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…
Pewaukee Astronomy Club
News and Information About the Pewaukee Astronomy Club and the Harken Observatory
Archive for November, 2009
An Unusual Variable Star in Auriga
Friday, November 27th, 2009Another Nova in Scutum
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Another 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…
Adventures in Guiding. . .
Monday, November 9th, 2009I 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…
Public Viewing Tonight (Sat 11/7)
Saturday, November 7th, 2009The 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!
