The April 2016 edition of the Huachuca Astronomy Club newsletter, Nightfall, is now available for download. Submissions for next month’s issue can be sent to , our Nightfall editor.

The Huachuca Astronomy Club (HAC) and Coronado National Memorial will co‐host a Star Party from 7 to 9 pm on Friday, April 8, 2016. This special evening event, celebrating our beautiful dark night skies in southeastern Arizona, will begin around dusk at Montezuma Pass at Coronado National Memorial. The knowledgeable members of HAC will set up telescopes in the parking lot at Montezuma Pass for the public to view the night sky, including Jupiter and its moons, far‐away galaxies,  and distant nebulae where stars are born. A park ranger will give constellation tours throughout the night, exploring popular constellations and tracing the human histories and imaginations that have been written in the stars.

Montezuma Pass is located three miles west of the Coronado National Memorial Visitor Center on East Montezuma Canyon Road/Forest Road 61. The last two miles are unpaved. The graded forest road is narrow in sections as it switchbacks up the canyon to the summit parking lot. Restrooms are available at Montezuma Pass, but no other amenities. Parking is limited so carpooling is recommended.

Visitors are encouraged to dress in layers, as nights at the pass can be cool. Please minimize flashlight use to preserve night vision. If available, visitors should use a red night vision flashlight or consider covering a standard flashlight with red cellophane or brake light tape.

Come enjoy the clear, high‐desert skies with the Huachuca Astronomy Club and park rangers at Coronado National Memorial!

For additional information please contact Christopher Bentley at 520‐366‐5515 x2310 or visit our listing of ranger‐led programs on the official park website: http://www.nps.gov/coro/planyourvisit/calendar.htm

The Huachuca Astronomy Club will hold their April meeting in the Cochise College Library (Library Commons) on the Sierra Vista Campus on Friday, April 15th, 2016 at 7PM. The meeting is FREE and open to the public.

Our speaker will be Sarah Morrison, a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona.  Her talk is titled “Outer Planets: The New Frontier of Exoplanets

Abstract:

Within the last 10 years, we now have much more context for our Solar System with the discovery and characterization of thousands of exoplanet systems. To date, however, most of these systems provide insight mainly for the inner planets since they sample planets that orbit close to their host stars. I will discuss cutting-edge efforts to start looking for outer exoplanets using direct imaging campaigns, as well as through indirect evidence in debris disks and current transit/radial velocity surveys and what these findings mean for our understanding of our own Solar System.

Biography:

Sarah Morrison is a PhD candidate in Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory studying the evolution of planetary systems using orbital dynamics. She received her B.A. in Astronomy from Cornell University calibrating cameras on the Mars Exploration Rovers and exploring the moons of Saturn with the Cassini mission. She currently enjoys observing the often clear Southwestern skies while pondering perplexing planetary puzzles.

This is the perfect opportunity for you to go through your cameras and lenses, binoculars, spotting scopes, telescopes, astro equipment, hardware, cases, widgets and doodads. Check your closets, garage, and observatory and find those once precious items that are now just taking up space, and make them available to others (who may want or need them). It’s also a great chance to find some interesting stuff, learn a lot, and mingle with other, likeminded enthusiasts.

Bring your odds and ends, and bring cash!

WHO: Huachuca Astronomy Club of Southeastern Arizona, members and community

WHAT: 2016 Astronomical & Optical Swap Meet and Sale

WHERE: Patterson Observatory, University of Arizona South Campus, 1140 Colombo Ave, Sierra Vista, AZ 85635

WHEN: Saturday, April 2, 2016. Setup starts at 11AM. Sales are from 1PM to 4PM.

WHY: To allow members and others in the amateur Arizona astronomy community a venue for buying and selling optical and astro gear, while also supporting the Huachuca Astronomy Club. Other interested parties might be photographers or naturalists who use such equipment.

HOW: Dig through all your photographic, optical and astro gear, decide what you want to move out, bring it to the Meet; or, come and see what’s available, bring cash or items to barter.
Here are more details and important points:

• Advance registration is advised but not required. But, arrive early for a better table position!
• Bring a small table, chair, and protective cloth to be positioned around the room and patio.
• HAC member volunteers will be present to facilitate paperwork and handle donations.
• Suggested, voluntary donation to HAC is 10% of total amount sold, or a flat donation. Donations are voluntary and are tax deductible. Receipts will be available.
• We will have a Sellers Registration/Sales Form for sellers to complete to track items sold and dollars.
• Consignment: We will have a consignment table in case you only have one or two items to sell. The table will be staffed by HAC member volunteers and you (the seller). Items should be marked with the seller’s name and a price. The seller should be available later that day for either picking up or reconciling.
• Don’t bring guns, illegal stuff, or stuff that cannot be reasonably considered optical or astronomy related. Please use your best judgment!

The March 2016 edition of the Huachuca Astronomy Club newsletter, Nightfall, is now available for download. Submissions for next month’s issue can be sent to , our Nightfall editor.

The next Kartchner Caverns State Park astronomy program will be Saturday, March 12, 2016.  Weather permitting, there will be solar telescopes set up starting at about 1 pm.  At 5:30 pm, there will be a talk in the Discovery Center Auditorium. The guest speaker will be University of Arizona and Steward Observatory Astronomer Dr. Kevin Hainline, and his talk is titled, “Hunting for Supermassive Black Holes.”  Black holes – objects so massive that not even light that gets caught inside their reach can escape – are not just a theoretical prospect. In this talk, Dr. Hainline will describe how astronomers have been finding black holes with a variety of cutting edge techniques, with a focus on his own work searching for supermassive black holes. The intense gravity from these objects can serve as an engine for a powerful light source that can have a significant impact on the stars and gas throughout the galaxies that host them. Dr. Hainline will also discuss his work on the James Webb Space Telescope, which is currently being built for launch in 2018, with a focus on what we will learn from this telescope about the history of the growth of black holes across cosmic time.

After the program, we will look through the telescopes of the Huachuca Astronomy Club of Southeastern Arizona.    Don’t miss the close-up views of the great planet Jupiter, craters and mountains of the moon, the star formation region of the Great Orion Nebula, distant galaxies, and many other wonders of the night sky.  Sunset will be at about 6:30 pm, and bring your jackets.  For more information about Kartchner, visit their website at: http://azstateparks.com/Parks/KACA/

Dr. Kevin Hainline is a postdoctoral researcher on the James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam science team at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. His research explores active galaxies and quasars both nearby and at large cosmic distances. He received his PhD from UCLA in 2012 and had a three year position at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire prior to moving to Tucson. He has a passion for science outreach education, with many years of experience through the UCLA Planetarium and the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vermont. 

The Huachuca Astronomy Club will hold their March meeting in the Community Room of the Student Union Building, Cochise College Sierra Vista campus on March 18, 2016 at 7 PM.

Our speaker will be Maxwell Moe. Max received his PhD from Harvard University in 2015 and is currently a Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona’s Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. His presentation is titled “The Cosmic Tango of Binary Stars”.

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The 2016 Youth Engineering & Science (YES) Fair was held at the Windemere Hotel & Convention Center in Sierra Vista on February 23-26, 2016. Students in grades 5 through 12 in Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative’s service area and schools in Bisbee, Douglas, Nogales, and Tombstone are elegible to enter. HAC member Bob Gent volunteered to help judge the event and was especially interested in projects that involved Space Science.  This year there were 2 projects that qualified in that area.

Congratulations to Dennis Yusufoff and Camden Miller for their outstanding project on Mars botany (photo below).  Among other awards, they each won a $50 check from the Huachuca Astronomy Club and certificates of achievement. They also won one-year family memberships in the Huachuca Astronomy Club.

Congratulations, also, to Miriam Allen of Joyce Clark Middle School (photos of project and award below).  Among other awards, she won the 2016 awards from the Huachuca Astronomy Club and the Planetary Science Institute.   She completed an excellent project on star brightness vs distance (see photos below).  She won a $50 check from HAC, certificates of achievement from HAC and PSI, a PSI backpack, a signed book about Mars, a PSI hat, and a PSI 32GB flash drive.   She also won a one-year family membership in the Huachuca Astronomy Club.

The February 2016 edition of the Huachuca Astronomy Club newsletter, Nightfall, is now available for download. Submissions for next month’s issue can be sent to , our Nightfall editor.

The Huachuca Astronomy Club will hold their February meeting in the Community Room of the Student Union Building, Cochise College Sierra Vista campus on February 19, 2016 at 7 PM.

Our speaker will be HAC member Tom Kaye.

Tom is an advanced amateur astronomer that moved from Chicago to Sierra Vista to take advantage of the clear skies. He runs a wide field telescope nightly in search of exoplanets and records data on other unusual stellar targets. He is also the caretaker of the famous Junk Bond Observatory 32” telescope one of the largest in southern Arizona. His projects can be seen at www.spectrashift.com

His talk is titled: White Dwarf Eats Asteroids for LunchContinue reading→