There is a lot of amateur astronomy going on in Southern Arizona these days. Today I paid a visit to Bruce Gary's Sliding Roof Observatory in Hereford. Bruce is an expert in photometry and has recently received recognition for his extrasolar planet transit observations in Sky & Telescope magazine (see "Amateurs Help Discover a Transiting Exoplanet", pages 90-92 of the September 2006 issue). Bruce uses a commercial 14" scope to achieve millimagnitude accuracy in his measurements.
I'm hoping to do some photometry as well and Bruce kindly shared some of his knowledge with me. I'll begin with some basic differential photometry, with the intention of developing my own light curves as well as submitting my data to the AAVSO. This type of work is focused on the scientific aspect rather than nice looking pictures, so some of the data acquisition methods and processing techniques are quite different. To really get an understanding of the meaning of infinity, one only needs to become involved with amateur astronomy; it seems there are an infinite number of possible ways to enjoy this hobby!
After my visit to Bruce's observatory, I attended the monthly Huachuca Astronomy Club meeting. Tonight's speaker was Rik Hill, an astronomer for the Catalina Sky Survey on Mt. Bigelow (which is visible from Xanadu Observatory). Rik gave an excellent talk about the CSS and other observatories' involvement with the search for NEO's (Near Earth Objects). They are finding many nearby asteroids, down to about 20th magnitude, and attempt to determine their orbits to make sure we are not going to be hit. In the process of the NEO search they also occasionally discover comets. As always, the HAC meeting was also a great opportunity to just hang around a bunch of friendly amateur astronomers.
It's clear tonight but a full moon. I was too tired by the time I got home to set up, so no observing tonight.
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