Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 6
General Calendar p. 8
Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 8
Observing p. 11
Observing p. 11
Useful
Links p. 12
About the Club p. 13
Club News & Calendar.
Club Calendar
About the Club p. 13
Club News & Calendar.
Club Calendar
Club Meeting Schedule:
-- note the possible change of date in Sept. due to Labor Day holiday week
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)
|
3 Oct.
|
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
|
Pizza Party & ?
|
(A1/1735)
|
4 Oct. – Dana Middle
School star party 6:30-8:30pm
5 Oct. – Club Mt.
Wilson night (booked full)
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 (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)
Supernova Cannon Expels Pulsar J0002
Image Credit: F. Schinzel et al. (NRAO, NSF), Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (DRAO), NASA (IRAS); Composition: Jayanne English (U. Manitoba)
Explanation: What could shoot out a neutron star like a cannon ball? A
supernova. About 10,000 years ago, the supernova that created the nebular remnant CTB 1 not only destroyed a massive star but blasted its
newly formed neutron star core -- a pulsar -- out into the Milky Way Galaxy. The pulsar, spinning 8.7 times a second, was discovered using downloadable software Einstein@Home searching
through data taken by NASA's orbiting Fermi Gamma-Ray
Observatory. Traveling over 1,000
kilometers per second, the pulsar PSR J0002+6216 (J0002 for short) has already left the supernova remnant CTB 1, and is even fast
enough to leave our
Galaxy. Pictured, the trail of the pulsar is visible extending to the lower left of the
supernova remnant. The featured
image is a combination of
radio images from the VLA and DRAO radio observatories, as well as data archived from NASA's orbiting IRAS infrared observatory. It is well known that supernovas can act
as cannons, and even that pulsars
can act as cannonballs -- what
is not known is how supernovas do it.Image Credit: F. Schinzel et al. (NRAO, NSF), Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (DRAO), NASA (IRAS); Composition: Jayanne English (U. Manitoba)
The Local Void in the Nearby Universe
Image Credit: R. Brent Tully (U. Hawaii) et al.
Explanation: What does our region of the Universe look like? Since
galaxies are so spread out over the sky, and since our Milky
Way Galaxy blocks part of the
distant sky, it has been hard to tell. A new map
has been made, however, using
large-scale galaxy motions to infer what massive objects must be gravitating in
the nearby universe. The featured map, spanning over 600 million light years on a side, shows
that our Milky Way Galaxy is on the edge of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies, which is connected to theGreat Attractor -- an even larger grouping of galaxies. Also nearby
are the massive Coma Cluster and the extensive Perseus-Pisces
Supercluster. Conversely, we are
also on the edge of huge region nearly empty of galaxies known as the Local
Void. The repulsive push by the Local Void combined with the gravitational pull toward the
elevated galaxy density on the other side of the sky explains part of the mysteriously high speed our Galaxy has relative to the cosmic
microwave background -- but
not all. To explore the local universe yourself, as determined by Cosmicflows-3, you are invited to zoom in and spin around this
interactive 3D visualization.Image Credit: R. Brent Tully (U. Hawaii) et al.
Arp 87: Merging Galaxies from Hubble
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI, AURA)
Explanation: This dance is to the death. Along the way, as these two
large galaxies duel, a cosmic bridge of stars, gas, and dust currently stretches over
75,000 light-years and joins them. The bridge itself is strong evidence
that these two immense star systems have passed close to each other and experienced violent tides induced by mutual gravity. As further evidence, the
face-on spiral galaxy on the right, also known as NGC 3808A, exhibits many
young blue star clusters produced in a burst of star formation. The twisted
edge-on spiral on the left (NGC 3808B) seems to be wrapped in the
material bridging the galaxies and surrounded by a curious polar ring. Together, the system is known as Arp 87 and morphologically classified, technically, aspeculiar. While such interactions are drawn out over billions of
years, repeated close passages should ultimately result in the death of one galaxy
in the sense that only one galaxy will eventually result. Although this
scenario does look peculiar,
galactic mergers are thought to be common, with Arp 87 representing a stage
in this inevitable
process. The Arp 87 pair are about
300 million light-years distant
toward the constellation Leo. The prominent edge-on spiral galaxy at the far left appears to be a more distant
background galaxy and not involved in the on-going merger.Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI, AURA)
Rumors of a Dark Universe
Image Credit: High-Z Supernova Search Team, HST, NASA
Explanation: Twenty-one years ago results were first
presented indicating that most
of the energy in our universe is not in stars or galaxies but is tied to space
itself. In the language of cosmologists, a large cosmological constant -- dark energy -- was directly implied by new
distant supernova observations. Suggestions of a cosmological
constant were not new -- they have existed since the advent of modern relativistic
cosmology. Such claims were not
usually popular with astronomers, though, because dark energy was so unlike
known universe
components, because dark energy's
abundance appeared limited by other observations, and because less-strange cosmologies without a significant amount of dark energy had
previously done well in explaining the data. What was exceptional here was the
seemingly direct and reliable method of the observations and the good
reputations of the scientists
conducting the
investigations. Over the two decades, independent teams of astronomers have continued to
accumulate data that appears to confirm the existence of dark energy and the unsettling result of a presently accelerating universe. In 2011, the team leaders were awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics for
their work. The featured picture of a supernova that occurred in 1994 on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy was taken by one of these collaborations.Image Credit: High-Z Supernova Search Team, HST, NASA
Astronomy
News:
[This
looks like a variant on the Solar Gravity Lens concept Aerospace is involved
with – but a bit closer to home.
Atmospheric refraction around earth it seems would be less uniform than
gravitational bending around a star.]
A
proposed space telescope would use Earth’s atmosphere as a lens
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/proposed-space-telescope-would-use-earth-atmosphere-lens
The ‘terrascope’
would use a detector in space to collect refracted light
BIG SHOT The bending of starlight caused by
Earth’s atmosphere could be used to create a giant telescope, one scientist
suggests, by placing a detector out in space (illustrated).
JAMES TUTTLE KEANE
Telescopes keep
getting bigger — and more expensive. But what if there were a better way?
One astronomer has
suggested a possible work-around: Turn the entire Earth into a telescope lens by
using the planet’s atmosphere to bend and focus light.
When light from stars
hits Earth’s atmosphere, the light bends, or refracts. That bending
concentrates the rays, focusing them in a region of space on the opposite side
of the planet. Put a spacecraft in the right spot — say, orbiting 1.5 million
kilometers from Earth — and it could catch the focused rays, says David Kipping of
Columbia University (SN: 10/14/17, p. 22).
Instruments aboard the craft might be able to collect more light from dim
objects than is possible by current telescopes on Earth. That means the
terrascope, as Kipping calls his design, could potentially make ultrasensitive
measurements, for example, revealing new features of exoplanets, such as
mountain ranges or clouds, he says.
Kipping has outlined the idea in
a study accepted in Publications of the Astronomical
Society of the Pacific. But some scientists are questioning its
merits. Astrophysicist Slava Turyshev of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif., suggests that the concept is infeasible for a variety of
reasons, from the difficulty of blocking out unwanted light from Earth to the
possible blurring of images caused by light entering the atmosphere at
different heights.
Others are a bit more optimistic. “There’s clearly a lot of work
to do before we’ll know if it will work,” says Martin Elvis of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “Even if this neat idea doesn’t
pan out, this is the kind of creative thinking that will get astronomy out of
the linear thinking trap of wanting a bigger version of what we already have.”
A
version of this article appears in the September 14, 2019 issue of Science
News.
CITATIONS
2019.
Kipping. The ‘terrascope’: On the possibility of using the Earth as an
atmospheric lens. Publications of the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific, in press, 2019.
A
3-D map of sta
rs reveals the Milky Way’s warped shape
Scientists used
thousands of stars called Cepheids to trace the galaxy’s structure
BENT OUT OF SHAPE A new map of the Milky Way made with Cepheid
stars reveals the warped shape of the galaxy. In this image, those stars
(green) are overlaid on top of an image of another warped galaxy, NGC 4565. The
star icon indicates the sun.
J. SKOWRON/OGLE/ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY/UNIV. OF WARSAW
Like a misshapen
potato chip, our home galaxy is warped. A new 3-D map brings the contorted structure of
the Milky Way’s disk into better view, thanks to measurements of special stars
called Cepheids, scientists report in the Aug. 2 Science.
Making 3-D
measurements of the galaxy requires estimating how far away stars are from
Earth, typically a matter of guesswork. But unlike other stars, Cepheids vary
in brightness over time in a particular way that can be used to determine a
precise distance to each star.
Although the Milky
Way’s disk is usually depicted as flat, previous observations had revealed that
the galaxy is curved at its edges. The new study shows that that the Milky Way
is even more warped than scientists had thought, says astronomer Dorota Skowron
of the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw. If you took a
spaceship into deep space and looked back at our galaxy, says Skowron, “you
could see by eye” that it’s misshapen.
Skowron and colleagues
made new observations of Cepheids as part of the Optical Gravitational Lensing
Experiment, or OGLE. Combining those measurements with previously studied
Cepheids resulted in 2,431 stars charted in the map.
The team also used the
Cepheids’ regular brightness variations to estimate the stars’ ages. Younger
Cepheids aligned with the Milky Way’s four main spiral arms, while the older
stars were more scattered, a result of their dispersal over time as the galaxy
rotates, a computer simulation suggests. The scientists were able to roughly
reproduce the stars’ actual distributions by simulating stars forming in the
galaxy’s arms and spreading out over time, helping scientists understand how
the galaxy came to have its current structure.
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/7ZWGX7HFf7g The Milky Way’s Cepheid stars
are plotted in three dimensions, revealing the galaxy’s warped shape. Unlike
other stars, Cepheids vary in brightness in a particular way that helps
scientists make more precise estimates of their distances from Earth. Brighter
colors represent Cepheids closer to the warped plane of the galaxy, indicated
by the grid. The star icon indicates the sun.
CITATIONS
D.M. Skowron et al. A three-dimensional map of
the Milky Way using classical Cepheid variable stars. Science. Vol 365, August 2, 2019, p. 479. doi:
10.1126/science.aau3181.
General Calendar:
Colloquia, Lectures, Seminars, Meetings, Open Houses & Tours:
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.
6
Sept
|
Friday Night 7:30PM SBAS Monthly General Meeting
in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw
Bl. In Torrance)
Topic: “The Antikythera Mechanism” Ken Munson
|
||||||
6
September Friday, 8 PM CalTech Astro: Stargazing and Lecture Series “Observing
Black Holes” a lecture by Marianne Heida. For directions, weather updates,
and more information, please visit: http://outreach.astro.caltech.edu
9 Sept.
|
LAAS General Mtg. 7:30pm Griffith Observatory
(private)
|
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)
|
Sept. 19 & 20 The von
Kármán Lecture Series: 2019
It Broke! A Story of How we Fixed It
A
story of how we repaired and saved a spacecraft that was millions of miles
away.
Host:
Brian White
Brian White
Speaker(s):
Dr. Marc Rayman,
Mission Director/Chief Engineer/Project Manager for Deep Space 1
Dr. Marc Rayman,
Mission Director/Chief Engineer/Project Manager for Deep Space 1
Location:
Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions
Friday, Sept. 20, 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.
Thursday, Sept. 19, 2019, 7pm
The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
› Directions
Friday, Sept. 20, 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.
Sept 29, 2019
|
UCLA Meteorite Gallery Events
PROF. ED YOUNG
POLLUTED WHITE DWARFS
Location: Geology Building - Slichter Room 3656
Time: 2:30PM
When a star the size of the Sun has burned all its H and He,
it starts to cool by radiation. It eventually becomes very dense; white
dwarfs typically contain the mass of the Sun in an Earth-size star. The
gravitational field is so strong that elements other than H and He settle out
of the atmosphere on a short time scale (months to 106 years). Thus it was a
surprise when detailed surveys showed 25% of white dwarfs to be polluted with
asteroidal or cometary debris. Recent studies of WD atmospheres thus allow
comparison of these pollutants with the smaller materials orbiting our Sun.
 |
3 Oct.
|
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting
|
Pizza Party & ?
|
(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 September:
Moon: Sept 5 1st
quarter, Sept 13 Full, Sept 21 last quarter, Sept 28 new
Planets:
Venus
visible at dusk after the 18th. Mars hidden in Sun’s glow
all month. Mercury
hidden in the Sun’s glow all month. Saturn visible at dusk, sets after midnight. Jupiter visible at dusk, sets mid-evening.
Other
Events:
6 Sept Jupiter 2 deg
S. of Moon
4,11,18,25 Sept.
|
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
|
7 Sept.
|
LAAS Public
Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm See http://www.griffithobservatory.org/programs/publictelescopes.html#starparties for more information.
|
10 September Neptune
at Opposition
21 Sept.
|
SBAS In-town
observing session – contact Greg Benecke to coordinate a location. http://www.sbastro.net/.
|
23 Sept. Equinox
28 Sept.
|
SBAS
out-of-town Dark Sky observing – contact Greg Benecke to coordinate a
location. http://www.sbastro.net/.
|
28 Sept.
|
LAAS Private dark
sky Star Party
|
Internet
Links:
Telescope, Binocular & Accessory Buying
Guides
General
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/.
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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