AEA Astronomy Club
Newsletter
August 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. 15
About the Club p.
16
Club News &
Calendar.
Club Calendar
Club Meeting Schedule:
--
4 Aug AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
1 Sept 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)
Disorientation: A poem about the cosmos, by
Katie Mack, PhD
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=256795098557849
“I wrote this poem to share with you my love of
the cosmos, and why I do what I do, both in my research work and online. The
good folks at NC State College of Sciences helped me make a video combining my poem with
astronomical images, and I've loved hearing the positive responses as it's been
spread around the internet. After a bit of a Facebook haitus, I'm finally posting
it here so you can see it if you haven't yet -- I hope you enjoy it! The full
text of the poem and more info can be found here: https://sciences.ncsu.edu/.../disorientation-a-science.../
Book review by Katie Mack of “The Elephant in the Universe,” by Govert
Schilling. Dark Matter Mystery: For decades, astronomers puzzled over the strange
behavior of stars and galaxies. Something else had to be out there.
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VIDEO: Comet NEOWISE Rising over the Adriatic Sea https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220726.html
Video Credit & Copyright: Paolo Girotti
Explanation: This sight was worth getting out of bed
early. Two years ago this month, Comet
C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) rose
before dawn to the delight of northern sky enthusiasts awake
that early. Up before sunrise on July 8th, the featured photographer was able
to capture in dramatic fashion one of the few comets visible to the unaided eye this century, an
inner-Solar
System intruder
that has become known as the Great Comet of 2020. The resulting video detailed Comet NEOWISE from Italy rising over the Adriatic Sea. The time-lapse video combines over 240 images taken over
30 minutes. The comet was seen rising through a foreground
of bright and undulating noctilucent
clouds, and before
a background of distant stars. Comet
NEOWISE remained
unexpectedly bright until 2020 August, with its ion and dust tails found
to emanate from
a nucleus spanning about five kilometers
across.
Spiral Galaxy M74: A Sharper View
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Processing Copyright: Robert Eder
Explanation: Beautiful spiral
galaxy Messier 74 (also
known as NGC 628) lies some 32 million light-years away toward the
constellation Pisces. An island universe of about 100 billion stars with two
prominent spiral arms, M74 has long been admired by astronomers as a perfect example of a grand-design spiral galaxy.
M74's central region is brought into a stunning, sharp focus in this recently
processed image using publicly
available data from
the James Webb Space Telescope. The colorized combination of image data
sets is from two of Webb's instruments NIRcam and MIRI, operating at near- and mid-infrared
wavelengths. It reveals cooler stars and dusty structures in the grand-design
spiral galaxy only hinted at in previous space-based
views.
Starburst Galaxy M94 from Hubble
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Explanation: Why does this galaxy have a ring of bright
blue stars? Beautiful island universe Messier 94
lies a mere
15 million light-years distant in the northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs
(Canes Venatici). A popular target for Earth-based astronomers, the face-on spiral
galaxy is about 30,000 light-years across, with spiral arms sweeping
through the outskirts of its broad disk. But this Hubble Space Telescope field of
view spans
about 7,000 light-years across M94's central region. The featured close-up highlights the galaxy's compact,
bright nucleus, prominent inner dust lanes, and the remarkable bluish ring of young massive stars.
The ring stars are all likely less than 10 million years old, indicating that
M94 is a starburst galaxy that is experiencing an epoch
of rapid star formation from inspiraling gas. The circular ripple of blue stars
is likely a wave
propagating outward,
having been triggered
by the
gravity and rotation of a oval matter
distributions.
Because M94 is relatively nearby, astronomers can better explore details of its starburst ring.
Jupiter and Ring in Infrared from Webb
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Processing
& License: Judy Schmidt
Explanation: Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's main
ring was
discovered in 1979 by NASA's passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but its origin was then
a mystery. Data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from
1995 to 2003, however, confirmed the hypothesis that this ring was created by meteoroid impacts on
small nearby moons. As a small meteoroid strikes tiny Metis, for example, it will bore into the moon,
vaporize, and explode dirt and dust off into a Jovian orbit. The featured image of Jupiter in infrared light by the James
Webb Space Telescope shows
not only Jupiter
and its clouds,
but this ring as well. Also visible is Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) -- in comparatively light
color on the right, Jupiter's large moon Europa -- in the center of diffraction spikes on the left, and Europa's shadow -- next to the GRS. Several features in the image are not
yet well understood,
including the seemingly
separated cloud
layer on Jupiter's right limb.
Stephan's Quintet from Webb, Hubble, and
Subaru
Image Credit: Webb, Hubble, Subaru; NASA, ESA, CSA, NOAJ, STScI; Processing &
Copyright: Robert Gendler
Explanation: OK, but why can't you combine images
from Webb and Hubble? You can, and today's
featured image shows
one impressive result. Although the recently launched James Webb
Space Telescope (Webb)
has a larger
mirror than
Hubble, it specializes in infrared
light and
can't see blue -- only up to about orange. Conversely, the Hubble Space Telescope (Hubble) has a smaller mirror than
Webb and can't see as far into the infrared as Webb, but can image not
only blue light but even ultraviolet. Therefore, Webb and Hubble data can be combined to create
images across a wider variety of colors. The featured image of four galaxies from Stephan's Quintet shows Webb images as red and also
includes images taken by Japan's ground-based Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Because image data for Webb, Hubble, and Subaru are made freely available, anyone
around the world can process it themselves, and even create intriguing and scientifically useful
multi-observatory montages.
Saturn and the ISS
Image Credit & Copyright: Tom Glenn
Explanation: Soaring high in skies around planet Earth,
bright planet Saturn was a star of June's
morning planet parade. But very briefly on June 24 it posed with a bright object in low
Earth orbit, the International Space Station. On that date from a school
parking lot in Temecula, California the ringed-planet and International Space
Station were
both caught in this single high-speed
video frame.
Though Saturn was shining at +0.5 stellar magnitude the space station was an
even brighter -3 on
the magnitude scale.
That difference in brightness is faithfully represented in the video capture
frame. In the
challenging image, the orbiting ISS was at a range of 602 kilometers. Saturn was about 1.4 billion kilometers
from the school parking lot.
Astronomy
News:
From
ScienceNews.org
How James Webb Space Telescope data have already revealed
surprises
The
first image contains a galaxy cluster’s past and recent star birth in more
remote galaxies
It took astronomers mere days to dig insights
out of the first public image from JWST, which shows a massive galaxy cluster
called SMACS 0723 and many more distant galaxies behind it.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI
Massimo Pascale wasn’t
planning to study the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. But as soon as he saw the
cluster glittering in the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope, or
JWST, he and his colleagues couldn’t help themselves.
“We were like, we have
to do something,” says Pascale, an astronomer at the University of California,
Berkeley. “We can’t stop ourselves from analyzing this data. It was so
exciting.”
Pascale’s team is one
of several groups of scientists who saw the first JWST images and immediately
rolled up their sleeves. In the first few days after images and the data used
to create them were made public, scientists have estimated the amount of mass
the cluster contains, uncovered a violent incident in the cluster’s recent past
and estimated the ages of the stars in galaxies far beyond the cluster itself.
“We’ve been preparing
for this for a long time. Myself, I’ve been preparing for years, and I’m not
very old,” says Pascale, who is in his fourth year of graduate school.
JWST “is really going to define a new generation of astronomers and a new
generation of science as a whole.”
Cluster
collision
When the image of
SMACS 0723 was released in a White House briefing on July 11, most of the focus
went to extremely distant galaxies in the background (SN: 7/11/22).
But smack in the middle of the image is SMACS 0723 itself, a much closer
cluster of galaxies about 4.6 billion light-years from Earth. Its mass bends
light from even farther away, making more distant objects appear magnified, as
if their light had traveled through the lens of another cosmic-sized telescope.
The light from the
most distant galaxy in this image started its journey to JWST about 13.3
billion years ago — “almost at the dawn of the universe,” says astrophysicist
Guillaume Mahler of Durham University in England, who is already using the
picture as his Zoom background.
But the image can also
fill in the history of the intervening galaxy cluster itself. “People sometimes
forget about that — the galaxy cluster is also very important,” Pascale says.
Pascale’s and Mahler’s
teams each started by taking inventory of the distant galaxies that appear
stretched and distorted in the image. The light from some of those galaxies is
warped such that multiple images of the same galaxy appear in different places.
Mapping those multiply imaged galaxies is a sensitive probe of the way mass is
spread around the cluster. That, in turn, can reveal where the cluster contains dark matter, the
invisible, mysterious substance that makes up the majority of the mass in the
universe (SN: 9/10/20).
Both teams found that
SMACS 0723 is more elongated than it appeared in previous observations. They also
found a faint glow, called intracluster light, inside the cluster from stars
that don’t belong to any particular galaxy. Together, those features suggest
that SMACS 0723
is still recovering from a relatively recent smash-up with
another galaxy cluster, the teams report separately in a pair of papers
submitted to arXiv.org on July 14.
A galaxy cluster that
has been sitting on its own for eons should have a rounder distribution of
matter and intracluster light, rather than SMACS 0723’s oblong shape. The stars
that emit the intracluster light were probably ripped from their home galaxies
by gravitational forces during the collision.
“Two separate clusters
have merged together, and it looks to us as if it’s not totally settled yet,”
Pascale says. “What we might be looking at is an ongoing merger.”
Far-flung
galaxies
Mapping out mass in
the cluster is also essential to decoding the properties of the more distant
galaxies in the background of the image, Mahler says. “You need to understand
the cluster and its magnification power to understand what’s behind.”
Some scientists are
already investigating those distant galaxies in detail. The first JWST data
include not just pretty pictures but also spectra, measurements of how much
light an object emits at various wavelengths. Spectra allow scientists to
determine how much a distant object’s light has been stretched — or redshifted
— by the expansion of the universe,
which is a proxy for its distance. Such data can also help reveal a galaxy’s
composition and the ages of its stars.
“The main thing that
limits the study of star formation in galaxies is the quality of the data,”
says astrophysicist Adam Carnall of the University of Edinburgh. But with the
vastly improved data from JWST, he says, he and his team were able to measure
the ages of stars in those remote galaxies.
Carnall and colleagues
turned their attention to the spectra of the distant galaxies just a few days
after the SMACS image was released. They measured the redshifts of 10 galaxies,
five of which were
particularly distant, the team reports in a paper
submitted to arXiv.org on July 18. One had already been highlighted as one of
the most distant galaxy ever seen, with light that was emitted just 500 million
years after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. The other four shone as late
as 1.1 billion years after the Big Bang.
All 10 galaxies were
relatively young when they emitted the light captured by JWST, Carnall says.
They had all switched on their star formation just a few million years earlier.
That’s not especially surprising, but it is interesting.
“The ability to look
at these small, faint galaxies … gives you a sense of how all galaxies must
look when they start forming stars,” Carnall says.
Scientists hope to use
JWST to find the first instances of star formation ever. Other early results
suggest they’re already getting close.
Some galaxies in a
JWST image of another
cluster may hearken from an
even earlier time, as early as 300 million
years after the Big Bang, two research teams report in a pair of papers
submitted to arXiv.org on July 19. One of those galaxies seems to have already
built up a spiral disk about a billion times the mass of the sun, which is
surprisingly mature for such an early galaxy.
And a tally of
galaxies seen in the SMACS 0723 image suggests that galaxies with mature disks,
rather than disorganized blobs or ones made up mostly of dark matter, may have
been more common in the very early universe than previously thought, another
team reports in an arXiv.org paper submitted July 19. That means those early
disks might not be outliers.
“Definitely these
galaxies are a big deal, but it remains to be seen how exciting they will look
in the context of a few months’ progress with JWST,” Carnall says. The best is
yet to come.
Exploded
stars, colliding galaxies, and beautiful clouds feature in the first space
photos released by The James Webb Space Telescope July 12.
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
4 August AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
5 Aug 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)
August
18 The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2022
This artist's concept depicts NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft entering
interstellar space. Interstellar space is dominated by the plasma, or ionized
gas, that was ejected by the death of nearby giant stars millions of years ago.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Voyager – 45 Years in Space
August
18
Time: 7 p.m. PDT (10 p.m. EDT; 0300 UTC)
As
the twin Voyager spacecraft approach their 45th anniversary, we take a look at
where the mission has been, what they’ve taught us, and where they go from
here. In this conversation with Suzanne Dodd, Voyager Project Manager, we’ll
discuss how Voyager came to be, highlight some of the major discoveries, and
hear stories about this mission that has captured the public’s attention for
years.
Speaker(s):
Suzanne Dodd, Voyager Project Manager, NASA/JPL
Host:
Brian White, Public Services Office, NASA/JPL
Co-Host:
TBD
Webcast:
Click here to watch the event live on YouTube
1 Sept 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 August:
Moon Aug 5 1st quarter, Aug 12 Full (supermoon), Aug 19 last quarter, Aug 27 new
Planets:
Venus
is visible in the east-northeast at dawn all month. Mars
visible at dawn all month. Jupiter
& Saturn rise in the evening and are visible until dawn. Mercury
is visible at dusk from the 7th to 21st.
Other
Events:
LAAS Event Calendar (incl.
various other virtual events):
https://www.laas.org/laas-bulletin/#calendar
|
Aug 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 |
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 August Perseids
Meteor Shower Peak
14 Aug Saturn at
opposition
15 Aug Jupiter
1.9deg N of Moon
18 Aug Uranus
0.6deg S of Moon, occultation
|
20 Aug |
SBAS In-town
observing session – In Town Dark Sky Observing Session at Ridgecrest
Middle School– 28915 North Bay 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 |
25 August Northern
Iota Aquarids Meteor Shower Peak 5 to 10 meteors per hour may be seen under
dark sky conditions
25 Aug Venus 4deg
S of Moon
27 Aug Mercury
greatest elongation E (27deg)
|
27 Aug |
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. |
|
? |
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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