AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter March 2022
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. 14
Useful
Links p. 16
About the Club p.
16
Club News &
Calendar.
Club Calendar
Club Meeting Schedule:
--
3 Mar AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
7 Apr AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
AEA
Astronomy Club meetings are now on 1st Thursdays at 11:30 am. Virtual meetings on Teams until further
notice. When live meetings resume, our
preferred room has been A1/1735, when we can reserve it.
Club News:
A report from the 2024 solar eclipse committee (Mark Clayson, Mai
Lee, Melissa Jolliff, Nahum Melamed, Judy Kerner, Marilee Wheaton):
After initial research into lodging and observing
options, the committee leans towards observing from Kerrville, Texas (in the
Hill Country 60 miles from San Antonio) and lodging there (preferably) or north
San Antonio. We have reserved an observing site in Kerrville, and
identified alternates. A fallback we
continue to research is the Marble Falls-Llano area & Austin. We want
to make tentative reservations at least at one establishment early (some open
this coming April 7), but also pursue any more preferable options as they begin
to take reservations later this year or early next year. Demand and
competition closer to centerline is expected to be high (all properties have
been contacted by others), and we may be forced to San Antonio or Austin
lodging.
The committee will shortly be surveying club members,
and possibly other interested employees, for interest & preferences. We are tentatively planning for a group of
about 110 (about 50 hotel rooms), which is the size of our two prior expeditions
in 1991 and 2017. Tentatively for both
April 7 & 8, though some may want to stay additional nights for other
sightseeing and activities.
Contact
Jason Fields if interested in joining him for an observing night with his 20”
Dobs.
We need volunteers to help with:
·
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, Sam has a fair chunk of the equipment)
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 2022 https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220201.html
Video Credit: Data: Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter ; Animation: NASA's Scientific Visualization
Studio;
Music: Build the Future (Universal
Production Music), Alexander
Hitchens
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 and altitude data
taken by NASA's Moon-orbiting Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter to show all 12 lunations that appear this year, 2022 -- as
seen from Earth's northern (southern) hemisphere. 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: Eta Car: 3D Model of the Most Dangerous Star Known https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220209.html
Video Credit: NASA, CXC, April Hobart; Text: Michael F.
Corcoran (NASA, Catholic U., HEAPOW)
Explanation: What's the most dangerous
star near earth?
Many believe it's Eta Carinae, a binary star system about 100 times the
mass of the Sun, just 10,000 light years from earth. Eta
Carinae is a
ticking time bomb, set to explode as a supernova in only a few million years, when it
may bathe
the earth in dangerous gamma rays. The star suffered a notorious
outburst in
the 1840s when it became the brightest star in the southern sky, only to fade
to obscurity within
decades. The star was not destroyed, but lies hidden behind a thick, expanding, double-lobed
structure called the Homunculus which now surrounds the binary. Studies
of this ejecta provide
forensic clues about the explosion. Using observations from NASA satellites we
can now visualize the
3D distribution of the shrapnel, all the way from the infrared, through optical and UV, to the
outermost shell of million-degree material, visible only in X-rays.
Aurora and Light Pillars over Norway
Image Credit & Copyright: Alexandre
Correia
Explanation: Which half of this sky is your favorite?
On the left, the night sky is lit up by particles expelled from the Sun that later collided with Earth's
upper atmosphere —
creating bright auroras. On the right, the night glows with ground lights
reflected by millions of tiny ice
crystals falling
from the sky — creating light pillars. And in the center, the astrophotographer
presents your choices. The light pillars are vertical columns because the
fluttering ice-crystals are mostly
flat to the
ground, and their colors are those of the ground lights. The auroras cover the
sky and ground in the green hue of glowing oxygen, while their
transparency is clear because you can see stars right through them. Distant
stars dot the background, including bright stars from the iconic constellation
of Orion. The featured image was captured in a
single exposure two months ago near Kautokeino, Norway.
The Galactic Center in Radio from MeerKAT
Image Credit: Ian
Heywood (Oxford
U.), SARAO; Color Processing: Juan
Carlos Munoz-Mateos (ESO)
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 latest image of our Milky
Way's center by the MeerKAT array of 64 radio dishes 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 in 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.
Direct Projection: The Moon in My Hands
Image Credit & Copyright: Jeff
Graphy
Explanation: You don't have to look through a telescope
to know where it's pointing. Allowing the telescope to project its image onto a large
surface can be useful because it dilutes the intense brightness of very
bright sources.
Such dilution is useful for looking at the
Sun, for example
during a solar eclipse. In the featured single-exposure image,
though, it is a too-bright full moon that is projected. This February
full moon occurred two weeks ago and is called
the Snow Moon by
some northern cultures. The projecting instrument is the main 62-centimeter
telescope at the Saint-Véran Observatory high in the French Alps. Seeing a full moon directly is easier
because it is not too
bright, although
you won't see this level of detail. Your next chance will occur on March 17.
Earth at Night
Image Credit: NASA, Suomi NPP VIIRS; Data: Miguel Román (NASA GSFC); Processing: Joshua Stevens
Explanation: This is what the Earth looks like at night. Can you find
your favorite country or city? Surprisingly, city lights make this task
quite possible. Human-made lights highlight particularly developed
or populated areas of the Earth's surface, including
the seaboards of Europe, the eastern United States, and Japan. Many large cities are located near rivers or oceans so that they can exchange goods
cheaply by boat. Particularly dark
areas include
the central parts of South
America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. The featured
image,
nicknamed Black Marble, is actually a composite of hundreds of
pictures remade in 2016 from data taken by the
orbiting Suomi NPP satellite.
Symbiotic R Aquarii
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/R. Montez et al.; Optical: Data:
NASA/ESA/STScI,
Processing: Judy Schmidt (CC BY-NC-SA)
Explanation: Variable
star R Aquarii is
actually an interacting binary star system, two stars that seem to have a close symbiotic
relationship. Centered in this space-based
optical/x-ray composite
image it lies about 710 light years away. The intriguing system consists of a
cool red giant star and hot, dense white dwarf
star in
mutual orbit around their common center of mass. With binoculars you can watch
as R Aquarii steadily changes its brightness over the course of a year or so.
The binary system's visible light is dominated by the red giant, itself a Mira-type long period variable
star. But material
in the cool giant star's extended envelope is pulled by gravity onto the
surface of the smaller, denser white dwarf, eventually triggering a thermonuclear explosion, blasting
material into space. Astronomers have seen such outbursts over recent decades.
Evidence for much older outbursts is seen in these
spectacular structures spanning almost a light-year as observed by the Hubble Space
Telescope (in red and blue). Data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (in purple)
shows the X-ray glow from shock waves created as a jet from the white dwarf
strikes surrounding material.
T Tauri and Hind's Variable Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Dawn Lowry, Gian Lorenzo Ferretti, Ewa Pasiak and
Terry Felty
Explanation: The star with an orange tint near top center in this dusty telescopic frame is T Tauri, prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars. Next to it (right) is a yellow cosmic cloud historically known as Hind's Variable Nebula (NGC 1555). About 650 light-years away, at the boundary of the local bubble and the Taurus molecular cloud, both star and nebula are seen to vary significantly in brightness but not necessarily at the same time, adding to the mystery of the intriguing region. T Tauri stars are now generally recognized as young (less than a few million years old), sun-like stars still in the early stages of formation. To further complicate the picture, infrared observations indicate that T Tauri itself is part of a multiple system and suggest that the associated Hind's Nebula may also contain a very young stellar object. The well-composed image spans about 8 light-years at the estimated distance of T Tauri.
Astronomy
News:
From
ScienceNews.org
How Russia’s war in Ukraine hinders space research
and
exploration
A Mars rover, an
X-ray telescope and several low-Earth satellites are all on hold
The Rosalind Franklin Mars rover
(illustrated), part of a joint European-Russia mission to Mars, is one of
several space projects at risk due to the Russia-Ukraine war.
ESA/ATG MEDIALAB
Space exploration may
seem like a faraway endeavor from Earth’s surface, but events on the ground
ripple into space. The Russian war on Ukraine is no exception.
From a rocket launch
system to a rover set to explore Mars, a wide range of space missions is facing
postponements or cancelations due to escalating tensions on the ground in the
wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine on February 24. The European
Union, United States and others have imposed sanctions on Russia; Russia, as a
result, is continually changing and canceling its space-related plans. The
shifts are having an impact on everything from international collaborations to
missions that rely on Russian rockets to get to space.
Here’s a closer look
at some of those projects.
ExoMars
rover
The ExoMars mission is
a partnership between the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency
Roscosmos. This is a two-part mission to Mars consisting of an orbiter and a
rover. The orbiter has been at the Red Planet since late 2016, but
the Rosalind Franklin rover was supposed to launch this September (SN: 10/18/16).
“The sanctions and the
wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely,” the European Space Agency,
or ESA, said in a February 28 statement in
response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Due to Earth’s and
Mars’ orbital geometry, the most direct trajectory for a spacecraft from our
planet to Mars repeats every two years, and that launch window remains open for
less than two weeks. The ExoMars rover, which will look for signs of past life,
was originally to launch in 2020, but due to the pandemic and technical
issues, it slipped to 2022 (SN: 3/12/20).
Now it’s at risk of slipping again to 2024.
The
eROSITA telescope
Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma
is a space-based X-ray observatory, run jointly by Germany and Russia, that has
been mapping the large-scale structure of the universe for
the last two and a half years (SN: 7/8/20). The
probe’s main telescope, eROSITA, has discovered hundreds of celestial objects,
including a bizarre stellar explosion known as a “cow” (SN: 1/21/22). On
February 26, the Germans placed eROSITA into safe mode as
an action to “freeze co-operation with Russia,” according to a statement from
SRG leadership at the Max Planck Institute in Garching, Germany.
“This is a standard,
reversible, operation mode of the telescope, in which we do not take data, but
keep the vital subsystems on,” says Andrea Merloni, an astronomer at the Max
Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, also in Garching, and eROSITA’s
project scientist. He declined to comment on any other aspect of the mission or
collaboration with Russia.
The Russian News
Agency TASS reported March 1 that Roscosmos intends to estimate the financial
loss of that safe-mode action and other European space-related sanctions, and
the Russian space agency will then bill “the European side” of the projects.
ESA, meanwhile, is
“assessing the consequences on each of our ongoing programmes conducted in
cooperation with the Russian state space agency,” the agency said in its
February 28 statement.
Navigation
satellites
In response to
international sanctions against Russia, the head of Roscosmos announced
February 26 that the agency was suspending cooperation with
the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, and withdrawing its dozens of
employees from the site. Several space missions were set to launch from this
location via a Russian Soyuz rocket in the next year, including a pair of
European navigation satellites in early April.
These satellites would
have joined with the already-launched two dozen that make up the Galileo
navigational system, the European answer to the United States’ GPS system. Two
additional Galileo satellites are also in orbit, but they were placed incorrectly and
instead focus on science and search and rescue (SN: 12/10/18).
OneWeb
internet network
The U.K. company
OneWeb, which is building a space-based internet network with hundreds of
low-Earth satellites, is also facing a launch postponement.
A Soyuz rocket was
scheduled to send up a few dozen OneWeb satellites March 4, one of a series of
launches aimed at completing the network in 2022. But in the early hours of
March 2, the head of Roscosmos tweeted the space agency wouldn’t launch the satellites without
a guarantee from the company that they wouldn’t be used for military purposes.
He also demanded the U.K. government sell its share of the mission, which it
has refused to do.
Venera-D
mission to Venus
The Russian-Ukraine
war has also affected U.S. space activities, but to a lesser extent than its
impact on its European counterparts. NASA has relationships with several
commercial partners, so the agency relies less on Roscosmos. But NASA is still
feeling some effects.
For instance, in
retaliation to U.S. sanctions, the head of Roscosmos tweeted on February 26
that NASA’s participation in the Russian-led Venera-D mission to Venus would be
“inappropriate.” This mission will include
an orbiter, lander and surface station, and it will focus on understanding
Venus’s former and present habitability.
However, Venera-D
won’t launch until late this decade, and NASA has been involved only in some
planning groups. The U.S. space agency already has two of its own Venus missions in
the works (SN: 6/02/21).
International
Space Station
While many areas of
cooperation in space with Russia are fraying, the International Space Station
collaboration so far remains unchanged. “NASA continues working with all our
international partners, including the State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for
the ongoing safe operations of the International Space Station,” NASA public
affairs officer Joshua Finch, at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, said
in an e-mailed statement.
Currently, there are
two Russian cosmonauts, four NASA astronauts and one ESA astronaut aboard the
station. Later this month, a Russian Soyuz capsule is set to return the two
cosmonauts and one of the NASA astronauts to Earth, landing in Kazakhstan as
scheduled, Finch said.
However, during a March
1 NASA Advisory Council meeting, Wayne Hale, a former NASA associate
administrator, recommended the U.S. space agency consider contingencies in case
Russia no longer collaborates on the space station. At the same meeting the
following day, former U.S. representative Jane Harman recommended that NASA
think about what cooperation with Russia will look like going forward.
Other
science collaborations at risk
Space research is not
the only area of science experiencing uncertainty due to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here are two other scientific collaborations showing signs of strain.
Nuclear
fusion: In Southern France, an international group of physicists
is constructing ITER,
which will be the world’s largest plasma physics experiment to produce energy
the same way stars do at their cores (SN: 1/27/16).
Seven partner members — including the European Union, Russia and the United
States — lead the project and develop the equipment used in the experiment. No
one yet knows what the effects on ITER will be because this is a “situation without precedent,” the
ITER organization said in a March 2 tweet. — Liz Kruesi
Arctic research: Since the Arctic
Council was established in 1996, its eight full members — including Russia and
the United States — have forged agreements on issues from oil spill cleanup
plans to scientific cooperation, leading to nominations for the Nobel Peace
Prize, including in 2022.
It’s not yet clear what impacts the war will have on this cooperation, or on
other international Arctic efforts, such as U.S.-Russia joint patrols in the
Bering Sea and an E.U.-Russia plan to retrieve sunken nuclear submarines from
Russian waters. — Carolyn Gramling
General Calendar:
Colloquia,
Lectures, Seminars, Meetings, Open Houses & Tours:
Colloquia: Carnegie (Tues.
11am), UCLA, Caltech (Wed. 4pm), IPAC (Wed. 12:15pm) & other Pasadena
(daily
12-4pm): http://obs.carnegiescience.edu/seminars/
Tuesday, March 1, 2022 -
11:00am
Dr. Carl Fields (LANL)
Next-Generation Simulations of The Remarkable Deaths of
Massive Stars
Tuesday, March 8, 2022 -
11:00am
Dr. Catherine Zucker (Space
Telescope Science Institute)
Revealing the Star Formation History of our Solar
Neighborhood
Tuesday, March 15, 2022 -
11:00am
Prof. Brant Robertson (UC
Santa Cruz)
Inferring the Thermal History of the Intergalactic Medium
from the Lyman-alpha Forest
Tuesday, March 22, 2022 -
11:00am
Prof. Emily Levesque
(University of Washington)
Betelgeuse Is Pretty Cool: Cosmic Questions for our
Naked-Eye Neighbor
Tuesday, March 29, 2022 -
11:00am
Dr. Yiming Zhong (KICP)
Carnegie Zoom Digital Series
Zoom Webinar Platform
January Night Sky
Network Clubs & Events https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/clubs-and-events.cfm
3 March AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
Cancelled Friday Night SBAS Monthly General Meeting in the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance)
March
17 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2022
Moon Dance: Dynamics of the Moons of the
Outer Solar System
Mar.
17
Time: 7 p.m. PDT (10 p.m. EDT; 0300 UTC)
We
are the map makers, the orbit takers. By knowing where the small moons of our
solar system are, we can plan our missions. This will be a practical story of
why orbits are important when looking at solar dynamics, resonances, and moons
of the outer solar system.
Speaker(s):
Dr. Marina Brozovic, Navigation Engineer, NASA/JPL
Host:
Brian White, Public Services Office, NASA/JPL
Co-Host:
Lindsay McLaurin, Public Outreach Specialist, NASA/JPL
Webcast:
Click here to watch the event live on YouTube
7 April AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
Observing:
The
following data are from the 2022 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s
2022 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 March:
Moon: March 2 new, March 10
1st quarter, March 18 Full, March 25 last quarter
Planets:
Venus
is visible at dawn all month. Mars visible at dawn all
month. Jupiter visible at dawn low
in the east-southeast at dusk starting on the 31st. Saturn
emerges at dawn starting on the 8th.
Mercury
is lost in the Sun’s glare all month.
Other
Events:
LAAS Event Calendar (incl.
various other virtual events):
https://www.laas.org/laas-bulletin/#calendar
|
5 March |
SBAS
out-of-town Dark Sky observing – contact Ken Munson to coordinate a location.
http://www.sbastro.net/. |
|
5 March |
LAAS Private dark
sky Star Party |
|
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 |
11 March La Ballona
Elementary School Star Party Located at 10915 Washington Blvd, Culver City.
The star party will be held on the playground area. The entrance to the
playground is around the back of the school on Matteson Ave. Gates should be
open after about 5:15 PM.
12 March
International Day of Planetariums - International Planetarium Society, Inc.
(ipsplanetarium.org)
13 March Daylight
Savings Time Starts Don’t forget to change your clocks! And now we wait
even longer for it to get dark.
20 March Vernal
Equinox
20 March Mercury
1.3deg S of Jupiter
25 March El Segundo
Star Party Hilltop Park at Grand Ave & Maryland Street. Star pa
|
26 March |
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 |
|
Cancelled |
LAAS Public
Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm See http://www.griffithobservatory.org/programs/publictelescopes.html#starparties for more information. |
29 March Venus 2deg N of Saturn
|
2 April |
SBAS
out-of-town Dark Sky observing – contact Ken Munson to coordinate a location.
http://www.sbastro.net/. |
|
2 April |
LAAS Private dark
sky Star Party |
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 Kaly Rengarajan, 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: Jason Fields, President & Program Committee Chairman, Sam
Andrews, VP, Kelly Gov club Secretary (& librarian), or Kaly Rangarajan,
(Treasurer).
Mark Clayson,
AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter Editor
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