Greetings to all of our club members, visitors, and guests!

We welcome you to the regular meetings of the North Houston Astronomy Club on the 4th Friday of every month.

The Kingwood campus is located on the west side of I 69 (US Highway 59), north side of Kingwood Drive, and NW of the Kingwood Medical Center.

Click below here to see the Map and Driving Directions!
(Parking permits are not required after 6 PM!)

Lone Star-Kingwood Campus

See the following Campus Map

All Members, Guests, and Visitors park at the Parking Lot C across the Sortes-McClellan Road. The CLA building we both the novice and general meetings gather is building 4 as shown on this map. Click on the image above to get a pdf file with more information about the campus layout.

Physical Address

20000 Kingwood Dr.

Kingwood, TX 77339

22 February 2019

Our gathering begins with the Novice Meeting:

Place: Lone Star College-Kingwood Campus

Location: Classroom Building A (CLA) – (2nd Floor – Room CLA221)
The Astronomy Classroom

Time: (6:30 – 7:15) PM

Speaker: Dr. Aaron Clevenson
(Director – Humble ISD Insperity Observatory)

Presentation

Messier Marathon 2019

The entire compilation of images of every object of Charles Messier’s Catalogue of deep sky objects.

Dr. Aaron Clevenson will give us a general overview of the strategies and purpose in conducting a Messier Marathon! This is a time period from Mid – March through Early April in which all of 110 objects of Charles Messier’s catalog of Deep Sky Objects can be observed from the beginning of Nautical twilight after sunset to the end of Nautical Twilight of the following day before sunrise. Get all of the tips, sky charts, and necessary supplies at this novice presentation by Dr. Clevenson on how to conduct a successful Messier Marathon. The purpose is to get as many of the objects in the catalog, but getting all of them is not a necessity and it rarely happens, but it is still a very fun event of testing ones’ endurance for ‘all – night’ observing!

Learn more from the following References

Rob Hawley’s Guide to the Messiers!

The Messier Marathon

American Association of Amateur Astronomers!
Old Link from 2005 Marathon, but very useful!

Messier Marathon Atlas!!

Jim’s Cosmos (Marathon Page)

GreenHawk Observatory’s Messier Webpage

Larry McNish’s Messier Marathon Planner!
Excellent Tool as a software program to plan out your personal marathon!

The gathering concludes with the General Meeting:

Place: Lone Star College-Kingwood Campus

Location: Classroom Building A (CLA) – (1st Floor – Room CLA112)
The Teaching Teacher Auditorium

Time: (7:30 – 10:00) PM

Speaker: Prof. Justin McCollum
(Professor Comet)

Presentation

The Magnetic Fields of the Natural Satellites
(Part II)

Ganymede is the only known natural satellite within our Solar system that has an inherent magnetosphere. This means that the moon can generate its own magnetic field which acts as a magnetic balloon that nearly surrounds the body while residing inside the magnetic field of Jupiter as it orbits the planet.

(This is Part II of this presentation and it starts off with the Magnetic field and properties of Ganymede and its interaction with the Planet Jupiter and concludes with the interactions of the Major moons of Saturn with its Magnetic Field!)

Professor Comet will take you on a journey of exploration and discovery about the nature of magnetic fields that exist within the major natural satellites (moons) that orbit the planets Jupiter and Saturn (Jovian Gas Giants). There are two types of common magnetic fields: Intrinsic and Extrinsic. Intrinsic fields are naturally generated within a physical body due to a natural dynamo in which electricity is generated producing electrical currents which in turn produce magnetic fields. Extrinsic fields are the result of energy shifted from an outside source of electrical currents that produce an outside magnetic field which in turn subjects any body of mass moving through this field to produce electrical charges which generate a separate magnetic field for that body.

Extrinsic fields are very week and can only be sustained by an outside source that can charge up the interior mass of passerby body for as long as the body remains in the magnetic field of the outside source. Sometimes a natural satellite orbiting about a very massive planet (example: Europa orbiting Jupiter) gravitational tidal forces can internally heat up a body or if the body has a layer of conductive material such as a probable global ocean of saltwater under a global sheet of water ice (example: Europa). This can be a separate source of energy which can be shifted into electrical energy that contributes to the magnetic field for such a small body.

Come along for the journey to explore and learn more about the magnetism and magnetic envelopes or balloons that form around the natural satellites of Jupiter and Saturn!