Front Page Archive - 2016

Here are the photos and articles that have appeared on the front pages of the MAS website during 2016.

Super Moon? The full moon on the night of November 13/14 is called the supermoon, but as you can see from the images above, it's misleading.  These three images represent the moon at it's largest (the so-called super), it's average, and smallest sizes.  To the naked-eye, it's hardly noticeable. Read about it in Astronomy Magazine.

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New MAS History Section. The picture above are featured in the History of the MAS. Our story starts in 1932 with a meeting at the home of Luverne Armfield and his backyard in West Allis will be the initial location of the MAS observatory until an acre of land is donated in New Berlin. The observatory is established in 1936 and officially dedicated in 1938, all of this happening during the Great Depression. Learn why at our observatory "A" stands for Armfield, "B" stands for Buckstaff, and the tremendous contributions by Ed Halbach and Bill Albrecht. Though our story currently ends in 1977, we are hoping to extend it further.

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Mercury Transit on May 9th. Though astronomically significant, a transit of Mercury can be disappointing for the uninitiated. The pictures above show the comparison with a Venus transit. As you can see, Mercury is so small you can (and probably will) easily mistake it for a sunspot. The way you know: keep looking and over 15-30 minutes its motion will become apparent. Because of this fact and it occurs on a Monday, we will not be hosting a public event for this at the observatory.

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New images in the Showcase! A variety of images taken by MAS members showing off the depth of talent in our membership. Want to learn how to take images like this? Join us! See these and other images in our Showcase

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6 Views of the Rosette Nebula. MAS members took all these images of the Rosette which shows how different the result. From top left: Paul Borchardt, Scott Jamieson, Chad Andrist, Tom Schmidtkunz, Steve Wiencek, and Dennis Roscoe. See these in our Showcase.

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4 light curves by Neil Simmons. MAS members Gerry Samolyk and Neil Simmons do amazing photometry on variable stars. Here are 4 examples by Neil out of 63 he did in 2015.