2017 February

AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter February 2017

Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 6
General Calendar p. 14

    Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 14
    Observing p. 17

Useful Links p. 18
About the Club p. 19

Club News & Calendar.

Club Calendar

Club Meeting Schedule:

2 Feb	AEA Astronomy Club Meeting	The Planet Vulcan, David Nakamoto	(A1/1735)
2 March	AEA Astronomy Club Meeting	TBD	(A1/1735)
6 April	AEA Astronomy Club Meeting	Pizza & Gemini (Exo-)Planet Imager, Sloane Wiktorowicz, Aerospace	(A1/1735)

AEA Astronomy Club meetings are now on 1^st  Thursdays at 11:45 am (except Feb. 2 which will start at 12:00).  For all of 2017, the meeting room is A1/1735. 

Club News:  

We are requesting the night of Sept. 16 (3 days from new moon) on the Mt. Wilson 100-inch telescope this year, and will begin taking reservations company-wide when confirmed after Feb. 6.  Astronomy Club members will have several days for preferential treatment before the company-wide advertisement.

We have received the annual AEA budget allotment, to the amount requested, and will now make final determination as to purchases to be made, especially considering the Aug. 21 eclipse expedition.

Jim Edwards continues to look for possible alien signals from exoplanets, as he described several years ago in a club presentation.  Here he shows some of his data.  No aliens this time, but he’s definitely detecting exoplanet transits!  The transits are times he postulates aliens may choose for sending optical signals in the direction of other habitable planets, and he postulates that H-alpha would be a good choice of wavelength.

“So I reduced the H-alpha filter image set in the same manner as I did the clear filter image set shared several days ago.  I was able to kludge a means by which to present the results on the same chart but it ain't "pretty" but gets the job done--- see attached image.  The clear data is the red circles, the H-alpha data is the green triangles(?), corresponding to 15 sec and 180 second exposures, respectively.

“Bottom line: the H-alpha images show pretty much the same as the clear images (ie, the exo-planet transit across the star is readily visible in both) such that no discernible coded SETI beacon is readily apparent (what a surprise!).  Remember, this is purely a proof of concept experiment... this run cost me some $66 using a remotely controlled 10" telescope.  But it worked as predicted--- yay!!!

“I'd now like to do the same thing but using a much bigger scope (maybe 20" aka 1/2 meter) to exclusively collect the H-alpha data and a smaller scope running in parallel to collect the clear data (the 10" was very suitable for this but, lol, bigger is always better).  Such a run would probably cost me several hundred dollars (maybe pushing $1000 to work the full transit rather than just the half transit I collected in this experiment), which is more than I'm willing to invest of my own money at this particular time (or probably ever).  Maybe get a grant?!

“I'm rather pleased.  Of course, further refinement of even my current data set is absolutely possible but at diminishing returns for appreciably more effort.  Maybe I'll tinker around with it, dunno.

“Pretty exciting!!!”

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

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

VIDEO:  Geostationary Highway through Orion

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49w-veb3jSc
 Image Credit & Copyright: James A. DeYoung

Explanation: Put a satellite in a circular orbit about 42,000 kilometers from the center of the Earth and it will orbit once in 24 hours. Because that matches Earth's rotation period, it is known as a geosynchronous orbit. If that orbit is also in the plane of the equator, the satellite will hang in the sky over a fixed location in a geostationary orbit. As predicted in the 1940s by futurist Arthur C. Clarke, geostationary orbits are in common use for communication and weather satellites, a scenario now well-known to astroimagers. Deep images of the night sky made with telescopes that follow the stars can also pick up geostationary satellites glinting in sunlight still shining far above the Earth's surface. Because they all move with the Earth's rotation against the background of stars, the satellites leave trails that seem to follow a highway across the celestial landscape. The phenomenon was captured last month in this video showing several satellites in geostationary orbit crossing the famous Orion Nebula.

GOES-16: Moon over Planet Earth 
 Image Credit: NOAA, NASA

Explanation: Launched last November 19 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the satellite now known as GOES-16 can now observe planet Earth from a geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above the equator. Its Advanced Baseline Imager captured this contrasting view of Earth and a gibbous Moon on January 15. The stark and airless Moon is not really the focus of GOES-16, though. Capable of providing a high resolution full disk image of Earth every 15 minutes in 16 spectral channels, the new generation satellite's instrumentation is geared to provide sharper, more detailed views of Earth's dynamic weather systems and enable more accurate weather forecasting. Like previous GOES weather satellites, GOES-16 will use the moon over our fair planet as a calibration target.

Cassini's Grand Finale Tour at Saturn 
 Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech

Explanation: Cassini is being prepared to dive into Saturn. The robotic spacecraft that has been orbiting and exploring Saturn for over a decade will end its mission in September with a spectacular atmospheric plunge. Pictured here is a diagram of Cassini's remaining orbits, each taking about one week. Cassini is scheduled to complete a few months of orbits that will take it just outside Saturn's outermost ring F. Then, in April, Titan will give Cassini a gravitational pull into Proximal orbits, the last of which, on September 15, will impact Saturn and cause the spacecraft to implode and melt. Cassini's Grand Finale orbits are designed to record data and first-ever views from inside the rings -- between the rings and planet -- as well as some small moons interspersed in the rings. Cassini's demise is designed to protect any life that may occur around Saturn or its moons from contamination by Cassini itself.

Daphnis the Wavemaker 
 Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Plunging close to the outer edges of Saturn's rings, on January 16 the Cassini spacecraft captured this closest yet view of Daphnis. About 8 kilometers across and orbiting within the bright ring system's Keeler gap, the small moon is making waves. The 42-kilometer wide outer gap is foreshortened in the image by Cassini's viewing angle. Raised by the influenced of the small moon's weak gravity as it crosses the frame from left to right, the waves are formed in the ring material at the edge of the gap. A faint wave-like trace of ring material is just visible trailing close behind Daphnis. Remarkable details on Daphnis can also be seen, including a narrow ridge around its equator, likely an accumulation of particles from the ring.

The Matter of the Bullet Cluster 
 Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/ M. Markevitch et al.; 
Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/ D.Clowe et al. 
Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.

Explanation: What's the matter with the Bullet Cluster? This massive cluster of galaxies (1E 0657-558) creates gravitational lens distortions of background galaxies in a way that has been interpreted as strong evidence for the leading theory: that dark matter exists within. Different recent analyses, though, indicate that a less popular alternative -- modifying gravity-- could explain cluster dynamics without dark matter, and provide a more likely progenitor scenario as well. Currently, the two scientific hypotheses are competing to explain the observations: it's invisible matter versus amended gravity. The duel is dramatic as a clear Bullet-proof example of dark matter would shatter the simplicity of modified gravity theories. For the near future, the battle over the Bullet cluster is likely to continue as new observations, computer simulations, and analyses are completed. The featured image is aHubble/Chandra/Magellan composite with red depicting the X-rays emitted by hot gas, and blue depicting the suggested separated dark matter distribution.

Sentinels of a Northern Sky 
 Image Credit & Copyright: Pierre Destribats

Explanation: Who guards the north? The featured picture was taken last March in Finnish Lapland where weather can include sub-freezing temperatures and driving snow. Surreal landscapes sometimes result, where white alien-looking sentinels seem to patrol the landscape. In actuality though, the aliens are snow-covered trees, and the red hut they seem to be guarding is an outhouse. Far in the distance, behind this uncommon Earthly vista, is a beautifulnight sky which includes a green aurora, bright stars, and streaks of orbiting satellites. Of course, in the spring, the trees thaw and Lapland looks much different.

Astronomy News:

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

[Note:  “This is actually one of 3 very similar instruments, where we commissioned one of them (Gemini Planet Imager, Gemini South 8-m) in Dec 2014 and the other (SPHERE, VLT 8-m) was commissioned a year later. The field's getting crowded with them and they're all amazing!

Sloane Wiktorowicz, Ph.D., The Aerospace Corp.]

New Detective Instrument Captures Chemical Signatures of Planets

http://subarutelescope.org/Topics/2016/11/09/index.html

November 9, 2016

A team of scientists and engineers led by Princeton University researchers recently reported the successful operation of a new instrument for the Subaru Telescope that will allow astronomers to make direct observations and take spectra of planets orbiting nearby stars.

The instrument, dubbed CHARIS (Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph), was designed and built by a team led by Professor N. Jeremy Kasdin. It allows astronomers to isolate light from planets larger than Jupiter going around a star other than the Sun and then analyze the light to determine the planets' atmospheric constituents. The recent observation is known in the astronomical community as a "first light," a first test of the instrument on the telescope to capture light from the universe that demonstrates it is operating successfully (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Data from CHARIS instrument during its commissioning observation run clearly shows multiple planets around a star HR 8799. (Credit: CHARIS/Princeton Team and NAOJ)

"We couldn't have been more pleased by the results," said Kasdin. "CHARIS exceeded all of our expectations. I can't praise our team enough for their extremely hard work and dedication that made CHARIS a success. It is on track to be available for science observations starting in February, 2017."

CHARIS is part of a massive effort in astronomy to find and analyze planets orbiting distant stars. Beginning with the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1995 and greatly accelerated by the recent results from NASA's Kepler space observatory, researchers over the past two decades have identified more than three thousands of such exoplanets. But nearly all of those observations rely on using minute changes in stellar light to identify the presence of planets. Although remarkably successful in determining the presence of planets, those observations cannot tell scientists much about the planets themselves.

More recent projects have demonstrated the ability to channel light coming from the planets and separate it from the light shining directly from its star. Those efforts will allow scientists to examine the light and determine the chemical makeup of the planet's atmosphere in the same way that chemists use the spectrum of light to analyze the composition of material in a lab. The CHARIS project is part of that effort. Currently, CHARIS is a unique ground-based spectrograph searching for exoplanets in the northern hemisphere and the most powerful one in the world, the project member says.

"CHARIS is a key addition to the growing exoplanet imaging and characterization capabilities at Subaru Telescope," said Olivier Guyon, the leader of the adaptive optics program at Subaru Telescope and a faculty member at the University of Arizona. "With CHARIS spectra we can now do a lot more than simply detect planets: we can measure their temperatures and atmosphere compositions."

The CHARIS project is part of a long-term collaboration among Princeton University, the University of Tokyo and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, which operates the Subaru Telescope located on Maunakea, Hawaii. The CHARIS instrument was assembled at Princeton University under the direction of Tyler Groff formerly at Princeton who now works for NASA.

"By analyzing the spectrum of a planet, we can really understand a lot about the planet," Groff said. "You can see specific features that can allow you to understand the mass, the temperature, the age of the planet."

The spectrograph is sealed in a 500 pound container measuring 30 inches by 30 inches by 12 inches. The research team took about five years to assemble it, which operates at temperatures between 70 and 100 degrees Kelvin (-333 to -280 degrees Fahrenheit). The assembly includes 9 mirrors, 5 filters, 2 prism assemblies and a microlens array.

The spectrograph sits behind a carefully assembled device called a coronograph, which channels light from the telescope and uses special patterns to separate the light from a star and the light emitted from orbiting planets. It is a bit like picking out a home-run baseball in front of a floodlight from hundreds of miles away. The high contrast is key, which is enabled by SCExAO (Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics) at the Subaru Telescope. The combination of CHARIS and SCExAO makes the overall system the most powerful tool in the world for studying other worlds. Dr. Nemanja Jovanovic in Guyon's team was a lead for integrating CHARIS with SCExAO (Figure 2). Guyon summarize the integration process was very smooth, "thanks to years of preparation and hard work on both the SCExAO and CHARIS side." The professional work of the staff in the Instrument Division also greatly contributed to the mounting of CHARIS.

Figure 2: CHARIS (Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph, the red box) is attached to SCExAO (Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics, the black box) at the Nasmyth focus platform of the Subaru Telescope. (Credit: CHARIS/Princeton Team and NAOJ)

CHARIS has a relatively narrow field of view of about 2 arc seconds of the sky. For comparison, the full moon seen from earth is about 1,800 arc seconds. But it has the ability to make images across a very wide band of light, allowing for detailed analysis of anything in its field.

"We tested the device on Neptune, but you cannot fit the entire planet Neptune on our detector! The imager is looking at such a fine field of view to reveal the details (Figure 3)," Groff said. That is why the detector was able to make interesting observations of clouds floating across the planet's surface.

Figure 3: Vapor clouds moving across a section of the planet Neptune captured in the CHARIS’s view during its commissioning observation run. (Credit: CHARIS/Princeton Team and NAOJ)

Groff said there has been a great deal of interest in the project in the astronomical community and the principal investigators are now reviewing research proposals. "There is a lot of excitement," he said. "CHARIS is going to open for science in February 2017 to everyone."

The CHARIS project was the work of a large team of researchers. Jeremy Kasdin of Princeton University and Masahiko Hayashi of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan are the principal investigators. In addition to Tyler Groff, other team-members included: Michael Galvin, Michael Carr, Craig Loomis, Norman Jarosik, Johnny Greco, Robert Lupton, Edwin Turner, James Gunn and Gillian Knapp of Princeton University; MaryAnne Limbach of Limbach Optics; Timothy Brandt of the Institute for Advanced Study; and Jeffrey Chilcote of the University of Toronto. Olivier Guyon, Nemanja Jovanovic, Naruhisa Takato are at the Subaru Telescope, and Motohide Tamura is at the University of Tokyo. This project was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas "New Frontiers of Extrasolar Planets: Exploring Terrestrial Planets" (2302).

Related Articles:

·         Earth-bound instrument analyzes light from planets circling distant stars

·         New Exoplanet-hunting Camera to Help Search for Life Outside Our Solar System

·         CHARIS website

·         SCExAO website

Farthest stars in Milky Way might be ripped from another galaxy

In this computer-generated image, a red oval marks the disk of our Milky Way galaxy and a red dot shows the location of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. The yellow circles represent stars that have been ripped from the Sagittarius dwarf and flung far across space. Five of the 11 farthest known stars in our galaxy were probably stolen this way.

Credit: Marion Dierickx / CfA

The 11 farthest known stars in our galaxy are located about 300,000 light-years from Earth, well outside the Milky Way's spiral disk. New research by Harvard astronomers shows that half of those stars might have been ripped from another galaxy: the Sagittarius dwarf. Moreover, they are members of a lengthy stream of stars extending one million light-years across space, or 10 times the width of our galaxy.

"The star streams that have been mapped so far are like creeks compared to the giant river of stars we predict will be observed eventually," says lead author Marion Dierickx of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

The Sagittarius dwarf is one of dozens of mini-galaxies that surround the Milky Way. Over the age of the universe it made several loops around our galaxy. On each passage, the Milky Way's gravitational tides tugged on the smaller galaxy, pulling it apart like taffy.

Dierickx and her PhD advisor, Harvard theorist Avi Loeb, used computer models to simulate the movements of the Sagittarius dwarf over the past 8 billion years. They varied its initial velocity and angle of approach to the Milky Way to determine what best matched current observations.

"The starting speed and approach angle have a big effect on the orbit, just like the speed and angle of a missile launch affects its trajectory," explains Loeb.

At the beginning of the simulation, the Sagittarius dwarf weighed about 10 billion times the mass of our Sun, or about one percent of the Milky Way's mass. Dierickx's calculations showed that over time, the hapless dwarf lost about a third of its stars and a full nine-tenths of its dark matter. This resulted in three distinct streams of stars that reach as far as one million light-years from the Milky Way's center. They stretch all the way out to the edge of the Milky Way halo and display one of the largest structures observable on the sky.

Moreover, five of the 11 most distant stars in our galaxy have positions and velocities that match what you would expect of stars stripped from the Sagittarius dwarf. The other six do not appear to be from Sagittarius, but might have been removed from a different dwarf galaxy.

Mapping projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have charted one of the three streams predicted by these simulations, but not to the full extent that the models suggest. Future instruments like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which will detect much fainter stars across the sky, should be able to identify the other streams.

"More interlopers from Sagittarius are out there just waiting to be found," says Dierickx.

The report can be found at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.00089.pdf

Galaxy murder mystery

This artist's impression shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4921 based on observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ICRAR, NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

It's the big astrophysical whodunnit. Across the Universe, galaxies are being killed and the question scientists want answered is, what's killing them?

New research published today by a global team of researchers, based at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), seeks to answer that question. The study reveals that a phenomenon called ram-pressure stripping is more prevalent than previously thought, driving gas from galaxies and sending them to an early death by depriving them of the material to make new stars.

The study of 11,000 galaxies shows their gas—the lifeblood for star formation—is being violently stripped away on a widespread scale throughout the local Universe.

Toby Brown, leader of the study and PhD candidate at ICRAR and Swinburne University of Technology, said the image we paint as astronomers is that galaxies are embedded in clouds of dark matter that we call dark matter halos.

Dark matter is the mysterious material that despite being invisible accounts for roughly 27 per cent of our Universe, while ordinary matter makes up just 5 per cent. The remaining 68 per cent is dark energy.

"During their lifetimes, galaxies can inhabit halos of different sizes, ranging from masses typical of our own Milky Way to halos thousands of times more massive," Mr Brown said.

"As galaxies fall through these larger halos, the superheated intergalactic plasma between them removes their gas in a fast-acting process called ram-pressure stripping.

An animation showing how ram-pressure stripping removes gas from galaxies, sending them to an early death. Credit: ICRAR, NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

"You can think of it like a giant cosmic broom that comes through and physically sweeps the gas from the galaxies."

Mr Brown said removing the gas from galaxies leaves them unable to form new stars.

"It dictates the life of the galaxy because the existing stars will cool off and grow old," he said.

"If you remove the fuel for star formation then you effectively kill the galaxy and turn it into a dead object."

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-galaxy-mystery.html#jCp

---

Story Source:

Materials provided by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 

 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.

2 Feb			AEA Astronomy Club Meeting	The Planet Vulcan, David Nakamoto	(A1/1735)
	3 Feb	Friday Night 7:30PM SBAS  Monthly General Meeting in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance) Topic:  “Getting Your Hands on Real Astronomy Data” Dr. Luisa Rebull, Research Scientist, Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) and Spitzer Science Center (SSC)

February 9 & 10 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2017

In Hot Water: Glacier Change and Sea Level Rise

Glaciers and ice sheets hold massive amounts of freshwater locked up as ice. The loss of glacial ice due to melting as our climate warms or from calving of icebergs can have large impacts on the Earth system and on society. These stores of freshwater feed water supplies that support millions of people around the world, raise global sea levels, and can even change the rate of Earth’s rotation. It is now nearly certain that as Earth’s atmosphere and oceans warm over the coming centuries, glaciers and ice sheets will continue to retreat and sea levels will continue to rise. The big question now is at what rate and by how much? With trillions of dollars in infrastructure and large populations located in areas vulnerable to rising seas, researchers around the world are analyzing a diverse collection of satellite and airborne measurements in an effort to learn how and why the world’s ice has responded in complex ways to recent changes in both air and ocean temperatures. In this talk JPL’s Alex Gardner will reveal a world of rapid change as seen through the eyes of a NASA glaciologist.

Alex Gardner is a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He earned a degree in Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, a doctorate in Earth Sciences from the University of Alberta and was a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada research fellow in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences at the University of Michigan. Alex studies Earth’s cryosphere (frozen Earth) with a particular focus on glaciers and their impacts on sea level rise and water resources. He is interested in how glaciers respond to natural and human-induced changes in atmosphere and ocean as well as how changes in the reflectivity of snow and ice modify Earth’s climate. He has published numerous high-impact scientific papers on the topic, is a contributing author to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 5th assessment report, and is a member of NASA’s Sea Level Change and ICESat-2 Science Definition Teams.

Speaker:
Alex S. Gardner, Earth Scientist, JPL

Webcast:
Click here to watch the event live on Ustream (or archived after the event)

Locations:	Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017, 7pm The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL 4800 Oak Grove Drive Pasadena, CA › Directions Friday, Feb 10, 2017, 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.

13 Feb

LAAS LAAS General Meeting.

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

26 Feb Emeritus Prof. John Wasson

Formation of tektites in thermal plumes: no craters required

Location: Slichter 3853
Time: 2:30PM

Tektites are glassy samples with interesting shapes (e.g., teardrops) and compositions similar to soils and shales that formed as a result of weathering the continental crust. Since 1960 the consensus view has been that tektites are crater ejecta. However, high concentrations of 10Be (half-life of 1.5 My) show that tektites are made from soils from the upper 50 centimeters of the crust. The best model seems to be thermal plumes resulting from accreting asteroids or comets that disintegrated and deposited their entire energy in the atmosphere, similar to the 1908 Tunguska event. Figure: Thermal plume after Glasstone and Nolan

2 March	AEA Astronomy Club Meeting	TBD	(A1/1735)
3 March	SBAS Friday Evening  7:30 PM Monthly General Meeting	Topic:   TBD Speaker: TBD

Observing:

The following data are from the 2017 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2017 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 February:

  

Moon: Feb 4 1^st quarter, Feb 11 full, Feb 18 last quarter, Feb 26 new                  

Planets: Venus& Mars are visible after dusk in the west.  Mercury & Saturn are before dawn in the southeast. Jupiter is up late night to dawn, east-southeast to southwest.

Other Events:

4 Feb

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

1,8,15,22 Feb

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

10 February Penumbral Lunar Eclipse The eclipse will be nearing its end as the moon rises in California. 15 February Galileo Day

15 February each year is Galileo Day - a celebration of the anniversary of Galileo Galilei's birth. The best way to celebrate Galileo Day is with a traditional feast. Invite your friends round, knock up a slap-up meal and toast to the man himself. Given Galileo's area of work it is also highly appropriate to go star gazing on this night. Have a search round for your local astronomy society and have them organize something, or, if you happen to have a telescope yourself, organize a dinner and star spotting evening.

17 Feb Venus greatest illuminated extent

18 Feb

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/

25 Feb

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

25 Feb

LAAS Private dark sky  Star Party

26 February Mars Passes 0.6 deg From Uranus

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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