WILL’S WORDS BRENDA’S MINUTES

DECEMBER 2016 ISSUE THE CLUB WEB SITE:

asset-astronomer.org

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ASSET Meeting Location

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PLANETARIUM

STARGAZER ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF SOUTH EAST TEXAS

P O BOX 654

GROVES, TEXAS 77619

ASSET NEWSLETTER

President - Will Young

president@asset-astronomer. org

Vice-President - Kyle Overturf

vice-president@asset-astronomer.org

Secretary - Brenda Tantzen

secretary@asset-astronomer.org

Treasurer - Eddie & Cat Trevino

treasurer@asset-astronomer.org

Newsletter Editor - Howard Minor

newslettered@asset-astronomer.org

ASSET Minutes November 11, 2016

Our December meeting will be on the 9th at 6:30 p.m. at Habaneros. There will be a gift exchange. If you choose to participate, bring a gift worth $10-$15 for each person in your party. Don’t forget dues are due--$30/year. Will showed some El Dorado star party videos/pictures that he took using his drone. There will be a star party at King Middle School on December 5, 5 p.m. Come help if you can. The Beaumont Children’s Museum will have a star party December 8th, set up at 5:15 p.m. at River Front Park.

Attendance: 22 January refreshments: Moi

Brenda Tantzen ASSET Secretary

CHRISTMAS DINNER MEETING

Friday Dec. 9th 6:30 pm

at Habaneros, Just north

of the parkdALE MALL

on access road

NEW

TELESCOPE

AND

ACCESS0RY

TIME

Everyone wave as 2016 says goodbye and 2017 takes its place! What a year! If you

made it to some star parties, then you prob-ably had a great time. All of them had good nights. Speaking of, the skies have been extremely nice here in the Beaumont area lately. If you get the chance get out and observe! Our December meeting will be at Habanero's in Beaumont. We will meet at 6:30pm for some food and fun!! If you want to participate in the gift exchange bring a wrapped astronomy related gift of about $10 or so and we will exchange those after the meal. It's always a lot of fun. If you can please help us with the upcoming out-reach parties: December 5th at King Middle School and December 8th at River Front Park for the Beaumont Children's Museum. More details on that will be coming soon. Watch for the emails!

See you at the December Meeting. Will PAGE 1

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM JANE AND HOWARD

OBSERVERS’ PAGE

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+ TRAN-

RITTER SAB-INE

ARM-COL-

An Astronomy Team

To Take Care Of All

Your Astronomical

Needs

Clayton 713-569-7529

Ron 979-702-0258

2017 Texas Star Party – Sign up now! Yes it is time! - Those who would

like to attend need to open the TSP web site and sign up. As stated below they have only room

for 500, so they have a drawing for the 1st 500. Will is already signed up!

The great tradition of dark sky observing continues with the 39th Annual TEXAS STAR PARTY, May

21-28, 2017,near Ft Davis, Texas Staying on the Ranch in housing, RV, or camping? Staying off-site in

other accommodations? Everyone needs to enter the TSP drawing, held in late January. You should

submit a Registration/Reservation Request Form to ENTER THE TSP DRAWING before January 20,

2017. This will provide you the highest possible chance of being selected as one of the 500 people

who will be able to attend TSP this year.

CLUB NEWS - 2017 DUES CAN BE PAID TO Eddie & Cat, our Treasurers. They are still $30 and mail in checks should be sent to PO BOX 654, GROVES, TX 77619 and made out to ASSET. And the club will take any extra donations, for we are a non-profit organization. We would love to have some of our old members rejoin or just drop by once in a while. It would be nice to see you guys. 1. We are still looking for observing sites and preparing loaner telescopes for you all. 2. There are 2 star parties and Christmas Dinner Meeting the same week, in December. The 1st is at King Middle school and will start just after dark. We are planning to arrive at about 5 to 5:15pm or so and the date is Monday December the 5th. The 2nd is the same ar-rival time, as well, 5 to 5:15. This one will be at the Amphitheater at River Front Park in Beaumont on Thursday December the 8th. Watch for emails for more details. This one is important, as the public is invited, and a flyer is being prepared send out now. Will, should have more info on that soon. We are ready for you all to jump in and make 2017 GREAT.

How long to orbit Milky Way’s center? - Our solar system orbits around the sun. One orbit of the Earth takes one year. Meanwhile, our entire solar system – our Sun with its family of planets, moon, asteroid and comets – orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Our Sun and solar sys-tem moves at about 500,000 miles an hour in this huge orbit. So in 90 seconds, for example, we all move some 12,500 miles in orbit around the galaxy’s center. Our Milky Way galaxy is a big place. Even at this blazing speed, it takes the sun approximately 225-250 million years to complete one journey around the galaxy’s center. (from earth/sky.org)

SOUTH TROPICL ZONE

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TWO METEOR SHOWERS FOR DECEMBER The Geminids and Ursids,which is lesser known, but may be the best because of a full Moon during the Geminids. In 2016, the Gemi-nids are expected to peak on the night of December 13 and early morning hours of December 14. A Full Moon may make viewing con-ditions difficult. Unlike most other meteor showers, the Geminids are associated not with a comet but with an asteroid: the 3200 Phaethon. The Geminids are considered to be one of the more spectacular mete-or shower during a year. The annual Ursid meteor shower always peaks near the time of the Decem-ber winter solstice. In 2016, look for some possible activity over the next several days, that is Wednes-day evening Dec. 21st thru the morning hour of Dec. 22nd, so this is the peak period. The radiant is circumpolar, so you want to view to the north. In the morning hours the 3rd quarter Moon will start to rise, but before then will be best.

NORTH, NE 7PM TO MORNING

Messier 33 is the 2nd-closest spiral galaxy Triangulum galaxy, aka Messier 33 is 2.7 million light-years away, and the third-largest member of our Local Group, after the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. With a diameter about half that of our Milky Way, it’s face on to us and thus has a low surface brightness in our sky. Although theo-retically visible to the unaided eye under dark skies conditions, it’s not easy to spot in binoculars or even a telescope. It’s well known that the Andromeda galaxy is moving toward our Milky Way and that a collision between the two galaxies will occur some 4 billion years from now. Meanwhile, the fate of the Triangulum Galaxy isn’t known for certain. It might someday be torn apart and absorbed by the Andromeda galaxy. It might participate in the collision between the Milky Way and Androm-eda galaxies. Two other possibilities are a collision with the Milky Way before Andromeda arrives or an ejection from the Local Group. It’s safe to say that the fate of these great galaxies is beyond human knowledge at this time! (info from earth/sky)

WHAT IS THE ASTEROID BELT The vast majority of asteroids in the solar system are found in a region of the solar system out beyond Mars. They form the Asteroid Belt. Others orbit in near-Earth space and a few migrate or are thrown out to the outer so-lar system by gravitational interactions. The four largest asteroids in the belt are Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. They contain half the mass of the entire belt. The rest of the mass is contained in countless smaller bodies. There was a theory once that if you combined all the asteroids they would make up the missing “Fifth” rocky planet. Planetary scientists estimate that if you could put all that material together that exists there today, it would make a tiny world smaller than Earth’s moon. The Asteroid Belt is lo-cated in an area of space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. That places it between 2.2 and 3.2 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. The belt is about 1 AU thick. The average distance be-tween objects in the Asteroid Belt is quite large. If you could stand on an asteroid and look around, the next one would be too far away to see very well.

EARTH JUPITER

MARS ASTEROID BELT

Vast Underground Water Ice on Mars Water ice makes up half or more of an underground layer, in a large region of Mars about halfway from the equator to the planet’s north pole, scientists say. The amount of water in this deposit is about as much as in Lake Superior. The presence of water underground in this region may have implications for future human explorations of Mars. Scientists used data from a ground-penetrating radar instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to examine this region on Mars. (earth/sky.org)

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This article is provided by NASA Space Place. With articles, activities, crafts, games, and lesson plans, NASA Space Place encourages everyone to get excited about science and technology. Visit spaceplace.nasa.gov to explore space and Earth science!

Dimming stars, erupting plasma, and beautiful nebulae

By Marcus Woo

Boasting intricate patterns and translucent colors, planetary nebulae are among the most beautiful sights in the universe. How they got their shapes is complicated, but astronomers think they've solved part of the mystery—with giant blobs of plasma shooting through space at half a million miles per hour.

Planetary nebulae are shells of gas and dust blown off from a dying, giant star. Most nebulae aren't spherical, but can have multiple lobes extending from opposite sides—possibly generated by power-ful jets erupting from the star.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered blobs of plasma that could form some of these lobes. "We're quite excited about this," says Raghvendra Sahai, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Nobody has really been able to come up with a good argument for why we have multipolar nebulae."

Sahai and his team discovered blobs launching from a red giant star 1,200 light years away, called V Hydrae. The plasma is 17,000 degrees Fahrenheit and spans 40 astronomical units—roughly the distance between the sun and Pluto. The blobs don't erupt continuously, but once every 8.5 years.

The launching pad of these blobs, the researchers propose, is a smaller, unseen star orbiting V Hy-drae. The highly elliptical orbit brings the companion star through the outer layers of the red giant at closest approach. The companion's gravity pulls plasma from the red giant. The material settles into a disk as it spirals into the companion star, whose magnetic field channels the plasma out from its poles, hurling it into space. This happens once per orbit—every 8.5 years—at closest approach.

When the red giant exhausts its fuel, it will shrink and get very hot, producing ultraviolet radiation that will excite the shell of gas blown off from it in the past. This shell, with cavities carved in it by the cannon-balls that continue to be launched every 8.5 years, will thus become visible as a beautiful bipolar or multipolar planetary nebula.

The astronomers also discovered that the companion's disk ap-pears to wobble, flinging the cannonballs in one direction during one orbit, and a slightly different one in the next. As a result, eve-ry other orbit, the flying blobs block starlight from the red giant, which explains why V Hydrae dims every 17 years. For decades, amateur astronomers have been monitoring this variability, mak-ing V Hydrae one of the most well-studied stars.

Because the star fires plasma in the same few directions repeat-edly, the blobs would create multiple lobes in the nebula—and a pretty sight for future astronomers.

If you’d like to teach kids about how our sun compares to other stars, please visit the NASA Space Place: http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/sun-compare/en/

This four-panel graphic illustrates how the binary-star system V Hydrae is

launching balls of plasma into space. Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI

A Big Reminder For Next Year! Your Dues For 2017 can be paid at the

December Meeting or mail them to PO Box 654, Groves, TX 77619

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A THROUGHT IN THE NEWS - THE HIDDEN PLANET X In the far reaches of the solar system, a hidden planet larger than Earth may be lurking Something very odd seems to be going on out beyond Pluto. Astronomers have known for more than two decades that the tiny former planet is not alone at the edge of the solar system: it is part of a vast cloud of icy objects known collectively as the Kuiper belt. But unlike most of their fellow travelers, and unlike the planets and most asteroids, which or-bit between Mars and Jupiter, a small handful of Kuiper belt objects, or KBOs, have or-bits that are decidedly weird. For one thing, they take unusually elongated paths around the sun, unlike the roughly circular orbits of most planetary bodies. (Scientific American)

Asteroid formed moon's Imbrium Basin? And if it did, it may have been protoplanet-sized

Grooves and gashes associated with the Imbrium Basin on the moon have long been puzzling. New research shows how some of these features were formed and uses them to estimate the size of the Imbrium impactor. Around 3.8 billion years ago, an asteroid more than 150 miles across, roughly equal to the length of New Jersey, slammed into the Moon and created the Imbrium Basin -- the right eye of the fabled Man in the Moon. This new size estimate, published in the journal Nature, sug-gests an Imbrium impactor that was two times larger in diame-ter and 10 times more massive than previous estimates. (Science Daily)

A REMINDER ON WHAT A CHAIN OF CRATERS IS CALLED A crater chain is a line of craters along the surface of an astro-

nomical body. The descriptor term for crater chains is catena.

Crater chains seen on the Moon often radiate from larger craters,

and in such cases are thought to be either caused by secondary

impacts of the larger crater's ejecta or by volcanic venting activity

along a rift. You can see them in your telescope.

SOLAR CYCLES AND WHAT’S HAPPENING

The sun goes through a natural solar cycle approximately every 11 years. The cycle is marked by the increase and decrease of sunspots which are visible dark regions on the sun’s surface and cooler than its surroundings. We are in Solar Cycle #24, and the Sun Spot peak is over, so we are in a waning situation. This goes on for the next couple of years till our next Solar Cycle #25, starting in 2020 and peaking in 2025, and it is expected to have fewer Sun Spots than our cur-rent cycle that peaked in 2013. But that does not mean there won’t be good spots to view, just somewhat fewer. Also, they are continuing studies on how solar cycles govern our solar system's climate. With #24 waning, this could propel us into a period of some global cooling, and 24 contin-ues its recent trend of weakening, since solar cycles that began with solar cycle 22, that peaked around 1990. However, a weak solar cycle does suggest strong solar storms will occur less often, but it does not rule them out. In other words, there can still be a chance for significant solar activity in the months and years ahead.

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WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM?

WHERE ARE THE PLANETS?

DECEMBER 2016

HALLOWEEN

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Children’s Mus. SP Dec. 8, 5 p.m.

River Front Park.

King Middle School SP on Dec. 5, 5 p.m.

NEW

3RD

FULL

1ST

Moon farthest

from Earth,

Apogee

Moon Closest to Earth, Perigee

Christmas Dinner Meet

6:30 PM

CHRISTMAS DINNER AND GIFT EXCHANGE DEC. 9th at 6:30 p.m. at Habaneros

6685 Eastex Fwy, (just north of mall)

MERRY

CHRISTMAS

GEMINIDS METEORS

PEAK 13TH, 14TH

NEW YEAR’S

EVE

JOHANNES KEPPLER

BORN 1571

LONGEST

NIGHT OF

THE YEAR

Well here we go for all you VENUS fans! December VENUS is getting higher each week. For

quite a while it has been too near the Sun for viewing. Now the planets and Moon are slipping by it,

making a beautiful evening grouping. Venus is very noticeable, our “evening star”. MERCURY is visi-

ble the 1st couple of weeks in December, but is much lower than Venus. It will take binoculars to find

it. The highest elongation from the Sun happens on Dec. the 10th and is 60% lit in the telescope.

MARS is also in the southwest and moving toward Venus. Mars is now fading faster and too small for

any detail in the telescope. Mars and Venus are on opposite sides of the constellation, Capricornus,

as they are closing on each other. URANUS is in Pisces and in good position for viewing. If you have

an opportunity to be a good dark sky site, you may, with good eyes, have a chance to see it naked

eye. NEPTUNE is also in good position to see, but in a telescope, of course. This 8th magnitude

object is in Aquarius and will be occulted by the Moon on Dec. 6th. You will need to get on the internet

to get times for you and your telescope if you want to see it. PLUTO is too close to the Sun to view in

Dec. SATURN is also too close to the Sun, as it has slipped down in the western sky. But by Janu-

ary it will be peaking up before the Sun in the morning sky. That brings us to the “Morning Sky”.

JUPITER is ready to observe for you early risers. In Virgo, it is up high enough to put the telescope

on by 3 AM. It is almost back to –2 magnitude and 32” in diameter. Check out the bands and see if

they changed since it slipped around the back side of the Sun and is now emerging in the morning.

Remember the Meteors, the Geminids and the Ursids on the 13th and the 21st. Also watch the

Moon as it goes through its phases during the month.