The regular meeting of the Ogden Astronomical
Society will convene in the Layton P. Ott Planetarium
on the Weber State University campus at 7:30 p.m. on
Thursday evening January 14, 1999. Details of this
month's meeting have not been finalized by the Prez.
But indications, to date, are that it will be an
exceptionally interesting program.
Greetings Earthlings; How did the holidays turn out for everyone? Fine I hope. The prez and first lady (with dogs) chiseled the trailer out of the snow Christmas week and drove to Lake Mead at Boulder City for Christmas. Took a scope along of course. On Christmas night I did some observing under one of the steadiest skies I have ever seen. Everything thing looked like a photograph in the eyepiece. The stars in Trapezuim showed pinpoint separation in the 10 inch at low power and high power. And the planets... don't get me started. It truly was a special night.
And as good fortune would have it there were about 20 members of my family there to enjoy the stoic stellar event.
Hopefully this coming year will provide many nights like this for our club events. Last year was a wash out on many occasions. The only really good event at the island wasn't until Oct. and many of the school events were rained out. Both of the Monte Cristo's were O.K. one was hot and one was windy. Spring and early summer I remember a lot of clouds. Guess it was that El Nino thing we had going.
Which leads me to observing in general. As you all know we have been discussing joining the Astronomical League. Among the items it has to offer are the observing programs. I know that a lot of us are more enthused about observing if we have more of a structure to follow.(unlike yours truly who has adult onset ADD). They offer about six programs with some for binoculars even. These would provide plenty of incentive to get out and observe more often plus the added bonus of braggin' rights when you have an award for completing the programs.
There are several other advantages offered thru the league so here is the web site <mcs.net/~bstevens/al> . You better check it out so you can vote for or against membership at the January meeting . In my opinion joining the A.L. will give us another avenue of resources, incentives to sharpen our observing skills and give us more access to the astronomical community at large. All in all, for three dollars a year, the benefits derived will greatly enhance our knowledge and pleasure of the universes greatest hobby. And as we all know, the rest will be history.
The Prez.
MINUTES
OGDEN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
December 10, 1998
The December meeting of the Ogden Astronomical Society was called to order by President Ron Vanderhule at 7:30 p.m.
Members were offered a choice of presentations; the scheduled program on home building of mirrors and telescopes or, a video on Mars. Members opted for the telescope making program.
Business began with the pros and cons of the OAS joining the Astronomical League, as was discussed at the November meeting. A deciding vote will be taken by the members present at the January meeting.
Doug Say offered club shirts and caps for sale Jim Seargeant was introduced to describe his technique used when taking and processing the Jupiter image in this months newsletter.
Discussion on mirror making was introduced with the John Dobson video. The meeting adjourned to informal discussion at 9:30 p.m. Bob Tillotson, Sec.
This is an image of Saturn and five of the brightest moons visible on 2 December 1998. Like the picture of Jupiter in last month's newsletter, this image was taken by some of John Sohl's students as their astronomy class project using my 12" Meade LX 200 and SBIG ST-7 CCD camera. This image was processed much like the one of Jupiter, using Elgie Mills' techniques of processing the image first for the planet, processing again for the moons, then combining the two.
This procedure is required because of the great brightness range of the planets and their moons. In this month's image, Saturn is 0.4 mag and the moons are, from left to right, Rhea - 9.5 mag, Dione - 10.2 (Saturn is between Rhea and Dione), Enceladus - 11.5, Tethys - 10.0, and Titan - 8.2. The brightness of the moons shown here is not representative of the real thing, but the printed page (and computer screen) is very limited in the range of
brightness that can be shown. I used a digital version of the darkroom technique of burning in the moons to make them visible next to Saturn - this also made the moons appear larger than is realistic.
As in the Jupiter image, this one was shot at a focal length of 75.6". With these encouraging results, I will try to increase the scale of the images by shooting at focal lengths of 120" and 240" while Jupiter and Saturn are still well situated in the sky.
This business of CCD imaging really uses a lot of software. The image was taken and initially processed using CCDOPS; Corel PhotoPaint burned in the moons; Picture Window combined the planet and moon images into one; Guide determined the names and magnitudes of the moons; AOL sent the image and these notes to Bob Tillotson; and everything ran under Windows 98. No doubt Bob used and different set of software to receive this message and image and assemble the newsletter. Jim
Normally, we should expect a Blue Moon once in no more than three years, that phenomenon being a second Full Moon in the calendar month. But in 1999 both January and March will present Utah residents with a Blue Moon on the 31st day of each of those two months. Two Blue Moons in one year last occurred in 1961 and will not happen again until 2018 and then again in 2037, according to Patrick Wiggins of the Hansen Planetarium and a recent article in The Salt Lake Tribune.
The term Blue Moon of course has nothing to do with color. It is only a nickname for an unusual sky event. They are even so rare as to be dependent upon the particular time zone from which the moon is observed. It is more a matter of timing based on the moon's 29.53 day period around the Earth, and the Earth's rotation. So, step outside and enjoy this rare event.
Bob Tillotson