April 2010 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Libration Summary Chart for Lunation 1080 Apr May 2010
by Canopus56 12 Apr '10

12 Apr '10

A lunar libration summary chart for lunation 1080 (4-14 to 5-13) - http://fisherka.csolutionshosting.net/astronote/libration/Latest.jpg Historical charts are available in directory: http://fisherka.csolutionshosting.net/astronote/libration/ Clear Skies - Kurt

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] I need your help on this star party
by Jay Eads 12 Apr '10

12 Apr '10

Let me know when it reschedules and if schedule permits I'll go. I do believe this was postponed due to weather in case others may not have seen that. On 2010-04-12 17:05, Robert Taylor wrote: > Yes, I am planning on going if the weather holds, I'll add my name. > > -----Original Message----- > From: utah-astronomy-bounces@??? > [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces@???] On Behalf Of M Wilson > Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 11:02 AM > To: Utah Astronomy > Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] I need your help on this star party > > Are you planning on attending, Robert? > > I just checked the SLAS calendar and still only found myself and German. If > you're planning on attending, please sign up. (I saw that one club member > had signed up, but then took his name off of the list). > > Mike Wilson > Board Member in Charge of School Star parties > > --- On Mon, 4/12/10, Robert Taylor <Rob.Taylor@???> wrote: > > > From: Robert Taylor <Rob.Taylor@???> > Subject: [Utah-astronomy] I need your help on this star party > To: "'Utah Astronomy'" <utah-astronomy@???> > Date: Monday, April 12, 2010, 6:42 AM > > > Forwarded on behalf of German Platero: If you can make it tomorrow night > there's s Star Party tomorrow night in Utah County. > > _____ > > From: German Platero [mailto:platero289@???] > Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2010 6:06 PM > Subject: I need your help on this star party > > > > On Tuesday night, April 13, will be the club's first school oriented star > party. The place: Lakeview Academy in Saratoga Springs. The time: shortly > after sunset (which is at 8 pm). > > There will be about seventy-five 6th graders and their parents and the > contact person is Doug Baird, the school's "Science Guy", at 801-512-3972 > > Lakeview Academy is at 527 W 400 N in Saratoga Springs, Utah (or 11281 W > 7600 N using Utah County grid addressing). > > There's two ways to get there: > > As per a map found at <http://tinyurl.com/yjptx6n> > http://tinyurl.com/yjptx6n take I-15 to the Lehi exit (exit 279). Head west > on Main Street (Hwy 73) thru Lehi to Redwood Rd (Hwy 68). Turn left and go > south to 400 N (Saratoga Spgs addressing) or 7600 North (Utah County > addressing). Head west on 400 N/7600 N for approximately 4 blocks (0.6 > miles). School is on south side of road. > > The other way is to take Redwood Rd all the way into Utah County. Once you > pass the Smith's Store Shopping area at Lehi's Main St and Redwood Rd, > continue until you get to 400 N (Saratoga Spgs addressing) or 7600 N (Utah > County addressing) and turn right. School is about 4 blocks (0.6 miles) on > south side of road. > > Please go to the SLAS Events Calendar and sign up if you're interested > > > > > > > > > >

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I need your help on this star party
by Robert Taylor 12 Apr '10

12 Apr '10

Forwarded on behalf of German Platero: If you can make it tomorrow night there's s Star Party tomorrow night in Utah County. _____ From: German Platero [mailto:platero289@yahoo.com] Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2010 6:06 PM Subject: I need your help on this star party On Tuesday night, April 13, will be the club's first school oriented star party. The place: Lakeview Academy in Saratoga Springs. The time: shortly after sunset (which is at 8 pm). There will be about seventy-five 6th graders and their parents and the contact person is Doug Baird, the school's "Science Guy", at 801-512-3972 Lakeview Academy is at 527 W 400 N in Saratoga Springs, Utah (or 11281 W 7600 N using Utah County grid addressing). There's two ways to get there: As per a map found at <http://tinyurl.com/yjptx6n> http://tinyurl.com/yjptx6n take I-15 to the Lehi exit (exit 279). Head west on Main Street (Hwy 73) thru Lehi to Redwood Rd (Hwy 68). Turn left and go south to 400 N (Saratoga Spgs addressing) or 7600 North (Utah County addressing). Head west on 400 N/7600 N for approximately 4 blocks (0.6 miles). School is on south side of road. The other way is to take Redwood Rd all the way into Utah County. Once you pass the Smith's Store Shopping area at Lehi's Main St and Redwood Rd, continue until you get to 400 N (Saratoga Spgs addressing) or 7600 N (Utah County addressing) and turn right. School is about 4 blocks (0.6 miles) on south side of road. Please go to the SLAS Events Calendar and sign up if you're interested

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PST mount Heads-Up
by Chuck Hards 12 Apr '10

12 Apr '10

I use the Orion Tele Track GoTo mount for my PST. It works well, can carry an additional small white-light solar scope side-by-side with the PST if needed, and can also be used for night-time use on the stars. While the sun isn't in it's alignment star database, I easily get around that by noting which star the sun is close to on my planetarium program, then aligning on the sun as that star, and my best estimate on where I think Polaris is. This works so well that tracking is always dead-on for periods of up to half an hour before needed to be tweaked, at the low powers the PST is used for. And at night, when you can align on the stars themselves precisely, tracking is perfect. It functions on either internal batteries or 12VDC. It also has a 12VDC output jack. A table-top mount is available as an accessory but it comes with a full-height tripod that works well, from my experience. Right now, Orion has a Tele Track on-sale in their Clearance Center (typically customer returns or cosmetic "seconds", guaranteed to be fully functional, at sometimes impressive discout). $50.99 off the regular price: http://www.telescope.com/control/clearance-center/accessories-on-sale/refur…

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Bino question
by Patrick Wiggins 12 Apr '10

12 Apr '10

With the weather being so (relatively) nice today I was able to do my first Sun viewing in a while. Not much on offer in the way of sunspots but several prominences all around the limb including one huge one blasting off the northern limb. I have a pair of 10x50 which I recently equipped with solar filters from Orion. Crisp views. I like the yellow color and they showed last week's sunspots very nicely. So now I'm thinking about similar filters for my 11x80. But would there be any advantage to 11x80 white light views of the Sun over 10x50. More light gathering to be sure but, heck, we're talking the Sun here. No shortage of light even in 10x50. And I can't imagine I'd get that much more with 11 power vs 10 power. But binocular minds far superior to mine live on this list. Hence my question. Should I go with 11x80 solar filters? Many thanks, patrick

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] North entry into the Coma-Sculptor Galaxy Group
by Canopus56 11 Apr '10

11 Apr '10

Glad you enjoyed it, Joe. If you have Starry Night, I understand that it will a supergalactic flyby based on an older dataset of 30K galaxies from R. Brent Tully. Tully's newest data on galactic distances with a good chart of local space as it relates to the Virgo Supercluster are at: Extragalatic Database UofHi (see diagram at bottom of page) http://edd.ifa.hawaii.edu/figures/LV_vector.jpg (diagram) in http://edd.ifa.hawaii.edu/ (page) Powell's Atlas of the Universe has a good plot showing the voids - - Space to 200 million light-years with voids labeled http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/200mill.html - Virgo supercluster http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/virgo.html Tully recent article http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008ApJ...676..184T Clear Skies - Kurt

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North entry into the Coma-Sculptor Galaxy Group
by Canopus56 11 Apr '10

11 Apr '10

Galaxies in Coma Berenices are featured in Sue French's column in the May edition of Sky & Telescope. http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=3210 Finding members fo the Coma-Sculptor galaxy group (a sub-part of the Virgo Supercluster) has always been another difficult task for me. Getting oriented to the Com constellation under urban and suburban semi-light polluted skies and finding computer control stars for synchronizing a computer handbox to. It seems that the main stars of Com are either invisible and impossible to find under light polluted skies or in a dark sky site the region is flooded with faint stars. The 6 degree diameter Coma Star Cluster (Melotte 111) and related stars form a coat-hanger like asterism that provides a quick way to orient and handbox synchronize to 4.4 mag gamma (15) Com (SAO 82313, HD108381 HR 4737). The Coma Star Cluster is itself easily seen in 10x50 binoculars from urban light polluted areas. The cluster forms a coat-hanger like asterim: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=3214 The celestial north end of the cluster terminates with two stars including 14 Com. The third-end point is gam Com - one of the primary stars in Com figure consisting of gam, beta and alf Com. Once located gam Com provides a handbox synchronization opportunity. gam Com is 3 degs from NGC4565 (Caldwell 38). The coat-hanger like asterism is evidence on many charts, e.g. - in Burnhams, on Macholtz's Messier Marathon Chart, and Tiron's Cambridge Star Atlas. Once gam Com is located, even under urban light polluted skies - an easterly right ascension sweep (using 14 Com and gam Com as a right-angle guiding reference line) across optical wide doubles including 31 Com and 41 Com allow quick location of beta Com (v 4.2, SAO 82706, HR4983, HD114710). The Coma "coathanger" provides an easy after-work practice target that will aid in locating more galaxies in the Realm of Galaxies during dark sky weekend sessions in late April and May. - Kurt P.S. - the Coma-Sculptor Galaxy Cluster has always been one of my favorites from a supragalactic structural point-of-view. Our Milky Way lies on soap-bubble film-like surface bewteen two major voids: http://fisherka.csolutionshosting.net/astronote/Clarkxref/img/3DUniv40Mpc1V… The Coma Sculptor Galaxy Group - in which the Milky Way sits is a close galaxy group member (colored red) in the north galactic hemisphere view of the Virgo Supercluster. The Virgo cluster (colored teal) is more distant: http://fisherka.csolutionshosting.net/astronote/Clarkxref/img/3DUniv40Mpc1.… The Coma galaxy members of the Coma Sculptor Group reaches down to the Milky Way's plane, encompasses the Milky Way and then continues on into the southern galactic plane as the Sculptor galaxies. The effect can be seen on the Orion Deep Sky 600 map on the wall of the Ealing observatory.

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Heading out Locally Tonight if Anyone Wants to Join
by Jay Eads 10 Apr '10

10 Apr '10

I'm heading out tonight to a darker site locally. Clear Sky Clock shows good clearing of the clouds (as does satellite) by this afternoon, evening. Humidity will be low at Pit n Pole with decent transparency, low humidity and average seeing. I am thinking of Pit n Pole since it is closer for me. If your interested in heading out and want to go local I'll be at Pit n Pole and set up by 8:00p.m. as I want a really good view of Venus and Mercury. The western horizon is good there. Also, should be good for galaxies in Ursa Major, Leo and Virgo. You can reply here or email me at JayLEads@ (see the list email) if you need directions or want to meet on the way out there. Weather is coming in next week for new moon for a few days so I thought I'd maximize efforts. Clear skies to you!

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Western entry chart for the Virgo Realm of the Galaxies
by Canopus56 09 Apr '10

09 Apr '10

I have always had trouble getting accurate scope pointing in the Realm of the Galaxies (the Virgo Supercluster) beneath Com B. The May Sky & Telescope suggests an asterism - the Little Pleaides - to ease western entry from beta Leo. Western Entry to Realm of the Galaxies - Little Pleaides Asterism http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=3207 The Little Pleaides asterism is located about 6 degs on an RA sweep from beta Leo and contains 6 Com (5 mag) as its brightest star. The Little Pleaides asterism is useful for locating and synchronizing computer controlled scopes on M98 - which is next to 6 Com and M99 which is next to another prominent star in the asterism. Once computer control is resynched with the Realm, moving to the numerous nearby galaxies is easy. The Little Pleaides asterism is easily located under at mag 5 sky at Little Mtn using 5 deg TFOV binoculars. beta Leo, omi Vir and 6 Com make a nice equilateral triangle about 6 degs on a side. Center your binos in this imaginary triangle using the brighter beta Leo and omi Vir. Then travel up slighty to the celestial northeast and you will see the Little Pleaides. The same principle applies with a 4 deg telescope finder. From my mag 3.5 to 4.0 apartment in the Avenues, the Little Pleaides is difficult to find. It appears as a flag asterism in 10 x 50 binos because light pollution washes out the faintest star in the Pleaides-like asterism. I have not checked my Celestron and Meade 497 handcontrollers to see if 6 Com (SAO100012) comes up. As we get ready for the weather constrained start of season - practicing finding the Little Pleaides asterism after work under an urban or suburban sky is a good prepatory warm-up to get ready for a clear late April or May weekend. Clear Skies - Kurt

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Last night's lecture
by Gary Vardon 09 Apr '10

09 Apr '10

I attended a lecture about detecting planets on other stars at the U of Utah. The two methods mentioned are Doppler shifts and ellipses. If a new method could be developed that would be very useful. Sincerely, Gary Vardon The book DO It Right will help you understand vital ideas leading to your greater success. GO to PublishAmerica.com Consulting For Profit is also available. Learn how to make money as a consultant.

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