Colorado Springs Astronomical Society
Education + Science + Star Parties + Star Viewings + Star Programs
The Astronomical League has recently started making a monthly observing chart available on their web site. Each month I’m sharing them in the CSAS News section. The PDF version is suitable for printing and I’ll have paper copies at star parties and RMSS!
Dave
Director of Outreach
June 15, mag 4, 38º
Use this spreadsheet to determine how accurate your mount/telescope is pointed at the celestial north pole.
Compass’ only tell us which direction the magnetic north pole is. Polaris (the “north” star) gives us a close (less than one degree) approximation. But to use a mount/telescope for taking images, you want to be parrallel within several arcminutes (or even arcseconds) of the celestial polar axis.
Before using this spreadsheet, determine how the knobs on your mount/telescope change the azimuth and altitude. For instance, if turning the altitude knob twenty turns changes the altitude five degrees you now know that the altitude changes 900 arcseconds for each turn, or 15 arcminutes for each turn. Likewise, determine the effect of the azimuth knob.
This spreadsheet is based on a paper written by Ralph Pass. It is included below the spreadsheet. Read the paper for an explanation of how to use this with a GoTo mount/telescope.Continue reading “Polar Alignment Aid Spreadsheet”
Here is a PDF file of a method of a two star polar alignment by Ralph Pass
You can download the file by saving it to your computer’s hard drive – when you hover over the bottom right of the pdf the choices should show up. If you have your browser set to not load files, you may need to right click and allow adobe pdf to run.
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A new set of on-line university courses are now available at “WWW.WORLDSCIENCEU.COM“. These are comprehensive Master Classes given by world famous scientists that may be taken at your own speed. The current classes which may be played at any time are “Special Relativity” by Prof. Brian Greene and “Inflation” by Prof. Alan Guth. Although the classes are university level, they are quite understandable to anyone with at least a high school education who is interested in astronomy. These classes come in versions with or without advanced mathematics and completion of any module set earns a certificate of completion. World Science U plans classes on general relativity, gravitation, astrophysics, etc., etc.
Bruce Temkin
GLOBE at Night is an annual 2-week campaign in March. People all over the world record the brightness of their night sky by matching its appearance toward the constellation Orion with star maps of progressively fainter stars. They submit their measurements on-line and a few weeks later, organizers release a map of light-pollution levels worldwide. Over the last four GLOBE at Night campaigns, volunteers from over 100 nations have contributed 35,000 measurements.
Go to the Globe at Night website for more info and to participate!
Ever wonder how to pronounce the names of some of the stars or constellations? Like Bootes? Or Cepheus? Or Dubhe?
Astronomical Society of the Pacific published a guide in 1936 which is available online as a pdf document —
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1936PASP…48..139R/0000140.000.html
Starry Night also has a pronunciation guide which, along with the written pronunciation, has a quicktime audio file so you can actually hear it spoken.
http://www.starrynighteducation.com/resources_pronunciation.html
So, how do YOU pronounce Bootes?
If you’d like to discuss this, please go to our forums:
http://www.csastro.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=13220#13220
http://www.eso.org/public/products/minisites/website_0013/
From their about page:
ESOs GIGAGALAXY ZOOM: The Sky, from the Eye to the TelescopeContinue reading “Tour the Milky Way!”
Rob Hawley has produced an educational video on YouTube, broken down into 4 segments, total is about 30 minutes.
The video is about finding astronomical objects using charts, aka “starhopping”. He uses charts from Sky Map Pro, and from Sky Tools V3, but refers to paper charts as well in the video.
Here is the link…
A couple of days ago I came across this very interesting and “cool” website! Part of the Zooniverse (there is a link to Zooniverse on the links page). From the Zooniverse website, “Galaxy Zoo – The original Zooniverse project. Help astronomers figure out how galaxies form and evolve by classifying their shape. Over 50 million classifications so far but we need more!”
You register at the Galaxy Zoo website and then you can participate by classifying galaxies. They show you how and then you just classify when you have time. You can save the galaxies that you like the most to your own “gallery”. You can get very technical info on each galaxy, but don’t expect the Messier number!
There are also other things you can participate in, such as merging galaxies and detecting supernovae. Enjoy!
This is from October 7, 2009 – thought it was interesting for 2 reasons —Continue reading “Astronomy Night at the White House”
Since we are experiencing the wonderful clear, COLD skies of winter, I thought it appropriate to share this You Tube video about Orion and the Orion Nebula or M42. Enjoy!
LL Orionis and its heliosphere interacting with interstellar gas and plasma near the edge of the Orion Nebula (M42). Image Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA / STScI), C. R. O’Dell (Vanderbilt), and NASA.
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