Club Meetings
The Club meets in the Pewaukee Library conference room on the second Wednesday of every month at 7 pm.
Next Meeting: Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Public Events
The Second Saturday of every month the Club has a "Rain or Shine" presentation on an astronomy topic. The presentations are given in the Community Room at the Library unless otherwise noted.
Next Event: Jeff Annis will discuss how to inexpensively build a large Dobsonian telescope at home using common materials on Saturday May 12 at 8:00 pm, Pewaukee Public Library, 210 Main Street, Pewaukee. Please note the time change to 8 PM. The event is free and intended for a general audience.
We have moved the starting time to 8 PM during the summer months because the later time may enable us to show the night sky after the presentation, weather permitting.
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Author Archives: rbuchwald
What a lunar eclipse! (too bad it was cloudy)
As you might know, the weather did not cooperate for our planned observing session of the total lunar eclipse. What was also unusual was that this eclipse occurred on the night of the winter solstice (the longest night of the … Continue reading
Geminid Meteor Shower – a warmer method to observe!
The Geminid meteor shower is about as good of a meteor show as the Perseids are but happens in the cold of winter. It peaked this year at about 2 AM on December 14th while the temperature was sub-zero. Being … Continue reading
HT Cassiopeia – Light Curve (Part 2)
The 600 images collected during the observing session were analyzed photometrically using the capabilities of the MAXIM DL5 software. There are numerous reference/comparison stars available for the analysis as shown on an AAVSO finder chart obtained at http://www.aavso.org/vsp/chart under the … Continue reading
HT Cassiopeia – an Amazing Binary Star System (Part 1)
On November 2nd, a new AAVSO Special Notice (#221) arrived in my email inbox. HT Cas is a dwarf nova star in the constellation of Cassiopeia (the one that looks like a “W” and is currently well placed in our … Continue reading
Say Goodbye to Comet Hartley
As some of you may know, there has been another comet passing near the Earth on its periodic orbital path. It is known as a “short period” comet because it completes one orbit around the sun about every 6 years. … Continue reading
A Whirlwind Tour of the Solar System
I received a phone call from Mike Paquette on Saturday July 24th. He told me that he thought that it might be possible to observe all of the planets in the solar system all in a few hours in one … Continue reading
Fun with Astrometrics! and a Near Earth Object
As some of you may know, I have recently been experimenting with the capability of our observatory equipment to accurately measure the position of objects in the telescope camera images. Things outside of our solar system don’t change position much, … Continue reading
Observations of an Exoplanet!
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 … Continue reading
An Unusual Variable Star in Auriga
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 … Continue reading
Another Nova in Scutum
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 … Continue reading
