Thursday, October 25, 2012

Seeing Red!

With the close of summer behind us, and the completion of my globular star cluster pin from the Astronomical League, I have started two new projects for more observing pins from the Astronomical League. The first is Carbon Stars and the second is Sunspotters. I have always been fascinated by carbon stars which I had sort of started observing earlier this year. Now with globulars done I can really focus on them. As of today I have done 16 of the 100 stars. So far the stars have been interesting with a couple of them being really nice. The Astronomical League has a list of 100 stars to observe whereas many other lists of them may only have 15 or 20. So while there are some impressive stars on the list, there are some that don’t really give the impression of the carbon star many astronomers might have. But is neat to see the differences in the stars, which I can even appreciate being just 16 stars into the program. Now the Sunspotter program is a program that is nice since it is in the daytime. I don’t have to deal with dew or cold weather! This program involves following the Sun for an entire 30 day cycle and also identifying sunspots and the features they exhibit. So that is all for now!