AEA Astronomy Club Newsletter July 2023
Contents
AEA Astronomy Club News & Calendar p.1
Video(s) & Picture(s) of the Month p. 2
Astronomy News p. 10
General Calendar p. 14
Colloquia, lectures, mtgs. p. 14
Observing p. 16
Useful
Links p. 18
About the Club p.
19
Club News &
Calendar.
Club Calendar
Club Meeting Schedule:
--
1 June AEA
Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great
Courses video Teams
6 July 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.
2023 AEA Astronomy
Club Dues
• The new Treasurer, Eric Belle,
will be sending out a request for 2023 Dues, it is recognized that this request
is being sent out 3 months late
• We will attempt to set up an
electronic method of dues payment; once the proposed method has been approved
by the officers, an email will be sent out to the membership along with a
request to pay 2023 Dues.
·
To be counted on the club roster for group
membership in the Astronomical League, you need to renew.
2024
Eclipse -- An update from the
2024 solar eclipse committee (Mark Clayson, Marilee Wheaton, Judy Kerner,Mai
Lee, Melissa Jolliff, Nahum Melamed):
The contract with our new hotel
on the north edge of San Antonio has been finalized, and Marilee Wheaton has
the link & phone to make reservations.
It is within an hour drive of Kerrville and Fredericksburg – two options
on centerline for observing. 50 rooms of
various varieties (kings, double queens, studio & 2-bedroom suites, all with
sofabeds). Rates are a bit higher.
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.
We are still
pursuing options for reserving an observing site – leaning now towards
Fredericksburg rather than Kerrville, as the latter has been adopted by NASA
for one of their 3 sites. Looking at
schools, parks, commercial & private properties. There are designated public viewing sites,
but we’d like to find a private one to avoid crowds and parking issues.
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)
From our club member Jay Landis:
Here is my most recent project from data I captured a few years
ago.
The Pacman Nebula (NGC 281) is a large emission nebula appearing
near the orange giant Schedar in
the constellation Cassiopeia. It
was named the Pacman Nebula for its resemblance to Pac-Man, the character in
the popular 1980s maze video game. In optical images, a dark dust lane forms
the Pac-Man’s mouth. The nebula lies approximately 9,200 light years away and
occupies 35 arcminutes (slightly larger than a full moon) of the night sky. The
Pacman Nebula stretches an estimated 48 light years across. It is a
star-forming region that contains young stars, large dark dust lanes and Bok
globules. Bok globules are small, dense dark nebulae packed with material from
which new stars are formed. The dark dust lane spreads unevenly across glowing
clouds of hydrogen and its appearance suggests that it being sculpted by a
massive star in the background, concealed by the dark clouds. The edges of the
dark dust lanes glow with emitted and reflected light from the bright star. NGC
281 was discovered by the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard in August
1883. The Pacman Nebula is very easy to find because it lies near one of the
peaks of Cassiopeia’s W, one of the most distinctive asterisms in the northern
sky. It appears just east (left) of Schedar (Alpha Cassiopeiae), the bottom
right star of the “W,” and south of the binary star Achird (Eta Cassiopeiae). (https://www.constellation-guide.com/pacman-nebula/)
Since this is a strong emission nebula, specialized filters
captured the ionized hydrogen, sulphur, and oxygen components of the gas
cloud. The “color” is a combination of sulphur (S) as red, hydrogen (H)
as green, and oxygen (O) as blue (the same color palette used by NASA’s Hubble
telescope.) The palette is called SHO. This image was taken over 23 nights from
November 24, 2020 to January 14, 2021. The combined image is from 501 10-min
SHO and 51 5-min RGB data, a total of 87 hrs 45 min. The RGB data was
used for true color for the stars. The nebulosity is exclusively from the
SHO data. This image was taken through a 4.7 inch refractor telescope from the
light polluted skies of Los Angeles, California, USA.
Enjoy the wonder,
VIDEO: Planet Earth
at Night II https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230617.html
Video Credit: NASA, Gateway
to Astronaut Photography, ISS
Expedition 53; Music: The Low Seas (The 126ers)
Explanation: Recorded during 2017, timelapse sequences from the
International Space Station are compiled in this serene
video of planet Earth at Night.
Fans of low Earth orbit can start by enjoying the view as green and red aurora
borealis slather up the sky. The night scene tracks from northwest to southeast across
North America, toward the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida coast. A second
sequence follows European city lights, crosses the Mediterranean Sea, and
passes over a bright Nile river in northern Africa. Seen from the orbital
outpost, erratic flashes of lightning appear in thunder storms below and stars
rise above the planet's curved horizon through a faint atmospheric airglow. Of course, from home you can always check out the vital
signs of Planet Earth Now.
VIDEO: Moons
Across Jupiter https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230613.html
Image Credit: NASA; ESA, JPL, Cassini
Imaging Team, SSI; Processing: Kevin M. Gill
Explanation: Jupiter's moons circle Jupiter. The featured
video depicts Europa and Io,
two of Jupiter's largest moons, crossing in front of the grand planet's Great Red Spot, the largest known storm system in our Solar System. The video was composed from images taken by the robotic
Cassini spacecraft as it
passed Jupiter in 2000, on its way to Saturn. The two moons visible are volcanic Io, in the distance, and icy Europa. In the time-lapse video, Europa appears to overtake Io,
which is odd because Io is closer to Jupiter and moves faster. The explanation is that the motion
of the fast Cassini spacecraft changes the camera location significantly
during imaging. Jupiter is currently being visited by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft, while ESA's Jupiter Icy
Moons Explorer (JUICE), launched in April, is enroute.
VIDEO: Star Eats
Planet https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230606.html
Illustrative Video Credit: K. Miller & R. Hurt (Caltech, IPAC)
Explanation: It’s the end of a world as we know it. Specifically, the Sun-like
star ZTF
SLRN-2020 was seen eating one
of its own planets. Although many a planet eventually dies by spiraling into
their central star, the 2020 event, involving a Jupiter-like planet, was the first time it
was seen
directly. The star ZTF SLRN-2020 lies about 12,000 light years from the Sun toward the constellation of the Eagle (Aquila). In the featured animated
illustration of the incident,
the gas planet's atmosphere is first pictured being stripped away as it skims
along the outskirts of the attracting star. Some of the planet's gas is absorbed
into the star's atmosphere, while other gas is expelled into space. By the video's end, the planet is
completely engulfed and falls
into the star's center, causing the star's outer atmosphere to briefly expand,
heat up, and brighten. One day, about
eight billion years from now,
planet Earth may spiral into our Sun.
Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
Illustration Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech
Explanation: Are asteroids dangerous? Some are, but the likelihood of a
dangerous asteroid striking the Earth during any given year is low. Because
some past mass extinction
events have been linked to asteroid
impacts, however, humanity has made it a priority to find and catalog
those asteroids that may one day affect life on Earth. Pictured here are the orbits of the over 1,000 known Potentially
Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).
These documented tumbling boulders of rock and ice are over 140 meters across and will
pass within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth -- about 20 times the distance to
the Moon. Although none of them will strike the Earth in the next 100 years -- not
all PHAs have been discovered, and
past 100 years, many orbits become hard to predict. Were an asteroid of this size to impact the Earth, it could raise dangerous tsunamis, for example. To investigate Earth-saving strategies, NASA
successfully tested the Double Asteroid Redirection
Test (DART) mission last year. Of course, rocks and ice bits of much
smaller size strike the Earth every day, usually pose no danger, and sometimes create memorable fireball and meteor displays.
A Message from the Gravitational Universe
Illustration Credit: NANOGrav Physics
Frontier Center; Text: Natalia Lewandowska (SUNY Oswego)
Explanation: Monitoring 68 pulsars with very large radio telescopes, the North American Nanohertz
Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav)
has uncovered evidence for the gravitational
wave (GW) background by carefully measuring slight shifts in the arrival times of pulses. These
shifts are correlated between
different pulsars in a way that indicates that they are caused by GWs.
This GW
background is likely due to
hundreds of thousands or even millions of supermassive black hole
binaries. Teams in Europe, Asia and Australia have also independently reported their results today.
Previously, the LIGO and Virgo detectors have detected higher-frequency GWs from
the merging of individual pairs of massive orbiting
objects, such as stellar-mass black
holes. The featured illustration
highlights this spacetime-shaking result by depicting two orbiting supermassive
black holes and several of
the pulsars that would appear to have slight timing shifts. The imprint these GWs make on spacetime itself is illustrated by a distorted
grid.
MAVEN's Ultraviolet Mars
Image Credit: MAVEN, Laboratory for Atmospheric and
Space Physics, Univ. Colorado, NASA
Explanation: These
two global views of Mars were
captured at ultraviolet wavelengths, beyond the spectrum visible to human eyes. Recorded by the MAVEN
spacecraft's Imaging Ultraviolet
Spectrograph instrument in July 2022 (left) and January 2023, three otherwise
invisible ultraviolet bands are mapped into red, green, and blue colors. That
color scheme presents the Red Planet's surface features in shades of tan and green. Haze and clouds
appear white or blue, while high altitude ozone takes on a dramatic purple hue.
On the left, Mars' south polar ice cap is in brilliant white at the bottom but
shrinking during the southern hemisphere's summer season. On the right, the northern hemisphere's polar region is
seen shrouded in clouds and atmospheric ozone. Known to some as the Mars
Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN spacecraft, MAVEN has been exploring Mars'
tenuous upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and its interactions with the Sun and
solar wind since 2014.
Sunset to Sunrise over the Baltic Sea
Image Credit & Copyright: Bernd Pröschold (TWAN)
Explanation: This
serene view from the coast of
Sweden looks across the Baltic sea and compresses time, presenting the passage
of one night in a single photograph. From sunset to sunrise, moonlight illuminates the creative sea and skyscape. Fleeting
clouds, fixed stars, and flowing northern lights leave their traces in planet Earth's sky. To construct the timelapse image, 3296 video frames were
recorded on the night of a nearly full moon between 7:04pm and 6:35am local
time. As
time progresses from left to
right, a single column of pixels was taken from the corresponding individual
frame and combined in sequence into a single digital image 3296 pixels wide.
M94: A Double Ring Galaxy
Image Credit & Copyright: Brian Brennan
Explanation: Most galaxies don't have any rings of stars and gas -- why
does M94 have two? First, spiral galaxy M94 has an inner ring of newly formed stars
surrounding its nucleus, giving it not only an unusual
appearance but also a strong
interior glow. A leading
origin hypothesis holds that
an elongated knot of stars known as a bar rotates in M94 and has generated a burst of star formation in this inner ring. Observations have also revealed another ring, an outer ring, one
that is more faint, different in color, not closed, and relatively complex.
What caused this outer ring is currently unknown. M94, pictured here, spans about 45,000 light
years in total, lies about 15
million light years away, and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici).
Astronomy
News:
(from ScienceDaily.com or ScienceNews.org)
Quasar 'clocks'
show Universe was five times slower soon after the Big Bang
Observational data from nearly 200 quasars
show Einstein correct -- again -- about time dilation of the cosmos
Date: July 3, 2023
Source: University of Sydney
Summary: Quasars are
the supermassive black holes at the centres of early galaxies. Scientists have
unlocked their secrets to use them as 'clocks' to measure time near the
beginning of the universe.
FULL STORY
Scientists have for the first time observed the early universe
running in extreme slow motion, unlocking one of the mysteries of Einstein's
expanding universe.
Einstein's
general theory of relativity means that we should observe the distant -- and
hence ancient -- universe running much slower than the present day. However,
peering back that far in time has proven elusive. Scientists have now cracked
that mystery by using quasars as 'clocks'.
"Looking
back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time
appearing to flow five times slower," said lead author of the study,
Professor Geraint Lewis from the School of Physics and Sydney Institute for
Astronomy at the University of Sydney.
"If
you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second
-- but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that
early time appears to drag."
The
research is published today in Nature
Astronomy.
Professor
Lewis and his collaborator, Dr Brendon Brewer from the University of Auckland,
used observed data from nearly 200 quasars -- hyperactive supermassive black
holes at the centres of early galaxies -- to analyse this time dilation.
"Thanks
to Einstein, we know that time and space are intertwined and, since the dawn of
time in the singularity of the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding,"
Professor Lewis said.
"This
expansion of space means that our observations of the early universe should
appear to be much slower than time flows today.
"In
this paper, we have established that back to about a billion years after the
Big Bang."
Previously,
astronomers have confirmed this slow-motion universe back to about half the age
of the universe using supernovae -- massive exploding stars -- as 'standard
clocks'. But while supernovae are exceedingly bright, they are difficult to
observe at the immense distances needed to peer into the early universe.
By
observing quasars, this time horizon has been rolled back to just a tenth the
age of the universe, confirming that the universe appears to speed up as it
ages.
Professor
Lewis said: "Where supernovae act like a single flash of light, making
them easier to study, quasars are more complex, like an ongoing firework
display.
"What
we have done is unravel this firework display, showing that quasars, too, can
be used as standard markers of time for the early universe."
Professor
Lewis worked with astro-statistician Dr Brewer to examine details of 190
quasars observed over two decades. Combining the observations taken at
different colours (or wavelengths) -- green light, red light and into the
infrared -- they were able to standardise the 'ticking' of each quasar. Through
the application of Bayesian analysis, they found the expansion of the universe
imprinted on each quasar's ticking.
"With
these exquisite data, we were able to chart the tick of the quasar clocks,
revealing the influence of expanding space," Professor Lewis said.
These
results further confirm Einstein's picture of an expanding universe but
contrast earlier studies that had failed to identify the time dilation of
distant quasars.
"These
earlier studies led people to question whether quasars are truly cosmological
objects, or even if the idea of expanding space is correct," Professor
Lewis said.
"With
these new data and analysis, however, we've been able to find the elusive tick
of the quasars and they behave just as Einstein's relativity predicts," he
said.
§ Big Bang
o Quasar
o Galaxy
o Galaxy formation and evolution
o Cosmic microwave background radiation
o Big Bang
Story
Source:
Materials provided
by University of
Sydney. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal
Reference:
1.
Geraint F. Lewis, Brendon J. Brewer. Detection
of the cosmological time dilation of high-redshift quasars. Nature Astronomy, 2023;
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-023-02029-2
Astrophysicists
propose a new way of measuring cosmic expansion: Lensed gravitational waves
Date: July 1, 2023
Source: University of California - Santa Barbara
Summary:
The universe is expanding; we've had evidence of that for about
a century. But just how quickly celestial objects are receding from each other
is still up for debate.
FULL STORY
The universe is expanding; we've had evidence of that for about
a century. But just how quickly celestial objects are receding from each other
is still up for debate.
It's no
small feat to measure the rate at which objects move away from each other
across vast distances. Since the discovery of cosmic expansion, its rate has
been measured and re-measured with increasing precision, with some of the
latest values ranging from 67.4 up to 76.5 kilometers per second per
megaparsec, which relates the recession velocity (in kilometers per second) to
the distance (in megaparsecs).
The
discrepancy between different measurements of cosmic expansion is called the
"Hubble tension." Some have called it a crisis in cosmology. But for
UC Santa Barbara theoretical astrophysicist Tejaswi Venumadhav Nerella and
colleagues at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bangalore, India,
and the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India,
it is an exciting time.
Since the
first detection of gravitational waves in 2015, detectors have been
significantly improved and are poised to yield a rich haul of signals in the
coming years. Nerella and his colleagues have come up with a method to use
these signals to measure the universe's expansion, and perhaps help to settle
the debate once and for all. "A major scientific goal of future detectors
is to deliver a comprehensive catalog of gravitational wave events, and this
will be a completely novel use of the remarkable dataset," said Nerella,
co-author of a paper published in Physical
Review Letters.
Measurements
of the cosmic expansion rate boil down to velocity and distance. Astronomers
use two kinds of methods to measure distances: the first start with objects
with a known length ("standard rulers") and look at how big they
appear in the sky. These "objects" are features in cosmic background
radiation, or in the distribution of galaxies in the universe.
A second
class of methods starts with objects of known luminosity ("standard
candles") and measures their distances from Earth using their apparent
brightness. These distances are connected to those of farther bright objects
and so on, which builds up a chain of measurement schemes that is often called
the "cosmic distance ladder." Incidentally, gravitational waves
themselves can also help measure cosmic expansion, since the energy released by
the collision of neutron stars or black holes can be used to estimate the
distance to these objects.
The method
that Nerella and his co-authors propose belongs to the second class but uses
gravitational lensing. This is a phenomenon that occurs when massive objects
warp spacetime, and bend waves of all kinds that travel near the objects. In
rare cases, lensing can produce multiple copies of the same gravitational wave
signal that reach Earth at different times -- the delays between the signals
for a population of multiple imaged events can be used to calculate the
universe's expansion rate, according to the researchers.
"We
understand very well just how sensitive gravitational wave detectors are, and
there are no astrophysical sources of confusion, so we can properly account for
what gets into our catalog of events," Nerella said. "The new method
has sources of error that are complementary to those of existing methods, which
makes it a good discriminator."
The sources
of these signals would be binary black holes: systems of two black holes that
orbit each other and ultimately merge, releasing massive amounts of energy in
the form of gravitational waves. We haven't yet detected strongly lensed
examples of these signals, but the upcoming generation of ground-based detectors
is expected to have the necessary level of sensitivity.
"We
expect the first observation of lensed gravitational waves in the next few
years," said study co-author Parameswaran Ajith. Additionally, these
future detectors should be able to see farther into space and detect weaker
signals.
The authors
expect these advanced detectors to start their search for merging black holes
in the next decade. They anticipate recording signals from a few million black
hole pairs, a small fraction (about 10,000) of which will appear multiple times
in the same detector due to gravitational lensing. The distribution of the
delays between these repeat appearances encodes the Hubble expansion rate.
According
to lead author Souvik Jana, unlike other methods of measurement, this method
does not rely on knowing the exact locations of, or the distances to, these
binary black holes. The only requirement is to accurately identify a
sufficiently large number of these lensed signals. The researchers add that
observations of lensed gravitational waves can even provide clues on other
cosmological questions, such as the nature of the invisible dark matter that
makes up much of the energy content of the universe.
§ Asteroids, Comets and Meteors
§ Big Bang
§ Galaxies
o Ultimate fate of the universe
o Big Bang
o Cosmic microwave background radiation
Story
Source:
Materials provided
by University of
California - Santa Barbara. Original written by Sonia
Fernandez. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.
Journal
Reference:
1.
Souvik Jana, Shasvath J. Kapadia, Tejaswi Venumadhav,
Parameswaran Ajith. Cosmography Using Strongly
Lensed Gravitational Waves from Binary Black Holes. Physical Review Letters, 2023;
130 (26) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.261401
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
6 July AEA Astronomy Club Meeting TBD – Great Courses video Teams
12 July Join NASA to Celebrate Webb
Space Telescope’s First Year of Science
14 July 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:
July 2023 - VITAL Work
to Benefit all Humankind
A diagonal portrait of VITAL
(Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally), a ventilator designed
and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
July
20
Time: 7 p.m. PDT (10 p.m. EDT; 0300 UTC)
In
response to the coronavirus pandemic, JPL spacecraft engineers worked with
medical professionals to develop VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology
Accessible locally), a breathing aid that helps critically ill COVID-19
patients and bolstered scarce stocks of traditional hospital ventilators. Learn
from JPL Ventilator (VITAL) Operations Lead, Dr. Stacey Boland, how this VITAL
work went from a conversation over morning coffee to a life-saving machine
licensed in 42 countries.
Speaker(s):
Dr. Stacey Boland, JPL Ventilator (VITAL) Operations Lead,
NASA/JPL
Host:
Nikki Wyrick, Office of Communications and Education, NASA/JPL
Co-host:
Katherine Park, Office of Strategy and Formulation, NASA/JPL
Webcast:
Click here to watch the event live on YouTube
No event currently scheduled.
3 August 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 July:
Moon July 3
Full, July 10 last quarter, July
17 new, July 25 1st quarter
Planets:
Venus
is visible at dusk to the 30th. Mars is is visible at dusk
and sets in the late evening. Jupiter
visible at dawn all month. Saturn rises in the late evening and is visible
to sunrise. Mercury is visible at dusk starting on
the 14th.
From NASA:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/skywatching/home/
Other
Events:
LAAS Event Calendar (incl.
various other virtual events):
https://www.laas.org/laas-bulletin/#calendar
1 July Conjunction of
Venus and Mars The two planets will pass about 3.5 degrees of each other.
|
July 5, 12, 19, 26 |
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 |
8 July Neptune 1.7
deg N of Moon
|
8 July |
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/. |
11 July Jupiter 2
deg S of Moon
12 July Uranus 2
deg S of Moon
|
15 July |
SBAS
out-of-town Dark Sky observing – contact Ken Munson to coordinate a location.
http://www.sbastro.net/. |
|
? |
LAAS Private dark
sky Star Party |
|
22 July |
LAAS Public
Star Party: Griffith Observatory Grounds 2-10pm See http://www.griffithobservatory.org/programs/publictelescopes.html#starparties for more information. |
29-30 July Delta
Aquarids Meteor Shower The Delta Aquarids shower is an average meteor
shower than can produce up to 20 meteors per hour at its peak. It is produced
by debris from Comets Marsden and Kracht. The shower runs annually from July 12
to August 23. It peaks this year from evening July 29 to morning July 30.
However, the nearly full Moon will block out most of the fainter meteors.
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://aerosource2.aero.org/confluence/display/AstroClub/AEA+Astronomy+Club+Home 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
