July 2006 Volume 13 Number 01Page 1

Your 2006-2007 Officers

Star Gazer NewsNewsletter of the Delmarva Stargazers

www.delmarvastargazers.orgJuly 2006 Volume 13 Number 01

Presidential CommentsJerry Truitt

Lyle laughingly told me at our last club meetingthat it was now up to me to write a monthly article forour club paper. While not a chatter box, I’m also nevershort on words, so here we go.

To start I’m very happy with the staff of officersI have available to help me with the tasks ahead for thecoming year.

Tom Pomponio has always been someone whojumps in to help out. Tom will take over the role of outreach coordinator for the club as President Elect. I lookforward to working with Tom on many things in thecoming year.

Tony Codella and I sat at the same table withour wives at the Christmas Party last year and really hitit off. Like me, Tony is fairly new to this hobby but hasjumped in with both feet. We share a philosophy thatyou get out what you put into something. Tony is a hardand willing worker. He’s also someone I learn some-

Upcoming Events:

⇒ No Meeting until September⇒ Field observing - Jul. 22nd

Tom Pomponio Jerry Truitt Kathy Sheldon Tony Codella Lyle JonesPresident-Elect President Tresurer Secretary Past President

thing from almost every time I talk to him.I’ve had the pleasure of working with Kathy Sheldon a

lot already and look forward to continuing. Kathy, besidesbeing the club treasurer, is another one who is always readyto pitch in at our club events and help out.

Pj Riley has relinquished his duties of secretary butwill continue doing his excellent job as Newsletter editor. He’salso willing to start printing and distributing as well as publish-ing the paper. Beside the paper, Paul and his wife, Doreen,are always at every event pitching in helping.

Of course one of the other things you can count on isDon Surles being fully involved. Don is an organizer andalways looking for ways to get us together. This is greatlyappreciated by me as we really need to have activities; theyare the glue that keep our club together. Don has alwaysfreely shared his years of experience with me, I’ll certainly becounting on Don’s guidance in the year ahead.

The epitome of recognition has to be when anotherclub recognizes you for your contribution to amateur astron-omy. The Delaware Astronomical Society’s bestowing theirLuther Porter award to Don is a richly deserved honor and aworthy tribute to someone who has done and continues to doso much for all of us involved in this hobby.

Keith Lohmeyer will run the No Frills Star Party for usagain this year. This will be a Friday to Tuesday event like theStar Gaze. The dates are September 22 to the 26 and I thinkwe can expect a great crowd.

I couldn’t end this without mentioning one of thepeople who has really become a friend, Leonard White.Leonard is our welcome wagon for new members, informing

(See “Jerry” on page 2 - click me)

July 2006 Volume 13 Number 01Page 2

How to Join the Delmarva Stargazers: Anyone with an interest in any aspect of astronomy is welcomeNAME________________________________________________________________________________________ADDRESS_____________________________________________________________________________________CITY, STATE & ZIP______________________________________________________________________________E-MAIL ADDRESS (If any)_________________________________________________________________________Please attach a check for $15 made payable to Delmarva Stargazers and mail to Kathy Sheldon, 20985Fleatown Rd, Lincoln, DE 19960. Call club President Jerry Truitt at 410-885-3327 for more information.

Reflections in a Eyepiece:Comet Halley from Alabama

Bob BungeBy the fall of 1985, Comet Halley fever was all

the rage. While those in the know had a firm under-standing the comet wasn't going to be the best, it wasstill the event of a lifetime. It was also clear the cometwould be best viewed from lower latitudes.

So, I took some time off from college and droveto Lillian, Alabama to stay with astro-friend MarshalHolman for a couple of weeks. In those days, Marshal'sbackyard, near the gulf coast, was dark enough forsome pretty good observing. So it was December 30,1985, that I recorded these field drawings of Halleythrough Marshal's 20-inch dobsonian and my own 4.25-inch f/4 RFT at 17x. On this evening, Halley and it'snarrow tail was clearly visible to the naked eye. The tailhad brightened, just over the past 24 hours.

I had found Halley to be underwhelming. Visiblefor only a few minutes during twilight, the excitement forthe evening was soon over and it was back to the realbusiness of time for me, finding faint galaxies.

During January, 1986, Halley slipped behindthe Sun to reappear in the morning sky, somewhatbetter and with a longer tail. Perhaps my most memo-

rable Halley observing session was a fine cold morningat a site near Mansfield, Ohio with plenty of friends andwonderful skies and I even managed to shoot a nicecolor slide of the comet.

But by far, my most memorable Halley event washelping to staff an early AM public viewing session at a park,south of Columbus, Ohio. Cars were lined up for miles,heading both directions on a narrow, two-lane country road.Just outside the gate to the park, I stood in the middle of road,umbrella in hand, explaining that it wasn't going to be possiblesee the comet in the pouring rain.

My faith in comets were restored by the great pair ofthe 1990's, Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp. Sure would be nice tohave a comet that those again!

them of our web site and yahoo site. He also tells them all thethings we take for granted with our club. He’s also one of thepeople who is at every event or activity and always helpingout.

We need to think about how we want to run nextyears’ star parties. There has been some talk about goingback to the Wednesday to Sunday format. I think that will behard to do next year because of the moon, the new moon willbe in the middle of the week favoring the Friday to Tuesdayformat.

While I’m talking about star parties, let me thank JoeCain who has been doing the daunting task of handling

registration for us. Joe’s a big reasonour parties have been so successful.

The warm weather is here andwith it comes short nights, humidity andmosquitoes. Yet the warm nights ofsummer are my favorite time to ob-serve, not because of the viewing con-ditions so much as I just like being outduring the summer nights. Of course,I’m sitting at Captain’s Cove Virginiaright now, the skies are so dark herethe Milky Way seems to jump out atyou. Dark skies help inspire me toobserve. I’ve spent the day fishing andplanning the night’s observing.

Whatever your sky conditions, get outand observe. Let me also ask youshare your experience whenever youcan. Don’t do it thinking you’ll inspiresomeone to join the club or buy ascope. Do it because we have some-thing unique to share that most people

never get to see. You might not convert them to star gazersbut you will at least for a brief period open them to sights theywould otherwise never see.

(“Jerry” from page 1)

July 2006

An Approach toDigital Camera Focusing

Michael LecuyerAnyone who has tried to use a digital camera

limited to a LCD screen for focusing knows that the LCDscreen is much better for framing daylight pictures thanfocusing on astronomical objects. One suggestion is touse a magnifying glass on the LCD screen. I’ve tried thisit’s very difficult especially at odd angles.

All digital cameras useful for astro-photographyhave a composite video output jack for displaying pictureson TV. The output is a fraction of the resolution of theactual photo but suitable for low-resolution compositevideo. It seemed to me that this output could be displayedsomehow on a larger monitor. But how?

Eventually Googling paid off when a search for‘USB TV’ turned up a range of great devices. It turns outthere are many USB TV tuners and TV/VCR to CDROMconverters that do the job. The one I picked was theKWORLD VS-USB2800 DVD Maker for $40 created to ripoff movies and play video games on a computer displayinstead of a TV.

This device support NTSC up to 720x480 @30frames per second (fps) with USB 2.0 and 320x240 @30fps with USB 1.1. In practical terms most cameras don’t

produce high resolution framing images and there is anoticeable propagation delay within the camera electron-ics.

The software includes a live action feed to awindow that is resizable with the capability for snapshots.This live TV window displays the v der contentsincluding any heads up display of thThis makes it much easier to focus andwithout directly looking at the camera

can fill the laptop screen you can be some distance from thecomputer and still focus effectively.

Focusing can be done directly by making the star imageas small as possible. Because of the size of the pixels this isn’talways the best way. Another method used to focus uses some-thing called a Hartmann screen. The picture below shows thecamera display as well as the image of the Hartmann screenresult for an out of focus Sirius.

The follow-ing imagesshowsnapshotsfrom thecapturedevice asfocus isimproved.

T h enext imageshows im-proved fo-cus:

(Continued on page 4 - click me)

Office OffPresident JerVice President TomSecretary TonTreasurer KatEditor Pj RPast President Lyl

Magazine SubscriptionsAs a paid member of DMSG, you can sign up -or-

renew your S&T or Astronomy magazines through the club

iewfin

Volume 13 Number 01Page 3

e camera settings. control the camera. Since the image

Your 2006-2007 Officersicer Phone e-mailry Truitt 410-885-3327 truittjs@atlanticbb.net

Pomponio 302-739-9581 pomponio@lycos.comy Codella 302-559-0297 tonytowels@yahoo.comhy Sheldon 302-422-4695 f.a.sheldon@att.netiley 302-738-5366 pjr127@yahoo.com

e Jones 302-736-9842 lyjones@state.de.us

for a discount over private rate. S&T, reg. $42.95, is$32.95 thru DMSG, Astronomy, reg. $44, is $34 thruDMSG. See Tony Codella for details.

July 2006 Volume 13 Number 01Page 4

and the final focus:

*Here’s how the camera sees it:

The Hartmann mask has the two holes of aSheiner disk with the addition of a triangle. The trianglewill appear either side of the circles depending on whetheryou’re inside or outside focus. You can see the triangle inthe pictures above. The picture below shows the cameramounted on the telescope (left) and the Hartmann maskon the top. The mask holder is an 8” electric burner ringfrom a hardware store and works well with 8” telescopetubes. The cardboard advertising insert provided a proto-type shape for mask tests since it was designed to grip thering well. In this picture the cardboard mask was too thinand had to be held by tape.

All in all it’s a convenient way to work with the limiteddisplay provided by the cameral.

(Continued from page 3) Observing Notes – Almost !Don Surles - 6/15/2006

I left work early today and was fortunate to catch afew winks on the back porch - these few winks refueled me.The sky cleared to a beautiful Carolina blue late in theafternoon so I decided I would go to the marsh to see thesunset.

I took a cigar, my new digital camera, and my 1943mark 39 - model 1 Bausch & Lomb ‘Bureau of Ships’ militarybino. My goal was to see the conjunction of Saturn, Mars, andthe Pleiades and maybe even Mercury.

About 2 miles from the observation tower I spotted afurry ball on the shoulder of the road - it looked like a raccoonand I guessed it had been hit by a car. So, I turned aroundand went back to investigate. The fur ball was still there and itwas moving so I stopped and approached...and was surprisedto see the fur ball was actually two baby raccoons. They didn'trun but they let me know they weren't pets. One of them stoodup on his behind feet and put his dukes up as if to say "comeon big boy...do you feel lucky, punk?" So, I captured their picwith the digital camera and shooed them into the cover of thewoods. Let’s hope mama raccoon finds her babies.

Next stop was the observation tower at mallard lodge.There were a few long legged, long necked white birds pokingaround in the mud flats for big macs and fries and maybe adiet coke. They didn't mind me capturing them with thecamera.I climbed the tower and scanned for more wildlife while I lit thestogie. All told I counted fifteen deer, many many geese of allsizes and ages, and a great blue heron, while being sere-naded by marsh birds and frogs.

The sun set very clear and as the west darkened theeast began to show nighttime rising from the marsh under-neath the pink glow of the belt of Venus.A C-130 passed overhead with 4 trails of pollution streamingbehind it. Then I noticed the nuclear power plant cooling towersilhouetted against the northern horizon. I guess the marshand its wildlife have adapted to our intrusions.

The 1943 navy bino is my favorite bino...it is clear andbright. Tonight I used it to view the critters and beauty of themarsh and wondered about the images it saw while in serviceto the navy. The peacefulness of the marsh is such a contrastto the hustle and bustle of our modern man-made industrial/business/political environment.Well, it was getting dark. The deer and geese disappearedinto the dusk. And as the birds slowly quit singing I couldbegin to hear the unmistakable high pitched hum of marshmosquitoes. Every one of them was honing his bill andmaking plans to attack the Surles boy when I descended thetower.

Yes, I chickened out and decided to forego the plea-sure of seeing the conjunction. I quickly made my way to thepickup and even more quickly found safety inside.

Next time I will find a place with fewer hungryskeeters but I doubt I will find a more interesting environment.

Don...

July 2006 Volume 13 Number 01Page 5

Learnings…Don Surles

The Wilmington Library holds an annual Buck-a-Book sale in May. This year, fresh from our fantastic StarGaze, I dropped by the sale and found a few cast off bookson astronomy. Sometimes you buy a dud and sometimesthere are a few nuggets of interest in these old books. Oneof my purchases was Splendor in the Sky, by Mr. Gerald S.Hawkins; I am sure he is not as famous as Stephen just asI am sure the book never was a best seller. But there is achapter on White Elephants that reminded me of the eightinch F-14 reflector I built and that was allowed to occupy myback porch for many years.

My reasoning for making the long focal lengthscope stemmed from my observations that the imagesseemed sharper in F-8 to F-10 scopes versus the F-4.5’sthat I owned at the time. So, if F-8 or F-10 is better thanF-4.5 then F-14 should be better than F-10. It seems someof our ancestors had similar reasoning in designing andbuilding telescopes a few centuries ago.

The first scopes were refractors, ie, made withlenses. They suffered from spherical and chromatic aberra-tion. Spherical aberration is caused by a spherical surfaceon the objective lens that focuses light along a line perpen-dicular to the lens surface, ie, the light was not focused to aPOINT. Spherical abberation can be eliminated by usingnon-spherical surfaces on the lens elements. But this tidbitof information was not known by the early scope makers.Chromatic aberration (fringing) is caused by splitting lightinto it’s many colors by refraction and the correction for thiswas not found until around the late 1700’s when specialcrown and flint elements were used for telescope lenses.Apparently the early scope makers chose to make theirscopes VERY long trying to eliminate the spherical andchromatic aberrations that must have been pretty severe.

The folks who chose this long focus route havefamiliar names; Johannes Helvelius, and Christian andConstantine Huygens. They pursued the construction of60, 70, 123, 170, and 210 FEET (not inches!) focal length

scopes. The Huygens scopes were tubeless. The scopes employeda pole approximately 100 feet tall with the objective mounted on aball and socket/platform that could be moved up and down the poleby rope and pulley (change in declination). The tailpiece wastethered to the objective by a string of the exact focal length of theobjective. To point the scope the objective was aimed at a star orplanet and the image was brought to focus on a piece of oiledparchment. Then the trick of tracking the target became a real pieceof magic that never was solved. This must have been a disappoint-ing operation – a flex tube scope with the objective 100 feet up, nofinder scope, the tailpiece tethered to the objective by a string and noway to track.

Mr. Hawkins comments about the disappointments and theeventual resting place for the Huygens lenses being the basement ofthe Royal Society of London. It seems Isaac Newton received the170 foot lens for the Society and that the 123 foot lens was deliveredby Christian Huygens himself. But he did not donate the 100 footpole – they were more expensive than the lens. The Royal Societywas delighted with Huygens’ generosity and ordered Edmund Halleyto try mounting the 123 foot scope on the scaffolding of St. Paul’sCathedral, which was under construction, but Edmund did not use itfor some reason. Instead he moved the lens eight miles north ofLondon and erected it on a Maypole. Apparently the local folkswanted their Maypole back and left nasty notes for the astronomers.Finally, with no important discoveries to announce and costs mount-ing, the lens made its way to the Royal Society’s basement . Oh,100 poles were expensive because the English had not yet tappedthe longleaf pine forests of the Carolinas and Georgia.

Helvelius heard of the long focus scopes in Holland andLondon and decided he needed LONGER scopes for himself.Again, the scope was tubeless but a little more familiar to todays’scope makers. Helvelius employed 40 foot boards held together andstraight??? by cables and pulleys. The whole contraption wasmounted to pole that must have been 75 or more feet tall. He livedon the stormy Baltic seashore and thus the scope had to be storedinside and hauled to the observing site…and set up for viewing. Thiswas a “severalmen” chore thatcreated quite a bitof entertainmentfor local folks. Noimportant discov-eries were madewith the scope – Iguess the poor as-tronomers wereexhausted by thetime they were setup and ready forobserving.

So, thenext time you haulyour C-8 out forobserving justthink how advan-taged you are ver-sus the astro boysof the 1600’s.Here are a coupleof jpg’s to conveythe Helvelius andHuygens scopes.

July 2006 Volume 13 Number 01Page 6

Jerry TruittI started my interest in astronomy at the age of 8. We use to camp by the old rail road bridge

in West Ocean City Maryland. Back then the lights went out in OC at 1 PM and the light showbegan. At night on the beach in a sleeping bag looking straight up the number of stars were justover whelming. I had to know more and started getting books out of the library.

I didn’t have a telescope yet, so I use to get this one book Stars for Sam and set it up on mybed. I’d go down the other end with a paper towel cardboard tube and look through in pretendingit was a telescope. I started whining for a telescope, like always I got what I wanted and of coursein was the famous Gilbert 3.5 inch reflector. It wasn’t easy to aim but I was able to find things andI was the hit of the neighborhood.

At 16 my interest changed to cars, fast cars and I stated drag racing, at the track I might addnot the street. This still holds my interest today and I always make at least one race a year. All myold friends trace back to my days of racing and most have jobs that have something to do withcars.

When my boys got to be the age of 8 and 9 I decided it was time to share my great pastexperience of exploring the universe. So I went to K-Mart and brought one of those cheap 60 mm refractors we warn everyoneabout. We had a blast with it and always drew a crowd. We were able to see the rings around Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, theOrion Nebula and many other wonderful things.

Once Patty and I were empty nesters I wanted to get a real telescope and brought an 8” Meade SCT. It was a greatscope that I really enjoyed. I sold it to a friend and still get to enjoy it on occasions.

After I moved to the country I could see it was time to get serious so I moved up to a 10” Meade LXD55 then I joinedthe Delmarva Stargazers. Oops I got it backwards, join the club first dummy! Live and learn and share your experience. I stilllike the scope after spending another $700 for a mount that works. I certainly would have made a more informed purchase if Ihad joined the club first.

I now anxiously awaiting the return of the 8” mirror I ground at the 2005 Mirror Making event. I have a plan in my headafter my hours of reading and looking at what others have done. Hopefully by the No Frills I’ll have a completed scope.

Member’s Page

Jerry

From Thunderstorms to Solar Storms…by Patrick L. Barry

When severe weather occurs, there's a world ofdifference for people on the ground between a storm that'soverhead and one that's several kilometers away. Yet currentgeostationary weather satellites can be as much as 3 km offin pinpointing the true locations of storms.

A new generation of weather satellites will boost thisaccuracy by 2 to 4 times. The first in this new installment ofNOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellitesseries, called GOES-N, was launched May 24 by NASA andBoeing for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-istration). (A new polar-orbiting weather satellite, NOAA-18,was launched May 2005.)

Along with better accuracy at pinpointing storms,GOES-N sports a raft of improvements that will enhance ourability to monitor the weather—both normal, atmosphericweather and “space weather.”

“Satellites eventually wear out or get low on fuel, sowe've got to launch new weather satellites every few years ifwe want to keep up the continuous eye on weather that NOAAhas maintained for more than 30 years now,” says ThomasWrublewski, liaison officer for NOAA at NASA's GoddardSpace Flight Center.

Currently, GOES-N is in a “parking” orbit at 90° westlongitude over the equator. For the next 6 months it willremain there while NASA thoroughly tests all its systems. If allgoes well, it will someday replace one of the two active GOESsatellites—either the eastern satellite (75°W) or the westernone (135°W), depending on the condition of those satellites atthe time.

Unlike all previous GOES satellites, GOES-N carriesstar trackers aboard to precisely determine its orientation in

space. Also for the first time, the storm-tracking instruments havebeen mounted to an “optical bench,” which is a very stable platformthat resists thermal warping. These two improvements will let scien-tists say with 2 to 4 times greater accuracy exactly where storms arelocated.

Also, X-ray images of the Sun taken by GOES-N will beabout twice as sharp as before. The new Solar X-ray Imager (SXI) willalso automatically identify solar flares as they happen, instead ofwaiting for a scientist on the ground to analyze the images. Flaresaffect space weather, triggering geomagnetic storms that can dam-age communications satellites and even knock out city power grids.The improved imaging and detection of solar flares by GOES-N willallow for earlier warnings.

So for thunderstorms and solar storms alike, GOES-N will bean even sharper eye in the sky.

Find out more about GOES-N atgoespoes.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes . Also,for young people, the SciJinksWeather Laboratory at sci-jinks.nasa.gov now includes aprintable booklet titled “How DoYou Make a Weather Satellite?”

This article was provided by the JetPropulsion Laboratory, California Instituteof Technology, under a contract with theNational Aeronautics and Space Adminis-tration.

Right:New GOES-N satellitelaunches, carrying an imaging radiometer,an atmospheric sounder, and a collectionof other space environment monitoringinstruments.

July 2006 Volume 13 Number 01Page 7

July 2006 Volume 13 Number 01Page 8

Moondark for July: Celestial Cats and DogsDoug Miller

Saturn and Mars have drifted past the Beehive Cluster and are fading into the evening twilight. Winter’s constellations have set, and observers are busy tracking down the spectacular galaxies of the springtime sky. Butwell positioned, almost overhead, are three relatively faint, unremarkable and largely unrelated constellations.Together, they comprise the apparently desolate region south of Ursa Major and north of the zodiacal constella-tions of Gemini , Cancer and Leo . What interesting objects do these “cat and dogs” hold?

Lynx is reasonably large (ranking 28th of 88), but surprisingly dim, and is named for the exceptional acuityneeded just to see this constellation. With only a meander of 3rd and 4th magnitude stars to mark its presence, itwas probably designated simply to fill the gap between Ursa Major and Gemini . For the telescopic observer, thereare a handful of double stars and an edge-on spiral NGC 2683 , along with many faint galaxies. Also here is one ofthe most distant globular clusters known, NGC 2419 , dubbed the “Intergalactic Tramp” by Harlow Shapley.

Leo Minor is directly east of Lynx, but about half its size . Oddly, Beta LMi, despite being the only one with aGreek letter , is not even the brightest star. The paucity of notable deep sky objects is due to ithe constellation'sposition, well-off the plane of the Milky Way and nearly opposite our galaxy’s center in Sagittarius . Targets for thesmall telescope include galaxies NGC 3344 and the edge-on NGC 3003 . But located on the periphery of the UrsaMajor-Virgo clusters to the east, there are numerous faint and challenging galaxies. Christian Luginbuhl and BrianSkiff’s Observing Handbook and Catalog of Deep-sky Objects lists 21 galaxies of 11 and 12th magnitude.

Although named by Johannes Helevius in the late 17th century (as were Lynx and Leo Minor), Canes Venatici is the only one of the trio that has any true connection to ancient mythology: it is Latin for the leashedhunting dogs, Asterion and Chara , of herdsman Boötes . The brightest star, called Cor Caroli (“heart of Charles”) byEdmund Halley for the kings of England, is actually a fine double. While similar in size to Lynx, Canes Venatici isfar better endowed with deep sky objects, even for binoculars and small telescopes. “La Superba,” technicallyknown as Y CVn, is a deep red, semi-regular variable star. There are five Messier objects, including the Whirlpool(M51, NGC 5194 and 5195 ) and the Sunflower (M63, NGC 5055 ) galaxies, as well as two other spirals M94 (NGC 4736 ), and M106 (NGC 4258 ). Here too is the bright globular cluster, M3 (NGC 5272 ). David Eicher’s The Universe from Your Backyard provides a readable, illustrated overview. And there is plenty more for the large telescope:George Kepple and Glen Sanner’s The Night Sky Observer’s Guide , Volume 2 Spring & Summer, includes over 60additional NGC galaxies .

In comparison with the other dogs (Canis Major and Canis Minor ) and cat (Leo the Lion) of the sky, these"pet" constellations are much fainter and nowhere near as interesting. But on close inspection, these threeconstellations have much to offer for such a dim region of the sky. And at nightfall this time of year, they are ideallyplaced overhead. So while waiting for the bigger, brighter and more bizarre beasts of the summer sky to appear,these three “empty” regions of the sky definitely represent a worthy challenge for the observing enthusiast.

Moondark is written by Doug Miller, published at the Moondark web site , and printed in the Delmarva Star Gazers ' Star Gazer News .This document was last revised on 22 June 2006. Text and images copyright © 2006 by Douglas C. Miller, All Rights Reserved. Thismaterial may not be reproduced in any form without prior permission.