CADAS

Night Sky January 2017

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL.

May your skies be  still, dark, cloud free and transparent in 2017

January 2017 Sky notes

January 2017 Sky chart

Comet 45Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova should begin to come visible with binoculars in the evening sky to the right of Venus. It’s currently at magnitude 9. It’s at perihelion (closest to the sun) on Dec 31st at a distance of 0.533 AU.

It should get much brighter than it is though comets are unpredictable though we do get  a lot closer to it. Its current distance from us is 0.959 AU (Dec19). On the 31st it will be 0.703 AU from us. It will be at its closest to us on Feb10th at a distance of 0.084 AU in the constellation of Hercules.

(1.0 AU = 93million miles)

This evening at 5:00pm the comet will approximately be 10degrees to the right of Venus and 7degrees lower.

Each evening this month at the same time it will increase it’s distance towards the setting Sun.

See   www.heavens-above.com for further details.

CADAS December 2016

A bitter- sweet meeting.

This meeting was tinged with sadness following the sudden unexpected recent death of our Secretary and good friend Mike Holland. Mike was a founder member of CADAS. A minutes’ silence was held to remember Mike and his family. Mike will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

Bob Mizon ‘s ‘object of the month’ was beta Tauri on the border of Auriga and Taurus in the direction of the galactic anticentre  and also known as  Al Nath (or the various other variations of that name).

Pete Adshed shared some of his trials and tribulations of imaging without an observatory on freezing nights.  However he also demonstrated how he found objects using setting circles and with the help of the software nova.astrometry.net and shared some of his excellent results.

The quality of Bill Reed’s images continues to improve and impress. His latest Christmas Tree, Horsehead and Orion Nebulae were superb as was the Andromeda Galaxy he ‘just shot whilst waiting for Orion to get high enough’.

Arthur Davis concentrated on Cancer as his ‘constellation of the month’, identifying the clusters  M44 and M67 as excellent binocular objects to view. He also identified Ceres as an object to observe.

We then broke for festive eats and drinks and what a lot there was to eat and drink! Thanks to everyone for contributing and especially those who cooked and baked. It was quite a spread and it was nice to have the extra time to chat amongst ourselves.

Very many thanks to Lorna for producing our brilliant CADAS calendar for 2017. If you are a member and haven’t collected yours (free), please see Bud at the next meeting.

The meeting ended with Annabelle giving a short talk on Georges Remi (Hergé)

Next month on January 18^th we have members short talks on ‘Celestial motion’. We need you to come up with a quick five to 10 minute chat about movement ‘out there’.

Mike’s funeral service will take place at St John’s Church, Yeovil at 12.30 pm on Friday 23rd December followed by interment at Yeovil Crematorium. If you are able to attend please do.

Mike Holland died suddenly at home on Monday.5th December. No further news.

CADAS sends its sympathy and condolences to Tracey and the Holland family. Mike will be a great loss to all who knew this lovely man.

Mike doing what he loved.

Adrian’s December 2016 Night Sky

December ’16 Sky Notes

December ’16.Skychart

Again it was nice to welcome some visitors.

It was great to see so many at the meeting to enjoy Sheri Lynn Karl’s presentation on solar observation and imaging. Sheri used her excellent images in white light, H-Alpha and Calcium K to show just how much there is to see at different depths on the always – changing sun. Although some of the imaging equipment can be fairly expensive, observing and imaging in white light is not and is well worth it as Sheri clearly showed.  Great talk. Thanks Sheri!

Arthur Davis chose Perseus for his constellation for December and kindly made copies of his sky notes for the month available.

Bob Mizon gave a short presentation on Aurorae in addition to his ‘Object(s) of the month’ talk on interesting objects to be found in and around Canis Majoris. Many thanks to both Arthur and Bob.

Bud Budzynski showed some superb close up images of the moon taken with two different cameras so that we could compare the quality differences.  There was no doubt his new (secret) camera was the better one.

Iain Torrance’s cakes were as usual superb.  If he keeps this up we’ll just have to abandon the astronomy stuff and just spend the time stuffing ourselves..

Thanks to all who helped in setting up and clearing away so quickly and especially Zena and Annabella for managing the goodies.

Next month is our Christmas Social so no main speaker, but members’ short talks. How about contributing a quick 5/10 minute item.

Please bring a few nibbles and/or drinks to share as we celebrate another great year.