Mississauga Astronomical Society
Eighth Meeting
   Members’ Night

 Day:           8 p.m.   Friday, October 10, 2003      

Speakers:     Randy Attwood
                     Dan Doolan      
                     Geoff Gaherty 
                     Jim Kendrick - Guest Speaker  
                            Vimal Lad 

Introduction and welcome

Randy Attwood welcomed current and new members. He reminded the audience that there is a wealth of interesting astronomical images on the internet. As examples, he showed recently posted pictures of the Sombrero Galaxy by the HST, the Horsehead Nebula by the CFH telescope, a satellite image of Hurricane Isabel, pictures of the recent Canadian astronaut postage stamps, and Hubble images of Saturn (in anticipation of next year’s Cassini arrival at the planet).   


Starfest Reunion 2003
 
Randy Attwood showed slides and described this year’s gathering at Starfest, the largest astronomical star party in Canada replete with speakers, vendors, and of course, great observing at night (and daytime for the sun).  Due to the close approach of the red planet, the theme for this year was “2003 Mars Tour”.

Dan Doolan described his “Pictoral Journey to Starfest 2003”, beginning with his first attempts at astroimaging and his gradual progression from a LX 8” to a 10” LX GPS; and his evolution from a Pro webcam to a modified webcam bypassing the electronic shutter, and now to a Starlight Express MX7-C camera. He showed a variety of images he has taken, especially outstanding being ones of Jupiter and the GRS, the Ring Nebula M57, and the Dumbell Nebula. He described the equipment necessary to take successful images and spoke about his experience at Starfest this year showing deep sky images he took there. Especially memorable was the violent storm on Thursday night. His Kendrick tent protected his equipment from the wind and rain.  His advice to would be astroimagers was: “practice, experiment, have fun.”

 

The Sky Tonight  Oct.-Nov.

Geoff Gaherty from the Toronto Centre R.A.S.C. gave  an informative talk about the astronomical events predicted in the sky for the coming month. These include the asteroid Pallas at opposition, meteor showers, the zodiacal light which is favourable from a dark site at this time of the year before dawn, the change to Daylight Saving Time which gives astronomers more dark hours in the evening to observe, the lunar eclipse on Nov. 8, and various deepsky objects in Aquarius and Capricornus. He also encouraged the audience to take the Halloween challenge on Oct. 31 by showing the evening sky through a telescope to trick-or-treaters. 

 

Guest Speaker

Jim Kendrick of Kendrick Astro Instruments, www.kendrick-ai.com  spoke about the many astronomical products that would make a Christmas gift for anyone from the beginner or someone with a casual interest in astronomy to the serious observer.  He began with showing the Astronomy Monopoly game, Terrence Dickinson’s “Backyard Astronomer’s Guide” and other books, planisphere and calendars for 2004, lens pens and eyepiece collimators.  Then followed a lengthy and informative demonstration of new high quality eyepieces including the Orion, widepiece KK Magellan and the Pentax XW series, and star diagonals. Jim also showed filters such as the lumicon OIII which is indispensible for faint nebulae, a minus violet filter to eliminate the false colour of an achromatic telescope, a Watters moon and sky glow filter, and the Sirius wheel containing several colour filters for planetary observing in one entity.  But most impressive of all was the SolarView telescope which can show unprecidented views of the sun in the H-alpha narrow band of only 0.7 Ångstroms; it’s cost is only $6000, a wonderful present indeed to put under the tree!  Finally he presented us with telescope covers, binocular viewers, astrotents etc.  With the very large selection of gifts that of all these items represent, no one with an astronomer at home needs to fear about not having anything to buy for Christmas.

 

Telescope lending, newsletter

Vimal Lad, the new newsletter editor and telescope loan program co-ordinator asked for donations of telescopes in order to start the telescope lending program. The current plan is to lend scopes for a period of two weeks for M.A.S. members at a nominal fee. Vimal also asked for feedback on the newsletter which he recommended be published online bimonthly.

 

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