Delta Astronomical Society

Those of you who helped out at our July 4^th fundrais­ing booth in Lud­ing­ton Park might remem­ber meet­ing  ama­teur astronomer Bill Suri­ano, from Chicago.  I got to talk­ing with him about astropho­tog­ra­phy, etc and he men­tioned that he does nar­row band astropho­tog­ra­phy from the Chicago sub­urbs. He seemed quite knowl­edge­able and was a bit envi­ous of our dark UP Skies. I asked him for his E-mail address and added him to our DAS e-mail lists. The other day, he sent me this link to some of his astropho­tog­ra­phy on Flickr. Get ready to be wowed. Bill is no run of the mill ama­teur, like myself…rather, he’s an accom­plished astropho­tog­ra­pher, who is doing some fine work.

He’s also one of our newest long dis­tance members/supporters. (Thanks, Bill). I am sure we are going to want to get to know him bet­ter. To see sam­ples of his astro-photos go to:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wsuriano/

Click here to view the DAS Newsletter!

Major Sunspot Group, Nov. 2011 NASA, SOHO

NASA announced 8–5-13 that the Sun is begin­ning to flip its mag­netic poles. The Solar North Pole has already changed polar­ity and the South is in the process of flipping.

As the Sun’s field flips, the lines that spread through­out the Solar Sys­tem become bro­ken and chaotic. This is a nor­mal occur­rence dur­ing “Solar Max­i­mum,” and actu­ally results in the Earth being bet­ter pro­tected from Cos­mic Rays, which nor­mally ride the Sun’s mag­netic field lines through the Solar Sys­tem. Go to: http://www.space.com/22264-sun-s-magnetic-field-will-soon-flip-stormy-space-weather-ahead-video.html, for a NASA video explain­ing the event.

Reminder: Don’t miss the Per­seid Meteor Shower, peak­ing Aug 12–13. As many as 1 a minute late in the night.

All you need is a com­fort­able chair, bug repel­lant and the abil­ity to stay awake into the wee hours before dawn.

Brown Bags with John Bur­roughs and Dan Young of the Delta Astro­nom­i­cal Society:

Wednes­day, Octo­ber 9

Infor­ma­tion on Comet ISON: When, Where and How to see it. Will it be “The Comet of the Century?”

J Bur­roughs with DAS 22inch Tele­scope, 2012 c. D Young, DAS.

Wednes­day, Octo­ber 23 at NOON   — Pub­lic Welcomed

Take a Walk Through the Solar Sys­tem with DAS. Walk of the Plan­ets — Ren­dezvous @Bonifas – walk to library & through to H&H.  Or, meet at the library at 11:55 (Dress appro­pri­ately, this is an out­door event). Guided tour of the Solar Sys­tem with com­men­tary by the author of the Planet Walk, Dan Young.

Dan Young DAS, shows Sunspots to an inter­ested passerby. Lud­ing­ton St, July 12, 2013. c. R Luchay, DAS.

Devil’s Night:  A Clos­ing Celebration

Wednes­day, Octo­ber 30 – 4 p.m.  — Pub­lic Welcomed

Sto­ry­telling in the Gallery with astronomer Mary Stew­art Adams

Stargaz­ing in the inflat­able plan­e­tar­ium with Delta Co. Astro­nom­i­cal Society

*Dress casu­ally, enter­ing the dome requires a short crawl through an inflated “tun­nel,” and sit­ting on pads on the floor. (20 mins per session)

Astropho­tog­ra­phy Work­shop: Inter­me­di­ate – Advanced, Back Again, by Pop­u­lar Demand!   With artist Shawn Mal­one                                                                                                                            Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 2 from 6:30 –10 p.m. (New moon phase) Reg­is­tra­tion Required.

With artist Shawn Mal­one.  Wednes­day, Octo­ber 2 from 6:30 –10 p.m. (New moon phase) Reg­is­tra­tion Required.   Note: weather per­mit­ting par­tic­i­pants will use their dig­i­tal SLR cam­eras to pho­to­graph the night skies.

Note: Sec­ond class in November.

Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 26 – 7 p.m.  – Pub­lic Welcomed

Meet Mary Stew­art Adams: Star-Lore his­to­rian, artist, writer and Pro­gram Direc­tor at The Emmet County Head­lands Inter­na­tional Dark Sky Park out­side Mack­inac City.

Also her illustrator/ artist Patri­cia DeLisa will be here to talk about visu­al­iz­ing these folk traditions.

Fairy Tale Moons, Mary Stew­art Adams, detail of cover by Patri­cia DeLisa.

Click here to view the DAS Newsletter!

We have had a busy cou­ple of weeks, with the 4^th of July and the Escan­aba 150^th Celebrations.

We held day and night  pub­lic observ­ing ses­sions dur­ing the two week cel­e­bra­tion and also extended our annual 4^th of July fundrais­ing booth  (we sell home­made lemon­ade, Sayklly’s Carmel Apples and fudge ) to the 5^th, and 6^th.

On July 4^th we had my 10inch Meade SCT with a solar fil­ter and our dig­i­tal video feed to our new 24inch flat screen LCD TV for live views of some awe­some Sunspot groups, 11am– 6:45 pm. ( pho­tos attached c Rich Luchay, DAS mem­ber). Hun­dreds of peo­ple took a look.

On Fri­day July 12, we had a day­light view­ing of the Sun, Venus, and the Moon from 11am-4:30 pm on Lud­ing­ton St in front of the Library/City Hall entrance. We prob­a­bly had over 50 peo­ple (some as young as 3 years) who had views through both our 22 inch f4.3 Reflec­tor and my 10inch Schmidt Cassie.  This was our first out­ing with our new 10inch glass solar fil­ter used on the 22inch dob­son­ian. (John built a stop-down cover for the sec­ondary mount­ing ring (pho­tos attached).  Again, we had great pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion, even though we found that the skies were very hazy in the heat & humid­ity, and find­ing the Moon was quite a chore! (I could get glimpses of it naked eye, right where my loca­tor data said it should be, but it just kept elud­ing us in the big ‘scope. We later dis­cov­ered that our col­li­ma­tion was out.)

That night, we had a pub­lic view­ing from 8:30 pm until 1am in the grassy field at the Munic­i­pal Dock  in Escan­aba, and again had a live feed from my 10inch SCT to our 24in TV with high power views of the young Moon, Sat­urn, Ring Neb­ula, M-13 Her­cules Glob­u­lar etc.  Many of the pub­lic attend­ing were awed by the live, high power views of the Moon and Sat­urn. Addi­tion­ally we find that those with phys­i­cal chal­lenges such as being wheel chair bound, hav­ing poor eye­sight,  young chil­dren etc., can now  also eas­ily enjoy astro­nom­i­cal viewing.

We also had our 22inch ‘scope for deep sky observ­ing through the eye­piece, and its views of the Androm­eda Galaxy (M31),  Owl Neb­ula, Ring, and the rich starfields of Sagit­tar­ius with M22 and var­i­ous open clus­ters and neb­u­lae were awe inspir­ing. We prob­a­bly had upwards of 150 peo­ple out from sun­set until we sent the last of them home at 1am.

We repeated the Fri­day view­ing on Sat­ur­day night the 13^th, with fewer par­tic­i­pants after Escanaba’s clos­ing 150^th cel­e­bra­tion Fire­works, from about 10:30pm until about 1:30am.

DAS has a updated the Planet Walk brochure for all the sesqui­cen­ten­nial view­ings and activ­i­ties. Click here to take a look!

Click here to view the DAS Newsletter!