Mississauga Astronomical Society

Twentyfifth Meeting

Members’ Night

 

Day:                Friday, Aug. 27, 2004

 

Chair:         Phil Mozel

                    

 

Retrograde Planets

Roy Swanson  presented an interesting hypothesis on the history of the solar system and the evidence for retrograde orbits of certain planets and moons. Initially, the primitive solar system had orbits in 3 dimensions with objects approaching each other, some giving a retrograde spin to another. Small bodies would collide and form larger spherical objects. After a certain period of time, some planets moved prograde and others retrograde. Spin is a relic of the ancient relationships of these various objects. Jupiter, the largest planet set up the plane of the ecliptic. Retrograde objects either collided, spiraled into the sun or survived e.g. some Kuiper belt objects, Phoebe (Saturn’s moon), and possible planets like Venus which could have had its orbit changed by an encounter with Jupiter or Neptune. The spin of Uranus, along the ecliptic, suggests  that the orbit of the planet was originally perpendicular to Jupiter and was changed by Jupiter. 

 

Hale Observatory in California

Phil Mozel showed slides from his trip to Mount Palomar in Southern California. The observatory is reached via a steep switchback road. At the summit, like a shrine, stands the 200” dome containing the 200” telescope. In addition there are domes for the 18” and 48” Schmidt telescopes. Phil showed slides of the Hale telescope with its instrumentation, ladders, prime focus cage etc.

 

Starfest

Randy Attwood first showed updates from the Cassini mission to Saturn and the Mars rovers. The he discussed Starfest held at Mount Forest from Aug. 19 to 21, organized by the North York Amateur Astronomers. This is the 24th year for Starfest. The astronomy event has grown from a couple score to over 1,000 people with hundreds of telescopes and equipment of all kinds. Randy showed images of the registration tent, participants, speakers, the Kidfest and the venue in general. Of the many talks, the ones by Najine Cox who works on the Mars rover missions, were especially notable.

Randy also gave an update on future events for the MAS, and discussion about the possibility of our society joining the RASC.

 

Twin Peaks Observing

Bob and Jim Anderson brought in about 300 lb. of telescopic equipment and gave an interesting presentation on astroimaging. These included a Celestron14 f11 reflector, TMB 115mm f7 APO refractor, 80mm f6 APO refractor, telrad finders, finderscope with reticle light, polar alignment scope, Losmandy mount, a 1300 x 840 megapixel camera with NII, CIII, and Ha filters, and computers. They showed how to set up the equipment for a night of imaging. The very important Losmandy mount is set up level to the horizontal, polar alignment is done using the polar alignment scope, and balance is carefully checked. At least 4 antidewing heaters are used simultaneously. Focusing is done meticulously with a starlight focuser, first through the camera with rough focus then electronic focus with the computer. Because temperature changes during an observing session, further focusing needs to be done as the night wears on.

Once fine focus, alignment and balance are achieved, fine polar alignment is done using a star to the east and west and with the help of  the computer program maxim.

Bob and Jim discussed image processing software and methods. Examples of the Orion Nebula, Dumbell, Ring, N. America, globular M13 and Flame Nebula in Orion were shown. These are on their website at http://www.tpo.ca/.  They stated that the future of imaging lies with webcams.  Many questions ensued after this interesting presentation.

 

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