March 9th, 2010
This Saturday, March 13 at 7 PM Greg Buchwald will give a talk entitled “A Dozen Years of Chasing the Shadow: Observing Solar Eclipses” As always, the event is free and open to the public — please join us!
Greg has travelled the world to observe 8 Solar Eclipses. He will share photographs and videos of his experiences from places like the Galapagos Islands, China, Turkey, Zambia and more! Additionally, Greg also volunteers at the Yerkes Observatory in Lake Geneva, home of the world’s largest refractor telescope. He was part of the team that found pre-discovery images of Pluto taken at Yerkes. These were very helpful in calculating precise orbital elements for the Dwarf Planet.
Here are some of his images:
Posted in Imaging, Sky Events, Solar System | No Comments »
March 5th, 2010
We often speak of the stars as being fixed in the heavens or refer to their motion only in vast time scales compared to our lifetimes. But the things that truly pique our interest in astronomy involve movement. The planets, for example, are special because they move relative to the fixed stars. Even the word “planet” comes from the Greek word for “wanderer”. Because things in the sky actually do move, they occasionally pass in front of other things. . . and those events can be both visually striking and provide insight into our place in the Universe. In this article, I will focus on things that pass in front of our star, the Sun. Continue Reading…
Posted in Sky Events, Solar System | 2 Comments »
January 16th, 2010
Last Wednesday night we lucked out with clear sky conditions and relatively good seeing to observe something amazing: the transit of an exoplanet!
HD80606b is a planet that is four times larger than Jupiter, orbiting one star of a binary star system 190 light-years away from earth. Every 111 days, this planet passes in front of its star as viewed from earth. Continue Reading…
Posted in General, Imaging, Stars | 4 Comments »
December 31st, 2009
Please join us on Saturday, January 9th at 7pm at the Pewaukee Library. Club member Scott Berg will give a talk entitled “The Life and Times of a Star” – A short discussion of the very long life of a celestial star.
The presentation is free, family-friendly and the general public are welcome!
Hope to see you there.
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December 10th, 2009
This Saturday from 11 to noon at the Pewaukee Library, Mike Paquette will give a talk called “Seasons and Constellations” Geared for ages 7 to 12, kids can come and see what causes our seasons, why the stars move like they do, and what constellations are visible in the night sky at various times of the year.
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November 27th, 2009
Auriga is the “Charioteer” in the sky, and is quite prominent in the sky now. Its brightest star is Capella. A fairly bright star (3rd magnitude) not far away from Capella called epsilon Aurigae is undergoing one of its unusual dimmings. These happen once every 27.1 years. It should reach its minimum light state around December 21st. If you look up at Auriga, you might notice that something looks “different” in the outline of that constellation.
Right now and over the next two years Continue Reading…
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November 11th, 2009
Another nova was tentitively discovered by H. Nishimura in Japan and I went to the observatory Tues night to see if I could confirm it. Yup – its there! I took an AAVSO finder chart wit me, but it was scaled for the Stellarvue D80. I actually used the LX200 scope with a smaller field of view so it took a little “star-hopping” to locate the star field. I measured a position of RA 18h 43m 45.62sec, Dec -07deg 36min 42.0sec. I measured it at about magnitude 8.2, so it appears to still be brightening from Continue Reading…
Posted in Imaging, Sky Events, Stars | 4 Comments »
November 9th, 2009
I spent some time last Saturday evening taking images of some galaxies. I wanted to get a good wide field image of M33 in Triangulum which was nearly overhead. M33 (along with the Andromeda Galaxy) is part of our local group. It is fairly large (being relatively close by at 3 million light years) and very faint with a small star like core and some bright star forming regions.
The Starlight Express H9C camera on the 80mm APO refractor at 480mm focal length gave a field of view of almost 1 degree. Continue Reading…
Posted in Deep Sky, Galaxies, Imaging | Comments Off
November 7th, 2009
The observatory will be open tonight from 6:30 to 9:00 for public viewing in the large onference room. Club members will project live images from the telescope onto the view screen.
See you there!
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October 28th, 2009
Image of the nova – a star that was not visible there before.
A little while back, I subscribed to the special notice bulletins from the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). I thought that it might be interesting to hear about unusal variable stars, novas and perhaps even a supernova should one of those appear. One of these notices arrived in my inbox on Monday. There was a newly discovered nova in the constellation of Sagittarius. I wondered, could we observe this at the Harken Observatory?
Since I had never tried to do this before, I could not resist trying! The weather map showed Continue Reading…
Posted in Deep Sky, Sky Events, Software, Stars | 2 Comments »
