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No club meetings or events until further notice

Ohio, the nation, and the world have paused to slow the spread of the potentially-deadly coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 disease. In compliance with state and local restrictions, all meetings and events regularly staged by the Cuyahoga Astronomical Association (CAA) are canceled; none of the group’s scheduled activities will take place until further notice. Updates will be published on this website and on the CAA’s Twitter.

In the mean time, we hope you and your loved ones are healthy and will remain so. Remaining apart is currently our only means of prevention. Let’s hope medical science can quickly find effective treatments and vaccines so that we can be spared future illness, death, and hardship brought on by COVID-19.

Ohio Department of Health

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

World Health Organization

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Venus transits the Pleiades

Once every eight years, as dictated by orbital mechanics, planet Venus crosses the Pleiades star cluster. The star cluster is one of those nearest Earth and easy to spot: to the right and running ahead of the great Orion constellation. It’s an open cluster consisting of about 1,000 gravitationally-bound stars though only a few of them are visible to the unaided eye. Longer camera exposures reveal more and more stars in the group. The before, during, and after-transit conjunction positions of Venus and the Pleiades make for a lovely sight by eye, telescope, and a favorite target for astrophotographers. Shown below are some of the images CAA members have made of the April 2020 Venus/Pleiades combinations.

Wide view of the transit: Canon EOS Rebel T5i – 250mm lens, ISO 800 F5.6, 8 seconds. by Jon Salontay

Alan Studt: Nikon D850, Sigma 600mm, f6.3, ISO 28000, 1/10th second, 110 shots, 25 darks stacked in DSS. Added a bit of glow in Photoshop.

Pre-transit Conjunction. Via 400mm telephoto lens. April 2, 2020. by James Guilford.

Venus and Three Sisters. View of the Venus transit through a telescope. “I wish I could have zoomed out!” says Photographer James Guilford.

Jon Salontay_trees_IMG_7735 — Transit in the Trees. by Jon Salontay. Canon EOS Rebel T5i, 55mm lens, ISO 800, F/4, 8 seconds.

Venus visits the Pleiades. by Lonnie Dittrick

Glorious Pleiades. Canon and 70-200mm lens piggybacked telescope, 30-second images for about an hour, combined. by Dave Watkins.

Give the Moon a chance

Waxing Gibbous Moon, by James Guilford. April 3, 2020.

by William Murmann, CAA President

I know the Moon is considered a nuisance by many of our members. However, it does have many things worth looking at as it waxes and wanes during the month. Every night presents something new to see.

Tonight {April 3, 2020} for example, we have a waxing nine-day Moon that is past first quarter. Looking along the terminator, however, you can spot 52-mile diameter crater Tycho with its steep walls and magnificent ray system that shoots halfway across the Moon.

Farther to the Moon’s north, we have 56-mile diameter crater Copernicus with a collection of four to five thousand-foot mountain peaks in its center made by rebound energy immediately after the crater was created by its impactor.

And just below the Moon’s north polar region, we have the 61-mile diameter crater Plato, the famous “Black Lake.” Plato is filled halfway with black lava. On its western rim there is a 9,000-foot peak called Plato Zeta.

As the Moon wanes and the terminator from the setting Sun nears the western edge of the crater, a sharp, spiky shadow can be seen shooting about 30 miles across the crater floor just as the Sun hits Plato Zeta. By luck, I happened to observing Plato at 4 a.m. one morning and saw the shadow at the exact moment when the setting Sun hit the peak and shot the shadow across the crater floor.

If you are up for a challenge, see if you can see Plato Zeta’s spiky shadow just as it appears.

March 9 Membership Meeting and a visit to Mauna Kea (by a member)

Panorama of the Mauna Kea Observatories by Frank Ravizza. — Panorama of the Mauna Kea Observatories. Photo by Frank Ravizza. Used under Creative Commons License. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons

The monthly general membership meeting of the Cuyahoga Astronomical Association will take place March 9, 2020 from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. CAA Member and Vice President Tim Campbell will present his talk, “Mauna Kea: Telescopes above the Clouds!” — his visit to Hawaii’s Mauna Kea mountaintop observatories (MKO). Several major telescopes are located there at 14,000 feet above sea level. Mauna Kea is one of the most important sites in Earth-based astronomy and Campbell will take attendees on a detailed tour!

The CAA’s monthly meetings are held on the second Monday of every month except December at 7:30 p.m. in the Cleveland Metroparks’ Rocky River Nature Center; 24000 Valley Parkway; North Olmsted, Ohio. Meeting programs are open to the public. Following the presentation and a brief social break, the club will conduct its membership business meeting.