the monthly newsletter of the bays ch 2020 …...bays mountain astronomy club newsletter march 2020...

The Monthly Newsletter of the

BaysMountain AstronomyClub

Edited by Adam Thanz M o re o n t h i s i m a g e .

S e e F N 1

March 2020

Chapter 1

Cosmic Reflections

W i l l i a m Tro x e l - B M A C C h a i r

M o re o n t h i s i m a g e .

S e e F N 2

Greetings BMACers. March is here. The other day I was reading an article while getting my tires changed. It was about the concept of time in our society. The article expressed that we, as Earth people, feel like we have less time. Because we are amateur astronomers, we understand time in a bit broader field. I am not sure where I heard the following, however "We all have the same amount of time, it is more about how we chose to spend the time we have." I want to encourage each of you to always face each day learning as much as you can.

The February meeting had a wonderful turnout and we enjoyed one of the wonderful shows in the Park's Planetarium. Jason was the host. The show's title was "Einsteins Gravity Playlist." Following the show Jason pulled up the night sky as it would be outside had we had a clear night. One of the very cool features about the Park’s Planetarium is that we were able to show the skies of the southern hemisphere. Judging from the sounds I heard when the dome seemed to move I think everyone was impressed as I. (Note: I was one of those making noises.)

Many of our new members shared with me that they had not had the chance to come out and see one the programs in the

Planetarium, this was why I asked Adam and Jason if we could do a program. If you did not get to come attend, and if the members want, I will try to get another meeting in the future to highlight the theater again.

March is a real busy month. You know that we will be holding our SunWatch solar viewing on clear Saturdays and Sundays thru the last week of October. The official time is 3 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Dam. If the weather is poor, the SunWatch is cancelled. March also starts the Spring session of the StarWatch night viewing programs on the Saturday evenings of March and April starting at dusk. If poor weather, a tour of the night sky will take place in the planetarium theater. Both of these programs are open to the public.

Don't forget that we (the club) hosts these public viewings. You are welcome to come out and enjoy, but if you would like to help and be a host, you must go through the park’s volunteer program. Contact Adam or Jason and they will get you started with the process.

William Troxel

Cosmic Reflections

Bays Mountain Astronomy Club Newsletter March 2020 3


S e e F N 3

I also want to tell you about our speaker this month. March welcomes Noah Frère. He is finishing his Masters from UT Knoxville and he's a member of the Smokey Mountain Astronomical Society, the Knoxville Observers and O.R.I.O.N. He will speak about “The Purple Edge Problem.” This is Noah’s thesis for his Masters in Astrophysics degree. Many of you may recall Noah from a past StarFest. I hope you will plan on coming out and giving him a big BMAC welcome. Please feel free to bring your questions. The meeting will be March 6th at 7 p.m. in the Discovery Theater classroom on the lower level of the Bays Mountain Park Nature Center.

Until next time, this is your chairman wishing for each of you…

Clear skies.

4 Bays Mountain Astronomy Club Newsletter March 2020

Chapter 2

BMACNotes


S e e F N 4

Sad NewsI’m sorry to say that new BMAC member Jim Harrington passed away in mid January. I didn’t know much about him as he recently joined the club a few months ago. He and his wife moved to our area about a year or so ago. Upon finishing getting settled, he wanted to get back into helping with public observing events. He just finished going through the volunteer orientation and was going to start helping with this next StarWatch season. I think he would have done well. [Ed.]

EFLIGHT 2021 Total Solar Eclipse Flight 04 December 2021

An advance time-sensitive opportunity to secure your space...

Knowing your deep interest in TSE (Total Solar Eclipse) 04 December 2021, herein is our 'cure' for the isolation, remoteness, and access challenges that otherwise characterize its path of totality.

For eclipse-chasers, the mention of TSE 2021 brings up logistically and climatologically challenging visions of either an inland trans-Antarctic trek for 48s of totality near the edge of the path of totality, or a protracted sea-bound voyage through pack-ice strewn passages under quite oft-cloudy skies.

For those who have been hopefully awaiting a less daunting and much higher-probability-of-success alternative for a TSE 2021 viewing opportunity, we are now very pleased to announce we have have designed, engineered, and matured just the ticket - from 39,000 feet above the surface of the Earth in a specially chartered Airbus A321-200 aircraft to be launched from Punta Arenas, Chile.

Our eclipse-viewing-optimized "EFLIGHT 2021-SUNRISE" will centrally intercept the Moon's umbral shadow at mid-eclipse for 1m 45s of totality as it descends upon the Earth soon after local sunrise. With the totally-eclipsed Sun majestically standing seven solar diameters above the apparent horizon, totality will be framed in the dark horizontal tunnel of the the conical lunar umbra as it sweeps over the northern Scotia sea enveloping our aircraft. This will be a dramatically amazing sight to behold the

BMAC News



S e e F N 3

corona from the clear dark skies and rarified air above 80% of the Earth's atmosphere.

For a full and detailed technical description of our EFLIGHT 2021-SUNRISE dedicated ~ 5-1/2 hour end-to-end duration eclipse-charter plans see:

https://tinyurl.com/EFLIGHT2021

Participation (and seat-row selection) on the flight will limited by the number of available sun-side windows for eclipse viewing and will be on a first-come/first-serve basis. (When they are gone, they are gone!)

For information on securing space see:

questions? --> reserve your space: Tim Todd (TEI), [email protected]; 1-925-825-6104

questions? --> technical contact: Glenn Schneider, [email protected]; 1-520-621-5865

Cheers and Clear Skies (of course, from 39,000 feet!; See you on-board), Glenn Schneider, Tim Todd and John Beattie




mailto:[email protected]




Chapter 3

Celestial Happenings

J a s o n D o r f m a n


S e e F N 5

As March begins, here at the Park we also begin our SunWatch program, which is our solar observing program that runs from March through the end of October. Therefore, I thought a short article about the Sun and what you can observe with the proper filters would be good for March. If you have never viewed the Sun through a telescope, then you should definitely plan a visit to the park on a weekend afternoon to observe our closest star.

Overview of the SunOur Sun is a star just like all the thousands of stars we see in the night sky. With a radius of 432,168 miles, it is enormous compared to the Earth. However, it is just an average star when compared to the multitude of stars in our galaxy. There are many other stars that are several times larger than the Sun. It is made mostly of hydrogen and helium, about 71% and 27%, respectively. The remaining 2% consists of elements heavier than helium, which scientists simply refer to as "metals."

The interior of the Sun is divided into different layers. In the very center is the Core where hydrogen atoms are converted into helium atoms through the process of nuclear fusion. The pressures and temperatures in the core are extremely high. At

the very center of the Sun the temperature is almost 30 million degrees Fahrenheit. The nuclear fusion process in the Core releases energy in the form of photons, which are radiated outward through the next layer called the Radiative Zone. The photons are absorbed and re-radiated by the atoms in this layer millions of times as the energy is slowly carried outward.

About 70% of the distance from the center to the surface, we reach the outermost layer of the Sun's interior called the Convective Zone. Here, the energy transport mechanism changes from radiation to one of convection; like a boiling pot of water, large volumes of hot gas ascend through the Convective Zone and cool along the way. We see smaller convective cells at the surface, called granules.

The interface layer where the Radiative Zone meets the Convective Zone is known as the Tachocline. It is now believed that the Sun's complex magnetic field is generated from a magnetic dynamo in this region due to shear flows that result from the changing fluid flow velocities as the energy transport mechanism changes from radiative to convective across this region. The Sun's complex magnetic field is responsible for many

Jason Dorfman

Celestial Happenings



S e e F N 3

of the features that we'll explore later and understanding how it operates an important part of understanding our Sun and its impact on Earth.

Once we reach the top of the Convective Zone, we reach the Photosphere, which is considered the surface of the Sun and is where we transition from the solar interior to the solar atmosphere. At the Photosphere, the Sun's density becomes low enough that photons of light are finally able to travel unimpeded away from the Sun. The temperature at the Photosphere is about 10,000 °F. Above the Photosphere is the Chromosphere, an irregular region where the temperature rises to almost 40,000 °F as we approach the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere, the Corona. This is the diffuse region only visible during total eclipses of the Sun. Surprisingly, it was found that temperatures in the Corona reach almost 2,000,000 °F.

The mechanism for this super-heating seen as we move up into the corona is not well understood. Two missions have recently been launched to help investigate this region and perhaps give us a better understanding of this temperature increase, though they are sure to lead to many more unanswered questions. Launched in 2018, the Parker Solar Probe is using flybys of Venus to gradually reduce its distance from the Sun taking it deeper into the Corona. It has already made two passes within the orbit of Mercury and at its closest will pass within 4 million miles of the Sun's surface, closer than any other spacecraft has come before.

The other is the Solar Orbiter, a joint ESA/NASA mission that launched just last month on February 10. It will examine how the Sun creates and controls the heliosphere by studying the charged particles in the solar wind and measuring the magnetic fields of the Sun and Heliosphere.

Safely Observing the SunWe are told at a young age to never look directly at the Sun because you could damage your eyes. I'm sure that many of us have had that experience of looking at the Sun accidentally, usually while driving at sunrise or sunset, and then seeing a nice dark spot in your vision for the next half hour. Because of the focusing power of binoculars and telescopes, it becomes even more important to understand and follow certain safety precautions when viewing the Sun through these instruments. Properly filtering out much more than 99% of the Sun's light before it reaches the eye is the key to maintaining your eye health. I'm not going to go into the many different filter options available, but instead will focus on the broad categories and what features of the Sun they highlight.

White light filters reduce all the wavelengths of the Sun's light equally and are applied to the front of your telescope. Though once used in the far past, you should avoid using eyepiece filters which are more likely to degrade due to the concentrated sunlight, which, in turn, can damage your vision. Front-mounted white-light filters reveal the Photosphere of the Sun. Depending



Sunspots


Sunspot Count


Spicules - NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory


Granules - G. Scharmer, Swedish

Vacuum Solar Telescope


Filaments


Faculae - NASA


The Sun just prior to first contact for the

2017 total solar eclipse. - Adam Thanz

upon the specific type of filter material used, the disk of the Sun will appear pale yellow, orange or white. Sunspots are the more prominent features that are observable at the Photosphere. Sunspots are dark spots that appear in a wide variety of shapes and forms. These are cooler areas that are caused by magnetic field lines emerging at the surface and are often seen in pairs. Observational records counting the number of sunspots seen at a given time date back to the 1700's and reveal a periodic increase and decrease in the number of spots recorded. This regular cycle is known as the sunspot cycle. Each cycle lasts from 10-12 years. We are currently at a minimum of cycle 24 which had a low peak and there has been very little sunspot activity for many months as the cycle nears its end. The next cycle, 25, is predicted to begin in April and looks to be another cycle with a low number of sunspots at its peak around 2025 or 2026.

In addition to sunspots, you may also observe faculae. These are bright areas where the magnetic field is concentrated in much smaller bundles than in sunspots. [Ed.: A form of radiative transfer is why they transmit more energy (and heat) than the surrounding surface and thus look brighter than the surface.] They are seen more easily near the limb, or edge, of the Sun.

Another type of filter is an hydrogen alpha or H-alpha filter. This filter focuses only on a narrow band of wavelengths around a particular energy of light emitted by the hydrogen atom. With this type of filter we observe the Chromosphere of the Sun. Some of

the features seen in the Chromosphere include prominences, filaments, plages and spicules. Prominences are loops of gas flowing along magnetic field lines extending out from the surface. They are easily seen along the edge of the Sun. Filaments are seen as dark, thread-like features on the surface and are the same as prominences except that you are seeing them from above instead of from the side. Plages are bright areas surrounding sunspots and are the same as faculae, but for the Chromosphere. Spicules are small, spikey features that appear as short dark streaks in an H-alpha view. They are eruptions ejecting material off of the surface and outward into the Corona that last just a few minutes.

Of course, projecting an image of the Sun is the safest way to view the Sun. There are several ways to do this which will give you a similar view of the Photosphere as with a white light filter.

Some Final ThoughtsIf you don't have the proper filter for your telescope or binoculars, or don't have a telescope in the first place, then be sure to come out to a clear SunWatch. It occurs out on the middle of the dam every Saturday and Sunday from 3-3:30 p.m. It is weather permitting, if we can't see the Sun, the program is cancelled.

A great website to see what's currently going on with our closest star is spaceweather.com. The site has a lot of information, so it's a little busy looking at first. But, once you know where to look, it's very useful. I use it to check on sunspots before observing. It also


has information about solar flares and near-Earth asteroids. If you're interested in learning more about the Sun and how it works, be sure to check out some of the other referenced links below.

[Ed.: I don't normally push a certain product, but the best white-light solar filter out there is the Baader Planetarium AstroSolar 5.0 Safety Film. You can purchase it in sheets to make your own filter. Or, you can purchase a complete filter with holder, also from Baader. I recommend Astro-Physics as a source for these products. Note, these filters do not color the view, so the image is white. The Sun actually emits white light, but its peak wavelength is in the yellow range of the spectrum, thus our "yellow" Sun. This filter also has the highest contrast for any pre-telescope filter.]

Happy and Safe Solar Observing!

References:https://science.nasa.gov/missions/solar-orbiter/ (February 18, 2020)

http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/The-Mission/index.php#introduction (February 18, 2020)

https://sci.esa.int/web/solar-orbiter (February 18, 2020)

https://www.spaceweather.com (February 18, 2020)

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov (February 18, 2020)

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/sunspotssolar-cycle (February 18, 2020)

https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml (February 18, 2020)

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/observe/ (February 19, 2020)

https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/how-to-look-at-the-sun/ (February 19, 2020)


https://science.nasa.gov/missions/solar-orbiter/

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/solar-orbiter/

http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/The-Mission/index.php#introduction




https://sci.esa.int/web/solar-orbiter

https://sci.esa.int/web/solar-orbiter

https://www.spaceweather.com

https://www.spaceweather.com

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/sunspotssolar-cycle

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/sunspotssolar-cycle

https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml

https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/observe/

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/observe/

https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/how-to-look-at-the-sun/




Chapter 4

TheQueenSpeaks

R o b i n B y r n e

This month, we celebrate the accomplishments of a woman who is still making contributions to astronomy. Heidi Hammel was born March 14, 1960 in California. She went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for her undergraduate studies, graduating in 1982. Hammel then attended graduate school at the University of Hawaii, studying physics and astronomy. She received her PhD in 1988.

After graduating, Hammel held a post-doctoral position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California before returning to MIT, where she spent nine years in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences as a Principal Research Scientist. In 1998, Hammel went to work at the Space Science Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where she now serves as the co-Director of their Research Branch.

The primary focus of Hammel’s research has been the Jovian planets, with an emphasis on the planets Uranus and Neptune. In particular, she is interested in studying their atmospheres, but also has made discoveries about their moons and rings. In describing the work she does, Hammel said, "One thing that we all care about is the weather…. But what makes weather is gases

and clouds, and the reason the weather on the Earth is hard to predict is because we have oceans and continents that interact with our atmosphere…. But if you take a planet like Jupiter or Neptune you don't have continents and you don't have oceans. All you have is gas, all you have is atmosphere, and therefore it's a lot easier to model the weather on those planets. But it's the same physical process…. Therefore by studying weather on Neptune we learn about weather in general, and that helps us understand the weather on Earth better.”

In 1989, Hammel was part of the team that used Voyager 2 to image Neptune. They were the first to see Neptune’s Great Dark Spot, which, at the time, was thought to be a permanent storm similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. In 1994, Hammel led a team of astronomers who used the Hubble Space Telescope to image Neptune again. That was when it was discovered that the Great Dark Spot had disappeared. Talking about the Great Dark Spot, Hammel said, “So far, it hasn’t come back. We don’t know why. But we did learn something new: that Neptune could change dramatically in just five years. Till then, it was thought that Neptune was more static.”

Robin Byrne

Happy Birthday Heidi Hammel



S e e F N 3


Heidi Hammel, senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute

in Boulder, Colorado discusses newly

released images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009 at NASA

Headquarters in Washington. The

images were from four of the telescopes' six

operating science instruments. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill

Ingalls)

Image from NASA Goddard Space Flight

Center.

When the fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 were discovered to be on a collision course with Jupiter in 1994, Hammel led a team of astronomers who used the Hubble Space Telescope to image Jupiter over the several days the collisions occurred. Their primary interest was how Jupiter’s atmosphere would react to the collisions. Predictions ranged from very dramatic explosions to seeing nothing noticeable at all. Hammel was designated by NASA as the spokesperson who would explain the events to the public. When the first images showed a pitch black spot where the impact occurred, everyone was thrilled. Seeing Hammel popping open a bottle of champagne in celebration is something I’ll never forget, and it put a more human face on scientists, in general.

Since the year 2000, Hammel has been using the Keck telescope in Hawaii to study Uranus. In 2003, her research discovered record winds on the planet, ranging between 240 and 260 miles per hour (107 - 111 meters per second). Hammel, along with her colleague, Imke de Pater, also studied Uranus’ ring system, discovering that the rings are unique from other ring systems by being made of only a single layer of particles. They also found a new ring, closer to Uranus than the rest of its ring system, made of rocky material. In 2006, they found that Uranus has one ring that appears blue, and one that appears red, both of which are very rare.

In 2002, Hammel was chosen to be an interdisciplinary scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. Once launched in 2021, Hammel’s focus will be on the theme of “Planetary Systems and the Origins of Life.” When asked about Hubble vs. Webb, Hammel replied, “Listen, much as I love Hubble, it’s time to build new tools to see new things…. Webb will be able to probe regions of the cosmos that are simply not visible to Hubble. It’s bigger and it will be tuned to wavelengths that Hubble can’t really see. With Webb, we have the potential to answer questions about the origins of just about everything in the Universe.”

Hammel was named the executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) in 2011. AURA is a consortium of universities, educational institutions, and non-profits from around the world, all devoted to the study of astronomy. Although Hammel still engages in research, now being the mother of three has changed her main focus: “I made a commitment several years ago to move from the doing of the research to the enabling of the research…. I want to make sure that … young people have the opportunities, with the new tools that we’re developing right now, to push the boundaries of science.”

Since the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact of Jupiter, Hammel increasingly became in demand as the public face of astronomy news. In 2002, she was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal, which is given to a scientist who has greatly enhanced the public’s


knowledge of the Solar System. In 2003, she was named one of Discover Magazine’s 50 most important women in science. When asked about how she learned to be such a good communicator of science, Hammel explained, “My Uncle Larry was my template. When I was a student, I’d come home on Thanksgiving weekends, and during breaks in his football game he’d go, ‘O.K., Heidi, whatcha workin’ on?’ I knew I had 30 seconds to tell this guy who worked in a Mack truck factory what I did. He just wanted the big picture. I’d quickly say, ‘I’m using big telescopes to try to find planets and figure out what they’re made of.’ Every scientist should be able to do that.”

Hammel’s enthusiasm for astronomy, coupled with her ability to share her love with the general public, has ensured her place in history. Sure, she has an asteroid named after her, but Hammel’s legacy goes well beyond that. From everything she has helped us learn about the outermost planets in our Solar System, to her mentoring of the next generation of astronomers, to her outstanding ability to communicate what’s so exciting about it all, Hammel will be remembered.

“I think all scientists are like detectives. We are most happy when we find something that doesn’t fit our expectations. My work often involves analyzing images of the planets taken by Hubble or made at Earth-based telescopes like the Keck in Hawaii. If I see something that seems out of sync with what’s already known, the first thing I do is try to find out what’s wrong with the data. Once

you’ve done that, and it still seems wrong, that’s when things get interesting. It means you’ve found something new to understand. So you think about it and go for more data and come up with different models. All real science is like that.”

References:Wikipedia - Heidi Hammel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Hammel

James Webb Space Telescope - Meet the Team - Heidi Hammel

https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/meetTheTeam/people/hammel.html

New York Times, A Conversation with an Astronomer Devoted to the Icy and Far Away by Claudia Dreifus, September 1, 2008

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/science/02conv.html








Chapter 5

Space Place


S e e F N 6

Cancer the Crab is a dim constellation, yet it contains one of the most beautiful and easy-to-spot star clusters in our sky:

the Beehive Cluster. Cancer also possesses one of the most studied exoplanets: the superhot super-Earth, 55 Cancri e.

Find Cancer’s dim stars by looking in between the brighter neighboring constellations of Gemini and Leo. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t find it at first, since Cancer isn’t easily visible from moderately light polluted areas. Once you find Cancer, look for its most famous deep-sky object: the Beehive Cluster! It’s a large open cluster of young stars, three times larger than our Moon in the sky. The Beehive is visible to unaided eyes under good sky conditions as a faint cloudy patch, but is stunning when viewed through binoculars or a wide-field telescope. It was one of the earliest deep-sky objects noticed by ancient astronomers, and so the Beehive has many other names, including Praesepe, Nubilum, M44, the Ghost, and Jishi qi. Take a look at it on a clear night through binoculars. Do these stars look like a hive of buzzing bees? Or do you see something else? There’s no wrong answer, since this large star cluster has intrigued imaginative observers for thousands of years.

55 Cancri is a nearby binary star system, about 41 light years from us and faintly visible under excellent dark sky conditions. The larger star is orbited by at least five planets including 55 Cancri e, (a.k.a. Janssen, named after one of the first telescope makers). Janssen is a “super-earth,” a large rocky world 8 times the mass of our Earth, and orbits its star every 18 hours, giving it one of the shortest years of all known planets! Janssen was the first exoplanet to have its atmosphere successfully analyzed. Both the Hubble and recently-retired Spitzer space telescopes confirmed that the hot world is enveloped by an atmosphere of helium and hydrogen with traces of hydrogen cyanide: not a likely place to find life, especially since the surface is probably scorching hot rock. The NASA Exoplanet Catalog has more details about this and many other exoplanets at bit.ly/nasa55cancrie.

How do astronomers find planets around other star systems? The Night Sky Network’s “How We Find Planets” activity helps demonstrate both the transit and wobble methods of exoplanet detection: bit.ly/findplanets. Notably, 55 Cancri e was discovered via the wobble method in 2004, and then the transit method confirmed the planet’s orbital period in 2011!

David Prosper

Dim Delights in Cancer



S e e F N 3

http://bit.ly/nasa55cancrie




http://bit.ly/findplanets

http://bit.ly/findplanets



S e e F N 8



S e e F N 9

Want to learn more about exoplanets? Get the latest NASA news about worlds beyond our Solar System at nasa.gov.

This article is distributed by NASA Night Sky Network. The Night Sky Network program supports astronomy clubs across the USA dedicated to astronomy outreach. Visit nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov to find local clubs, events, and more!


http://nasa.gov

http://nasa.gov

http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov

http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov

Chapter 6

BMAC

Calendar

and more


S e e F N 7

BMAC Calendar and more



S e e F N 3

Date Time Location NotesB M A C M e e t i n g sB M A C M e e t i n g sB M A C M e e t i n g sB M A C M e e t i n g s

Friday, March 6, 2020 7 p.m. Nature CenterDiscovery Theater

Program: Noah Frère from UT Knoxville, the Smokey Mountain Astronomical Society, the Knoxville Observers, and O.R.I.O.N will speak about "The Purple Edge Problem."

Noah Frère plans to graduate this year with a Masters Degree in Astrophysics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, focusing on the spectral analysis of Vesta-like meteorites and Vestoids. He owns an Astrotech f/4 6” imaging Newtonian and a 70 mm Celestron refractor. He is the Treasurer of O.R.I.O.N. and a member of the Knoxville Observers. Along with graduate school, Noah tunes Pianos and collects and studies Bonsai in his

spare time.; Free.

Friday, April 3, 2020 7 p.m. Nature CenterDiscovery Theater Program: TBA; Free.

Friday, May 1, 2020 7 p.m. Nature CenterDiscovery Theater

Program: Students from Sullivan South High School will present papers on their current scientific research. Lead educator, Thomas Rutherford.; Free.

S u n W a t c hS u n W a t c hS u n W a t c hS u n W a t c h

Every Saturday & SundayMarch - October

3-3:30 p.m. if clear At the dam View the Sun safely with a white-light view if clear.; Free.

S t a r W a t c hS t a r W a t c hS t a r W a t c hS t a r W a t c hMarch 7, 2020 7 p.m.

ObservatoryView the night sky with large telescopes. If poor weather, an alternate live tour of the night sky will be held in the planetarium theater.; Free. If you are a club member and have completed the Park volunteer program, you are

welcome to help out with this public program. Please show up at least 30 minutes prior to the official start time.Mar. 14, 21, 28, 2020 8 p.m. Observatory

View the night sky with large telescopes. If poor weather, an alternate live tour of the night sky will be held in the planetarium theater.; Free. If you are a club member and have completed the Park volunteer program, you are

welcome to help out with this public program. Please show up at least 30 minutes prior to the official start time.Apr. 4, 11, 18, 25, 2020 8:30 p.m.Observatory

View the night sky with large telescopes. If poor weather, an alternate live tour of the night sky will be held in the planetarium theater.; Free. If you are a club member and have completed the Park volunteer program, you are

welcome to help out with this public program. Please show up at least 30 minutes prior to the official start time.

S p e c i a l E v e n t sS p e c i a l E v e n t sS p e c i a l E v e n t sS p e c i a l E v e n t s

Friday, March 27, 2020 TBA TBA Messier Marathon. This is a BMAC members only event. Test your skills at finding Messier objects within a single night! Weather dependent.

Saturday, May 2, 20201-4:30 p.m.8:30-9:30

p.m.

Nature Center& Observatory

Annual Astronomy Day - Displays et al. on the walkway leading to the Nature Center, 1-4:30 p.m.; Solar viewing 3-3:30 p.m. at the dam; Night viewing 8:30-9:30 p.m. at the observatory. All non-planetarium astronomy

activities are free.

Bays Mountain Astronomy Club

853 Bays Mountain Park Road

Kingsport, TN 37650

(423) 229-9447

www.BaysMountain.com

[email protected]

Annual Dues:

Dues are supplemented by the Bays Mountain Park Association and volunteerism by the club. As such, our dues can be kept at a very low cost.

$16 /person/year

$6 /additional family member

Note: if you are a Park Association member (which incurs an additional fee), then a 50% reduction in BMAC dues are applied.

The club’s website can be found here:

https://www.baysmountain.com/astronomy/astronomy-club/#newsletters

Regular Contributors:William Troxel

William is the current chair of the club. He enjoys everything to do with astronomy,

including sharing this exciting and interesting hobby with anyone that will

listen! He has been a member since 2010.

Robin Byrne

Robin has been writing the science history column since 1992 and was chair in 1997.

She is an Associate Professor of Astronomy & Physics at Northeast State

Community College (NSCC).

Jason Dorfman

Jason works as a planetarium creative and technical genius at Bays Mountain Park.

He has been a member since 2006.

Adam Thanz

Adam has been the Editor for all but a number of months since 1992. He is the

Planetarium Director at Bays Mountain Park as well as an astronomy adjunct for

NSCC.


http://www.BaysMountain.com

http://www.BaysMountain.com

mailto:[email protected]?subject=

mailto:[email protected]?subject=





Footnotes:1. The Rite of SpringOf the countless equinoxes Saturn has seen since the birth of the solar system, this one, captured here in a mosaic of light and dark, is the first witnessed up close by an emissary from Earth … none other than our faithful robotic explorer, Cassini.Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn’s rings during equinox is extremely foreshortened and limited. But in orbit around Saturn, Cassini had no such problems. From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini’s wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun’s disk was exactly overhead at the planet’s equator.The novel illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun’s angle to the ring plane, significantly darkens the rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and to cast shadows across the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn’s equinox which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. Before and after equinox, Cassini’s cameras have spotted not only the predictable shadows of some of Saturn’s moons (see PIA11657), but also the shadows of newly revealed vertical structures in the rings themselves (see PIA11665).Also at equinox, the shadows of the planet’s expansive rings are compressed into a single, narrow band cast onto the planet as seen in this mosaic. (For an earlier view of the rings’ wide shadows draped high on the northern hemisphere, see PIA09793.)The images comprising the mosaic, taken over about eight hours, were extensively processed before being joined together. First, each was re-projected into the same viewing geometry and then digitally processed to make the image “joints” seamless and to remove lens flares, radially extended bright artifacts resulting from light being scattered within the camera optics.At this time so close to equinox, illumination of the rings by sunlight reflected off the planet vastly dominates any meager sunlight falling on the rings. Hence, the half of the rings on the left illuminated by planetshine is, before processing, much brighter than the half of the rings on the right. On the right, it is only the vertically extended parts of the rings that catch any substantial sunlight.With no enhancement, the rings would be essentially invisible in this mosaic. To improve their visibility, the dark (right) half of the rings has been brightened relative to the brighter (left) half by a factor of three, and then the whole ring system has been brightened by a factor of 20 relative to the planet. So the dark half of the rings is 60 times brighter, and the bright half 20 times brighter, than they would have appeared if the entire system, planet included, could have been captured in a single image.The moon Janus (179 kilometers, 111 miles across) is on the lower left of this image. Epimetheus (113 kilometers, 70 miles across) appears near the middle bottom. Pandora (81 kilometers, 50

miles across) orbits outside the rings on the right of the image. The small moon Atlas (30 kilometers, 19 miles across) orbits inside the thin F ring on the right of the image. The brightnesses of all the moons, relative to the planet, have been enhanced between 30 and 60 times to make them more easily visible. Other bright specks are background stars. Spokes -- ghostly radial markings on the B ring -- are visible on the right of the image.This view looks toward the northern side of the rings from about 20 degrees above the ring plane.The images were taken on Aug. 12, 2009, beginning about 1.25 days after exact equinox, using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide angle camera and were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained at a distance of approximately 847,000 kilometers (526,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 74 degrees. Image scale is 50 kilometers (31 miles) per pixel.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

2. Leo RisingA sky filled with stars and a thin veil of clouds.Image by Adam Thanz

3. The Cat's Eye Nebula, one of the first planetary nebulae discovered, also has one of the most complex forms known to this kind of nebula. Eleven rings, or shells, of gas make up the Cat's Eye.Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)Acknowledgment: R. Corradi (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, Spain) and Z. Tsvetanov (NASA)

4. Jupiter & GanymedeNASA's Hubble Space Telescope has caught Jupiter's moon Ganymede playing a game of "peek-a-boo." In this crisp Hubble image, Ganymede is shown just before it ducks behind the giant planet.

Footnotes



S e e F N 3

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

http://ciclops.org

http://ciclops.org

Ganymede completes an orbit around Jupiter every seven days. Because Ganymede's orbit is tilted nearly edge-on to Earth, it routinely can be seen passing in front of and disappearing behind its giant host, only to reemerge later.Composed of rock and ice, Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system. It is even larger than the planet Mercury. But Ganymede looks like a dirty snowball next to Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Jupiter is so big that only part of its Southern Hemisphere can be seen in this image.Hubble's view is so sharp that astronomers can see features on Ganymede's surface, most notably the white impact crater, Tros, and its system of rays, bright streaks of material blasted from the crater. Tros and its ray system are roughly the width of Arizona.The image also shows Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the large eye-shaped feature at upper left. A storm the size of two Earths, the Great Red Spot has been raging for more than 300 years. Hubble's sharp view of the gas giant planet also reveals the texture of the clouds in the Jovian atmosphere as well as various other storms and vortices.Astronomers use these images to study Jupiter's upper atmosphere. As Ganymede passes behind the giant planet, it reflects sunlight, which then passes through Jupiter's atmosphere. Imprinted on that light is information about the gas giant's atmosphere, which yields clues about the properties of Jupiter's high-altitude haze above the cloud tops.This color image was made from three images taken on April 9, 2007, with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in red, green, and blue filters. The image shows Jupiter and Ganymede in close to natural colors.Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)

5. 47 TucanaeIn the first attempt to systematically search for "extrasolar" planets far beyond our local stellar neighborhood, astronomers probed the heart of a distant globular star cluster and were surprised to come up with a score of "zero".To the fascination and puzzlement of planet-searching astronomers, the results offer a sobering counterpoint to the flurry of planet discoveries announced over the previous months."This could be the first tantalizing evidence that conditions for planet formation and evolution may be fundamentally different elsewhere in the galaxy," says Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, MD.The bold and innovative observation pushed NASA Hubble Space Telescope's capabilities to its limits, simultaneously scanning for small changes in the light from 35,000 stars in the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, located 15,000 light-years (4 kiloparsecs) away in the southern constellation Tucana.Hubble researchers caution that the finding must be tempered by the fact that some astronomers always considered the ancient globular cluster an unlikely abode for planets for a variety of reasons. Specifically, the cluster has a deficiency of heavier elements that may be needed for building planets. If this is the case, then planets may have formed later in the universe's evolution, when stars were richer in heavier elements. Correspondingly, life as we know it may have appeared later rather than sooner in the universe.Another caveat is that Hubble searched for a specific type of planet called a "hot Jupiter," which is considered an oddball among some planet experts. The results do not rule out the possibility that 47 Tucanae could contain normal solar systems like ours, which Hubble could not have detected. But even if that's the case, the "null" result implies there is still something fundamentally different between the way planets are made in our own neighborhood and how they are made in the cluster.

Hubble couldn't directly view the planets, but instead employed a powerful search technique where the telescope measures the slight dimming of a star due to the passage of a planet in front of it, an event called a transit. The planet would have to be a bit larger than Jupiter to block enough light — about one percent — to be measurable by Hubble; Earth-like planets are too small.However, an outside observer would have to watch our Sun for as long as 12 years before ever having a chance of seeing Jupiter briefly transit the Sun's face. The Hubble observation was capable of only catching those planetary transits that happen every few days. This would happen if the planet were in an orbit less than 1/20 Earth's distance from the Sun, placing it even closer to the star than the scorched planet Mercury — hence the name "hot Jupiter."Why expect to find such a weird planet in the first place?Based on radial-velocity surveys from ground-based telescopes, which measure the slight wobble in a star due to the small tug of an unseen companion, astronomers have found nine hot Jupiters in our local stellar neighborhood. Statistically this means one percent of all stars should have such planets. It's estimated that the orbits of 10 percent of these planets are tilted edge-on to Earth and so transit the face of their star.In 1999, the first observation of a transiting planet was made by ground-based telescopes. The planet, with a 3.5-day period, had previously been detected by radial-velocity surveys, but this was a unique, independent confirmation. In a separate program to study a planet in these revealing circumstances, Ron Gilliland (STScI) and lead investigator Tim Brown (National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO) demonstrated Hubble's exquisite ability to do precise photometry — the measurement of brightness and brightness changes in a star's light — by also looking at the planet. The Hubble data were so good they could look for evidence of rings or Earth-sized moons, if they existed.But to discover new planets by transits, Gilliland had to crowd a lot of stars into Hubble's narrow field of view. The ideal target was the magnificent southern globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, one of the closest clusters to Earth. Within a single Hubble picture Gilliland could observe 35,000 stars at once. Like making a time-lapse movie, he had to take sequential snapshots of the cluster, looking for a telltale dimming of a star and recording any light curve that would be the true signature of a planet.Based on statistics from a sampling of planets in our local stellar neighborhood, Gilliland and his co-investigators reasoned that 1 out of 1,000 stars in the globular cluster should have planets that transit once every few days. They predicted that Hubble should discover 17 hot Jupiter-class planets.To catch a planet in a several-day orbit, Gilliland had Hubble's "eagle eye" trained on the cluster for eight consecutive days. The result was the most data-intensive observation ever done by Hubble. STScI archived over 1,300 exposures during the observation. Gilliland and Brown sifted through the results and came up with 100 variable stars, some of them eclipsing binaries where the companion is a star and not a planet. But none of them had the characteristic light curve that would be the signature of an extrasolar planet.There are a variety of reasons the globular cluster environment may inhibit planet formation. 47 Tucanae is old and so is deficient in the heavier elements, which were formed later in the universe through the nucleosynthesis of heavier elements in the cores of first-generation stars. Planet surveys show that within 100 light-years of the Sun, heavy-element-rich stars are far more likely to harbor a hot Jupiter than heavy-element-poor stars. However, this is a chicken and egg puzzle because some theoreticians say that the heavy-element composition of a star may be enhanced after if it makes Jupiter-like planets and then swallows them as the planet orbit spirals into the star.The stars are so tightly compacted in the core of the cluster – being separated by 1/100th the distance between our Sun and the next nearest star — that gravitational tidal effects may strip nascent planets from their parent stars. Also, the high stellar density could disturb the subsequent migration of the planet inward, which parks the hot Jupiters close to the star.


Another possibility is that a torrent of ultraviolet light from the earliest and biggest stars, which formed in the cluster billions of years ago may have boiled away fragile embryonic dust disks out of which planets would have formed.These results will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in December. Follow-up observations are needed to determine whether it is the initial conditions associated with planet birth or subsequent influences on evolution in this heavy-element-poor, crowded environment that led to an absence of planets.Credits for Hubble image: NASA and Ron Gilliland (Space Telescope Science Institute)

6. Space Place is a fantastic source of scientific educational materials for children of all ages. Visit them at:http://spaceplace.nasa.gov

7. NGC 3982Though the universe is chock full of spiral-shaped galaxies, no two look exactly the same. This face-on spiral galaxy, called NGC 3982, is striking for its rich tapestry of star birth, along with its winding arms. The arms are lined with pink star-forming regions of glowing hydrogen, newborn blue star clusters, and obscuring dust lanes that provide the raw material for future generations of stars. The bright nucleus is home to an older population of stars, which grow ever more densely packed toward the center.NGC 3982 is located about 68 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The galaxy spans about 30,000 light-years, one-third of the size of our Milky Way galaxy. This color image is composed of exposures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The observations were taken between March 2000 and March 2009. The rich color range comes from the fact that the galaxy was photographed invisible and near-infrared light. Also used was a filter that isolates hydrogen emission that emanates from bright star-forming regions dotting the spiral arms.Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)Acknowledgment: A. Riess (STScI)

8. Artist concept of 55 Cancri e orbiting its nearby host star. Find details from the Spitzer Space Telescope’s close study of its atmosphere at: bit.ly/spitzer55cancrie and the Hubble Space Telescope’s observations at bit.ly/hubble55cancrie Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

9. Look for Cancer in between the “Sickle” or “Question Mark” of Leo and the bright twin stars of Gemini. You can’t see the planets around 55 Cancri, but if skies are dark enough you can see the star itself. Can you see the Beehive Cluster?


http://spaceplace.nasa.gov

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov

http://bit.ly/spitzer55cancrie

http://bit.ly/spitzer55cancrie

http://bit.ly/hubble55cancrie

http://bit.ly/hubble55cancrie

the monthly newsletter of the bays ch 2020 …...bays mountain astronomy club newsletter march 2020...

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