|
Congratulations goes to Rob Adkins for getting his Messier Certificate at
the last meeting August 4, 2007. |
|
Club President Larry Oyster got his Sunspotters certificate fall of 2006. |
Hi all you crazy star gazers,
I'm writing this to update you on the Mason Dixon Star Party to be held July
11th thru July 15, 2007.
As I wrote before this is a family oriented Star Party so please feel free
to bring your children. We have a swimming pool ($6.00)/ day, sand
volleyball courts, horseshoe pits, bunk houses, restrooms, showers,
speakers, workshops, raffle prizes and this year we will have a Saturday
afternoon picnic sponsored by York County Astronomical Society and Mason
Dixon Star Party. The picnic will be open to all paid registrants and will
last approx. 5 hours with all you can eat hamburgers with our without tomato
sauce, hot dogs, roasted pig, macaroni salad, veggie trays, gourmet ice
cream bars, lemonade, iced tea, corn on the cob, baked beans, etc. If you
time it right, you can have lunch and dinner at no cost to you. We will also
have a lunch wagon on site for 24 hour sandwiches, drinks and snacks. Some
of the raffle prizes are a Coronado PST donated by York County Astronomical
Society/Mason Dixon Star Party, a Takahashi 1.25, 5mm LE. donated by Land,
Sea & Sky (Texas Nautical Repair) the sole importers of Takahashi equipment
into the United States their web site: http://takahashiamerica.com/catalog/
, a Deep Sky Planner 4 donated by Knightware http://knightware.biz/dsp/index.htm
to name a few. The registration fee is $35.00 individual or $50.00 family.
Camping and swimming fees are additional. Oh, by the way, new moon is
Saturday, July 14th. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to
contact me at YCAS1@comcast.net and keep an eye on our website at
www.ycas.org for updates. Hope to see you in July.
Cindy Tavares
YCAS Secretary
2007 MDSP Chairperson
www.ycas.org |
|
March 25th the group is planning a Messier Marathon at Grayson Lake. Log
into the Yahoo group for
more information. |
|
November 5th we will hold a Mars viewing Party. Weather permitting. |
|
September 17th a Dome Painting Party is planned weather permitting. This
will replace our usual meeting. |
|
The 3rd Annual Sirius Stargazing Party is being held in Wolverine, Michigan
July 8 - 11. |
 Additional
info
for The Almost Heaven Star Party which is going to be held June 2nd
to the 5th can be found here. |
Fellow Astronomy Clubs,
NOVAC is pleased to announce that we will be holding our first regional Star
Party at Spruce Knob, West Virginia on June 2-5, 2005. The event will be
held at The Mountain Institute in one of the darkest areas on the east coast
and is at an elevation of about 4200 feet. Please check the web site for
more information. We will be adding details over the next few weeks. http://www.novac.com/AHSP/index.php
Registration is now open and we have automated the process so that it can be
done completely on-line. If you have questions please send an email to AHSP@NOVAC.COM
Please post a notice and/or link to the AHSP web site on your web site,
calendar or in your newsletter if possible.
Mid-East Region of the Astronomical League (MERAL) is also planning to hold
their annual meeting at the event, so please try to send a representative
from your club if possible.
All proceeds from this event will go to the Virginia Outdoor Lighting
Taskforce - VOLT.ORG to support their efforts to fight light pollution.
Hope to see you there,
Bob Parks
AHSP Coordinator
|
| Next OVAS Meeting |
Saturday - 3/19/05 at HHS at 5 PM, details on
Meeting Information web page.
For other meetings and public star gazes run
by OVAS check the meetings page! |
| Messier Marathon |
Rescheduled due to
weather conditions
3/12/05 at Bruin Boat Ramp, Grayson
Lake State Park.
What is
a Messier Marathon?
link to the 2003 MM page or visit the
The SEDS Messier Marathon. |
| Geminids |
The
Geminid meteor shower, which grows in intensity each year, will peak between
10PM on Dec. 13 and 2AM on Dec. 14 with up to 75 meteors per hour. |
| Total lunar eclipse - 10/27-28/04 |
At 9:14 p.m.
Eastern Daylight Time on the 27th the Earth’s umbra touches the left side of
the Moon( the penumbra hits at about 8:30 PM). The dark notch grows until it covers the entire lunar surface at
10:23 p.m. Totality ends at 11:45 p.m., and the Moon departs the Earth’s
umbra at 12:54 a.m. The public star gaze
begins at 8:00 PM. |
| Jupiter Occulted by the moon - 12/7/04 at 3:45 AM |
Beginning about 3:45
a.m. Eastern Standard Time on December 7th, the Moon occults Jupiter.
Jupiter reappears about 1 hour later from the moon's other side! It will be
swallowed by the bright crescent and disgorged from the dark side. |
| Planetary
Happenings |
Whoa, Whoa, look below ... ahhhh. |
| 11/5/04 - about 45 minutes before dawn - Venus and
Jupiter will be with in 2/3's of a degree |
Sky and telescope link on Jupiter Venus conjunction. This hasn't
happened in 122 years, so don't miss it! |
| 11/9/04 - the moon occults Jupiter during the day |
Beginning at 12 noon EST on 11/9/04, the moon will occult
Jupiter |
| 12/7/04 - the
moon occults Jupiter at night! Well actually in the early AM - 3:45AM! |
Beginning about 3:45 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on the morning of December
7th, the Moon occults Jupiter - a great sight in telescopes or binoculars! |
| Comets in our future |
|
| Machholz comet |
Another comet is in the neighborhood.
It appears if you can find Orion - here is a link to a finder chart from the
"sky hound" -
finder chart
link. For more info visit the "sky hound's" comet info page -
link. |
| Solar happenings |
|
| SOLARMAX is over, but the sun is still there every
day, you never know what you will see - it changes - day by day - hour by
hour - and sometimes, when its active, over as little as a few minutes. |
Learn about the sun's cycles
NASA .
What is going on now?
The Latest SOHO Solar Images are here!!
This link goes to a primer on H alpha terminology
Go HERE, Understand
what you see! |
| Saturn Occultation Video
This is a short GIF video of Saturn disappearing behind the moon in '01. |
See the
Occultation movie
from the lunar occultation of Saturn on
12/28/01
|
| Astronomy lecture
at Shawnee State U. 10/11/02
Extra Solar planets |
The mystery
of the final frontier is being explored like never before and
Shawnee State University is ensuring that the Portsmouth area is not
left behind on all the latest news as it welcomed one of the foremost
researchers in the field of extrasolar planets to campus.
Astrophysicist Sara Seager, Ph.D., one of the top scientific
detectives
who is presently working to solve that age-old question of just what is
really out there, spoke at SSU at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 11, in the Flohr
Lecture Hall located in the Clark Memorial Library.
Seager, a Harvard University graduate who works at the Carnegie
Institution in Washington, D.C., spoke about the discovery of extrasolar
planets and the stimulating research that has resulted from thediscovery.
"This is a new and very exciting field of research," said Seager, 31,
an
Ontario, Canada native. "Just over 100 giant extrasolar planets have
been
spotted in only the last seven years or so. We are trying to understand
what these planets look like and what they are made of. In addition, we
are embarking on the search for Earth-like planets and biological
signatures of extraterrestrial life."
Extrasolar
planets orbit sun-like stars, just like the Earth orbits the
sun. The first one was discovered in 1995. Surprisingly, said Seager,
almost all of the known planetary systems are very different from our
solar system.
"This discovery allows us to explore the possibility of our origins,
such as how our solar system was formed and where we come from," said
Seager,
whose work at the Carnegie Institution of Washington mainly involves
building models of the new planetary systems through computer
programming
and conducting research.
The event was attened by John Kelly, Jeff Ball, Chris and Larry
Oyster, Bill and Betty Evans, and Rodger Blake of OVAS. Means of
detection of Extra Solar planets as well as strategies for the future
were discussed. Also covered were the characteristics of extra solar
planets. A nice evening.
|
| NEO 2002 NY 40
aka the "killer" asteroid |
Tim and Jan
stayed and waited out the clouds. After all the others left, they found
the asteroid with binoculars and later observed it with a telescope.
What did it look like? Some movie links taken by others follow.
700K movie,
a smaller movie,
300K movie.
Good Job guys! |
|
Astronomy
Merit Badge at Camp Chickahominy
|
Rodger taught the
Astronomy Merit Badge at the BSA Camp near Williamsburg, Virginia. How
did it go? |
|
Astronomy Day 2002 |
OVAS members helped the staff
of the Highlands Regional Museum in Ashland, KY put on an astronomy day
at the museum. |
|
Laurel Highlands Star Cruise
2002 |
Jeff Ball, Don
Kemper, Dave - Marla - Evan Tolley, Larry - Chris Oyster, Rodger -
Justin Blake made the trip. Was it a most excellent experiance? Yes!
Read All about it! |
|
Black Forrest
Star Party 2002 |
This year's BF
Starparty was 9/6-9/8/02. Check out
Jeff Ball's
review of THIS years event. This year Jeff was a featured speaker on
Astrophotography. This is at an excellent dark sky site for the East,
though it is a bit far from here (?7-8 hours). Visit the Official black Forrest
Star Party web site. This is a link to Jeff's images of the aurora
that they saw |
| The 2001
Messier Marathon |
Five club members braved the cold for our 2001
Messier marathon. How did they fare? |
| Special Lecture: "Robert Goddard, his career & the
first liquid fueled rocket." |
Dr. Arlow W. Mayne Jr spoke about Robert h. Goddard,
his: life, career, and the launch of the first liquid fueled rocket - at
a special lecture on Saturday Aug, 25th , 2001. This talk was given in
honor of 75th anniversary of the 1st liquid rocket launch. |
| Hometown
Elementary Star Party |
Four club Helped out at Hometown Elementary’s Star
Party |
| The Johnson
County Astronomy Fest |
Two club members made the trip to the Johnson County
Astronomy Fest. What was it like? Read the reports! |
| Astronomy
Day 2001 |
About 11 club members helped the folks at the
highlands museum in Ashland host an Astronomy Day |
| The Leonid
Meteor Shower 2001 |
Four OVAS members met at the DCMO to observe the
meteors with between 150 and 200 members of the general Public. Chris
and Larry Oyster, Rodger Blake, Dave Tolley, John Walker were at the
dome. Tom Wilson was at the "bend" [in the road leading up to the
school] trying to photograph. Don Kemper was observing from a dark sky
site in Carter County, KY. What was it like? |
