March 2021 Meeting Notes

Bartlesville Astronomical Society Meeting Minutes

March 1, 2021

• Opening and Welcome

• Thank you to Denise for Zoom setup

• Welcome guests and new members. 14 attended tonight’s meeting, including four visitors—one of these was Robbin Jones who was our main presenter this evening.

• Announcements

• Library still unavailable for meetings. Will continue to have meetings via Zoom, at least through May

• Thanks to John Grismore, John Blaesi, Mike Woods, and others for the Shut-in Newsletter and our regular newsletter

• Minutes of previous meeting are posted online by Denise were approved

• Treasurer’s Report - Evan Zorn

• Ending balance January 31, 2021: $5015.83

• Payment of $15.00 to the Oklahoma Secretary of State for annual nonprofit registration

• Ending balance Feb. 28, 2021: $5000.83.

• Committee Reports

• Astronomical League news and activities – Denise. No news from the Astronomical League, although Denise showed the Observing Challenge Certificate of Completion she received for the Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction in December.

• Youth club (BYA) news - Rick Bryant – Rick was not in attendance this evening.

• Library Display - Update

• If you need anything from the storage room at First Christian Church, let Craig know.

• Planning meeting for anyone interested in helping will be on Saturday, March 6 at 10:30 via Zoom. Denise will send out Zoom link to all members.

• Setup will most likely be on April 1; the library will notify us. Plan to get started around 10 a.m. at the First Christian Church to bring things over, then arrange them in display. Two people can be in the display case at once (display case has two doors).

• We will need people to help transport and set up the display. We will probably need 3 people to set up the background and floor cover.

• Dark Sky committee - John Blaesi

• We have been making sky quality measurements every month of 21.3 or better at Osage Hill State Park. In early February measured 21.4.

• Need volunteers to take measurements

• Email bvilleastro+darksky@gmail.com if willing to help!

• New Business

• Need Astronomical League coordinator to replace Kristi Herrman; Denise is filling in

• Need web wizard and social media wrangler to replace Derek Herrman; Denise Gregg is filling in. Need someone with Facebook and Twitter skills.

• Website migration from classic to new google sites is underway. This work is being done by John Grismore, Craig and Denise.

• Astronomy News and Events

• Astronomy News - Abby Bollenbach: Abby is making presentations for Astronomy magazine. Latest is “What is Dark Matter” and “Pluto’s Icy Heart”. Pluto was discovered Feb 18, 1930. View her presentations at http://astronomy.com and select the Videos tab

• Perseverance landing on Mars:

• Landed on February 18 at Jezero Crater (west of the InSight lander)

• https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020 has images

• Parachute encoded with “Dare Mighty Things”

• Anyone decode the GeoCache coin?

• Northern lights live display cam from Churchill, Manitoba, Canada: https://www.explore.org/livecams/aurora-borealis-northern-lights/northern-lights-cam

• Astronomy Club of Tulsa - March 23, 7:00

• “Discovery of an Exoplanet” - Phillips Scott

• https://astrotulsa.com

• Kalamazoo Astronomical Society Zoom meetings - kasonline.org

• Dr. Pascal Lee from SETI will be presenting on “N-1: Alone in the Milky Way” at their next meeting on March 5 - 7:00pm EST

• Introduction to Amateur Astronomy - January 23 - 5 sessions one every 2 weeks

• Next session is on March 6 on Telescopes

• Need to register online at kasonline.org

• Meteor showers: Not much until April - Lyrids

• AlCor 2021 August 4 in Albuquerque

• Club Events

• Star parties: Rick Buck

• Star Party for Dewey School - TBA

• St. Lukes - TBA

• Wayside school - TBA

• Osage Hills First Light - Next year!

• John Blaesi - upcoming events: Schedule a Messier Marathon at Osage Hills next week?

• Vesta opposition March 3 in Leo

• magnitude 6.2? 99.8% illuminated

• May be a good binocular view

• Any interest in observing Vesta at Osage Hills?

• Have already seen Vesta asteroid in Leo last week

• Member photos: Denise showed an image of Vesta taken Feb. 23.

• Tonight’s Program: Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA) by Robbin Jones of the Astronomy Club of Tulsa

o Robin gave an excellent presentation to our Club!

o Robbin is a petroleum engineer who’s been involved in astronomy for about ten years—more seriously in the last 5-6 years; he’s been involved with the Astronomy Club of Tulsa for about 8-9 years.

o Robbin’s father worked for a NASA contractor on the Apollo LEM. His father was given a commemorative coin made from NASA equipment that had been on the Moon, brought back to earth and melted!

o Where Robbin lives in Tulsa, his light at night registers Bortle 9. He can see magnitude 3.1 stars like Albireo and sometimes magnitude 4 stars with naked eye.

o Robin got into Electronically Assisted Astronomy because he wanted to see deep sky objects in more detail and take images in a shorter time frame.

o What is Electronically Assisted Astronomy? It is astronomy assisted by analog or digital cameras that can provide images in real or near real time (in seconds or a few minutes). The function of a regular telescope eyepiece is replaced by a camera and a display device.

o Images taken with EAA range from simple low-resolution (less than .5 megapixel) images to high-resolution images (2-6 megapixels) that you can stack, subtract darks, and apply flat frames to on the fly.

o Robbin typically stacks images for 5-10 minutes, depending on the object and the level of detail he wishes to see.

o For the cost of two good-quality telescope eyepieces you can get a good camera, which will let you see more than the eyepieces would—both fainter objects, and more colors in objects

o You can share what you see with others without them touching your equipment

o You can take screen shots of what you see, take longer stacked exposures, take videos, and do spectroscopy.

o Another form of EAA is the use of eyepieces based on night vision technology.

o Tools needed for Electronically Assisted Astronomy:

§ Telescope—all types work; alt-azimuth telescopes work but a German equatorial mount works better

§ GoTo tracking mount and tripod

§ If you want to save images, you need a video frame grabber and/or software and a computer

§ Camera of one of these two types—CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) or CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor).

· Low-resolution CCD cameras (0.5 megapixel) run $125-200

· High-end cameras (26 megapixels) run $2000 and up

· There are cameras with resolution levels and price points in between.

· Some of the cameras used for EAA run without a PC and others require a PC to control and display images.

o Taking images with larger pixel size will let you see fainter objects.

o Using faster telescopes or using focal lengths reduced to F/4-F/6 are better than F/10, except for planets. Required exposure times drop with lower values.

o Challenges in doing Electronically Assisted Astronomy:

§ Steep learning curve—new technology and terminology

§ Best to start out simple, focusing on bright objects

§ You must learn how your camera works

§ This technology can detract from your overall outdoor experience, but on the other hand, you can do this type of astronomy from indoors, avoiding cold, heat, humidity, etc.

§ Keep a log of what did and didn’t work for you!

o Performance factors:

§ Camera resolution and pixel size

§ Aperture and focal ratio (the faster the better)

§ Quality of mount tracking and polar alignment

§ Sky conditions

§ Temperature outdoors (camera noise doubles every 12 degrees Fahrenheit higher)

§ Camera settings:

o Exposure time

o Gain – signal amplifier; also amplifies noise

o Histogram – clips off background light and brightens shadows

o Binning – digitally simulates larger pixels

o Hot pixel correction – some pixels always show a signal; even in dark, they are “hot”

o Need to use good focusing

o A Bahtinov mask helps by creating diffraction spikes which are used to focus camera. Focus of mirror-based telescopes can change with temperature.

o Robbin has MallinCam cameras, but there are many good camera manufacturers for EAA in the market

o Robbin showed us a variety of beautiful images taken using EAA: Lagoon Nebula; Rosette Nebula; Eagle Nebula; Monkey Head Nebula in Orion; Running Man Nebula in Orion; Trapezium in Orion Nebula; Eastern Veil Nebula; Ring Nebula; Dumbbell Nebula; Crescent Nebula; Andromeda Galaxy (M31) with M110 and M32

o Here are some recommended resources for more information about EAA:

§ remotevideoastronomy.com by Jim Meadows

§ Sky and Telescope, “Exploring the Deep Sky with Video” by Rod Mollise, June 2020, page 66

§ agenaastro.com, “A Beginner’s Guide to Choosing Equipment for Deep Sky Electronically Assisted Astronomy”, June 21, 2020

§ liveskies.org, Live Broadcast of MallinCam sessions from around the world

§ https://www.rspec-astro.com/ Spectroscopy with a small telescope

• Next meeting - April 5; topic TBD

• Volunteers needed for upcoming meetings – contact Bob Young

• Ice cream at virtual Braum’s!!!

• Motion to adjourn