Aurora, northern lights were seen at HJRO in Lincoln park by Faac astronomers

We were setting up and adjusting the telescopes tonight and I had my telescope outside to do some observing.

I looked up and saw a red glow. It looked like a large sky glow event one would see from a steel mill. It was in the north west and also extended toward the east. I had heard that there was an alert about a cme blast that could cause auroras and immediately hollered for other astronomers to look up and view the aurora that we could see.

It was bright and I quickly grabbed my canon t1i and set it up on the tripod to take a few photos. Some of the photos were not as focused on the stars as they could have been, but I was in a hurry.

I shot them using iso 3200 and ten second exposures.

The bright exposures makes it almost look like it's daylight outside, but the glow is from the northern lights.

We didn't see any green as far as I can tell from our location, but may have missed some of the initial green displays. A few of us were calling and leaving messages to other Faac members who lived nearby to tell them to head out and take a look to see if they could see the aurora display.

When I called Rick Arzadon, his wife told me that he was outside looking at the red sky and I told her it was the northern lights.

Within five to ten minutes, the glow greatly decreased and could only be detected with long exposures as it diminished.

We had a fun time viewing through the greatly improved c14 as we did a star alignment of the secondary mirror and had many other fine tune adjustments happen with the software.

We had a great night. I left at about 2:30am.

We even had a local visitor who owns a 6 inch dob and often travels to Monroe to view the sky in a darker location. He was a graduate from LP high school and told me he never looked through the telescope in the old days. I gave him a faac card and invited him out to the club meeting. We showed him m42 through the c14 and Jupiter through the 49 year old ten inch Dobsonian, Big Bertha.

Very bright at first almost from horizon to horizon, in light polluted skies.



Eastern view above western view below




Starts to fade below. . .






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A string of bad nights, full of clouds.

This week we didn't have any decent observing nights.

We had some progress today in setting up the newer computer in the observatory.

I arrived just in time to pull one of the telescopes out of the way to give the four of us Faac members more room.

George showed up with his box of toys, to adjust the telescope and we all worked on installing the software. Well to say we all worked was probably not exactly true. I for the most part chatted and perhaps was more of a distraction than a work helper and George and Tim setup the software. Art was there as well and during part of the time they were working on the observatory I left to grab a late dinner at a local fast food place. Then I grabbed some hot chocolate drinks from Tim Hortons. Not exactly a productive observing night as the clouds covered the sky. We were going to insure we have good secondary mirror alignment in the C14, that's another story. We didn't have a chance to star test the optics, because there were no stars.

Tim was feeling the effects of the cold while we were there and I grabbed the IR heater and turned it on. I was feeling a bit of the effects of the chill of fall as well. Temperatures are supposed to drop down to near 36 degrees tonight.

More software tests and driving was performed. We tweaked the mount and slowed down the slew speed.

We chatted about a new star model and some steps we should take in the near future to setup the mount and test the model and various new models we put into the computer and goto controller.

That was about all there was to it. We have higher speed wifi access to the Internet now and it will be even better within the next week according to reports from Tim Dey.

It's a good thing Leo McMaster didn't call the high school astronomy club out tonight as we didn't have clear skies. Supposedly they would clear later in the evening according to some forecasts, but at 11pm when I was returning home from a late night pizza trip in Dearborn, the skies were still cloudy in Lincoln Park and Dearborn as well. A week without observing, but of course plenty of time to talk about equipment and possible setups in the future. I also showed a couple of short sequences from some interesting shows I've seen on Netflix which involve astronomy. The nice thing about the internet and smart devices, is even if there is clouds we can still search out information on the Internet and find something to talk about regarding astronomy.

Here is another picture from the past week. This one was sent to me by Brian Kutscher who took this with his camera.

The two star like trails in the photo are likely aircraft.



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A mystery coded message

A coded message one of our astronomers found tonight near HJRO. What does it mean?





Probably only the writer knows.

We are reinstalling software to control the telescope on a new computer in HJRO tonight.

Sky is partly cloudy. We might do a little observing tonight if we have any time.

Tim Dey, Art Parent and I are at the observatory.

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Ford Amateur Astronomy Club short recap of HJRO first week of this month

I skipped a few brief opportunities in the past couple of days to observe. This was due to the cold weather and a bit of sniffles. I decided to stay warm, rest up and wait for the next observing event at the observatory.

I wrote and article for this months star stuff newsletter, it's basically a write up about what has been happening at HJRO from my perspective.

I wrote about the observing events in relation to an entire week of observing.

Basically we had the Monday visit of scouts, lphs astronomy club members and Faac. Then I went observing on Tuesday with Faac members who provided telescopes at the Wayne library for an astronomy presentation there. The presentation was given by Faac club president Gordon Hanson.

Then Wednesday I did some image experiments at HJRO and had a fellow Faac member call up and then show up to take some photos with his canon Eos slr camera.

Then thursday, Art Parent and Sandra Macika, both Faac members showed up and we did a bit of observing. Sandra pulled out her drawing pad and did a sketch of Jupiter while looking through the eyepiece.

To draw a sketch of planet you don't just take a peek and draw it from memory, you need some serious eyepiece time and Sandra sat in the observing chair and sketched for several minutes while Art and I sat and chatted about many astronomy subjects and my wish list of the moment.

Then Friday we had an observing night for the Lincoln Park High School Astronomy club. The name of the school club is "astronomy club". In the old days we had a club at the junior high and we had only a few high school members who stayed in the club. The name of the first astronomy club was actually,the "Lincoln Park Astronomy Club" which when you think about it was a name that sounded like a club name for the entire city. We didn't really have a city astronomy club however. Some clubs like the Warren club in Warren Michigan, have the city name in their club names.

Here is a photo of the Tuesday observing event from Tuesday the forth of this month.

This was a photo of some club members who showed up to setup telescopes. There were a lot of young kids at the event at the Wayne Library. They were very excited about the event and a few were ready to run around and had a lot of energy. It seems that it might be better to have two astronomers per telescope instead of one per scope when a lot of small kids are present, that gives one astronomer the chance to constantly watch the telescope and the other volunteer can chat with people in line and answer questions. We might experiment with this kind of setup in future events when many young kids are present. That won't be necessary for older observers like the new club however.

There may be an ideal observing and star party setup, we probably haven't figured that out with an organized approach however. There is to much chance for random and independent operation of each telescope which is parr of the fun of the event. Everyone has their own idea of how to improve these events, but often each event is not controlled or run in a very organized manner. I tend to wander and tend toward a more chaotic mode of operation. This means I favor letting everyone kind of go their own way, and that can have it's drawbacks at times.

I still don't know how to best use the iPad at an event, it can become such an interesting distraction at times I end up showing small groups the iPad and astronomy software on that

(Six Faac astronomers at an astronomy event at the Warren Library.)






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We had a great time at Hector J Robinson observatory last Monday

There was so much going on, but unfortunately we had thick cloud cover and couldn't observe.

We had a lot of video clips taken by the Faac cable show and by a scout videographer as well.

This was the first visit of the new astronomy club based at the high school.

I stayed out of the way and manned a telescope outside as well as talked with a bunch of visitors and a few of the high school club members.

We had a half a dozen Faac members show up and bring their telescopes.

Sandra, Tim C, Brian K, and Rick A, had their telescopes out. (I'm not including their last names because this is a quick post and I'm too touch in a hurry to look up all the spellings.

Sandra had a 14.5 inch Dobsonian telescope out. Art Parent and Tim Dey were there as well. Professor David Cinabro presented a Meade deep sky imager to Mr. Rockwell the Lincoln Park superintendent.

Much of the presentations were captured on video tape. There was a little creative staging of scouts looking through the telescope, but unfortunately this was just for the show and didn't really occur due to clouds.


It was still fun to show off the observatory and the equipment. Sandra gave a talk on how her telescope worked and had it aimed at a local radio tower in the area. I aimed my binoculars at the tower as well. The moon peeked out very little through the clouds later in the evening but it was still covered with many layers of clouds and was barely visible. A few people got a short glimpse of the moon.

Tuesday skies were clear and some Faac members did a telescope and astronomy outreach at the Wayne public library.

Wednesday I went out late and looked through the telescope at HJRO but I didn't announce it as being open because I wanted to do a test and was suffering a bit from allergies or a cold, or some kind of bug perhaps. My throat was bugging me. I toughhed it out and Brian Kutcher ended up coming out as he emailed me and we worked on imaging with the Meade. We had some problems with the mount not tracking well. Brian took some shots with his Canon Eos as well and we did a little bit of visual observing very late into the morning hours. We left at about 3am. The Orion Nebula at 3am with the 8mm eyepiece and oxygen3 filter looked really awesome. Although the stars were not sharp at that high power the nebula looked like a thickly spun cobweb, the type you might see in the woods.

We were at awe at the view of m42 in the 15mm with the u2 filter as well.

Here's a photo from Monday night.




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The observatory will be open tonight.

We are hoping for partly cloudy skies.

We will be filming some clips for a Faac cable show early in the evening and will have a few special guests.

We are also looking forward to meeting a bunch of LPHS students that have checked out the new astronomy club forming there.

Professor Dave Cinabro from Wayne State University will be presenting a Meade Deep Space imaging camera to the school superintendent. At least that is what I've heard as being a part of the activities.

We hopefully will be viewing the moon and ore objects as the weather permits.


We have at least three or four astronomy club members arriving from the FAAC club and will have telescopes setup outside if all goes well.

I believe we may have a scout group and some members of Henry Ford Community college Astronomy club as well. There will be a lot of people present so if your an occasional visitor and used to a quiet time of observing, this will be much more busy, with less scope time, but more telescopes and people.

If your a Faac member and want to stop by bring a scope or binocular or just bring yourself, we will have plenty of equipment and people there for a fun time.

Greg


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