Doubling Up on Double Stars

Submitted by Bill Pellerin on Mon, 2010-07-12 16:53

By Bill Pellerin, GuideStar Editor

Houston Astronomical Society

The Astronomical League has a Double Star Club, which I highly recommend (and which I completed some years ago). The program requires you to observe 100 double stars and to record those observations in an observing log with a drawing of the double star (anybody can put a pair, or more, of dots in a circle).

If that is not enough double star observing for you, there are additional resources that you can use to continue your double star observing program. The two books that I will review for this article will keep you in the double star observing business for a long time. Which of these two books is appropriate for you depends on how you like to go about your observing program.

The two books are:

Press release for Astroleague Youth Awards (NYAA and Horkheimer Awards)

Submitted by Carroll Iorg on Fri, 2010-06-11 20:59


(Presentations to be made at National Convention in Tucson, Arizona)

(Kansas City, MO)--The Astronomical League is pleased to announce the top finishers in the competitions for its National Young Astronomers Award Program (NYAA) and the Jack Horkheimer Award Program.

The first-place winner in the NYAA program is Andrew Hitchner, Norristown, Pennsylvania. His project was entitled “A Study in Stellar Spectroscopy.” Tongji Li, Hershey, Pennsylvania, was awarded second-place in this competition for her work “Will Humans Become Extinct Like the Dinosaurs Did?” Third place was awarded to Erika Tinley, Tucson, Arizona, for “The Geometry of Active Galactic Nuclei as Evidenced by their Emission Line Spectra.” The first-place winner receives an all-expenses- paid trip to ALCon 2010, the national convention of the Astronomical League, being held in late June in Tucson, Arizona. The top three finishers receive beautiful plaques to commemorate their outstanding achievements. The NYAA is generously supported by Explore Scientific, which also provides one of its great telescopes to the first-place winner.

Flat Galaxies Club

Introduction & Overview

 

Detection of shape and form in galaxies is a visual challenge. As a general class of galaxies, edge-on galaxies are a pleasant yet demanding change of pace. A subclass of edge-on galaxies are flat galaxies which are defined as having a diameter larger than 40 arc-seconds and a major to minor axis ratio of >= 71. This unique brand of galaxies is used as a tool for studying large scale motions and distances. Karachentsev et al1 published the fact that there is a tight correlation between their linear diameter and the width of the 21cm line that can be detected. There are thousands of flat galaxies catalogued1,2 with many of them well beyond the limit of visual observations. The galaxies selected are brighter than 15th magnitude, with the majority well within the range of amateur telescopes.

Purpose & Significance

Join the Astroleague Web Team!!

Submitted by Vern on Thu, 2010-04-08 18:47

M45Volunteers are needed to help out on the Astroleague web team.  Our goal is to make the Astroleague web site one of the best resources on the Internet for amateur astronomers.

We need help in several areas:

  • Content maintenance - keep a particular area of the website up to date
  • Astronomy articles - write interesting astronomy related content on regular basis
  • Software development - expertise in drupal or php needed to develop new software modules
    Video production - help write, narrate, prepare graphics, etc. for the "Sky this Week" video

 The web site uses a content management management system called Drupal so it is fairly simple to use -- knowledge of HTML is not mandatory (though helpful).  For several of the areas listed above you just need to be able to write, enter information in a form or make corrections, and hit submit.

If you have expertise in one or more areas listed above and have several hours free each week, please send me an email at webmaster@astroleague.org

Astroleague Office Coordinator Hours

The Astroleague Office Coordinator, Brenda Sparks, will be available to take 'live' calls Mondays and Wednesdays 9:00 am to 4:00 pm CDT, phone 1-816-333-7759.

Syndicate content