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)

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

2017 January

AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter January 2017

Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 8
General Calendar p. 11
    Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 11
    Observing p. 13
Useful Links p. 15
About the Club p. 16

Club News & Calendar.

Club Calendar

Club Meeting Schedule:

5 Jan
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Pizza Party & Online Astronomy
(A1/1735)
2 Feb
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Speaker TBD
(A1/1735)
AEA Astronomy Club meetings are now on 1st  Thursdays at 11:45 am (except Feb. 2 which will start at 12:00).  For all of 2016, the meeting room is A1/1735. 


Club News:  
Here’s a photo taken by Jay Glowacki:



 Information:
From the 6th floor balcony of a resort in Ka'anapali, Maui, Hawaii on Jan 2, 2017 at 6:46 pm.
In the upper left, from top down, is Mars (tiny dot), the moon and Venus.
In the foreground is the resort bldg and palm trees.
In the middle, from the bottom up, is the Pacific Ocean, the island of Lanai, and clouds, some of which llghtly covered the planet conjunction area.


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

VIDEO:  Traces of the Sun https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161221.html
Video Credit & Copyright: György Bajmóczy
Explanation: This year the December Solstice is today, December 21, at 10:44 UT, the first day of winter in the north and summer in the south. To celebrate, watch this amazing timelapse video tracing the Sun's apparent movement over an entire year from Hungary. During the year, a fixed video camera captured an image every minute. In total, 116,000 exposures follow the Sun's position across the field of view, starting from the 2015 June 21 solstice through the 2016 June 20 solstice. The intervening 2015 December 22 solstice is at the bottom of the frame. The timelapse sequences constructed show the Sun's movement over one day to begin with, followed by traces of the Sun's position during the days of one year, solstice to solstice. Gaps in the daily curves are due to cloud cover. The video ends with stunning animation sequences of analemmas, those figure-8 curves you get by photographing the Sun at the same time each day throughout a year, stepping across planet Earth's sky.
Curiosity Surveys Lower Mount Sharp on Mars 
 Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS;
Explanation: If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? If you were the Curiosity rover, then just last month you would have contemplated the featured image -- a breathtaking panorama of the lower portion of Mount Sharp. The colors have been adjusted to mimic lighting familiar to Earthlings. Surveyed here was a rocky plain before increasingly high rolling hills. The rounded hills in the middle distance, called the Sulfate Unit, are Curiosity's highest currently planned destination. One reason these hills are interesting is because sulfates are an energy source for some micro-organisms. The immediate path forward, though, was toward the southeast on the left part of the image.

Aurora over Jupiter's South Pole from Juno 
 Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, ASI, INAF, JIRAM
Explanation: Why is there a glowing oval over Jupiter's South Pole? Aurora. Near the closest part of its first pass near Jupiter in August, NASA's robotic spacecraft Juno captured this dramatic infrared image of a bright auroral ring. Auroras are caused by high energy particles from the Sun interacting with a planet's magnetic field, and ovals around magnetic poles are common. Data from Juno are giving preliminary indications that Jupiter's magnetic field and aurorae are unexpectedly powerful and complex. Unfortunately, a computer glitch caused Juno to go into safe mode during its October pass near the Jovian giant in October. That glitch has now been resolved, making Juno ready for its next pass over Jupiter's cloud tops this coming Sunday.

NGC 4696: Filaments around a Black Hole 
 Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, A. Fabian
Explanation: What's happening at the center of elliptical galaxy NGC 4696? There, long tendrils of gas and dust have been imaged in great detail as shown by this recently released image from the Hubble Space Telescope. These filaments appear to connect to the central region of the galaxy, a region thought occupied by a supermassive black hole. Speculation holds that this black hole pumps out energy that heats surrounding gas, pushes out cooler filaments of gas and dust, and shuts down star formation. Balanced by magnetic fields, these filaments then appear to spiral back in toward and eventually circle the central black hole. NGC 4696 is the largest galaxy in the Centaurus Cluster of Galaxies, located about 150 million light years from Earth. The featured image shows a region about 45,000 light years across.

A Triple Star is Born 
Image Credit: Bill Saxton, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NRAO/AUI/NSF - Publication: John Tobin (Univ. Oklahoma/Leiden) et al.
Explanation: A triple star system is forming, enshrouded within this dusty natal disk some 750 light-years away in the Perseus molecular cloud. Imaged at millimeter wavelengths by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, the extreme close-up shows two protostars separated by a mere 61 AU (1 AU is the Earth-Sun distance) with a third 183 AU from the central protostar. The ALMA image also reveals a clear spiral structure indicating instability and fragmentation led to the multiple protostellar objects within the disk. Astronomers estimate that the system, cataloged as L1448 IRS3B, is less than 150,000 years old. Captured at an early phase, the starforming scenario is likely not at all uncommon, since almost half of all sun-like stars have at least one companion.

The Extraordinary Spiral in LL Pegasi 
 Image Credit: ESA, Hubble, R. Sahai (JPL), NASA
Explanation: What created the strange spiral structure on the left? No one is sure, although it is likely related to a star in a binary star system entering the planetary nebula phase, when its outer atmosphere is ejected. The huge spiral spans about a third of a light year across and, winding four or five complete turns, has a regularity that is without precedent. Given the expansion rate of the spiral gas, a new layer must appear about every 800 years, a close match to the time it takes for the two stars to orbit each other. The star system that created it is most commonly known as LL Pegasi, but also AFGL 3068. The unusual structure itself has been cataloged as IRAS 23166+1655. The featured image was taken in near-infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope. Why the spiral glows is itself a mystery, with a leading hypothesis being illumination by light reflected from nearby stars.

Shell Game in the LMC 
Image Credit & Copyright: John Gleason
Explanation: An alluring sight in southern skies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is seen here through narrowband filters. The filters are designed to transmit only light emitted by ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Ionized by energetic starlight, the atoms emit their characteristic light as electrons are recaptured and the atom transitions to a lower energy state. As a result, this false color image of the LMC seems covered with shell-shaped clouds of ionized gas surrounding massive, young stars. Sculpted by the strong stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation, the glowing clouds, dominated by emission from hydrogen, are known as H II (ionized hydrogen) regions. Itself composed of many overlapping shells, the Tarantula Nebula is the large star forming region at top center. A satellite of our Milky Way Galaxy, the LMC is about 15,000 light-years across and lies a mere 180,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado.




Astronomy News:
(from http://esciencenews.com/topics/astronomy.space)

Mars Ice Deposit Holds as Much Water as Lake Superior


This vertically exaggerated view shows scalloped depressions in a part of Mars where such textures prompted researchers to check for buried ice, using ground-penetrating radar aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
› Full image and caption
Fast Facts:
› Water ice makes up half or more of an underground layer in a large region of Mars about halfway from the equator to the north pole.
› The amount of water in this deposit is about as much as in Lake Superior. It was assessed using a radar aboard a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars.
› This research advances understanding about Mars' history and identifies a possible resource for future astronauts.

Frozen beneath a region of cracked and pitted plains on Mars lies about as much water as what's in Lake Superior, largest of the Great Lakes, researchers using NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have determined.

Scientists examined part of Mars' Utopia Planitia region, in the mid-northern latitudes, with the orbiter's ground-penetrating Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument. Analyses of data from more than 600 overhead passes with the onboard radar instrument reveal a deposit more extensive in area than the state of New Mexico. The deposit ranges in thickness from about 260 feet (80 meters) to about 560 feet (170 meters), with a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, mixed with dust or larger rocky particles.

At the latitude of this deposit -- about halfway from the equator to the pole -- water ice cannot persist on the surface of Mars today. It sublimes into water vapor in the planet's thin, dry atmosphere. The Utopia deposit is shielded from the atmosphere by a soil covering estimated to be about 3 to 33 feet (1 to 10 meters) thick.

"This deposit probably formed as snowfall accumulating into an ice sheet mixed with dust during a period in Mars history when the planet's axis was more tilted than it is today," said Cassie Stuurman of the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the lead author of a report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Mars today, with an axial tilt of 25 degrees, accumulates large amounts of water ice at the poles. In cycles lasting about 120,000 years, the tilt varies to nearly twice that much, heating the poles and driving ice to middle latitudes. Climate modeling and previous findings of buried, mid-latitude ice indicate that frozen water accumulates away from the poles during high-tilt periods.

Martian Water as a Future Resource

The name Utopia Planitia translates loosely as the "plains of paradise." The newly surveyed ice deposit spans latitudes from 39 to 49 degrees within the plains. It represents less than one percent of all known water ice on Mars, but it more than doubles the volume of thick, buried ice sheets known in the northern plains. Ice deposits close to the surface are being considered as a resource for astronauts.

"This deposit is probably more accessible than most water ice on Mars, because it is at a relatively low latitude and it lies in a flat, smooth area where landing a spacecraft would be easier than at some of the other areas with buried ice," said Jack Holt of the University of Texas, a co-author of the Utopia paper who is a SHARAD co-investigator and has previously used radar to study Martian ice in buried glaciers and the polar caps.

The Utopian water is all frozen now. If there were a melted layer -- which would be significant for the possibility of life on Mars -- it would have been evident in the radar scans. However, some melting can't be ruled out during different climate conditions when the planet's axis was more tilted. "Where water ice has been around for a long time, we just don't know whether there could have been enough liquid water at some point for supporting microbial life," Holt said.

Utopia Planitia is a basin with a diameter of about 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers), resulting from a major impact early in Mars' history and subsequently filled. NASA sent the Viking 2 Lander to a site near the center of Utopia in 1976. The portion examined by Stuurman and colleagues lies southwest of that long-silent lander.

Use of the Italian-built SHARAD instrument for examining part of Utopia Planitia was prompted by Gordon Osinski at Western University in Ontario, Canada, a co-author of the study. For many years, he and other researchers have been intrigued by ground-surface patterns there such as polygonal cracking and rimless pits called scalloped depressions -- "like someone took an ice-cream scoop to the ground," said Stuurman, who started this project while a student at Western.

Clue from Canada

In the Canadian Arctic, similar landforms are indicative of ground ice, Osinski noted, "but there was an outstanding question as to whether any ice was still present at the Martian Utopia or whether it had been lost over the millions of years since the formation of these polygons and depressions."

The large volume of ice detected with SHARAD advances understanding about Mars' history and identifies a possible resource for future use.

"It's important to expand what we know about the distribution and quantity of Martian water," said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "We know early Mars had enough liquid water on the surface for rivers and lakes. Where did it go? Much of it left the planet from the top of the atmosphere. Other missions have been examining that process. But there's also a large quantity that is now underground ice, and we want to keep learning more about that."

Joe Levy of the University of Texas, a co-author of the new study, said, "The ice deposits in Utopia Planitia aren't just an exploration resource, they're also one of the most accessible climate change records on Mars. We don't understand fully why ice has built up in some areas of the Martian surface and not in others. Sampling and using this ice with a future mission could help keep astronauts alive, while also helping them unlock the secrets of Martian ice ages."

SHARAD is one of six science instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which began its prime science phase 10 years ago this month. The mission's longevity is enabling studies of features and active processes all around Mars, from subsurface to upper atmosphere. The Italian Space Agency provided the SHARAD instrument and Sapienza University of Rome leads its operations. The Planetary Science Institute, based in Tucson, Arizona, leads U.S. involvement in SHARAD. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the orbiter mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver built the spacecraft and supports its operations.


 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.  . Click here for more information.
5 Jan
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Pizza Party & Online Astronomy
(A1/1735)


6 Jan
Friday Night 7:30PM SBAS  Monthly General Meeting
in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance)
Topic:  “IMAX: Journey to Space” A Look at the Future of Space Exploration

None in Jan
LAAS LAAS General Meeting.
Griffith Observatory
Event Horizon Theater
8:00 PM to 10:00 PM

January 13 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2017

Exoplanets: The Quest for Strange New Worlds
Planets orbiting other stars ("exoplanets") have become an important field of astronomical study over the past two and a half decades. Recent findings from NASA's Kepler mission suggest that exoplanets are ubiquitous, i.e. nearly every star you see in the night sky probably has exoplanets orbiting it. The number of confirmed exoplanets is now a few thousand. Their discoveries have yielded terms that would have sounded alien to astronomers before the 1990's: Hot Jupiters, Pulsar planets, Super-Earths, Mini-Neptunes, Circumbinary planets. Trends are emerging among exoplanet populations which put our own solar system in context, and most exoplanetary systems appear to be very unlike our own. I'll present a brief history of exoplanet discoveries, the story of the transiting “super-Saturn” extrasolar ring system J1407b (a candidate moon-forming disk around a young giant planet), and summarize NASA's ongoing and future plans to discover and characterize "strange new worlds."
Speaker:
Dr. Eric Mamajek, Deputy Program Chief Scientist, NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program, JPL

Webcast:
Click here to watch the event live on Ustream (or archived after the event)
Locations:
[no Thursday event this time]
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, Jan 13, 2016, 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.



5 Jan
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Pizza Party & Online Astronomy
(A1/1735)
13 January

SBAS Friday Evening  7:30 PM Monthly General Meeting
Topic:   TBD Speaker: TBD

22 Jan. Emeritus Prof. Bruce Runnegar

The Cryogenian, coldest time in Earth History

Location: UCLA, Slichter 3853
Time: 2:30PM
We are now in (and probably leaving) one of the coldest periods in Earth history. Previous icehouse intervals occurred about 300, 700 and 2000 million years ago. During one of these periods, the Cryogenian, glacial ice extended to sea level in the tropics. We shall discuss this so-called Snowball Earth event in terms of its origin, and its effects on our planet and its life. Image credit: Chris Butler/SPL

2 Feb
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Speaker TBD
(A1/1735)


Observing:

The following data are from the 2016 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2016 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 January:

  

Moon: Jan 5 1st quarter, Jan 12 full, Jan 19 last quarter, Jan 28 new                    
Planets: Venus& Mars are visible after dusk.  Mercury & Saturn are before dawn. Jupiter is up late night to dawn.
Other Events:

3 January Quadrantids Meteor Shower Peak A minor shower that occasionally has some high peaks. ZHRs vary from 80 to more than 300/hour

7 Jan
LAAS Public  Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm


4,11,18,25 Jan
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

12 January Venus at Greatest Eastern Elongation Venus is also passing within 0.4o of Neptune. See both of them in the same FOV!

19 January Mercury at Greatest Western Elongation


 
21 Jan
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/


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


28 Jan
LAAS Private dark sky  Star Party

31 Jan Mars, Venus & crescent moon within a 6 degree circle.

Internet Links:

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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