The April 2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Prepare to be Gobsmacked!

Bob Hamers and Jeff Shokler will help you prepare for your total eclipse experience by sharing the insights, tips, and lessons learned from their own eclipse experiences. During the talk, they’ll help you consider your eclipse viewing and/or imaging goals, discuss the many ways one can enjoy experiencing a total solar eclipse (including the numerous phenomena to keep an eye out for), and share important safety considerations.

If photographing the eclipse is one of your goals, they’ll also talk about the kinds of imaging gear that is most appropriate for photographing total eclipses, and how to plan and prepare for taking pictures – particularly under the demanding, tight timelines total eclipses present imagers...

There’s an App for That? Astronomy Software for the Amateur Astronomer

Is it going to be clear tonight? What’s the moon’s phase and what will I be able to see along the terminator? How bad is the smoke going to impact transparency for imaging tomorrow? Which moon of Jupiter just snuck out from behind the limb of the planet? How should I best orient my camera field of view to frame the DSO I want to shoot tonight? I haven’t seen the sky in months, what’s going to be up there this weekend when it is supposed to clear out?

Any of these questions sound familiar? If so, join Jeff as he shares his favorite “go-to” mobile, laptop, and browser-based applications and software for amateur astronomy...

MAS is back!

We’re still observing public health advisories to avoid any face to face meetings so for our April meeting, MAS is going virtual!

Friday, April 10 our own Jeff Shokler will present “Wonders of the Universe: Exploring the Night Sky Through Astrophotography.” During his presentation he will share images captured of a wide variety of astronomical objects including the Moon, planets, lunar and solar eclipses, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, and much more. Over the course of the presentation he will take the audience on a journey from objects close to home to those found in some of the most distant reaches and earliest time periods of the universe...

Chasing Shadows: Planning for and Imaging ISS Transits of the Sun and Moon – Jeffrey E. Shokler

How do you catch something travelling at 17,500 mph as it moves between you and a target that might be 92 million miles away (or maybe only 240,000 miles away)? Longtime MAS member and astrophotographer Jeffrey Shokler will show us how to plan for International Space Station transits of the Sun and Moon, and also about his recent experiences capturing images of those events. You’ll learn about on-line planning tools, strategies for the week before, day before, and day of in terms of positioning and set-up. Jeff will also share the approaches he has taken to both capturing and processing the transit data in order to create finished images of ISS transits.

About the Speaker:
Jeffrey E...

Trifid Nebula (M20) – Photo by Jeffrey Shokler

The Trifid presents the unusual combination of an emission nebula, a reflection nebula, and a dark nebula all in one object! The Trifid lies 5,200 light years from us in the constellation Sagittarius.

Messier 21 (M21; NGC 6531) is the beautiful, small open cluster containing 57 stars that is visible to the upper left of the Trifid. M21 is 3,900 light years from us.

Canon 5D Mark II (astromodified; Baader UV/IR cut)
Stellarvue 130EDT (f7)
Celestron CGEM mount
1250 ISO
20x4min subexposures (80min/1.3hr total integration)
Guided (Lacerta MGEN II)
PixInsight (calibrated, registered, stacked, post-processed)
Photoshop (finish processing)

The Spaceshuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center, Los Angeles, CA.