San Diego Astronomy Association - SDAA · resides in San Diego. San Diego Astronomy Association (SDAA) sponsors speakers on a wide range of ... Steph stepped outside and saw the waxing

San DiegoAstronomy AssociationCelebrating Over 40 Years of Astronomical Outreach

Observatory (619) 766-9118http://www.sdaa.org

A Non-Profit Educational AssociationP.O. Box 23215, San Diego, CA 92193-3215

February 2013

SDAA Business MeetingNext meeting will be held at:3838 Camino del Rio North

Suite 300San Diego, CA 92108February 12th at 7pm

Next Program Meeting February 20, 2013 at 7pm

Mission Trails Regional ParkVisitor and Interpretive Center1 Father Junipero Serra Trail

CONTENTSFebruary 2013, Vol LI, Issue 2Published Monthly by the San Diego Astronomy Association$2.50 an issue/$30.00 yearIncorporated in California in 1963February Program Meeting...................1Januar y Minutes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2TDS Combination Change...................3A Xmas 2012 Atmospheric Display....4February Calendar............................5SDAA Contac t s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6ASIG Galler y. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7We b O n l y - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -The Art of Space Imagery....................9

Newsletter DeadlineThe deadline to submit articles

for publication is the15th of each month.

February Program Meeting

Date: February 20th, 2013 Speaker: Dr. Brian Hart Topic: Galaxy Clusters: Giants of the Universe

Please join us Wednesday evenening, Feb. 20th at 7 pm, when Dr. Brian Hart will will present the latest version of a new documentary project, “Galaxy Clusters: Giants of the Universe.” Clusters of galaxies are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe. A standard measure of their size extends from 3-15 million light-years (approx 1-5 Mpc) across. The warm gas in between the galaxies of the clusters reaches temperatures of 10 million to 1 billion Kelvins. This makes it shine brightly in the X-rays, and assuming that the gas is in hydrostatic equilibrium, the gas is used as a tracer of the dark matter content of the cluster. The high-level structure of galaxy clusters was studied by Dr. Hart through using Chandra X-Ray Observatory data to investigate the structure and behavior of the Universe as a whole. The movie follows the story of Chandra and documents the achievements by women in space and astronomy. Dr. Hart leads us out from Earth to where the galaxy clusters roam in the depths of the Universe and tells the story of dark matter, dark energy, and the quest to understand the workings of the Universe. Originally from Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Minnesota, Brian obtained his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the Center for Cosmology at the University of California, Irvine in 2008. Since this, he has held a position as a Federal physicist with the U.S. Army and nu-merous software engineering positions. In his spare time, Dr. Hart continues to devote himself toward advancing public understanding of science, partially through the movie project being presented at tonight’s talk. Dr. Hart is also the Founder and Past Director of the SoCal Science Cafe organization. Dr. Hart currently works full-time with a small software company in Encinitas, California, runs his own software company as well, and resides in San Diego.

San Diego Astronomy Association (SDAA) sponsors speakers on a wide range of astronomy topics on the third Wednesday of every month at the Mission Trails Regional Park Visitors Center. The Program meeting begins at 7:00 PM. Each attendee receives one free door prize ticket. After announcements and a small amount of business, the audience is treated to the featured presentation. At the close of the meeting the door prizes are presented. The event is open to the public. The Mission Trails Regional Park Visitors Center is at One Fr. Junipero Serra Trail, San Diego CA 92119. Call the park at 619-668-3281 for more information or visit http://www.mtrp.org.

http://www.sdaa.org

San Diego Astronomy Association

Page 2 SAN DIEGO ASTRONOMY ASSOCIATION NEWS AND NOTES, FEBRUARY 2013

SDAA Board of Directors Monthly Business Meeting Minutes

January 8, 2013-Unapproved and Subject to Revision

1. Call to order. The meeting was called to order at 7pm with the following board members in attendance: Michael Vander Vorst, Presi-dent; Mike Chasin, Vice President; Ed Rumsey, Treasurer; Jeff Herman, Corresponding Secretary; Brian McFarland, Recording Secretary; Kin Searcy, Director; Mike Finch, Director; Paul “Moose” Pountney, Director; David Woods, Director. Members in attendance were Daphne and Richard Zay.

2. Approval of Last Meeting Minutes. Approved.

3. Priority / Member Business. Banquet:

Set up: We can start the set up at 3pm. We need two merchandise tables, one table for tickets, and four tables for auction & raffle. $50 total will cover the centerpieces. The hotel is providing the podium and screen, and SDAA has everything else required.

Hosted guest tickets/expenditures: Complimentary tickets will be offered as follows: Paul Etzel (2), speaker (2), OPT (2), and Dennis Mam-mana (2). $300 gratuity will be given to the speaker.

Raffle Prizes: They are coming in and the list will be posted to the website. Raffle tickets will be $1 each, 7 for $5, or 15 for $10. Since the speaker is local, he may not need the comp room so we might be able to raffle it off. Jerry Hilburn will be the auctioneer.

Schedule: 5:45pm registration and cocktails. Dinner will be from 6:30 to 8pm.

25-year awards: Michael Vander Vorst has the list. 4. Standard Reports.

Treasurer/Membership Report. Treasurer’s report accepted. We are currently at 517 members. No budget issues.

Site Maintenance Report. The private pad row that Moose’s pad is on loses power occasionally when it rains – need to look into this. Now that it’s winter, Moose will verify that the pump house heat lamp is working properly.

Observatory Report. The building needs a paint job, and the warming room door needs adjusting.

Private Pad Report . • There are currently 3 vacant pads and nobody on the active waiting list. Expect that to change in the next few months, and the 2013 Pad Offering Cycle should start around mid-March.• The proposed lease for pads with semi-permanent observatories will be delayed until the February meeting due to illness over the Christmas Holidays.• The Pad Usage Analysis for 2012 is below. Pertinent statistics (for the categories with a *, pads that were leased for a partial year weren’t counted):o 7 pads had no use last year *o 6 pads had 1 use last year *o 3 pads had 2 uses last year *o 10 pads had 3 uses last year *o 29 pads had 4 or more uses last yearo 9 pads had 10 or more uses last year


Page 3SAN DIEGO ASTRONOMY ASSOCIATION NEWS AND NOTES, FEBRUARY 2013

• The following Pad Owners have submitted statements regarding their usage for consideration by the BOD:o Pad 4 – owner works for the County Registrar of Voters and couldn’t make it to the site as often as he would like because of the election cycle. Had 1 use in 2012, 2 in 2011, and 1 in 2010.o Pad 35 – owner is recovering from major back issues suffered in 2011. Before 2011, he was a regular at TDS during the sum-mer, but he only had 2 uses in 2011 and none in 2012. This is a grandfathered pad.o Pad 40 – owner is caring for an elderly parent. He had no uses in 2011 or 2012, but has a history of regular pad usage prior to 2011. This is a grandfathered pad.o Pad 61 – owner was working 6+ day/ 60+ hour weeks for most of the year due to a software development cycle. He is expect-ing that job to end in February of 2013 and expects pad usage to return to normal this year. He had 2 uses in 2012, 5 in 2011, and 3 in 2010.

• The Pad Sharer’s list should be updated before the spring/summer observing season starts.

Program Report. A speaker is lined up for February; IDA in May.

Outreach Committee Report. The weather has not been cooperating. Looking ahead:• Sycamore Canyon this month• Heise star party will be on the Saturday night before the TDS member night, and the KQ Ranch star party will be the Saturday night after the TDS member night, as agreed to by the respective coordinators.• Kin will use the star party contacts to communicate SDAA’s involvement in the Science Fair, and that the SDAA gives awards for astronomy-related projects.

AISIG Report. The January meeting will be a planning meeting.

Governing Documents. A club member has started his review. We need to document what it is we are hoping to do; that is to streamline the process for property acquisition and amend the documents in order to attain property tax relief for TDS. Brian and Ed will search the archives for pertinent documentation.

NASA/Roboscope. Nothing to report.

TDS Network. Dave is now in possession of the software.

Newsletter Report. Nothing to report.

Website. Nothing to report.

Merchandise Report. Nothing to report.

Site Master Plan. Nothing to report.

Safety Documents. Nothing to report.

5. Old Business. None. 6. New Business. None. 7. Adjournment. 8:40 pm.

TDS Combination ChangeBy Edward Rumsey

It is that time again. The combination at the Tierra del Sol site will be changed after the Member Star Party on the morn-ing of April 14, 2013. The warming room combination will not be changed. Contributing members will be provided the revised combination with their April newsletter availability notice and/or on their printed newsletter label. If you have any questions or concerns please contact me at [email protected]



A Xmas 2012 Atmospheric Display

By John Mood

Most evenings, my wife Stephanie and I periodically go outside in front of our house in Ocean Beach (facing south) ¾ mile from the ocean and look around, especially at the heavens. We like to see what, if anything, is going on. This past Xmas night, after a pleasant evening meal with friends, we settled in at home for the night. Then, about 8:15 p.m. (PST), Steph stepped outside and saw the waxing gibbous Moon directly overhead, with a 22° halo around it and, as a brilliant bonus, Jupiter inside the halo and very very close to the Moon. She called me out and as we looked, we saw it was an even more complex atmospheric display than we originally thought. For around the Moon was a corona (a fuzz caused by wa-ter droplets in the atmosphere, not to be confused with the quite different corona around the Sun during a total solar eclipse). But oddly, the corona brightened a bit at its edge so that there appeared to be a small faint ring about 2° out from and around the Moon. We had never seen that. And just inside this small quasi-ring was Jupiter, maybe about 1.5° from the Moon. And all around this was the huge 22° halo (caused by ice crystals high in the atmosphere). We had never seen this combination of lunar corona and halo at the same time. Obviously what was going on was that there was a layer of water droplets up in the atmosphere causing the corona, and above that, higher in the atmosphere, a layer of ice crystals causing the halo. But the display was not over. We kept going out every now and then, and slowly began to notice that the movement east-ward of the Moon was pulling it away from Jupiter, so that the planet was now on the edge of the coronal ring itself. Then, even later, about 10:20, the Moon had moved so far away that Jupiter was outside the coronal ring. Of course, all this was still taking place inside the 22° halo. Quite an intriguing site! So much so that even one local TV channel of the evening news showed a photo of the Moon and the halo and gave a reasonably accurate account of what caused it. But Jupiter was not mentioned at all and of course, neither was the motion of the Moon. Still, how often does one hear and see something so pleasant from the disaster-riddled TV news? The next morning, I looked up the info in Astronomy magazine and discovered that earlier the Moon had sailed by Jupiter by a stunningly close 0.4° at 7:00 p.m. EST earlier that evening on the East Coast. Of course, we could not have seen it then, at 4:00 p.m. PST, but how lucky we were to spot the grand lunar, planetary and atmospheric sites later from here in San Diego from our front yard. Thanks to the Cosmos! So remember, watch the skies from wherever you are.



February 2013 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

1

2 Public Star Party

TDS

3

4

5

6

Stars in the Park

7

8 Stars at Mission

Trails

Hilltop Drive Elementary

9 Member Night

TDS

10

New Moon

11

12 Curie

Elementary

SDAA Business Meeting

13

Innovation Middle

14 Horizon

Academy

15 Stars At

Sycamore Canyon

16

17

18

19

20

SDAA Program Meeting

21

Bethuane K-8 School

22

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25 Full Moon

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AISIG Meeting

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1

2

Public Star Party

TDS



SDAA ContactsClub Officers and Directors

President Michael Vander Vorst [email protected] (858) 755-5846Vice-President Mike Chasin [email protected] (858) 210-1454Recording Secretary Brian McFarland [email protected] (619) 462-4483Treasurer Ed Rumsey [email protected] (858) 722-3846Corresponding Secretary Jeff Herman [email protected] (619) 846-4898Director Alpha Dave Wood [email protected] (858) 735-8808 Director Beta Paul “Moose” Pountney [email protected] (619) 201-5311Director Gamma Michael Finch [email protected] (760) 440-9650Director Delta Kin Searcy [email protected] (858) 586-0974

CommitteesSite Maintenance Bill Quackenbush [email protected] (858) 395-1007Observatory Director Jim Traweek [email protected] (619) 207-7542Private Pads Mark Smith [email protected] (858) 484-0540Outreach Kin Searcy [email protected] (858) 586-0974N. County Star Parties Doug McFarland [email protected] (760) 583-5436S. County Star Parties Benjamin Flores [email protected] (619) 885-1291E. County Star Parties Dave Decker [email protected] (619) 972-1003Central County Star Parties Kin Searcy [email protected] (858) 586-0974Camp with the Stars Doug McFarland [email protected] (760) 583-5436K.Q. Ranch Coordinator Michael Vander Vorst [email protected] (858) 755-5846Newsletter Andrea Kuhl [email protected] (858) 547-9887New Member Mentor Dan Kiser [email protected] (858) 922-0592Webmaster Jeff Stevens [email protected] (858) 566-2261AISIG Kin Searcy [email protected] (858) 586-0974Site Acquisition -Vacant- [email protected] Field Trips -Vacant- [email protected] (425) 736-8485Grants/Fund Raising -Vacant- [email protected] Merchandising Paul “Moose” Pountney [email protected] (619)-201-5311 Publicity -Vacant- [email protected] Roboscope Director -Vacant- [email protected] Governing Documents TBDTDS Network Dave Wood [email protected] (858) 735-8808Amateur Telescope Making Peter De Baan [email protected] (760) 745-0925

Have a great new piece of gear? Read an astronomy-related book that you think others should know about? How about a photograph of an SDAA Member in action? Or are you simply tired of seeing these Boxes in the Newsletter rather than something, well, interesting?

Join the campaign to rid the Newsletter of little boxes by sharing them with the membership. In return for your efforts, you will get your very own by line or pho-tograph credit in addition to the undying gratitude of the Newsletter Editor. Just send your article or picture to [email protected].

SDAA Editorial StaffEditor - Andrea [email protected]

Assistant Editor: Rick Imbra

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]=2


[email protected]

mailto:// [email protected]





AISIG Gallery

David Wood is doing some outstanding work with the new grab and go i-Optron Smart EQ mount. This image of M42, the Orion Nebula, was a short run of 40 minute sub images to test the tracking of his new mount. He used an SBIG ST4000XCM CCD imager on a Williams Optics Zenith Star 66 SD refractor on the i-Optron mount.

Jeff Herman captured some nice detail on the spiral galaxy NGC 3718 in Ursa Major in an image that he recently posted on the AISIG Gallery ( aisig.sdaa.org). He collected over 7 hours of LRGB through an RC10C mounted on a MI-250 mount using an Alta U16M CCD camera.

http://aisig.sdaa.org/



MEMBERSHIP INFORMATIONSend dues and renewals to P.O. Box 23215, San Diego, CA 92193-3215. Include any renewal cards from Sky & Telescope or Astronomy magazine in which you wish to continue your subscription. The expiration date shown on your newsletter’s mailing label is the only notice that your membership in SDAA will expire. Dues are $60 for Contributing Memberships; $35 for Basic Membership; $60.00 for Private Pads; $5 for each Family membership. In addition to the club dues the annual rates for maga-zines available at the club discount are: Sky & Telescope $32.95 and Astronomy $34. Make checks payable to S.D. Astronomy Assn. PLEASE DO NOT send renewals directly to Sky Publishing. They return them to us for processing.

Craig Hunter posted a nice image of NGC 1977, the Running Man Nebula, taken from Santee. This is a blue reflection nebula in Orion near M-42. He used an SBIG ST2000XM CCD camera through an Explore Scientific ED 127 refractor mounted on a Losmandy G-11 mount.

Two telescopes for sale.Celestron C-11 SCT. Blue tube and comes with heavy duty hinged mounting rings, dew shield, dew heater, diagonal, and a big honkin’ trunk to haul it around in. Somewhere around here I have a Lumicon Giant Easy Guider (and 0.63 reducer) that I’ll throw in for nothing extra if I can find it. $1,000.Celestron 6-inch F8 achromat refractor. Retrofitted with an upgraded Crayford focuser and collimatable lens cell. You get the original cell, too. And best of all, it comes in the best telescope transport case money can buy - a TOW missile case! Guaranteed you’ll be the only kid on the block with one of those. Also comes with hinged mounting rings. Good optics with the usual color one would expect in an achro-mat. All for $500.Contact Brian McFarland at [email protected] or 619-462-4483



Space Place partners’ article January 2013

The Art of Space Imagery By Diane K. Fisher

When you see spectacular space images taken in infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope and other non-visible-light telescopes, you may wonder where those beautiful colors came from? After all, if the telescopes were recording infrared or ultraviolet light, we wouldn’t see anything at all. So are the images “colorized” or “false colored”?

No, not really. The colors are translated. Just as a foreign language can be translated into our native language, an image made with light that falls outside the range of our seeing can be “translated” into colors we can see. Scientists process these images so they can not only see them, but they can also tease out all sorts of information the light can reveal. For example, wisely done color translation can reveal relative temperatures of stars, dust, and gas in the images, and show fine structural details of galaxies and nebulae.

Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), for example, is a four-channel camera, meaning that it has four different detector arrays, each measuring light at one particular wavelength. Each image from each detector array resembles a grayscale image, because the entire detector array is responding to only one wavelength of light. However, the relative brightness will vary across the array.

So, starting with one detector array, the first step is to determine what is the brightest thing and the darkest thing in the image. Software is used to pick out this dynamic range and to re-compute the value of each pixel. This process produces a grey-scale image. At the end of this process, for Spitzer, we will have four grayscale images, one for each for the four IRAC detectors.

Matter of different temperatures emit different wavelengths of light. A cool object emits longer wavelengths (lower energies) of light than a warmer object. So, for each scene, we will see four grayscale images, each of them different.

Normally, the three primary colors are assigned to these gray-scale images based on the order they appear in the spectrum, with blue assigned to the shortest wavelength, and red to the longest. In the case of Spitzer, with four wavelengths to represent, a secondary color is chosen, such as yellow. So images that combine all four of the IRAC’s infrared detectors are remapped into red, yellow, green, and blue wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum.

Download a new Spitzer poster of the center of the Milky Way. On the back is a more complete and colorfully-illustrated explanation of the “art of space imagery.” Go to spaceplace.nasa.gov/posters/#milky-way.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.



Space Place partners’ article January 2013

This image of M101 combines images from four different telescopes, each detecting a different part of the spectrum. Red indicates infrared information from Spitzer’s 24-micron detector, and shows the cool dust in the galaxy. Yellow shows the visible starlight from the Hubble telescope. Cyan is ultraviolet light from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope, which shows the hottest and youngest stars. And magenta is X-ray energy detected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, indicating incredibly hot activity, like accretion around black holes.