The OAS Word - May 2013

Lupor Victor, Partial Lunar Eclipse, 24 April 2013 ISO 200 exp 1/500

GCSE Astronomy closing date to enrol 18th May 2013

Contents OAS News ................................................................................................................................................ 3 OAS Academy ...................................................................................................................................... 3 GCSE Astronomy ................................................................................................................................. 3 OAS Subgroups.................................................................................................................................... 4 Hugh’s View ........................................................................................................................................ 4 OAS juniors.......................................................................................................................................... 5 Mini Lunar/Solar Cam ......................................................................................................................... 7 Navigating using the cosmos ............................................................................................................ 10 Your images....................................................................................................................................... 13

OAS News OAS Academy The time has come I think to explain a little more about the academy, and where this is going. First off I should remind people the OASA is NOT part of the Online Astronomy Society. The Online Astronomy Society Is a non-profit making organisation. The Online Astronomy Society Academy is the business end which offers among other things the online tutorials many of you have seen and the GCSE Astronomy course. The company is under the trading name of easyasIT Limited, which in itself is a not VAT registered business. The Academy also has the capacity to add other services and has indeed done so as you will see.

However in summary we now offer a planetarium service and have teamed up with a representative from Usborne Books, Fiona Price who is now catering for our younger audience (via their parents).

Please note as well as offering astronomy tutorials, we also offer a product training service.

For example, we have just created the training material for www.astroplace.net . If you are a retailer, perhaps we can help you to provide training for your products, software, or hardware. Good training programmes not only offer a good selling point, but also can help slash support calls from customers. Sometimes you need more than a book of words to impress the customer once they have parted with their hard earned cash.

GCSE Astronomy 16 confirmed students enrolled for the start of the GCSE Astronomy course this summer, tutored by Dr Johanna Jarvis. There is still time to register for GCSE Astronomy; the course begins on 01/06/2013 with final enrolments being accepted no later than 18/05/2013. Course cost is ÂŁ160 please visit www.onlineastronomycourses.co.uk for more information or contact OASAcademy@gmail.com We have also had a restructure in that we now offer: Beginning Astronomy Spectroscopy Astrophotography - all at ÂŁ10 each for the year, with Cosmology being offered free with each package.

Planetarium!

We are now able to offer a mobile planetarium show.

Please visit www.oasplanetarium.com for more details

Prices start from just £250 for schools and £350 for corporate events. Please email OASAcademy@gmail.com for more information

OAS Subgroups We have seen some new and interesting sub groups forming off the OAS Group. With the main Online Astronomy Society Group seeing rapid grow in recent months to over 2000+ it came to our attention that there was no easy way to handle different aspects of astronomy like the groups we formed below. The OAS Group itself continues to attract bloggers and imagers; the latter of course continues to be the main purpose (sterile group if not).

However the format was not giving other astronomical spin offs a chance to thrive, hence the formation of the below groups, which must make the Online Astronomy Society quite possibly one of the most diverse and active groups online (in Facebook anyway). We have tried several times unsuccessfully to grow from Facebook, using forums and such like, but to no avail. However if you would like to be kept informed, following our Twitter Group is the way to go, we have OASoc and OASAcademy OAS Asteroid Hunters Group With the Panstarrs campaign now complete we have netted 5 provisional asteroids in our searches.

What this means is the 5 objects discovered will need to be confirmed before being added to the database of the Minor Planet Centre. For this to happen repeated follow up observations are needed. The process can take up to 7 years after which the asteroids can be named, potentially after their discoverers. Well done team! Next campaign is in October 2013 so looking forward to that.

Visual Observers Group Michael Nicholls is doing well with the Visual Observers Group with over 30 members enrolled, producing some lovely work and reminding us how important and useful classical astronomy sketches can be. Some amazing work in there by the likes of Dr Paul Abel to name a few.

Spectroscopy Group This group continues to thrive with some fine spectroscopists, including Jeff Barton, Dr Johanna Jarvis (Open University), and Ray Gilchrist. A fine place to come and learn more of this fascinating hobby

Hugh’s View

It is galaxy season and I recently captured this image of the very faint ‘super thin’ galaxy IC 2233 (apparent magnitude only 13.1). The super thin designation was introduced by Jean Goad and Morton Roberts in their 1981 paper

in the Astrophysical Journal: ‘Spectroscopic Observations of Super thin Galaxies’ (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981ApJ...250...79G). A galaxy is super thin if the ratio of the minor diameter to major diameter is 1:9 or less; I estimate a ratio of ~1:11 for my image of IC 2233. The major diameter of IC 2233 is given as 5.17 arc minutes in the NASA Extragalactic Database (http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/forms/byname.html). At an averaged distance of almost 45 million light years this equates to a visual diameter of about 65,000 light years, just a bit more than half the diameter of the Milky Way. What is also particularly noticeable in my image is the absence of a bright, central bulge which is another typical characteristic of super thin galaxies. They are in fact a particular type of spiral galaxy inclined at almost 90° to our line of sight. In a 2008 paper by Lynn Matthews and Juan Uson in the Astronomical Journal (http://iopscience.iop.org/15383881/135/1/291/pdf/1538-3881_135_1_291.pdf) the inclination angle of IC 2233 is given as 88.5°, just 1.5° short of perfectly edge on. As well as their scientific interest, I think super thin galaxies have a very particular visual beauty.

(Image details: 8” Meade LX90, Meade f3.3 focal reducer, Meade DSI II colour CCD camera, stack of 14 x 40sec exposures)

OAS juniors OAS Juniors aims to provide interesting articles targeted at our younger audience. Children are the future of astronomy and OAS hopes to not just educate but inspire the astronomers of the next generation.

This month we look at the Northern and Southern Lights…

The Northern and Southern Lights Looking up at the night sky, you will probably notice that it is all one colour; a black blanket studded with stars and the occasional appearance of the moon from time to time. Of course at certain times of the year, like New Year’s Eve, you can make the night sky appear as many different colours as you like with the help of fireworks that your family and friends let off into the night sky.

Besides this, however, you might be surprised to learn that if you took a trip to the chilly Artic, in the North, or Antarctic, in the South, then you are likely to see a colourful display without even needing to strike a match!

Planet Earth has its very own firework extravaganza, and a much quieter one at that – you wouldn’t need to cover your ears with your hands to watch this display! Astronomers call these lights aurora and they appear most commonly at the northern or southern poles of our planet. To be able to tell them apart, scientists call the displays over the Artic, aurora borealis and those over the Antarctic, aurora australis. To make it much easier to remember them, some people like to call them the Northern or Southern Lights. You may have already heard of them but do you know how they are made?

Aurorae are made, not from gunpowder in your favourite firework, but partly by the Sun – our Solar System’s own fireball. When you have had a fizzy drink that is full of gas you may notice that the first thing that happens after drinking it is that you burp! The Sun is made up of gas, so likes to let out a continuous belch that throws out particles with lots of energy from its surface – this is called the Solar Wind and we are usually in the path of it. From this stream of particles alone, an aurora is not always at its most spectacular – eruptions on the hot surface of the Sun called solar flares make them all the more brighter – they are pretty hard to miss!

These particles could be dangerous to us but we are protected by an invisible shield around our planet. This shield is magnetic and called the magnetosphere which sometimes holds these particles prisoner. However some break free and head towards the atmosphere of our planet – that’s when the “fireworks” really begin!

So why are these aurorae found at the poles of our planet? Well just like a magnet, Earth has a North and a South Pole. The magnetism at the poles reaches all of the way down into our planet’s core, and just like how you and your friends rush through the same corridor to the playground of your school when it’s time to go home, the particles follow an invisible magnetic line down the poles. After wriggling through to the Earth’s atmosphere, the particles start to act like bumper cars at a fairground and bounce off the molecules (that’s two or more particles attached to each other!) that can be found at the highest reaches of our planet. Our Earth’s atmosphere is made up of two main gases called oxygen and nitrogen and when they collide with the particles their molecules emit the colours that turn the darkest of skies into a beautiful light show.

Did you know?

Oxygen molecules that can be found in the Earth’s atmosphere make green or brown-ish aurorae, whereas nitrogen molecules make the blue or red aurorae.

Aurorae are at their brightest during the most intense stages of the solar cycle – that will be where there are gigantic explosions on the Sun’s surface caused by a grouping of sunspots.

Many thanks for reading this month’s OAS Juniors article check back with us next time to learn all about our continuing fight against light pollution!

Mini Lunar/Solar Cam

By Pete Gow

I make no apologies for this idea being based on the solar cam featured in September 2012's edition of Sky at Night magazine.

You will need 1 Objective lens from an old pair of binoculars (preferably 50mm but 40mm will do) 1 astro web cam or a web cam you are prepared to modify.

Tubing to fit the nose piece of a web cam.

Basic hand tools i.e a hacksaw and I like to use holt melt glue Insulation tape Some plumbing fixings to make the job look neater.

This is based on the scope that I made.

Having several bits of tubing laying around in my quest for modding web cams for astro use and seeing the article mentioned above I decided to have a go at making something that might work but at the same time would keep me quiet for a while.

The tubing I used came from a children's telescope from a supermarket.

The hardest part of the project was cutting the tube straight and I still haven't got it right.

I tend to modify my own web cams that I usually pick up from car boots for a ÂŁ1 or so and are usually of the CMOS sensor variety.

Modifying is an easy task as what one man puts together another can take apart and I'm not worried whether any mod is made for a permanent use within a project.

This camera is a play station 2 eye toy camera and a 35mm film canister for the nose piece.

There is loads of information on the web regarding web cam conversions for Astro use so I won't go into details here.

The first job after removing the objective lens is to ensure that it is clean inside and out.

I made a simple jig to get the sort of length required to get the camera and objective lens to focus on a distant lamp post.

After measuring the length required the tube was then cut a bit shorter (about 20mm) and the lens attached with hot melt glue and the join covered with insulation tape (whatever colour you have to hand).

Another smaller diameter tube (tight fit into main tube) was then fixed to

the front of my camera with hot melt glue again and slid into the main tube, As my tube was from the same telescope and only thin plastic I cut a slit along the length of tube that is attached to the camera to make it a bit smaller.

The sliding fit allows a bit of flexibility with focusing and also being tight means it won't fall out.

Mounting is a matter of preference with the user but a couple of brackets from the plumbing supplier to fit around the tube and onto a small piece of wood to fit onto a scope would be one idea.

My bracket came from a redundant zoom lens from an old film camera and was a bit on the large size but plenty of insulation tape soon had it padded out to fit.

If I was to make the scope again I would alter it by adding a fitting to the end to make it look a tidier fit onto the lens and not so amateurish.

My lunar cam was knocked up in a couple of hours with basic tools just to prove it would work with a cheap web cam and as such is a work in progress.

Don't forget to either spray the inside of the tube black or line it with rolled up black paper.

It certainly works when imaging the moon and with a Baeder film filter will work for white light imaging of the sun.

Finished prototype

Please remember though never to point a scope of any kind that is unfiltered at the sun and never leave unattended when it is outside, If you need to leave it then please swing it away from the sun especially if you have it mounted on top of a larger scope where children or curious adults may be tempted to have a look at what you are viewing.

The warning is serious but the reminder for me is one of near fire.

Whilst showing a friend on a half cloudy day how the idea works and pointing the scope out of my living room window into the garden I became distracted for a few moments until my 4 year old daughter informed me that smoke was coming from my new toy. The cloud had moved and exposed the lens to sunlight allowing indirect sunlight to heat the tube up!

With this being the solar maximum why not have a go at building one and adding a filter to count the sun spots.

And please feel free to alter the design to suit any materials you have to hand.

Any further questions I can be contacted at g7vhj@hotmail.co.uk

Navigating using the cosmos The heavens have fascinated people since the dawn of day, but did you know the heavens can also aid in navigation as well?

I think most of us are aware that the pole star points north

Following Merak and Dubhe as indicated will easily lead to Pole Star by night. It’s just 1 degree off the celestial North Pole

Dubhe Merak This is fine, but what about during the day?

The Sun The Sun is a reasonable indicator of direction. We all know it rises roughly in the east and sets roughly in the west, even though not precise it can give an idea as to what your direction is. But did you also know that if you have an analogue watch (one with a face and hands) this can be used to find direction. For example if you can align the hour hand in the direction of the Sun, then half way between the hour hand and 12’ o’clock is south.

If in daylight saving, make it between the hour hand and 1pm

Other less obvious means of getting direction can be gained from the Moon

Another little known method is navigating using the Moon.

The Moon takes 28 days to orbit the Earth once. During this time the Moon is illuminated from the right as it waxes, then illuminates to the left as it wanes Did you know if the Moon rises before the Sun sets its illuminated side will point west? If it rises after sunset, this will be in the east.

These methods (in the absence of a compass of course can help with the setting up of telescopes. The methods are not precise enough for aligning a telescope for imaging but they help get it partially right.

For themed planetarium shows visit http://www.immersive-theatres.com/

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Please email onlineastronomysociety@gmail.com

Eagles Eye view of the sky Courtesy of David Eagle www.eagleseye.me.uk

Check out APT software www.astroplace.net

Your images Gary Palmer: Another shot of Jupiter taken on the 2 March 2013 with a Celestron edge 9.25 and a DMK camera. Ive been playing with the processing on a few of these.

Bastian Leppin,Messier 51 & Galaxie IC 4263

From a distance of almost 30 millions of light year, lurking among the stars of Leo, the elegance of the barred spiral of NGC 2903 is astonishing. The central core of this realm of stars shows some hot spots, believed to be young globular cluster. It was discovered by W. Herschel on 16 Nov. 1784.

The high-res image above was taken with the PlaneWave 17 robotic unit part of the Virtual Telescope Project. 15, 300seconds images were averaged: images were unguided, trusting the robotic Paramount ME mount hosting the optical tube. The image scale is 0.9″/pixel

Toni Scarmato Final Image of Comet C/2011 L4 (PanStarrs) taken this evening with an APO Tele 300 mm and Canon 10D at ISO 400. Compared to other nights the camera was located on an equatorial mount with RA and tracker so I could put 120 seconds each and to add 5! I applied to the original image processing filters that seem to bring out the inner part of the coma and tail! I'm not sure, however, about the quality of the result because the filters can create artifacts, but after seeing some images with high resolution and wide field think that the structures could be real!

Magnitude estimed 2.6 in 7x50 binoculars!