Video transcript of meeting
- Edmonton RASC’s BNLO Black Nugget Lake Observatory Unyk-Drew 32″ Telescope – Alister Ling
- 32″ 0.8m folded f/4 128″ focal length Newtonian Alt/Az
- Donation from Bob Drew, built by Roman Unyk, and funds from Alberta gamblers
- East of Edmonton, fairly dark site, about 1-hour drive from the city
- County land and camping, surrounded by farm land
- Visual use only for public and member events
- 3 observers at a time inside the dome
- Observations
- Crescent Nebula NGC 6888 – sketch by Berta Beltran
- Einstein’s Cross – 17th Magnitude, gravitationally lensed quasar
- Veil Nebula – amazing detail
- M36 Pleiades cluster – FOV is too narrow to appreciate star clusters
- Pease 1 planetary nebula in M15 globular cluster – star hopping required
- NGC 40 – planetary nebulae are ideal for this telescope – colour apparent
- M76 Little Dumbbell – lots of detail
- M1 Crab Nebula – OIII filter reveals detail
- Planets – not great targets for this telescope, but moons of Uranus: Umbriel, Titania & Ariel can be detected
- NGC 891 – edge-on galaxy – irregular dark lane is obvious
- Stephan’s Quintet – not an exciting object, so perhaps airglow and/or aurora degradation
- M33 – good detail
- NGC 206 Andromeda starcloud
- M31 Andromeda Galaxy – core – scotopic & photopic vision – green colour visible
- Colour of the core of the Orion Nebula – Hydrogen a, b, g, d – green colour visible
- Comments from Bob Drew
- Astrophotographs and Sketches
- Observing from Victoria Centre Observatory – Randy Enkin
- Photos of Comet 12/P Pons-Brooks using 12″ Dob and 20″ Obsession with new tracker
- Moon sketch using 20″ Obsession
- Mike Nash’s lunar photo compared with Randy Enkin’s sketch – both from their homes
- Comet 12/P Pons-Brooks
- Mar 18, 2024 APOD – red spiral core of the comet featured
- Dan Posey’s photo of the comet and beautiful tail
- Observing from Victoria Centre Observatory – Randy Enkin
- Leap Year 2024 – Jeff Pivnick
- Common Year, Solar Year and Sidereal Year
- Leap Years started with Julian calendar
- Gregorian calendar – more accurate compensation to define leap years
- Accuracy of calendars adjusting for leap years
- Events – David Lee, Randy Enkin, Lauri Roche
- Makers SIG cancelled for this month
- Next week’s Astro Cafe – presenter Kali Salmas, Operating the MMT Telescope in Arizona
- FDAO Star Party – March 23 starting at 6:30PM
Astronomy Cafe – Mar 18, 2024