Vol. 56, No. 10, December, 2011 Next Meeting – December 20th, 2011 at 8:00 PM ~ ANNUAL HOLIDAY PARTY!! ~ at the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Observatory ~ Please Join Us for Fellowship and Fun ~ FROM THE PRESIDENT ! Bill Hanagan First off, I’d like to thank DAS member Ron Worden Annual Holiday Party to Feature for his November presentation on Backyard Astronomy with a GIANT SWAP MEET... Your Observatory, Greg Lee for the November “What’s Up”, and Fred DeLucia for describing the observing challenge of Got Some Astro-Stuff That Rediscovering Comet P/2006 T1 Levy. I’d also like to thank everyone who brought refreshments to the November meeting. You’d Like to Sell or Trade? Our December meeting will feature a Swap Meet, Bring it to the Annual Xmas Party! “What’s Up in the Sky” by Greg Lee, a brief slide show of Longwood Gardens’ Christmas Decorations at Night, by yours truly, and our traditional Christmas/Holiday Party. I The DAS December Swap Meet realize that many DAS members can’t make it out to our ! Bill Hanagan December celebration, so at this point I would like to extend In past years, only a handful of people have brought to everyone the warmest of Holiday Greetings and my items in for sale at our swap meets. For a swap meet to heartiest wishes for a Happy New Year. work, a lot more people need to bring items in for sale. For those of you who can attend our Christmas Please look through your astronomy gear and pull out the celebration, we will be setting up for both the Swap Meet and items you don’t use or don’t have space for anymore, figure the Christmas Party starting at 7:00 PM. There will be no out what you want for them, and bring them in for sale! board meeting in December. Note that the Swap Meet will Maybe someone else can use them and you can recover be temporarily suspended at 8:00 PM when we move into part of your cost and clear a little space for something new! the lecture room for the announcements and presentations, Even if you don’t sell an item, it may spark someone’s but it will resume after the presentations and continue during interest in another aspect of amateur astronomy. the Holiday Party. Several of our members have volunteered to bring As always, I’d like to remind you to keep thinking tables for everyone’s use during the swap meet, so there will about how YOU can contribute to the DAS and how you can be ample table space available for many DAS members to make the DAS a better astronomy club. While we’ve had display their items. Of course, if you need a lot of display some volunteers step forward, and we’ve received a variety of (continued on page 2) donations, more volunteers and donations are needed. A club works best when essentially all of its able- FOCUS uses plenty of photos bodied members pitch-in and help out at our club functions in each Issue... in whatever way they can. If you want to make the DAS a we want to use YOURS...not Hubble’s!! better astronomy club, give me a call at 302-239-0949. I’m PLEASE email to FOCUS editor [email protected]. sure we can come up with something that you can do to help the DAS that also suits your particular interests. Each issue of FOCUS is full of useful hyperlinks. Just click on any graphic or telltale blue web address and your browser should take you to additional linked web resources. Saturn - Photo by DAS Member Rob Lancaster taken at the May 21st AP SIG meeting at Mt. Cuba. Taken using Bill Hanagan’s Aprochromatic Refractor on Rob’s Losmandy G11 mount. Images were captured from live view movies using a Canon Digital Rebel Xsi and stacked & processed using Lynkeos. Observing with the Delaware Astronomical Society... DAS Member Star Parties ! Bill Hanagan I used a tripod mounted Canon 50D DSLR at ISO NEW We held our fifth MSP of the year at the Elk River site on November 18. The seeing was a little better than 1200 with a 50mm f/1.8 average and transpar- lens set at f/2 for a 10 ency was good overall, second exposure. The though we saw some resulting image was thin clouds drift past for adjusted for color bal- a few minutes. ance, contrast and The red-light photo brightness. The Orion at left shows Rob nebula is visible as a Lancaster tweaking the small glow around the focus on his Canon central star in Orion’s 60D DSLR as he sword hilt. With a half- prepares to acquire an frame APS-C DSLR such image of Jupiter. Rob’s as the Canon 50D or image of Jupiter with 60D, a 50mm lens the shadow of Europa transiting will appear in a future issue frames a narrow area and of FOCUS. acts like a short focus telephoto lens. Trailing is barely Later in the evening the constellation of Orion visible in this photo and would become obvious in exposures climbed high enough to allow me to take the photo at right. longer than 10 seconds. (continued at the bottom of page 9) NEW The DAS December Swap Meet (continued from pg. 1) and sizes, lenses, finders, telescope mounts, tube rings, space you may want to bring an extra table along. eyepieces, Barlow lenses, focal reducers, planispheres, Try to have each of your items clearly labeled in astronomical CCD cameras, Digital Single Lens Reflex advance with an initial asking price. Naturally, you can (DSLR) cameras, film based SLR cameras, camera lenses, change the price later if you choose. In the end, the selling tripods, mirror making supplies, telescope parts, books and price is the price that the buyer and seller agree on. DVDs on astronomy, astro-photos, astronomy posters, and What sort of items are we looking for at the Swap calendars. Less obvious items might include a film SLR Meet? Astronomy items! That includes any item that’s camera (Swap Meet items often include older technology), useful for visual observing, astronomical imaging, or tele- cable releases, a video camera, a web-cam (especially a scope making, as well as any item with an astronomy Philips or other CCD based webcam), low light security theme. Obvious examples include telescopes of all types cameras, a laptop computer, or even cold-weather gear. “PUBLIC NIGHTS” at the Mt. CUBA OBSERVATORY... MCAO PUBLIC NIGHTS Greg Weaver nights at 8pm. Please check the website for programs planned, full details and updates. The Mt. Cuba Observatory Public The remaining Public Nights schedule for Nights continue year 2011 follows. The 2012 schedule has not yet been posted. Date Speaker Topic round! In addition to learning about many Dec. 12 D. Wilson Wonders of the Universe aspects of the heavens, you’ll have a chance to visit and view our all-digital full-dome planetarium. You can pick up a schedule when you next come to a meeting or get the latest updated version off the website at: http:// MountCuba.org. Programs are presented on Monday -2- DAS Special Interest Groups for Photography and Telescope Construction... DAS ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY NEW The next AP SIG meeting is tentatively scheduled for SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP ! Bill Hanagan Saturday, January 14 at 7:30 PM at MCAO. I also wish to proudly announce that February will The DAS astrophotography special interest group (DAS mark the TEN YEAR anniversary of the founding of the AP AP SIG) meets on Friday nights at 7:30pm every other month at Mt. SIG at the Delaware Astronomical Society! Cuba regardless of weather. The SIG also meets for photo shoots scheduled on 1-2 day notice to synchronize with the weather. Even if you aren’t an AP-SIG member, you’re wel- The monthly meetings are informal and typically come to attend to learn more. Be sure to sign up for the include the presentation of astrophotos taken by the members DAS Yahoo Group in order to receive the email announce- along with an extended question and answer period. Objects ments that provide directions and dates of the meetings. commonly photographed include constellations, auroras, lunar As always, please consider submitting one or more of eclipses, and planetary photos, as well as a wide variety of deep- your favorite astrophotos for publication in the FOCUS. A sky objects such as nebulae, galaxies, star clusters, etc. The recent photo is not required. You can email your photo(s) as topics discussed cover the entire gamut of astrophotography, .jpg files to our FOCUS editor, Joe Neuberger at his address at from how to get started with a minimum of equipment, to polar [email protected]. Please include a text file briefly aligning your telescope, all of the way to the fine points of using describing how you made each photo (in Microsoft Word auto-guiders and post-processing digital images. format) along with any by-lines or captions you would like Joe You can get started in astrophotography with just to use. If you would like, you can write a more in-depth your current camera mounted on a tripod or a motorized discussion to go with your photos. Joe can make a masterful telescope by taking wide field photographs of meteor showers, layout, but if you would like to suggest a layout of your own conjunctions, constellations, and star trails. As you move to you can insert copies of your photos into the Word document progressively fainter and smaller subjects, you’ll need better to give him an idea what you would like to see.