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

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

Sunday, December 13, 2015

2015 December

AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter December  2015

Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 7
General Calendar p.9
    Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 9
    Observing p. 10
Useful Links p. 12
About the Club p. 13

Club News & Calendar.

Club Calendar

Club Meeting Schedule:

3 December
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
The Great Eclipse Expedition of 1991 – Mark Clayson & Corp. Colloquium Video

A1/1735

7 January
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Astronomy STEM – Nahum Melamed et al
A1/1735


4 February
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Hubble Operations, Morgan Bracken, GSFC
A1/1735


AEA Astronomy Club meetings are now on 1st  Thursdays at 11:45am.  For all of (except Aug. 6) 2015, the meeting room is A1/1735. 


Club News:  

Technical difficulties at the Dec. 3 club mtg. prevented the showing of the 1991 Corporate Colloquium on the Great Eclipse Expedition of 1991.  We will work on resolving them, and possibly show it at a later date, and/or upload it for your personal viewing on Aerolink.

2017 Eclipse Plans

There was considerable interest expressed at the Dec. 3 club mtg. to plan & prepare to go to centerline on Aug. 21, 2017Prime locations (favorable cloud climatology & distance from L.A.) appear to be just north of Idaho Falls, and north of Boise.  The former also has the draw of proximity to Yellowstone & Grand Tetons National Parks. 

Lessons from the 1991 club & company expedition to Baja were reviewed and committees formed for travel/accommodations, and a photo/observing pool to use our equipment and record the eclipse.  Mary Lee Wheaton, a Travel Club member who also helped with the 1991 travel & lodging, will head the travel/accommodations committee, and Mark Clayson will also serve on it.  David Taylor & Kirk Crawford volunteered for the photo/observing pool committee.  Additional volunteers on both committees are welcome. 

We will put out a general notice not only to the travel & camera/video clubs, but to all of Aerospace, and invite all interested in joining the expedition(s) (there may possibly be more than one group/destination) to provide their names, destination(s) of interest, flexibility on dates/duration, equipment/experience, travel mode(s) (drive, fly/drive, etc.), etc.

With 300 million Americans within a day or 2 drive of centerline, and widespread publicity already especially in the amateur community, lodging may quickly book near centerline.  Camping or RV-ing are other options, including in the national parks, and possibly dormitories at local universities.  Much of our equipment will likely need to be transported by car – to avoid the expense of buying sturdier cases for airline checked luggage.

Equipment that we tentatively would plan to use for the eclipse includes:  The Meade 10-inch SCT w. solar filter & video or CCD camera for partial phases, diamond ring, prominences & inner corona during totality; the 5-inch refractor (& get a new filter) & video or CCD camera for the same (& extended corona?); the H-alpha scope & video or CCD camera for partial phases & prominences; the DSLR (w. a new longer focal length telephoto) for extended corona, diamond ring, prominences?  The video camera (& CCD/eyepiece video?) may also display on a flatscreen TV or laptop for group viewing.  The Celestron scope may be used w. eyepiece camera.  The tabletop autotracker may be used for wide-angle panoramic/scenic shots w. another DSLR or pocket/smartphone/tablet camera, and the Backpack Observatory may be used w. eyepiece video.  All of these (except the H-alpha) may also be used for some night-time star party observations, as well as the 8- and 16-inch Dobsonians.


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


VIDEO:  Assembly of The International Space Station 
Explanation: It is the largest and most sophisticated object ever built off the Earth. It has taken numerous spaceflights and over a decade to construct. The International Space Station (ISS) is currently the premiere habitat for humans in Earth orbit, and an amalgamation of sophisticated orbiting laboratories that have examined everything from the formation of new materials and medicines created in microgravity -- to the limitations of the human body -- to thecomposition of the universe. This month, the ISS is celebrating 15 years of continuous human habitation. The ISS has been visited by astronauts from 15 countries, so far, and has international partners led by NASA (USA),Roscosmos (Russia), CSA (Canada), JAXA (Japan), and ESA (Europe). The featured animation shows the piece-by-piece construction of the ISS from 1998 to 2011. Spanning the length of a football field, the ISS can be seen as an unusually bright spot drifting slowly overhead by anyone who knows when and where to look.


VIDEO: Comet ISON Being Destroyed by the Sun 
Explanation: Most comets don't survive a close encounter with the Sun. Two years ago this month, though, Comet ISON was thought by some to be big enough to withstand its perilous sungrazing dive. The featured video shows the drama as it was recorded by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint mission of ESA and NASA. As many Earthlings watched in fascination, a bright area did emerge from closest approach, but it soon faded and dispersed. It is now assumed that no large fragments of Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) survived. Besides the comet, the active Sun is seen to eject puffs of plasma known as coronal mass ejections. Launched in 1995, sun-orbiting SOHOhas become a historic device in the discovery and tracking of comets known as sungrazers. Two months ago, a comet designated SOHO 3000 was named in honor of the record 3000th comet that was discovered on SOHO images, a total that amounts to about half of all known comets.


Earth and Milky Way from Space 
Image Credit: 
NASA, Scott Kelly
Explanation: Since November 2000, people have been living continuously on the International Space Station. To celebrate humanity's 15th anniversary off planet Earth, consider this snapshot from space of our galaxy and our home world posing together beyond the orbital outpost. The Milky Way stretches below the curve of Earth's limb in the scene that also records a faint red, extended airglow. The galaxy's central bulge appears with starfields cut by dark rifts of obscuring interstellar dust. The picture was taken by Astronaut Scott Kelly on August 9, 2015, the 135th day of his one-year mission in space.


Gravity's Grin 
Image Credit: X-ray - 
NASA / CXC / J. Irwin et al. ; Optical - NASA/STScI
Explanation: Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, published 100 years ago this month, predicted the phenomenon of gravitational lensing. And that's what gives these distant galaxies such a whimsical appearance, seen through the looking glass of X-ray and optical image data from the Chandra and Hubble space telescopes. Nicknamed the Cheshire Cat galaxy group, the group's two large elliptical galaxies are suggestively framed by arcs. The arcs are optical images of distant background galaxies lensed by the foreground group's total distribution of gravitational mass dominated by dark matter. In fact the two large elliptical "eye" galaxies represent the brightest members of their own galaxy groups which are merging. Their relative collisional speed of nearly 1,350 kilometers/second heats gas to millions of degrees producing the X-ray glow shown in purple hues. Curiouser about galaxy group mergers? The Cheshire Cat group grins in the constellation Ursa Major, some 4.6 billion light-years away.


Unusual Pits Discovered on Pluto 
Image Credit: 
NASA, Johns Hopkins U. APL, SwRI
Explanation: Why are there unusual pits on Pluto? The indentations were discovered during the New Horizons spacecraft's flyby of the dwarf planet in July. The largest pits span a kilometer across and dip tens of meters into a lake of frozen nitrogen, a lake that sprawls across Sputnik Planum, part of the famous light-colored heart-shaped region named Tombaugh Regio. Although most pits in the Solar System are created by impact craters, these depressionslook different -- many are similarly sized, densely packed, and aligned. Rather, it is thought that something has caused these specific areas of ice to sublimate and evaporate away. In fact, the lack of overlying impact craters indicates these pits formed relatively recently. Even though the robotic New Horizons is now off to a new destination, it continues to beam back to Earth new images and data from its dramatic encounter with Pluto.


A 212-Hour Exposure of Orion 
Image Credit & Copyright: 
Stanislav Volskiy, Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt
Explanation: The constellation of Orion is much more than three stars in a row. It is a direction in space that is rich with impressive nebulas. To better appreciate this well-known swath of sky, an extremely long exposure was taken over many clear nights in 2013 and 2014. After 212 hours of camera time and an additional year of processing, the featured 1400-exposure collage spanning over 40 times the angular diameter of the Moon emerged. Of the many interesting details that have become visible, one that particularly draws the eye is Barnard's Loop, the bright red circular filament arcing down from the middle. The Rosette Nebula is not the giant red nebula near the top of the image -- that is a larger but lesser known nebula known as Lambda Orionis. The Rosette Nebula is visible, though: it is the red and white nebula on the upper left. The bright orange star just above the frame center is Betelgeuse, while the bright blue star on the lower right is Rigel. Other famous nebulas visible include the Witch Head Nebula, the Flame Nebula, the Fox Fur Nebula, and, if you know just where to look, the comparatively small Horsehead Nebula. About those famous three stars that cross the belt of Orion the Hunter -- in this busy frame they can be hard to locate, but a discerning eye will find them just below and to the right of the image center.


An Unexpected Rocket Plume over San Francisco 
Image Credit & Copyright: 
Abe Blair (Abe Blair Gallery)
Explanation: What is that unusual light in the sky? A common question, this particular light was not only bright but moving and expanding. It appeared just as the astrophotographer and his friend were photographing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California against a more predictable night sky. They were not alone in seeing this unusual display -- at least hundreds of people in California reported a similar sight. The consensus of experienced sky observers was that the plume resulted from a rocket launch -- an explanation that was soon confirmed as an unpublicized test of a submarine-launched, unarmed, Trident II D5 nuclear missile. Such tests are not uncommon but do not usually occur just after sunset near a major metropolitan area -- when they are particularly noticeable to many people. Were plume images not posted to the Internet and quickly identified, such a sky spectacle might have been understood by some to be associated with more grandiose -- but incorrect -- explanations.


Astronomy News:

 

What is the universe made of?

Published: Wednesday, December 2, 2015 - 14:48 in Astronomy & Space

Related images

Credit: V.Springel, Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Garching bei München

Matter known as ordinary, which makes up everything we know, corresponds to only 5% of the Universe. Approximately half of this percentage still eluded detection. Numerical simulations made it possible to predict that the rest of this ordinary matter should be located in the large-scale structures that form the 'cosmic web' at temperatures between 100,000 and 10 million degrees. A team led by a researcher from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, observed this phenomenon directly. The research shows that the majority of the missing ordinary matter is found in the form of a very hot gas associated with intergalactic filaments. The article reporting this discovery is published in the journal Nature. Galaxies are formed when ordinary matter collapses then cools down. In order to understand the origin of this formation, it was vital to discover in what form and where the ordinary matter that we do not perceive -- known as the 'missing baryons' -- is found. To do this, the astrophysicists from UNIGE and the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) took an interest in Abell 2744, a massive cluster of galaxies with a complex distribution of dark and luminous matter at its center. They observed this cluster with the XMM space telescope, which is capable of detecting the signature of very hot gas due to its sensitivity to X-rays.

Hot gas at the core of the filaments
Large-scale galaxy surveys have shown that the distribution of ordinary matter in the Universe is not homogeneous. Instead, under the action of gravity, matter is concentrated into filamentary structures, forming a network of knots and links called the 'cosmic web'. The regions experiencing the highest gravitational force collapse and form the knots of the network, such as Abell 2744. Comparable to neural networks, these knots then connect to one another through filaments, wherein the researchers identified the presence of gas, and consequently, the missing baryons. The astrophysicists pointed XMM in the direction of the areas where they suspected to find the presence of filaments, and therefore, the presence of 10-million degree hot gas structures. For the first time, they were able to measure the temperature and density of these objects, and found that they corresponded to the predictions of the numerical models. For this reason, we now have a grasp of the form taken by the missing ordinary matter.
Will the amount of ordinary matter in the universe soon be known?
This research is a very significant validation of the models of galaxy formation in the Universe. "Now we must verify that the discovery of Abell 2744's missing baryons is applicable to the entire universe. This will consist in studying these filamentary regions in detail, and measuring their temperature distribution and the various atoms that compose them, in order to understand how many heavy elements there are in the universe," says Dominique Eckert, led scientist. In fact, if the researchers manage to measure the atoms in these filaments, they will be able to estimate the number of heavy nuclei formed by stars since the beginning of the universe. In order to deepen this research, the European Space Agency (ESA) is in the process of developing a new space telescope. Switzerland and the researchers from UNIGE are especially involved in this project. The telescope, named Athena, should be operational in the mid-2020s.

Source: Université de Genève

 


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 HaynieClick here for more information.

3 December
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
The Great Eclipse Expedition of 1991 – Mark Clayson & Corp. Colloquium Video

A1/1735










4 Dec
Friday Night 7:30PM SBAS  Monthly General Meeting
in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance)
Friday Night 7:30PM Monthly General Meeting
Topic:   "The Great Debate;The Size and Shape of the Universe” Speaker: Stephen Naftilan, Claremont College
November 5 & 6 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2015

The InSight Mission: Journey to the Center of Mars

December 4
The InSight mission to Mars, the twelfth mission in NASA's Discovery Program, will launch in March of 2016, landing six months later in Elysium Planitia. Unlike previous missions to Mars, which have focused on surface features and chemistry, InSight aims to explore the interior of the planet down to its very core. InSight will investigate the fundamental processes of terrestrial planet formation and evolution by performing the first comprehensive surface-based geophysical measurements on Mars. It will provide key information on the composition and structure of an Earth-like planet that has gone through most of the evolutionary stages of the Earth up to plate tectonics. 

The planet Mars is a keystone in our quest for understanding the early processes of terrestrial planet formation and evolution. Unlike the Earth, its overall structure appears to be relatively unchanged since a few hundred million years after formation. Unlike the Moon, it is large enough that the pressure-temperature conditions within the planet span an appreciable fraction of the terrestrial planet range. Thus the large-scale chemical and structural evidence within Mars should tell us a great deal about the processes of planetary differentiation and heat transport. 

InSight will pursue these goals using seismology, precision tracking, and heat flow measurements. The limitation to a single location provides challenges to traditional seismology, which can be overcome with the application of single-station techniques that have been developed for terrestrial observations, and to heat flow interpretation, which is spatially variable and thus would prefer many distributed measurements.
Speaker:
Dr. Bruce Banerdt, InSight Principal Investigator, JPL

Webcast:
Click here to watch the event live on Ustream (or archived after the event)
Locations:
Thursday, (NONE), 2015, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium
at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, Dec. 4, 2015, 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.


14 Dec
Griffith Observatory
Event Horizon Theater
8:00 PM to 10:00 PM

7 January
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Astronomy STEM – Nahum Melamed et al
A1/1735


Observing:
The following data are from the 2015 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2015 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

Sun, Moon & Planets for December:



Moon: Dec 3 last quarter, Dec 11 new, Dec 18 1st quarter, Dec 25 full                 
Planets: Saturn reappears in dawn twilight late in Dec.  Jupiter rises in the east in late evening.  Venus & Mars rise and are visible in the East a few hours before sunrise. Mercury is well-placed in the evening sky after Dec 7.
Other Events:

1 December 2015 1:58 AM Asteroid Gaspra Occults TYC-1862-116-1 Watch a faint 11th magnitude star appear to blink as a faint asteroid passes in front of it.

 
5 Dec
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/

7 December Moon Occults Venus Occultation begins at about 8 AM and ends at about 9:55 AM. If you get up to find Venus before dawn, expect to see Comet Catalina nearby. It’s supposed to be a good pre-dawn binocular comet through December.

12 Dec
SBAS out-of-town Dark Sky observing – contact Greg Benecke to coordinate a location. http://www.sbastro.net/.  

12 Dec
LAAS Private dark sky  Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm

14 Dec Geminid meteors peak

2,9,16,23,30 Dec
LAAS The Garvey Ranch Observatory is open to the public every Wednesday evening from 7:30 PM to 10 PM. Go into the dome to use the 8 Inch Refractor or observe through one of our telescopes on the lawn. Visit our workshop to learn how you can build your own telescope, grind your own mirror, or sign up for our free seasonal astronomy classes.

Call 213-673-7355 for further information.
Time: 7:30 PM - 10:00 PM
Location: Garvey Ranch Obs. , 781 Orange Ave., Monterey Park, CA 91755

19 Dec
LAAS Public  Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm

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.

29 December Mercury at its Greatest Eastern Elongation

Internet Links:

Telescope, Binocular & Accessory Buying Guides


General


Regional (Southern California, Washington, D.C. & Colorado)


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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