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)

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

2021 February

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: --

 

4 Feb

AEA

TBD

(A1/1735)

AEA Astronomy Club Meeting

TBD -- Great Courses video

Teams

 

4 March

AEA

TBD

(A1/1735)

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: NRAONASAESAHubbleProcessing & 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 (VLAradio 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 & CopyrightAlvin 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: NASAJohns Hopkins Univ./APLSouthwest 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: HiRISEMROLPL (U. Arizona)NASAProcessing: Włodek Głażewski;
Text: Alex R. Howe (NASA/USRAReader'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

 

4 Feb

AEA

TBD

(A1/1735)

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)

 

 

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.

Click here for the YouTube playlist of past shows

 

 

 

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. 

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

 

 

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

The Astronomical League

 e! Science News Astronomy & Space

NASA Gallery

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)

More...

 

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)

Orange County Astronomers

The Local Group Astronomy Club (Santa Clarita)

Ventura County Astronomical Society

The Astronomical Society of Greenbelt

National Capital Astronomers

Northern Virginia Astronomy Club

Colorado Springs Astronomical Society

Denver 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


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