AEA
Astronomy Club Newsletter February
2021
Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 8
General Calendar p. 15
Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 15
Observing p. 17
Useful
Links p. 18
About the Club p.
19
Club News &
Calendar.
Club Calendar
Club Meeting Schedule:
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AEA Astronomy Club Meeting |
TBD -- Great Courses video |
Teams |
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AEA Astronomy Club Meeting |
TBD -- Great Courses video |
Teams |
AEA
Astronomy Club meetings are now on 1st Thursdays at 11:30 am. For 2020:
Jan. & Feb. in A1/1735, March 5 in A1/2906 and for the rest of 2020 (April
to Dec.) virtual meetings on Teams.
Club
News:
We are long overdue for a club election. 2 of our officers (myself -- Mark Clayson,
president, and Alan Olson, treasurer) have been serving for many years, and
would be glad to share the opportunity.
And Mark is planning to retire in April.
Per the bylaws, a nominating committee of 3 (not officers) is to be
appointed by the president, and come back with a slate of officers by Nov., and
the election decided by Dec. Then terms
of office from January thru December of the following year.
Mark is putting out a call for volunteers for the nominating
committee (Nahum Melamed can describe their job, as he’s served on it in the
past). And we can provide basic job
descriptions of the various officers (president, vice president, secretary and
treasurer). If I don’t get 3 volunteers
for the nominating committee, I may start approaching and appointing some of
you. We would then like to have a slate
of candidates by our next (March 4) meeting, and the election by April 1. And that would give me a little time to help
transition a new president before I retire end of April.
We need volunteers to help with:
·
Our
nominating committee
·
Assembling
our new 16-inch Hubble Optics Dobs
·
Installing
our new software on our tablet & laptop
·
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: Moon Phases in 2021 https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210111.html
Video Credit: Data: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter ; Animation: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio;
Music: Brandenburg
Concerto No4-1 BWV1049 (Johann
Sebastian Bach), by Kevin
MacLeod via Incompetech
Explanation: What will the Moon phase be on your birthday this year? It
is hard
to predict because the Moon's appearance changes
nightly. As the Moon orbits
the Earth,
the half illuminated by the Sun first
becomes increasingly visible, then decreasingly visible. The featured video animates
images taken by NASA's Moon-orbiting Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter to show all 12 lunations that appear this year, 2021. A
single lunation describes
one full cycle of our Moon, including all of its phases.
A full lunation takes
about 29.5 days, just under a month (moon-th).
As each lunation progresses,
sunlight reflects from the Moon at
different angles, and so illuminates
different features differently. During all of this, of course,
the Moon always
keeps the same face toward the Earth. What
is less apparent night-to-night is that the Moon's
apparent size changes slightly, and that a slight wobble called a libration occurs
as the Moon progresses
along its elliptical
orbit.
VIDEO: Sprite Lightning at 100,000 Frames Per Second https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210104.html
Video Credit & Copyright: Matthew G McHarg, Jacob L
Harley, Thomas
Ashcraft, Hans Nielsen
Explanation: What causes sprite lightning? Mysterious bursts of light in the sky that momentarily resemble gigantic jellyfish have been recorded for over 30 years, but apart from a general association with positive cloud-to-ground lightning, their root cause remains unknown. Some thunderstorms have them -- most don't. Recently, however, high speed videos are better detailing how sprites actually develop. The featured video, captured in mid-2019, is fast enough -- at about 100,000 frames per second -- to time-resolve several sprite "bombs" dropping and developing into the multi-pronged streamers that appear on still images. Unfortunately, the visual clues provided by videos like these do not fully resolve the sprite origins mystery. High speed vidoes do indicate to some researchers, though, that sprites are more likely to occur when plasma irregularities exist in the upper atmosphere.
North American Nightscape
Composite Image Credit & Copyright: Liron
Gertsman
Explanation: On January 21, light from the Moon near first quarter
illuminated the foreground in this snowy mountain and night scene. Known as The
Lions, the striking pair of mountain peaks are north of Vancouver,
British Colombia, Canada, North America, planet Earth. Poised above the twin
summits, left of Deneb alpha star of the constellation Cygnus, are
emission regions NGC
7000 and IC 5070. Part of a large star forming complex about 1,500
light-years from Vancouver, they shine with the characteristic red glow of
atomic hydrogen gas. Outlines of the bright emission regions suggest their
popular names, The North America Nebula and The Pelican Nebula. The well-planned, deep
nightscape is a composite of consecutive exposures made with a
modified digital camera and telephoto lens. Foreground exposures were made with
camera fixed to a tripod, background exposures were made tracking the sky. The
result preserves sharp natural detail and reveals a range of brightness and
color that your eye can't
quite see on its own.
The Vertical Magnetic Field of NGC 5775
Image Credit: NRAO, NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing
& Text: Jayanne
English (U.
Manitoba)
Explanation: How far do magnetic fields extend up and out of spiral
galaxies? For decades astronomers knew only that some spiral galaxies had magnetic fields.
However, after NRAO's Very
Large Array (VLA) radio telescope (popularized
in the movie
Contact) was upgraded in
2011, it was unexpectedly
discovered that these fields could extend vertically away from
the disk by several thousand light-years.
The featured
image of edge-on
spiral galaxy NGC 5775,
observed in the CHANG-ES (Continuum
Halos in Nearby Galaxies) survey, also reveals spurs of magnetic
field lines that may
be common in spirals. Analogous to iron filings around a bar magnet,
radiation from electrons trace galactic magnetic field
lines by spiraling around these lines at almost the speed of light. The filaments
in this image are constructed from
those tracks in VLA data. The visible light image, constructed
from Hubble
Space Telescope data, shows pink gaseous regions where stars
are born. It seems that winds from
these regions help form the magnificently extended
galactic magnetic fields.
The Milky Ring
Image Credit & Copyright: Alvin Wu
Explanation: An expanse of cosmic dust, stars and nebulae along the
plane of our Milky Way galaxy form a beautiful ring in this
projected all-sky view. The creative panorama covers the
entire galaxy
visible from planet Earth, an ambitious 360 degree mosaic that
took two years to complete. Northern hemisphere sites in western China and
southern hemisphere sites in New Zealand were used to collect the
image data. Like a glowing jewel set in the milky ring, the bulge of the galactic
center, is at the very top. Bright planet Jupiter is the beacon just
above the central bulge and left of red giant star Antares.
Along the plane and almost 180 degrees from the galactic center, at the bottom
of the ring is the area around
Orion, denizen of the northern hemisphere's evening winter skies. In
this projection the ring of the Milky Way encompasses two notable galaxies in
southern skies, the large and small Magellanic clouds.
A Plutonian Landscape
Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Institute
Explanation: This
shadowy landscape of majestic mountains and icy plains
stretches toward the horizon on a small, distant world. It was captured from a
range of about 18,000 kilometers when New
Horizons looked back toward Pluto, 15 minutes after the spacecraft's
closest approach on July 14, 2015. The dramatic, low-angle, near-twilight scene
follows rugged mountains formally known as Norgay Montes from foreground left,
and Hillary Montes along the horizon, giving way to smooth Sputnik
Planum at right. Layers of Pluto's tenuous atmosphere are also revealed in the
backlit view. With a strangely familiar appearance, the frigid terrain likely
includes ices of nitrogen and carbon monoxide with water-ice mountains rising
up to 3,500 meters (11,000 feet). That's comparable in height to the majestic mountains of
planet Earth. The Plutonian landscape is 380 kilometers (230 miles) across.
Arches Across an Arctic Sky
Image Credit & Copyright: Giulio Cobianchi
Explanation: What are these two giant arches across the sky? Perhaps the
more familiar one, on the left, is the central band of our Milky
Way Galaxy. This grand disk of stars and nebulas here appears to
encircle much of the southern sky. Visible below the stellar arch is the rusty-orange planet Mars and
the extended Andromeda
galaxy. For a few minutes during this cold arctic
night, a second giant
arch appeared to the right, encircling part of the northern
sky: an aurora.
Auroras are much closer than stars as they are composed of glowing air high
in Earth's
atmosphere. Visible outside the green auroral arch is
the group of stars popularly known as
the Big
Dipper. The featured
digital composite of 18 images was captured in mid-December
over the Lofoten Islands in Norway.
Striped Sand Dunes on Mars
Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA; Processing: Włodek Głażewski;
Text: Alex
R. Howe (NASA/USRA, Reader's History of
SciFi Podcast)
Explanation: Why are these sand dunes on Mars striped? No one
is sure. The featured
image shows striped dunes in Kunowsky
Crater on Mars, photographed recently with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE
Camera. Many Martian dunes are known to be covered unevenly with carbon dioxide
(dry ice)
frost, creating patterns of light and dark areas. Carbon dioxide doesn’t melt,
but sublimates,
turning directly into a gas. Carbon dioxide is also a greenhouse material even
as a solid, so it can trap heat under the ice and sublimate from the bottom
up, causing geyser-like
eruptions. During Martian spring, these eruptions can cause a
pattern of dark defrosting
spots, where the darker sand is
exposed. The featured
image, though, was taken during Martian autumn, when the weather is
getting colder – making these stripes particularly puzzling. One hypothesis is
that they are caused by cracks in the ice that form from weaker eruptions
or thermal
stress as part of the day-night cycle, but research continues.
Watching these dunes and others through more Martian
seasons may give us more clues to solve this mystery.
Astronomy
News:
Crushed space rocks hint at exoplanets’ early atmospheric makeup
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/crushed-space-rocks-meteorites-exoplanets-early-atmosphere
Water-rich
steam might envelop the far-flung planets, experiments suggest
Astronomers want to know what the atmospheres
of rocky exoplanets like Kepler-186f, shown in this artist’s impression, are
made of. Some scientists are burning meteorites to figure that out.
NASA AMES/SETI INSTITUTE/JPL-CALTECH
Burning bits of
ground-up meteorites may tell scientists what exoplanets’ early atmospheres are
made of.
A set of experiments baking the pulverized space rocks suggests
that rocky planets had early atmospheres full of water, astrophysicist Maggie
Thompson of the University of California, Santa Cruz reported January 15 at the
virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The air could also have
had carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, with smaller amounts of hydrogen gas
and hydrogen sulfide.
Astronomers have
discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Like the terrestrial
planets in the solar system, many could have rocky surfaces beneath thin
atmospheres. Existing and future space telescopes can peek at starlight
filtering through those exoplanets’ atmospheres to figure out what chemicals they contain, and if any are
hospitable to life (SN: 4/19/16).
Thompson and her
colleagues are taking a different approach, working from the ground up. Instead
of looking at the atmospheres themselves, she’s examining the rocky building blocks of planets to see what kind of
atmospheres they can create (SN: 5/11/18).
The
researchers collected small samples, about three milligrams per
experiment, of three different carbonaceous chondrite meteorites (SN: 8/27/20).
These rocks are the first solids that condensed out of the disk of dust and gas
that surrounded the young sun and ultimately formed the planets, scientists
say. The meteorites form “a record of the original components that formed
planetesimals and planets in our solar system,” Thompson said in a talk at the
AAS meeting. Exoplanets probably formed from similar stuff.
The researchers ground
the meteorites to powder, then heated the powder in a special furnace hooked up
to a mass spectrometer that can detect trace amounts of different gases. As the
powder warmed, the researchers could measure how much of each gas escaped.
That setup is
analogous to how rocky planets formed their initial atmospheres after they
solidified billions of years ago. Planets heated their original rocks with the
decay of radioactive elements, collisions with asteroids or other planets, and
with the leftover heat of their own formation. The warmed rocks let off gas.
“Measuring the outgassing composition from meteorites can provide a range of
atmospheric compositions for rocky exoplanets,” Thompson said.
All three meteorites
mostly let off water vapor, which accounted for 62 percent of the gas emitted
on average. The next most common gases were carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide,
followed by hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide and some more complex gases that this
early version of the experiment didn’t identify. Thompson says she hopes to
identify those gases in future experimental runs.
The results indicate
astronomers should expect water-rich steam atmospheres around young rocky exoplanets,
at least as a first approximation. “In reality, the situation will be far more
complicated,” Thompson said. Planets can be made of other kinds of rocks that
would contribute other gases to their atmospheres, and geologic activity
changes a planet’s atmosphere over time. After all, Earth’s breathable
atmosphere is very different from Mars’ thin, carbon dioxide-rich air or Venus’s thick, hot, sulfurous soup (SN: 9/14/20).
Still, “this
experimental framework takes an important step forward to connect rocky planet
interiors and their early atmospheres,” she said.
This sort of basic
research is useful because it “has put a quantitative compositional framework
on what those planets might have looked like as they evolved,” says planetary
scientist Kat Gardner-Vandy of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, who was
not involved in this new work. She studies meteorites too and is often asked
whether experiments that crush the ancient, rare rocks are worth it.
“People inevitably will ask me, ‘Why would you take a piece of a
meteorite and then ruin it?’” she says. “New knowledge from the study of
meteorites is just as priceless as the meteorite itself.”
From the Feb. 2021 Edition of the SBAS First Light
Why is Mars a Cold, Barren World? A Theory Ever since
Giovanni Schiaparelli’s discovery of vague lines or “canali” on Mars, people
have been obsessed with the idea that life must exist on Mars. Percival
Lowell’s observations and misinterpretation of “canali” to mean canals further
strengthened the belief that there was a technologically superior civilization
on Mars that was desperately trying to stave off extinction. Alas such beliefs
were dashed in 1964 when the Mariner IV probe did the first-ever flyby of Mars
and returned photos of a heavily cratered surface with no signs of any
civilization. With the arrival of Mariner 9 in Mars orbit, it began to appear
that there had been free-flowing water on the surface but that it had frozen or
dried up long ago. Today, the hunt is on for ancient microbial lifeforms that
perhaps once populated Mars. So, what happened to Mars? Why didn’t it evolve
into a vibrant life-filled planet like Earth?
To understand, we need to go way back to the beginning,
around 4.5 billion years ago when the solar system first formed. There are
still a lot of unanswered questions about how that happened but evidence
supports the Nebular Hypothesis first proposed by Pierre Simon de Laplace back
in the 18 th century. Bear in mind, he proposed this idea with virtually no
real evidence to support it. This theory being that the Sun and planets
coalesced out of a giant gas and dust cloud, with the Sun taking most of the
gas leaving only a little to form the planets. Conventional wisdom and observations
indicated that the rocky inner planets formed close to the sun while the giant
planets formed in the outer reaches. However, recent discoveries in exo-planets
have called that idea into question. It would seem more likely that the giant
planets formed in the inner system, closer to the sun, where there would have
been much more material. Gravitational interactions over a few hundred million
years would cause the giants to migrate outwards (with some being thrown into
the sun) and the smaller, rocky planets formed in the outer regions which had
more light gases and dust that would eventually be the basis for their oceans.
Supposing that this might have happened in the first
half-billion to billion years of the solar system, it’s very likely that Earth,
Mars, Venus and even Mercury were born further out and were moved inwards as
the giants moved out. Mercury, ending up close to the sun, had all its water
and atmosphere boiled away. Venus, thanks to being larger, Figure 1. The Solar
Nebula Hyptothesis 2 held onto its water and atmosphere but, perhaps, suffered
a collision that robbed it of most of its angular momentum. This left it to
slowly bake all its surface water away.
Earth had its big collision which formed the moon and gave
it a more iron-rich core and, maybe, a bit more angular momentum allowing it
have time to assemble an atmosphere and surface ocean. However, this early
atmosphere was extremely toxic by today’s standards, having more resemblance to
Saturn’s moon Titan’s atmosphere. In this environment, the atmosphere and
oceans were a pre-biotic soup. All the ingredients for life were there just
waiting to be assembled.
And how did they get assembled? That takes energy. In the
historic Miller-Urey experiment of the 1950s, they posited the early atmosphere
of earth and that lightning might have supplied the energy needed to form
complex molecules that could lead to life. Initially thought to be a failure,
it was found over several months that the experiment did, indeed, lead to the
formation of more complex molecules, including amino acids. More recent
research but G. S. Osinski and many others have proposed that meteorite impacts
may also have served to ignite the birth of life. Their research has found that
impacts in a pre-biotic soup of chemicals can serve to pump up the chemistry
forming ever longer and more complex molecules. If the surface of the moon is
any indication, the early history of the solar system was a place with lots and
lots of impact events.
It can be reasonably theorized that Earth and Mars formed
about the same time, out of the same stuff and both likely had the same early
atmosphere and both were pummeled repeatedly during the period of heavy
bombardment. Once the worst of the bombardments had subsided, both planets were
left with oceans full of organic chemicals just waiting to be fully assembled.
For that, it took a couple of things: water and energy. Water was everywhere on
both planets and energy was easily available from sunlight. As has recently
been discovered, energy is also available in deep ocean hydrothermal vents
where heat and chemicals provide the necessities of life. Nearer to the
surface, it seems that life evolved in shallow coastal waters and tide pools.
Without a large moon, Mars didn’t have significant tides but the ocean was
probably shallower. Energy from sunlight would have been the primary driver on
both planets as their thick atmospheres held onto solar heat. Similar shallow
water conditions on both planets might have worked to allow chemicals to become
trapped in bubbles forming the first primitive cells. Once the complexity
reached a tipping point, life was off and running. This first life would have
been very different to what we know today, existing in a noxious, mostly
methane atmosphere. Anaerobic bacteria still exist on earth today but live
buried deep in the earth. These life forms survive by harvesting chemicals to
make the energy for reproduction. Which is, unfortunately, slow.
Somewhere along the way, a mutation occurred. Perhaps
indigenously or maybe brought by a meteor or comet but a new molecule appeared
in the library of life on both planets: chlorophyl. This ingenious chemical
allowed primitive life to harvest the abundantly available energy of sunlight
to drive its internal machinery. With the abundance of chemical foods and
sunlight, life on both planets took off like wildfire.
What happens when you get plants using chlorophyl? You get
oxygen produced as a waste gas. So, yes, as always, life brings about
extinction events. The previous world of anaerobic lifeforms vanished, to be
replaced by Figure 2. Protoplanetary Disks Figure 3. Hadean Earth. Earth and
Mars must have looked similar at this stage. 3 the green oxygen-producing
plants we know today. A similar event must have occurred on Mars.
How do we know this? Since life began in the oceans, the
oceans were the first place to absorb all the newly generated oxygen. The
atmosphere remained more methane until the oceans became saturated with oxygen.
And what happens when you have a lot of oxygen and water? You get rust! The
early oceans on both planets must have had an abundance of dissolved iron in
them. As the oxygen saturated the water, it combined with the iron to produce
rust which collected on ocean floors leaving it to be found in the banded iron
formations exposed in deep canyons on Earth. On Mars, it can be seen in the
world-wide distribution of hematite.
Once the oceans became saturated with oxygen the excess gas
began entering the atmosphere. This was the period knows as ‘The Great Oxygenation”.
Lasting a few million years, the methane atmosphere was scrubbed clean and the
once orange skies became a beautiful, clear blue. That would seem to be ideal
for the emergence of life as we know it.
Unfortunately, no. With great things come great consequences.
The consequence of having all this oxygen in the atmosphere was to leave the
air much thinner than it had been for millions of years. With the loss of
density, the atmosphere lost a lot of its ability to retain heat. As usual,
life tends to be its own worst enemy. The Great Oxygenation was followed by a
Great Cooling. This resulted here in the formation of Snowball Earth, with
glaciers and ice most of if not all the way to the equator.
On Mars, the same thing would have happened, although probably
a bit faster since its ocean was shallower. The ocean would have quickly
saturated driving the atmospheric oxygenation rapidly forward. This would then
have thinned the Martian atmosphere to the point where it couldn’t retain the
solar heat like it used to. Thus, Mars would have become a snowball planet,
it’s ocean frozen.
Here's where Earth gets very lucky. Because of that big
impact which left the earth larger and formed the moon, the earth had a much
bigger molten core. This molten core provided two big advantages: 1) it allowed
for the formation of a powerful magnetic field, and 2) it provided the energy
for plate tectonics. On Mars, since it was much smaller, only 3/5th the size of
earth, its core would have probably cooled faster and slowed its spin. This
left it unable to generate the magnetic field needed to protect the surface and
atmosphere. Figure 4. Rise of Oxygen Levels. Figure 5. Banded Iron Formation –
Karajini National Park, Western Australia 4 The cooling core also, left Mars
unable to sustain the plate tectonics that would have driven the formation
subduction zones and rift valleys. Without these, volcanism on Mars came to a
halt.
On Earth, plate tectonics continued and deep ocean vents
provided a place for life to continue. Over time and continents rose and fell,
it’s likely that seafloor life evolved again to embrace sunlight and once again
take over. As the continents formed, increased volcanism pumped up the amount
of carbon in the atmosphere allowing it to retain more heat, melting the
worldwide glaciers. And, thus, it’s been ever since, with Earth swinging
between too hot and too cold, both conditions driven more by life itself.
On Mars, though, without plate tectonics, there was no
continental drift, no subduction zones, no new volcanic activity to replenish
the atmosphere. Once Mars froze, life was not able to re-emerge and resume.
With the core mostly frozen and no magnetic field, the solar wind slowly
stripped Mars’ atmosphere of oxygen and hydrogen, leaving a mostly thin mix of
carbon dioxide behind.
Recent explorations by the Mars rovers have pointed to the
likelihood that Mars was once a water world like earth. Future explorations
will search for signs of early microbiotic life that may well have been there
before most of it got snuffed out in the Great Martian Cooling. Life probably
does still exist on Mars, deep underground, but it likely to be of the anerobic
variety, if it’s there at all. The remaining core of Mars may still be warm
enough to melt water below the surface, although had deep remains unknown.
Perhaps someday, we will meet our long-lost cousins. - Ken Munson
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/
See the Night Sky Network
for
many virtual or other events: https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/event-list.cfm
6,13,20,27 Jan. 7:30pm Virtual Space
Tour, Morrison Planetarium series https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/event-view.cfm?Event_ID=114721
|
|
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting |
TBD -- Great Courses video |
Teams |
|
||||||
|
Cancelled
for now |
|
Friday Night 7:30PM SBAS Monthly General Meeting in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw
Bl. In Torrance) |
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Feb.
4 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2020
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Planetary Protection
Feb. 4
Time: 7 p.m. PDT (10 p.m.
EDT; 0300 UTC)
Protecting the Earth from the scum of the universe... and the universe from the
scum of Earth. We chat with Moogega Cooper (Mars 2020, Europa Clipper) about
preventing contamination during missions around the solar system and making
sure they don't bring anything dangerous back with them.
Host:
Brian White, Public Services Office, NASA/JPL
Co-Host:
Nikki Wyrick, Public Services Office, NASA/JPL
Speaker(s):
Dr. Moogega Cooper, Planetary Protection Lead, Mars 2020, NASA/JPL
Webcast:
Click here to watch the event live on YouTube
Click here to watch the event live on Ustream
Past shows are archived on YouTube.
|
8 Feb |
LAAS General Mtg. 7:30pm Griffith Observatory
(private) |
10 Feb NASA/AIAA-hosted Discussion on Mars Perseverance Rover
Technology,
7:00am https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/event-view.cfm?Event_ID=115997
|
TBD |
UCLA METEORITE SCIENTISTS
No events scheduled currently. |
17
Feb SETI Talks: Strange and Intriguing Exoplanets, 7:00pm https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/event-view.cfm?Event_ID=115998
|
4 March |
AEA Astronomy Club Meeting |
TBD -- Great Courses video |
(Teams) |
Observing:
The
following data are from the 2020 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s
2020 Skygazer’s Almanac & monthly Sky at a Glance.
Current
sun & moon rise/set/phase data for L.A.:
http://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/usa/los-angeles
Sun, Moon
& Planets for February:
Moon: Feb 4 last quarter, Feb
11 new, Feb 19 1st quarter, Feb 27 Full
Planets:
Venus
visible at dawn until the 7th. Mars transits at sunset
and sets around midnight. Jupiter is
visible at dawn after the 18th, Saturn is
visible at dawn after the 20th, Mercury
is visible at dawn after the 19th.
Other
Events:
|
Cancelled |
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. Time: 7:30
PM - 10:00 PM Location: Garvey
Ranch Obs. , 781 Orange Ave., Monterey Park, CA 91755 |
|
6 Feb |
SBAS In-town
observing session – In Town Dark Sky Observing Session at
Ridgecrest Middle School– 28915 NortbBay Rd. RPV, Weather Permitting: Please
contact Ken Munson to confirm that the gate will be opened. http://www.sbastro.net/. Only if we get
permission to use the school grounds again and CDC guidelines are reduced |
6 Feb Online viewing
courtesy of JPL, 9:00pm https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/event-view.cfm?Event_ID=113938
|
13 Feb |
LAAS Private dark
sky Star Party cancelled but online viewing at
9:00pm |
|
13 Feb |
SBAS
out-of-town Dark Sky observing – contact Ken Munson to coordinate a location.
http://www.sbastro.net/. |
18 Feb Mars 2020 Landing
|
Cancelled |
LAAS Public
Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm See http://www.griffithobservatory.org/programs/publictelescopes.html#starparties for more information. |
Internet
Links:
Telescope, Binocular & Accessory Buying
Guides
Sky & Telescope Magazine -- Choosing Your Equipment
Orion Telescopes & Binoculars -- Buying
Guides
Telescopes.com -- Telescopes 101
General
Getting Started in Astronomy & Observing
e! Science News Astronomy & Space
Astronomical Society of the Pacific (educational, amateur &
professional)
Amateur Online Tools, Journals, Vendors, Societies, Databases
The Astronomy White Pages (U.S. & International
Amateur Clubs & Societies)
American Astronomical Society
(professional)
Regional
(Southern California, Washington, D.C. & Colorado)
Southern California & Beyond
Amateur Astronomy Organizations, Observatories & Planetaria
Mt. Wilson Observatory description, history, visiting
Los Angeles Astronomical Society (LAAS)
South Bay Astronomical Society
(SBAS)
The Local Group Astronomy Club
(Santa Clarita)
Ventura County Astronomical
Society
The
Astronomical Society of Greenbelt
Northern
Virginia Astronomy Club
Colorado
Springs Astronomical Society
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
