AEA Astronomy Club
Newsletter
March 2023
Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 7
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:
--
2 March AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
6 April 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:
The club’s Meade LX-200 10”
telescope & accessories need a new home – contact Alex Ellis.
Nominations for club V.P. are being taken.
2024
Eclipse -- An update from the
2024 solar eclipse committee (Mark Clayson, Mai Lee, Melissa Jolliff, Nahum
Melamed, Judy Kerner, Marilee Wheaton):
Great news from the eclipse
committee – we have secured lodging (April 7 & 8) & an observing site
for the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse!
We have contracted for a block of 50 rooms in the Boerne, TX area (30
minutes from San Antonio & our observing site on centerline in Kerrville --
halfway between them, and 90 minutes from Austin). 4 types of rooms, all under $100/night before
taxes.
If you would like more
information about the hotel & available rooms, the link and phone to
reserve a room as well as preliminary travel & car rental research and
observing plans, contact Marilee Wheaton at Marilee.wheaton@aero.org , 310-874-5480.
It is expected that all
people making reservations be members of the club in 2024. And, as with Mt. Wilson observing trips, we ask
that all family members/friends accompanying them also join the club for 2024,
as they will also be receiving benefits of the club (arrangements, equipment, photos,
expertise, and possibly eclipse glasses and T-shirt). Violations are subject to cancellation of
room reservations, if membership is not finalized by Dec. 31, 2023.
Also, please let Marilee
know of your anticipated travel plan – driving or flying. We need to know who’s driving and may be able
to take some of our club equipment for observing and photographing the
eclipse.
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:
·
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)
NGC 1850: Not Found in the Milky Way
Image Credit: NASA, ESA and P. Goudfrooij (STScI);
Processing: M. H. Özsaraç (Türkiye
Astronomi Derneği)
Explanation: There is nothing like this ball of stars in our Milky Way
Galaxy. This is surprising because, at first glance, this featured
image by the Hubble Space
Telescope suggests that star
cluster NGC 1850's size and shape are reminiscent of the many ancient globular star clusters which roam our own Milky Way Galaxy's halo. But NGC 1850's stars are all too young, making it a type
of star cluster with no
known counterpart in the Milky
Way. Moreover, NGC
1850 is also a double star cluster, with a second, compact cluster of stars visible here just
to the right of the large cluster's center. Stars in the large cluster are
estimated to be 50 million years young, while stars in the compact cluster are
younger still, with an age of about 4 million years. A mere 168,000 light-years distant, NGC 1850 is located near the outskirts of
the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy. The glowing gas filaments across the image
left, like supernova remnants in our own galaxy, testify to violent stellar explosions and indicate that short-lived massive stars have recently been present in the region.
Seven Dusty Sisters in Infrared
Image Credit: NASA, WISE, IRSA, Processing & Copyright : Francesco
Antonucci
Explanation: Is this really the famous Pleiades star cluster? Known for
its iconic blue stars, the Pleiades is shown here in infrared light where the surrounding dust outshines the stars. Here
three infrared colors have been mapped into visual colors (R=24, G=12,
B=4.6 microns). The base images were taken by NASA's orbiting Wide
Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
spacecraft. Cataloged as M45 and nicknamed the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades star cluster is by chance situated in a passing dust cloud. The light and winds from the massive Pleiades stars preferentially repel
smaller dust particles, causing the dust to become stratified into filaments, as seen. The featured image spans about 20 light years at the distance of the
Pleiades, which lies about 450
light years distant toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus).
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 from Webb
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Janice Lee (NOIRLab)
- Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Explanation: A mere 56 million light-years distant toward the southern
constellation Fornax, NGC 1365
is an enormous barred spiral
galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter. That's twice the size of our own
barred spiral Milky Way. This
sharp image from the James
Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared
Instrument (MIRI) reveals
stunning details of this
magnificent spiral in
infrared light. Webb's field
of view stretches about 60,000
light-years across NGC 1365, exploring the galaxy's core and bright newborn
star clusters. The intricate network of dusty filaments and bubbles is created
by young stars along spiral arms winding from the galaxy's central bar. Astronomers
suspect the gravity field of
NGC 1365's bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, funneling gas
and dust into a star-forming
maelstrom and ultimately
feeding material into the active galaxy's central, supermassive black hole.
Magellanic Clouds over Chile
Image Credit & Copyright: Felipe
Mac Auliffe López
Explanation: The two prominent clouds in this Chilean Atacama
Desert skyscape captured on January 21 actually lie beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Known as the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds they are so named for the 16th
century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, leader of the first
circumnavigation of planet Earth. Famous jewels of southern
hemisphere skies, they are the
brightest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. The larger cloud is some 160,000
light-years, and the smaller 210,000 light-years distant. While both are
irregular dwarf galaxies in their own right, they exhibit central barred
structures in the deep wide-angle view. Wide and deep exposures also reveal
faint dusty galactic
cirrus nebulae and the
imprints of gravitational tidal interactions between the Large and Small
Magellanic Clouds.
The Seventh World of Trappist-1
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Michael Carroll
Explanation: Seven worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. A
mere 40 light-years away, many of the exoplanets were discovered in 2016
using the Transiting Planets and
Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST)
located at La Silla Observatory in Chile and later confirmed with telescope
including NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope. The TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely all rocky and similar in size to Earth,
and so compose one of the largest treasure troves of terrestrial
planets ever detected around a
single star. Because they orbit very close to their faint, tiny star they could
also have regions where surface temperatures allow for
the presence of ice or even
liquid water, a key ingredient for life. Their tantalizing proximity to Earth makes them prime
candidates for future
telescopic explorations of the atmospheres of potentially
habitable planets. All seven exoplanets appear in the featured illustration, which imagines a
view from the most distant known world of this system, TRAPPIST-1h, as having a rocky landscape covered in ice. Meanwhile, in
the imagined background, one of the system's inner planets crosses in front of
the dim, orange, nearly Jupiter-sized parent star.
Astronomy
News:
From Science Daily
Six candidate massive galaxies are seen 500-800 years after
the Big Bang. One of the sources, bottom left, could contain as many stars as
our present-day Milky Way. NASA FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Massive galaxies seen near the cosmic dawn
BY MARCIA DUNN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
>>Astronomers have discovered what appear to be massive galaxies dating
back to within 600 million years of the Big Bang, suggesting the early universe
may have had a stellar fast-track that produced these “monsters.”
While the new James Webb Space Telescope has spotted even
older galaxies, dating to within a mere 300 million years of the beginning of
the universe, it’s the size and maturity of these six apparent mega-galaxies
that stun scientists. They reported their findings Wednesday. Six candidate
massive galaxies are seen 500-800 years after the Big Bang. One of the sources,
bottom left, could contain as many stars as our present-day Milky Way. NASA FOR
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lead researcher Ivo Labbe ofAustralia’s Swinburne University
of Technology and his team expected to find little baby galaxies this close to
the dawn of the universe — not these whoppers. “While most galaxies in this era
are still small and only gradually growing larger over time,” he said in an
email, “there are a few monsters that fast-track to maturity. Why this is the
case or how this would work is unknown.”
Each of the six objects looks to weigh billions of times
more than our sun. In one of them, the total weight of all its stars may be as
much as 100 billion times greater than our sun, according to the scientists,
who published their findings in the journal Nature. Yet these galaxies are
believed to be extremely compact, squeezing in as many stars as our own Milky
Way, but in a relatively tiny slice of space, according to Labbe.
Labbe said he and his team didn’t think the results were
real at first — that there couldn’t be galaxies as mature as the Milky Way so
early in time — and they still need to be confirmed. The objects appeared so
big and bright that some members of the team thought they had made a mistake.
“We were mind-blown, kind of incredulous,” Labbe said.
The Pennsylvania State University’s Joel Leja, who took part
in the study, calls them “universe breakers.” “The revelation that massive
galaxy formation began extremely early in the history of the universe upends
what many of us had thought was settled science,” Leja said in a statement. “It
turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for
science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into
question.”These galaxy observations were among the first data set that came
from the $10 billion Webb telescope, launched just over a year ago. NASA and
the European SpaceAgency’s Webb is considered the successor to the Hubble Space
Telescope.
[from National Geographic, Feb. 2023]
How did
Saturn get its rings?
Scientists don’t agree on when the planet’s iconic rings
formed—or even how they came to be. But the theories have one thing in common:
violence.
When the Cassini spacecraft took a 2013 image from above Saturn’s pole,
its rings didn’t intersect the planet. In the same Cassini image, but with
Saturn’s rings edited out, the planet loses some of its luster.
ORIGINAL CASSINI IMAGE BY NASA/JPL/CALTECH/SPACE SCIENCE
INSTITUTE/CORNELL; PHOTO ILLUSTRATION (RINGS REMOVED)
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 15, 2023
10 MIN READ
Without its rings, Saturn looks really boring. Super
blah. Erase those bangles—as blogger Jason Kottke did (above) from a NASA
photo—and the planet is the blandest sphere in our solar system. Sure, a
hexagonal vortex and some cool cyclones appear at the planet’s poles—but its
vanilla face lacks the pizzazz of Jupiter’s watercolored bands,
the spicy blue of Neptune, the suffocating murk of Venus.
Even rusty
Mars looks more interesting.
Thankfully, at some point in the past 4.5 billion years,
the cosmos gave Earth’s neighborhood an upgrade: It put a big, bright, icy ring
system around Saturn. But scientists don’t agree on when Saturn’s rings
formed—or how the bangles even came to be. And that’s been true for decades. In
a twist, it turns out that the genesis of one of the solar system’s iconic
features is still an unsolved mystery.
For the most part, scientists have a good grip on the provenance of our
solar system’s most spectacular sights. But Saturn’s rings …
“The planet was formed at a certain point during the
formation of the solar system, and we don’t know if the rings formed at the
same time or if they were formed much later,” says Cornell University
astrophysicist Maryame El Moutamid. “And the reason why it’s so interesting is
not only to know that but to understand the Saturn system—we have a planet, a
ring system, and a moon system, and we think there is a connection between the
rings and the moons.”
That enigma is uniquely fascinating. For the most part,
scientists have a good grip on the provenance of our solar system’s most
spectacular sights: a chasm carved into Mars that would dwarf the Grand
Canyon, Jupiter’s churning Great Red Spot, the
moon’s enormous southern basin. But Saturn’s rings …
“Saturn’s rings are unique,” says Jeff Cuzzi of NASA’s
Ames Research Center. “They’re the only big, massive rings, and they’re very,
very bright, which is unusual. So this has been a puzzle.”
Left: Depictions of Saturn have come a long way
since the earliest drawings: what Galileo saw in 1610 (left), and then in 1616
with a better telescope.
PHOTOGRAPH BY WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Right: A rendering by astronomer Giovanni Cassini,
published in 1676.
ARCHIVIO GBB/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Scientists who think about this question tend to cluster
into two camps. The first group suggests that Saturn’s rings are primordial—that
they formed along with the planet more than four billion years ago—and that
Saturn has never been a boring, blah world.
The other group suspects the rings are much younger,
formed within the past several hundred million years. Under that theory, the
rings are so young that if the dinosaurs had had a space program, they’d have
seen a ringless Saturn through their telescopes (and maybe avoided obliteration
by a wayward asteroid).
ACROSS
A HUMAN LIFETIME, THE NIGHT SKY MAY NOT SEEM TO CHANGE MUCH.
Planets move in predictable orbits,
constellations rise and fall on schedule, time’s passage can be marked by the
shifting lunar face. This is comforting because it means that, adrift on a
verdant island in an infinite cosmic sea, small creatures like us have achieved
some degree of celestial knowing. We have deciphered the harmonies of planetary
motion; we can calculate, with precision, the appearance of something as
magical as a blackened midday sun; and we know, to some degree, how everything
came to be (except ourselves). In a bottomless universe, we cling to what we
know.
“Your mind just wants things to be stable and permanent,” says NASA’s Jeff
Cuzzi. “Celestial things are supposed to not be changing in front of our eyes.
But that’s one thing [the Cassini probe] showed us when we were there at Saturn … We know stuff’s popping out there on all timescales. It’s
a perspective shift that would be good for us.” —ND
“Both scenarios have great arguments, but
they also have weaknesses,” El Moutamid says.
Though separated in time by billions of years, both origin
stories have one thing in common: violence. Making the rings required the
cataclysmic destruction of an icy object—a comet, perhaps, or a moon. Somehow
that object wandered too close to Saturn, and the planet’s gravity tore it into
countless icy shards. A small fraction of those shards are bigger than houses;
others are infinitesimally small. Most are made of bright, pristine water ice,
but one band in the rings is a bit darker. Over time, those busted-up remnants
organized themselves into the ring system we see today, which stretches some
170,000 miles across but is only about 30 feet thick.
Disk of Rings
The varied rings were assigned a letter in the order of their
discovery, while gaps and divisions between them are named for astronomers.
Tiny “shepherd” moons like Pan, Atlas, Prometheus, and Pandora orbiting within
the bright rings maintain the breaks.
Matthew W. Chwastyk, NGM Staff
Sources: NASA; JPL/CalTECH; SSI
The “old-rings” crew says that the cataclysm occurred in
Saturn’s early days. (It is scientifically likelier for a
wayward object to enter a planet’s gravitational maw during the solar system’s
youth.) One version of that story proposes that the giant planets were not born
where we see them today; rather, they migrated to their current locations and
triggered a cascade of instability among smaller objects that ended up being
flung all over the place like celestial Ping-Pong balls.
During the chaos of the solar system’s infancy, it
wouldn’t be tough for an icy body to end up putting a ring around Saturn. The
old-rings theory also predicts that some of Saturn’s moons formed from
busted-up ring stuff that spread far enough from the planet to form clumps on
its own. And therefore, some of the moons that today hover near the rings’
margins are made of the same material.
“Honestly, and without trying to be too neutral, I think
the old age makes more sense to me than the young age,” El Moutamid says.
“That’s my belief up to now, but I am happy to be convinced otherwise.”
The trouble is, the icy rings are too pearly white to be
billions of years old—or at least that’s an argument the “young-rings” camp
focuses on. Called the pollution argument, the problem hinges on the rate at
which dark dust in the outer solar system collides with and dims rings’
resplendence. Put simply, some four billion years of drab cosmic rain should
leave Saturn’s rings looking as dingy and unimpressive as Jupiter’s—unless the
rings are massive, or they’re young. In 2017, using NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, scientists
measured the mass of Saturn’s rings and found there’s not enough material to
absorb a solar system’s age of dust and still look so pristine. Cassini also
gathered data about how much dust ends up in the Saturn system, and that result
also supports the idea that the rings are young.
Yet it’s highly unlikely that an object large enough to
shatter into rings could have come within reach of Saturn—except in the chaos
of the early solar system.
The first photograph of Saturn was taken by Voyager I in 1980.
PHOTOGRAPH BY REGENTS, UC SANTA CRUZ
What if, instead of shredding an
interloping object, Saturn destroyed one of its own moons? Two recent theories
suggest that—just as Spanish painter Francisco de Goya depicted in a bloody
masterpiece—Saturn, in fact, devoured one of its children.
Theory number one, proposed in 2016, suggests that roughly
a hundred million years ago, the Saturn system slid into a position where the
sun’s gravity jostled its inner moons onto colliding orbits that eventually
fastened a ring of debris around the planet. That idea also explains the
seemingly young surfaces of several Saturnian moons, since the ring-forming
event would have destroyed some and caused them to re-form.
Theory number two, from late 2022, largely blames the
rings on Saturn’s megamoon Titan, which is slowly tiptoeing away from its home
world. A couple hundred million years ago, Titan’s slow-motion exodus put it in
resonance with—that is, exerted a gravitational influence on—a hypothetical
moon that scientists call Chrysalis. As a result, Chrysalis got chucked toward
Saturn and ripped into a ring. (This theory would also explain the curious
angle at which Saturn is tilted, as a gravitational interaction with the orbit
of Neptune.)
Needless to say, some don’t buy either of those scenarios.
But in Cuzzi’s view, “Debate is good for science. It’s not a bad thing that not
everyone is convinced.”
Young Saturnian rings challenge our comfortable notions of
cosmic permanence, even as stars explode and meteors streak through our sky.
That one of the solar system’s most familiar sights—magnificent ringed
Saturn—may not have always looked this way is startling, just as when the star
Betelgeuse dramatically dimmed and changed the celestial outline of the
constellation Orion. As Cuzzi says, objects we know and love in our nighttime
sky aren’t supposed to do that.
Yet to me, young Saturnian rings also suggest that life on
Earth got lucky. Serendipitously, evolution produced us—a species capable of
crafting telescopes—in an age that intersects with Saturn’s magnificent cosmic
spectacle.
Footprints of galactic immigration uncovered in Andromeda galaxy
The Dark Energy
Spectroscopic Instrument reveals compelling evidence of a mass migration of
stars into a galaxy other than the Milky Way
Date: February 8,
2023
Source: Association
of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) & Science Daily
Summary: Astronomers
have uncovered striking new evidence for a mass migration of stars into the
Andromeda Galaxy. Intricate patterns in the motions of stars reveal an
immigration history very similar to that of the Milky Way.
FULL STORY
Over the course of billions of years, galaxies
grow and evolve by forging new stars and merging with other galaxies through
aptly named "galactic immigration" events. Astronomers try to uncover
the histories of these immigration events by studying the motions of individual
stars throughout a galaxy and its extended halo of stars and dark matter. Such
cosmic archaeology, however, has only been possible in our own galaxy, the
Milky Way, until now.
An international team of researchers has uncovered striking new
evidence of a large galactic immigration event in the Andromeda Galaxy, the
Milky Way's nearest large galactic neighbor. The new results were made with the
DOE's Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Nicholas U. Mayall
4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a Program of NSF's
NOIRLab.
By measuring the motions of nearly 7500 stars in the inner halo
of the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31), the team discovered
telltale patterns in the positions and motions of stars that revealed how these
stars began their lives as part of another galaxy that merged with M31 about 2
billion years ago. While such patterns have long been predicted by theory, they
have never been seen with such clarity in any galaxy.
"Our new observations of the Milky Way's nearest large
galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, reveal evidence of a galactic
immigration event in exquisite detail," explained Arjun Dey, astronomer at
NSF's NOIRLab and the lead author of the paper presenting this research.
"Although the night sky may seem unchanging, the Universe is a dynamic
place. Galaxies like M31 and our Milky Way are constructed from the building
blocks of many smaller galaxies over cosmic history. "
"We have never before seen this so clearly in the motions
of stars, nor had we seen some of the structures that result from this
merger," said Sergey Koposov, an astrophysicist at the University of
Edinburgh and coauthor of the paper. "Our emerging picture is that the
history of the Andromeda Galaxy is similar to that of our own Galaxy, the Milky
Way. The inner halos of both galaxies are dominated by a single immigration
event."
This research sheds light on not only the history of our
galactic neighbors but also the history of our own galaxy. Most of the stars in
the Milky Way's halo were formed in another galaxy and later migrated into our
own in a galactic merger 8-10 billion years ago. Studying the relics of a
similar, but more recent, galaxy merger in M31 gives astronomers a window onto
one of the major events in the Milky Way's past.
To trace the history of migration in M31, the team turned to
DESI. DESI was constructed to map tens of millions of galaxies and quasars in
the nearby Universe in order to measure the effect of dark energy on the
expansion of the Universe. It is the most powerful multi-object survey
spectrograph in the world, and is capable of measuring the spectra of more than
100,000 galaxies a night. DESI's world-class capabilities can also be put to
use closer to home, however, and the instrument was crucial to the team's
survey of M31.
"This science could not have been done at any other
facility in the world. DESI's amazing efficiency, throughput, and field of view
make it the best system in the world to carry out a survey of the stars in the
Andromeda Galaxy," said Dey. "In only a few hours of observing time,
DESI was able to surpass more than a decade of spectroscopy with much larger
telescopes."
Even though the Mayall Telescope was completed 50 years ago (it
achieved first light in 1973), it remains a world-class astronomical facility
thanks to continued upgrades and state-of-the-art instrumentation. "Fifty
years sounds like a long time, and naïvely one might think that's the natural
lifetime of a facility," said co-author Joan R. Najita, also at NOIRLab.
"But with renewal and reuse, a venerable telescope like the Mayall can
continue to make amazing discoveries despite being relatively small by today's
standards."
The research was carried out in collaboration with two Harvard
University undergraduates, Gabriel Maxemin and Joshua Josephy-Zack, who
connected with the project through the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Najita was a Radcliffe Fellow from 2021 to 2022.
The team now plans to use the unparalleled capabilities of DESI
and the Mayall Telescope to explore more of M31's outlying stars, with the aim
of revealing its structure and immigration history in unprecedented detail.
"It's amazing that we can look out at the sky and read
billions of years of another galaxy's history as written in the motions of its
stars -- each star tells part of the story," concluded Najita. "Our
initial observations exceeded our wildest expectations and we are now hoping to
conduct a survey of the entire M31 halo with DESI. Who knows what new
discoveries await!"
Story Source:
Materials provided by Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy (AURA). Note: Content may be edited for style and
length.
Journal Reference:
1.
Arjun Dey, Joan R. Najita, S. E. Koposov, J. Josephy-Zack,
Gabriel Maxemin, Eric F. Bell, C. Poppett, E. Patel, L. Beraldo e Silva, A.
Raichoor, D. Schlegel, D. Lang, A. Meisner, Adam D. Myers, J. Aguilar, S.
Ahlen, C. Allende Prieto, D. Brooks, A.P. Cooper, K. S. Dawson, A. de la
Macorra, P. Doel, A. Font-Ribera, Juan Garcia-Bellido, S. Gontcho A Gontcho, J.
Guy, K. Honscheid, R. Kehoe, T. Kisner, A. Kremin, M. Landriau, L. Le Guillou,
Michael E. Levi, T. S. Li, Paul Martini, R. Miquel, J. Moustakas, Jundan Nie,
N. Palanque-Delabrouille, F. Prada, E. F. Schlafly, Ray M. Sharples, Gregory
Tarle, Yuan-Sen Ting, L. Tyas, M. Valluri, Risa H. Wechsler, H. Zou. DESI
Observations of the Andromeda Galaxy: Revealing the Immigration History of our
Nearest Neighbor. The
Astrophysical Journal (submitted), 2023 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2208.11683
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):
https://obs.carnegiescience.edu/observatories-events (in-person, online & hybrid events
typically Tuesdays & Fridays)
Carnegie Zoom Digital Series
Zoom Webinar Platform
Night Sky Network Clubs
& Events
https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/clubs-and-events.cfm
2 March AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
3 March Friday Night 7:30 PM SBAS Monthly General
Meeting Topic: TBA in
the Planetarium at El Camino College (16007 Crenshaw Bl. In Torrance)
The von Kármán Lecture
Series:
March 2023 - To Boldly
Go Where No Robots Have Gone Before: Solar System Exploration with Autonomous
Robots at JPL
Mar.
9
Time: 7 p.m. PST (10 p.m. EST; 0300 UTC)
The
Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, has the most
advanced autonomous driving capability ever flown to Mars. Having such an
advanced capability contributes to the rover in its challenging mission to
discover signs of life that may have existed on Mars in a distant past. This
talk provides an overview on the current research and development efforts on
robotics autonomy at JPL, with an emphasis on enhancing the safety, efficiency,
and performance of robotic mobility through the applications of risk-aware
decision making and machine learning.
Speaker(s):
Masahiro (Hiro) Ono, Group Lead, Robotic Mobility Group, NASA/JPL
Host:
Brian White, Office of Communications and Education, NASA/JPL
Co-Host:
Rachel Etheredge, Lead Producer – The Studio, NASA/JPL
Webcast:
Click here to watch the event live on YouTube
No event currently scheduled.
6 April AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
Observing:
The
following data are from the 2023 Observer’s Handbook, and Sky & Telescope’s
2023 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 7 Full, March 15 last quarter, March 21 new, March 29 1st quarter
Planets:
Venus
is visible at dusk all month. Mars transits the meridian
at sunset and sets in the predawn. Jupiter
visible low in the west at dusk until the 30th. Saturn
is visible at dawn starting on the 23rd. Mercury
is visible at dusk starting on the 26th.
Other
Events:
LAAS Event Calendar (incl.
various other virtual events):
https://www.laas.org/laas-bulletin/#calendar
1 March -- Jupiter and Venus conjunction.
|
March 1 |
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 Mar |
SBAS In-town
observing session –at Christmas Tree Cove Located at the west end
of Palos Verdes Peninsula at the intersection of Via Neve and Paseo Del Mar.
Reached from PV West, turn on Via Anacapa then turn left on Via Sola and left
again on Via Neve., Weather Permitting. http://www.sbastro.net/. |
12 March – Daylight
Savings Time begins
|
18 Mar |
SBAS
out-of-town Dark Sky observing – contact Ken Munson to coordinate a location.
http://www.sbastro.net/. |
20 March – Vernal Equinox
22 March – Jupiter 0.5deg N of Moon
24 March -- Venus 0.1 deg N of Moon
25 March – Uranus 1.5 deg S of Moon
28 March – Mars 2deg S of Moon
|
? |
LAAS Private dark
sky Star Party |
|
25 March |
LAAS Public
Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm See http://www.griffithobservatory.org/programs/publictelescopes.html#starparties for more information. |
Internet
Links:
Telescope, Binocular & Accessory Buying
Guides
Sky & Telescope Magazine -- Choosing Your Equipment
Orion Telescopes & Binoculars -- Buying
Guides
Telescopes.com -- Telescopes 101
General
Getting Started in Astronomy & Observing
e! Science News Astronomy & Space
Astronomical Society of the Pacific (educational, amateur &
professional)
Amateur Online Tools, Journals, Vendors, Societies, Databases
The Astronomy White Pages (U.S. & International
Amateur Clubs & Societies)
American Astronomical Society
(professional)
Regional
(Southern California, Washington, D.C. & Colorado)
Southern California & Beyond
Amateur Astronomy Organizations, Observatories & Planetaria
Mt. Wilson Observatory description, history, visiting
Los Angeles Astronomical Society (LAAS)
South Bay Astronomical Society
(SBAS)
The Local Group Astronomy Club
(Santa Clarita)
Ventura County Astronomical
Society
The
Astronomical Society of Greenbelt
Northern
Virginia Astronomy Club
Colorado
Springs Astronomical Society
About the
Club
Club
Websites:
Internal (Aerospace): https://aeropedia.aero.org/aeropedia/index.php/Astronomy_Club It is updated to
reflect this newsletter, in addition to a listing of past club mtg.
presentations, astronomy news, photos
& events from prior newsletters, club equipment, membership & constitution.
We have linked some presentation materials from past mtgs. Our club newsletters are also being posted to
an external blog, “An Astronomical View” http://astronomicalview.blogspot.com/.
Membership. For information, current dues &
application, contact 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 Eric Belle,
(Treasurer).
Mark Clayson,
AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter Editor
