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Welcome to Houston Astronomical Society

Founded in 1955, Houston Astronomical Society is an active community of enthusiastic amateur and professional astronomers with over 60 years of history in the Houston area. The club meets on the first Friday of each month at the University of Houston. Membership has a variety of benefits, including access to a secure dark site west of Houston, a telescope loaner program, and much more. Joining our club is simple; you can sign up online, by mail or in person at a monthly meeting.

February 18, 2012, 2:00AM: Club Star Party (Members Only)

Saturday February 18th is prime night (the Saturday closest to New Moon). Plan to join us for our first star party of the year at our dark sky site in Columbus. Come on out and (weather permitting) enjoy one of the major benefits of HAS - observing from our dark sky site. For those who have yet to use our dark site, it is well set up for club observing with many pads for telescopes all within easy reach (less than 50 ft) of electrical power and public indoor restrooms. The skies at our site can be quite good - especially a day or two after a cold front passes through.

February 23, 2012, 7:30PM: Urban Observing at Bear Creek Park

HAS 2012 Urban Star Party Series Continues! We're meeting at Bear Creek Park; directions below, follow this link for a Google Map.

In the event of cancellation due to weather, a notice will be sent via the HAS netslyder email system and the STARLINE (832-464-4270) will be updated at 6:00PM advising of the events status, either canceled or that it will still be held.

March 02, 2012: Kepler: The Quest for Earth

Novice Meeting: 7:00PM
Novice Meeting Topic: 
Skytools Part II: Connecting & Operating with a Scope & Tracking Mount
Novice Meeting Speaker: 
TBD
General Meeting: 8:00PM
General Meeting Topic: 
Kepler: The Quest for Earth
General Meeting Speaker: 
Dr. Aaron Clevenson
About the General Meeting Presentation

Join Dr. Aaron Clevenson for a look at the Kepler Mission. We will talk about the details of the mission and discuss some of the milestones it has achieved. Kepler is the observatory that is looking in the vicinity of Cygnus in an attempt to identify Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

Dr. Aaron Clevenson is a member of the North Houston Astronomy Club. He is also an Astronomy Professor at Lone Star College, Montgomery. He is a National Observing Program Coordinator for the Astronomical League, and is the coordinator for the Constellation Hunter, Solar System, Galileo, and Carbon Stars Observing Programs. He will also be coordinator for the new for next year Special Observing Program: Planetary Transits.

Parking and Directions (View Map)

Meetings are held in the Science & Research building at the University of Houston Main Campus. The novice meeting is in room 116, the general meeting is in room 117.

Do not try to park around any of the old parking lots due to the construction on the new parking garage. Drive a short distance down Cullen to Parking lot 15D or 15F which is were they have moved the staff parking lot (the gates will be open). DO NOT PARK IN ANY OF THE ASSIGNED STAFF PARKING SPACES; The assigned staff parking spaces will be noted like the old parking lot with number parking painted on the ground. Normally, this will be the FIRST and SECOND rows. Jefferson stadium is the home stadium for the Houston Dynamo soccer team and on Friday nights of their home games please let the parking attendant know you are there for the HAS monthly meeting and you wont have to pay parking.

Shallow Sky Object of the Month: M44

Original article appears in GuideStar February, 2012.

Beehive Cluster Object: M44—The Beehive
Class: Open Cluster
Constellation: Cancer
Magnitude: 3.1
R.A.: 8 h, 39 m, 57 s
Dec: 19 degrees, 40 m, 21 s
Optics needed: Visible with the unaided eye on a dark night at a dark site. Easily seen with binoculars or a small wide-field telescope

If I’m out with my binoculars, and the constellation Cancer is up (although not always visible), I look for the Beehive. It’s an easy to find open cluster, not in the Milky Way, so it’s not is a busy star field. The cluster was observed as early as 260 BC and later by Galileo in 1609. It was Galileo who identified the object as a collection of stars and he was said to have identified 40 stars in the cluster.

My visual impression of the cluster is that it is a collection of reasonably bright stars with several stars arranged in small triangles. Once you’ve seen this cluster you won’t confuse it with any other.

This cluster is 577 light years away from us and is middle aged, as these objects go. Various estimates put the age of the cluster at about 600 million years. This is far to young to have any solar mass end-of-life stars included in the cluster.

Re-thinking an Alien World: The Strange Case of 55 Cancri e

Original article appears in GuideStar December, 2011.

55 Cancri eForty light years from Earth, a rocky world named “55 Cancri e” circles perilously close to a stellar inferno. Completing one orbit in only 18 hours, the alien planet is 26 times closer to its parent star than Mercury is to the Sun. If Earth were in the same position, the soil beneath our feet would heat up to about 3200 F. Researchers have long thought that 55 Cancri e must be a wasteland of parched rock.

Now they’re thinking again. New observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that 55 Cancri e may be wetter and weirder than anyone imagined.

Spitzer recently measured the extraordinarily small amount of light 55 Cancri e blocks when it crosses in front of its star. These transits occur every 18 hours, giving researchers repeated opportunities to gather the data they need to estimate the width, volume and density of the planet.

Chris Westall and Lennie Brown: A GuideStar Interview

Original article appears in GuideStar December, 2011.

Clayton JeterI first met Chris Westall two years ago at the dedication of the Blinn College Schaefer Observatory” and star party in Schulenburg, Texas. I had recently restored the college’s ‘70s-era Celestron C-14 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. While operating the refurbished SCT that evening under the dome, I was introduced to Chris.

Some months later, I discovered that Chris had formed a new astronomy club in the La Grange area (halfway between Houston and Austin). He invited me to a star party at Lennie Brown’s Bed and Breakfast near La Grange and I have since joined their group, the “Colorado Valley Dark-Sky Explorers”. These two folks are the heartbeat of the astronomy community in their area.

This is a very informal group that loves the night skies. They have several observing sites and always seem to have a star party pending. Let’s see how a new local club came to be and what makes it tick…

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