Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri

Member Tom Richards completed observing all 110 Messier objects to qualify for the Astronomical League’s Messier Certificate and Pin.  Observing Chairperson Jim Twellman presented the certificate and pin at a ceremony during the regular club meeting on December 8, 2007.  Below Jim Twellman on left, Tom Richards on right.

Twenty two people enjoyed the pot luck supper and meeting.  Corned Beef and Cabbage was the main entree in celebration (a bit early) of Saint Patrick’s day. 

Meeting proceeded with a review of progress towards establishing the Astronomy Center.  Plans were announced to locate the 32-in at Bob J.’s and the 16-in at the Interpretive Center until their permanent homes can be established.  A five-minute Stargazer episode by Jack Horkheimer was shown.  Marvin S. was presented a Certificate of Achievement from the Astronomical League for public outreach service.  Wayne C. reviewed a book on Arp Peculiar Galaxies.  Thane B. presented a slide show on various subjects.

After the formal meeting skies were clear enough for some observing.  Brad G. brought his new 10-inch Lightbridge and learned how to collimate it with a laser collimator.  Afterwards, views of Saturn and the Orion nebula were enjoyed by all.

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Fifteen people showed up for our Beginners Meeting that started at 7:00 pm.  Some of these had attended our Digital Imaging Workshop on February 24 and some others were at our public outreach event for the Lunar Eclipse at Klondike Park on March 3.  The program featured the December edition of the Sky at Night program contained in the February issue of the BBC magazine of the same name.  Also reviewed was Jack Horkheimer’s five minute Stargazer edition for the week.

Questions were taken and answered from the group.  As it was cloudy, no observing was possible.

The workshop was held on Saturday, February 24, 2007 at the Interpretive Center at Weldon Spring, Missouri. Twenty-seven participants were in attendance.

10:00 am to Noon - Sessions
Noon to 1:00 pm - Lunch (provided, free)
1:00 pm to 4:00 pm - Sessions

The five hours of sessions covered the following subject matters:

• Session 1 - Basics - What is a digital image, how is it captured, rough divisions of astrophotography (ie, lunar and planetary, deep sky, scientific).

Leader:  Jim Roe.  Jim started digital imaging in 1997 and has taken and processed thousands of images with his SBIG ST-7 camera and Meade LX-200 telescope, mostly in search of new asteroids.  Lacking suitable software in the early days, Jim wrote his own image processing program thereby gaining a deeper understanding of the fundamentals.  Much better programmers have rescued him from such tasks in the present.

• Session 2 - Lunar and Planetary - basic techniques with web cams, avi capture (K3CCDtools?), aligning and stacking (Registax?), wavelet filtering, post-processing.

Leader: Jim Melka.  Jim has been an amateur astronomer since about 1954.  He has enjoyed observing and imaging Mars since 1971 and began the first amateur Mars photo patrol in 1973. He photographed Mars for Lowell Observatory using a 24-inch Cassegrain telescope on Mauna Kea in 1988. He has contributed observations to the Mars section of ALPO since 1971. Currently, he is imaging  Mars and other planets by eyepiece projection using a ToUcam 840 Pro webcam mounted on a 12-inch Newtonian reflector and uses Registax 4.0 for image processing.

• Session 3 - Deep Sky - basic techniques for long exposures, stacking, filters, processing - illustrate with one or more astronomical image processing programs (AIP4Win, others?) 

AND

• Session 4 - Photoshop(/GIMP?) techniques

Leader: Gregg Ruppel.  Gregg got started in imaging back in the 1960s with film.  In 1997 he built a Cookbook 245 camera using the book by Richard Berry and that got him started in CCD imaging.  He has 8 and 10 inch SCTs that he uses along with a Takahashi Sky90 for wide field work.  He has used Starlight Xpress and SBIG cameras in various different configurations.  He uses MaximDL/CCD for image acquisition and basic processing, but also uses AIP4Win for specific tasks.  He uses PhotoshopCS2 for final image processing, along with other free or shareware programs. Most of his  imaging is from his backyard in Ellisville, Missouri and many of his results can be seen at http://www.ruppel.darkhorizons.org.

• Session 5 - Scientific imaging - astrometry, photometry

Leaders:  Jim Roe and Wayne Clark.

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Thirty people participated in the pot luck supper and regular meeting of the Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri.  Vince Barrows from the Cahokia Archaeological Society will gave a presentation on ArchaeoAstronomy.  He has conducted research into enigmatic Native American Tablets for more than 5 years.  Connotations of astronomy and mythology on the tablet forms will be discussed.  Barrows also described cultural connections with the symbolism found at the Cahokia Mounds.