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San Diego Astronomy Association Celebrating Over 40 Years of Astronomical Outreach

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San Diego Astronomy Association Celebrating Over 40 Years of Astronomical Outreach San Diego Astronomy Association Celebrating Over 40 Years of Astronomical Outreach Office (619) 645-8940 November 2011 Observatory (619) 766-9118 http://www.sdaa.org A Non-Profit Educational Association November Program Meeting P.O. Box 23215, San Diego, CA 92193-3215 Date: November 16th SDAA Business Meeting Speaker: Brian Keating Next meeting will be held at: Topic: New 3.5 meter Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert 3838 Camino del Rio North Suite 300 University of California, San Diego cosmolo- San Diego, CA 92108 gist Brian Keating and his colleagues will have November 8th at 7pm the inside track in the race to become the first to discover what happened in the first billionth Next Program Meeting of a billionth of a billionth of a second after the November 16, 2011 at 7pm universe was formed. Mission Trails Regional Park With the telescope, dubbed POLARBEAR Visitor and Interpretive Center (short for Polarization of Background Radiation), the scientists are trying to detect 1 Father Junipero Serra Trail primordial gravitational waves. The existence of these waves would support the theory of inflation, which holds that right after the Big Bang, there was an incredibly rapid and violent expansion of the universe. CONTENTS November 2011, Vol XLIX, Issue 11 San Diego Astronomy Association (SDAA) sponsors speakers on a wide range of Published Monthly by the astronomy topics on the third Wednesday of every month at the Mission Trails Regional San Diego Astronomy Association Park Visitors Center. The Program meeting begins at 7:00 PM. Each attendee receives $2.50 an issue/$30.00 year one free door prize ticket. After announcements and a small amount of business, the au- Incorporated in California in 1963 dience is treated to the featured presentation. At the close of the meeting the door prizes November Program Meeting...................1 are presented. The event is open to the public. The Mission Trails Regional Park Visitors Stars at Sycamore Canyon.......................1 Center is at One Fr. Junipero Serra Trail, San Diego CA 92119. Call the park at 619-668- TDS North 40 Expansion Status.............2 3281 for more information or visit http://www.mtrp.org. Bino-Views..........................2 Please contact Bill Carlson ([email protected]) if you have an questions, com- Banquet..........................5 ments, or ideas for the Program Meetings. October Minutes............................6 November Calendar............................8 Stars at Sycamore Canyon SDAA Contacts.......................9 By Bob Austin ASIG Gallery..........................................10 SDAA Annual Barbeque.............12 In the tradition of other SDAA outreach events like “Stars at the Park” and “Stars at Web Only _________________________ Mission Trails,” another great monthly outreach event will be starting in November 2011 SDAA Annual Barbeque (cont)......13 on the 3rd Friday of every month, “Stars at Sycamore Canyon!” For the last several years The Gray Cubicle You Want to Work In.. I’ve been working with the Rangers at Sycamore Canyon/ Goodan Ranch Open Space ....................................................................16 Preserve (http://goodanranch.org/). With the help of many SDAA volunteers, we’ve had several outstanding public outreach star parties at this venue and it seems to be a favorite Newsletter Deadline location for many of the SDAA volunteers as well as the public for telescope viewing in The deadline to submit articles town. for publication is the 15th of each month. San Diego Astronomy Association Located at the east end of Poway, this venue offers a pretty dark sky for being only 19 miles, as the crow flies, from downtown San Diego. There are no homes or business directly around the viewing area and the panoramic view of the city below is amazing. In the past, the rangers have had the public park along the road and a small hill between the viewing area and the road protects the telescopes from the cars’ headlights. The rangers will continue to provide this service for this new event. So mark your calendars for the 3rd Friday of the month for “Stars at Sycamore Canyon.” To access this venue, use the park entrance on Hwy 67, ½ mile south of Scripps Poway Parkway. Continue through the gate and up the dirt road about 1½ miles to the parking area, this is where we setup. If you need more info, contact me at 760-787-1174 or [email protected] . Thanks for your support and to all that volunteer. TDS North 40 Expansion Status Update By Bill Carlson, Vice President SDAA This month the SDAA was hoping to begin the process of amending our Major Use Permit with a Minor Deviation; which is a fairly simple and inexpensive way to make minor changes to our site plan in order to expand into the North 40. We were expecting the changes to proceed smoothly, unfortunately we hit a road block. A Minor Deviation is limited to changing 10% of the site plan, and our plans were to change only that amount; however, we were unaware that a previous Minor Deviation was applied to the site in 1994, and it had already maxed out that 10% change. This effec- tively removes the possibility for us to do another Minor Deviation, and only leaves us with a significantly more expensive option to expand. The next possible expansion option is called a Modification to the Major Use Permit. Unlike the Minor Deviation, which costs about $750 and is limited to changing 10%, the Modification does not have a set limit, but requires $10,000 in deposits just to start the process, and according to the San Diego County Department of Planning and Land Use (DPLU), the average cost for a Modification is nearly $42,000. In addition to the significantly higher cost, we would also be required to do an Environmental Impact Review Update and hold a public hearing to discuss the plan. Due to the significantly higher costs of getting the project approved by the county, we would be required to increase the lease costs of the new private pads by nearly double. At this time, we don’t feel that it would be in the best interest of the club to move forward, and that interest in the pads would be greatly reduced if they were to cost between $3500 and $4000 each. The board has decided to put the expansion on hold at this time, but to continue to explore our options. BINO-VIEWS You may have noticed from previous articles that I like using binoculars. I keep a pair at the back door that I can grab at a moment's notice, day or night, whether to check out birds in the bath or an early phase moon. But I also like to head into the back yard in the early evening or late at night, ease into a comfortable chair with my 10 x 50's, and peruse the sky for a few minutes or more. You can't beat the quick "set-up", and the wide field of view makes it easy to find some of the dimmer constellations, like Saggita (the "Arrow"), and provides a perspective on wide field objects that you can't usually get with a telescope. Magnification, aperture, and field of view (fov) are the key parameters for describing binoculars, and usually are inscribed on the binos – e.g., 10 x 50; 6.5°, where "10" is the magnification (10x), "50" is the aperture (mm), and "6.5°" is the fov. As magnification increases, the field of view generally decreases. Above about 10x it becomes increasingly difficult to hold binoculars steadily on an object. You can mini- mize the jitter with practice, and by bracing yourself of the binos against a stationery object, but, unless you have a very steady hand, you'll be best served using a mount for binos with a magnification greater than 10x. Or you can try image-stabilized binoculars, which markedly reduce jittering. If you're looking to buy a pair of binoculars, you'll find they vary greatly in price, from a few dollars to thousands. But you can get a quality pair of smaller hand held binos for around $100-$200, or larger mountable binos for around $200-$300. When in doubt, stick to a "good" name in optics (e.g., Nikon or Pentax) to increase the likelihood you'll get a well built, collimated pair, and, before buying, try a few different pair, either on a mount or by holding them, as appropriate. For hand held binos, make sure they're comfortable to hold, and spend a little time on an object to make sure the jitter is acceptable to you. I have three pairs of binos – 8 x 35, 8.3°; 10 x 50, 6.5°; and 20 x Page 2 SAN DIEGO ASTRONOMY ASSOCIATION NEWS AND NOTES, NOVEMBER 2011 San Diego Astronomy Association x 60, 2.2°. I always use the 20 x 60's on a parallelogram mount, and often use the 10 x 50's on the mount. This month we'll start the Alpha Persei Cluster, which we looked at last month, then move on to some rising winter objects, as well as the moon and a few planets. As discussed last month, α Persei (Mirfak; mag 1.8) lies within the Alpha Persei Cluster (Melotte 20). Mirfak is the brightest star northeast of Andromeda and southeast of Cassiopeia. In my 8 x 35's, the Cluster extends from a few stars northwest of Mirfak, southeast through a grouping that looks like a cup into which Mirfak is falling, and continues on to a grouping farther to the southeast. My 10 x 50's neatly frame the cluster of stars around Mirfak, and reveal a deep red star, possibly a carbon star, to the southeast in the cluster.
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