On the web at http://www.nhastro.com/

Observer StaffEditor & Publisher:Paul Winalski

Newsletter of the New Hampshire Astronomical Society

Vol. 2008 No. 8 “All the news that fits in print” August 2008

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Stellafane Report

Our annual trek to Stellafane wasanother success. We had two nightsof observing but did lose the thirdnight (Saturday) to rain. I arrivedearly Thursday afternoon and stakedout our usual spot for the club, thenclaimed a campsite for myself inshady Pine Island. I then walked thecampgrounds, reunited with a fewStellafane friends, then went andhad dinner by myself in the foodvendors’ tent. There were fewpeople there then, but one did comein and sit with me for a quick chat,none other than TeleVue owner AlNagler. We chatted about refractorsand eyepieces for a while (whatelse?). Later that evening I foundmyself observing quite by accidentwith Sue French who writes themonthly article Deep-Sky Wondersfor Sky and Telescope. I enjoyedmany fine views in her vintageAstro-Physics 130mm refractor.This is a wonderful part of ourhobby —that manufacturers,magazine writers and the like areaccessible and approachable toeveryone.

The second evening NHAS wasthere in force, our canopy was up,and we had several scopes set upnearby. A group of people came byand asked if any of us had beenthere the year before, and in factmost of us had been. These peoplehad been there last year and hadgotten their first telescopic viewsever through NHAS member scopesand came by to thank us warmlyagain for sharing with them.

Saturday we had our cookout going,NHAS members happily puttingaway burgers and dogs and chickenserved up by Joel Harris and Bill

Steele. The weather kept closing inand eventually lightning streakedacross the western sky, which sentus scurrying at record pace to teardown the canopy and pack it awayin my truck before it all got wet.Then the sky opened and the raincame, some decided to attend theremaining talks, while others,myself included left early. And soended another year at theconvention.

� Gardner Gerry

NHAS President 2008

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You just read our President’s reporton the annual NHAS trek toStellafane. More information onthis event (including pictures)appears later in this Newsletter.

The final four of our scheduled skywatches for the MBC SummerCamp in Contoocook NH werescheduled in this reporting period.Two of them actually took place(one by accident). In all, four of thescheduled six MBC sky watchesactually were held, which is a minormiracle considering the horrible skyconditions this summer (one of thevery wettest on record).

Anyone who has been payingattention to the celestial calendarknows that a total solar eclipse waspredicted for 1 August along a linestretching from the Arctic throughWestern Siberia, and into westernChina. Our own John Blackwell

was in Novosibirsk to view the

eclipse, and he gives us his report,with photographs.

NHAS put on other publicobserving events: our annual skywatch for the Goffstown PublicLibrary; a solar observing event forthe Currier Museum Art Center; andother random acts of Astronomy.Enjoy, all, and clear skies (please!).

� Paul Winalski

NHAS Secretary 2008

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The intrepid NHAS imaging corpscontinue to work in producingwonderful images. Please feel freeto visit the NHAS pictures forum tosee the latest postings.

� Gardner Gerry

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Friday I went to represent NHAS atCMP for the sky watch. Had 16 or17 people and just me and aBUNCH of clouds. Theyappreciated my trying to track downobjects that kept disappearingbehind the numerous clouds.Jupiter eventually showed up, and Iwas able to show brief glimpses ofM13, M27, T Lyrae and severaldouble stars. About half of thosethat were there really seemed toenjoy it even though the viewingwas poor.

� Ken Charles

My thanks, on behalf of all ofNHAS, to Ken for keeping the faith(I admit it—I wimped out). Wehave had absolutely ghastly weatherfor the monthly scheduled CMP skywatches of late, and this has beenthe best one of late. We can onlyhope for better weather as fall

2 The NHAS Observer August 2008

approaches (but I’m not holding mybreath).

� Paul Winalski

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The last four sky watches at theMBC Summer Camp inContoocook, NH were scheduled totake place during this reportingperiod. Amazingly, given theovercast weather, we actually heldtwo of them.

As recounted previously, theobserving field here suffers frompoor horizon visibility, but the skiesare very clear—equivalent to whatwe have at YFOS. The kids (about100, aged 6-18, arranged inapproximately four groups of 25 byage) have been great. Well-behaved, interested, and askingsome very good questions duringthe “What’s in the Sky?”presentation I gave to the youngestgroup.

We have become something of acamp legend—each group ofcampers told the new campers thatone of the highlights of the weekwould be the awesome telescopesshowing up on Wednesday.

Our last viewing session hereactually took place by accident.Due to an email misunderstanding, Ishowed up in Contoocook onTuesday, 29 July, and gave, solo, asky watch unanticipated either bythe campers or NHAS. The goodpart was that the campers, andespecially the camp staff afterwards,got to enjoy really clear skies. Thebad, and really frustrating part forme, was that since I was alone Icould only show one object each tothe four groups of 25 campers whowere there to observe. I choseJupiter and M13. I only wish thatmore scopes were there—skies werevery clear, and it was frustrating toonly be able to show off one objectto each group. I was able to showoff more to the camp counselorslater on.

All told, this has been a verysuccessful series of sky watches forus. Four of the six scheduled skywatches took place (given the

horrible weather, this is mostunusual), the kids have been great,the venue is very good, and theresponse has been awesome.

I hope they have us back again nextsummer.

� Paul Winalski

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NHAS makes an annual pilgrimageto the oldest convention of amateurtelescope makers (ATMs) in theworld. Here, in pictures, arehighlights of this year’s Stellafane.

Setup at Stellafane (Joe Derek

photo)

Those Earthlings make me sooo

angry! (Joe Derek photo)

Big dob ready to go (Joe Derek

Photo)

Mike Townsend, Joe Derek, andChase McNiss pose with the 16”classical Cassegrain that won the“triple crown” of all three categoriesof the main scope constructioncompetition. Two gentlemen fromConnecticut designed and built thescope over a six-year period.

Gardner Gerry photo.

Here Mike Townsend checks outthe spectroscopic view in an AlvanClark 5” refractor. This is the samescope Nils Wygant and Gardner

Gerry saw at the Clay Center forScience and Technology (see theJune 2007 NHAS Observer). It isowned by Clark refractor collectorand Clay Center faculty astronomerJohn Briggs.

Gardner Gerry photo.

I only wish I’d been there!

� Paul Winalski

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I volunteered to give a sky watch(can one “give” a sky watch?) [yes,one can—Ed.] to a small group ofpeople in Wonalancet. These folksget together to discuss lofty topicsonce a year, and what loftier topic isthere besides astronomy?

I found the unmarked dirt road theday before as it is only about 10miles from where I live. Theorganizer and I decided to tryFriday night, as Saturday looked tobe monsoonal. Well, weather being

August 2008 The NHAS Observer 3

what it is around here, andparticularly near the mountains, itwas still risky, but like I said, it wasclose to home.

I got there about 9:30 [2 August] fora 10:00 staring time, to fit with theirscheduled activities.

The view to the South was fantastic!We seemed to be looking down toJupiter. The humidity was liquid,and my hair dryer and zapper wereworking overtime. I gave the usualtour of the circumpolar region, andthrew in some mythology (pleasefootnote “The Clash of the Titans”here).

Clouds flew over at regularintervals, but in between we couldplainly see all seven stars of theLittle Bear. When I pointed myever-popular green laser at theclouds, it hit! (ever popular evenwith this group... they all wanted toplay with it!) There was a cleardot, not just the “off into the infinitebeyond,” as usual.

A good time was seemingly had byall and I packed up after 12.

� Marc Stowbridge

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With the pending eclipse of 1August, I decided to go and chase itdown. The reports from variousagencies showed that the furthersouth one went into Asia, the betterthe weather prospects looked for theeclipse date. I chose to head intoRussia towards the city ofNovosibirsk, the third largest city inthe Russian Federation. To get therewas an interesting process: Here inNH to Boston to New York toHelsinki to Moscow to SaintPetersburg to Novosibirsk! I can saythat I have seen and experiencedRussia, its beauty, its food, itspeople and language. I had preppedby taking a year of acceleratedRussian language classes, and I canalso say this helped a lot!

John Blackwell in front of St.

Basil’s Cathedral, Red Square,

Moscow

To photograph the eclipse I broughtalong a Nikon D200 with plenty ofmemory and 300mm telephoto lens,a portable 80GB hard drive, a dualbattery pack, remote control shuttercontrol, a right angle viewer and aBogen tripod with slow motionhead. This turned out to be the rightcombination of gear: easilytransported in a daypack stylecamera case and easy to get throughsecurity at the various airports alongthe way. The lens and tripodallowed the right image size andtracking control needed to followthe eclipse.

The eclipse site was at the northernshore of the huge Novosibirskreservoir, a manmade lake which isa part of Russia's long Ob River.We arrived in the early afternoon toset up and get psyched for the event.Hundreds of other people were alsowithin range from all walks of life.It was not immediately a joyousevent, though: Clouds dominatedthe sky with some passing showersin the area. The wind was fierce,pushing through off the water at30mph with higher gusts. Cameraswould shake, and dust was an issue.Miraculously, the clouds not onlyparted, but evaporated completelyinto blue skies. The wind? It keptpounding us. The location offeredtwo main spots to observe from: thebeach, a sandy area with winds right

off the water, and a promontoryabout 12m above the beach that hada 10m clearing then birch forest. Ihad set up on the edge of the cliffbut thought better of it once thecamera was coated in a fine powderof dirt being blown up the cliff. Imoved back towards the trees justafter taking the first contact images.This reduced wind effects, dirt, andoffered shade until the big momentarrived.

Observing site at Novisibirsk

(John Blackwell photo)

As totality approached, I fell intothe moment, just watching withoutthe camera. My intent was tocapture the diamond ring on theway out. This was a good plan. Asthe eclipse reached totality, the“ooohs” and “ahhs” were quitefrequent, the shadow of the Moonwas clearly visible tracking acrossthe water, and then the corona burstforth in a stunning display with fainttendrils and streamers. Through atelescope, three small pinkprominences were also visible. Inthe 2 minutes and 20 secondsallotted. I then took TONS ofimages. I am happy with the resultsand with the trip as a whole.

Totality! (John Blackwell photo)

� John A.Blackwell

4 The NHAS Observer August 2008

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The Currier Museum Art Centerholds a summer day camp for kids,roughly grades 3-6. Their modulefor this summer was “cosmicoriented”, and so they asked us togive them a (daytime) astronomypresentation.

I gave an extended version of the“what's in the night sky”slide show.I added more pictures of deep-skyobjects, included the “solar systemmodeled on a football field” and“the speed of light, from light-nanosecond to light-year” slidesfrom some of the Astro 101presentations. I also included asequence of spiral galaxies fromface-on (M101, M51) through tilted(M81, M31) to edge-on (M104,NGC 891), to illustrate how ourview of the Milky Way is that of aspiral galaxy, viewed from theinside. I finished with a few slideson the Sun—how it looks in visiblelight (sunspots from 1992), what itlooks like in H-alpha, and a cut-away of the internal structure of theSun.

This being an art center, I alsothrew in a slide of Van Gogh's“Starry Night over the Rhone”,which shows the Big Dipper andArcturus. I noted that, given theposition that the artist depicted theconstellation, we can determinewhat time of year he did the originalsketches for the painting. The staffwas delighted I’d included artreferences in the presentation, and itturned out they were studying VanGogh that very week with the kids.

There were good questions from thekids. For example: “You said thatthis galaxy has a black hole in thecenter. Then why is the center sobright?” And: “How do we knowthat Alpha Centauri is 4.5 light-years away?” Answer: “Simpletrigonometry. Next time you’re inGeometry or Trig class and you getbored and think it’s all prettyuseless stuff, think again. It’s bydirect application of simpletrigonometry that we know prettyaccurately how far away AlphaCentauri is.”

One of the kids asked specificallyabout the star representing thegorgon Medusa in the sky. I repliedthat, indeed, that was the wonderfuleclipsing binary star Algol, but Ihadn’t included it in thepresentation, since Perseus risesvery late at night this time of year. Idid find on my laptop an image ofthe famous (and repulsive!) Rubenspainting of Medusa’s Severed Head.Thus inspired, the kid knocked offan etching of Medusa’s Head in thesky. I was really impressed!

The clouds held off enough so thatthe kids were all able to see solarprominences, naked eye, in H-alpha.I was most pleased with how thisevent turned out, and they sent usmany sketches and letters ofappreciation.

� Paul Winalski

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The following is the list of NHASmembers that were recorded lastnight at the Goffstown PublicLibrary Sky watch on 23 July: Bill

Steele, Mike Townsend, John

Rose, Paul Winalski, Rich

DeMidio, Chase McNiss, Marc

Stowbridge, Ken Charles, Ted

Blank, Al Navarro, and Charley

Vaillancourt.

A family brought a Christmas giftthat they couldn’t get first lightthrough since the gift was opened.The scope was a Meade refractor(looks like a department storeproduct), looked like the SkySeekerpicture I found on the Sears web sitethis morning.

The scope came with both coversand missing the eye pieces. I wasoff to get one of my EP when thefather returned with the two thatcame with the Meade (9mm and25mm). We tried to get a focus on atree top to align the red dot finder.After some time I noticed that the2X Barlow was installed betweenthe draw tube and the diagonal. Iremoved the Barlow and bingo Icould focus on a tree top then alignthe red dot finder.

At last they were very happy to getfirst light on Jupiter.

Mike helped a user with a Celestron9.5—looked like a CPC. I don’thave any details.

� Bill Steele

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Tom Cocchiaro, who wasinstrumental in our obtaining a$5000 grant, reports that FostersDaily Democrat and the PortsmouthHerald both recently ran photos andnews articles on the grant.

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ATM

No report.

YFOS

Larry Lopez reports that theMosquito Magnet was working, butnow is shut down (probably out offuel). MMs are expensive to fix,but we can expect it to break downin 3-4 years. Someone mowed thelawn. According to Herb Bubert,the Gemini mount needs a battery.

Membership

Alan Shirey left a report on thethree June educational workshops(DSOs, Carbon Stars, Stellarevouution). Four new memberswere introduced: Jason Spencer,Scott McCartney, Stan Klemczak,Wendy Flagg.

Astrophotography

No activity to report. People arestill taking astroimages (see thewebsite).

Radio Astronomy

No report.

Public Observing

Marc Stowbridge reported onupcoming sky watches at the MBCSummer Camp in Contoocook,Goffstown PublicLibrary (bringyour DEET!), and Madison OldHome Week. Also a daytimelecture at the Currier Art Center inManchester.

A solar observing session was heldin Madison.

Marc presented his work-in-progress slide show on circimpolarconstellations.

August 2008 The NHAS Observer 5

Webmaster

Mike O’Shaughnessy has set up afile site for us.

Book of the Month

Ted Blank presented CharlesWoods’s The Modern Moon, A

Personal View� Paul Winalski.

Scope of the Month

Ken Charles presented Soulshine,his 11” Celestron f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain. It is GPS computerizedand tracks really well with either 1-star or 2-star alignment. Extrafeatures that Ken added include aMoonlite focuser, Telrad, andcounterweight bar. The sturdytripod has a built-in level. Thetripod weighs 18lb, and the scopeitself 65 lb.

Stellafane Planning

Someone needs to bring up the clubcanopy. Joel Harris will do thecooking.

Evening Program

A delightful presentation of photosby club members including:

John Blackwell: NGC 7000,California Nebula, M88 galaxycluster, Cave Nebula, M104, M101.

Dave Weaver: Comet 8P Tuttle,Comet Holmes, M106, M33.

Chase McNiss: Lots of Moonstuff: Northern Highlands, Clavius,Tycho region, Copernicus.

Rich Schuller: Jupiter system,three planets(Mars, Jupiter, Saturn),M8, NGC 7000, M51, CometHolmes and Mirfak in conjunction,M31/M32/M110, Veil in H-alpha,Schwassmann Wachmann fragmentC and M57 in conjunction.

John Buonomo: M45, CaliforniaNebula, M42, M81,. IC 410, IC443, Veil Nebula, Rosette Nebula,YFOS setup.

Nils Wygant: M13, M27, CometMaccholz, California Nebula,Umbra of 10-21-04 lunar eclipse,sunspots, Horsehead and flamenebula, M44.

Larry Lopez: Moon and VeilNebula.

Gardner Gerry: M31/M32/M110,M101, M16, M17, full Veil Nebula,

Maccholz in Cepheus, crescentMoon and earthshine.

Tim Printy: Comet Swant, CometMcNaught, Milky Way fromFlorida, Milky Way and Iridiumflare at YFOS.

Tom Cocchiaro: Orion and ship onhorizon, star sunset.

Herb Bubert: M97 and M108,NGC 2359 (Thor’s Helmet), M20,Flame and Horse Head,M31/32/110, Mars, Saturn, Jupiterdouble transit sequence.

Paul Howard: Veil in H-alpha/S II/O III, M27.

� Paul Winalski

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Starting Balance: $5292.45

Deposits/Credits: 7.50(membership)Accounts/Paid: 219.10(Kalmbach Pub.; Penney Fence; ProPortsmouth)

Net Account Balance: $5080.85

Petty cash drawer: $100.00

Cash Balance: $5180.85

2008 Membership: 133

New Members: Craig Yankes,

Nasahua, NH

Donations: $0.00

Balance of Grant Funds $809.70

� Chase McNiss

DEADLINE September 2008 Issue: 5 PM September 13E-mail articles to the Editor.CHANGE OF ADDRESS – Notify the Treasurer of changes to postal or e-mail address.

How to Join N.H.A.S.Write to us: Send E-mail to:NHAS info@nhastro.comP.O. Box 5823Manchester, NH 03108-5823 Use our web site:Attn: Treasurer http://www.nhastro.com/

This month's contributors:Gardner Gerry, Ken Charles, Joe Derek, Marc Stowbridge, John Blackwell, Bill Steele, Tom Cocchiaro, Chase McNiss

New Hampshire Astronomical SocietyP.O. Box 5823Manchester, NH 03108-5823

Event Date Time Location

NHAS Business Meeting August 15 7:30 PM Christa McAuliffe Planetarium

Astro 101: Lunar Observing August 16 7:00 PM YFOS

Astronomer’s Conjunction August 29-31 all day Northfield MA

CMP Public Sky Watch September 5 7:00 PM Christa McAuliffe Planetarium

NHAS Business Meeting September 12 7:30 PM St. Anselm College

Coffee House Night September 26 5:00 PM YFOS

NHAS Upcoming Events

2008 OfficersPresident: Gardner Gerry

VicePresident: Mike TownsendTreasurer: Chase McNiss

Secretary: Paul Winalski