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Star Gazer News
Newsletter of the Delmarva Stargazers
www.delmarvastargazers.org
From the Prez…
It’s hot out and I am letting some
glue set on my second dobsonian mount built
for the scope that I’ve been building since
last September. The first mount built for
the scope was not large enough to balance
it even with springs for counter balance.
But that story is for another newsletter.
Over the June 27 through June 29
weekend my wife, Cherie, and I went to the
Cherry Springs Star party sponsored by the
Astronomical Society of Harrisburg, PA.
Cherie and I left early Friday morning and
got to Cherry Springs around 3:30 PM. We
took the scenic route and by-passed 95 and
the 495 bridge mess in Delaware. Our drive
went by York, Pa, then traveled through
Harrisburg, Pa to Cherry Springs via state
route 144 -- slow but scenic.
Several other members of the Stargazers were planning to attend but couldn’t
due to weather and scheduling conflicts,
although we did see Tom Pomponio and Leonard White there. Upon arrival, we quickly
got checked in with our preregistration.
The observing field was almost full and the
first open place that we found was a wet
spot from all the rainfall which occurred
earlier in the week so we moved across the
road and set up our camping area. It had a
good southern view and there were trees to
the north which gave us some shade; less
than a hundred feet to the south was an
electrical box so I could plug-in my CPAP
machine. About 50 feet farther north from
our camping area, there was a tree-line
with a small open area where lupines, buttercups, Queen Anne’s lace, daisies and
some early asters grew. All the flowers
were blooming- nice area to camp.
We were eating our dinner around 8 PM
when we both looked to the north and saw a
mother black bear and her club moving
through the lupines less than 50 feet away.
Both bears looked very health and were not
concerned about us. They slowly moved off.
Needless to say our food and cosmetics were
repacked in our van. Later that evening we
are pleased to announce the
No Frills 2014 Star Party.
When: Thurs., Sept. 18th through Sun., Sept.
21st 2014.
Where: Tuckahoe State Park's Equestrian Center
near Queen Anne, MD.
The registration fee includes the following:
Camping fee for the observing area (campers are
permitted to park by their telescopes) — Star Gazer Coffee continuously —- Soup or chili
on Thursday and Friday nights — Fish fry on Saturday afternoon —- Sodas and hot dogs will
be available at minimal cost.
For more info
check the website for updates.
Meeting !
Observing !
No Frills Star Party
August 2014
Upcoming Events:
NO MEETING THIS MONTH !
Aug 22, 23rd
Dusk
Sept 18th to 21st
4 day/3night
Page 1
Eq. Cntr & BBF
Eq. Cntr
Volume 21 Number 02
heard some fire crackers
park ranger to scare them.
set
off
by
the
Lupines and daisies blooming in small
meadow.
That night the atmosphere had a lot
of moisture. The night sky was very similar
to a typical summer night sky at Tuckahoe
State Park. Even with the moisture I did
get to view M57, M92, M58, M13, M29, Albireo, M80 and M4. I could not see M27 (the
dumbbell) or globular cluster M71 in Sagitta. The Milky Way was not that evident.
There were two school teachers camping
close to us-- one from Philadelphia and the
other from New York City. They only had a
binocular so I asked them if they would
like to look through my telescope. For the
next hour and half, I showed them the objects listed above and Saturn. They were
amazed by the objects visible, especially
Saturn and its moons. It was the first time
they had seen the Milky Way, though it was
not very clear. By 1AM the skies were
fairly cloudy and I packed it in for the
night.
The next day the sky had a lot of cumulus clouds. Cherie and I spent much of
the day just admiring the cloud formations,
reading, looking at other scopes, talking
to Tom and Leonard, and checking out the
vendors and swap tables. During our walks
we noticed a small red-orange, a gold centered flower. It was primarily in the
shaded areas. Later we found out that the
flower was call hawkweed- a very pretty
flower and everywhere. Unfortunately, we
found later using Safari on our cell phones
that the plant was invasive in pastures and
meadows. Oh well!
In the early evening the clouds
cleared away and slowly the sky darkened.
After all it was only four days past the
longest day of the year. The atmosphere had
less moisture and the viewing was much better than the night before. As the night
Your 2014-2015 Officers
Office
President
President-elect
Secretary
Treasurer
Past President
August 2014
Officer
Lyle Jones
Phone
email
302-382-3764 [email protected]
Kathy Sheldon
Don Surles
302-422-4695 [email protected]
302-653-9445 [email protected]
Page 2
Volume 21 Number 02
progressed the viewing steadily improved. I
was told that around 3 am some clouds moved
in. I ran out steam around 1AM and called
it a night. I should have slept earlier and
gotten up later.
Hawkweed
Pond, the walking distance to the flush
toilet will be about the same as Cherry
Springs. To get coffee or food there would
be a slightly longer walk at Trap Pond.
There were astronomical presentations
during the afternoons of Friday and Saturday. The venders did not seem to have a lot
of customers. Swap meet only had a few
swappers. There were a lot of door-prizes
with the option of buying additional tickets. You could place your tickets in a box
for door-prizes you wanted. So some doorprizes had few tickets in their box whiles
other door-prizes like Tele Vue eyepieces
or SkyStopper Equatorial Platform had many
tickets. The food that we purchased at the
star party was good and the price was reasonable. The star party seemed well organized!
Early Sunday morning Cherie and I
drove out on Highway 44 and saw deer and a
porcupine. Along the road in shaded areas
where sandstone outcropped were blooming
azaleas and rhododendrons. By taking SR 44
we connected quickly with the expressways
in Pa and were home in six hours even with
stops. Needless to say we took 95 South
from Interstate 476. Cherie and I enjoyed
the Cherry Springs Star party and hope to
go back there!
Some of other observations about the
Cherry Star party
I received by email a letter confirming my registration which was good. I think
by handing the copy of the email to the Astronomical Society of Harrisburg members
who were checking us in, the process was
sped up. There was one flush toilet at the
entrance of the park and porta-potties were
scattered
throughout
the
viewing area.
Around the flush toilet, the rules for observing at Cherry Springs were clearly
posted. The flush toilet even had red light
bulbs in the light fixtures since no white
lights were allowed on the viewing field. Lyle Jones
If we moved our star party location to Trap
Delmarva Stargazer
Membership List
July 2014
Chris Todd
Sheryl Campbell*
David Heberling*
Raymond & Patricia Diedrichs
Dave Groski
Tomasz G. Smolinski
Steve Long
Andy Baker*
Frank Filemyr
Jean-Paul Richard
David Honaker
Nathan J. Naddeo*
Bill Ellis*
Chuck Harrison*
James M. Tippett
Kathy Sheldon*
Lyle Jones
Dawn Miller
Cynthia & Francis Ingram
Jerry Truitt
Tom Pomponio
Douglas Norton
Micheal Lecuyer
August 2014
Don Surles
Dennis Dellies
Peter Graham
Michael S. Rhee*
Henry E. Rozanski, Jr
Stephen M. Shearer
David E. Cowall
Marlon Detorres
Larry Pieper
Ralph Gruen
Liam & Aidan O’Connor
Dwane Miles
David D. Pletsch*
Pj and Doreen Riley
* indicates hardcopy of
newsletter mailed.
Our
annual dues are $15.
Anyone with an interest of astronomy is welcome
to join the Delmarva Stargazers regardless of skill
level.
We are all amateurs
and trying to learn.
Meeting attendance is
not required but highly recommended to get the most out
of the club.
If your name is missing,
please contact Lyle Jones
(see pg. 2).
If you want to add your name
to the list, please use the
form on pg. 8 or
http://
delmarvastargazers.org/
clubinfo/membershipform.html
Page 3
Volume 21 Number 02
Problems with Observing
Pj Riley
It's been weeks, or even months, since
you HAD the time to go out observing.
You set time aside during a new moon
weekend and NOTHING is gonna stop you from getting some observing done.
You pack everything up and arrive at the
site early enough to set up and get ready before sunset. After setting up your scope, you
check it's collimation. Everything looks perfect. Darkness falls and you pick some bright
stars to check the scope's collimation. Something's wrong, terribly wrong. The stars are
fuzzy. Rechecking collimation, everything is
fine. Changing eyepieces doesn't help. Even the
sky appears OK. Skyclock had indicated earlier
that seeing should be good. What is WRONG!?
Observing consist of a three part system: Object being observed, observing device,
Detection system. If the sky is OK, and the
scope checks out, then it must be the detection
device.
Some of our friends use digital cameras
as detection devices: some simple, some complex. Most of us use our eyes.
If'n you are 18-25 years old, you eyes
are at their best for observing.
If'n you are 50+ your eyes may start developing issues, such as cataracts. This can
cause some very, very slow changes to your vision. Common effects are: duller colors: a yellow tint overcast everything (most cataracts
are slightly yellow), and the most notable is a
hazy halo surrounding bright lights at night
and stars. This was what was happening to me.
Visits to your ophthalmologist confirm
your suspicions. You are developing cataracts,
but they are not severe enough yet to warrant
surgery. As long as your vision can be corrected close to 20/20 most insurances won't
authorize surgery (and payment).
Finally, your ophthalmologist tells you
that he can no longer correct your vision to
meet state requirements for driving.
Time to
do some surgery.
Welcome to the world of eye drops. As
surgery is scheduled, you are given 3 prescriptions to keep your eyes healthy. A fourth prescription is just to dilate your eyes on the
day of surgery. You will end up putting 250-300
drops in your eyes before the whole process is
over. Don't lose track.
Once surgery starts, it’s over.
In a
matter of 5-7 minutes, vision in your eye goes
from hazy – to just white nondescript light –
to crisp clear vision.
Vision in my right eye was 20/800 without correction. 20/40 at best with correction.
For those who don't know 20/800 vision means
the you see at 20 feet what others see at 800
feet. That's as far as the chart goes. The day
after surgery the eye is checked and found to
be at 20/40. The ophthalmologist states that as
the eye heals over the next week, it'll improve.
Several things are easily noticed comparing the cataract eye to the one just repaired. The dingy yellow overcast is gone in
the new eye. Colors are more brilliant. Also,
objects in the repaired eye are ~5% bigger compared to the bad eye.
Big things to remember after surgery: NO
rubbing of the eye, stay outta dusty, dirty
environments for 2 weeks (helps with the NO
rubbing rule), no strenuous exercise (keeps
pressure under control in the eye).
The second eye was operated on 12 days
after the first.
Stars DO look a lot better, actually
back to being pinpoints.
The vision in the left eye was better
after surgery than the right eye.
I’ll end up in August getting eyeglasses
to fine tune the vision, but no more thick
glasses.
How M13 starts to slowly look like
You wait, and wait. Months, years go by
– it's a slow process – and now you notice halos around bright lights during the day. Stars
have gotten fuzzier.
August 2014
Page 4
How M13 looks now
Volume 21 Number 02
Camelopardalids,
Camelopardalids,
Wherefore Wert Thou?
Jim Tomney
What with the March Regulus occultation by asteroid Erigone being
a cloud out on the east coast and
the April Lunar eclipse also blocked
from our view it seemed amazing that
it was actually going to be clear
for the a possible new meteor shower
on the evening of May 23-24. The
predictions
of
Earth
skimming
through debris left behind by comet
209P/LINEAR on one of its passes
over a century ago brought some
over-the top predictions from the
media ("200+ meteors per hour possible!", "comet 209B/LINEAR is expected to light up the night skies
in May 2014 in a dazzling display").
Please people - the event is associated with a comet, one of the most
notoriously unpredictable denizens
of the night sky. It hadn't been 6
months since ISON went to ISOFF in a
significant disappointment to sky
gazers everywhere.
August 2014
But still - who wants to be
that guy who stayed home on a beautiful spring night if there's even a
remote opportunity of catching a few
dozen shooting stars? Obviously not
me, so I grabbed my camera, binoculars, lawn chair, and some warm apparel and headed out to the Alpha
Ridge observing location just west
of Baltimore. When I got there it
was just getting dark and there were
a surprising number of folks who had
assembled hoping for a show. Those
with scopes were enjoying the planetary trifecta of Jupiter, Mars, and
Saturn; as the skies darkened they
pursued deeper quarry of cluster,
nebulae, and galaxies above the
park.
I settled in facing North and placed
the Big Dipper into the camera
field. Around 11 pm I began clicking
off 30 second exposures hoping to
catch a piece of comet dust streaking through that familiar constellation. I would occasionally take a
break and hunt down familiar Messier
objects with the Oberwerks. There is
something to be said for just lounging comfortably out under the stars,
enjoying a cosmic game of I spy.
Unfortunately by 1 a.m. my grand total of observed meteors was three two of which were sporadics and one
maybe was a Camelopardalid. And obviously nothing to show on film
other than some pleasant Ursa Major
shots. But even without the Giraffe's meteors it was a relaxing,
bug-free, temperate, great Friday
night under the stars with like
minded souls. To quote Charlie
Sheen, "Winning!!"
Page 5
Volume 21 Number 02
The Invisible Shield of our Sun
By Dr. Ethan Siegel
Whether you look at the planets within our solar system,
the stars within our galaxy or the galaxies spread throughout the universe, it's striking how empty outer space truly is. Even though the largest concentrations of mass are
separated by huge distances, interstellar space isn't empty: it's filled with dilute
amounts of gas, dust, radiation and ionized plasma. Although we've long been able to
detect these components remotely, it's only since 2012 that a manmade spacecraft -Voyager 1 -- successfully entered and gave our first direct measurements of the interstellar medium (ISM).
What we found was an amazing confirmation of the idea that our Sun creates a humongous "shield" around our solar system, the heliosphere, where the outward flux of
the solar wind crashes against the ISM. Over 100 AU in radius, the heliosphere prevents
the ionized plasma from the ISM from nearing the planets, asteroids and Kuiper belt objects contained within it. How? In addition to various wavelengths of light, the Sun is
also a tremendous source of fast-moving, charged particles (mostly protons) that move
between 300 and 800 km/s, or nearly 0.3% the speed of light. To achieve these speeds,
these particles originate from the Sun's superheated corona, with temperatures in excess of 1,000,000 Kelvin!
When Voyager 1 finally left the heliosphere, it found a 40-fold increase in the
density of ionized plasma particles. In addition, traveling beyond the heliopause
showed a tremendous rise in the flux of intermediate-to-high energy cosmic ray protons,
proving that our Sun shields our solar system quite effectively. Finally, it showed
that the outer edges of the heliosheath consist of two zones, where the solar wind
slows and then stagnates, and disappears altogether when you pass beyond the
heliopause.
Unprotected passage through interstellar space would be life-threatening, as
young stars, nebulae, and other intense energy sources pass perilously close to our solar system on ten-to-hundred-million-year timescales. Yet those objects pose no major
danger to terrestrial life, as our Sun's invisible shield protects us from all but the
rarer, highest energy cosmic particles. Even if we pass through a region like the Orion
Nebula, our heliosphere keeps the vast majority of those dangerous ionized particles
from impacting us, shielding even the solar system's outer worlds quite effectively.
NASA spacecraft like the Voyagers, IBEX and SOHO continue to teach us more about our
great cosmic shield and the ISM's irregularities. We're not helpless as we hurtle
through it; the heliosphere gives us all the protection we need!
Want to learn more about Voyager 1’s trip into interstellar space? Check this
out: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-278.
Kids can test their knowledge about the Sun at NASA’s Space place: http://
spaceplace.nasa.gov/solar-tricktionary/.
Image credit: Hubble Heritage Team
(AURA
/
STScI),
C.
R.
O'Dell
(Vanderbilt), and NASA, of the star LL
Orionis and its heliosphere interacting
with interstellar gas and plasma near
the edge of the Orion Nebula (M42).
Unlike our star, LL Orionis displays a
bow shock, something our Sun will regain
when the ISM next collides with us at a
sufficiently large relative velocity.
August 2014
Page 6
Volume 21 Number 02
August 2014
Page 7
Volume 21 Number 02
How to Join the Delmarva Stargazers: Anyone with an interest in any aspect of astronomy is welcome
NAME_______________________________________________________________New_______Renew___________
ADDRESS_____________________________________________________________________________________
CITY, STATE & ZIP______________________________________________________________________________
E-MAIL ADDRESS (If any)_________________________________________________________________________
Do you need the newsletter snail mailed to you (Y/N)?___________________________________________________
Please attach a check for $15 made payable to Delmarva Stargazers and mail to Kathy Sheldon, 20985
Fleatown Rd, Lincoln, DE 19960. Call club President Lyle Jones at 302-382-3764 for more information.
August 2014
Page 8
Volume 21 Number 02