Announcements   Last Update: Saturday, November 27, 2021

Nov 27	With great sadness, we mourn today's passing of long-time member, Alan Daroff.                             Alan Daroff, circa 2001
Dec 3	Formal Meeting, at the Virtua Health and Wellness Center in Moorestown, NJ, 7:00 pm. We are now meeting in-person at Virtua! It will also be simulcast via Zoom (log-on information posted to the WAS e-group). Guests are welcome at Virtua. Elections for the 2022 Officers will be held.
Dec 4	New Moon at 2:43 am EST in southern Ophiuchus.
Dec 13	The Geminid Meteor Shower peaks overnight, about 2 am EST on Dec 14, but the ten-day-old Moon will interfere somewhat. However, for 40°N-75°W, the Moon sets at 2:52 am and astronomical twilight begins at 5:37 am EST.
Dec 17	Informal Meeting, at the Virtua Health and Wellness Center in Moorestown, NJ, 7:00 pm.
Dec 18	Full Moon at 11:35 pm EST in eastern Taurus.
Dec 21	Solstice at 10:59 am EST, the Winter Solstice for the Northern Hemisphere (the Sun will be in Sagittarius).
Note:	The Public Star Watch season for 2021 at Batsto was lost to COVID-19 restrictions; hopefully, we'll be back in 2022. Member observing at the Barnegat Road Observing Site commenced in July 2021 (sessions organized through the WAS e-group), and soon, we expect to be able to observe again at Atsion Field in Wharton State Forest.

Photo Spotlight   Image posted 11.22.2021

As indicated in the picture frame, this splendid image of M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, was recently captured by club member Howard Schneck. M33 (Messier 33) is, of course, located in the constellation Triangulum. Like our own Milky Way galaxy, M33 also has numerous "deep sky objects," several with their own NGC (New General Catalog) designations, mouseover for labels. In particular, NGC 604 is an H-II region (similar to, but much larger than M42 in the Milky Way's Orion), can be seen in moderate-size amateur telescope. Under a truly dark sky, M33 is visible with unaided eyes. The labeled star, magnitude 8.1 HD 9483, is in the Milky Way, as are the other foreground stars.

This image was captured from suburban Mt. Laurel, NJ. Howard used a modified Canon EOS T3 digital SLR camera (with a clip-in CLS light pollution filter) at the prime focus of a Celestron Edge HD8 telescope with a focal reducer, yielding a net focal length of 1488 mm. The optical assembly tracked on a Sky-Watcher NEQ6 Pro German equatorial mount guided by an Orion 60 mm guidescope (240 mm focal length) and a ZWO ASI120MM-S camera. It's stack of 29 x 300-second exposures for a total integration time of 2.4 hours (plus 30 flats). Capture was done with NINA, PHD2 and Stellarium. Processing was done with PixInsight.

Click here for the previous home page image.

Click to contact the . Members are encouraged to submit their astronomical images to the webmaster for inclusion on the WAS Home Page. Be sure to include a description, date and time, as well as equipment and photo data.