CLUB EVENTS

21 Jul--HiDAS Meeting at Lewis Center, 7:00pm

27 Jul--Public Observing at Lewis Center, 8:30pm

10 Aug--Public Observing at Lewis Center, 8:00pm

11 Aug--

PARTY

at Larry & Patty Deuel (potluck), 6pm

17 Aug--Public Observing at Lewis Center, 8:00pm

18 Aug--HiDAS Meeting at Lewis Center, 7:00pm

31 Aug--Planetarium Show at VVC, 7:00pm

The Luz Observatory June/July 2007

High Desert Astronomical Society Newsletter

Ok, so July is half over and it is almost time to talk about what’s up in August. Have you seen asteroid Vesta, Comet VZ13, the thin crescent of Venus, Mercury in the

morning or even Mars? Well, what have you been doing! Summer is a great time to “look up”. It is warm all night long! I know in about a week the Moon will be obtrusive. But then you might as well study the Moon. Vesta is still visible in binoculars, so it can be followed relatively easy. It is heading for Jupiter and by August 27th it will be less than 1 degree away from the planet. Which reminds me that Neptune and Uranus should be up and about in the evening next week. Many of us got a glimpse of Comet VZ13 at the star party last Saturday. We could even see it move over a period of as little as 20 minutes. It is bright at 7.5 mag and a fast moving comet. By the end of the month it will be in Virgo heading for the western horizon. Catch this one while you can, ‘cause it ain’t coming back. Venus will be heading to the morning sky soon, so it would be a good idea to watch it nightly as the crescent gets thinner, yet larger in size. Really something to watch over a short period. Speaking of something to watch, the Perseid meteor shower is com-ing. August 12/13th are predicted to be the height of the shower, but Perseus is actually starting to rise now around midnight. Anyone care to stay up and see how many can be counted in an hour? Send me your report and I’ll include it in the August newsletter. —GFW

What’s Up...

A new space explorer is waiting in the wings and ready to take center stage: the Mars lander called Phoenix. Set for launch aboard a Delta II rocket on August 3rd at2:35 PDT in the morn-ing. Phoenix's assignment is to dig through the Martian soil and ice in the arctic region and use its onboard scientific instruments to analyze the samples it retrieves. Both rocket and spacecraft are undergoing final preparation at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Phoenix to Fly "Our 'follow the water' strategy for exploring Mars has yielded a string of dramatic discoveries in recent years about the history of water on a planet where similarities with Earth were much greater in the past than they are today," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Ex-ploration Program at NASA Headquar-ters, Washington. "Phoenix will com-plement our strategic exploration of Mars by being our first attempt to actually touch and analyze Martian water in the form of buried ice." NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter found evidence in 2002 to support theories that large areas of Mars, including the arctic plains, have water ice within an arm's reach of the sur-face. "Phoenix has been designed to examine the history of the ice by measuring how liquid water has modi-fied the chemistry and mineralogy of the soil," said Peter Smith, at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Check out phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/ for more information. Artist concept NASA/JPL

June/July 2007 We are well into the month of July and I really do have to send out a Mirrored Image soon. I have had obstacles and interests in my path that caused me not being able to get the June newsletter pub-lished. My apologies. I am combining to make a June/July issue, but for all practical purposes this is a July update. As I write this section I am already late in getting the July issue in the mail. We have already had our July star party, which was quite nice at our Camp Rock Road site; but I will save the report for the August newsletter. I am re-questing that anyone who wishes to write or send an article of interest for the August newsletter do so by the 1st of August. It can be an observing report, what

you want to learn about, or anything that grabs your attention you wish to pass on to other members. I want to have that issue in the mail prior to our August 11 star party/potluck at the Deuels. I am wanting to get back to basics and take care of what needs to be done as close to on time as possible. Don’t hesitate to call or email me with reminders, ‘cause I do need reminding now and then <G>.

Clear skies (and a little less hot weather). —GFW

From the President High Desert Astronomical Society 2 www.hidasonline.com

Reminder…...HiDAS Meeting….July 21st…...7:00pm the north-northeast of Antares. Data on the Galilean satellites is available at skytonight.com/observing/objects/javascript/3307071.html and on the central meridian by the Great Red Spot at skyandtelescopes. com/observing/objects/planets/article_107_1.asp Saturn rapidly drops away from Venus and by July 31 it is 6 degrees distant. Uranus is positioned between Phi (mag 4.2) and 96 Aquarii (mag 5.6) in eastern Aquarius. It is 0.9 degree northeast of Phi on July 31. Neptune is located approximately 2.3 degrees north of the fourth magnitude star Gamma Capricorni. Finder charts for Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto can be found on page 60 of the July issue of S&T. C/2006 VZ13 is a fast moving comet that may get to 8th mag in early July in the northern sky from Lacerta through Draco. Asteroid 4 Vesta dims from magnitude 6.1 to magnitude 6.7 this month. As July begins, it lies to the north of Graffias (Beta Scorpii). The asteroid heads southward towards Nu Scorpii as the month progresses. Minima of Algol has appearances during July: 07/01@ 20:13; 07/16@ 04:17; 07/19@ 01:05; 07/21@ 21:54. August: 08/08@ 02:45; 08/10@23:34 and 08/28@04:25; 08/31@01:14.

Mercury undergoes its best morning appari-tion of 2007 for observers in the northern hemi-sphere. From July 18 to July 28, it's at least ten degrees above the horizon in the east-northeast from our latitude of 40 degrees north. Mercury is 37 per-cent illuminated and shines at magnitude 0.3 when it is at greatest western elongation on July 20. Venus drops in altitude as it dives sunward after the middle of the month, the time of the Venus' greatest bril-liance (magnitude -4.7). As it does so, it becomes an increasingly thin crescent, decreasing in illumination from 35 to 9 percent. At the same time, Venus grows noticeably in apparent size from 32 to 51 arc sec-onds. Venus sets only 40 minutes after the Sun by the end of July. Mars rises just before 2:00am at the beginning of the month and by 1:00am at month's end. During that time, the Red Planet brightens from magnitude 0.7 to 0.5; but at 7 arc seconds is still too small for serious observation. On July 27, Mars passes from Aries into Taurus. It is located 7 degrees southwest of the bright open cluster M45 by July 31. Jupiter continues to shine brightly just 5 degrees to

http://www.astroleague.org/index.html is their website. Drop by for a look. More to come in the future.

July Astronomical Updates

I wanted to make mention of the monthly meeting on the Saturday, July 21st. While I was at RTMC I purchased Alex Filipenko’s lecture series on “Understanding the

Universe”. It has sixteen DVD’s with half hour lectures, updated last year, from his astronomy course at UC Berkeley. I have thought with the summertime globular clusters in full regalia the “Star Clusters, Ages, and Remote Distances” lecture would be a good topic for this month. Make plans to attend, bring a friend, neighbor or a vacationing student and learn about star clusters! We will have two star parties for August. First will be our annual Pinion Hills Outreach Star Party on August 4th. Normally we have it at the Heliopad at the Senior’s Center in Pinion Hills; however this year we will be at the Pinion Hills Elementary School grass athletic field. The Chamber of Commerce has expanded the event by bringing daytime events for the community to the school. I will have more on this event at the meet-ing. It should be lots of fun! The following Saturday, August 11th will be a star party/potluck combination event at the home of Larry and Patty Deuel. Those of us that attended last year at the Deuel’s know how great it was. Ask how you may make it the best star party of the year at the meeting this Saturday. Elsewhere in the universe…—Gary

HiDAS Notes

High Desert Astronomical Society 3 www.hidasonline.com

Reminder...Star Party…July 14th at Camp Rock Rd...dusk HELLO HiDASSERS! Allow me to introduce

"OMEGA", my latest telescope. It is a vintage 2003 NightSky, 16-inch f/4.5 Truss Dobsonian. I bought it used from a man in Wash-ington State who ordered it new in 2003 from Jim Nadeau, the owner of Night-Sky Tele-scopes. The optics were figured by Optician John Hall, owner of Pegasus Optics, and the primary yielded a Strehl Ratio of 0.99 and a surface accuracy of 1/24th wave. My friends on the Night Sky Reflector Forum all

New Acquisition say that these figures indicate a near perfect mirror! The scope came with a Telrad sight, which I removed and replaced with a Glatter Green Laser Pointer, and I also added a Lumicon 12X80mm Super Finder. These additions necessitated a counterbalance weight of 7-1/2 pounds, which I added to the mirror cell's steel framework. I also removed the electrical circuitry which included a thermostatically-controlled secondary mirror heater, and the battery power con-nections for the heater and the dual cooling fans on the mirror cell. I won't be needing these accessories in our low-humidity climate. I received the scope on 3-31-07, and as yet have NOT taken it outdoors for its First Light. Hal Pollner

The next Space Shuttle launch is scheduled for the evening of

August the 7th. Endeavour arrived at Launch Pad 39A early July 11th after an overnight rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building. The STS-118 mission will be the 22nd flight to the International Space Station and first flight for Endeavour since 2002. nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html has more information about the next mission. Did anyone besides Cliff and Gary happen to see the ISS and Atlantis streaking across the sky the last two nights of its June ISS mission? Hmmmmm...

Well, guys, here's a belated summary of

my Grandview trip. Up the 395 through the Owens Valley, the Eastern Sierras are ruggedly beautiful. Mount McKinley is dominating and awesome. The little towns along the way are still charming and quaint. Big Pine, Independence, Lone Pine. Ahh, fantasies of small town living! Turning up the road to the Bristlecone Pine Forest winds up the White Moun-tains, in some places an eight per cent grade (putt, putt). The campground is in pinion pines surrounding what would be a meadow if it wasn't so dry. Just low sage in the basin. No water, pit toilets. Thursday night was just me and another couple from the SBVAA club. Daytime highs around 85º (cool in the shade with breezes) and night temps in the low 50’s. Everyone said it was warmer at night than usual. A sweatshirt was all that was needed till Saturday night, when it dropped into the upper 40’s, but a little less water vapor and dust. Friday afternoon people started arriving. Total count was fifteen adults and a couple of young kids. Six or seven other astronomers were in the camp-ground as well. Lots of different scopes and giant binoculars. Martin had his Lightbridge and his old twenty inch dob, and a friend of his from LA showed with a twenty-five inch Obsession. Go-to and tracking. Sweet! Lots of stars, great transparency. A sky meter

Observation Report reading of 21.7. Slightly disappointing. Boy, I am getting hard to please! The Obsession drew a lot of attention from all the other campers. It looked like the cannon from a human cannonball act. Now to the meat of this report. It is hard to fault a site where most of the Messier objects are visible in the finder-scope! In the big dob, M-51 (directly overhead) was resolved to giant, bright spiral arms. Most obvious, no averted vision needed here. The guys said that they had never seen the Sombrero so fine. We were observing at 290 and 310 power. The Swan spilled over the eyepiece view. Tempestuous and very bright. Better than any photo-graph I've seen! North American Nebula was wonder-ful, and the Pillars of Creation were visible (faintly) in the Eagle Nebula. When the Andromeda Galaxy came up, I would call it a night. On September 8th another Grandview trip is scheduled. A different part of the sky will be available to us then, though the temps can be a lot cooler. The trip was very worthwhile, Grandview being most appropriately named. Dark skies rule! Cliff Saucier

Endeavour

High Desert Astronomical Society 4 www.hidasonline.com

The June star party was held at Mike and Tony’s place, which is located north-east of the Apple Valley airport. Granted we did have a light glow from

Apple Valley and Victorville present in below our hilltop height, but the view from the northeast to the southeast was extremely nice with the Milky Way showing from the spout of the Teapot through Cygnus. I was one of the last to arrive. Jim Heaton and Phil Evans already had their refractors set up in the driveway. Dave Meyer with a friends 10” Meade (see “For Sale” below) and Tony’s 12.5” Discovery Dob were closer to the road. Cliff Saucier had come up from “down the hill”, Hal and Judy along with Harold and Gloria were setting up their scopes. Hal and I decided to take up some of the road for less obstructions. As I began setting up my scope, one of the first objects was Mercury, due to its nice eastern elonga-tion. At twilight Mercury was about 9 degrees high with around a 20% phase. It was a very good view for a short while. Of course Venus, Saturn and Jupiter were other objects of interest. Venus was at 50% phase while Saturn was again really nice to view. Jupiter was just over 10° and would improve before the night was over. Next up as the sky darkened were some easier Messier objects. We had quite a few telescopes on site to view the assorted targets being bandied about. Jim Heaton also brought his binocular chair and that was fun chasing down a few globular clusters. It reminded me of the top ball turret gunner on a B-17 bomber. Other deep sky objects were called out and chased down. Donovan, Sabrina and son Tyler, friends of Tony and Mike, enjoyed hours of looking at the variety of “never before seen” things in the night sky. A very enjoy-able evening was had by all and I left last around midnight. —GWitt

Star Party Report

10” Meade LX200 EMC

Classic telescope. Like new. It is a very nice Schmidt-Cassegrain. Only used five times, including at last HiDAS star party. In perfect condition including sev-eral eyepieces, tripod, diagonals and case. Cost new - $2700. Asking $1600 or best offer. If interested please contact Dave Meyer.

For Sale

Hi Gary. Linda and I were there from about 9 AM to

4 PM. We ran into Mark and Sandy Ross, former members who moved to Phoenix, I think. Also saw Warren Taylor, who is a member, plus you and Sue, Steve Carey, Tony Heinzman, Brandy and family, and Dave Radosevich. Dave said that he saw Bill Fisher and his wife on Friday, but I did not see them. I think the way they had the major vendors set up was better. The big tents were a good thing. I think many of the vendors had more merchandize to sell or maybe sales were slow. I only bought that 1-1/4" dielectric diagonal and some caps. We had a good time. Dave Meyer

RTMC Feedback Hi Gary, I talked to Meade about that laser collimator, the rep said to call tech support and gave me the number. She said that they would probably send a new one. I also talked to another rep and he put a center mark on my primary mirror. I bought a right angle finder scope, while managing only to spend $50.00 compared to $200 last year. I had a good time anyway.

Steven Carey.

Good afternoon everyone, My husband and I had a great time in Big Bear at the RTMC. The food was good and the weather was great. I would like to thank everyone that came. I will give you a report at our next meeting on the information that I collected. I have a joke for Judy, Patty and Sue at the next meeting. See you at there.

Gloria Johnson

Thanks to all. We had quite a few members present and two just missed taking home a door prize by one number. We were six numbers away from the Grand Prize of a Meade 10” LX200-R telescope.

The Dawn spacecraft mission to Ceres and Vesta has been

rescheduled for a September launch. Minor problems had postponed its launch and then conflicts arose with the Phoenix mission in August.

Did you know?

HIGH DESERT ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY at THE LEWIS CENTER

High Desert Astronomical Society 5 www.hidasonline.com

HiDAS 2005 Board Members

OFFICERS

Gary Witt President 240-4422

Sue Alley Vice President 221-2939

Judy Pollner Secretary 247-4785

Larry Deuel Treasurer 949-6644

Dave Meyer Lewis Center Liaison/Publicity 245-8020

Contact List

CHAIRPERSONS

Gloria Johnson Speaker Programs/Events Coordinator 868-2001 Gary Witt Newsletter 240-4422 Sue Alley Star Party Coordinator 221-2939 Patty Deuel Historian 949-6644 Sue Alley Astronomical League Coordinator 221-2939 Steve Carey Member at Large 241-9312 Bob Schuette Member at Large 949-2199 Tim Baggerly Member at Large 242-2321 Anthony Rogers Member at Large 406-2985 Raymond McArthur Member at Large 952-0048

HiDAS Star Party Site

JUST A REMINDER . . . . . . The month and year (ex: 04/07) your HiDAS membership expires is shown in the upper right corner of your address label.

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MAGAZINE REQUEST: SKY & TELESCOPE $32.95 ASTRONOMY $34.00 (Magazine requests are optional)

DONATION TO HiDAS ENDOWMENT: _________________ Note: If you wish to claim your contribution to the endowment on your income taxes, please write a separate check to: High Desert Partnership in Academic Excellence

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Please clip and mail this form, along with your payment (make checks payable to HiDAS), to: High Desert Astronomical Society, 17500 Mana Road, Apple Valley, California 92307

HiDAS Star Party Site

N

Alternate Yucca Loma entrance is a little rough, but shorter.

High Desert Astronomical Society 6 www.hidasonline.com

HIGH DESERT ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

17500 MANA RD.

APPLE VALLEY, CA 92307

July 2007 August 2007