AEA Astronomy Club
Newsletter
July 2022
Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 11
General Calendar p. 15
Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 15
Observing p. 17
Useful
Links p. 19
About the Club p.
20
Club News &
Calendar.
Club Calendar
Club Meeting Schedule:
--
7 July AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
4 Aug 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:
Nominations for club V.P. being taken – Sam is going off to grad school.
Mt.
Wilson – Confirmed reservation for the 60-inch Oct. 21 (Friday).
2024
Eclipse -- An update from the
2024 solar eclipse committee (Mark Clayson, Mai Lee, Melissa Jolliff, Nahum
Melamed, Judy Kerner, Marilee Wheaton):
We continue to try to nail down a hotel, but it may be
a while (several months?) as most are not yet taking reservations or
negotiating contracts. We’ll continue to
keep you informed. But typical group
contracts allow individual group members to make their individual reservations
and deposits directly with the hotel.
And deposits may not be required until month(s) before the stay.
Contact Jason Fields if interested in joining him for an observing
night with his 20” Dobs – per recent emails.
We need volunteers to help with:
·
Serving
as club Astronomical League representative
·
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)
Game: Super Planet Crash https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220619.html
Game Credit & License: Stefano Meschiari (U. Texas at Austin) & the SAVE/Point Team
Explanation: Can you create a planetary system that lasts for 1000
years? Super Planet Crash, the
featured game, allows you to try. To create up to ten planets,
just click anywhere near the central star. Planet types can be selected on the
left in order of increasing mass: Earth, Super-Earth, Ice giant, Giant
planet, Brown
dwarf, or Dwarf
star. Each planet is gravitationally attracted not only to the central
Sun-like star, but to other planets. Points are awarded, with bonus
factors applied for increasingly crowded and habitable
systems. The game ends after 1000 years or when a planet is gravitationally
expelled. Many
exoplanetary systems are being discovered in recent years, and Super Planet Crash demonstrates
why some remain stable. As you might suspect after playing Super
Planet Crash a few times, there is reason to believe that our
own Solar
System has lost
planets during its formation.
Planets of the Solar System
Image Credit & Copyright: Antonio
Canaveras, Chiara Tronci, Giovanni Esposito, Giuseppe Conzo, Luciana Guariglia,
(Gruppo Astrofili Palidoro)
Explanation: Simultaneous images from four cameras were combined to
construct this atmospheric predawn skyscape. The
cooperative astro-panorama captures all the planets of the Solar System, just
before sunrise on June 24. That foggy morning found innermost planet Mercury
close to the horizon but just visible against the twilight, below and left of
brilliant Venus. Along with the waning crescent Moon, the other bright
naked-eye planets, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn lie near the ecliptic, arcing
up and to the right across the wide field of view. Binoculars would have been
required to spot the much fainter planets Uranus and Neptune, though they also
were along the ecliptic in the sky. In the foreground are excavations at an
ancient Roman villa near Marina di San Nicola, Italy, planet Earth.
[See also https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220629.html
-- part of description is below]
Yes, but have you ever seen all of the planets at once? A rare
roll-call of planets has been occurring in the
morning sky for much of June. The
next time that all eight planets will be simultaneously
visible in the evening sky will be in
2122.
Mercury from Passing BepiColombo
Image Credit & License: ESA, JAXA, BepiColombo, MTM
Explanation: Which part of the Moon is this? No part -- because this is the planet Mercury. Mercury's old surface is heavily cratered like that of Earth's Moon. Mercury, while only slightly larger than Luna, is much denser and more massive than any Solar System moon because it is made mostly of iron. In fact, our Earth is the only planet more dense. Because Mercury rotates exactly three times for every two orbits around the Sun, and because Mercury's orbit is so elliptical, visitors on Mercury could see the Sun rise, stop in the sky, go back toward the rising horizon, stop again, and then set quickly over the other horizon. From Earth, Mercury's proximity to the Sun causes it to be visible only for a short time just after sunset or just before sunrise. The featured image was captured last week by ESA and JAXA's passing BepiColombo spacecraft as it sheds energy and prepares to orbit the innermost planet starting in 2025.
Filaprom on the Western Limb
Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Wise
Explanation: A solar
filament is an enormous stream of incandescent plasma suspended
above the active surface of the Sun by
looping magnetic fields. Seen against the solar disk it looks dark only because
it's a little cooler, and so slightly dimmer, than the solar
photosphere. Suspended above the solar limb the same structure looks bright
when viewed against the blackness of space and is called a solar prominence. A
filaprom would be both of course, a stream of magnetized plasma that crosses in
front of the solar disk and extends beyond the Sun's edge. In
this hydrogen-alpha close-up
of the
Sun captured on June 22, active region AR3038
is near the center of the frame. Active region AR3032 is seen at the far right,
close to the Sun's western
limb. As AR3032 is carried by rotation
toward the Sun's visible edge, what was once a giant filament above it
is now partly seen as a prominence, How big is AR3032's filaprom? For scale
planet Earth is shown near the top right corner.
Supernova Remnant: The Veil Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Craig Stocks (Utah
Desert Remote Observatories)
Explanation: Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history,
a new light would have suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after
a few weeks. Today we know this light was from a supernova, or
exploding star, and record the expanding debris cloud as the Veil Nebula, a supernova
remnant. Imaged with color filters featuring light emitted by sulfur (red), hydrogen (green), and oxygen (blue), this deep
wide-angle view was processed to remove the stars and
so better capture the impressive glowing filaments of the Veil. Also known as
the Cygnus Loop,
the Veil Nebula is
roughly circular in shape and covers nearly 3 degrees on the sky toward
the constellation
of the Swan (Cygnus). Famous nebular sections
include the Bat
Nebula, the Witch's
Broom Nebula, and Fleming's
Triangular Wisp. The complete
supernova remnant lies about 1,400 light-years away.
Satellites Behind Pinnacles
Image Credit & Copyright: Joshua Rozells
Explanation: What are all those streaks across the background? Satellite
trails. First, the foreground features picturesque rock mounds known as
Pinnacles. Found in the Nambung
National Park in Western Australia, these human-sized
spires are made by unknown processes from ancient sea shells (limestone).
Perhaps more eye-catching, though, is the sky behind. Created by low-Earth orbit satellites
reflecting sunlight, all of these streaks were captured in less than two hours
and digitally combined onto the single featured image,
with the foreground taken consecutively by the same camera and from the same
location. Most of the streaks were
made by the developing Starlink constellation
of communication satellites, but some are not. In general, the streaks are indicative
of an increasing number of satellites nearly
continuously visible above the Earth after
dusk and before dawn. Understanding and removing the effects
of satellite trails on images from Earth's ground-based cameras and telescopes
is now important not only for elegant
astrophotography, but for humanity's scientific
understanding of the distant universe.
Ship Tracks over the Pacific Ocean
Image Credit: NASA, Terra, MODIS; Text: Raymond Shaw (MTU)
Explanation: What are those unusual streaks? Some images of planet Earth show
clear bright streaks that follow the paths of ships. Known as ship tracks, these low and
narrow bands are caused by the ship's
engine exhaust. Water
vapor condenses around small bits of exhaust known as aerosols, which soon grow into
floating water drops that efficiently reflect sunlight. Ship
tracks were first
discovered in 1965 in Earth images taken by
NASA's TIROS
satellites. Multiple ship
tracks are visible across the featured
image that was captured in 2009 over the Pacific Ocean by
the MODIS instrument
on NASA's Terra satellite.
Inspired by ship-tracks, some scientists
have suggested deploying a network of floating buoys in the worlds' oceans that
spray salt-aerosol containing
sea-water into the air so that, with the help of the wind, streams of sunlight-reflecting clouds would
also form. Why do
this? These human-made clouds could reflect
so much sunlight they
might help fight global
warming.
Milky Way Galaxy Doomed: Collision with Andromeda Pending
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Z.
Levay and R. van der
Marel (STScI); T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger
Explanation: Will our Milky Way Galaxy collide one day with its larger
neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy? Most likely, yes. Careful
plotting of slight displacements of M31's stars relative to background
galaxies on recent Hubble
Space Telescope images indicate that the center of M31 could
be on a direct collision
course with the center of our home galaxy. Still, the errors in
sideways velocity appear sufficiently large to admit a good
chance that the central parts of the two galaxies will miss, slightly,
but will become close
enough for their outer halos to become gravitationally entangled.
Once that happens, the two galaxies will become bound, dance around, and eventually merge to become
one large elliptical galaxy --
over the next few billion years. Pictured
here is a combination of images depicting the sky of a world (Earth?)
in the distant future when the outer parts of each galaxy begin to
collide. The exact future of our Milky Way and the entire surrounding Local Group of
Galaxies is likely to remain an active topic of research for years to
come.
Two Black Holes Dancing in 3C 75
Image Credit: X-Ray: NASA/CXC/D. Hudson, T. Reiprich et al. (AIfA); Radio: NRAO/VLA/ NRL
Explanation: What's happening at the center of active galaxy 3C 75? The
two bright sources at the center of this composite x-ray (blue)/ radio (pink)
image are co-orbiting supermassive black holes powering the giant radio
source 3C 75. Surrounded
by multimillion degree x-ray emitting
gas, and blasting out jets of relativistic particles the supermassive
black holes are separated by 25,000 light-years. At the cores
of two
merging galaxies in the Abell 400 galaxy
cluster they are some 300 million light-years away. Astronomers
conclude that these two supermassive black holes are
bound together by gravity in a binary system in part
because the jets' consistent swept back appearance is most likely due
to their common motion as they speed through the hot cluster gas at
about 1200 kilometers per second. Such spectacular cosmic mergers
are thought to be common in crowded galaxy
cluster environments in the distant universe. In
their final stages,
the mergers are expected to be intense
sources of gravitational
waves.
A 10,000 Kilometer Galactic Bridge
Image Credit & Copyright: Maxime Oudoux, Jean-Francois GELY
Explanation: With this creative astro-collaboration you can follow the
plane of our Milky Way Galaxy as it bridges northern and southern hemisphere skies. To
construct the expansive composite nightscape, skies over Observatorio El Sauce
in Chile (top) were imaged on the same date but 6 hours later than the skies
over the Saint-Veran observatory in the French Alps. The 6 hour time-lag
allowed Earth's rotation to align the Milky Way above domes
at the two sites. All exposures were made with similar cameras and lenses
mounted on simple tripods. A faint greenish airglow is visible in the dark Chilean sky that
also features the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds near the observatory dome.
In the French Alps light pollution is apparent, but the distant Andromeda
Galaxy can still be spotted near the horizon in the northern night.
On planet
Earth the two observatories are separated by about 10,000 kilometers.
Astronomy
News:
From
ScienceNews.org
New Gaia data paint the most detailed picture
yet of the Milky Way
The
catalog includes asteroids, galaxies and the stuff between stars for the first
time
DPAC/GAIA/ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
1.6 billion stars. 11.4 million galaxies. 158,000 asteroids.
One spacecraft.
The European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, which
launched in 2013, has long surpassed its goal of charting more than a billion stars in the Milky Way (SN: 10/15/16). On June 13, the mission extended that
map into new dimensions, releasing more detailed measurements of hundreds of
millions of stars, plus — for the first time — asteroids, galaxies and the
dusty medium between stars.
Data in the new survey, which were collected from 2014 to 2017,
are already leading to some discoveries — including the presence of
surprisingly massive “starquakes” on the surfaces of thousands of stars (SN: 8/2/19).
But more than anything, the release is a new tool for astronomers, one that
will aid their efforts to understand how stars, planets and entire galaxies
form and evolve.
Here are a few of the long-standing puzzles the data could help
solve.
Asteroid
mishmash
The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is a mess of history.
After the Earth and other planets formed, the rocky building blocks that were
left over smashed into each other, leaving behind jumbled fragments. But if
scientists know enough about individual asteroids, they can reconstruct when
and where they came from (SN: 4/13/19). And that can provide a peek into the
solar system’s earliest days.
Gaia’s massive new
dataset may help solve this puzzle, says Federica Spoto, an astrophysicist at
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. It includes
data on the chemical makeup of over 60,000 asteroids — six times more than
researchers had such details on before using other tools. That information can
be essential for tracing asteroids back to their shattering origins.
“You can go back in time and try to understand all the formation
and evolution of the solar system,” says Spoto, a Gaia collaborator. “That’s
something huge that before Gaia we couldn’t even think about.”
Asteroids aren’t just pieces of the past, though; they’re also
dangerous. The new data could reveal asteroids that are next to impossible to spot from Earth because they orbit
too close to the sun, says Thomas Burbine, a planetary scientist at Mount
Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., who is not involved with the mission (SN: 2/15/20).
Since these asteroids would have originally come from farther out (say, the
asteroid belt), they can tell us about the rocks going past Earth that can
potentially hit us. “We’ll know our neighborhood better,” Burbine says.
Dating
a star
It is notoriously difficult to measure the age of stars (SN: 7/23/21). “It’s not uncommon to have uncertainty
of more than a billion years,” says Alessandro Savino, an astrophysicist at the
University of California, Berkeley who is not involved with Gaia. Unlike
brightness or location, age is not directly visible. Astronomers have to rely
on theories of how stars evolve to predict ages from what they can measure.
If past versions of the Gaia survey were like a photograph of
stars, the new release is like shifting the photograph from black and white to
color. It provides a deeper look at hundreds of millions of stars by measuring
their temperature, gravity and chemistry. “You imagine the star as this point
in space, but then they have so many properties,” Spoto says. “That’s what Gaia
is giving you.”
Although these kinds of measurements are far from new, they have
never been collected in the Milky Way on such a scale before. Those data could
provide more insight into how stars evolve. “We can improve the resolution of
our clocks,” Savino says.
Milky
Way snacks
Though it may seem unchanging, the Milky Way is actually gorging
on a steady diet of smaller galaxies —it’s even in the process of eating one
right now. But for decades, predictions of when and how these cosmic mergers
happen have been at odds with evidence from our galaxy, says Bertrand Goldman,
an astrophysicist at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France,
who is not involved in the Gaia data release. “That has been
controversial for a long time,” Goldman says, “but I think that Gaia will
certainly shed light.”
The key is to be able to pick apart different structures in the Milky Way and see how old
they are (SN: 1/10/20).
Gaia’s latest release helps in two ways: By mapping the chemistry of stars and
by measuring their motion. Previous versions of the survey described how millions
of stars were moving, but mostly in two dimensions. The new catalog quadruples
the number of stars with full 3-D trajectories from 7 million to 33
million.
This has implications beyond our neighborhood. Most of the mass
in the universe is contained in galaxies like the Milky Way, so knowing how our
own galaxy works goes a long way to understanding space on the largest scales.
And the more scientists understand the parts of galaxies they can see, the more
they can learn about dark matter, the mysterious substance that exerts gravity but
doesn’t interact with light (SN: 6/25/21).
Even
as astronomers mine this latest dataset, they are already looking ahead to
future treasure hunts. The next round is years off, but it is expected to
enable the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, produce rare measurements of
black holes and help astronomers clock how fast the universe is expanding. In
part, this is because Gaia is designed to track the motion of objects in space,
and that gets easier as more time passes. So Gaia’s observations can only get
more powerful. “Like good wine, they age very, very well,” Savino says.
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/
https://carnegiescience.edu/events/carnegie-digital-series
Carnegie Zoom Digital Series
Zoom Webinar Platform
January Night Sky
Network Clubs & Events https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/clubs-and-events.cfm
7 July AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
8 July Friday Night
7:30 PM SBAS Monthly General Meeting Topic: Space Exploration: A History in
33 Objects Speaker: Dr. Steven Morris in the Planetarium at El Camino
College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance)
12 July 1st
Webb photos to be released
July
21 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2022
Curiosity – A Decade on Mars
NASA's
Curiosity Mars rover used its navigation cameras to capture panoramas of this
scene. Blue, orange, and green color was added to a combination of the
panoramas for an artistic interpretation of the scene.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Curiosity – A Decade on Mars
July 21
Time: 7 p.m. PDT (10 p.m. EDT; 0300 UTC)
10 years and over 17
miles of driving has taught us there is more to Mars than we could ever
imagine. We’ll take a look at highlights from the past decade of this
extraordinary mission and see where it’s leading us next.
Speaker(s):
Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity Project Scientist, NASA/JPL
Keri Bean, Curiosity Rover Planner Deputy Team Lead, NASA/JPL
Host:
Nikki Wyrick, Public Services Office, NASA/JPL
Co-Host:
Sarah Marcotte, Public Outreach Specialist, NASA/JPL
Webcast:
Click here
to watch the event live on YouTube
4 Aug 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 July:
Moon July 6 1st quarter, July 13 Full (supermoon), July 20 last quarter, July 28 new
Planets:
Venus
is visible in the east-northeast at dawn all month. Mars
visible at dawn all month. Jupiter
visible at dawn all month. Saturn rises in the evening and is
visible until dawn. Mercury
is visible at dawn until the 7th.
Other
Events:
LAAS Event Calendar (incl.
various other virtual events):
https://www.laas.org/laas-bulletin/#calendar
|
July 6, 13, 20, 27 |
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 |
12 July 1st
Webb photos to be released
20 July International
Moon Day Star Party The event will be held at the Palos Verdes Public
Library Peninsula Center Branch at 701 Silver Spur Road, RPV. There will be
several talks before the star party. The star party will be held in the parking
lot above the library.
|
23 July |
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 |
29 July Southern
Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower Peak Under dark sky conditions a Zenithal
Hourly Rate of 16 may be observided.
|
30 July |
LAAS Private dark
sky Star Party |
|
Cancelled |
LAAS Public
Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm See http://www.griffithobservatory.org/programs/publictelescopes.html#starparties for more information. |
|
30 July |
SBAS
out-of-town Dark Sky observing – contact Ken Munson to coordinate a location.
http://www.sbastro.net/. |
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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