NEW ASTRONOMERS GROUP 22 June 2010

1. NEW ASTRONOMERS GROUP 22 June 2010 Picture I took of Mars in 2009 With A Digital Camera Roy Jordan

2. Observing Session Friday Night

3. Observing Session Friday Night Left my best lenses at home . But I do have my 32 mm lens !

4. Is this a planet or a star? ....Maybe I need to collimate my telescope

5. Zoomed in My Go-To Telescope tells me this is Saturn....... But I don’t see the rings with my 32mm lens ..........

6. Zoomed in What will I do !

7. Barlow Lens In its astronomical use, a Barlow lens may be placed immediately before an eyepiece to effectively decrease the eyepiece's focal length by the amount of the Barlow's divergence. Astronomical Barlow lenses are rated for the amount of magnification they induce. Most commonly, Barlow lenses are 2x or 3x but adjustable Barlows are also available

8. Barlow Lens Astronomical Barlow lenses are rated for the amount of magnification they induce. Most commonly, Barlow lenses are 2x or 3x but adjustable Barlows are also available. The power of an adjustable Barlow lens is changed by adding an extension tube between the Barlow and the eyepiece to increase the magnification.

9. If you have 2 Barlow Lenses that came with your telescopes...... You will probably only need one of them. You can convert the 2nd Barlow Lens into an extension tube. Remove the glass lens from the 2nd Barlow and this will leave you with a hollow extender tube. Place this between the Barlow and the eye piece to extend your magnification.

10. View of Saturn With eyepiece and Barlow View of Saturn With 32mm eyepiece and Barlow and an extension tube

11. Connecting Cameras to Telescopes

12. Connecting Cameras to Telescopes If you are new to astro photography, You may not want to start off by paying a fortune. Some Cost $5000 plus And include all the bells and whistles

13. Connecting Cameras to Telescopes You can start off with a cheaper option without the bells and whistles.

14. Connecting Cameras to Telescopes Demonstration

15. Do you have an iPhone? You can buy an adapter for the iPhone as well to connect to your telescope

16. Observing the Sun

17. What is H-alpha? Hydrogen-alpha (or H-alpha) filters are so-called because they transmit a specific wavelength of light in the far red end of the spectrum called the - you guessed it - hydrogen-alpha line. You need an H-alpha filter to view the Sun as shown above

18. Observing the Sun SolarMax 60 High Quality Cost : Several Thousand

19. Observing the Sun Personal Solar Telescope PST Good Quality – Not as much Detail Cost : $US 499

20. Observing the Sun The PST represents the same technology and quality that goes into a SolarMax series telescope but with a few unique design characteristics that allow us to offer it for less than some premium eyepieces. The PST will show prominences, active regions, filaments, as well as other surface details. At <1.0 angstrom it will not reveal as much surface detail as the SolarMax series telescope and filters but it certainly doesn't disappoint. Product Specifications Aperture: 40mm F/L: 400mm F/Ratio: F/10 Bandwidth: <1.0Å - <0.6Å Thermal Stability: 0.005 A/C Blocking: Full blocking >105 from EUV to far IR Personal Solar Telescope PST

21. H-alpha View of the Milky Way

22. Objects to View in next 4 weeks

23. Objects to View in next 4 weeks

24. Objects to View in next 4 weeks

25. Objects to View in next 4 weeks

26. Jupiter Impact – July 09

27. Another Jupiter Impact? – June 10 On June 3rd, 2010, something hit Jupiter. A comet or asteroid descended from the black of space, struck the planet’s cloud tops, and disintegrated, producing a flash of light so bright it was visible in backyard telescopes on Earth. Soon, observers around the world were training their optics on the impact site, waiting to monitor the cindery cloud of debris which always seems to accompany a strike of this kind. “It’s as if Jupiter just swallowed the thing whole,” says Anthony Wesley of Australia, one of two amateur astronomers who recorded the initial flash. The other, Christopher Go of the Philippines, says “it was thrilling to see the impact, but the absence of any visible debris has got us scratching our heads.”

28. What was the Flash? A mysterious flash of light seen on Jupiter early this month was likely caused by the disintegration of a meteor in the planet's upper atmosphere, Hubble Space Telescope images show. Astronomers had originally speculated that the culprit was a much larger asteroid or comet. The Hubble found no trace of a dark debris field following the distinctive burst, which appeared for two seconds on June 3 Astronomers suspected that a large meteor or comet had hit the gas giant, based on the fact that the Earth-size fireball was visible through backyard telescopes more than 470 million miles (770 million kilometers) away.

29. Another mystery on Jupiter Jupiter’s belt mysteriously disappears Amateur astronomers discover the Jovian planet has lost a major stripe for unknown reasons

30. Hubble Finds Jupiter’s Missing Stripe The gas giant’s characteristic band of dark clouds started fading late last year and had vanished completely by early May, 2010. Images taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 on June 7 — just over three days after an unknown object smacked into the planet — found a layer of white ammonia ice crystal clouds. The ammonia clouds float at a higher altitude than the missing brown clouds, obscuring them from view. The images show a preview of what’s to come for the dark stripe, too. A chain of dark spots along the boundary of Jupiter’s south tropical zone peek through the white cloud layer as the ammonia thins and dissipates. “The Hubble images tell us these spots are holes resulting from localized downdrafts. We often see these types of holes when a change is about to occur

31. NSAS Observing Sessions Northern Sydney Astronomical Society will hold it’s regular sessions at Northern Turramurra Golf Course in July. Despite poor weather in June we managed 2 observing sessions at NTGC which were pretty rewarding for those who attended. We had some good views of Jupiter and Saturn for example and also tried to find Pluto... But it was a little too low to the horizon to see. Star Clusters and Nebulae were also popular targets for the nights. Observing sessions will also be held at the next NAG meeting in July if weather permits.

32. Question and Answer Section