Hello Fellow Astronomers,
Hello Fellow Astronomers,
On March 29, 2014, an event called the Founder’s Day Event was held at the Dark Site. The purpose of the event was several fold:
Ask anyone who’s earned the award, and they'll tell you the same: the HAS Texas 45 is fun a program that teaches you the skies, “spring, summer, winter and fall.” Join these members who’ve completed the HAS Texas 45 observing program. And congratulations to newest awardee, Steve Goldberg!
For more information about the HAS Texas 45 observing program, check out the Programs section of this website.
by Bill Pellerin, HAS president & editor of the GuideStar
Object: Capella—Alpha AurAuriga, the charioteer, is usually depicted as carrying a goat in his left arm. The goat is represented by the star Capella (from the Latin ’capra’ which means ’goat’). Three nearby stars represent ’the kids’.
While the overall color of the star is G, the same as our Sun, what you see is, in fact, the combined light from two stars that make up the star system. Under normal circumstances the two stars would be called ’A’ and ’B’ (and some sources refer to the two stars this way).
Not this pair, because the fact that this is a double star was not discovered early on and another nearby star was given the ’B’ designation.
What to do? To solve this problem, astronomers named the close double stars ’Aa’ and ’Ab’. Don’t try to split these with your telescope though. You can’t do it because they’re only a fraction of an arc-second apart (some references say .2 arc-seconds separates the two stars). It took the interferometer at the Mount Wilson Observatory to identify Capella as a double-star (in 1919).
Dawn: 05:23 A.M.
Sunrise: 06:46 A.M.
Sunset: 07:55 P.M.
End Twilight: 09:19 P.M.
Learn how to read it the clear sky chart.