Category: syracuse astronomical society

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Syracuse Astronomical Society President's Message for May, 2008

A repost of the original at the Syracuse Astronomical Society website.

Now Can We Have Our Marathon?!

Greetings fellow astrophiles. As some of you may know, we've had a very poor run of public viewings and society meetings this year. April was a complete mud wash at the Observatory, with 2 full hours of patient waiting revealing roughly three stars (that all four of us at the Hill agreed on seeing, anyway. Fortunately, we were having too much fun to really worry about it). May 2nd and 3rd? Less mud but far more overcast conditions (if such a thing were possible).

Perhaps it would be better to not say anything in the event the SAS monthly message is the jinx, but we will be having out second May Public Viewing and Society Meeting this Friday (and, in the event the weather doesn't hold out, Saturday) at Darling Hill. The full Messier Marathon (of all 110 objects) is beyond possibility at this point, but there are plenty of clusters within easy reach of a decent pair of binoculars to our South in Sagittarius (not Cortland). While we're not meeting right at a New Moon as we've planned our new observing schedule around, the Moon should not interfere with many of the brightest Messier objects and certainly won't interfere with viewing of Saturn and Venus, which will be prominent in the Night's Sky both on the 24th and 25th, and Mars, which will have just completed a transit through M44, the Beehive Cluster, on the early morning of the 24th.

Hubble's view of Mars. From wikipedia.com.
Click for a larger view.

The Beehive Cluster. From wikipedia.com.
Click for a larger view.

In the event that we find ourselves not risking the combustion of precious hydrocarbons over another overcast observing weekend, I thought it worth at least reporting a place or two to go where the sky is more predictable, your feet stay warmer, and the tear-down is faster (which are all lousy reasons if you're an amateur astronomer!). These two websites were recently reported on by the New York Times if you're looking for some more background.

Google Sky

Having tackled the Earth, Moon, and Mars, Google has set their sites a bit higher with their Google Sky site. Like everything Google, the interface is straightforward enough that you can literally search-and-go to anywhere within the SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) as soon as the browser window loads. As an example, I've included a screenshot below with another view of the Beehive Cluster. The representation of the smallest objects in the sky (the planets) are a little quirky (try searching Mars and you'll see what I mean) while you're searching in Deep Sky mode (note the buttons on the lower left corner that select for different objects) but having easy access to the SDSS deep sky data today more than makes up for any wait in data processing on the Google-side.

Screenshot of Google Sky. Click on the image for a larger version.

WorldWideTelescope.org (WWT)

Mike Brady reported on this one as well. In true interoperability fashion, I could not find the download link for the software on the WWT site using my Windows XP machine (and did I mention that Microsoft Research is responsible for the development of the WWT?) in Internet Explorer. The download link showed up just fine in my OSX Safari browser (this link should be obvious when you click on Experience WWT). The download link is provided HERE.

From worldwidetelescope.com.

APOD Mars Flight Simulator v1

If you don't keep track of this site, you're missing out on some great visuals. The Astronompy Picture of the Day goes all the way back to June 16, 1995 (that's ancient by WWW standards!) and has been as much a regular feature on Astronomy Blogs (and Astro Society sites such as this one) as it has on the big Web 2.0 news services (such as Slashdot and Digg).

I thought the May 19th APOD was worth throwing in at the last minute. Doug Ellison and Randolph Kirk have combined data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Spirit Rover (auto makers, take note!) to make a fly-by animation of the Columbia Hills (which you can see in flattened detail by going to the Google Mars site).

Flying Over the Columbia Hills of Mars

Doug Ellison, Randolph Kirk (USGS), MSSS, MER, NASA

ESA Swarm Gallery

Way back in 1988, Marstar and the Walt Disney Company put out a made-for-TV movie called Earth Star Voyager, about a spaceship of teens en route to survey a planet that, having learned our lessons on an overcrowded and over-polluted Earth, we'd be a bit more careful about mismanaging. One of the first post-take-off scenes involved the Voyager having to navigate through all of the satellite and previous spaceship debris that humanity couldn't find anywhere else to put.

Just when you thought it was safe to take-off from Anywhere, USA en route to your stellar destination, the ESA has added to their list of gallery content several images mapping all of the satellites and large debris floating in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). No, the images are not to scale, but when objects are pulling +25,000 mph/h, they cover quite a bit of ground, er, sky. While I suspect we've a ways to go before space pollution becomes a major issue, one hopes that someone in our Space Administration is keeping tabs of our far future launch windows of opportunity (and, we hope, coordinating with all of the other Space-Faring nations and those yet to come). If the destruction of USA 193 is any indication, our Navy may get their money's worth from the gaming community in years to come.

Objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – view over the North Pole.
Image from ESA/NASA – SOHO/LASCO.
Click on the image to go to the ESA site.

"Not Enough Stars In The Night" by Brendan DuBois

A link from our own Prof. John McMahon: "Here's a little bit of fiction that speaks volumes… "

"Science and progress has turned inward, creating new realities and entire new worlds. Fletcher works as a virtual reality tester to escape to the past, and longs for a bygone era when humankind could still gaze into space."

Story featured in Cosmos Magazine. Read it HERE.

Phoenix Lander Landing. On Land!

Finally, this weekend will hopefully be notable for more than the SAS finally having a Public Viewing session in 2008. The Phoenix Mars Mission is set to roll into high gear on May 25th at 4:38 p.m. EST with the touch-down of the Phoenix Mars Lander. This mission is the first of the NASA "Scout Program" missions, which are aimed at Mars, er, sorry, are aimed at providing important scientific data at low-budget levels in anticipation of, er, in efforts to support major missions in the future, such as a successful Mars landing, which would certainly help to put Earth on the map.

Phoenix Mission Lander on Mars, Artist's Concept
Image from NASA/JPL.

The website should be brimming with activity and my NASA-TV feed will be going all afternoon in the background. With luck, the first pictures will arrive at NASA HQ around 6:30 p.m. EST. If anyone has a sufficiently large scope, we'll attempt to sketch the landing area on the 25th (if the weather on the 24th doesn't hold up, of course).

Space is the place,

Damian Allis, Ph.D.

sas@somewhereville.com

Links Used Above (Subject To Web Changes)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_marathon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_%28constellation%29
www.cortland.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_moon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_44
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline
www.nytimes.com
www.google.com/sky
earth.google.com
moon.google.com
mars.google.com
www.google.com
sky.google.com
www.sdss.org
www.worldwidetelescope.com
www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsxp/default.mspx
research.microsoft.com
www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx
www.apple.com/macosx
www.apple.com/safari
content.worldwidetelescope.org/setup/setupwwt.exe
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
slashdot.org
www.digg.com
www.dougellison.com/?page_id=2
astrogeology.usgs.gov/About/People/RandolphKirk
mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro
marsrovers.nasa.gov/home
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Hills_(Mars)
antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080519.html
astrogeology.usgs.gov
www.msss.com
marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
www.nasa.gov
www.imdb.com/company/co0185768
www.disney.com
www.imdb.com/title/tt0095077/
www.esa.int
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_193
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Lake_Erie_(CG-70)
lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil
www.brendandubois.com
web.lemoyne.edu/~mcmahon/McMahon.html
www.cosmosmagazine.co
www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1974
phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/spacecraft/index.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

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Syracuse Astronomical Society President's Message for March/April, 2008

A repost of the original at the Syracuse Astronomical Society website.

2008 Messier Marathon



Charles Messier (1730 – 1817). Click HERE for more info.

It is that time of year again! The opening of the observatory on April 4th will also be our official date for the 2008 Messier Marathon. While approaching the edge of the "ideal window" for the Marathon (which is between mid-March and very early April), the new Moon matches up with our ability to get near the Observatory soon after the beginning of Spring (when there's usually snow still covering the scope pads). As our Society Meetings now coincide with Public Viewing sessions, this is an excellent opportunity for anyone interested to get a thorough "crash course" in astronomical objects and viewing equipment (a few of us will only attempt the Messier hunt with binoculars, while others will stay fixed to their telescopes for quality-over-quantity observing).


Courtesy Thierry Lombry, www.astrosurf.com/lombry
Click on the image for a larger version.

I will save the discussion of the Marathon and its history for a few excellent websites on the subject. As for those planning to attend either Friday or Saturday night (Friday is the planned date, but check the website Friday afternoon for weather updates and the official call from the Board), be VERY sure to bring extra layers of clothing. After dark at the observatory, the temperatures can quickly drop to freezing and, without the Sun to help, you provide the heat to Darling Hill, not vice versa!

The February 21th MOST Lecture

For those that missed the MOST, I wanted to post a few notes and links mentioned by Prof. James Lloyd during his lecture on "Planets Orbiting Distant Stars." These barely scratch the surface, put certainly provide some great reading and viewing.

Giordano Bruno

"It is then unnecessary to investigate whether there be beyond the heaven Space, Void or Time. For there is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call Void; in it are innumerable globes like this one on which we live and grow. This space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, possibility, sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit. In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own." – Giordano Bruno, From De l'infinito universo et mondi (On the Infinite Universe and Worlds), 1584.

The proposal that ours is not the only (habitable?) planet in the universe is not at all recent, especially given that it's been less than 20 years since the first discovery (HD 114762 b way back in 1989. I still have the clipping from the Post-Standard in my old Peterson Field Guide). One thing that has changed in the last +400 years is the way in which such new revelations are handled by society. Bruno burned at the stake for his then heretical views, a misunderstanding the Catholic church has since acknowledged regret for.

exoplanet.eu

At some point in the not too distant future, people will look upon the www.exoplanet.eu website and comment "They found yet another one. Ho hum." In the meantime, this website, run by Jean Schneider of CNRS/LUTH (the French equivalent of our National Laboratory System) is the international place to go for updates on the total count of planets beyond our Solar System, including all kinds of information about the planetary properties and how they were discovered.

planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov

Our tax dollars at work, and including a free widget! The planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov site contains the up-to-the-minute tally of extrasolar planets, news articles (popular press) about those discoveries, and a download-able widget for Windows and OSX that provides the total count on your desktop.

Prof. Lloyd Quote Of The Night

"We know as much about the cores of extrasolar planets as we know about our own."

Ye Olde Popular Press

In discussing the methods by which we discover extrasolar planets, Prof. Lloyd made reference to the phenomenon of gravitational lenses, one of the amazing aspects of the interaction of light and matter predicted by Albert Einstein before its reported observation by Arthur Eddington. I've heard it described as "The great reconciliation of Germany and England after World War I", but recent studies indicate that Eddington's measurements were within the error bars of not being credibly observable, although we know today with our increasingly sensitive equipment that the phenomenon is very real.

How often does science make the front page? The two clips are taken from the New York Times reporting the… peculiar revelations (that description sounds reasonably dated, yes?) of one Albert Einstein.

American Scientist Stamp Unveiling At The MOST

February 6th saw the official release by the US Postal Service of a panel of four stamps commemorating four American Scientists. For those keeping count, a set of four stamps came out in 2005 featuring Barbara McClintock, John von Neumann, Josiah Willard Gibbs (of Gibbs Free energy fame, of course) and the incomparable Richard Feynman. Included in the current set are Gerty Cori, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen, and the reason I mention the release, Edwin Hubble. Given just how far science has progressed us since the simpler times of Giordano Bruno's Italy, it is still amazing that it wasn't until the reporting of Hubble discoveries on January 1, 1925 that it became public knowledge that the Milky Way is not, in fact, the only galaxy in the universe. Less than 100 years ago, every galaxy we've now observed with the Hubble Space Telescope was believed to lie within the (still uncharacterized) bounds of our own galaxy. As a practicing scientist, I consider that a very humbling thought.


Click on the image for a larger version.

Syracuse Stamp Club Commemorative Hubble Cover

The first day of availability of the aforementioned "Scientific Panel" (certainly one that could have easily lost their audience without scratching the surface of their respective fields) was celebrated by the Syracuse Stamp Club with a Commemorative First Day Stamp Cover designed by Board of Director member and fellow Syracuse University alum Vincent Juchimek. After a delightful afternoon campus visit and First Day Stamp Cover education with his wife Dianne, Vincent graciously offered to make available a Hubble-centric stamp cover to SAS members (see the image below). I think they serve the important purposes of supporting the recognition of American Scientists (by buying the stamps from the US Post Office), demonstrating how two otherwise very different hobbies (I only ever pick up a magnifying glass when I'm trying to find a cluster in some dense pocket book to set the sights of my 25×100's on) can overlap in a most productive way, and providing an artistic way to commemorate a national event in a most Syracuse-centric way. Thirty of these have been secured for the SAS that will be available to members for $3.00 each (which included the cover, the stamp, and the commemorative cancel). If you're interested in obtaining one or more Hubble Stamp Covers, let me know as soon as possible and we'll have them out as they come off the press!


Click on the image for a larger version.

Ice Pillars Attack Downtown Syracuse!

The SAS received a little bit of local recognition on the morning of February 29th with a news article in the Post-Standard about some remarkable pillars of lights the night before. I received a phone call from reporter Douglass Dowty asking for info about the strange lights observed downtown after he'd received information from the 911 Call Center about people reporting strange lights, flying discs, etc. After briefly peaking my head out the window (and running out quickly in socks to not miss what, given viewing conditions in Syracuse, could have been the last 5 seconds of "something wonderful"), I told him that the phenomenon looked like aurora, which I confirmed to myself by checking spaceweather.com to see if we were, in fact, in the middle of a major solar storm (which we reportedly were). After a bit more viewing from downtown, what I thought was aurora became decidedly more localized in nature. The phenomenon we all observed was "ice pillaring," a specific example of "light pillaring," a not-too-common phenomenon in itself that provides a different, but no less stunning, light show in the Night Sky.

I quickly threw together a picture of how ice pillars form (well, appear) that I'm including here (replete with local color).

Click on the image for a larger version.

After some posting on the article blog at syracuse.com, Douglass re-quoted me with my more likely explanation in the February 30th edition. Two of my best pictures of the pillars are provided below. The picture on top shows a slightly over-exposed view of North Syracuse (to make the pillars more prominent). The picture at bottom is exactly as my camera and I saw it, with very pronounced pillaring over St. Joseph's Hospital. The pillars remind me a bit of the transporter signatures in the old Star Trek movies (very bright and very localized).


Click on either image for a larger version.

and finally…

Milky Way Gets Super-Sized (Sorry, I Can't Resist)

Oh Henry! A Fast Break over the scientific newswire reports that the Milky Way has reportedly put on a bit of weight, but no one appears to be Snicker-ing. Like the rest of us, the Milky Way hasn't gotten longer, only a little Chunky-er, or wider in the middle (and tailing off to either end). A group of astronomer Smarties at the University of Sydney didn't need their 100 Grand scope, requiring only an analysis of small Mounds of data available on the internet to determine that the Milky Way is now 12,000 light years wide. Truly a low-cost, high-impact PayDay for Prof. Bryan Gaensler and co-workers, with some calling this the most important discovery in astronomy since the discovery of water on Mars.

Click on the image for more info.

We can only hope that the researchers performing the data analysis weren't a group of Butterfingers. Stay tuned for S'More astronomy news.

If it weren't bad enough that we're less than 100 years past Hubble's great announcement on the distance of other galaxies from our own, consider now how significant it is that we're still uncovering the very largest-scale properties of our own galaxy.

Space is the place,
Damian Allis, Ph.D.
sas@somewhereville.com

Links Used Above (Subject To Web Changes)
www.astro.cornell.edu/people/facstaff-detail.php?pers_id=96
www.cornell.edu
www.most.org
seds.org/MESSIER/xtra/history/CMessier.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_marathon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon
www.astrosurf.com/lombry
seds.org/Messier/xtra/marathon/marathon.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
astrosun2.astro.cornell.edu/~jpl/
www.most.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
www.positiveatheism.org/hist/brunoiuw0.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_114762
www.syracuse.com
www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=681482
www.exoplanet.eu
www.obspm.fr/~schneider
www.cnrs.fr
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system
planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov
www.microsoft.com
www.apple.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
www.nytimes.com
www.usps.gov
www.usps.com/communications/news/stamps/2004/sr04_076.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_McClintock
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Willard_Gibbs
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerty_Cori
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bardeen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble
www.aps.org/publications/capitolhillquarterly/200802/physicshistory.cfm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
hubblesite.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_day_cover
www.syracusestampclub.org
syracusestampclub.org/officers/officers.htm
www.syr.edu
www.syracuse.ny.us
www.linkedin.com/pub/2/543/B78
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010:_The_Year_We_Make_Contact
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_%28astronomy%29
www.spaceweather.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pillar
blog.syracuse.com/news/2008/02/pillars_of_light_illuminate_sk.html
www.startrek.com
www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2163
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_Henry%21
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Break_%28candy%29
www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2163
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way_%28candy%29
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snickers
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestle_Chunky
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smarties_%28Ce_De_Candy%29
www.usyd.edu.au
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Grand
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mounds_%28candy%29
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayDay_%28confection%29
www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~bmg
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050401.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfinger
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%27more