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, September 4, 2014

2014 September

AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter September 2014

Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 1
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

Club Meeting Schedule:

18 Sept
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:  

For the Sept. 18 club mtg., please assemble at 11:45am in the A6 lobby (not A1/1735), from where we will proceed with Richard Rudy on a tour of the A6 Epod & new in-house-built telescope.

 

We’re still looking into scheduling another Mt. Wilson 60-inch session maybe in the Fall (we’ll see what our AEA budget allocation is).  But we must await the AEA budget allocation, as we’ve completely depleted our bank account.  Also, We’re also checking on the possibility of using Aerospace’s new 0.8m telescope at Mt. Wilson.


We’ve just discovered a long-lost Meade 2045 (portable) telescope from the previous incarnation of the club, that escaped the liquidation of 2002.  It turned up in Chantilly, where there was a small former branch of the club.  We’ll see if there’s any interest in starting up another club branch there, or else ship it here for our use.  We believe there is another such scope elsewhere – possibly in Colorado – and will see if we can track it down. 

Astronomy Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month

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

VIDEO:  Flying Past Neptune's Moon Triton  http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140826.html
Image Credit: Voyager 2, JPL, NASA; Digital composition: Paul Schenk (LPI, USRA)
Explanation: What would it look like to fly past Triton, the largest moon of planet Neptune? Only one spacecraft has ever done this -- and now, for the first time, images of this dramatic encounter have been gathered into a movie. On 1989 August 25, the Voyager 2 spacecraft shot through the Neptune system with cameras blazing. Triton is slightly smaller than Earth's Moon but has ice volcanoes and a surface rich in frozen nitrogen. The first sequence in the video shows Voyager's approach to Triton, which, despite its unusual green tint, appears in approximately true color. The mysterious terrain seen under the spacecraft soon changed from light to dark, with the terminator of night soon crossing underneath. After closest approach, Voyager pivoted to see the departing moon, now visible as a diminishing crescent. Next July, assuming all goes well, the robotic New Horizons spacecraft will make a similar flight past Pluto, an orb of similar size to Triton.

Milky Way over Yellowstone 
Image Credit & Copyright: Dave Lane
Explanation: The Milky Way was not created by an evaporating lake. The colorful pool of water, about 10 meters across, is known as Silex Spring and is located in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA. Illuminated artificially, the colors are caused by layers of bacteria that grow in the hot spring. Steam rises off the spring, heated by a magma chamber deep underneath known as the Yellowstone hotspot. Unrelated and far in the distance, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy arches high overhead, a band lit by billions of stars. The above picture is a 16-image panorama taken late last month. If the Yellowstone hotspot causes another supervolcanic eruption as it did 640,000 years ago, a large part of North America would be affected.
Arp 188 and the Tadpole's Tail 
Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing & Copyright: Joachim Dietrich
Explanation: Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation Draco. Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-years long and features massive, bright blue star clusters. One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy.

Collapse in Hebes Chasma on Mars 
Image Credit & Copyright: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
Explanation: What's happened in Hebes Chasma on Mars? Hebes Chasma is a depression just north of the enormous Valles Marineris canyon. Since the depression is unconnected to other surface features, it is unclear where the internal material went. Inside Hebes Chasma is Hebes Mensa, a 5 kilometer high mesa that appears to have undergone an unusual partial collapse -- a collapse that might be providing clues. The above image, taken by the robotic Mars Express spacecraft currently orbiting Mars, shows great details of the chasm and the unusual horseshoe shaped indentation in the central mesa. Material from the mesa appears to have flowed onto the floor of the chasm, while a possible dark layer appears to have pooled like ink on a downslope landing. A recent hypothesis holdsthat salty rock composes some lower layers in Hebes Chasma, with the salt dissolving in melted ice flows that drained through holes into an underground aquifer.
Star Trails Over Indonesia 
Image Credit & Licence: HuiChieh (my dark sky)
Explanation: Both land and sky were restless. The unsettled land included erupting Mount Semeru in the distance, the caldera of steaming Mount Bromo on the left, flowing fog, and the lights of moving cars along roads that thread between hills and volcanoes inBromo Tengger Semeru National Park in East Java, Indonesia. The stirring sky included stars circling the South Celestial Pole and a meteor streaking across the image right. The above 270-image composite was taken from King Kong Hill in mid-June over two hours, with a rising Moon lighting the landscape.
Astronomy News:

Orion rocks! Pebble-size particles may jump-start planet formation

Published: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 - 16:21 in Astronomy & Space
S. Schnee, et al.; B. Saxton, B. Kent (NRAO/AUI/NSF); We acknowledge the use of NASA's SkyView Facility located at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Rocky planets like Earth start out as microscopic bits of dust tinier than a grain of sand, or so theories predict. Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered that filaments of star-forming gas near the Orion Nebula may be brimming with pebble-size particles -- planetary building blocks 100 to 1,000 times larger than the dust grains typically found around protostars. If confirmed, these dense ribbons of rocky material may well represent a new, mid-size class of interstellar particles that could help jump-start planet formation.
"The large dust grains seen by the GBT would suggest that at least some protostars may arise in a more nurturing environment for planets," said Scott Schnee, an astronomer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia. "After all, if you want to build a house, it's best to start with bricks rather than gravel, and something similar can be said for planet formation."
The new GBT observations extend across the northern portion of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region that includes the famed Orion Nebula. The star-forming material in the section studied by the GBT, called OMC-2/3, has condensed into long, dust-rich filaments. The filaments are dotted with many dense knots known as cores. Some of the cores are just starting to coalesce while others have begun to form protostars -- the first early concentrations of dust and gas along the path to star formation. Astronomers speculate that in the next 100,000 to 1 million years, this area will likely evolve into a new star cluster. The OMC-2/3 region is located approximately 1,500 light-years from Earth and is roughly 10 light-years long.
Based on earlier maps of this region made with the IRAM 30 meter radio telescope in Spain, the astronomers expected to find a certain brightness to the dust emission when they observed the filaments at slightly longer wavelengths with the GBT.
Instead, the GBT discovered that the area was shining much brighter than expected in millimeter-wavelength light.
"This means that the material in this region has different properties than would be expected for normal interstellar dust," noted Schnee. "In particular, since the particles are more efficient than expected at emitting at millimeter wavelengths, the grains are very likely to be at least a millimeter, and possibly as large as a centimeter across, or roughly the size of a small Lego-style building block."
Though incredibly small compared to even the most modest of asteroids, dust grains on the order of a few millimeters to a centimeter are incredibly large for such young star-forming regions. Due to the unique environment in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, the researchers propose two intriguing theories for their origin.
The first is that the filaments themselves helped the dust grains grow to such unusual proportions. These regions, compared to molecular clouds in general, have lower temperatures, higher densities, and lower velocities -- all of which would encourage grain growth.
The second scenario is that the rocky particles originally grew inside a previous generation of cores or perhaps even protoplanetary disks. The material could then have escaped back into the surrounding molecular cloud rather than becoming part of the original newly forming star system.
"Rather than typical interstellar dust, these researchers appear to have detected vast streamers of gravel -- essentially a long and winding road in space," said NRAO astronomer Jay Lockman, who was not involved in these observations. "We've known about dust specks and we have known that there are things the size of asteroids and planets, but if we can confirm these results it would add a new population of rocky particles to interstellar space."
The most recent data were taken with the Green Bank Telescope's high frequency imaging camera, MUSTANG. These data were compared with earlier studies as well as temperature estimates obtain from observations of ammonia molecules in the clouds.
"Though our results suggest the presence of unexpectedly large dust grains, measuring the mass of dust is not a straightforward process and there could be other explanations for the bright signature we detected in the emission from the Orion Molecular Cloud," concluded Brian Mason, an astronomer at the NRAO and co-author on the paper. "Our team continues to study this fascinating area. Since it contains one of the highest concentrations of protostars of any nearby molecular cloud it will continue to excite the curiosity of astronomers."
A paper detailing these results is accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The GBT is the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope. Its location in the National Radio Quiet Zone and the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone protects the incredibly sensitive telescope from unwanted radio interference.
Later this year, the GBT will receive two new, more advanced high frequency cameras: MUSTANG-1.5, the even-more-sensitive successor to MUSTANG, and ARGUS, a camera designed for mapping the distribution of organic molecules in space.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Source: National Radio Astronomy Observatory



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/ 




5 Sept
7:30PM
SBAS Monthly General Meeting
Topic: Annual SBAS Members’ Astrophotography Contest
Speaker:

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


Sept. 11 & 12  The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2014
Studying Soil Moisture from Space – NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive mission
NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive, or SMAP, is a remote sensing mission designed to measure and map Earth's soil moisture distribution and freeze/thaw state with unprecedented accuracy, resolution, and coverage. Using a single satellite launched into a near-polar, low altitude orbit, SMAP's state-of-the-art radar and radiometer sensors are able to peer beneath clouds, vegetation, and other surface features to create global maps of these measurements every 2-3 days over a period of three years. Data from SMAP will be used in an extraordinary variety of important scientific applications and research, addressing weather forecasting and climate modeling, drought, flood and landslide predictions, agricultural productivity, and seasonal climate-related human health issues.
Speaker:
Dr. Sam W. Thurman, Deputy Project Manager
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Mission
Locations:
 Thursday, Sept 11, 2014, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, Sept 12, 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.



18 Sept
Club Meeting
A Tour of the new Aerospace E POD (A6) Telescope & Facility
Richard Rudy
Gather in A6 Lobby then to          E Pod

Observing:
The following data are from the 2014 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2014 Skygazer’s Almanac & monthly Sky at a Glance.

Current sun & moon rise/set/phase data for L.A.:  http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/usa/los-angeles

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

Sun, Moon & Planets for September:


Moon: Sept 2 1st quarter, Sept 9 full, Sept 16 last quarter, Sept 24  new              
Planets:  Mercury is only visible briefly after sunset in the W.  Venus is visible in E dawn twilight.  Jupiter rises early morning in east.  Saturn and Mars are in the SW evening sky, setting early evening.
Other Events:

 
13 Sept
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/


20 Sept
SBAS out-of-town observing – contact Greg Benecke http://www.sbastro.net/.  
21 Sept
Mercury at Greatest Eastern Elongation

23 Sept Equinox

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

28 Sept Saturn 0.7 deg S of Moon, occultation

?
Public  Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm


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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