September Object of The Month, “Veil Nebula”
Rob Dallimore
This image of the “Pickering’s Triangle” region of the Veil Nebula was captured this month under Bortle 5 skies in Linganore, MD using a 9.25″ Celestron SCT at f6.3.
Additional capture details…
Losmandy G11G
ASI294mc pro
ZWO duo narrow band filter
107 x 180” lights with darks, flats and dark-flat calibration frames
NINA, PHD2, and PixInsight
Past HAL Public Meeting: October 9, 2025 – Looking Back at A Century of Innovation in Amateur Telescope Making — Is It Still Worth It?”
Presenter: Guy Brandenburg
President, NCA
Guy Brandenburg, President of National Capitol Astronomers
Artifacts: Meeting PDF YouTube Video of Meeting
The meeting took place on October 9, 2025 at 7 PM on Zoom and at the Robinson Nature Center.
Featured Speaker:
Guy Brandenburg
Speaker Bio:
Guy Brandenburg is a retired DC public school math teacher, who made his first telescope in 1991, under the guidance of the late Jerry Schnall, in an ATM class located in DC that still continues today, under Guy’s leadership.
The title of his talk will be “Looking Back at A Century of Innovation in Amateur Telescope Making — and Is It Still Worth It?”
Russell Porter began the first known telescope making class for amateurs in 1920 in an unused basement room of the factory he was working at in Springfield, VT. Using the innovations of people like Isaac Newton, Léon Foucault, Russell Porter, Jean Texereau, John Dobson, and Mel Bartels, many thousands of amateur astronomers all over the world have made telescopes of all sorts with their own hands, from scratch.
While it is true that many others have purchased the materials for such projects but did not complete them, the fact remains that a well-figured Newtonian reflector on a Dobsonian mount, coupled with the free web-page AstroHopper, gives excellent views of bright objects, even from urban street corners, and is also very easy to use.
A Dob is not the best choice for astrophotography, and it’s not so easy to carry one on a plane to a remote dark-sky destination, but making a Dob and purchasing a few eyepieces is a whole lot cheaper than buying apochromats or astrographs, filter wheels, tripods, motorized focusers, astro cameras, specialized software, and highly-accurate computerized tracking mounts. Also, it is hard to beat the exclamations of wonder, amazement, and gratitude one gets from ordinary passers-by on a street corner when they clearly see the Moon, a planet, or a multiple-star system for the first time, with their own eyes, for free, looking through the eyepiece of a home-made telescope that doesn’t wobble.
Guy feels that photographs are fine, but seeing something for one’s self in real time is also great.
Guy will describe and show the basic steps in crafting parabolic mirrors, and will show off some home-made Dobs. He will also explain why you should NOT bother trying to make a refractor or catadioptric yourself, and will discuss whether telescope-making has a future.
Any HAL member who has made a telescope is invited to bring their project (or photos of it) to show off your work as well.
Guy earned a BA at Dartmouth College in 1971 and an MEd (secondary math) at UMCP in 1981. The first astronomy course he ever took was in 9th grade at the same DCPS JHS/MS he ended up retiring from, over 45 years later. He is also currently the president of National Capital Astronomers, founded at the USNO in DC in 1937, and of the private Hopewell Observatory, begun in 1975.
He also has a well maintained and excellent blog.
Public Star Party (Alpha Ridge) 9/13/2025
I’m happy to report that HAL’s September public star party last night was very successful! We had at least a dozen scopes set up and hundreds of visitors. The clouds held off until 11:00 PM so we had beautiful clear skies for the entire event. I personally showed visitors the Iris Nebula (NGC 7023), the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635), the Swan Nebula (Messier 17), the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31), Saturn, the Veil Nebula (NGC 6960), the Pinwheel Galaxy (Messier 101), the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16), the Dumbbell Nebula (Messier 27), the Ring Nebula (Messier 57) and the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules (Messier 13). I was too busy showing the sky to visitors to be able to walk around and see what everyone else was doing but I suspect it was a lot of the same targets. As the clouds were coming in we ended the event at 11:00 PM and I locked up the park at 11:30 PM.
Past HAL Public Meeting: September 11, 2025 – Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS)
Presenter: Medhi Benna, PhD
Planetary Scientist, NASA
Lunar Environment Monitoring Station for Artemis 3 (LEMS-A3) – Principal Investigator
Artifacts: Meeting PDF YouTube Video of Meeting
Mehdi Benna, PhD
The meeting took place on September 11, 2025 at 7 PM on Zoom and at the Robinson Nature Center.
Featured Speaker: Mehdi Benna, Planetary Scientist with NASA at GSFC will be talking about the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS), one of the first three payloads to be a part of Artemis III that will send astronauts to explore the region near the lunar South Pole. Artemis III, currently planned to launch in 2026, will be the first time humans will return to the Moon’s surface since the historic Apollo program in 1969-1972. The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is a compact, autonomous seismometer suite designed to carry out continuous, long-term monitoring of the seismic environment, namely ground motion from moonquakes to meteorite impacts in the lunar south polar region. The instrument will characterize the regional structure of the Moon’s crust and mantle, which will add valuable information to lunar formation and evolution models.
SeeStar Very Small Array Update: Matthew Peters will join us to give a status update on the targets for this month and how to get involved with using your SeeStar (or other EAA scope) to help create some amazing collaborative results.
Star Party Report: Rich & Millie Russin will share their recent experience attending this year’s Grand Canyon Star Party.
Speaker Bio:
Dr. Benna is a planetary scientist with a research emphasis in plasma physics and planetary magnetospheres dynamics.
Dr. Benna’s main research interest is the numerical modeling of planetary magnetospheres and exospheres. Besides his scientific work, he uses his engineering experience to lead and support the development of several space-borne instruments (ROSETTA-CONSERT, CONTOUR-NGIMS, MSL-SAM, LADEE-NMS, MAVEN-NGIMS, CLPS-SEAL, GDC-MoSAIC, and Artemis III/LEMS). Dr. Benna has authored or coauthored more than 100 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, and more than 200 communications or invited presentations in international conferences related to the field of planetary science. His publications include articles on MHD modeling of planetary magnetospheres, comets and icy moons of the solar system, radiotomography techniques, and ill-posed inverse problems.
Dr. Benna received his degree in Electrical Engineering from the Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT) in 1999. After obtaining a M.Sc. in Radio-wave Telecommunication from the University of Tunis in 2000, he received in 2002 a Ph.D. in Space Science from the University of Toulouse in France. From 2002 to 2003, Dr. Benna was an associate scientist at the Planetary and Terrestrial Geophysics Laboratory (CNRS) in France, and from 2003 to 2006, he was an NRC postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Impromptu Star Party (Alpha Ridge) 8/31/2025
Ten HAL members showed up for a very pleasant evening of observing and imaging at Alpha Ridge Park on the night of August 30th. The first-quarter moon was out until a little after 11:00. The temperature started out in the low 70s and dipped to the high 50s by 1:00 AM. Seeing and transparency seemed to be above average.
David and Dave were both imaging the North America Nebula in Cygnus with Seestar S50s in equatorial mode. Todd imaged the Western Veil Nebula with his Redcat 91mm refractor, while Mike D. imaged a 9-tile mosaic of the entire Cygnus Loop with his 122 mm refractor.
Mike P. imaged the Baby Nebula with his 8″ reflector. I’m not familiar with this object, and a Google search didn’t help. There is something called the Baby Eagle nebula, but that’s in Taurus and wasn’t visible. I might have misheard his target. He later imaged the more well-known Iris Nebula in Cepheus. Shrikant imaged the full-grown Eagle Nebula in Serpens with his 72mm Astro Tech refractor. Richard imaged some small nebulae near M8, the Lagoon Nebula, with his 130mm refractor.
Lee and Marian got in some visual observations with their Celestron Nexstar 6 SE, but the scope lost its alignment at some point. Rich was also having some issues with getting a good alignment with his Stellarvue 70 mm refractor.
I observed 7 double stars in Hercules and one in Corona Borealis with my 8″ Celestron Starsense Explorer Dob while waiting for the moon to set. I then observed globular clusters M13 and M92 in Hercules and planetary nebulae NGC 6572 in Ophiuchus and M27 in Vulpecula. I was pleased to share the view of M13 with Marian and double star Delta Herculis with Rich when they stopped by at different points in the night. I added two hours of data to an ongoing mosaic of the Heart and Fish Head nebulae in Cassiopeia with my Vespera II.
I started packing up around midnight and everyone else left over the next half hour. I locked up HALO and the park gate and left at 1:00.
Ernie Morse
Our Meetings
HAL General Meetings (Open to the Public) are held from 7:00PM to approximately 9:00 on the 3rd Thursday of every month via Zoom (until further notice).
HAL Planning Meetings (Open to all Members) to discuss future club direction, events, meeting topics, outreach, etc. are open to all members. They are usually held from 7:00 to 8:00PM on the 1st Monday of every month via Zoom (until further notice).
Star Parties
HAL’s public star parties at Alpha Ridge Park (normally held from March through October or early November) feature a relaxed, casual atmosphere where club members, other amateur astronomers from the area, and the public are all welcome to come and enjoy the wonders of the night sky.
Astroschool
Astroschool is usually held on the 2nd Thursday of most months at the Robinson Nature Center. Start and end times vary, but are approximately 6:30 to 8:30pm.