Mississauga Astronomical Society

Thirtysecond Meeting

Members’ Night

 

Day:                Friday, December 10, 2004

 

Chair:         Phil Mozel

 

Speakers:   Ray Khan

Leslie Harvey

                   Randy Attwood

                    Phil Mozel   

                              

 

 

Meade Deep Sky Imager

 

Ray Khan of Khanscope  (http://www.khanscope.com/) presented a talk about the Meade Deep Sky Imager which is revolutionizing CCD imaging. 

Twelve years ago, SBIG came out with the first CCD. The initial chips had a small surface area, there were compatibility difficulties with camera and computer, and image processing was complicated. Now, the new Meade imager has numerous advantages over traditional CCD’s. It is much less costly ($399), requires minimal equipment, no cooling, is easy to focus, has automatic image processing, alignment and stacking, and requires no external power supply. Meade was able to develop such an instrument by suppressing electronic noise, running the imager on stored energy, separating the digital and analog chambers. The imager is light (10 oz) and small, needs no counterweight, has IR filter and other accessories, can be used as an autoguide and includes autostar imaging software with dark frame subtraction, automatic aligning and stacking, colour saturation and balance features. The software allows images to be seen almost immediately on the screen.   

 

Astronomy Presents that Aren’t

 

Leslie Harvey is the Head of Public education of the Toronto Centre RASC. She spoke about astronomical Christmas presents for that were not made specifically for astronomers. Many of these gifts can be quite inexpensive and given by children with a low budget such as pill boxes and cream jars for accessories and eyepieces, and film canisters for eyepiece covers. Tripods, cable releases, memory cards for digital cameras make useful gifts for astrophotographers. Various items of clothing for cold weather observing are useful. For the creative and budget minded, astronomical items can be hand made such as a case for binoculars. The imagination, in fact, is the only limit with respect to astronomical gifts.

 

Clear sky clock. Website, Jupiter occultation

 

Randy Atwood showed the clear sky clock on the MAS website and its various features. He also encouraged members to visit the MAS website and its wealth of links. The recent Jupiter occultation was clouded out in Mississauga but images from the internet were shown of this event.

 

Historical Vignette

 

Phil Mozel described the experience of the Canadian Lewis Smith who, on April 15 in Alberta, 1939 discovered a 3rd magnitude comet in Andromeda. He contacted professor J.W. Campbell by mail about his discovery, who then subsequently sent a letter to Harvard reporting the discovery. Although Mr. Smith was the first to see the comet, three other co-discoverers in other countries received credit for the comet because their telegrams reached Harvard before the slower letters from Alberta. On a positive note, however, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific did award a medal to Mr. Smith acknowledging his independent discovery.

 

 Submitted by Chris Malicki, Secretary  Chris Malicki, Secretary                               back to M.A.S. meeting reports page
Mississauga Astronomical Society