Messier Sketch Project, Your Help Wanted...

You may have seen the Messier Poster that was created some time ago, the one that has nice photos of all 110 of the Messier objects. I will be working over the year to re-create this poster (sort of) with hand sketches done by myself and I am hoping others in TAAS. I am in need of any and all sketches that you have done or will do of any of the 110 Messier objects.


If you are like me and enjoy doing sketches at the eyepiece or if you do not currently sketch but have wanted to do more I hope you will take this opportunity to do some more sketching. I am hoping to get a few sketches of each of the objects by different people so that I have a variety of views to choose from, we all see things just a little different than others. Over the next several months I will use the President’s Remarks portion of the newsletter to feature a different constellation and I am hoping to have some sketches of the Messier objects that reside within that constellation to feature in the article. I am beginning this month with a constellation that will soon be lost until next fall, Auriga – the Charioteer.

This time of the year Auriga sits high in the western sky just after sunset, moving below the horizon and setting at about midnight. Look for a fairly bright grouping of stars forming a pentagon shape, the brightest five stars is Capella and sitting directly below Capella is a small grouping of three stars that form a triangle. The star opposite the pentagon from Capella is Elnath and this star is actually one of the horns of Taurus.

There are a couple of stories that go with Auriga, but all the stories describe it as a Charioteer holding the reigns of the chariot in his left hand and cradling a goat and her kids in his right arm, Capella is the right shoulder of the charioteer and means “she goat.” The Charioteer in some stories is believed to be Erechtheus, son of the Roman God Vulcan, who was the first man to harness four horses to a chariot.

Other stories claim that the Charioteer represents the ill fated Myrtilus who was thrown from the chariot by the daughter of King Oenomaus, Hippodamia after a quarrel with one of her suitors, Pelops. Myrtilus was the in charge of the Kings chariot; he rigged the chariot so the wheels would come off during a chariot race with Pelops eventually killing the King. When Myrtilus tried to claim Hippodamia as his bride she refused and pushed him from the chariot and ran off with Pelops.

There are three very nice Open Clusters within Auriga M36, M37 and M38 all three are not too difficult to find and can be seen from Albuquerque so they are nice objects for public star parties. M37 is a very dense grouping of stars with a few bright stars and lots of dimmer stars; it is easily identifiable as a cluster but not quite dense enough to look like a globular cluster. M38 is not quite as dense as M37 but there are far brighter stars within the view, again easily identifiable as cluster but a fairly loose cluster of stars. M36 is the least dense of the three but again there are quite a few bright stars and it is fairly easy to identify it as a cluster within the field.

Now that I have shared some of my sketches of a few of the Messier objects please consider sharing some of your sketches and email them to me at president@taas.org, I would like to feature them in some of my upcoming articles and would really like your help in creating sketches of all 110 of the Messier objects.

Ummm, what am I going to say?

Ok, the newsletter deadline is coming up and I have to try and figure out what I am going to say to all those wonderful TAAS people who read the newsletter when it comes out. Dee always told me how much he disliked this portion of his job as President, although I think he did an excellent job with it, I only hope I am half as good as he was.


I am going to try really hard to make the deadline this month and get my article in on Friday and not at the last minute on Sunday, as usual (I said try). But now I have to try and figure out what to say and how to say it, more to come…

So What On Your Mind...

Sunny, 70 degrees one day, snowy 40 degrees the next, then the wind and dust, snow, sun, wind, sun, clouds, rain, sun, sun and rain at the same time... Ahhh, springtime in New Mexico.


I am so ready for the spring and summer, maybe it is just me but this seems like a very long winter and I want the nice cool (but not cold) evenings with no wind and nice dark skies that make this such a great place to live and to be an back yard astronomer. I think I am having some telescope withdrawals; I need a nice evening of observing with a good list of objects both seen and unseen, globular clusters, nebula, galaxies, planets, open clusters and even some double stars.

My eyes have been bothering me a little the last few weeks, dry and itchy (from allergies, I think) I think they are in need of some medicine, I put in some eye drops, I rub, I wash I try different things and none of it is working. The medicine I need will not come in a little bottle that dispenses a drop at a time, it will come in a telescope with a nice eyepiece that focuses that magnificent light from distant wonders directly into my retina, stirring up the excitement, imagination and amazement of the universe again, I miss it.

The medicine I am prescribing for my tired eyes, is photons, lots of photons from distant far off places traveling years, decades, centuries and even millennia, passing through our atmosphere down a dark tube, bouncing off a mirror then off another mirror through an eyepiece and "SMACK" (oops I blinked) then looked again and there it is the medicine I have been waiting for, far better and more soothing than those few drops I picked up at Walgreens.

Think about it, what those photons have been through on their way to curing my soar deprived eyes. All the other stars they passed, all the galaxies they may have seen, planets, clusters, nebula, comets, asteroids and I am sure even several pairs of alien eyes looking through alien telescopes up into their known universe. Did they blink, where their eyes tired and soar waiting for the photons, are they sitting somewhere wondering if we exist and where we exist...?

So what is on your mind?

Predictably, Unpredictable…

Well, if you have lived in NM for any amount of time you have heard the saying “If you do not like the weather, wait a few moments.”


If spring time in New Mexico is anything it is unpredictable, it changes not only daily but, I have seen it change by the minute (ok maybe 10 minutes) but suddenly. I was very much looking forward to the Spring Equinox Open House and Picnic yesterday and was not too worried about the weather reports, because it is New Mexico and things change fast, so I was hoping it would all just blow by. Imagine how surprised I was to wake up and see a post on Becky R. blog welcoming spring with several inches of new snow and then hearing posts of up to 10 inches of the white stuff in the surrounding communities.

I continued to monitor the emails and was not surprised when I heard that the Open House and Picnic was going to be cancelled and rescheduled, I was a little disappointed but it was good to know early so I could figure out what to do with the rest of my day. It was a little more disappointing to watch the skies clear as the day went on knowing that we would not be gathering at GNTO later under the nice clear skies that developed as dark approached.

I want to thank the GNTO committee for their efforts in preparing for this event and I know they will do just fine in rescheduling it and we will all be able to gather to chat, eat, observe and just have fun soon. I want to thank them for their decision to cancel the event early and to see that the word got out to folks; I know it was not an easy decision but it was the smart decision and we will make it up soon. We are fairly sure there was snow on the ground at GNTO, it may have melted by the time the picnic started but it leaves behind lots of potential problems once it melts so it is better that we are all safe and warm and we will be all the more ready for our the re-scheduled picnic coming soon.

So until next time, observe and enjoy when you can and keep in mind we will have many more opportunities to get together over the remainder of the year.

Let the Observations begin...

So let’s discuss the constellation Orion this month. What are your memories, thoughts and experiences with one of the most recognized constellation in the sky (except maybe for the Pleiades), I now know the Pleiades are not a constellation they are part of Taurus. The area of sky surrounding Orion is very rich in bright stars and constellations with Taurus, Gemini, Canis Major and Minor, Auriga all with bright stars that make up much of their forms in the sky, and let’s not forget the planet Mars currently sitting between Gemini and Cancer a bright reddish star almost directly overhead early in the evening.

The sketch above was drawn on Saturday, February 13th at GNTO using my new 16" telescope (thank you Carl and Karen) and a 25mm eyepiece. It turned out to be a fairly spectacular evening for viewing, there was a slight breeze when I arrived about an hour before sunset but by the time it was dark enough to start observing there was virtually no wind whatsoever and the sky was very steady even the brighter stars were not twinkling. The "Great Orion Nebula" was absolutely beautiful, one of the best views I think I have ever seen of it. We also looked at the "Horse head Nebula" near the belt of Orion, a couple of people said that they could make out the Horse head but when I looked I could make out the darker region but could not distinguish any shape in the nebula.

The sketch of the Orion nebula above was the only one I made that evening but it was by no means the only thing I observed, just after sunset with the help of Steve I was able to see Venus and Jupiter, just above the horizon (I actually watched Jupiter set), I looked for some time at Mars and could make out some darker regions but no real detail of any kind. I looked at several galaxies and some open clusters that were all very nice to view and thank you to Carl for doing most of the driving that evening as he showed me how to set up the scope.

I hope to have many more nights like this one through the year and look forward to lots of observing with my new 16" telescope.

Photo by Shane Ramotowski

www.kor-astro.net

Mars at the Museum Planetarium

Planetarium to feature Mars…

On February 20, 2010 the Museum of Natural History and Science Planetarium will be featuring the "Red Planet" and I am inviting anyone who may be interested in bringing their telescopes to join me in presenting actual real-time views of Mars to the visitors of the planetarium this evening.  I think it will be a lot of fun and I am looking forward to building a stronger relation between TAAS and the Planetarium, I hope to see you there.