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)

Saturday, April 7, 2018

2018 April


AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter                         April 2018

Contents

AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 9
General Calendar p. 12
    Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 12
    Observing p. 16
Useful Links p. 18
About the Club p. 18

Club News & Calendar.

Club Calendar

Club Meeting Schedule:

5 April
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Quarterly Pizza Party & Jay Landis Presentation
(A1/1735)
3 May
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Additive Manufacturing on Mars
(A1/2906)

AEA Astronomy Club meetings are now on 1st  Thursdays at 11:45 am.  For 2018:  Jan. 4 in A1/1029 A/B, Feb. 1 & March 1 in A1/2906 and for the rest of 2018 (April-Dec), the meeting room is A1/1735. 



We have reserved the night of Sat. Sept. 8 on the Mt. Wilson 100-inch telescope.  We do have a full manifest already – carry-overs from the 2017 night cancelled due to bad weather.  But if interested, we can still put you on the waiting list in case of cancellations, which typically do occur.

We have a speaker for June 7 from JPL – Rob Zellem, doing research on exoplanetary atmospheres.

“Exoplanets: Finding Life in the Galaxy”

Rob was born just outside the Philadelphia city limits but grew up in Hendersonville, TN. He went to Villanova University where he graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Astronomy and Astrophysics, minoring in Physics, Mathematics, and Classics, and getting an Honors Concentration. His love of travel and learning about other cultures brought him to University College London in England where he got his MSc in Space Science. He then moved out west to Tucson, AZ, where he received his PhD in Planetary Sciences from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. He is currently a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory supporting ground- and space-based instruments that will measure the atmospheres of extrasolar planets.


Club News:  


We need volunteers to help with: 

·         Populating our club Sharepoint site with material & links to the club’s Aerowiki & Aerolink materials
·         Arranging future club programs
·         Managing club equipment

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

VIDEO:  Rotating Moon from LRO https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180318.html
Video Credit: LRO, Arizona State U., NASA
Explanation: No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That's because the Earth's moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side. Given modern digital technology, however, combined with many detailed images returned by theLunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has been composed. The above time-lapse video starts with the standard Earth view of the Moon. Quickly, though, Mare Orientale, a large crater with a dark center that is difficult to see from the Earth, rotates into view just below the equator. From an entire lunar month condensed into 24 seconds, the video clearly shows that the Earth side of the Moon contains an abundance of dark lunar maria, while the lunar far side is dominated by bright lunar highlands. Currently, over 20 new missions to the Moon are under active development from four different countries, most of which have expected launch dates either this year or next.
VIDEO: Flying over the Earth at Night II
 https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180312.html
Video Credit: NASA, Gateway to Astronaut Photography; Music: The Low Seas (The 126ers)
Explanation: What would it be like to orbit the Earth? The International Space Station (ISS) does this every 90 minutes, and sometimes the astronauts on board take image sequences that are made into videos. The featured time-lapse video shows many visual spectacles of the dark Earth below. First, as the video begins, green and red auroras are visible on the upper left above white clouds. Soon city lights come into view, and it becomes clear you are flying over North America, eventually passing over Florida. In the second sequence you fly over Europe and Africa, eventually passing over the Nile River. Brief flashes of light are lightning in storms. Stars far in the distance can be seen rising through the greenish-gold glow of the Earth's atmosphere.

NGC 602 and Beyond 
Image Credit: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al; 
Optical: Hubble: NASA/STScI; Infrared: Spitzer: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Explanation: Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by natal gas and dust, NGC 602 is featured in this stunning Hubble image of the region, augmented by images in the X-ray by Chandra, and in the infrared by Spitzer. Fantastic ridges and swept back shapes strongly suggest that energetic radiation and shock waves from NGC 602's massive young stars have eroded the dusty material and triggered a progression of star formation moving away from the cluster's center. At the estimated distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud, the Picture spans about 200 light-years, but a tantalizing assortment of background galaxies are also visible in this sharp multi-colored view. The background galaxies are hundreds of millions of light-years or more beyond NGC 602.

Camera Orion 
Image Credit & Copyright: Derrick Lim
Explanation: Do you recognize this constellation? Although it is one of the most recognizable star groupings on the sky, Orion's icons don't look quite as colorful to the eye as they do to a camera. In this 20-image digitally-composed mosaic, cool red giant Betelgeuse takes on a strong orange tint as the brightest star at the upper left. Orion's hot blue stars are numerous, with supergiant Rigel balancing Betelgeuse at the lower right, and Bellatrix at the upper right Lined up in Orion's belt are three stars all about 1,500 light-years away, born from the constellation's well-studied interstellar clouds. Below Orion's belt a reddish and fuzzy patch that might also look familiar -- the stellar nursery known as Orion's Nebula. Finally, just barely visible to the unaided eye but quite striking here by camera is Barnard's Loop -- a huge gaseous emission nebula surrounding Orion's Belt and Nebula discovered over 100 years ago by the pioneering Orion photographer E. E. Barnard.

The Nebra Sky Disk 
Image Credit: Dbachmann, Wikipedia
Explanation: Some consider it the oldest known illustration of the night sky. But what, exactly, does it depict, and why was it made? The Nebra sky disk was found with a metal detector in 1999 by treasure hunters near Nebra, Germany, in the midst of several bronze-age weapons. The ancient artifact spans about 30 centimeters and has been associated with the Unetice culture that inhabited part of Europe around 1600 BC. Reconstructed, the dots are thought to represent stars, with the cluster representing the Pleiades, and the large circle and the crescent representing the Sun and Moon. The purpose of the disk remains unknown -- hypotheses including an astronomical clock, a work of art, and a religious symbol. Valued at about $11 million, some believe that the Nebra sky disk is only one of a pair, with the other disk still out there waiting to be discovered.

The Crab from Space 
Image Credit: NASA - X-ray: CXC, Optical: STSCI, Infrared: JPL-Caltech,
Explanation: The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, expanding debris from the death explosion of a massive star. This intriguing false-color image combines data from space-based observatories, Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer, to explore the debris cloud in X-rays (blue-white), optical (purple), and infrared (pink) light. One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30 times a second, is the bright spot near picture center. Like a cosmic dynamo, this collapsed remnant of the stellar core powers the Crab's emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Spanning about 12 light-years, the Crab Nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.

The Complete Galactic Plane: Up and Down 
Image Credit & Copyright: Moophz Himself (Maroun Habib)
Explanation: Is it possible to capture the entire plane of our galaxy in a single image? Yes, but not in one exposure -- and it took some planning to do it in two. The top part of the featured image is the night sky above Lebanon, north of the equator, taken in 2017 June. The image was taken at a time when the central band of the Milky Way Galaxy passed directly overhead. The bottom half was similarly captured six months later in latitude-opposite Chile, south of Earth's equator. Each image therefore captured the night sky in exactly the opposite direction of the other, when fully half the Galactic plane was visible. The southern half was then inverted -- car and all -- and digitally appended to the top half to show the entire central band of our Galaxy, as a circle, in a single image. Many stars and nebulas are visible, with the Large Magellanic Cloud being particularly notable inside the lower half of the complete galactic circle.

Dual Particle Beams in Herbig-Haro 24 
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)/Hubble-Europe Collaboration; 
Acknowledgment: D. Padgett (NASA's GSFC), T. Megeath (U. Toledo), B. Reipurth (U. Hawaii)
Explanation: This might look like a double-bladed lightsaber, but these two cosmic jets actually beam outward from a newborn star in a galaxy near you. Constructed from Hubble Space Telescope image data, the stunning scene spans about half a light-year across Herbig-Haro 24 (HH 24), some 1,300 light-years away in the stellar nurseries of the Orion B molecular cloud complex. Hidden from direct view, HH 24's central protostar is surrounded by cold dust and gas flattened into a rotatingaccretion disk. As material from the disk falls toward the young stellar object it heats up. Opposing jets are blasted out along the system's rotation axis. Cutting through the region's interstellar matter, the narrow, energetic jets produce a series of glowing shock fronts along their path.

Cyclones at Jupiter's North Pole 
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, ASI, INAF, JIRAM
Explanation: Juno's Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper data was used to construct this stunning view of cyclones at Jupiter's North Pole. Measuring the thermal emission from Jovian cloud tops, the infrared observations are not restricted to thehemisphere illuminated by sunlight. They reveal eight cyclonic features that surround a cyclone about 4,000 kilometers in diameter, just offset from the giant planet's geographic North Pole. Similar data show a cyclone at the Jovian South Pole with five circumpolar cyclones. The South Pole cyclones are slightly larger than their northern cousins. Cassini data has shown that gas giant Saturn's north and south poles each have a single cyclonic storm system.


Astronomy News:
(from https://www.sciencedaily.com )

Tens of thousands of black holes may exist in Milky Way's center

Date: April 4, 2018
Source: Columbia University
Summary:  Astrophysicists have discovered a dozen black holes gathered around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The finding is the first to support a decades-old prediction, opening up myriad opportunities to better understand the universe.

Artist's concept of black hole (stock illustration).
Credit: © nasa_gallery / Fotolia
A Columbia University-led team of astrophysicists has discovered a dozen black holes gathered around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The finding is the first to support a decades-old prediction, opening up myriad opportunities to better understand the universe.
"Everything you'd ever want to learn about the way big black holes interact with little black holes, you can learn by studying this distribution," said Columbia Astrophysicist Chuck Hailey, co-director of the Columbia Astrophysics Lab and lead author on the study. "The Milky Way is really the only galaxy we have where we can study how supermassive black holes interact with little ones because we simply can't see their interactions in other galaxies. In a sense, this is the only laboratory we have to study this phenomenon."
The study appears in the April 5 issue of Nature.
For more than two decades, researchers have searched unsuccessfully for evidence to support a theory that thousands of black holes surround supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of large galaxies.
"There are only about five dozen known black holes in the entire galaxy -- 100,000 light years wide -- and there are supposed to be 10,000 to 20,000 of these things in a region just six light years wide that no one has been able to find," Hailey said, adding that extensive fruitless searches have been made for black holes around Sgr A*, the closest SMBH to Earth and therefore the easiest to study. "There hasn't been much credible evidence."
He explained that Sgr A* is surrounded by a halo of gas and dust that provides the perfect breeding ground for the birth of massive stars, which live, die and could turn into black holes there. Additionally, black holes from outside the halo are believed to fall under the influence of the SMBH as they lose their energy, causing them to be pulled into the vicinity of the SMBH, where they are held captive by its force.
While most of the trapped black holes remain isolated, some capture and bind to a passing star, forming a stellar binary. Researchers believe there is a heavy concentration of these isolated and mated black holes in the Galactic Center, forming a density cusp which gets more crowded as distance to the SMBH decreases.
In the past, failed attempts to find evidence of such a cusp have focused on looking for the bright burst of X-ray glow that sometimes occurs in black hole binaries
"It's an obvious way to want to look for black holes," Hailey said, "but the Galactic Center is so far away from Earth that those bursts are only strong and bright enough to see about once every 100 to 1,000 years." To detect black hole binaries then, Hailey and his colleagues realized they would need to look for the fainter, but steadier X-rays emitted when the binaries are in an inactive state.
"It would be so easy if black hole binaries routinely gave off big bursts like neutron star binaries do, but they don't, so we had to come up with another way to look for them," Hailey said. "Isolated, unmated black holes are just black -- they don't do anything. So looking for isolated black holes is not a smart way to find them either. But when black holes mate with a low mass star, the marriage emits X-ray bursts that are weaker, but consistent and detectable. If we could find black holes that are coupled with low mass stars and we know what fraction of black holes will mate with low mass stars, we could scientifically infer the population of isolated black holes out there."
Hailey and colleagues turned to archival data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory to test their technique. They searched for X-ray signatures of black hole-low mass binaries in their inactive state and were able to find 12 within three light years, of Sgr A*. The researchers then analyzed the properties and spatial distribution of the identified binary systems and extrapolated from their observations that there must be anywhere from 300 to 500 black hole-low mass binaries and about 10,000 isolated black holes in the area surrounding Sgr A*.
"This finding confirms a major theory and the implications are many," Hailey said. "It is going to significantly advance gravitational wave research because knowing the number of black holes in the center of a typical galaxy can help in better predicting how many gravitational wave events may be associated with them. All the information astrophysicists need is at the center of the galaxy."
Hailey's co-authors on the paper include: Kaya Mori, Michael E. Berkowitz, and Benjamin J. Hord, all of Columbia University; Franz E. Bauer, of the Instituto de Astrofísica, Facultad de Física, Pontificia, Universidad Católica de Chile, Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, Vicuña Mackenna, and the Space Science Institute; and Jaesub Hong, of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Columbia University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
1.       Charles J. Hailey, Kaya Mori, Franz E. Bauer, Michael E. Berkowitz, Jaesub Hong, Benjamin J. Hord. A density cusp of quiescent X-ray binaries in the central parsec of the Galaxy. Nature, 2018; 556 (7699): 70 DOI: 10.1038/nature25029





 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.
Monday evenings:  April 9th, April 23rd, May 7th and May 21st.
AT THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY AND BOTANICAL GARDENS
1151 Oxford Road, San Marino
All Lectures are in Rothenberg Auditorium. Directions can be found here.
The lectures are free. Because seating is limited, however, reservations are required for each lecture through Eventbrite. Additionally, the lectures will be streamed live through Livestream and simultanously on our Facebook CarnegieAstro page. 
Doors open at 6:45 p.m. Each Lecture will be preceded by a brief musical performance by students from The Colburn School starting at 7:00 p.m. Lectures start at 7:30 p.m. Light refreshments will be available.

Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA / Judy Schmidt
Monday, April 9th 2018
All tickets have now been claimed. You can watch for free on Livestream or through our Facebook page.
Sharing the Wonders of the Light and Dark Universe
Dr. Marja Seidel
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Carnegie Observatories

What is the Universe made of? We can peer millions of years into the past in the night sky, yet we barely understand just 5 percent—the “regular” matter that we can see. In the standard cosmological model, a quarter of the remaining 95 percent is dark matter. Dr. Seidel will discuss her quest to understand dark matter, and her experiences bringing astronomy education to some of the most remote and under-served locations on Earth.

Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Monday, April 23rd 2018
You Can't Make a Solar System Without Breaking a Few Asteroids: The Tale of Asteroid Families
Dr. Joseph Masiero
Scientist & NEOWISE Deputy-PI
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab

The formation of our Solar System was a chaotic collapse of gas and dust in to the Sun, planets, asteroids, and comets we have today, punctuated by the catastrophic collisions between these forming bodies. Dr. Masiero will discuss how the asteroid families in the belt today are the last remnants of these massive collisions, and give us a window into the processes that shaped our Solar System.

Image: SDSS / David Kirby
Monday, May 7th 2018
Dark Energy and Cosmic Sound
Dr. Daniel Eisenstein
Professor of Astronomy, Harvard University
Director, Sloan Digital Sky Survey III

Sound waves propagating through the Universe only 400,000 years after the Big Bang now offer some of our most-precise measures of the composiiton and history of the Universe. In the last decade, we have detected the fossil imprint of these sound waves using maps of the distribution of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Dr. Eisenstein will describe these waves and the ambitious experiments that use them to extend our cosmological reach. 


Image: Carnegie Institution for Science/ Robin Dienel
Monday, May 12st 2018
Astronomical Alchemy: The Origin of the Elements
Dr. Maria Drout
Hubble and Carnegie-Dunlap Fellow,
Carnegie Institution for Science

As Carl Sagan once said, "We are all made of star stuff." However, each element has its own astronomical origins story. Elements are created everywhere from the centers of stars, to supernovae explosions, to the Big Bang itself. Dr. Drout will take us on a journey through the perioidic table, highlighting how our recent discovery of a 'kilonova' associated with the cataclysmic merger of two neutron stars has filled in one of the final pieces of the elemental puzzle—the origin of many of the heaviest elements in the universe.

5 April
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Quarterly Pizza Party & Jay Landis Presentation
(A1/1735)


6 April
Friday Night 7:30PM SBAS  Monthly General Meeting
in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance)
Topic: ?  [still showing their March schedule online as of 4/4/18]





April 29



UCLA Meteorite Gallery --
Location: UCLA Campus

Prof. Ed Young

Rocks beyond our solar system - evidence from dead stars

Location: Geology 3656
Time: 2:30PM
White dwarf stars are the stellar cores left behind by Sun-like stars after they have exhausted their nuclear fuel. Some of these dead stars still have rocky bodies orbiting them that are similar to our asteroids. These orbiting objects sometimes fall into the stellar atmosphere and vaporize, releasing their elements which then contribute to the spectral lines visible with telescopes. The chemical similarities between rocks in our solar system and the rock-forming elements floating in the atmospheres of white dwarf stars provide good evidence that rocky planets elsewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy are similar to the rocky planets in our solar system. This, in turn, suggests that Earth-like planets are not unusual.


9 April
LAAS General Mtg. 7:30pm Griffith Observatory

 

The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2018

How Will Earth's Ecosystems Survive Under a Changing Climate?

April 12 & 13

One of the largest uncertainties in projections of future climate change is how do terrestrial ecosystems (communities of land organisms and their environments) contribute to or help counteract the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. This is because terrestrial ecosystems can both absorb carbon (i.e., photosynthesis) and emit it (i.e., respiration, decomposition, combustion). Whether they absorb or emit carbon depends on a variety of factors, such as temperatures, moisture, nutrients, etc.
At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), we are using satellite remote sensing and sophisticated modeling to understand how Earth's carbon, water and nutrient cycles are linked and their impacts on the Earth system as a whole. In this talk, Dr. Fisher will give an overview of the latest remote sensing datasets and model developments from JPL, and discuss new insights into the behavior and understanding of terrestrial ecosystems in a changing climate.
Speaker:
Dr. Josh Fisher - JPL Scientist

Location:
Thursday, April 12, 2018, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, April 13, 2018, 7pm
The Vosloh Forum at Pasadena City College
1570 East Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
› Directions


3 May
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Additive Manufacturing on Mars
(A1/2906)

Observing:

The following data are from the 2018 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2018 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 April:

  

Moon: April 8 last quarter, April 16 new, April 22 1st quarter, April 30 Full,            
Planets: Venus visible at dusk.  Mars visible at dawn.  Mercury hidden in Sun’s glow all month.  Saturn rises near midnight, visible until sunrise. Jupiter rises mid-evening, visible until sunrise.
Other Events:

2 April Mars 1.3deg S of Saturn

4,11,18,25 April
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

 
?
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/

14 April
LAAS Private dark sky  Star Party

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

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

29 April Mercury greatest elongation W (27deg)

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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