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)

Thursday, March 13, 2014

2014 March

AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter    March 2014

Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 3
Astronomy News p. 8
General Calendar p.9
    Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 9
    Observing p. 13
Useful Links p. 14
About the Club p. 15

Club News & Calendar.

Calendar

Club Meeting Schedule:

20 Mar 2014
Club Meeting
“America the Beautiful, at Night” Astrophotography Presentation
Wally Pacholka
A1/1735
17 Apr 2014
Club Meeting
TBD
TBD
A1/1735
15 May 2014
Club Meeting
A Tour of the new Aerospace E POD (A6) Telescope & Facility
Richard Rudy
Gather in A6 Lobby then to          E Pod
19 June 2014
Club Pizza Party & Astronomy Fun & Games
Pizza & Astronomy Fun & Games
TBD
A1/1735

AEA Astronomy Club meetings are on 3rd Thursdays at 11:45am.  For all of 2014 except May, the meeting room is A1/1735.

News:  

March 20:  Wally Pacholka is a local (Long Beach) but world-renowned professional astrophotographer who specializes in Milky Way shots that include spectacular scenes from national parks, etc.  He’s also a friend of Jason Fields’.  You can see some of his award-winning & commercial photos at http://astropics.com/  Wally will share some of his work, techniques, etc.  You won’t want to miss this one!

The A6 E Pod telescope completion has continued to suffer schedule delays, and so once again our tour is being put off to May 15, when 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/

Cosmos 2014.  
34 years after the original "Cosmos" TV series featuring Carl Sagan, there have been a wealth of astronomical discoveries justifying an updated version, including dark energy, exoplanets, etc. The 13-part series will be presented Sundays beginning March 9 (9pm) on Fox (KTTV in LA -- channel 11), and Mondays beginning March 10 on National Geographic channel. Hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson (Hayden Planetarium director), and with voices by Patrick Stewart & Kirsten Dunst, it encompasses geology, climate, biology, cosmology, chemistry engineering & mathematics. In the Sky & Telescope review, the producer promises a "vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale.....with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience." By the way, Charles Krauthammer raves of the Hayden Planetarium in his book, "Things That Matter:" "...thrilling...a palace of wonder...the unconquerable universe as seen by God....an intellectual challenge...humbling...the Hayden succeeds splendidly."

More Astronomical League Information
The AEA Astronomy Club’s application and roster (20 of us who opted) for membership in the Astronomical League has been processed.  Our club number is 201304, in the Western Region of the Astronomical League, or WRAL.  Our club now appears in the membership listings on the AL website.  Attached with this newsletter is additional information provided with our new membership, including benefits, privacy, and a sales price list.  In the last newsletter I described some of their observing programs and awards individuals can participate in and earn.  We can send updated rosters for any new or old club members who decide to join the AL. For more information go to:
http://www.astroleague.org/observing.html.  

Jim Edwards’ Observing Reports & Photo
Observing Report
South Redondo, 2/21/14

·          Began a spur of the moment “quick” session @8:30 on my roof deck; no plan in mind, just winging it
o         Temp 55°, still pretty humid, little/no breeze (unusual), quite clear (despite substantial fog in mid-afternoon)
·          Used an Orion 102mm Mak mounted on an Orion motorized (1-D) mini-equatorial mount.
o         I don’t have much experience with this scope yet so this is almost a shake-down session. Interested in observing limit
·          Polar alignment was crude:  set scope to home position, adjust the mount’s elevation angle and azimuth (by simply rotating the entire mount) until Polaris was centered
o         Tracking was amazingly solid!  Object stayed within view of the eyepiece for 30 minutes or more.  This made things a LOT easier (as compared to previous sessions)
·          Tested a new green laser pointer that I had gotten from NoMoreRacks.com for just $10 (no tax, free delivery), it worked great--- seemingly identical to that sold by Orion and others for $50-$70.
o         Beam seems to go on to infinity.  I plan to mount onto this small scope to aid in pointing
·          Also tried out a new Bahtinov focus mask that I got recently from Amazon for $20.  These are cool and useful for focusing, especially when doing imaging
o         Had a little bit of trouble using a star that was too dim but worked great on a brighter star nearby.  I think it is really going to help when using the club’s CCD imager.
o         The club should consider getting some of these for our various scopes
·          Under these conditions (better than average seeing but typical bright sky (ie, light pollution) for my area, I had no trouble whatsoever viewing magnitude 8+ stars
o         Based on what I saw, I estimate that I could see magnitude 10 stars with this same set-up under these conditions
·          I’m not much of a star-hopper (like everybody else, I’ve been spoiled by Go-To’s) so I planned to stick to just a couple of objects that I could view naked eye or thru finder scope
·          I had planned to start with Jupiter which was very bright and straight overhead but discovered that using the finder scope without a right-angle at the eyepiece made this more or less impossible (at least for these old bones).  Would have to come back to this later
·          Took a quick peek at Sirius because it was in a sweet spot about 50° elevation due south (fwiw, north thru east is my bad quadrant, looking right over LA).
o         Yep, that’s a star.  Very bright. Experimented with the Bahtinov focus mask again--- worked fantastic with this -1.5 magnitude star
·          I saw Orion at about 70-75° elevation and decided to look for M42, the Orion Nebula.
o         Took me a minute to remember that this was on the “dagger” rather than the “belt”.  I discovered this because I could see fuzziness of the nebulosity even thru the teeny finder!
o         I could very easily see appreciable nebulosity around the Trapezium.  When imaged with long exposure, this nebula is really big.  But thru this little 4” scope under these conditions, I could only see the central portion (but this was still plenty).  I couldn’t discern any color but this was not surprising--- my cones are shot and don’t work very well under dim light in any case.  You need a much bigger scope to visually see nebula color
o         No trouble whatsoever splitting these 4 nearby stars apart.  Little/no turbulence; the air was really calm and the seeing was really good (maybe even excellent!).
o         I experimented with several eyepieces of various designs.  My favorite is my 16mm Nagler type 5(?) with 100°(?) apparent field of view.
§          Also tried out a “shorty” 2x Barlow with this eyepiece; satisfactory results
§          Then tried a thread-in eyepiece focal reducer; this was not satisfactory as the decrease in (equivalent) focal length was almost exactly balanced by a narrowing of the Nagler fov.
·          I remembered that the Seven Sisters (aka, the Pleiades) were still up but pretty low by this time (I should have gone for them before M42).
o         When viewing thru a scope, one sees that there are a LOT more than just seven stars in this open cluster.  The brightest seven wouldn’t all fit when observed with the 16mm Nagler.  The 32mm did a better job here.  Very pretty indeed.
·          It was late enough now that Jupiter was noticeably past the zenith so I decided to go for it.  Still a struggle to site it in but, once done, viewing thru the 45° eyepiece “elbow” was fine
o         The planet was crisp and the two major bands above and below the equator were easily seen.  I saw no hint of the GRB so it was either on the other side or I couldn’t see it because it is so washed out lately (ie, the past decade or more).
§          I hope to look up its position tomorrow to see if the GRB was, indeed, present.  I don’t think it was but we’ll see.
o         The four Galilean moons were very bright and all lined up.  I noticed that Europa, which was quite close to the planet itself, was not in line with Jupiter’s equator.  I interpreted this as indicating that the moon’s orbital plane did not precisely align with the equatorial plane.  I checked this on my planetarium software (Starry Night Pro) and verified that this was indeed the case.
·          I decided to try for the Crab Nebula (M1).  It lies very close to Zeta Tauri, which is the tip of Taurus’s left horn.  At magnitude 9, I expected this nebula to be tougher than the very easy Orion Nebula viewed earlier (magnitude 5 and much larger) but I had what I thought was a good idea of where it was and how to get there relative to Zeta Tauri.  But bumbling around for 30 minutes left me empty handed--- I could not find it!  Bummer.
·          Things were just now starting to dew up (amazing everything hadn’t beaded up well before now, very strange).  Hence, at this point, I decided to call it a night.  Putting my stuff away, the thought occurred to me that I should perhaps write up my experience not only for my own records but also as an “observing report” for the club.  Which is exactly what I’ve just now done.

Imaged last evening (2/23/14) using a teeny 4" scope up on my roof deck under less than ideal conditions (we were playing peek-a-boo with dense, low clouds; we ended up with like a 5 minute window suitable for collecting images).

I've seen worse.

Astronomy Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month
(from Astronomy Picture of the Day, APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html)

VIDEO: Falling to Earth http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140210.html
Video Credit & Copyright: Red Bull Stratos, GoPro; 
Music: Wilderness is Their Home Now & Satellites (East of the River), ExtremeMusic
Explanation: What would it be like to fall to Earth from really high up? A new record for the highest jump was accomplished in 2012 by Felix Baumgartner. Surpassing the previous record of 31.3 kilometer plummet, Baumgartner, in a commercial venture, jumped off a floating balloon platform 39.0 kilometers above New Mexico, USA and had his entire fall recorded on video. Baumgartner wore a pressurized suit able to provide breathable air and warmth while up in the balloon and during his fall. Free falling 36.4 km before deploying his parachute, Baumgartner surpassed 1,000 km per hour and the sound barrier during the descent. The above video records his four minutes and 19 seconds of free fall in real time. The stunt included a somewhat unexpected but potentially dangerous spin that occurred during the second minute which could have knocked out or disoriented Baumgartner. After an enthralling plummet, Baumgartner's parachutes deployed and he landed safely.
Rocket, Meteor, and Milky Way over Thailand 
Image Credit & Copyright: Matipon Tangmatitham
Explanation: Can the night sky appear both serene and surreal? Perhaps classifiable as serene in the above panoramic image taken last Friday are the faint lights of small towns glowing across a dark foreground landscape of Doi Inthanon National Park in Thailand, as well as the numerous stars glowing across a dark background starscape. Also visible are the planet Venus and a band of zodiacal lighton the image left. Unusual events are also captured, however. First, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, while usually a common sight, appears here to hover surreally above the ground. Next, a fortuitous streak of a meteor was captured on the image right. Perhaps the most unusual component is the bright spot just to the left of the meteor. That spot is the plume of a rising Ariane 5 rocket,launched a few minutes before from Kourou, French Guiana. How lucky was the astrophotographer to capture the rocket launch in his image? Pretty lucky -- the image was not timed to capture the rocket. Also lucky was how photogenic -- and perhaps surreal -- the rest of the sky turned out to be.
Downtown Auriga 
Image Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors)
Explanation: Rich in star clusters and nebulae, the ancient constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer, rides high in northern winter night skies. Spanning nearly 24 full moons (12 degrees) on the sky, this deep telescopic mosaic view recorded in January shows off some of Auriga's most popular sights for cosmic tourists. The crowded field sweeps along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy in the direction opposite the galactic center. Need directions? Near the bottom of the frame, at the Charioteer's boundary with Taurus the Bull, the bright bluish star Elnath is known as both Beta Tauri and Gamma Aurigae. On the far left and almost 3000 light-years away, the busy, looping filaments of supernova remnant Simeis 147 cover about 150 light-years. Look toward the right to find emission nebula IC 410, significantly more distant, some 12,000 light-years away. Star forming IC 410 is famous for its embedded young star cluster, NGC 1893, and tadpole-shaped clouds of dust and gas. The Flaming Star Nebula, IC 405, is just a little farther along. Its red, convoluted clouds of glowing hydrogen gas are energized by hot O-type star AE Aurigae. Two of our galaxy's open star clusters, Charles Messier'sM36 and M38 line up in the starfield above, familiar to many binocular-equipped skygazers.
Comet Lovejoy over the Great Wall 
Image Credit & Copyright: Jiajie Zhang
Explanation: Fading now as it returns to the outer solar system Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1) still graces planet Earth's sky, a delicate apparition in binoculars or small telescopes. The comet, a relic of the solar system's formative years, is seen here rising in the morning twilight on January 12 among the stars of Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer. Posing near the comet is bright star Alpha Ophiuchi, also known as Rasalhague, from Arabic "the head of the serpent collector". Of course, the serpentine shape below is the ancient Great Wall of China, along the Panlongshan section northeast of Beijing. Panlongshan is translated as "a coiled dragon". A moving and fortuitous scene, it was captured with a digital camera and telephoto lens in two consecutive exposures. The exposures were merged to show a natural looking foreground and twilight sky.
The Long Jet of the Lighthouse Nebula 
X-ray Image Credit: NASA / CXC / ISDC / L. Pavan et al.
Explanation: The Lighthouse nebula was formed by the wind of a pulsar, a rapidly rotating, magnetized neutron star, as it speeds through the interstellar medium at over 1,000 kilometers per second. Some 23,000 light-years distant toward the southern constellation Carina, pulsar and wind nebula (cataloged as IGR J1104-6103) are indicated at the lower right in this remarkable image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Energetic particles generated by the pulsar are swept back into the wind's comet-like tail trailing up and to the left, along the direction of the pulsar's motion away from its parent supernova remnant. Both runaway pulsar and expanding remnant debris field are the aftermath of the core-collapse-explosion of a massive star, with the pulsar kicked out by the supernova explosion. Adding to the scene of exotic cosmic extremes is a long, spiraling jet extending for almost 37 light-years, but nearly at a right angle to the pulsar's motion. The high-energy particle jet is the longest known for any object in our Milky Way galaxy.
Möbius Arch Moonrise 
Image Credit & Copyright: Laurie Hatch
Explanation: Only two days past full, February's moon shines through thin clouds, rising on the left in this fisheye night skyscape. The moonlight illuminates a weathered, rounded foreground in theAlabama Hills, conveniently located east of Mt. Whitney along the Sierra Nevada range in California, USA, planet Earth. Orion the Hunter stands at the right, a familiar northern winter constellation. Bright Jupiter, the solar system's ruling gas giant, is near center at the top of the frame. Below Jupiter, Sirius, alpha star of the Big Dog, poses above a bowed and twisted landform known as Möbius Arch, its curve reminiscent of the mathematically famous surface with only one side. Of course, instead of using rock, wind, and weather, a Möbius strip is easier to make with paper, scissors, and tape.
Astronomy News:

York U astronomer maps out Earth's place in the universe among 'Council of Giants'

Published: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 - 12:38 in Astronomy & Space

Related images
(ctrl-click to enlarge)

Marshall McCall / York University
Marshall McCall / York University
We live in a galaxy known as the Milky Way -- a vast conglomeration of 300 billion stars, planets whizzing around them, and clouds of gas and dust floating in between. Though it has long been known that the Milky Way and its orbiting companion Andromeda are the dominant members of a small group of galaxies, the Local Group, which is about 3 million light years across, much less was known about our immediate neighbourhood in the universe.
Now, a new paper by York University Physics & Astronomy Professor Marshall McCall, published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, maps out bright galaxies within 35-million light years of Earth, offering up an expanded picture of what lies beyond our doorstep.
"All bright galaxies within 20 million light years, including us, are organized in a 'Local Sheet' 34-million light years across and only 1.5-million light years thick," says McCall. "The Milky Way and Andromeda are encircled by twelve large galaxies arranged in a ring about 24-million light years across -- this 'Council of Giants' stands in gravitational judgment of the Local Group by restricting its range of influence."
McCall says twelve of the fourteen giants in the Local Sheet, including the Milky Way and Andromeda, are "spiral galaxies" which have highly flattened disks in which stars are forming. The remaining two are more puffy "elliptical galaxies," whose stellar bulks were laid down long ago. Intriguingly, the two ellipticals sit on opposite sides of the Council. Winds expelled in the earliest phases of their development might have shepherded gas towards the Local Group, thereby helping to build the disks of the Milky Way and Andromeda.
McCall also examined how galaxies in the Council are spinning. He comments: "Thinking of a galaxy as a screw in a piece of wood, the direction of spin can be described as the direction the screw would move (in or out) if it were turned the same way as the galaxy rotates. Unexpectedly, the spin directions of Council giants are arranged around a small circle on the sky. This unusual alignment might have been set up by gravitational torques imposed by the Milky Way and Andromeda when the universe was smaller."
The boundary defined by the Council has led to insights about the conditions which led to the formation of the Milky Way. Most important, only a very small enhancement in the density of matter in the universe appears to have been required to produce the Local Group. To arrive at such an orderly arrangement as the Local Sheet and its Council, it seems that nearby galaxies must have developed within a pre-existing sheet-like foundation comprised primarily of dark matter.
"Recent surveys of the more distant universe have revealed that galaxies lie in sheets and filaments with large regions of empty space called voids in between," says McCall. "The geometry is like that of a sponge. What the new map reveals is that structure akin to that seen on large scales extends down to the smallest."

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/ 

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.
April 7, April 21, May 5 and May 19th, 2014.
All four lectures this year will be held at A Noise Within, the theater located at 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91107 (just North of the 210 Freeway; use the Madre Street exit). There is ample free parking on site. Visit www.anoisewithin.org for directions and more information.  All lectures are free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Please arrive early. Doors open at 7:00 PM and all lectures start at 7:30 PM. Light refreshments will be served in advance of the lectures.
The 2014 Astronomy Lecture Series is organized by Dr. John Mulchaey, Associate Director for Academic Affairs. For more information, please contact 626.304.0250 or visit www.obs.carnegiescience.edu.

Monday, April 7th 2014

Making Earth-Like Planets: Five Great Mysteries
Dr. Linda T. Elkins-Tanton
Director, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
Carnegie Institution for Science
The search for life within and beyond our solar system is one of today’s most exciting directions in astronomy. Astronomers and scientists in other disciplines are collaborating to discover how the processes of planetary evolution combine to produce a habitable planet, as defined by one indispensable ingredient: liquid water. Dr. Elkins-Tanton will discuss the mysteries of planetary formation – where Earth’s water came from, whether our solar system is average or unusual, how dust around young stars could accrete into planets, and much more.

Monday, April 21st 2014
Beyond Hubble: New Space Telescopes to Explore the Cosmos
Dr. Alan Dressler
Staff Astronomer,
The Carnegie Observatories
The Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of stars, galaxies, and the nature of our vast universe, and has blazed a trail to new journeys that lie beyond Hubble’s reach. Dr. Dressler will describe several future space telescopes – some already in fabrication, others on the technological horizon. These “virtual spaceships” will carry us to the end of our journey to understand the birth of stars and galaxies – the dawn of the modern universe – and will launch new quests to locate other worlds like Earth that may be habitable, or even inhabited.

Monday, May 5th 2014
The Biggest Eyes on Earth: Building the Giant Magellan Telescope
Dr. Wendy Freedman
Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair and Director,
The Carnegie Observatories
High in Chile’s Atacama Desert, construction of the largest telescope ever created is underway: the Giant Magellan Telescope, ten times more powerful than the Hubble Telescope. Dr. Freedman, head of the international GMT consortium, will discuss the complex teamwork involved in building this extraordinary instrument, and how the GMT will increase our understanding of dark matter and dark energy, the evolution of galaxies, the exciting field of exoplanets, and more. The GMT caps more than a century of leadership by the Carnegie Observatories in telescope technologies and contributions to our knowledge of the universe.

Monday, May 19th 2014

Seeing the Invisible:  What is Dark Matter?
Dr. Andrew Benson
George Ellery Hale Distinguished Scholar in Theoretical Astrophysics,
The Carnegie Observatories

Astronomy tells us that most of our universe is made from so-called “dark matter” – an invisible substance that holds together galaxies and clusters of galaxies. But how can we study something that we can’t see? Dr. Benson will describe the many ingenious ways that astronomers have found – and continue to find – to understand the nature of dark matter, including looking at how light from distant galaxies is deflected by gravitational lensing, and searching for the smallest galaxies in the universe.

7 Mar.
SBAS Monthly General Meeting at El Camino College planetarium. 7:30 PM
Topic: “A Night on Mauna Kea”
Speaker: Tom Bash http://www.sbastro.net/.  

10 Mar
LAAS LAAS General Meeting.
Griffith Observatory
Event Horizon Theater
8:00 PM to 10:00 PM

Mar. 13 & 14   The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2014

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2

Fossil fuel combustion and other human activities are now emitting more than 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere each year. The ocean and plants on land emit more than 20 times as much CO2 into the atmosphere as humans do, but they reabsorb almost as much, along with about half of human-produced emissions. Ground-based measurements accurately record the global impact of these processes on Earth’s atmospheric CO2 budget and its trends. However, their resolution and coverage is not adequate to identify the “sources” emitting CO2 or the natural “sinks” absorbing this gas. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory – 2 (OCO-2) is NASA’s first satellite designed to measure atmospheric CO2 with the accuracy needed to identify these sources and sinks. After its launch in July 2014, its spectrometers will record more than 100,000 CO2 measurements each day.
Speaker:
Dr. David Crisp, Science Team Leader, OCO-2
Locations:
 Thursday, Mar. 13, 2014, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, Mar. 14, 2014, 7pm
The Vosloh Forum at Pasadena City College
1570 East Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Webcast:
 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.




4 April
7:30PM
SBAS Monthly General Meeting
Topic: Binary Objects in the Solar System
Speaker: Gary Petersen

Observing:
The following data are from the 2014 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2014 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 March:


Moon: Mar 1 new, Mar 8 1st quarter, Mar 16 full, Mar 24 last quarter,                     
Planets:  Mercury and Venus are visible just before dawn.  Jupiter is up from sunset to after midnight.  Mars rises after sunset, and Saturn rises just before midnight.
Other Events:

1 Mar
SBAS out-of-town observing – contact Greg Benecke http://www.sbastro.net/.  

1 Mar
LAAS Dark Sky Night : Lockwood Valley (Steve Kufeld Astronomical Site; LAAS members and their guests only)


8 Mar
Public  Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm

9 Mar Daylight Saving Time begins

14 March Mercury at its Greatest Western Elongation

20 March Vernal Equinox

21 March Saturn 0.2 deg N. of Moon

22 March Mercury Passes 1.25 Degrees from Neptune
22 March Venus at its Greatest Western Elongation
 
22 Mar
SBAS Saturday Night In Town Dark Sky Observing Session at Ridgecrest Middle School– 28915 North Bay Rd. RPV, Weather Permitting: Please contact Greg Benecke to confirm that the gate will be opened! http://www.sbastro.net/

29 Mar  LAAS Messier Marathon

30 Mar
SBAS out-of-town observing – contact Greg Benecke http://www.sbastro.net/.  

Internet Links:

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


Regional (Southern California, Washington, D.C. & Colorado)
Southern California & Beyond Amateur Astronomy Organizations, Observatories & Planetaria
Mt. Wilson Observatory description, history, visiting


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/. 

 
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, membership in The Astronomical League, 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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