Pleiades by LAS member Brian Kimball

M31 by LAS member Jim Pollock

Longmont Astronomy Society Newsletter

January 2011

From the President:

The year 2010 turned out to be a productive year for LAS.

· We switched our regular monthly meeting place from the FRCC to theIHop. · We held an observing site planning meeting in February to look at optionsfor an LAS dark site. MRS observatory was selected as the most promising andaffordable.· The All-sky camera project was begun to monitor sky conditions near theproposed observing site at MRS. Project has been a collaborative effort involvingUniversity of Colorado, NOAA, and LAS. Camera was initially installed inOctober and after some testing, we improved shielding to reduce interference andupgraded the software. It was re-installed in late November and has been sendingimages continuously since.· We had some great presentations at our meetings. Bill Possel gave us anoverview of the Kepler mission in March. In April Dr. Robert Stencel updated uson the latest developments in studies of Epsilon Auriga. Craig Betzina talkedabout designing and building backyard dome observatories in May. Dr. SuzanneMetlay gave a presentation in June about the Solar Dynamics Observatoryspacecraft. In July, Chris Peterson talked about meteors and the Colorado All SkyNetwork of video cameras. In August Dr. Kiplinger gave presentation on theDutch Open Solar Telescope located on the island of La Palma in Canary Islands.In September Bill Tshumy gave a talk about the Milky Way and the GalacticCoordinate system. In October we had an open forum meeting with short talks byGary Garzone, David Nash, and Vern Raben. Dr. Elkins gave a presentationabout NOAA’s use of unmanned aircraft to explore the Earth’s atmosphere inNovember. Mike Hotka gave a short talk the Astronomical League Dark SkyAdvocate club. In December Robert Arn gave a talk about “Imaging the Universeon a Budget”.· Birch continued to publish his excellent monthly newsletters.· Brian Simpson completed scanning 16 years of past LAS newsletters – thatmust be close to a thousand pages! We are only missing issues from 2003 through2005. If anyone happens to have some old newsletters from those years, please letus know.· LAS was featured in the fall issue of the Longmont Magazine withinterviews by Brian Kimball, Gary Garzone, and John Figoski.· We supported several school star parties this year - SkyLine HS, Mead HS,Longmont HS, Greeley Community Park, and St. Vrain MESA. We had requestsfor 3-4 others but they were canceled due to weather.· We managed to get some clear, nights out at Keota this year for observingfaint galaxies and nebula. · Brian and Gary continue to impress us all with their excellent astrophotos.

Upcoming Events

The annual banquet meeting is Sunday, January 23rd at the Armadillo Restaurant, 700Ken Pratt. Event begins around 5:15 pm, dinner at 6 pm. Bill Possel will give apresentation at 7 pm on the Mars Volatile Evolution or MAVEN mission. Price is $20 perperson including gratuity. Note that we will not meet at the regular time or place thisJanuary.After Bill’s presentation we have officer elections for 2011. Those nominated at theDecember meeting are:

ALCor: Gary GarzoneNewsletter Editor: J.D. BirchmeierPresident: Vern RabenTreasurer: Michael FellowsVice President: Bill TschumyWebmaster: Brian Simpson

In the sky this month:

Meteor Showers - none

PlanetsMercury:greatest elongation was on the 9th, so its starting to sink in the east at sunriseVenus:astoundingly bright in the southeast, high at sunrise, but it's starting to sink, withthe greatest elongation on Jan 8th.Mars:close to the Sun, maybe May? Jupiter:still bright in the south at sunset, sets around 11Saturn:rises about midnight, high in the south at sunrise and the rings are beginning toopen again.

Interesting Stars/GalaxiesTake a look at the Horsehead (check out the pictures at the end of the newsletter), watchthe South belt reforming on Jupiter, watch the white spot of Saturn growing,

Club Calendar:

Next meeting: IHOP in Longmont on February 17th, 7:00, earlier for dinner andconversation.

School Star Parties

The 2011 school star party season is beginning. We have requests for scopes and

volunteers from Carrie Martin Elementary in Loveland on Friday January 28th and from

Legacy Elementary in Frederick on Tuesday February 15th.

Fiske Planetarium:Admission costs $3.50 for kids and seniors and $6 for adults Colorado Skies: Dwarf Planets Start Time: Thursday, January 20, 2011, 7:30pm

Many Faces of Hubble Friday, January 21, 2011, 7:30pm

Kids in Space Saturday, January 22, 2011, 2:00pm

Colorado Skies: Lunar Science (with Matt Benjamin) Thursday, January 27, 2011,7:30pm

The Crowded Sky (orbital debris) Friday, January 28, 2011, 7:30pm

Apollo 13: A Successful Failure Thursday, February 3, 2011, 7:30pm

Mars Revealed Friday, February 4, 2011, 7:30pm Internet Resources:

Planet Hunters!

Ever dreamed of being the first to make a discovery? Want to find a planet of your own?Thanks to http://www.planethunters.org, the latest Zooniverse project, you might just be

able to, using data from NASA's Kepler mission.

Kepler's goal is to catch the slight dip in brightness that's caused by a planet passing infront of its parent star. The Kepler Team computers are sifting through the data, but we at

Planet Hunters are betting that there will be planets which can only be found via theremarkable human ability for pattern recognition. This is a gamble, a bet, if you will, onthe ability of humans to beat machines just occasionally - and for us to have a chance we

need your help.

Fancy giving it a try? If you do, you could be the first to spot an new planet – it may be aJupiter-size behemoth or even an Earth-sized rock. So, come join our adventure and log

on to Planet Hunters now! (http://www.planethunters.org)------------

Galaxy Zoo has a tutorial on types of galaxies, etc on their website. It's long on wordsand short on pictures, but you can look at http://www.galaxyzoo.org/explore_galaxies ifyou want.

----------------First in a new series of videos on the Astronomy.com website – Liz and Bill run thru thelist of “10 reasons why astronomy is awesome” at http://www.astronomy.com/News-Observing/Liz%20and%20Bills%20Cosmic%20Adventures/2010/12/Episode%201.aspxFirst make your own list, then watch!

------------And then there's the “what to watch in the winter sky” video, too.http://www.astronomy.com/News-Observing/Intro Sky/Get to Know the NightSky/2010/12/2010 winter easy observing.aspx http://www.astronomy.com/videos has the complete (maybe a hundred) list of all thevideos available – they've redone the website for easier access.Http://www.astronomy.com/skythisweek has the “sky this week” podcasts.

-------------http://www.greatchallenges.info/ Welcome to GREAT10, a simulation challenge thataims to improve image analysis algorithms for cosmic gravitational lensing. You areinvited to participate in the Galaxy Challenge and the Star Challenge, for more

information follow the links below and read the Challenge Handbook. OK, imaging fans– what happens when the image is blurry? You have to unblur it, of course. Help huntfor dark matter at this website.

------------NASA's Mars Odyssey, which launched in 2001, broke the record December 15 forlongest-serving spacecraft at the Red Planet. The probe began its 3,340th day in martianorbit at 8:55 p.m. EST on the 15th to break the record set by NASA's Mars GlobalSurveyor, which orbited Mars from 1997 to 2006.

Odyssey's longevity enables continued science, including the monitoring of seasonalchanges on Mars from year to year and the most detailed maps ever made of most of theplanet. In 2002, the spacecraft detected hydrogen just below the surface throughout Mars'high-latitude regions. The deduction that the hydrogen is in frozen water promptedNASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which confirmed the theory in 2008. Odysseyalso carried the first experiment sent to Mars specifically to prepare for human missions,and found that radiation levels around the planet from solar flares and cosmic rays are 2to 3 times higher than around Earth.

Upcoming Space Missions:

Get ready for the talk on Sunday by studying up on the MAVEN mission athttp://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/maven_20080915.html

Current Space Missions:

Year end checkups: Go rooting around on any of these webpages for additional videoand pictures of the current mission.Maybe an Ontario Lacus flyover athttp://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/videos/movies/PIA13173flyover20100712-480cc.mov as Cassini does its Energizer Bunny bit and keeps going and going.....Mars Rovers (talk about the Energizer Bunny) – Spirit is stuck and never going to moveagain, but is still doing science. Opportunity is exploring another crater. If you've stillgot your red/green glasses, you can watch the 3D movie, too. It's athttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20101223a.html along withmore video and still pics.Mars Odyssey: still taking pictures after almost 10 years and holding the record forlongest-serving Mars explorer at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/ Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: ever more high res pics athttp://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ Dawn: arriving at Vesta in under 200 days. http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/ EPOXI: the recycled Deep Impact, after banging on its comet, is still traveling aroundand doing some science at http://epoxi.umd.edu/ Kepler: currently in safe mode after turning itself off. They're working onit....http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/keplerMission.cfm Stardust: now extended as the NeXT mission, its on its way to Tempel 1, maybe to seethe hole left by the Deep Impact mission... http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/

Voyager 1 & 2: still out there (WAY out there) investigating the heliopause at the limitsof the solar system and waiting for that Star Trek I movie stuff to start athttp://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ WISE: looking at the universe in IR at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise/ Solar Dynamics Observatory has movies on YouTube that are great! Check 'em out at

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/youtube.php

Humor Dept:

The competition: Looking at the Reflector's awards for best newsletters, we have thefollowingFirst: Texas Astronomy Society of Dallas http://texasastro.org/ Their opening page iscluttered up with all kinds of stuff. The newsletter ishttp://www.texasastro.org/spectrum/Spectrum_201012.pdf and it's 30 pages! Who's gotthe time?Second: Fort Worth Astronomical Society athttp://www.fortworthastro.com/FWAS/Welcome.html Nice opening page and goodlinks. Notice they have an observing site about 40 miles from town with 6 Dobsonianscopes to use and something called a restroom? Can't find the newsletter...Third: Sonoma County Astronomical Society athttp://www.texasastro.org/spectrum/Spectrum_201012.pdf and their latest newsletter isat http://sonomaskies.org/Newsletter/Dec.10_SonomaSkies.pdf only 13 pages for thisone. They have an extensive youth activity section.Fourth: the Oklahoma City Astronomy Club at http://www.okcastroclub.com/ and theGazette at http://www.okcastroclub.com/Gazette/2010/Gazette2010-12.pdf 10 pages forthis one, and a LOT of embedded images, multiple columns and stuff – really uses a niceediting program, and Birch is impressed.Fifth: Roanoke Valley Astronomical Society at http://rvasclub.org/ andhttp://rvasclub.org/rvas-news/pdf/1210RVASNL.pdf 18 pages this time. A lot ofembedded images and some good discussions of imaging. Nice looking. And WHY didthey use purple on their website for printing? This is a no-no since web designing startedway back in 1990s.Sixth: the Northeast Florida Astronomical Society at http://nefas.org/ and theirnewsletter at http://nefas.org/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=42&func=fileinfo&id=229 Somewhat clunky website,math in the newsletter that needs a master's degree, and pictures of the Christmas party.

And some purty pictures to get our page count up....

Horsehead Nebula by LAS member Gary Garzone

Bubble nebula and M52 by LAS member Brian Kimball

NGC 2024 (Flame Nebula) by LAS member Gary Garzone

M51 by the HST, visible and IR at right