Video transcript of the meeting
- DART spacecraft impact – Kelly Fast, presenter for Oct 17th Astro Cafe- Jeff Pivnick
- Last 2.5 minutes of mission
- Astrophotos from the VCO – Reg Dunkley
- Didymous – looks like Albert Einstein
- Had an MIC training session with poor attendance. We need a couple more sessions scheduled longer in advance.
- Operating the telescopes and the observatory
- All the equipment is working very well
- Can also bring along a dSLR
- David’s planetary imager was used to image the Io transit of Jupiter over the Great Red Spot – LRGB channels – 40,000 frames
- Couldn’t get Registax to work, so used AstroSurface software
- We are now allowed to have up to 15 members, 3 in VCO wearing a mask with new protocols in place
- Astrophotos – Brock Johnston
- Io transit of Jupiter over the Great Red Spot
- 4700mm of focal length
- Saturn – Sep 25th
- Jupiter – GRS on the edge
- Using AstroSurface – uses R-L deconvolution and wavelets
- Links to weather conditions and forecasts – Jetstream & ClearDarkSky for Victoria & Upper Winds
- Imaging using the Plaskett – Dan Posey
- Just past imaging session happened on Sep 30th
- gPrime & rPrime – good for imaging emission nebulae
- Next Plaskett sessions: Oct 29, Dec 22
- Can have up to two people with Dan in the control room
- No updates on the new camera, which will be about 20′ wide and more square FOV. Jim Hesser expects the camera replacement will take months, but it is progressing.
- Imaging done: Cocoon, Stephan’s Quintet, North America and Dumbbell nebula
- Cruise tour of 30 crashed into the dome – thanks to Dan for interrupting the imaging – Lauri
- SIGs – David Lee
- Beginner’s SIG this Tuesday
- Electronically-assisted Astronomy this Thursday
- Sky Brightness Survey – David Lee
- Consolidation and cleanup of the data is progressing
- Project meetings on Tuesday 7:00-7:30PM and Wednesday 7:00-8:00PM evenings with the team
- David will show some graphics depicting the data and problems
- Need some people who are colour blind to participate
- Does Jupiter skew the dark sky readings? Bill Weir
- About half the volunteers were new to SQM measurements, the others had done
- How about taking more readings during New Moon in October? – maybe
- 2023 RASC Calendars – Lauri Roche
- Place an order – email Lauri
- No up-front payment required
- See the RASC website for information about the 2023 calendar. We anticipate the cost will be similar to last year which was $15 each; this is a considerable savings over ordering directly from the RASC eStore
- Future of Hubble – Chris Gainor
- 13 years since last servicing mission
- 535 kms above Earth, so good until 2036-37
- NASA and SpaceX may use a Dragon spacecraft to boost Hubble into a higher orbit – 6 month technical study
- Polaris flights being privately funded for next year to high orbit – a second flight might be used to boost Hubble
- Chris’ Space Review article – NASA-SpaceX study opens final chapter for Hubble Space Telescope
- Bill Weir
- Vixen 114mm Newtonian telescope donation
- Parabolic mirror, good quality optics
- Two school programs might want to use this telescope – Lauri
- Sidewalk astronomy at Metchosin Market
- Vixen 114mm Newtonian telescope donation
- Next Astro Cafe is in 2 weeks on Oct 17th
Astronomy Cafe – Oct 3, 2022