AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter December 2013
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. 10
About the Club p. 11
Club News & Calendar.
Calendar
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. 10
About the Club p. 11
Club News & Calendar.
Calendar
Club Meeting Schedule:
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19 Dec 2013
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Club Meeting & Officer Election
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Mars Exploration
Concept
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Matthew
Eby
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A1/1735
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16 Jan 2014
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Club Pizza Party &
Presentation
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“America the Beautiful
at Night” Astrophotogaphy? Or Observing with the 16-inch Dobs.
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Wally
Pacholka? Or Jason Fields
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A1/1735
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20 Feb 2013
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Club Meeting
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A Tour of the new
Aerospace E POD (A6) Telescope & Facility
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Richard
Rudy
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Gather in A6 Lobby then to E Pod
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AEA Astronomy Club meetings are on 3rd Thursdays at 11:45am. For all of 2013 except September, the meeting room is A1/1735.
News:
Be sure
to cast your ballot for 2014 club officers. Election results will be announced at the
Dec. 19 club mtg.
We are
now taking orders for the 2014 Observer’s Handbook. Discount price varies with the size of the
group order: $26.95 for 2-9, $23.95
for 10+ (normally $38.20). Contact Alan
Olson or Mark Clayson by Nov. 30.
We’ve received our
$4,200 budget allotment from the AEA for FY14, and plan to spend most of it on a
5-inch refractor & GoTo mount (see below).
Also, a group membership in the Astronomical League. For that, we need each member to provide
their preferred email for League mailings.
Remember
to start or renew your club membership
for 2014 by sending the form (at membership
form link )
along with payment ($12 per year made out to AEA Astronomy Club) to Alan Olson,
M1-107. This will give you all the
benefits of membership, including free pizza, equipment & library borrowing
privileges, great programs & activities, discounts, etc.
On Dec. 19, Matthew Eby will share his work on "... the exploration of Mars and a research project
underway to develop and demonstrate an architecture for landing a small microprobe on Mars using a derivative of
Aerospace’s small reentry spacecraft. "
See a story on his IRAD & balloon drop test at http://pages.aero.org/orbiter/pdf-archival-view-month/?d=2
Don’t
miss our semi-annual pizza party Jan. 16. And we hope to also have Wally Pacholka’s
astrophotography presentation that had to be rescheduled from October. Otherwise, hopefully Jason Fields on
observing with the 16-inch Dobs.
For our Feb. 20 mtg., Rick Rudy of the Remote
Sensing Dept. will give us a tour of the
new in-house-built telescope in the A6 E Pod. See the Orbiter story on the new telescope
here: http://pages.aero.org/orbiter/2013/08/12/in-house-telescope-provides-new-capabilities/
Astronomy
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month
Comet ISON Rising http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131127.html
Video Credit & Copyright: Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado (TWAN, Earth and Stars)
Explanation: Will Comet ISON survive
tomorrow's close encounter with the Sun? Approaching to within a solar diameter
of the Sun's surface, the fate of one of the most unusual comets of modern times will
finally be determined. The comet could shed a great amount of ice and dust into a developing tail -- or break apart completely.
Unfortunately, the closer Comet ISON gets to the Sun, the
harder it has been for conventional telescopes to see the brightening comet in the glare of the morning Sun. Pictured in the above short time lapse video, Comet ISON was captured rising over
the Canary Islands just above the morning
Sun a few days ago. If the comet's nucleus survives, the coma and the tails it sheds might well be
visible rising ahead of the Sun in the next few days or weeks. Alternatively, satellites watching the Sun might document one of the larger comet disintegrations yet recorded. Stay tuned!Video Credit & Copyright: Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado (TWAN, Earth and Stars)
Surprising
Comet ISON http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131130.html
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, SOHO - Video Editing: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN) Explanation: After failing to appear for Sun staring spacecraft at perihelion, its harrowing closest approach to the Sun, sungrazing Comet ISON was presumed lost. But ISON surprised observers yesterday as material still traveling along the comet's trajectory became visible and even developed an extensive fan-shaped dust tail. Edited and processed to HD format, this video (vimeo, youtube) is composed of frames from the SOHO spacecraft's coronographs. It follows the comet in view of the wide (blue tint) and narrow (red tint) field cameras in the hours both before and after perihelion passage. In both fields, overwhelming sunlight is blocked by a central occulting disk. A white circle indicates the Sun's positon and scale. With questions to be answered and the tantalizing possibility that a small cometary nucleus has survived in whole or part, surprising comet ISON will be rising before dawn in planet Earth's skies in the coming days.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, SOHO - Video Editing: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN) Explanation: After failing to appear for Sun staring spacecraft at perihelion, its harrowing closest approach to the Sun, sungrazing Comet ISON was presumed lost. But ISON surprised observers yesterday as material still traveling along the comet's trajectory became visible and even developed an extensive fan-shaped dust tail. Edited and processed to HD format, this video (vimeo, youtube) is composed of frames from the SOHO spacecraft's coronographs. It follows the comet in view of the wide (blue tint) and narrow (red tint) field cameras in the hours both before and after perihelion passage. In both fields, overwhelming sunlight is blocked by a central occulting disk. A white circle indicates the Sun's positon and scale. With questions to be answered and the tantalizing possibility that a small cometary nucleus has survived in whole or part, surprising comet ISON will be rising before dawn in planet Earth's skies in the coming days.
2013 November 2
Explanation: This webcam and telescope image of banded gas giant Jupiter shows the transit of three shadows cast by Jupiter's moons in progress, captured in Belgian skies on October 12 at 0528 UT. Such a three shadow transit is a relatively rare event, even for a large planet with many moons. Visible in the frame are the three Galilean moons responsible, Callisto at the far left edge, Io closest to Jupiter's disk, and Europa below and just left of Io. Of their shadows on the sunlit Jovian cloud tops, Callisto casts the most elongated one near the planet's south polar region at the bottom. Io's shadow is above and right of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Of course viewed from Jupiter's perspective, these shadow crossings could be seen as solar eclipses, analogous to the Moon's shadow crossing the sunlit face of planet Earth.
Astronomy News:
Figures of 8
and peanut shells: How stars move at the center of the Galaxy
Published: Wednesday,
November 27, 2013 - 12:37 in Astronomy
& Space
Two
months ago astronomers created a new 3D map of stars at the centre of our
Galaxy (the Milky Way), showing more clearly than ever the bulge at its core.
Previous explanations suggested that the stars that form the bulge are in
banana-like orbits, but a paper published this week in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society suggests that the
stars probably move in peanut-shell or figure of eight-shaped orbits instead.
The difference is important; astronomers develop theories of star motions to
not only understand how the stars in our galaxy are moving today but also how
our galaxy formed and evolves. The Milky Way is shaped like a spiral, with a
region of stars at the centre known as the "bar," because of its
shape. In the middle of this region, there is a "bulge" that expands
out vertically.
In the new work Alice Quillen, professor of
astronomy at the University of Rochester, and her collaborators created a
mathematical model of what might be happening at the centre of the Milky Way.
Unlike the Solar System where most of the gravitational pull comes from the Sun
and is simple to model, it is much harder to describe the gravitational field
near the centre of the Galaxy, where millions of stars, vast clouds of dust,
and even dark matter swirl about. In this case, Quillen and her colleagues
considered the forces acting on the stars in or near the bulge.
As the stars go round in their orbits, they
also move above or below the plane of the bar. When stars cross the plane they
get a little push, like a child on a swing. At the resonance point, which is a
point a certain distance from the centre of the bar, the timing of the pushes
on the stars is such that this effect is strong enough to make the stars at
this point move up higher above the plane. (It is like when a child on the
swing has been pushed a little every time and eventually is swinging higher.)
These stars are pushed out from the edge of the bulge.
The resonance at this point means that stars
undergo two vertical oscillations for every orbital period. But what is the
most likely shape of the orbits in between? The researchers showed through
computer simulations that peanut-shell shaped orbits are consistent with the
effect of this resonance and could give rise to the observed shape of the
bulge, which is also like a peanut-shell.
Next month the European Space Agency will
launch the Gaia spacecraft, which is designed to create a 3D map of the stars
in the Milky Way and their motions. This 3D map will help astronomers better
understand the composition, formation and evolution of our Galaxy.
"It is hard to look back into the past of
our galaxy and know what was there, but simulations can give us clues,"
explained Quillen. "Using my model I saw that, over time, the resonance
with the bar, which is what leads to these peculiarly shaped orbits, moves
outwards. This may be what happened in our Galaxy."
"Gaia will generate huge amounts of data
-- on billions of stars," said Quillen. This data will allow Quillen and
her colleagues to finesse their model further. "This can lead to a better
understanding of how the Milky Way might have evolved into the shape it has
today."
Quillen explained that there are different
models as to how the galactic bulge was formed. Astronomers are interested in
finding out how much the bar has slowed down over time and whether the bulge
"puffed up all at once or slowly." Understanding the distributions of
speeds and directions of motion (velocities) of the stars in the bar and the
bulge might help determine this evolution.
"One of the predictions of my model is
that there is a sharp difference in the velocity distributions inside and
outside the resonance," Quillen said. "Inside -- closer to the
galactic centre -- the disk should be puffed up and the stars there would have
higher vertical velocities. Gaia will measure the motions of the stars and
allow us to look for variations in velocity distributions such as these."
To be able to generate a model for the orbits
of stars in the bulge, Quillen needed to factor in different variables. She
first needed to understand what happens at the region of the resonance, which
depends on the speed of the rotating bar and the mass density of the bar.
"Before I could model the orbits, I
needed the answer to what I thought was a simple question: what is the
distribution of material in the inner galaxy?" Quillen said. "But
this wasn't something I could just look up. Luckily my collaborator Sanjib
Sharma was able to help out."
Sharma worked out how the speed of circular
orbits changed with distance from the galactic centre (called the rotation
curve). Using this information, Quillen could compute a mass density at the
location of the resonance, which she needed for her model.
Quillen was also able to combine the new orbit
models with the speed of the bar (which is rotating) to get a more refined
estimate of the mass density 3000 light years from the Galaxy centre (about one
eighth of the distance from the centre of the Galaxy to Earth), which is where
the edge of the bulge is.
And there is not long now to wait now for Gaia
to start collecting data. Gaia's launch time is set for 0912 GMT on December
19, and will be streamed live on the ESA Portal.
Source: Royal Astronomical Society (RAS)
General Calendar:
Colloquia, Lectures, Seminars, Meetings, Open Houses & Tours:
Colloquia: Carnegie (Tues. 4pm), UCLA,
Caltech (Wed. 4pm), IPAC (Wed. 12:15pm) & other Pasadena (daily 12-4pm):
http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/seminars/
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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.
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6 Dec
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SBAS Monthly General Meeting at El Camino
College planetarium. 7:30 PM
Topic: “Observing Globular Clusters” Don Pensack,
EyepiecesEtc.com http://www.sbastro.net/.
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The Planck Space Telescope: Revealing the Ancient Universe
Launched
on May 14, 2009, the Planck mission studies the ancient radiation from the Big
Bang, called the cosmic microwave background, to help answer questions about
the early history and evolution of the universe. The European Space Agency
mission, with significant NASA/JPL participation, produced its first all-sky
image, and scientists continue to analyze and parse the various and complex
elements. The first cosmology results from Planck revealed the most precise
measurements yet of the age, origins and fate of our universe.
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Speaker:
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Dr. Charles Lawrence
Planck Project Scientist (U.S. Planck Team) Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
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Locations:
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Thursday, Dec 5,
2013, 7pm The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL 4800 Oak Grove Drive Pasadena, CA › Directions Friday, Dec 6, 2013, 7pm The Vosloh Forum at Pasadena City College 1570 East Colorado Blvd. Pasadena, CA › Directions |
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Webcast:
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We offer two options to
view the live streaming of our webcast on Thursday: › 1) Ustream with real-time web chat to take public questions. › 2) Flash Player with open captioning If you don't have Flash Player, you can download for free here. |
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9 Dec
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LAAS LAAS General Meeting.
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Griffith
Observatory
Event Horizon Theater 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM |
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19 Dec 2013
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Club Meeting & Officer Election
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Mars Exploration
Concept
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Matthew
Eby
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A1/1735
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Observing:
The following
data are from the 2013 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2013 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 November:
Moon: Dec 3 new, Dec 9 1st
quarter, Dec 17 full, Dec 25 last quarter
Planets: Venus is visible
after sunset in the SouthWest. Jupiter rises about 8pm. Mars,
Saturn & Mercury are in the pre-dawn sky in the East.
Other
Events:
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30 Nov
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SBAS
out-of-town observing – contact Greg Benecke http://www.sbastro.net/.
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30 Nov
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LAAS Dark Sky Night : Lockwood Valley (Steve Kufeld Astronomical Site; LAAS members and their guests
only)
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6 Dec Venus greatest illuminated extent.
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7 Dec
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Public Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds
2-10pm
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13 December Geminids Meteor Shower Peak
This is one of the best meteor showers of the year and never seems to
disappoint observers. An
observer in the Northern Hemisphere can start seeing Geminid meteors as
early as December 6,
when one meteor every hour or so could be visible. During the next week,
rates increase until a
peak of 50-80 meteors per hour is attained on the night of December 13/14.
The last Geminids are
seen on December 18, when an observer might see a rate of one every hour or
so.
21 Dec Winter Solstice
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21 December
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SBAS Saturday Night In Town Dark Sky Observing Session at Ridgecrest
Middle School– 28915 NortbBay Rd. RPV, Weather Permitting: Please contact
Greg Benecke to confirm that the gate will be opened! http://www.sbastro.net/
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22 December Ursids Meteor Shower Peak
The point from where the Ursid meteors appear to come from is located
within the constellation
Ursa Minor, also known as the "Little Dipper". This meteor shower
is active during the period
spanning December 17 to 25, but it peaks on December 22/23. At maximum,
rates can normally
reach 10 per hour. The meteor shower is produced by the periodic comet
8P/Tuttle and can
occasionally experience short-lived outbursts of up to 100 meteors per hour.
27 December Comet ISON Closest Approach to Earth
Assuming it survives its pass around the sun, ISON will pass within 0.5 AU
of earth.
29 Dec Saturn 0.9 deg N of Moon
Internet Links:
Link(s) of the Month
Link(s) of the Month
A weekly 5 minute video about what’s up in the night sky: www.skyandtelescope.com/skyweek.
Telescope, Binocular & Accessory Buying Guides
General
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 have linked some presentation materials from past mtgs. Our club newsletters are also being posted to an external blog, “An Astronomical View” http://astronomicalview.blogspot.com/.
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 have linked 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 Alan Olson, or see the club website (or Aerolink folder) where a form is also available (go to the membership link/folder & look at the bottom). 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: Mark Clayson, President & Program Committee Chairman (& acting club VP), TBD Activities Committee Chairman (& club Secretary), or Alan Olson, Resource Committee Chairman (over equipment & library, and club Treasurer).
Mark Clayson,
AEA Astronomy Club President
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