by Rene Gedaly

I was at the family homestead in Florida recently. They say you can’t go home again, but not much has changed over the years in that part of Florida Citrus Country. The skies were still dark enough to see my mom’s beloved Milky Way from the back porch and the winter constellations were spectacular. So were the summer ones.

A great season to observe

The clear skies found me lost in time and space watching constellations from succeeding seasons travel the night skies. When the summer Milky Way arose, it reminded me that it would soon be Messier Marathon season.

The full moon blots out the very best nights this year, but it’s still an excellent season for observing. Skip the marathon sprint for 2016 and use the night of March 5/6 to capture those Messier objects missing from your Astronomical League list. Almost all of them are visible from our latitude.

Stephen Jones has scheduled another of his popular Novice Labs on the crescent moon night of March 12. Incidentally, Mar 5 and 12 are both good nights to complete the HAS Texas 45 in a single night. You can read a firsthand account about the program by the most recent awardee, Steve Goldberg, elsewhere in this GuideStar.

All the committees have been hard at play—take a look.

Ground breaking on new bunkhouse

It seems we just announced plans for the new family and women’s bunkhouse when ground was broken on the slab. In truth this project has been on the drawing board for years, and I’m truly honored to see it come to fruition.

Special thanks go to Bill Kowalczyk, Allen Wilkerson, Amelia Goldberg, Mike Edstrom, the Observatory Committee, and the vision of the Board of Directors to fund it.

Bill K says it won’t be long before we’ll be having a good old fashioned barn raising to put up the frame.

Urban Observing: East Houston

Henry Gonzalez hosted the first official East Houston Urban Observing group at Double Bayou Park in Anahuac, TX. Congrats, Henry! I’ve observed in those parts and it is dark. If you’re on the east side, make plans to get to the next one.

Join HAS-Women@Netslyder.net

In January Amelia and I sent women members an email announcing a new club within a club at HAS, a special interest group for women. This is a social group as well as a place for hands on astronomy. Make sure you’re in the know by sending an email to info@astronomyhouston.org with your request to join HAS-Women. Steve Goldberg will verify your membership and add you to the list. If your spouse shares your email account, Steve can handle that, too. One of our first events might be something for the “barn raising” of our new bunkhouse!

The Art & Science of Astronomy

March is museum month for Outreach featuring the art and science of astronomy. On March 19 at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, astronomers Amelia Goldberg, Bob Menius, and Will Young will exhibit their astronomy-themed artwork at the museum the entire week leading up to Family Fun Day at CAMH. This is a daytime event and all manner of scopes will be on hand.

Another event you won’t want to miss is the re-opening of the Burke Baker Planetarium on March 26. It’s members night for the Houston Museum of Natural Science and HAS will be on hand with telescopes to show folks the real thing on the front plaza of the museum building. Way to go Joe Khalaf!

It’s always a great season for astronomy at the HAS.

by Bill Pellerin, GuideStar Editor

Object:  CR69—Orion’s Head
Class:  Open Cluster
Constallation:  Orion
Magnitude:  Stars 3.4 and dimmer
R.A.:    5 h, 35 m, 8.3 s
Dec:    9°  52’ 3”
Size/Spectral:  1 degree field
Distance:  1055 ly to Meissa (brightest star)
Optics needed: Binocs or small telescope

This set of stars comprising Orion’s head is easy to spot. Find the top two stars of the constellation, comprising the shoulders of Orion, named Betelgeuse and Bellatrix. Cast your eye about halfway between them then move up (north) about 3 degrees to find this cluster.

You should see about 10 stars with your binoculars and perhaps 50 stars in a small telescope. It’s a fairly dense star field so picking out stars that are part of the cluster from those that just happen to be along the line-of-sight to the cluster may be difficult.

The object is well placed in the sky with a transit time (mid March) of 7:15 p.m. and a set time of 1:40 a.m. You have plenty of time to get a look at this one in your telescope, but it’ll be best, meaning highest in the sky, earlier in the evening.

If you have a go-to telescope you can enter the star name Meissa (Lambda (λ) Ori) to find the cluster. Meissa is the brightest star in the cluster at 3.4 magnitude. Meissa is a double star whose 5.5 magnitude companion is 4.4 arc-seconds to the northwest of its companion.  Meisa is a very hot (35,000° K) star that provides 65,000 times the energy of our Sun. It is so powerful that it ionizes (lights up) a very large cloud of dust and gas in the constellation.

Since the stars that comprise the cluster are related to each other by birth, they’re all approximately the same distance (1300 ly) from us.

As is often the case the catalog that includes this cluster’s designation CR69 is less well celebrated that some of the other catalogs that are familiar to amateur astronomers (Messier, NGC, Caldwell, etc.). The Collinder catalog lists 471 open clusters, originally identified by Per Collinder, a Swedish astronomer. Cr 399 is well known to most of us as ‘The Coathanger’ in the summer sky.