NGC 6992 in bicolor by LAS member Brian Kimball

Comet Hartley by LAS member Gary Garzone(all publication rights reserved on club photos)

Longmont Astronomy Society Newsletter

October 2010

From the President:

The next LAS meeting is this Thursday, October 21st at the IHop Resturaunt, 2040 KenPratt Blvd, Longmont, CO. Please join us for dinner around 6, the regular meeting willbegin about 7pm.

This is an open forum meeting -- in other words no scheduled speaker. If you would liketo make a short (10-15 minute) presentation, you are welcome to do so. There will be anupdate on the “all sky” camera project (it is finally now in place atop a NOAA tower onNiwot Ridge). Also I’ll talk a bit about the Astronomical League conference at BryceCanyon in late June and also about a proposal for a “master imager” program. MikeFellows will present the monthly treasurer report. We’ll also discuss the “beginningastronomy” class which will begin in late February.

Last month's speaker:

Last month's speaker: some additional information: Bill Tschumy's website (http://thinkastronomy.com/ )contains the software program ( http://www.thinkastronomy.com/M13/index.html ) todraw the clusters, nebulae, etc in Galactic Coordinates. There is a handy app athttp://fuse.pha.jhu.edu/support/tools/eqtogal.html that will do conversions for you, aswell as a brief article in Wikipedia that explains it in another way in case you didn't get itthe first time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_coordinate_system Bill had a nicerbatch of pictures, so you may want to go through both.

If you want to buy that “Binocular Astronomy” book – hustle up! It's out of print andthere are 2 new copies on Amazon for 25 bucks, then it goes up to 80-100 bucks for thenext ones. Would have been a pretty good investment!

In the sky this month:

Meteor Showers

There were 5 “fireball” meteors spotted in the skies of Colorado last week. Data andpaths at http://www.cloudbait.com/meteor/metreq.php Showers: Orionids night of October 21 with a Full Moon. Leonids night of November 17Moon sets around 4 a.m. Planets

Mercury: behind the Sun Venus: inferior conjunction with the Sun on October 29, passing into the morning sky.Mars: very low in the southwest at sunset, lost in the peaks.Jupiter: still the champ of the evening sky, high in the south at sunset.Saturn: In conjunction with the Sun on October 1, it's moving to the morning sky now.Visible in a couple of weeks low on the eastern horizon.

Comets:

September 20, 2010 The brightest comet of the year starts to put on a good show in late September before

reaching its peak in October. (closest approach on October 20) When Comet103P/Hartley glows at its brightest, it should be visible with naked eyes under a dark skyat fifth magnitude. Binoculars will do the job.

Australian astronomer Malcolm Hartley discovered this comet in March 1986. It orbitsthe Sun once every 6.5 years, traveling from just outside the orbit of Jupiter to nearlyEarth's distance from the Sun. This is the comet's fourth return to the inner solar systemsince it was discovered, and its best one yet.

Comet 103P/Hartley should peak at 5th magnitude when it passes closest to Earth inOctober. A 5th-magnitude star is bright enough to see with naked eyes if you're out of thecity, but a comet's light spreads out, making it harder to see. Still, you'll have a goodchance to see it without optical aid from a dark-sky site. Binoculars will show the cometnicely, and a telescope will let you see details.

You can start looking for the comet in late September when it lies in the constellationCassiopeia and remains visible all night. It passes near the star Lambda (λ) Cassiopeiaethe night of September 29.

Search for Comet 103P/Hartley as it hangs high in the evening sky during October. Thebrightest comet of 2010 may be visible with naked eyes under a dark sky. Astronomy:

Roen Kelly [View Larger Image]The comet heads to the southeast during October. On the night of October 8/9, it floatsnext to the famous Double Cluster in Perseus, a pair of adjacent bright star clusters thatwill form a beautiful backdrop for the comet. It then passes the bright star Capella inAuriga in mid-October. It comes closest to Earth October 20, about the time it will appearbrightest in the sky. Unfortunately, a nearly Full Moon then brightens the sky, making thecomet less conspicuous.

Comet 103P/Hartley should show two tails emanating from a roughly circular glow,known as the "coma," which masks the comet's nucleus. The nucleus is a giant ball of ice

and dust that measures about a mile across. As sunlight hits the nucleus, the ice boils offand carries dust with it. This cloud of gas and dust forms the coma.

Sunlight ionizes the ejected gas molecules, causing then to glow with a bluish color. Thesolar wind carries this ionized gas away from the comet, creating a straight, bluish gastail. The ejected dust gets pushed away from the Sun more gently, so it forms a curvingtail. The dust particles simply reflect sunlight, so the dust tail has a white to pale-yellowcolor.

Although October marks the peak for Comet 103P/Hartley, the comet will continue tomake news in November. NASA's EPOXI mission will fly past the comet and returnstunning images of its nucleus. EPOXI comes closest to the comet November 4, andNASA should release fresh images soon thereafter.

Interesting Stars/GalaxiesAstronomy Magazine's Targets for for October 14-21, 2010Double star Eta Cassiopeiae Galaxy pair M32 and NGC 205Spiral galaxy NGC 7814 Astronomy Magazine's video on Autumn targets for large telescopes is athttp://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=8581&utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ASY_NEWS_Sub_101015_final&utm_content= Now, to find a large telescope.Maybe at a star party?

Finally getting dark early, and the ISS is coming over starting the 24th in the evening,pretty much every night. Look up the times at http://heavens-above.com and watch yourtax dollars at work. Club Calendar:

Next meeting: November 18 at the IHOP. Food and fellowship at 6:30 or so, meeting at7 o'clock.

Fiske Planetarium:

"Worlds in Collisions" by Dr. Phil Armitage has been moved from Oct. 14th & 15th toOct. 28th and 29th

CO Skies: Life after the space shuttle Start Time: Thursday, October 21, 2010, 7:30pm

Many Faces of Hubble - Explore the construction and use of the Hubble Space Telescopein this show about people behind the scenes, and various careers in space. Start Time:

Friday, October 22, 2010, 7:30pm

Stars and Lasers - Explore the night sky as we learn about stars and planets. Learn whatconstellations are visible and the stories behind these characters in the stars. Then enjoy a

short laser show choreographed to popular music. Start Time: Saturday, October 30,2010, 3:15pm

The Dark Side of the Universe w/ Dr Erica Ellingson - With this multimedia presentation, Prof. Ellingson tells the story of how scientists havecome to believe that most of the matter in the universe is in an unknown, invisible form,and that the universe is accelerating its expansion due to a mysterious "dark" energy. Start Time: Thursday / Friday, November 4, 2010, 7:30pm

Internet Resources:

From the October Scientific American: 3,767 supernovae have been discovered since2000 - “more than twice as many as seen before that date”. This was contained in anarticle about pair-instability type of supernovae that I ran across. Since a galaxy the sizeof the Milky Way has somewhere around 1/century, we're missing a few.

I know I put this in here before, but you can get a map of every satellite in space athttp://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.htmlhttp://science.nasa.gov/realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html Click on the Jtrack3D on the left menu. You can rotate theEarth and tilt it (just try getting it back again...) Click on any satellite and you get thelabel. Take a look at the ring of synchronous satellites at 22,000 miles up – all the cabletv, etc. Game: try to find the little dot that's the ISS! The Hubble....

http://www.lmsal.com/ is the link for Lockheed Martin solar satellites. Some nicepictures of sunspots, etc with some information. Links to a lot more solar satellites. Youcan spend awhile looking at all of these. Make sure you click on that movie on the rightand watch an active region going at it.

On October 7, the new Moon transited the Sun in full view of the Solar DynamicsObservatory. Watch the movie, see the pictures (nice eruption going on) athttp://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw.php?v=item&id=27

Current Space Missions:

NASA's Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft is hurtling toward Comet Hartley 2 for abreathtaking 435-mile flyby on Nov. 4th. Mission scientists say all systems are go for aclose encounter with one of the smallest yet most active comets they've seen. Stay tunedfor the video and pictures in the next newsletter.

A “near Earth size” Planet:A team of planet hunters from the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz, and theCarnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of a planet with 3 timesthe mass of Earth orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middleof the star's "habitable zone." The paper reports the discovery of two new planets around Gliese 581. This brings thetotal number of known planets around this star to six, the most yet discovered in aplanetary system outside our own. Like our solar system, the planets around Gliese 581have nearly circular orbits.

The new planet, designated Gliese 581g, has a mass 3 to 4 times that of Earth and orbitsits star in just under 37 days. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with adefinite surface and enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere. Gliese 581, located 20light-years away from Earth in the constellation Libra, has two previously detectedplanets that lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side (planet c) and oneon the cold side (planet d). While some astronomers still think planet d may be habitableif it has a thick atmosphere with a strong greenhouse effect to warm it up, others areskeptical. The newly discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of thehabitable zone.The planet is tidally locked to the star, meaning that one side is always facing the star andbasking in perpetual daylight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetualdarkness. One effect of this is to stabilize the planet's surface climates, according to Vogt.The most habitable zone on the planet's surface would be the line between shadow andlight (known as the "terminator").

Movie of the Saturn aurorae athttp://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/videos/movies/PIA13404.mov

A new movie and images showing Saturn's shimmering aurora over a 2-day period arehelping scientists understand what drives some of the solar system's most impressivelight shows.

The movie and images are part of a new study that, for the first time, extracts auroralinformation from the entire catalog of Saturn images taken by the visual and infraredmapping spectrometer instrument (VIMS) aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

This month’s field trip:

The editor recently returned from a family wedding in Big Bear, CA and took advantageof the occasion to visit the Big Bear Solar Observatory. The observatory was built by the

California Institute of Technology in 1969. The location of Big Bear was optimum for itsclarity of sky. The Lake surface is about 6,750 feet above sea level. Its position out on thepeninsula provides a cooling effect on the atmosphere surrounding the building andeliminates ground heat radiation waves that normally would cause heat wave aberrations.Management of the observatory was transferred to the New Jersey Institute ofTechnology in 1997. Funding comes from NASA, the National Science Foundation, theUS Air Force and other agencies.

The observatory is located on a earth berm. The observatory has been operating with a65 cm vacuum reflector telescope, a 25 cm vacuum refractor, and a 20 cm full disctelescope. The 65 and 25 cm scopes study sunspots while the 20 cm full disc scope tracksthe whole round of the sun from sun up to sun set.

By late spring 2007 it was planned that the 65 cm, 25 cm and 20 cm scopes be replacedby a new 1.6 meter, open frame, clear aperture telescope. The 20 cm telescope will bereplaced by a similar telescope in an additional small dome. The old dome has beenreplaced with a larger, more spherical, ventilated dome to contain the new 1.6 metertelescope from DFM Engineering.[ The new telescope saw first light in 2009.

Our cousin is an elementary teacher in Big Bear and takes her class to the observatoryevery year on a field trip. She reported that the scientists are very friendly and really liketo see the kids, but have a lot of trouble talking at the elementary level.... You can seesome of the images / videos at http://www.bbso.njit.edu/

Upcoming Space Missions:

The recently approved MAVEN mission to Mars run by LASP in Boulder has beenworking on their website. Mission is a go for a late 2013 launch to the red planet, andyou can follow the progress at http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/ Currently, what's there isan animation of the mission science, a list of the instrumentation and probe design, and alist of the 'to do's '. We'll have to keep an eye on that, and get somebody in a couple ofyears to go through the mission for a meeting.

LASP was also awarded around 6 million for instruments to be carried aboard theSolarProbe Plus – a mission to the Sun to study the solar wind at close range (inside theorbit of Mercury). The date on that one is a little vague, but you can go tohttp://solarprobe.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.htm and click on 'resources' to get some info on themission design.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgWWMN_L9E&feature=related Someone hascreated a YouTube video of the Sun in soft X-rays that's pretty cool and different. Off tothe right in that page are links to more videos, also cool.....

This month’s Wacky Idea:

Project FeederWatch starts in mid-November, but you can join at any time. Get a posterof bird identification, some feeding information, and data entry materials athttps://store.birds.cornell.edu/category_s/42.htm It's $15 well spent – just picture sittingthere at your window, snowed in, participating in science! (Actually, it's more likewading thru the snow, the wind blowing into your sleeve and up into your armpit, whileyou fill the feeders....) Anyway, it's fun and something to do during the winter! Whowants to stand in the snow and look at stars, anyway....

Gary Garzone catches the GRS transiting

A color blindness test, using NGC 6888 pictures by Brian Kimball.(all publication rights reserved on club photos)