The February meeting of the Auburn Astronomical Society will be on Friday, February 4, in room 215 of the Aerospace Engineering building on the campus of Auburn University. Montgomery area car-poolers should meet at my house (518 Seminole Drive). We'll head for Auburn at 7:00 PM.

The February star party will be the following Saturday, February 5 at the Tuskegee National Forest Site… 

Jack McDaniel has found a potential new observing site for the society. Our plans are to pursue this possibility in discussions with the Forest Service. My impressions of the new site were somewhat better than I had anticipated. The horizons could use some improvement, ( if negotiations with the Forest Service are successful this will not be a problem) but it was surprisingly dark. There was no problem with Moton Field, neither with the beacon nor landing lights. For Tuskegee to be so near, there was only a slight sky glow from that direction. A preliminary check of the sky with Phillip’s 10-inch seemed quite good. 

The field (marked in red on the map) runs roughly east-west. 

• The most direct route to the site for most, will be to take I-85 to Exit 42, the Wire Road exit. 
• Head south for just a few yards, then turn right onto Macon County Highway 53 South. 
• If you pass Beck’s Turf Farm #2 on your left, you’re on the right road. 
• When you reach the 3-way stop, proceed straight across. 
• Turn left just before the pavement ends onto the dirt road. 
• Proceed to the top of the hill. 
• Overflow parking space is on the left—the observing field on the right. 
• The roads in the Tuskegee National Forest (orange in the map) are dirt roads. 

Wedding Bells 
When you've seen that "far-away" look in Tom McGowan's eyes recently, it wasn't just because he was thinking about that cluster of galaxies that he had seen in his 20-inch -- he's had a direct hit to the heart from Cupid's bow. As we've come to expect from Tom, he made his "announcement" in his typically understated way, by asking about a "family rate" for membership dues. The lucky lady is Julie Ross, Tom's observing companion at most of our star parties. Best wishes to you both, Tom and Julie.

New Telescope Owner's Clinic 
Jack McDaniel hosted a one-man telescope buyers guide and user's seminar in Wetumpka last month. Jack reported a good turn-out. Obviously, his found an information vacuum in this area and done his part to help correct it. Thanks Jack!

Rick Evans, Director of the W. A. Gayle Planetarium wrote to remind us:

>We do need to start looking at Astronomy Day and start working and publicizing that event.

I've just received my 2000 calendar. It shows National Astronomy Day on Saturday April 8. That's gonna be a problem. The Peach State Star Gaze is also that weekend and a substantial number of us will be there.

May 13 would seem the next best choice, but both Jupiter and Saturn will be in conjunction that week. 

Backing up to March 11 looks better. Jupiter and Saturn will be about half way up in the western sky with Mars just below. A 5-day old Moon will bringing up the rear. Sunset looks about 5:45. We should start star gazing by 6:00.

I'm afraid that last year's effort was a bit of overkill. I'm afraid that we succeeded in boring the pants off of a bunch of folks who just wanted to look through the telescopes.

I’d like to share my trip to Ft. Davis, Texas with you. Back in November of 1999, I met with Tom Czarnecki and his wonderful wife, Lucy, for a week of observing and relaxing. I met Tom and Lucy from our recent trip to Australia. They live in Ft. Worth and own a nice piece of land in the mountains 13 miles due south of McDonald observatory in Ft. Davis. The site is about 5600 feet in elevation with the southern horizon completely unobstructed to the horizon somewhere in Mexico.

Tom has a 20-inch f/4.0 dobsonian on a equatorial platform tracker, which works great. Just when you think you have most everything you need for observing....

I brought my recently completed 16-inch dob. I had yet to really observe with this scope and figured there was no better place to test it out. And that was what I planned to do-test it to it’s limit. The weeks before the trip, I compiled an extensive list of objects and printed up the accompanying field charts with Mega-star. Most of the objects are quite challenging-that’s where the superb seeing of Ft. Davis helps.

We arrived to beautiful weather and the forecast for the remainder of the week was to only improve! We spent the day getting everything set-up and waited for darkness to come. The sky was great. Low humidity (in the teens %) with temperatures in the low 40’s. Tom is into planetaries very much so and planned on hunting down some of the lesser known ones. I had a lot of very small, faint galaxies that I planned on at first.

We looked at some Messier objects and some NGC’s while we waited for total darkness. Then it was time for ‘serious’ observing. My first object was a little galaxy called UGC 11428 located only a ½-degree from M 56 in Lyra. I star-hopped to the area with help of the chart but didn’t see anything. I kept scanning around, still nothing. I was about to give up when a little glow caught my attention. I carefully studied the area-there it was a small, round soft blur that noted as very tough. Alright, I thought, this is going to be challenging --for me as well as the telescope. Next up was Delphinus. My list included 4 galaxies, 2 planetaries and 2 globular clusters. Among the galaxies, NGC 6928, 6927+6930 made a tough little trio especially 6927 being a mag. 14.5 galaxy, 6930 is an edge-on that appears as a thin streak of light (13.1mag).

NGC 6956 is a extended oval glow, fairly tough at 13.2 with two UGC galaxies seen nearby(smaller + tougher).The planetary NGC 6905 at 45" across was pretty set in a nice field of stars. My list is rather extensive so I’ll list objects that were significant for one reason or another.
 

PERSUES GALAXY CLUSTER Tom called me over to look in his 20"-scope. It was filled with over a dozen faint smudges. And when I moved the scope around, more come into the field of view. After noting the location, I went to my scope and aimed it to the area. When I looked in, there they were, about 3 dozen galaxies in about a degree and a half area .Tom came over to check it out. After looking a while, he went back to his scope , looked a bit, then exclaimed, "They’re identical". A nice complement to the mirror maker, Carl Zambuto. Well, I certainly got my fill of observing that week. I was more than pleased with the performance of my telescope. I had many first this observing trip. First time I had seen any MCG, ESO, MAC, CGCG galaxies along with other fine objects. One object I failed to see was the dust-obscured galaxy, MAFFEI 1in Cassiopeia. I tried on three different nights, had the exact field and everything. Even had a black cloth draped over my head ... just couldn’t nudge it out of hiding. But, as I’ve learned in this hobby, there’s always next time. Oh, did I tell you I left Texas and went to Arizona. Yep. Two nights later I was observing from over 8000’ on Mt Graham, you know the one with the endangered squirrels. That’s another observing story....

Tom McGowan midnightelescope@aol.com
 

I spent the holidays visiting an old friend. He has informed me of a new product you may want to be on the lookout for. First there were the Naglers, then the Panoptics. Recently, The Radian line came out ,followed by the 31 Nagler, Type-4.

But soon to be released is the VIAGRANT line of eyepieces from TeleVue. By using special "space-age" technology developed in the medical field, these eyepieces will allow the image to dilate the blood vessels in and around the pupil and the eye in general thus allowing the viewer total pleasure at will. These eyepieces allow for "erect images" as well. The VIAGRANT line will surely keep you and your scope "up" all night.

This is to let you know that, as an attendee of last year’s Peach State Star Gaze or as one who has taken the time to e-mail me, I am notifying you that you DON’T have to wait for this year’s snail-mail PSSG brochure (though, if I have your address, you will get one anyway).

Instead, you may download your Y2K PSSG brochure and registration forms from the Atlanta Astronomy Club website at: http://aac.cjb.net

The brochure and registration form are in pdf file format, so if you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read and print them out.

If you don’t have Acrobat Reader, the AAC website has an icon you should click on that takes you to the Adobe website. Once there, scroll to the bottom of that page, click once more on the "Get Acrobat Reader" icon and follow the instructions to download your own FREE copy of this handy little utility. Then return to the AAC website to download our PSSG materials for your review.

More and more files are being produced in pdf format, which stands for "portable document file"; thus, files created on a MacIntosh and uploaded to the Internet can be downloaded and used by anybody else with any kind of computer as long as it has Acrobat Reader.

If you have any questions, either e-mail me at: ken.poshedly@mindspring.com  or phone me at 770-979-9842 (after 7 p.m. Eastern Time)
 

Meade has continued their "tradition" of updating the software for the Autostar for the ETX and DS family of telescopes.

On 1/14/00 they released version 2.0e, claiming "better accuracy". It also provides for downloading multiple "Tours" (such as a Messier Marathon) It's available at http://www.meade.com/support/auto.html
 

I’ve cobbled together a web page devoted to the Celestar 8 (and specifically the Deluxe model). It’s primarily directed to new users/owners but contains some general tips and modifications that may be of interest to others.

There’s a lot of good information floating around out there but it seems pretty scattered so I thought I’d try to document stuff I’ve run across in one place. I’m sure there’s still more I’ve not run across yet so if you see something missing you think new users/owners of the Celestar 8 might find helpful, please feel free to let me know.

Yes, the Unofficial Celestron page at http://america.net/~erg/celestron.htm is a great site but it tends to be directed more the older C8.

Clear skies,
Les
Celestar 8 Page http://www.apex2000.net/personal/lcb911/c8page.html
 
 

I have made a spreadsheet available on my web site that I created for calculating various telescope/eyepiece combinations. You will need Excel97 or greater to open the file called tec.xls (39K).

By entering your scope info (up to three different scopes can be set up) you can use it to calculate various performance specs for up to twelve different eyepieces per scope. I have used this as an easy reference when comparing eyepieces "on paper".

Anyway, I thought some of you might find this utility useful. The Eyepiece Calculator is free and can be found by going to my web site and following the link to the Observing Tools page.

Mark

My Home Page: The Star Hopper http://www.dallas.net/~markp

On the evening of May 15, 2002, the planets Mercury, Saturn, Mars, Venus, the crescent moon, and Jupiter will all be together in the evening sky. John Mosley of the Griffith Observatory, has produced a planetarium script to counter the paranoia and hysteria that accompanies these events. As a defense against the next "Urban Legend", that I predict will dwarf the recent "Largest & Brighest Moon" hype. See the script of Cosmic Catastrophe  sent to me by Rick Evans.
 

Hope to see everyone at the meeting,
 
 

Russell