The Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image (see description on the right, below)

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image
(10,000 galaxies in an area 1% of the apparent size of the moon -- see description on the right, below)

Sunday, May 13, 2012

2012 May


AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter, May 2012

Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 5
General Calendar p. 7
    Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 7
    Observing p. 8
Useful Links p. 9
About the Club p. 10

Club News & Calendar.

Calendar

17 May
Monthly Meeting
“IR Airglow Images,” Lynette Gelinas, Aerospace.  A1/ 1026
20 May
Annular Solar Eclipse
Central line thru Reno & Albuquerque – closest ~ Zion NP, Utah – max eclipse there ~ 6:40pm (elevation ~10 deg), begins ~5:30pm, ends at sunset (~ 8pm) (LA:  begins 5:25pm, max (13 deg elevation) at 6:38pm, ends 7:43pm)
26 May
Field Trip
RTMC Astronomy Expo, Big Bear.  Online registration cutoff May 10 http://www.rtmcastronomyexpo.org/ .
5 June
Venus Transit of the Sun
In L.A. 3:06pm (58 deg. elevation) to sunset (8:07pm) – greatest transit 6:25pm (18 deg elevation).
21 June
Monthly Meeting
Space Radiation Modeling,  Joe Mazur, Aerospace A1/1029A/B
19 July
Monthly Meeting
 Astrophotography & Research at an Amateur Observatory, Francis Longstaff, Polaris Observatory Assn. (amateur/pro collaboration) & UCLA Faculty & Saturn Lodge 0.7m amateur telescope.  A1/1029A/B

AEA Astronomy Club meetings are on 3rd Thursdays at 11:45am.  For 2012, April-May we meet in A1/1026; June-July & Oct.-Dec. in A1/1029A/B; Aug. in A1/2143 and Sept. in A3/1607A/B.

News:  

Jim Johansen has stepped forward as Treasurer (thanks!).  He’s appointed until the next election.  We’re still looking for a secretary. 

Musical Meeting Rooms.  Our Aug. room just changed again.  For 2012, April-May we meet in A1/1026; June-July & Oct.-Dec. in A1/1029A/B; Aug. in A1/2143 and Sept. in A3/1607A/B.  Hopefully next year we’ll get a stable room again.

Upcoming observing opportunities.  3 big events in the next 30 days:  May 20 annular solar eclipse, May 26 RTMC astronomy expo (online registration cutoff is May 10 http://www.rtmcastronomyexpo.org/) & club observing night, and June 5 Venus transit (last in our lifetimes).  Anyone seriously considering joining with fellow club members & equipment for any of these, please let me know to help in planning. 

For the solar events, we’ll need to watch the weather forecast for whether we observe locally or head for the hills (Mt. Wilson?).  The transit could be observed at Aerospace (the AGO mall?) as it’s a Tuesday afternoon/evening, although low elevation could be a problem.  The eclipse is on a Sunday, so off-campus.  We hope to get CCD images of the eclipse & transit thru the H-alpha scope.  I also have a neutral density filter for my 90mm Meade for possible viewing (but tracking drive isn't working).  David Wright (& son) for one is planning on the RTMC, & Jim Edwards the nearby SAS Symposium the preceding weekdays.


Paul Rousseau’s report on the April 28 Griffith star party:

Here are some photos from the Griffith Star Party last night. I just used the Orion 8 inch Dobsonian in manual mode and looked at the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Saturn. The public really enjoyed our telescope and were amazed to hear that this type of telescope (without the computer) is relatively affordable. 

We also watched with our eyes the International Space Station fly over, which was very cool. There was even an Iridium satellite spotting. All in all, it was a good time. 





 The May issue of Westways Magazine (AAA) is dedicated to all things space in So. Calif. (& New Mexico), incl. the Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey that I was not aware of – “Home of Apollo.”  Or the Frank & Son Collectible Show in Industry – where you can find all things Star Wars, on this 35th anniversary of the movie.  

Astronomy Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month
(from Astronomy Picture of the Day, APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html)
Video(s)
Incredible time-lapse music video from moving cameras for 3-D effect (at Canary Islands) http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120508.html

Matter, Higgs Boson & CERN LHC explained by cartoon video http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120501.html

Rosetta approaches asteroid Lutetia http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120424.html

Geostationary satellites above the Swiss Alps http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120411.html

A weekly 5 minute video about what’s up in the night sky:  www.skyandtelescope.com/skyweek.

2012 April 23

Evaporating Blobs of the Carina Nebula
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA
Explanation: No, they are not alive -- but they are dying. The unusual blobs found in the Carina nebula, some of which are seen floating on the upper right, might best be described as evaporating. Energetic light and winds from nearby stars are breaking apart the dark dust grains that make the iconic forms opaque. Ironically the blobs, otherwise known as dark molecular clouds, frequently create in their midst the very stars that later destroy them. The floating space mountains pictured above by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope span a few light months. The Great Nebula in Carina itself spans about 30 light years, lies about 7,500 light years away, and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of Keel (Carina).
2012 April 20

M57: The Ring Nebula
Credit: Composite Image Data - Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), Hubble Legacy Archive;
Processing and additional imaging - Robert Gendler
Explanation: Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial band. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to perspective - our view from planet Earth looks down the center of a roughly barrel-shaped cloud of glowing gas. But expansive looping structures are seen to extend far beyond the Ring Nebula's familiar central regions in this intriguing composite of ground based and Hubble Space Telescope images with narrowband image data from Subaru. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from the dying, once sun-like star at the nebula's center. Intense ultraviolet light from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas. Ionized oxygen atoms produce the characteristic greenish glow and ionized hydrogen the prominent red emission. The central ring of the Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,000 light-years away. To accompany tonight's shooting stars it shines in the northern constellation Lyra.
2012 April 22

Flowing Barchan Sand Dunes on Mars
Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA
Explanation: When does Mars act like a liquid? Although liquids freeze and evaporate quickly into the thin atmosphere of Mars, persistent winds may make large sand dunes appear to flow and even drip like a liquid. Visible on the above image right are two flat top mesas in southern Mars when the season was changing from Spring to Summer. A light dome topped hill is also visible on the far left of the image. As winds blow from right to left, flowing sand on and around the hills leaves picturesque streaks. The dark arc-shaped droplets of fine sand are called barchans, and are the interplanetary cousins of similar Earth-based sand forms. Barchans can move intact a downwind and can even appear to pass through each other. When seasons change, winds on Mars can kick up dust and are monitored to see if they escalate into another of Mars' famous planet-scale sand storms.

Astronomy News:
(from e! Science News Astronomy & Space)

Hubble to use moon as mirror to see Venus transit

Published: Friday, May 4, 2012 - 15:04 in Astronomy & Space

Related images
(click to enlarge)


NASA/ESA/D. Ehrenreich
This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. Astronomers didn't aim NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study Tycho, however. The image was taken in preparation to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun's face on June 5-6. Hubble cannot look at the Sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at Earth's moon, using it as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight and isolate the small fraction of the light that passes through Venus's atmosphere. Imprinted on that small amount of light are the fingerprints of the planet's atmospheric makeup.


These observations will mimic a technique that is already being used to sample the atmospheres of giant planets outside our solar system passing in front of their stars. In the case of the Venus transit observations, astronomers already know the chemical makeup of Venus's atmosphere, and that it does not show signs of life on the planet. But the Venus transit will be used to test whether this technique will have a chance of detecting the very faint fingerprints of an Earth-like planet, even one that might be habitable for life, outside our solar system that similarly transits its own star. Venus is an excellent proxy because it is similar in size and mass to our planet.


The astronomers will use an arsenal of Hubble instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, to view the transit in a range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. During the transit, Hubble will snap images and perform spectroscopy, dividing the sunlight into its constituent colors, which could yield information about the makeup of Venus's atmosphere.
Hubble will observe the Moon for seven hours, before, during, and after the transit so the astronomers can compare the data. Astronomers need the long observation because they are looking for extremely faint spectral signatures. Only 1/100,000th of the sunlight will filter through Venus's atmosphere and be reflected off the Moon.

Cassini sees new objects blazing trails in Saturn ring

Published: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - 13:22 in Astronomy & Space
Queen Mary scientists working with images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have discovered strange half-mile-sized objects punching through parts of Saturn's F ring, leaving glittering trails behind them. These trails in the rings, which scientists are calling 'mini-jets', fill in a missing link in our understanding of the curious behaviour of the F ring. The results were presented April 24 at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, Austria.
Scientists have known that relatively large objects like the moon Prometheus (as long as 92 miles across) can create channels, ripples and snowballs in the F ring. But until recently they didn't know what happened to these snowballs after they were created.


Now Professor Carl Murray, Nick Attree, Nick Cooper and Gareth Williams from Queen Mary's Astronomy Unit have found evidence that some of the smaller snowballs survive, and their differing orbits mean they go on to strike through the F ring on their own.


Professor Murray's group happened to see a tiny trail in an image from 30 January 2009 and tracked it over eight hours. The long footage confirmed the small object originated in the F ring, so they went back through the Cassini image catalogue to see if the phenomenon was frequent.


"The F ring has a circumference of 550,000miles (881,000kilometers) and these mini-jets are so tiny they took quite a bit of time and serendipity to find," said Nick Attree, a Cassini imaging associate at Queen Mary. "We combed through 20,000 images and were delighted to find 500 examples of these rogues during just the seven years Cassini has been at Saturn."


The small objects appear to collide with the F ring at gentle speeds -- something on the order of about 4 mph (2 meters per second). The collisions drag glittering ice particles out of the F ring with them, leaving a trail 20 to 110 miles (40 to 180 kilometers) long.


Professor Murray commented: "I think the F ring is Saturn's weirdest ring, and these latest Cassini results go to show how the F ring is even more dynamic than we ever thought. These findings show us that the F ring region is like a bustling zoo of objects from a half mile to moons like Prometheus a hundred miles in size, creating a spectacular show," he added.


In some cases, the objects travelled in packs, creating mini-jets that looked quite exotic, like the barb of a harpoon. Other new images show grand views of the entire F ring, showing the swirls and eddies that ripple around the ring from all the different kinds of objects moving through and around it.


Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, commented: "Beyond just showing us the strange beauty of the F ring, Cassini's studies of this ring help us understand the activity that occurs when solar systems evolve out of dusty disks that are similar to, but obviously much grander than, the disk we see around Saturn. We can't wait to see what else Cassini will show us in Saturn's rings."
The Science and Technology Facilities Council is the UK sponsor of astronomy.

Source: Queen Mary, University of London


General Calendar:

Colloquia, Lectures, Seminars, Meetings, Open Houses & Tours:

Note:  The South Bay Astronomical Society website (www.sbastro.org.) is temporarily not functional (due to recent death of the webmaster). Nor have I received the usual hardcopy mailing recently.  So I have no dates for their current observing events.

Colloquia:  Carnegie (Tues. 4pm), UCLA, Caltech (Wed. 4pm), IPAC (Wed. 12:15pm) & other Pasadena (daily 12-4pm):  http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/seminars/

Carnegie astronomy lectures – only 4 per year in the Spring www.obs.carnegiescience.edu.    Visit www.huntington.org for directions.  For more information about the Carnegie Observatories or this lecture series, please contact Reed Haynie.

4 May
SBAS Monthly General Meeting at El Camino College planetarium. 7:30 PM
Topic: TBD Guest Speaker:.  www.sbastro.org.  

7 May
LAAS LAAS General Mtg..
Griffith Observatory
Event Horizon Theater
8:00 PM to 10:00 PM

May 10 & 11 The von Kármán Lecture Series: The Quest for Other Worlds Like Earth
The centuries-old quest for other worlds like our Earth has been rejuvenated by the intense excitement surrounding the discovery of hundreds of planets orbiting other stars. The challenge now is to find terrestrial planets, especially those in the habitable zone of their stars where liquid water might exist on the surface of the planet. The Kepler mission, which launched in March 2009, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets. To date, 26 Kepler planets have been confirmed and nearly 2,000 planet candidates have been found. This talk will cover many of Kepler's discoveries, including several planets orbiting two stars, and will try to explain how Kepler's discoveries help define humanity's place in the universe.
Speaker:
 Dr. Thomas Gautier, JPL

Locations:
 Thursday, May 10, 2012, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, May 11, 2012, 7pm
The Vosloh Forum at Pasadena City College
1570 East Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
› Directions
Webcast:
 For the webcast on Thursday at 7 p.m. PST, click here Video Icon
If you don't have RealPlayer, you can download the free RealPlayer 8 Basic.


17 May
AEA Astronomy Club Monthly Meeting
“IR Airglow Images,” Lynette Gelinas, Aerospace.  A1/ 1026



Observing:
The following data are from the 2012 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2012 Skygazer’s Almanac & monthly Sky at a Glance.

A weekly 5 minute video about what’s up in the night sky:  www.skyandtelescope.com/skyweek.

Sun, Moon & Planets for April:




                                   

Planets:  Jupiter & Mercury are hidden by the sun all month.  Mars transits ~ 8pm.  Saturn transits 12pm May 1, 9pm May 31.   Venus sets 11:30pm May 1, 9:00pm May 31.  Neptune & Uranus are visible low just before dawn.


Other Events:

5 May – The largest full moon of 2012 occurs at 9:35pm PDT.


19 May
LAAS Dark Sky Night: Lockwood Valley (Steve Kufeld Astronomical Site; LAAS members and their guests only)
?
SBAS Star Party (weather permitting): RPV at Ridgecrest Middle School 28915 North Bay Rd.

20 May
Annular Solar Eclipse
Center line thru Reno & Albuquerque – closest ~ Zion NP, Utah – max eclipse ~ 6:40pm (elevation ~10 deg), begins ~5:30pm, ends at sunset (~ 8pm)  (LA:  begins 5:25pm, max (13 deg elevation) at 6:38pm, ends 7:43pm)

26 May
LAAS Public Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm
?
SBAS out-of-town observing – contact Greg Benecke www.sbastro.org.  

5 June
Venus Transit of the Sun
In L.A. 3:06pm (58 deg elevation) to sunset (8:07pm) – greatest transit 6:25pm, 18 deg elevation

Internet Links:

Link(s) of the Month

A weekly 5 minute video about what’s up in the night sky:  www.skyandtelescope.com/skyweek.

General
Regional (esp. Southern California)
Mt. Wilson Institute (www.mtwilson.edu/), including status for visits & roads


About the Club

Club Websites:  Internal (Aerospace): https://aeropedia.aero.org/aeropedia/index.php/Astronomy_Club  It is updated to reflect this newsletter, in addition to a listing of past club mtg. presentations, astronomy news, photos & events from prior newsletters, club equipment, membership & constitution.  We expect to link some presentation materials from past mtgs.  Our club newsletters are also being posted to an external blog, “An Astronomical View” http://astronomicalview.blogspot.com/. 
 
Membership.  For information, current dues & application, contact TBD, or see the club website where a form is also available.  Benefits will include use of club telescope(s) & library/software, discounts on Sky & Telescope magazine and Observer’s Handbook, field trips, great programs, having a say in club activities, acquisitions & elections, etc. 

 Committee Suggestions & Volunteers.  Feel free to contact:  Paul Rousseau, Program Committee Chairman (& club VP), TBD, Activities Committee Chairman (& club Secretary), or TBD, Resource Committee Chairman (over equipment & library, and club Treasurer). 

Mark Clayson,
AEA Astronomy Club President

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