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, August 13, 2019

2019 August


AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter                         August 2019

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. 15
Useful Links p. 17
About the Club p. 18

Club News & Calendar.

Club Calendar

Club Meeting Schedule: -- note the possible change of date in Sept. due to Labor Day holiday week

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

12 Sept.?
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Demo of Meade GoTo Scope & Another 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 welcome new club secretary & librarian, Kelly Gov!  We now have a full slate of officers for the first time in several years. 

In spending the surplus funds in our account before the end of the budget year, we have acquired the following in addition to the previously described acquisitions used to justify our FY19 AEA budget allowance:

·         A Meade ETX80 Backpack Observatory – just like one already in our inventory that has shown significant wear due to heavy use.
·         A set of Great Courses DVDs for our library – some of which you have seen portions of courtesy of Mark Clayson’s personal collection.  We overspent our budget due to an error, and may need to return some of these (3, 4 & 6?), or deduct from any FY20 budget allocation:
1.       Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, 2nd Edition
2.       Cosmology: The History and Nature of Our Universe
3.       What Einstein Got Wrong
4.       The Higgs Boson and Beyond
5.       Skywatching: Seeing and Understanding Cosmic Wonders
6.       Dark Matter, Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe

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 (Kelly Gov volunteered to help with the 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:  4000 Exoplanets https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190710.html
Video Credit: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida); Data: NASA Exoplanet Archive
Explanation: Over 4000 planets are now known to exist outside our Solar System. Known as exoplanets, this milestone was passed last month, as recorded by NASA's Exoplanet Archive. The featured video highlights these exoplanets in sound and light, starting chronologically from the first confirmed detection in 1992. The entire night sky is first shown compressed with the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy making a giant U.Exoplanets detected by slight jiggles in their parents-star's colors (radial velocity) appear in pink, while those detected by slight dips in their parent star's brightness (transit) are shown in purple. Further, those exoplanetsimaged directly appear in orange, while those detected by gravitationally magnifying the light of a background star (microlensing) are shown in green. The faster a planet orbits its parent star, the higher the accompanying tone played. The retired Kepler satellite has discovered about half of these first 4000 exoplanets in just one region of the sky, while the new TESS mission is on track to find even more, all over the sky, orbiting the brightest nearby stars. Finding exoplanets not only helps humanity to better understand the potential prevalence of life elsewhere in the universe, but also how our Earth and Solar System were formed.
VIDEO:  Robotic Dragonfly Selected to Fly Across Titan https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190703.html
Video Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins U. Applied Physics Lab.
Explanation: If you could fly across Titan, what would you see? To find out and to better explore this exotic moon of Saturn, NASA recently green-lighted Dragonfly, a mission to Titan with plans to deploy a helicopter-like drone. Saturn's moon Titan is one of the largest moons in the Solar System and the only moon known to have a thick atmosphere and changing hydrocarbon lakes. After development, building, testing, and launch, Dragonfly is currently scheduled to reach Titan in 2034. The featured animated video envisions Dragonfly arriving at Titan, beginning its airborne exploration, landing to establishing a radio link back to Earth, and then continuing on to another trans-Titanian flight. It is hoped that Dragonfly will not only help humanity better understanding Titan's weather, chemistry, and changing landscape, but also bolster humanity's understanding of how life first developed on our young Earth.

VIDEO: Apollo 11 Launches Humans to the Moon https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190716.html
Video Credit: NASA
Explanation: Everybody saw the Moon. Nobody had ever been there. Humans across planet Earth watched in awe 50 years ago today as a powerful Saturn V rocket attempted to launch humans -- to the Moon. Some in space flight guessed that the machinery was so complex, that so many things had to go right for it to work, that Apollo 11 would end up being another useful dress rehearsal for a later successful Moon-landing mission. But to the Moon they went. The featured video starts by showing astronauts Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins making their way to the waiting rocket. As the large and mighty Saturn V launched, crowds watched fromCape Canaveral in Florida, USA and on television around the world. The events that unfolded over the next few days, including a dramatic moon walk 50 years ago this Saturday, will forever be remembered as a milestone in human history and an unrivaled demonstration of human ingenuity. This week, many places around the world are planning celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the first humans landing on the Moon.

VIDEO: Apollo 11: Descent to the Moon https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190717.html
Video Credit: NASA, Apollo Flight Journal Compilation & Copyright: W. David Woods
Explanation: It had never been done before. But with the words "You're Go for landing", 50 years ago this Saturday, Apollo 11 astronauts Aldrin and Armstrong were cleared to make the first try. The next few minutes would contain more than a bit of drama, as an unexpected boulder field and an unacceptably sloping crater loomed below. With fuel dwindling, Armstrong coolly rocketed the lander above the lunar surface as he looked for a clear and flat place to land. With only seconds of fuel remaining, and with the help of Aldrin and mission control calling out data, Armstrong finally found a safe spot -- and put the Eagle down. Many people on Earth listening to the live audio felt great relief on hearing "The Eagle has landed", and great pride knowing that for the first time ever, human beings were on the Moon. Combined in the featured descent video are two audio feeds, a video feed similar to what the astronauts saw, captions of the dialog, and data including the tilt of the Eagle lander. The video concludes with the panorama of the lunar landscape visible outside the Eagle. A few hours later, hundreds of millions of people across planet Earth, drawn together as a single species, watched fellow humans walk on the Moon.


The Galactic Center in Radio from MeerKAT 
Image Credit: MeerKAT, SARAO
Explanation: What's happening at the center of our galaxy? It's hard to tell with optical telescopes since visible light is blocked by intervening interstellar dust. In other bands of light, though, such as radio, the galactic center can be imaged and shows itself to be quite an interesting and active place. The featured picture shows the inaugural image of the MeerKAT array of 64 radio dishes just completed in South Africa. Spanning four times the angular size of the Moon (2 degrees), the image is impressively vast, deep, and detailed. Many known sources are shown in clear detail, including many with a prefix of Sgr, since the Galactic Center is in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. In our Galaxy's Center lies Sgr A, found here just to the right of the image center, which houses the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole. Other sources in the image are not as well understood, including the Arc, just to the left of Sgr A, and numerous filamentary threads. Goals for MeerKAT include searching for radio emission from neutral hydrogen emitted in a much younger universe and brief but distant radio flashes.


In the Shadow of the Moon 
Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)
Explanation: On July 2 denizens of planet Earth could stand in the Moon's dark umbral shadow during South America's 2019 total solar eclipse. It first touched down in the Southern Pacific Ocean, east of New Zealand. Racing toward the east along a narrow track, the shadow of the Moon made landfall along the Chilean coast with the Sun low on the western horizon. Captured in the foreground here are long shadows still cast by direct sunlight though, in the final moments before totality began. While diffraction spikes are from the camera lens aperture, the almost totally eclipsed Sun briefly shone like a beautiful diamond ring in the clear, darkened sky.


The Big Corona 
Image Credit & Copyright: P. Horálek, Z. Hoder, M. Druckmüller, P. Aniol, S. Habbal / Solar Wind Sherpas
Explanation: Most photographs don't adequately portray the magnificence of the Sun's corona. Seeing the corona first-hand during a total solar eclipse is unparalleled. The human eye can adapt to see coronal featuresand extent that average cameras usually cannot. Welcome, however, to the digital age. The featured central image digitally combined short and long exposures that were processed to highlight faint and extended features in the corona of the total solar eclipse that occurred in August of 2017. Clearly visible are intricate layers and glowing caustics of an ever changing mixture of hot gas and magnetic fields in the Sun's corona. Looping prominences appear bright pink just past the Sun's limb. Faint details on the night side of the New Moon can even be made out, illuminated by sunlight reflected from the dayside of the Full Earth. Images taken seconds before and after the total eclipse show glimpses of the background Sun known as Baily's Beads and Diamond Ring. Tomorrow, a new total solar eclipse will be visible from parts of South America.
HDR: Earth's Circular Shadow on the Moon 
Image Credit & Copyright: Cristian Fattinnanzi
Explanation: What could create such a large circular shadow on the Moon? The Earth. Last week's full Moon -- the Buck Moon -- was so full that it fell almost exactly in a line with the Sun and the Earth. When that happens the Earth casts its shadow onto the Moon. The circularity of the Earth's shadow on the Moon was commented on by Aristotle and so has been noticed since at least the 4th century BC. What's new is humanity's ability to record this shadow with such high dynamic range (HDR). The featured HDR composite of last week's partial lunar eclipse combines 15 images and include an exposure as short as 1/400th of a second -- so as not to overexpose the brightest part -- and an exposure that lasted five seconds -- to bring up the dimmest part. This dimmest part -- inside Earth's umbra -- is not completely dark because some light is refracted through the Earth's atmosphere onto the Moon. A total lunar eclipse will occur next in 2021 May.


Moonquakes Surprisingly Common 
Image Credit: NASA, Apollo 11 Crew
Explanation: Why are there so many moonquakes? Analyses of seismometers left on the moon by the Apollo moon landings reveals a surprising number of moonquakes occurring within 100 kilometers of the surface. In fact, 62 moonquakes were detected in data recorded between 1972 and 1977. Many of these moonquakes are not only strong enough to move furniture in a lunar apartment, but the stiff rock of the moon continues to vibrate for many minutes, significantly longer than the softer rock earthquakes on Earth. The cause of the moonquakes remains unknown, but a leading hypothesis is the collapse of underground faults. Regardless of the source, future moon dwellings need to be built to withstand the frequent shakings. Pictured here 50 years ago today, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin stands beside a recently deployed lunar seismometer, looking back toward the lunar landing module.
Apollo 11 Landing Panorama 
Image Credit: Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11, NASA
Explanation: Have you seen a panorama from another world lately? Assembled from high-resolution scans of the original film frames, this one sweeps across the magnificent desolation of the Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility. The images were taken by Neil Armstrong looking out his window of the Eagle Lunar Module fifty years ago, shortly after the July 20, 1969 landing. The frame at the far left (AS11-37-5449) is the first picture taken by a person on another world. Toward the south, thruster nozzles can be seen in the foreground on the left, while at the right, the shadow of the Eagle is visible to the west. For scale, the large, shallow crater on the right has a diameter of about 12 meters. Frames taken from the Lunar Module windows about an hour and a half after landing, before walking on the lunar surface, were intended to initially document the landing site in case an early departure was necessary.
Tranquility Base Panorama 
Image Credit: Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11, NASA
Explanation: On July 20, 1969 the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle safely touched down on the Moon. It landed near the southwestern corner of the Moon's Mare Tranquillitatis at a landing site dubbed Tranquility Base.This panoramic view of Tranquility Base was constructed from the historic photos taken from the lunar surface. On the far left astronaut Neil Armstrong casts a long shadow with Sun is at his back and the Eagle resting about 60 meters away ( AS11-40-5961). He stands near the rim of 30 meter-diameter Little West crater seen here to the right ( AS11-40-5954). Also visible in the foreground is the top of the camera intended for taking stereo close-ups of the lunar surface.

Astronomy News:

Dark Matter May Have Existed Before the Big Bang, New Math Suggests

By Meghan Bartels 4 days ago Science & Astronomy 


Data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope informs a map of dark matter.
(Image: © NASA/ESA/Caltech)

Cracking the mystery of dark matter is one of the most frustrating quests of physics.
One lingering suggestion of how to explain some of the challenges of dark matter is that the strange substance arose before the Big Bang. That moment represents the most popular explanation for how the universe began, in a snapshot singularity that expanded over billions of years into everything that surrounds us. And if dark matter did come first, that changes how scientists should hunt for the substance.

"The study revealed a new connection between particle physics and astronomy," study author Tommi Tenkanen, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University, said in a statement. "If dark matter consists of new particles that were born before the Big Bang, they affect the way galaxies are distributed in the sky in a unique way. This connection may be used to reveal their identity and make conclusions about the times before the Big Bang, too."

Tenkanen developed a mathematical model to probe how dark matter interacts with what physicists refer to as scalar particles. In that category, scientists have so far spotted only the Higgs boson. And if dark matter is indeed older than the Big Bang, the substance would definitely have interacted with scalar particles, he said.

"If dark matter were truly a remnant of the Big Bang, then in many cases researchers should have seen a direct signal of dark matter in different particle physics experiments already," Tenkanen said.
The fact that researchers haven't seen such a signal yet is troubling. But Tenkanen said his model may point to a different approach for tackling the dark matter question: focusing on astronomical observations. In particular, he said he sees potential in the European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2022. That spacecraft is designed to map the edges of the universe, letting scientists look back about 10 billion years.

The new research is described in a paper published yesterday (Aug. 7) in the journal Physical Review Letters. 

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

The Problems with the Cosmic Calendar

By Paul Sutter 5 days ago Science & Astronomy 

Very important things have happened very quickly.



During the brief "inflation" period, the newborn universe expanded far faster than the speed of light, growing from a subatomic size to a golf-ball size almost instantaneously.
(Image: © NASA)
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. 

OK, it's been a while since I've had a nice, long rant. I'm in the mood, and you're in for a real treat. Have you ever heard of the so-called cosmic calendar? This is a frequently used device to illustrate just how small and insignificant and inconsequential our lives here on Earth are in the grand scheme of things. 

Now, don't get me wrong — our lives here on Earth are small and insignificant and inconsequential … but only in a certain frame of reference, and that certain frame of reference doesn't necessarily apply to cosmic scales.

Save the date

The cosmic calendar compresses the entire history of the universe — all 13 and change billion years of it — into a single calendar year. You know, one orbit of the Earth around the sun. It starts with the earliest moments of the Big Bang on Jan. 1 and continues on through the evolution of stars and galaxies through spring and summer. In this calendar, you'll find that life didn't arise on Earth until late fall, and that humanity didn't become humanity until almost the new year.
As scary as this sounds, it is entirely accurate. On this sort of scale, humans are — like I said — small and insignificant. 
But that's not the only scale available for us to judge importance in the universe. 
Sure, on billions-of-years cosmic time scales, humans haven't been around for very long. We just haven't had enough time. But this construction ignores some of the most momentous events to ever occur in the entire history of the universe, completely sweeping them under the rug simply because they happened so quickly. And just because something happens quickly doesn't mean it's not important.
I'm talking about some of the earliest moments of the Big Bang. Events that were so important and so impactful that they completely altered the course of cosmic history — and yet they were over in less time than it will take you to finish reading this article. 

Quick and deadly

Take, for example, the event known as cosmic inflation. When the universe was a mere a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second old, it rapidly expanded many times over. In a blink of a blink of a blink of an eye, it grew to over 50 times its previous radius. On the cosmic calendar, you can't even write down the words for inflation — they don't fit. And yet this event single-handedly changed the universe forever. It laid down the seeds of later structures (you know, stars and galaxies and you and me), it completely emptied out the universe of strange defects left over from an even earlier epoch, and it filled the universe with the matter and radiation that we know and love today. Our universe would simply be unrecognizable without this event, and yet the cosmic calendar has no room for it.

Or take nucleosynthesis. This is the fancy word for the formation of elements in the early universe. When our cosmos was just 10 to 20 minutes old, it formed all of the available hydrogen and helium and a tiny little bit of lithium that continues to fill the universe today. One or two dozen minutes, and all the raw material needed to build stars and galaxies and you and me. That's it. Compared to the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years that humans have walked the Earth, that is absolutely nothing.


One last flash

The first atoms formed in our universe when it was only 380,000 years old. That's when it cooled down enough for electrons to find some proton friends, start to hang out and go steady, and build a long-term relationship. That actual event (which we call recombination for various historical reasons) took place over the course of about 10,000 years. In that tiny window (compared to the vast age of our current universe), it completely transformed from a hot dense plasma into a neutral gas that would eventually evolve into — you guessed it — stars and galaxies and planets and you and me.

Humans have been around on the Earth for a couple hundred thousand years or so, and we've been writing things down for at least 6,000 years. And if those numbers are insignificant on cosmic timescales, must the same be argued for the formation of atoms?
Ultimately, the cosmic calendar is still biased toward our humanity, despite its attempts to show us how insignificant we are on cosmic scales. It's still based on our calendar and our ways of dividing up the year. But those kinds of divisions only make sense to us humans here on Earth. The universe simply does its own thing. And yes, most of those things are achingly slow processes. But some of them are blindingly fast and arguably much more important than the later, slower stages in cosmic evolution.
If you're ever tempted to think that humans don't matter because of the cosmic calendar, remember this: Your heartbeat lasts about one second, and in the first second in the history of our universe, more things, and more momentous things, happened than would ever occur in the eons after.
·         The Big Bang: What Really Happened at Our Universe's Birth?
·         Why We Need Cosmic Inflation
·         The Universe's Dark Ages: How Our Cosmos Survived
Learn more by listening to the episode "What's wrong with the cosmic calendar?"on the Ask A Spaceman podcast, available on iTunes and on the Web athttp://www.askaspaceman.com. Thanks to Okie J. for the questions that led to this piece! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter.


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



2 Aug

Friday Night 7:30PM SBAS  Monthly General Meeting
in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance)
Topic: “The Higgs Boson” Michael Harrison

9 August Friday, 8 PM CalTech Astro: Stargazing and Lecture Series “Galactic Archaeology: Digging Through the Remnants of Galaxies” a lecture by Gina Duggan.
For directions, weather updates, and more information, please visit: http://outreach.astro.caltech.edu


Aug 8 & 9 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2019


Small Worlds, Big Science

Among the planets and far beyond are small worlds that hold clues to the formation of our solar system. NASA's robotic spacecraft allow us to visit comets, asteroids, and dwarf planets up close. We are just beginning to figure out what these places are like, what they are made of, and how they formed.
Speaker(s):
Dr. Carol Raymond
Dawn Principal Investigator and Manager of the JPL Small Bodies Program

Location:
Thursday, Aug. 8, 2019, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions

Friday, Aug. 9, 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.

12 Aug 
LAAS General Mtg. 7:30pm Griffith Observatory (private)


Aug 25, 2019

UCLA Meteorite Gallery Events

DR. JOE MASIERO

BEFORE THEY WERE METEORITES: THE DISCOVERY AND CHARACTERIZATION OF NEAR-EARTH ASTEROIDS

Location: Geology Building - Slichter Room 3656
Time: 2:30PM
Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are small objects that have the potential to impact Earth. A small impacting asteroid can deliver meteorites, while larger ones could pose a threat to terrestrial life. Because of this, NASA has undertaken surveys of the sky to search for these NEAs. One of these, the NEOWISE space telescope, uses infrared light to find NEAs and make measurements of their properties such as size and reflectivity. A proposed next-generation telescope, NEOCam, would expand the capability to detect and characterize this population. I will present some exciting results from NEOWISE, and what we can anticipate learning from NEOCam.

12 Sept.?
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
Demo of Meade GoTo Scope & Another 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 August:

   

Moon: Aug 1 new, Aug 7 1st quarter, Aug 15 Full, Aug 23 last quarter, Aug 30 new                       
Planets: Venus hidden in the Sun’s glow all month.  Mars hidden in Sun’s glow all month.  Mercury visible at dawn from the 3rd to the 26th.  Saturn visible from dusk, sets after midnight. Jupiter visible at dusk, sets near midnight.
Other Events:


3 Aug
LAAS Private dark sky  Star Party

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

6 August Southern Iota Aquarids Meteor Shower Peak

9 Aug Jupiter 2deg S. of Moon, Mercury greatest elongation W

7,14,21,28 Aug
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 Aug
LAAS Public  Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm See http://www.griffithobservatory.org/programs/publictelescopes.html#starparties  for more information.

12 Aug Saturn 0.04deg N of Moon, occultation

13 Aug. Perseids meteors peak

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

25 August Northern Iota Aquarids Meteor Shower Peak

31 Aug
LAAS Private dark sky  Star Party

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, Kelly Gov club Secretary (& librarian), or Alan Olson, Resource Committee Chairman (over equipment, and club Treasurer).

Mark Clayson,
AEA Astronomy Club President



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