Hamilton Amateur Astronomers MayEvent 2003 Horizon Volume 10 Issue 7 II Hz 4 - An Odyssey by Tom Steckner It all started simply enough with an e-mail from An- one reference that seemed to be useful and authori- thony Tekatch: tative: http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/ im0117.html (I’ll refer to this as “URL 1”). How- Hello Experts, ever, the only Herzog designated object they showed Would one of you like to tackle this question was something called II Hz 4 (“Hz” = “Herzog”). This for the newsletter? implied that there were at least two Herzog catalogues (i.e., inferred from the “II”) and that “Hz” was the stan- Would you please send me information on dard abbreviation for objects in this catalogue. So, back Herzog 2 the galaxy. I know it looks like this to Google, AltaVista, and Vizier. Nothing. So I went (0 0) and that it’s a gamma ray source for back to URL 1 to study it some more and noticed an the colliding galaxy effect. Yet I don’t have e-mail address at the bottom of it. What the heck, I the facts how; 1) far away it is and 2) where thought, and sent off a note - let’s see if we can get the it is of what constellation? Who may I ask NOAO to answer me. :-) for a telescopic 35mm photo of the Herzog 2 to buy for under $20. Question by Scott Florance, Seattle WA On the surface at least the request for informa- tion about “Herzog 2” seemed like it should be simple enough to satisfy. First of all, I had often enough seen the name Herzog in connection with studies of peculiar galaxies. Second, just about every catalogue ever cre- ated in astronomy is available somewhere on the Web. So it was going to be “just” a matter of finding some time to do the research. (Not a problem if you ignore the 8 (ha!) hour per day job + 2 hour per day commute, kids, wife, household duties, etc., etc.) Not. My first attempts to find some information was with simple searches using the Google and AltaVista search Four ring galaxies from URL1 engines. I got tons of hits on the name Herzog, but (if C.R.Lynds, KPNO 4-m/NOAO/AURA/NSF confined to subjects astronomical...) most referred to papers written by this astronomer or to papers which This is how I got to know Dr. Nigel Sharp, a man referenced his work. So I then tried the Vizier search with a wry sense of humour, a willingness to talk to a engine, which is a specialised search engine for locat- non-professional, who seemed to know lots of people in ing only astronomical objects. Still no luck. Now the astronomical community, and was more than will- this was starting to get a bit weird. So I went back ing to help me chase this elusive “Herzog 2” that Scott to Google and AltaVista and started reading through referred to. all the astronomy-related hits I got and came across . cont’d on page 4 Chair’s report . .page 2 Newsflash . page 6 Eye Candy . .page 3 NASA . page 10 Bio Brief . .page 7 Calendar . .page 11 Upcoming events . .page 6 Anniversary Announcement . page 12 Page 2 Chair’s Report Finally - decent weather! We’ve software utilities K3CCDTools even had our first successful and Registax, you can get some observing night! Thanks to our truly astounding images working Observing Director, Stewart to your telescope’s diffraction Attlesey, for making the limit. Just 30 years ago, even the arrangements and, of course, largest telescopes in the world bringing along his wonderful “0.5 couldn’t acquire images of the metre” telescope. planets and the Moon which are as clear as the ones coming off of Our speaker this month seems Bob’s scope. If you haven’t seen wildly appropriate - Mark his animation of a Jovian shadow Robinson speaking about transit, check it out on the HAA Event Horizon is a publication ”Stormchasing”. Since we have webpage! of the Hamilton Amateur As- also had our first decent storms of tronomers (HAA). the season, we are all jazzed to Speaking of webpages, I would like The HAA is an amateur astron- hear about journeying into the to thank Rick MacDougall once omy club dedicated to the promo- cores of the wild ones. Like they again for his generous donation of tion and enjoyment of astronomy say, if you can’t beat ’em, join hosting the HAA website, for people of all ages and experi- ’em. www.amateurastronomy.org! ence levels. Now that lectures are finished, I Also, Anthony Tekatch has The cost of the subscription is in- have actually taken the continued to do an excellent job of cluded in the $25 individual or opportunity to get out observing maintaining it - in all the spare $30 family membership fee for the some nights recently. I was so time he has left over from editing year. Event Horizon is published impressed by Bob Botts’s webcam Event Horizon ... Gigathanks for a minimum of 10 times a year. images that I went right out after that, too. the last HAA meeting and got HAA Council myself a Philips ToUcam Pro! Finally, I hope that you will join Hon. Chair . Jim Winger Bob has kindly allowed me to use us for the HAA Star Party Chair. .Doug Welch his 12-inch Meade LX200 to image weekend at Silent Lake Provincial Second Chair . Grant Dixon Jupiter and the Moon. It is really Park for Fri, May 30 and Sat, Secretary . Margaret Walton astounding what these cameras May 31! Beautiful dark skies and Treasurer . Cindy Bingham can do. At video rate, with just fun people. What more could you Observing Dir. Stewart Attlesey their own lens, they can detect 1st want? Publicity. .Glenn and Gail Muller magnitude stars like Castor and Editor/Web . Anthony Tekatch Pollux. Along with the free Doug Welch Membership Dir.. .Ann Tekatch Councillor. .Ray Badgerow Councillor . Barb Wight Doug Welch is the current chair of the HAA and also a founding member. You can find out more about Doug at: Web: amateurastronomy.org http://www.physics.mcmaster.ca/people/faculty/ Welch_DL_h.html Mailing Address: PO Box 65578 Dundas, ON L9H 6Y6 Event Horizon - Hamilton Amateur Astronomers amateurastronomy.org Page 3 Domain Name and Web hosting for the Hamilton Amatuer Astronomy club supplied by Axess Communications Corporate and Residential DSL and Web Hosting http://www.axess.com [email protected] Photos by Bob Botts Photo by Doug Welch Your photo could be here, send it to [email protected] See these photos and more in colour on our web site amateurastronomy.org. Event Horizon - Hamilton Amateur Astronomers amateurastronomy.org Page 4 . cont’d from page 1. writing out all the entries in Vehrenberg’s book, I re- His first of many responses to me started like this: “Ah, alised that I had very little in my book - maybe 300 to the dear old Herzog “catalog” - no, not everything in 400 entries. So I started to look around for more. the world is online, and this is decidedly not, I fear. Well eventually these two thoughts came together: You might actually have to resort to a real library, but put the entries in my spiral ring notebook onto com- you’d need an astronomically specialised sort of library puter cards. You see, the 036 not only punched little and not even many of those would know. It’s one of holes in the cards (which at first I wasn’t interested in), those old-fashioned things that used to happen (and is but also typed across the top of the card (up to 80 char- starting to happen again in particle physics), where lists acters), and they happened to be a nice size for sorting were circulated without ever really being published.” I things like astrophotos. So I worked out a basic for- could see this was going to be fun. mat: 4 characters for the NGC number, 6 characters for R.A., 5 characters for declination, 2 characters for Really. As we continued to correspond, memories object type, 10 for object size, 4 for visual magnitude, started to flood back. You see, back when I was in 4 for photographic magnitude, a few more for object high school I started to get serious about astronomy. classification or spectral type, several more for miscel- Around the time I was in Grade 10 I was introduced to laneous other info (e.g., for open clusters, how many an IBM 036 keypunch machine. Remember those cards stars were in it; for planetary nebulae, the magnitude you used to fill (“bubble”) in using a pencil, or those of the central star; cross references into other catalogues cards you’d get in the mail from, say, the gas company such as Messier’s; etc.) and a space here and there to with a few little holes punch in them? (However, only make it look orderly and line things up properly. in recent times did I find out that those little bits of pa- Well I soon got serious about trying to figure out per that were punched out were called “chads.”) Well, how to complete my copy of the catalogue and started I thought that those cards would make beautiful index burrowing deeper and deeper into various libraries. cards for sorting and coallating all those astrophotos I Eventually I wound up at the Natural Sciences (NatSci) planned on taking with the telescope I was going to buy library at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) one day.