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)

Monday, July 7, 2014

2014 July

AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter  July 2014

Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 7
Astronomy News p. 12
General Calendar p.15
    Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 15
    Observing p. 16
Useful Links p. 17
About the Club p. 18

Club News & Calendar.

Calendar

Club Meeting Schedule:

17 July 2014
Club Meeting
Helioseismology
Edward Rhodes, USC
A1/1735
21 Aug 2014 (or Sept18?)
Club Meeting
A Tour of the new Aerospace E POD (A6) Telescope & Facility
Richard Rudy
Gather in A6 Lobby then to          E Pod

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

News:  

Our June 19 meeting features " Helioseismology," by USC professor Edward Rhodes.  The meeting will be in A1/1735 at 11:45.

The club is subsidizing a half-night (sunset to 1am) of observing on the Mt. Wilson 60-inch telescope on Tuesday, Aug. 5.  25 club members or spouses/guests will also enjoy a tour of Mt. Wilson beforehand.  We especially invited summer interns, and offered them reduced cost if they joined the club – we have 9 new members.  We plan to include in our FY15 budget request money to cover another such night for the rest of us on a weekend this Fall.  More information will be forthcoming.

Stay tuned for a summer star party combined with the camera & video club. 

 

We’re also checking on the possibility of using Aerospace’s new 0.8m telescope at Mt. Wilson.

 

Alan Olson's report on his June 20 Mt Wilson 60-inch session

"Overall, it was a great time. The people we went with were great, the guys running our tour and controlling the telescope were great, but the observing conditions were sub-par.

Since we met at the gate at 7:30 and the sun didn't set until after 8, we went on an impromptu tour of the 100inch. I'd done this before, but it was still fun. And those without fear of heights got to go out on the catwalk on the outside of the dome and take a ride while it spun around. Later in the evening I was told the reason the 100inch is not available for public viewing is trouble with the control system - it keeps crashing - and they don't want to charge people only to have them spend half the night waiting for the system to come back online. According to the Mt. Wilson site (http://www.mtwilson.edu/vir/100in.php) the 100inch was revamped in the mid-90's (so the control system probably runs on an ancient version of Windows!) and they added a (then) state of the art adaptive optics system! The few I've heard who've actually looked through it say the views are amazing.

Once back in the 60inch dome we looked first at Mars. There was no inversion layer that night so conditions were hazy, lots of skyglow, and the famously smooth air of Mt. Wilson was definitely lacking. This was clearly in evidence with Mars. For reference, I'd say Mars appeared slightly larger than Jupiter does in my 8inch dob - plenty large enough to see the famous surface markings (e.g., the polar caps). But the unstable atmosphere made it look like it was at the bottom of a puddle. It was difficult to focus, and I couldn't convince myself anything I saw wasn't the result of my imagination.

Saturn was a little better. The atmosphere was a little more stable by then (it takes a while to cycle through 25 people). I can understand why I was told Saturn is one of the most impressive objects you can see through this telescope. Even with a "swimming" and distorted view I could easily see the gaps and bands in the rings and atmosphere.

The next object was a quasar. At 8.6 billion light years distant it looked like just a faint star (approximately 14th magnitude). Quasars are really only interesting when you look at their spectra, but it is kind of neat to look at something that old and that far away.

The next object was Cambell's Hydrogen star, a sun-like star that is in the process of blowing off much of it's outer layers. Looking like an orange-red star just out of focus, like the quasar, this is an object that is more interesting when you look at spectra.

The seeing improved as the night went on and we went to more "classic" objects. The hercules cluster, ring nebula, the double-double (all four components of which were readily visible), the cat eye nebula, the saturn nebula, and Alberio. In all cases the views were stunning compared to what I'm used to seeing through my telescope.

I've attached a picture someone took of the cat eye nebula using their SLR and a special attachment. It is a combination of three exposures of varying length. The view through the eyepiece was not so bright, nor do I remember so many background stars. The LAAS sessions don't normally involve pictures. This was a special case. We could probably ask to take pictures in our session if everyone is willing to wait. You'd want to bring someone with a good astrophotography background to do it.

Jim Edwards’ June 28 & 19 observing reports:
No stacking, just single frames.  Stacking is TBD 
Saturn 
M5 (globular cluster): 15 sec exposure 
M12 (globular cluster): 30 sec exposure 








                                         
Astronomy Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month
(from Astronomy Picture of the Day, APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html)
VIDEO:  V838 Light Echo: The Movie http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140617.html
Image Credit: ESA, NASA, Hubble Space Telescope; Music: The Driving Force (Jingle Punks)
Explanation: What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon suddenly became one of the brightest stars in the entire Milky Way Galaxy. Then, just a few months later, it faded. A stellar flash like this has never been seen before -- supernovasand novas expel a tremendous amount of matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appeared to expel some material into space, what is seen in the above eight-frame movie, interpolated for smoothness, is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the flash. The actual time-span of the above movie is from 2002, when the flash was first recorded, to 2006. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant ellipsoids in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. Currently, the leading model for V838's outburst was the orbital decay and subsequent merging of two relatively normal stars. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of Monoceros, while the largest light echo above spans about six light years in diameter.
MONTAGE:  APOD Heatmap http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140616.html
Image Credit: Stuart Lowe, LCOGT/Virtual Sky
Explanation: The first APOD appeared 19 years ago today. To help celebrate, APOD brings you today an all-sky heatmap of (nearly) 19 years of APOD entries. The brighter a region appears on the above heatmap, the more APODs that occur in that region. Clicking anywhere on the map will bring up a link to all APODs, if any, that appear nearby. We at APOD again thank our readers, NASA, astrophotographers, volunteers who translate APOD daily into over 20 languages, volunteers who run APOD's over 20 mirror sites, volunteers who answer questions and administer APOD's main discussion board, and volunteers who run and update APOD's social media sites and smartphone applications for their continued support.
Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014 
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, H.Teplitz and M.Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), 
A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst(ASU), Z. Levay (STScI)
Explanation: Galaxies like colorful pieces of candy fill the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014. The dimmest galaxies are more than 10 billion times fainter than stars visible to the unaided eye and represent the Universe in the extreme past, a few 100 million years after the Big Bang.The image itself was made with the significant addition of ultraviolet data to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, an update of Hubble's famous most distant gaze toward the southern constellation of Fornax. It now covers the entire range of wavelengths available to Hubble's cameras, from ultraviolet through visible to near-infrared. Ultraviolet data adds the crucial capability of studying star formation in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field galaxies between 5 and 10 billion light-years distant.


CMB Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe 
Image Credit: DMR, COBE, NASA, Four-Year Sky Map
Explanation: Our Earth is not at rest. The Earth moves around the Sun. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy orbits in the Local Group of Galaxies. The Local Group falls toward the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. But these speeds are less than the speed that all of these objects together move relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). In the above all-sky map from the COBE satellite, radiation in the Earth's direction of motion appears blueshifted and hence hotter, while radiation on the opposite side of the sky is redshifted and colder. The map indicates that the Local Group moves at about 600 kilometers per second relative to this primordial radiation. This high speed was initially unexpected and its magnitude is still unexplained. Why are we moving so fast? What is out there?
Persistent Saturnian Auroras 
Image Credit: J. Clarke (Boston U.) & Z. Levay (STScI), ESA, NASA
Explanation: Are Saturn's auroras like Earth's? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft monitored Saturn's South Pole simultaneously as Cassini closed in on the gas giant in January 2004. Hubble snapped images in ultraviolet light, while Cassini recorded radio emissions and monitored the solar wind. Like on Earth, Saturn's auroras make total or partial rings around magnetic poles. Unlike on Earth, however, Saturn's auroras persist for days, as opposed to only minutes on Earth. Although surely created bycharged particles entering the atmosphere, Saturn's auroras also appear to be more closely modulated by the solar wind than either Earth's or Jupiter's auroras. The above sequence shows three Hubble images of Saturn each taken two days apart.

How to Identify that Light in the Sky 
Image Credit & Copyright: HK (The League of Lost Causes)
Explanation: What is that light in the sky? Perhaps one of humanity's more common questions, an answer may result from a few quick observations. For example -- is it moving or blinking? If so, and if you live near a city, the answer is typically an airplane, since planes are so numerous and so few stars and satellites are bright enough to be seen over the din of artificial city lights. If not, and if you live far from a city, that bright light is likely a planet such as Venus or Mars -- the former of which is constrained to appear near the horizon just before dawn or after dusk. Sometimes the low apparent motion of a distant airplane near the horizon makes it hard to tell from a bright planet, but even this can usually be discerned by the plane's motion over a few minutes. Still unsure? The above chart gives a sometimes-humorous but mostly-accurate assessment. Dedicated sky enthusiasts will likely note -- and are encouraged to provide -- polite corrections.
Four Lasers over Mauna Kea 
Image Credit & Copyright: Jason Chu (IfA Manoa)
Explanation: Are lasers from giant telescopes being used to attack the Galactic center? No. Lasers shot from telescopes are now commonly used to help increase the accuracy of astronomical observations. In some sky locations, Earth atmosphere-induced fluctuations in starlight can indicate how the air mass over a telescope is changing, but many times no bright star exists in the direction where atmospheric information is needed. In these cases, astronomers create an artificial star where they need it -- with a laser. Subsequent observations of the artificial laser guide star can reveal information so detailed about the blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere that much of this blurring can be removed by rapidly flexing the mirror. Such adaptive optic techniques allow high-resolution ground-based observations of real stars, planets, andnebulae. Pictured above, four telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA are being used simultaneously to study the center of our Galaxy and so all use a laser to create an artificial star nearby.


Astronomy News:

Hubble Unveils a Deep Sea of Small and Faint Early Galaxies

UC Riverside-led research shows the galaxies are the faintest and most numerous ever seen in the early universe [http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/19758]
By Iqbal Pittalwala On JANUARY 7, 2014
An image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope of Abell 1689, a massive cluster of galaxies whose gravitational pull is so strong that it bends light, acting like a lens. This “gravitational lens” magnifies galaxies behind the cluster, making them appear far brighter than they would if the foreground cluster of galaxies were not there. The galaxies discovered in this study (circled) are magnified by factors of 3-100 and are fainter than any galaxies seen at this distance before. These previously unseen distant galaxies are so numerous that they are likely producing the majority of stars formed in the early universe. Zoomed in images of many of the galaxies are shown on the right. The galaxies are very compact (diameters 1/30th – 1/100th the size of our own Milky Way galaxy) and very blue, meaning they have recently formed many new stars.PHOTO CREDIT: NASA AND ESA; SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A team of scientists led by astronomers at the University of California, Riverside has used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to uncover the long-suspected underlying population of galaxies that produced the bulk of new stars during the universe’s early years.
The galaxies are the smallest, faintest, and most numerous galaxies ever seen in the remote universe, and were captured by Hubble deep exposures taken in ultraviolet light.
Study results appear in the Jan. 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, and will be presented today (Jan. 7) at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington DC.
The 58 young, diminutive galaxies spied by Hubble were photographed as they appeared more than 10 billion years ago, during the heyday of star birth. The newly discovered galaxies are 100 times more numerous than their more massive cousins. But they are 100 times fainter than galaxies detected in previous deep-field surveys of the early universe.
These galaxies would normally be too faint for Hubble to see. But the astronomers were able to detect them by teaming Hubble with a natural zoom lens in space, produced by the gravity of Abell 1689, a giant foreground galaxy cluster. The cluster is so massive that it magnifies the light from faraway galaxies behind it due to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, where the curvature of space acts like a giant funhouse mirror to stretch and brighten distant objects.
Brian Siana is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at UC Riverside.
PHOTO CREDIT: UCR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS.

“There’s always been a concern that we’ve only found the brightest of the distant galaxies,” said study leader Brian Siana, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy. “The bright galaxies, however, represent the tip of the iceberg.  We believe most of the stars forming in the early universe are occurring in galaxies we normally can’t see at all. Now we have found those ‘unseen’ galaxies, and we’re really confident that we’re seeing the rest of the iceberg.”
Siana’s team believes it has completed the census of galaxies at an epoch when the universe was roughly 3.4 billion years old.  If this sample of galaxies is representative of the entire population at this early time, then the majority of new stars formed in these small galaxies.
“Though these galaxies are very faint, their increased numbers means that they account for the majority of star formation during this epoch,” said team member Anahita Alavi, a Ph.D. graduate student in Siana’s lab, and the first author of the research paper.
Siana explained that uncovering these galaxies also helps bolster claims that hot stars in small galaxies pumped out enough radiation to ionize hydrogen by stripping off electrons. This process, called “reionization,” occurred about 13 billion years ago, within the first billion years after the Big Bang. Reionization made the universe transparent to light, allowing astronomers to look far back into time.
“Although the galaxies in our sample existed a few billion years after reionization, it’s presumed that galaxies like these, or possibly some of these galaxies, did play a big role in reionization,” Siana said.
The early galaxies do not look like the majestic spiral and elliptical galaxies seen in our galactic neighborhood.
“The gravitational lensing stretches out the apparent shape of the distant galaxies, resolving them,” Alavi said. “Without the lensing, some of the galaxies would be just point sources to Hubble.  We now have an idea about their sizes that previously were impossible to measure because the galaxies were unresolved.”
The Hubble analysis shows the galaxies are small, irregularly shaped objects measuring just a few thousand light-years across.
“Even when fully mature, these galaxies will be about one-tenth to one-hundredth the mass of our Milky Way,” Siana said.  “Because they are undergoing a firestorm of star birth, their light is dominated by the ultraviolet glow of fledgling stars.”
The research team used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to search for faint, star-forming galaxies in ultraviolet light, a reliable tracer of star birth.  The galaxies existed when the universe was undergoing a “baby boom” of star formation, estimated to have peaked between 9 billion and 12 billion years ago.
This strategy of surveying large numbers of background galaxies with deep observations of lensing clusters is being used in a new three-year Hubble survey, called the Frontier Fields.  Hubble astronomers are using Hubble to exploit the magnification powers of six massive galaxy clusters in a hunt for small galaxies that existed more than 12 billion to 13 billion years ago.
The galaxies discovered in these lensing surveys will be prime targets for the James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared observatory scheduled to launch in 2018. Through spectroscopy, Webb will divide the light from each galaxy into its constituent colors, yielding information on the star birth and chemical content of each galaxy.
Siana and Alavi were joined in the study by Alberto Dominguez and William R. Freeman at UC Riverside; Johan Richard at Université Lyon, France; Daniel P. Stark and Brant Robertson at the University of Arizona, Tucson; Claudia Scarlata at the University of Minnesota, Minn.; Harry I. Teplitz and Marc Rafelski at Caltech, Pasadena; and Lisa Kewley at the Australian National University.
The research was supported by NASA, through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

On the 2014 HUDF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_Field 
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/june/hubble-team-unveils-most-colorful-view-of-universe-captured-by-space-telescope/ 
http://www.space.com/26118-colorful-hubble-telescope-photo-universe-evolution.html 

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/  



11 July?
7:30PM
SBAS Monthly General Meeting
Topic:
Speaker:

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


17 July 2014
Club Meeting
Helioseismology
Edward Rhodes, USC
A1/1735
July 17 & 18 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2014
Revealing Saturn: Cassini's Tenth Year
Cassini’s findings have revolutionized our understanding of Saturn, its complex rings, the amazing assortment of moons and the planet’s dynamic magnetic environment. The robotic spacecraft arrived in 2004 after a 7-year flight from Earth, dropped a parachuted probe to study the atmosphere and surface of Saturn’s big moon Titan, and commenced making astonishing discoveries that continue today. Icy jets shoot from the tiny moon Enceladus; Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes and seas are dominated by liquid ethane and methane, and complex pre-biotic chemicals form in the atmosphere and rain to the surface. Cassini’s findings at Saturn have also fundamentally altered many of our concepts of how planets form around stars. Spilker will present highlights from 10 years of Cassini’s ambitious inquiry at Saturn.
Speaker:
Dr. Linda Spilker, Cassini Project Scientist

Locations:
 Thursday, July 17, 2014, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, July 18, 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.




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 July:


Moon: July 5 1st quarter, July 12 full, July 19 last quarter, July 26 new                 
Planets:  Mercury is visible in the dawn sky.  Venus is visible in dawn twilight.  Jupiter vanishes in the evening twilight early in the month.  Saturn is in the SW evening sky, setting after midnight, and Mars in the SW evening sky.

Other Events:

5 July
Public  Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm

6 July Mars 0.2deg S of Moon, occultation

12 July Mars 1.4deg N of Spica

 

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/


26 July?
SBAS out-of-town observing – contact Greg Benecke http://www.sbastro.net/.  
26 July
LAAS Dark Sky Night : Lockwood Valley (Steve Kufeld Astronomical Site; LAAS members and their guests only)

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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