June 2017

by Stephen Jones

On multiple occasions, usually upon hearing how much observing I’ve been able to do in a relatively short time, people have asked me “how do you know it’s going to be clear when you head out to the dark site?”  To be honest, frequently I don’t!  Here on the Gulf Coast, our weather is notoriously volatile. 

In the winter months though, usually clear skies are pretty predictable.  Watch your local weather forecast for a cold front, look at when it’s going to pass, and head to the site the next night (assuming there’s not another front right behind it!). 

Summer is a completely different beast, however.  In summer, the parade of fronts that we see in the winter stays to the north of us, and we are instead treated to a daily cycle of the sun heating the gulf, generating a bunch of storms which then drift over land and dump some rain on us.  These storms are generally quite small in area and isolated.  One time I distinctly remember driving less than a mile from my home to the store, and it wasn’t raining either at my home or the store, but I drove through pouring down rain on the trip… click the read more button

by Bram D. Weisman

It was April 10, 2016, a bit past 1:30 a.m. I was star-hoping to a Galaxy cluster, NGC3156 and friends. Star-hoping is not to be confused with star-hopping. The later is a visual stroll that begins on an easy target and proceeds to nearby waypoints leading up to the desired object. The former is desperate meandering around a region of the sky, hoping to stumble across the intended target after a failed attempt at star-hopping.  

Technical note:  
There are three popular search patterns for star-hoping…

1. Spiral method, best when controlled by a computer
2. Strip method, also best when controlled by a computer
3.  Spastic method, best I can muster on my own

Anywho, there I was cruising the sky in my spastic search pattern when I saw something cool.  Five stars, neatly arranged in a kind of an inverted V, well more like an A to be precise.  There were other stars in the field, but these five were close enough in magnitude to strike me as a set, though they actually vary significantly in distance to earth.  The first thing that came into my mind was “Eiffel Tower”.  More on that later.  I wanted to know what this object was, so I checked the coordinates on my Synscan controller.  Even though I was star hopping, earlier I did do a Go-To star alignment to ensure good tracking and to bail me out of trouble.  ;-).  So my Synscan coordinates should have been good.  I also put a “skymark” into SkyTools for me to research at home.  I was able to see the Asterism perfectly rendered in SkyTools.

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by Bill Pellerin

OBJECT: Mini-Coathanger
CLASS: Asterism
CONSTALLATION: Ursa Minor
MAGNITUDE: 9 – 11 (stars)
R.A.: 16h 28m 42.0s
DEC: +80° 17' 00"
SIZE/SPECTRAL: appx 20’
OPTICS NEEDED: A small telescope

You have probably heard of, and seen, the Coathanger asterism (Collinder 399) in Vulpecula. I wrote a ‘Shallow Sky’ article about this object in the June 2007 GuideStar. This time, we’re looking for the Mini-Coathanger, another asterism for which the arrangement of the stars looks like a coat hanger. The first time I looked for the original Coathanger I expected a triangle with a hook at the top of the triangle, but the asterism looks like a straight line of stars with a hook near the middle.

Likewise, the Mini-Coathanger looks like a line of stars with a hook near the middle. You can easily star hop to this asterism as follows:

• Find the Little Dipper (itself an asterism in Ursa Minor, the
• little bear). The end of the handle of the Little Dipper is the
• North Star, Polaris.
• From Polaris, count two stars in the direction of the bowl.
• Draw a line from that star to the bowl star.

The asterism is about 1/3 of the distance along this line and about ½ degree away from this line in the direction of the bowl. The asterism is about 20’ (1/3 of a degree) in size and the stars are relatively bright so it should jump out at you... click read more button