Monthly Archives: December 2013

Last Sun 2013 – Stellar!

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Observe The Sun Safely! Never look at the Sun without a proper filter!
Solar Programs are held 1st Sunday of every Month 2:00-4:00 PM at Houge Park  weather permitting.

And it should look stellar on the 1st of 2014 too!

No solar scope? Join us Sunday Jan 5th at Houge Park 2-4PM!

Beautiful splatter of Sunspots – larger ones with webs of penumbra (SN 93 NOAA), plage and faculae. And H-alpha highlight was massive detached prominence – 20 Earth diam long 15 high! 

Click Image to Enlarge: Left – spaceweather.com; Right – M. Packer LX5 250sec, f/2.0, ISO 125 color shifted and sharpened to look neat.

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Posted in Blog, Solar

Steve’s Adventures In Deep Space

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Adventures In Deep Space

is a blog site maintained by Steve Gottlieb

Ray Cash, Mark Wagner, Mimi Wagner, Jim Shields and Steve Gottlieb – Photo by Marsha Robinson

[Steve Gottlieb]“is one of the world’s foremost visual observers, bay area amateur astronomer and all around great guy.”

Posted in Blog, Local Blogs

1st Sunday Solar Observing + ISON Is Dust

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Observe The Sun Safely! Never look at the Sun without a proper filter!
Solar Programs are held 1st Sunday of every Month 2:00-4:00 PM at Houge Park  weather permitting.

Knowing the Sun just sucked in Comet ISON, chewed it into a Thanksgiving gravy of dirty ice melt clods and spat it out into a field of dust offered a little more respectable view of the El Sol than usual. And the Sun did deliver. Click images to enlarge:

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ISON gravitationally sucked in and spat out into 100’s of thousands of miles of dust.

Sunspots Dec 2d 2013 - note spot at left edge

Sunspots Dec 2d 2013 – note spot at left edge

The Sunspot count was 104 (NOAA) in a smashing array with a large lone one at the edge exhibiting the Wilson Effect (the spot appears as a slight depression or cavity). The seeing was particularly fair this session and my personal 80mm Refractor with a Hershel Wedge and Continuum Filter showed the solar granularity beautifully as well as plage and faculae. Solar Prominences or H-Alpha Flares were particularly nice with a not-to-often seen Helix Prominence.

We had a small but dedicated crowd for this solar party – impressive because of the “Black Friday”-Thanksgiving-Football-Weekend. Susan and Bill O’Neil showed up with their C5 scope. New member Paul Summers showed up and took some images, along with member Dwight Shackelford, and Santa Cruz Astronomy Club President Jeff Gose. And of course we had members of the public deliberately stop by – or stroll up on their visit to Houge Park. Finally Solar veteran Terry Kahl stopped by for the fix it day. She reported a huge 1x power sunspot and huge prom just a few days ago. A perfect example of why El Sol is so dynamically hot to check out everyday now.

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Bill and Susan Showing the Sun with a Standard Filter on a C5

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Paul Summers Showing Sun in H-Alpha

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Paul had a knack for showing sun to children

Clear Mag -27.64 Skies!

Posted in Blog, Solar

Second Exploratory Trip to the Pinnacles

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This a report on my second exploratory trip to the Pinnacles. (Please see the earlier blog post on the first trip for some of the details on the Pinnacles itself)

On Sunday 12-1, me and 4 others from the SJAA met down at the Pinnacles (Nhan Nguyen, Guna Purushothaman, Sanjaya Srivastava and Srinivas P) For me, this was a second exploratory trip. On the first trip I did some imaging, but on this trip my goal was to see how good the viewing could be at this dark location. Guna, and Srinivas were imaging and the rest of us were viewing.

I brought my 6 inch scope to see what could be seen with a modest size scope under the dark skies. As the sun went down, the Milky Way and other stars began to light up the night sky. Venus again was so bright it was casting a glow over southwest. As Venus set, I started to do some observing on some of the objects I have never been able to see from RCDO with my 12′ SCT. Here is a list of some of the objects.

NGC6960 – The Veil Nebula, Using a OIII filter and my 40mm 72 degree eyepiece both east and west sides of the Veil Nebula easily seen with shape and detail.

NGC7000 – The North American Nebula, Using a nebula filter and my 40mm 72 degree eyepiece this nebula was easily visible, showing the shape and some detail to it. I’ve tried many times from RCDO with the 12″ to see this but, never was able to, so I was quite happy to see it this time.

IC1396 – Elephant Trunk Nebula, Using a nebula filter and my 40mm 72 degree eyepiece I could barely make out some outline of the object. Need bigger scope for this one.

IC1318 – Gamma Cygni Nebula, Using a nebula filter and my 40mm 72 degree eyepiece I could barely make out some outline of the object. Need bigger scope for this one.

IC1805 – The Heart Nebula, Using a nebula filter and my 40mm 72 degree eyepiece I could make out outline of the object. A bigger scope is needed to see more detail of it

M74 – A nice face on galaxy Mag 9.39, Using my 14mm 100 degree eyepiece, I could easily see the object and the spiral arms. I’ve tried many times from RCDO with the 12″ to see this but, never was able to, so I was quite happy to see it this time.

M33 – Another nice galaxy, Using my 14mm 100 degree eyepiece, I could easily see the object and the spiral arms. I’ve tried many times from RCDO with the 12″ I could see a smudge, but never was able to see the spiral arms, so I was quite happy to see them this time.

IC342 – A nice face on galaxy Mag 8.39, Using my 14mm 100 degree eyepiece, for some reason, I could not see this one, even though it’s supposed to be brighter then M74. Might need a bigger scope to see this one.

Overall, we had a good time on this trip, I did learn that dark skies really do make a difference as far as what is visible to you in your scope. Kudos again to Nhan Nguyen for finding this site. I think there is a possibility for this location for club members who want to view at a dark site within 2 hours of home base. I’m planning to go back again when I have the opportunity. If you would like to go view at this site with others, let us know hopefully we can get a group of people to go again.

-Ed Wong

Posted in Articles, Observing Reports, Trip Reports

SJAA’s first official new moon viewing/imaging night at Mendoza Ranch

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This is my report on the SJAA’s first official new moon viewing/imaging night at Mendoza Ranch. Mendoza Ranch is a new location that the SJAA has been granted access by the Santa Clara County Parks to use on the new moon Saturday night. Access to the ranch requires one of the permit holders to be present, currently Ed Wong or Dave Ittner. The nights it will be opened are the new moon nights on the SJAA calendar which coincide the Henry Coe nights which will give people an option on different darker sites they can go to view or image at.

The event was held on Saturday, November 30th. We had a pretty good turn out, ten people total. For eight of those, it was their first time at Mendoza Ranch. We started at 6pm, there was about an equal mix of people viewing and imaging, five and five. As the sun was setting, I was able to get my mount aligned to do some imaging. I noticed that I was able to see the handle of the Big Dipper in the north. Mendoza Ranch has pretty low horizons. About 10 degrees in the north and the east, approx 12 degrees in the south and west. Overall the total visibility of the entire night sky is the best of all the places I have been able to view from so far.

As it got dark, the north, east and south views were pretty dark. The west had some glow from Gilroy and Morgan Hill but, Mendoza Ranch has some hills on the west blocking some of it, so it’s not that bad as some other sites I’ve been too. By 8pm the sky seemed pretty dark so I took a SQM meter reading using my app on my phone. It read 21.2 for comparison to other sites SJAA uses around the Bay Area, RCDO is 20.5. Pinnacles is 21.7.

Overall, it was a pretty good night, people seemed happy to be able to get out to view and image. I heard people say they like the site and were planning to come back. I think it was a successful first night. The next planned opening of Mendoza Ranch will be Saturday, January 4th, 2014. Come out and join us!

-Ed Wong

Posted in Articles, Observing Reports