SPRING 2018 WELCOME TO ASTROCAMP Thank you for booking and welcome to the Spring AstroCamp 2018! We’ve resisted the temptation to grow to accommodate more bookings and have stayed at the familiar AstroCamp campsite in Cwmdu, which means we remain small, friendly and continue to be perhaps the most exclusive starparty around! AstroCamp has become widely regarded as the friendliest and most helpful star party there is. So, if you’re feeling sociable, come and set up around 'The Common', near the reception and the AstroCamp HQ tent. If you’re new to astronomy or don’t have your own telescope and want to look through a range of scopes and ask questions, The Common is the place to come! Our gatherings are always friendly so, if this is your first starparty, you can be guaranteed to leave with far more friends than you could imagine and an informed passion for the wonders of the night sky. So don’t be nervous about coming on your own – we’ll make you feel welcome as our newest member of the AstroCamp family! Of course, those that want to find a dark and quiet corner for some observing or imaging in blissful seclusion have everything they want in this weather protected valley under some of the darkest skies in the United Kingdom, here in the Brecon Beacons International Dark Sky Reserve. In 2017 we even obtained a specific directive from the Welsh Cabinet Secretary to turn off the local village’s street lights during AstroCamp events, making Cwmdu truly Wales’ Astronomical Village. In this pack, you find a guide to the scheduled events and talks that will be taking place this AstroCamp. All talks, & events are included in your admission, so please feel free to come along to any or all that you’d like. We've also listed our favourite objects this time of year, as a starter for planning your observations or getting started in imaging over the weekend. All the observation times are listed in UK local time. Apart from the Astronomers in the Pub event on Sunday afternoon, all workshops will begin from the AstroCamp HQ tent on 'The Common'. The Sunday afternoon talks & quizzes will be held at the Cwmdu Village Hall (our pop-up pub, The Spiral Arms, so that we can carry on the tradition of Astronomers in the Pub now that we’ve actually outgrown the village pub). This is easy to find and a short walk from the campsite: from the Farmer’s Arms pub, continue north on the A479 and turn left after 140m. All events are free, there are prizes worth many more times the cost of AstroCamp admission and we even have our own locally brewed AstroCamp Ale for the real ale drinkers. HOW TO GET TO ASTROCAMP By Train: The nearest train station to Cwmdu is Abergavenny. Bus services run weekly to Cwmdu so booking a taxi from the train station is recommended. Taxis cost around £25 each way, but most operators seem to be happy to negotiate a fixed price if you guarantee that you will use them for the return journey. There are often people looking to taxi-share on our Facebook page so you might want to check that out too, By Car: Cwmdu Caravan & Camp site is located four miles north of Crickhowell just off the A479 Turn right at the Farmers Arms public house in the small village of Cwmdu and follow the signs for 300m. PLEASE NOTE: While SATNAV may bring you successfully to the area it may NOT deliver you to the campsite. Please follow the "camping" road signs from the Farmers Arms public house for the final 300m to the campsite. Campsite Address: Cwmdu Campsite, Cwmdu, Crickhowell, Powys, NP8 1RU CAMPSITE LAYOUT Please pitch in your allocated area according to the map below. Please only park your car by your tent if it fits well within the dimensions of your chosen pitch (5x5m small, 8x8m large). Otherwise please park your car in the empty bottom field after unpacking and pitching up. Your neighbour will thank you for it! ASTROCAMP EVENT SCHEDULE Saturday 14th En-route to Cwmdu, listen to the Awesome Astronomy special podcast extra just for AstroCampers! Just look for ‘Awesome Astronomy’ on iTunes or go to awesomeastronomy.com/getpodcast 13:00 ........... Arrive at campsite, pitch up & set up 15:00 ........... Meet & Greet. Come to the gazebo on The Common to meet new friends, share stories & a drink or two 16:00 ........... John’s collimation tutorial. Make sure the mirrors in your scope are in tip-top alignment before the stars come out 21:00 .......... Paul’s starhopping & navigating tutorial on The Common. Learn how to find your way around the sky and pick out a few treats in the cosmos. Sunday 15th 10:00 ........... Solar SUN-day - solar observing in white light and hydrogen alpha on The Common The Sunday afternoon talks and quizzes are held at our pop-up pub ‘The Spiral Arms’ at Cwmdu Village Hall. All talks and quizzes are included in your admission price. 14:00 ........... The Spiral Arms Astronomy Quiz - where the big prizes are! 15:30………… Talk by Amber Hornsby – ‘Detecting the invisible universe.’ Amber Hornsby is a postgraduate researcher at Cardiff University, developing detectors to observe the oldest light in the universe - the Cosmic Microwave Background. 16:30 ........... Champions of the Universe Quiz (the difficult quiz in which you’re playing for beer!) Monday 16th 14:00 ........... Monday afternoon social on The Common. Bring food, drinks, chairs, tables (guitars & mandolins?) if you have them, for this popular AstroCamp social gathering. Tuesday 17th 12:00 ........... Leave campsite and book for 8-11th September AstroCamp The Common (in the middle of the campsite) is the area we’ve created for socialising and observing together. There’s always lots gathered here to share eyepiece views and learn new astronomy tricks from others. Join us in the AstroCamp family at The Common! RALPH'S DSO IMAGING TARGETS FOR BEGINNERS My picks are all visible in a 4” (100mm) scope and can be imaged in 1 minute exposures with a tracking mount. With a good polar alignment, you may be able to take 3 minute exposures or longer. But look at them carefully and if the stars look like they’re smearing, discard them and take slightly shorter exposures or refine your polar alignment. Of course, a dedicated tracking set up will allow you to take longer exposures and obtain better quality images but all of my deep sky picks in this guide will easily show up in shorter exposures if you’re trying out imaging night sky objects for the 1st time or are wanting to see just how far you can push your camera exposures. M65, M66 & NGC3628 - THE LEO TRIPLET This is a unique treat for amateur observers, giving us, as the name suggests, 3 galaxies in the same eyepiece view. The Triplet is at its most advantageous position just before 11pm but will be enjoyable all night. All three galaxies are spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, and each presents a different orientation: M66 isn’t quite ‘face on’ but shows us more of its spiral arms than the others, while NGC 3628 is perfectly ‘edge on’ showing a thick dust seam running through the centre under higher magnification. To locate these three galaxies, draw a line between the brightest star in Leo, Regulus in the lower chest of the lion, to Bright Denebola in the lion’s tail. About two thirds the way along that line sits the Leo Triplet. Start with a low power eyepiece to locate them and increase the magnification to frame them all perfectly. To get any level of detail from these distant objects will require exposures of 5 or 10 minutes and, as always, the more the merrier. But if you don’t have a guidescope, you can take shorter exposures of a couple of minutes (or as long as you can take before the stars appear smudged) and stack them together in the free Deep Sky Stacker software. M51 - THE WHIRLPOOL GALAXY Nice and high as soon as it’s dark, the whirlpool is a unique target for amateur astronomers as it gives us views of a spiral galaxy devouring a gravitationally bound smaller galaxy. Follow a line from the Mizar to Alkaid, the end star in the handle of the Plough (Ursa Major). M 51 is half that distance again from Alkaid. A one minute DSLR exposure will show the two galactic cores, while increasing the exposure times will reveal ever more detail. Visually, anyone with a 4 inch or larger telescope should be able to spot its characteristic details. Anyone with a 12-inch telescope may be able to find the companion M51b just behind the main disk, where streams of dust and stars are pouring towards the whirlpool. M13 - THE GREAT GLOBULAR CLUSTER IN HERCULES Getting higher in the sky as the night goes on, and therefore better to observe or image, M13 is still high enough in the sky to observe as soon as it’s dark. To find it, look two thirds the way along a line imagined between the stars zeta and eta Herculis in the keystone shaped asterism in Hercules. This is the largest and most spectacular globular cluster for northern hemisphere observers. M13 is a gravitationally bound ball of more than a quarter of a million stars, 22 light years away in a halo around our galaxy. Don’t miss the chance to see M13 through one of the bigger scopes at camp to see why this wonder has become a firm AstroCamp favourite.