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).
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).
August 21, 2025 -NASA Balloon Program Operations
Presenter: Andrew Hamilton
Deputy Chief, NASA Balloon Program Office
The meeting will take place on August 21, 2025 at 7 PM on Zoom and at the Robinson Nature Center .
Andrew Hamilton is currently serving as the Deputy Chief for the NASA Balloon Program having previously served as the Acting Chief of the program. Mr. Hamilton started his career with NASA at Johnson Space Center serving as an Astronaut Instructor for the Space Shuttle program as well as a Space Shuttle Flight Controller. Transferring to Wallops Flight Facility in 2012, he served as a Range Safety Officer before joining the balloon program in 2021.
Mr. Hamilton will discuss the mission, platforms, and operations involved with stratospheric scientific balloons.
Past Meeting July 17, 2025 – From the Retina, to Astronomical Drawing to Observing Programs
Presenters: Richard Orr, Chris Todd, and Steve Jaworiwsky
The meeting took place on July 17, 2025 at 7 PM on Zoom and at the Robinson Nature Center .
We enjoyed three great speakers and diverse topics:
• Chris Todd giving a presentation on the retina (20 minutes)
• Rich Orr speaking about his process for Astronomical Drawing (20 minutes)
• Steve Jaworiwsky discussing some of the observing programs of the Astronomical League (15 minutes)
Details available:
Presenter: Steve Jaworiwsky, Astronomical League Coordinator (ALCor)
Steve has been an amateur astronomer for over 50 years, and has been a member of HAL since 2001. His first telescope was a modest 6 inch Newtonian, and over the years he has progressed to bigger and bigger scopes. He now uses a 16 inch DOB for deep sky observing, and he also has a 4 inch refractor which he uses mostly for solar observing. Steve has an observatory in West Virginia with dark skies where he does his deep sky observing. He first starting working on the AL’s observing programs in 1990, and so far has completed 22 of them.
Tonight Steve told us about the AL observing programs and their requirements.
Far Out Journal Club: Featuring Author Dava Sobel 7/15/2025
July 15, 2025 Via Zoom
Learn more and register at:
The Far Out Journal Club is produced by HAL member Rich Russin and hosted by AAC past president Terry Smiljanich. The Journal Club is meant to have a personal, in-depth visit with the authors, artists, musicians, curators, and other cultural icons who bring us the vast world of cultural science and science fiction.
This is the 6th meeting and features Dava Sobel for an online conversation about her career and the very popular books she has written. Her stories take readers on a trip back in time, placing you squarely in the center of major discoveries as they unfold. Backed by masterful research, she brings you the story behind the story.
Biography:
- Longitude_ (Walker 1995, Bloomsbury 2005)
- Galileo’s Daughter_ (Walker 1999 and 2011)
- The Planets (Viking 2005, Penguin 2006)
- A More Perfect Heaven (Walker/Bloomsbury 2011 and 2012)
- And the Sun Stood Still (Bloomsbury 2016)
- The Glass Universe (Viking 2016, Penguin 2017)
- The elements of Marie Curie (Grove/Atlantic 2024)
Awards:
- 2001 Individual Public Service Award from the National Science Board “for fostering awareness of science and technology among broad segments of the general public.”
- 2001 Bradford Washburn Award from the Boston Museum of Science for her “outstanding contribution toward public understanding of science, appreciation of its fascination, and the vital roles it plays in all our lives.”
- 2004 Harrison Medal from the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, London, in recognition of her contribution to increasing awareness of the science of horology by the general public.
- 2008 Klumpke-Roberts Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for “increasing the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy.”
- 2014 Cultural Award from the Eduard Rhein Foundation of Germany “for using her profound scientific knowledge and literary talent to combine facts with fiction by merging scientific adventures and human stories in order to give the history of science a human face.”
June 2025 Image of The Month, “Sirius A & B”
Ken Everhart
Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is orbited by a much fainter companion, “Sirius B.” Orbiting its primary every 50-years, Sirius B is the closest example of a “White Dwarf Star.” White Dwarfs are stars that have aged past the Red Giant stage in their evolution and collapsed into a dense object that slowly cools. Although probably the size of the earth, Sirius B contains slightly more mass than our sun. A teaspoon full of the degenerate matter making up Sirius B would weigh over five tons on our earth. Likewise, I would weigh 66-million pounds should I wish to stand upon the surface of Sirius B.
Sirius B can be seen in this image as a tiny white dot just below its brighter companion. While Sirius shines at magnitude -1.67, Sirius B appears as magnitude 8.4 – fainter than Neptune! Moreover, they are currently separated by a tiny 10 arc seconds! To capture both stars. I imaged Sirius with a series of short 250-millisecond exposures. After stacking them, I processed the stack in the same way I tease Jupiter’s innermost moons out of the data.
Unfortunately, the result was a bit boring with no background stars and nothing to show the powerful glare of Sirius. Therefore, I used a second stack of one-second exposures to show the powerful brightness of Sirius and the background stars. I struggled with a way to represent both products on the same image, and decided just to inlay the shorter exposure containing the two stars atop the longer, prettier exposure.
As Sirius B progresses in its orbit throughout the upcoming years, its position relative to the background stars should be readily apparent.
Public Star Party (Alpha Ridge) 7/05/2025
After several rainy public star parties, our July star party had clear skies and was well attended! I counted 12-15 telescopes, and approximately 200 people joined us throughout the evening. Since sunset was not until after 8:36 pm, many HAL members focused on the Moon as their first target as we waited for the skies to darken. Some members arrived early enough to observe the Sun in hydrogen-alpha. Other targets include Mars, Caldwell 20 (The North American Nebula), M57 (The Ring Nebula), and other summer-time objects. The observatory, as usual, was packed with people throughout the night. Arjun was present with the solar system display table. The activities tent also included a solar sail activity for families. This public star party featured crew members from MPT (Maryland Public Television), who interviewed several members of HAL about the club and its role in the community.
Thank you to everyone who joined us tonight!
-Krystal
Link to photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Weuq1L9MVsYevuhE6
Impromptu Star Party (Alpha Ridge) 7/04/2025
It was a surprisingly cool night on Friday for the HAL impromptu star
party — several people, including me, wished they had brought a light
jacket as the temperature dropped to about 64 degF by midnight. Winds
were nonexistent and there was more moisture than predicted, but
conditions were not bad at all and dew didn’t stop anyone from
observing. The biggest issues were the nine day old Moon and wildfire
smoke, creating unusually bright skies even for Alpha Ridge Park. As a
testament to the impact of the smoke, the Moon had a yellowish tint all
night. My Sky Quality meter registered 19.32 mag/square-arcsec at about
11:45pm (about an hour after the end of astronomical twilight) with the
Moon low in the southwest, and it dropped to 19.58 mag/square-arcsec by
1:15am, a little before Moonset. After the Moon had set, it reported
19.71 mag/square-arcsec. This is still brighter than usual, and
probably reflects the light pollution scattering from the smoke. While
the transparency was less than optimal, the seeing was really good, and
was steady all night. My stars were unusually small in the images, and
my guiding was as good as I’ve ever experienced.
Six HAL members attended the party, with four doing visual observing and
two doing imaging. Jamie and his wife observed the Moon and other
objects with a small scope on an alta-azimuth mount, and Robert observed
the Moon with a 130mm Newtonian. Ernie observed double stars in Ursa
Major, Canes Venatici, Coma Bernices, and some other areas with his
8-inch Newtonian. Mike imaged the North America Nebula in Cygnus with
his 80mm Svbony refractor, while I added three more hours of LRGB data
on M13 (Hercules Cluster) with my 8-inch RC.
It was nice to see all the members who came out for the night; hopefully
we can get together again soon.
Wayne
11685 Old Frederick Rd, Marriottsville, MD 21104, United States