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)

Monday, July 29, 2019

2019 July


AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter July 2019

Contents

AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 1
Astronomy News p. 6
General Calendar p. 12
    Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 12
    Observing p. 16
Useful Links p. 17
About the Club p. 18

Club News & Calendar.

Club Calendar

Club Meeting Schedule: -- note the change of date in July due to July 4 holiday


11 July
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Quarterly Pizza Party & “Hawaiian Star chart Navigation” by Randy Chang
(A1/1735)

1 Aug
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
A Lecture from “The Remarkable Science of Ancient Astronomy,” Prof. Bradley Schaefer
(A1/1735)

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. 

Club News:  


We need volunteers to help with: 

·         Populating our club Sharepoint site with material & links to the club’s Aerowiki & Aerolink materials – Kaly Rangarajan has volunteered to help with this
·         Arranging future club programs
·         Managing club equipment & library

Astronomy Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month
(generally from Astronomy Picture of the Day, APOD: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html)
VIDEO:  Virtual Flight over Asteroid Vesta https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190630.html
Images Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, UCLA, MPS, DLR, IDA; Animation: German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Explanation: What would it be like to fly over the asteroid Vesta? Animators from the German Aerospace Center took actual images and height data from NASA's Dawn mission when it visited asteroid Vesta a few years ago and generated a virtual movie. The featured video begins with a sequence above Divalia Fossa, an unusual pair of troughs running parallel over heavily cratered terrain. Next, the virtual spaceship explores Vesta's 60-km Marcia Crater, showing numerous vivid details. Last, Dawn images were digitally recast with exaggerated height to better reveal Vesta's 5-km high mountain Aricia Tholus. The second largest object in the Solar System's asteroid belt, Vesta is the brightest asteroid visible from Earth and can be found with binoculars. Using Vesta Trek, you can explore all over Vesta yourself.

25 Brightest Stars in the Night Sky 
Image Credit & Copyright: Tragoolchitr Jittasaiyapan
Explanation: Do you know the names of some of the brightest stars? It's likely that you do, even though some bright stars have names so old they date back to near the beginning of written language. Many world cultures have their own names for thebrightest stars, and it is culturally and historically important to remember them. In the interest of clear global communication, however, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has begun to designate standardized star names. Featured above in true color are the 25 brightest stars in the night sky, currently as seen by humans, coupled with their IAU-recognized names. Some star names have interesting meanings, including Sirius ("the scorcher" in Latin), Vega ("falling" in Arabic), and Antares ("rival to Mars" in Greek). It's also likely that other of these bright star names are not familiar to you, even though familiar Polaris is too dim to make this list.

The Colors and Magnitudes of M13 
Image Credit & Copyright: Tolga Gumusayak, Robert Vanderbei
Explanation: M13 is modestly recognized as the Great Globular Star Cluster in Hercules. A ball of stars numbering in the hundreds of thousands crowded into a region 150 light years across, it lies some 25,000 light-years away. The sharp, color pictureof M13 at upper left is familiar to many telescopic imagers. Still, M13's Color vs Magnitude Diagram in the panel below and right, made from the same image data, can offer a more telling view. Also known as a Hertzsprung Russell (HR) diagram it plots the apparent brightness of individual cluster stars against color index. The color index is determined for each star by subtracting its brightness (in magnitudes) measured through a red filter from its brightness measured with a blue filter (B-R). Blue stars are hot and red stars are cool so that astronomical color index ranging from bluer to redder follows the relative stellar temperature scale from left (hot) to right (cool). In M13's HR diagram, the stars clearly fall into distinct groups. The broad swath extending diagonally from the bottom right is the cluster's main sequence. A sharp turn toward the upper right hand corner follows the red giant branch while the blue giants are found grouped in the upper left. Formed at the same time, at first M13's stars were all located along the main sequence by mass, lower mass stars at the lower right. Over time higher mass stars have evolved off the main sequence into red, then blue giants and beyond. In fact, the position of the turn-off from the main sequence to the red giant branch indicates the cluster's age at about 12 billion years.

The Interstellar Clouds of Orion 
Image Credit & Copyright: Andrew Klinger
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, a new long exposure image was taken over several clear nights in January, February and March. After 23 hours of camera time and untold hours of image processing, the featured collage in the light of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur was produced spanning over 40 times the angular diameter of the Moon. Of the many interesting details that have become visible, one that particularly draws the eye is Barnard's Loop, the bright red orange arc just to the right of the image center. The Rosette Nebula is not the giant orange nebula just to the left of the image center -- that is larger but lesser known nebula known as the Meissa Ring. The Rosette Nebula is visible, though: it is the bright orange, blue and white nebula near the image bottom. The bright orange star just left of the frame center is Betelgeuse, while the bright blue star on the upper right is Rigel. 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 to the right of the image center.
Astronomy News:

Astronomers Solve the Mystery of Small Galaxies with Monster Black Holes

By Paul Sutter a day ago Science & Astronomy 

https://www.space.com/small-galaxies-monster-black-holes-mystery-solved.html

Blue nuggets couldn't keep their secrets forever.




The tiny dwarf galaxy ESO 495-21, photographed here by the Hubble Space Telescope, hosts a supermassive black hole.
(Image: © NASA, ESA, W. Vacca)
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University, host of Ask a Spaceman and Space Radio, and author of Your Place in the Universe. Sutter contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. 
Almost every galaxy in our universe appears to have a giant black hole in its center, including our own Milky Way. The Event Horizon Telescope recently snapped a pic of the one inside of the Virgo Galaxy at a distance of 55 million light-years away. So that’s nice. And once you get over this surprising fact, another one emerges. There's a very peculiar relationship between the mass of the black hole at the center of a galaxy and the properties of the galactic host itself. For example, the bigger the galaxy, the bigger the black hole. But there are a few strange exceptions to this general trend, and astronomers studying these oddities may reveal a crucial link between the evolution of black holes and galaxies.

A dark beginning

If you're wondering which came first, the galaxy or its black hole, the answer is: We don't know. At some point in the distant past — about 13 and a half billion years ago when stars first started forming — galaxies and giant black holes appear to have formed at relatively the same time. But whether giant black holes began to germinate within still-young galaxies, or galaxies coalesced around infant black holes, a tight personal relationship was established very quickly.
Astronomers believe that there is regular communication and interaction between giant black holes and their galaxies. The bigger the galaxy, the more stuff there is, and the more stuff there is, the more fuel there is to feed the ever-gaping maw of the giant black hole. But when black holes feed, they become active; gas swirls around with intense energies as it falls into the event horizon. Some of that gas heats up and emits powerful blasts of radiation that escape the vicinity. In other cases, the gas can swirl around the outer edges of the black hole without falling in, forming long jets that extend thousands of light-years into the surrounding medium. 
As you can imagine, this is a lot of energy getting dumped into the neighborhood of the black hole. That energy heats up the surrounding gas, and the now-hot gas has very little inclination to sink down into the center where it might risk an encounter with the black hole. With the gas staying safely away, the black hole doesn't get to eat, and so stabilizes in size.
But if the galaxy is able to grow larger, then this can press more gas down to the center, overwhelming any misgivings and giving the black hole a new meal, which is duly accompanied by a new feedback episode that holds the continued growth of the black hole from spiraling out of control.
Thus, as galaxies grow, their black holes grow in step. Small galaxies end up with small black holes, and big galaxies end up with big black holes.
Except for the ones that don't.

Secrets of the blue nuggets

Some galaxies host extremely large black holes, way outside of the trend set by their brethren. How did these black holes get so big, if the galaxies that host them don't really have enough material to make them that way?
The answer, according to a recent study, may come from a peculiar kind of galaxy known as a blue nugget. That's right, blue nugget. It's a kind of galaxy, and I'm not making up that name. 
Blue-nugget galaxies are only found very far away, which means that they were a feature of the much younger universe and didn't hang around to the present day. Blue nuggets are, as their name suggests, blue and small. They're relatively tiny galaxies that feature an exceptionally enhanced rate of star formation. Since they're forming stars like crazy, these galaxies tend to form more big, bright-blue stars than average, giving them their namesake color.
The galaxies are able to form stars at such an exceptional rates because, despite their size, they're being fed by nearby streams of gas, which pump material into the undersized galaxy, ramping up its star-formation rate. 

Feed the machine

But this influx of raw material at such an early age comes at a cost. With all the activity, a massive black hole forms at the center, far larger than you'd expect in such a young galaxy. And that feeding black hole vomits all across the blue nugget galaxy, shutting off further star formation. Because the galaxy is so small, that feedback doesn't just affect the core but the entire thing, essentially terminating the growth of that galaxy at too young an age.
So, the population of stars that was born early on that makes the nugget nice and blue, eventually dies, leaving behind only old, small, dim red stars with very little new activity, converting this galaxy into what's affectionately known as a red nugget. And because of that early burst of activity, it sports an exceptionally large central black hole.
Could this really be the story behind these odd galaxies and their big black holes? We have only a handful of examples of such extreme cases, so without further data it's hard to draw firm conclusions. And yet this story is compelling, and it could provide a clue in the ongoing tale between black holes in their galaxies.
You can read the study, "Supermassive Black Hole Demographics: Evading M−σ," for free at the online preprint site arXiv. 
·         What Exactly Is a Black Hole Event Horizon (and What Happens There)?
·         This Tiny Galaxy Has a Pretty Big Black Hole


 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 2019 Astronomy Lecture Series

Each year the Observatories organizes a series of public lectures on current astronomical topics.  These lectures are given by astronomers from the Carnegie Observatories as well as other research institutions.  The lectures are geared to the general public and are free.
– only 4 per year in the Spring www.obs.carnegiescience.edu.  For more information about the Carnegie Observatories or this lecture series, please contact Reed Haynie.  . Click here for more information.
8 July 
LAAS General Mtg. 7:30pm Griffith Observatory (private)

11 July
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Quarterly Pizza Party & “Hawaiian Star chart Navigation” by Randy Chang.

(A1/1735)



12 July

Friday Night 7:30PM SBAS  Monthly General Meeting
in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance)
Topic: “Apollo 11: The 50th Anniversary”

12 July Friday, 8 PM CalTech Astro: Stargazing and Lecture Series “The Dynamic Radio Sky” a lecture by Dillon Dong. For directions, weather updates, and more information, please visit: http://outreach.astro.caltech.edu





July 21, 2019

UCLA Meteorite Gallery Events

DR. MING-CHANG LIU

THE HAYABUSA SPACECRAFT MISSIONS; RETURNING SAMPLES OF ASTEROIDS TO EARTH

Location: Geology Building - Slichter Room 3656
Time: 2:30AM
Despite many problems, Hayabusa 1 was the first spacecraft to sample an asteroid and bring samples back to Earth. Now the Hayabusa2 space mission will attempt to recover surface materials from asteroid 162173 Ryugu. It was launched December 2014, and is currently in the process of surveying the asteroid. The first touchdown to collect surface samples was conducted on February 22, 2019. In this talk, he will discuss the goals of this mission, show some images taken by on-board cameras and discuss what we hope to learn when the samples are brought back to our terrestrial laboratories. Ming-Chang obtained his Ph.D. at UCLA about 10 years ago; he is the manager of the NSF National Ion Probe Facility located here at UCLA.

July 11 & 12 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2019



Moon Struck! Celebrating Apollo’s 50th Anniversary
As part of the intense, decade-long effort that led to human footprints on the lunar surface, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched a series of robotic precursors to the Moon. It proved a formidable challenge — the first six missions failed, putting at risk the laboratory’s ambitions to explore the solar system.
Meanwhile, Caltech — which operates JPL for NASA — established a laboratory in the mid-1960s to help develop the new techniques that would be needed for analyzing lunar samples. And once the Apollo 11 Moon rocks were on the ground, the Caltech researchers raced to contribute to the first stunning scientific results NASA shared with the world.
This event will focus on understanding the supporting roles these institutions played in one of humanity's greatest achievements, and consider what might lie ahead in exploring the Moon. Take a journey back in time to learn how JPL found its way to success in the early days of the space race and how both Caltech and JPL have contributed to exploring and understanding our nearest celestial neighbor.
Host:
Preston Dyches
Speaker(s):
Blaine Baggett, JPL Fellow and Emmy award-winning producer
Arden Albee, Caltech Professor of Geology and Planetary Science, Emeritus
John Casani, JPL veteran engineer of the Ranger and Surveyor era

Location:
Thursday, July 11, 2019, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, July 12, 2019, 7pm
Caltech’s Ramo Auditorium
1200 E California Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

› Click here to watch the event live on Ustream
* Only the Thursday lectures are streamed live.
* Only the Thursday lectures are streamed live.


1 Aug
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
A Lecture from “The Remarkable Science of Ancient Astronomy,” Prof. Bradley Schaefer
(A1/1735)

Observing:

The following data are from the 2019 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s 2019 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 July:

   

Moon: July 2 new, July 9 1st quarter, July 16 Full, July 25 last quarter                  
Planets: Venus visible at dawn through the 22nd.  Mars hidden in Sun’s glow all month.  Mercury hidden in Sun’s glow all month.  Saturn visible from dusk to dawn. Jupiter visible at sunset, sets early morning.
Other Events:


6 July
LAAS Private dark sky  Star Party

9 July Saturn at opposition

3,10,17,24,31 July
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


13 July
LAAS Public  Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm See http://www.griffithobservatory.org/programs/publictelescopes.html#starparties  for more information.

27 July
SBAS In-town observing session – contact Greg Benecke to coordinate a location. http://www.sbastro.net/.  

29 July South Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower Peak The Southern Delta Aquariids are considered a strong shower, with an average meteor observation rate of 15–20 per hour, and a peak zenith hourly rate of 18.

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


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, Walt Sturrock, 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


Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)