Astronews

COMING SOON
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Cassini / Huygens - Sights and Sounds From Earth's Childhood

Starting from the beginning, at the first view of Saturn and its moons (looks at Saturn and it's moons), we follow the story of interplanetary explorations that gave us new insights of the distant worlds. Finally, the current Cassini-Huygens mission is broke to parts, explaining how the first breathtaking images of Titan came and what do they tell us about. As usual, nice pictures are presented in the article.

Authors: Marino Tumpic; Neven Udovicic
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Machholz Comet

In the end of the year 2004, in the constellation of Eridanus, a beautiful comet was discovered. Donald Machholz, a person who discovered it and by whom the comet carries the name, is an American with a history of 9 comets previously discovered. The comet moved slowly through Taurus being at 4th magnitude. On January the 7th he passed near M45 which was a pretty picture to shoot. It reached its perichel on January the 24th when it was approximately 178 mil. kilometers from the Sun. The members of the Astronomical society Vidulini, along with many astronomers around the world observed and pictured that event.

Author: Ana Galant
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Rochester-Vidulini Project (part 2)

RVP II is the continuation of the story about kind people who generously shared things that came very useful to us. Mr. Adolph Kurth from Rochester is the individual who made everything possible, starting with the 80/400mm telescope - refractor for a 7-year-old girl, Marina. With the equipment received, Berislav Bracun put together another instrument, an 114/900 dobsonian reflector for astronomers in elementary school in Korenica. Since equipment continued to arrive, two more telescopes - 150/1200 dobsonian and an 80/400 refractor, were built trough the duration of cLARKe (cLARKe is a gathering of gifted young astronomers for a period of time in summer, where they learn about sciences, astronomy and technology through various practical programs). There is also another piece of optics involved in this story. 200/1600 mirror, has an interesting and long history which will be told some other time. It will also be installed on the Vidulini observatory (work is in progress) making a big visual telescope for visitors to observe.
This Rochester-Vidulini project, that will for sure continue, has been used for inspiration in building another, even bigger one. It's the "Nebo na poklon" ("Sky for a gift") project, ran by Croatian astronomers Ana Bedalov, Ante Perkovic and Berislav Bracun

Author: Marino Tumpic
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Asteroids

This article tells the story of small bodies of our Solar system - asteroides.
The majority of them are situated between Mars and Jupiter, but there are also ones beyond that area, passing the orbits of the outer planets and forming the Kuiper's belt. Amateur astronomers are also capable of tracking and discovering new asteroids.
The equipment required for asteroid observations consist of a good robotic telescope and a CCD camera.) Two most important categories of asteroid observations are astrometry (measuring positions of an object and gather data about its path, to form its orbit), and photometry (measuring its properties, i.e. magnitude).
Author: Stefan Cikota
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Allsky Camera

To have an allsky camera means to be able to photograph the whole sky with a single shot. In this article, authors describe the step-by-step building of an Allsky camera with improvised parts, easy to obtain (light bulb and some metal parts for controlling camera movements). Digital camera, Canon A60 was used as a CCD camera in this case. Article, although in Croatian, contains a lot of nice pictures that demonstrate the process of building an allsky camera step-by-step, as stated before.

Author: Marino Tumpic
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Nuclear Winter

The number of possible catastrophes that could end the life on our planet is only getting bigger as time goes by. One of them is the nuclear war which is followed by the so-called nuclear winter - a period of time in which Earth suffers the consequences of the war. The world is in darkness; the Sun is not present anymore because the atmosphere is filled with soot from the widespread burning of cities and petroleum stocks destroyed in a nuclear attack. This would not only kill many of the plants and animals, but another global effect would occur - rapid and drastic reduction in global temperature - a new "ice age" would arrive. Looking for a similar scenario in the past, we can just remember the Tambora vulcan eruption; the following year (1816.) was known as the "year without summer".

Author: Neven Udovicic
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PDA in Astronomy

With rapid advance in computer sciences, it was only a matter of time before personal digital assistants (PDA) were put to use in Astronomy as well as everyday use. In this article, author describes few commercial and freeware programs for the use with PocketPC (Sorry, no PalmOS programs this time), its limitations and benefits and present state of various astronomy programs in PocketPC world. These small computers are not yet strong enough to replace notebooks or paper starcharts, but it's a beginning.

Author: Lucijan Blagonic
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Hunting Comets with Robotic Telescopes

Amateur astronomy has entered a new era of robotic telescopes where it's everyone's turn to engage, take control and go where no man has gone before. In this article we're talking about comet-hunting, and that means we have a lot of sky to image, and only little time. How to get this job done? The new comet survey at the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca is shown as an example of a possible approach to this problem.

Author:Reiner Stoss

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Messier Marathon 2005 - SLOVENIA

Here's a report from the Slovenian Messier Marathon held in a small place called Stanjel. Unfortunately, due to cloudy weather there were no outdoor activities, so many presentations covering various topics from Light Pollution to Messier Marathon strategy, filled the program. Few members of our society were also there, so "M111" was presented to the public. This was the 2nd Messier Marathon held so far in Slovenia. Hoping for better weather next year.

Authors: Matej Mihelcic; Teja Fabjan
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Messier Marathon 2005 - CROATIA

On the night of April the 2nd, in a location called Rusnjak, near Visnjan, 11. international Messier Marathon began. This marathon will be remembered by unusually beautiful weather, big number of competitors (24) and very tight competition.
Here's the top five list:
1. Matea Puljic [104 objects]
2. Vjekoslav Babic [103]
3. Igor Ziberna [99]
4. Branko Toic [96]
5. Mislav Balokovic [95]

Author: Ante Perkovic
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Night Sky from April to June

The sky is where astronomy really lives. Observing the night sky is for sure one of the most beautiful activities you can enjoy, even not being an astronomer.
Knowing what you're looking at, it gets even better, so here's a short guide through the night sky from April 'til July 2005, with instructions where and how you can find some constellations, planets and other objects worth seeing. There's also a map of the sky with all the constellations visible in this period of time (from the northern latitudes).

Author: Andreja Bencic
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Star Trek - Romulan Starships

Romulans are an interesting species. Their society is "closed one", and Romulans are in general hostile to outlanders, especially to Klingons, whom they hate "to the bone". They are oriented on spying other species and have developed technologies according so. "Tal Shiar" is a secret organization with very high influence in the Romulan Empire, and it takes credit for all covert operations happening in the Romulan Empire and beyond. Romulans are a specific race in the Star Trek universe, and are characteristic for their green blood.
The following Romulan ships are described in the article: Talon, Kestrel, Shrike, Veles, Raptor, Griffin, Draconarius, Warbird.

Author: Danijel Maric
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