The Reflector: January 2010€¦ · magnetic field, enabling the sun’s solar wind to strip its atmosphere away. Without a significant atmo-sphere, the liquid phase of water became

Newsletter of the Peterborough Astronomical AssociationThe ReflectorVolume 14 • Issue 9

November 2015ISSN 1712-4425peterboroughastronomy.comtwitter.com/PtbAstronomical

O f all the planets in the solar system other than our own, Mars is the one

place with the most Earth-like past. Geological features on the surface such as dried up riverbeds, sedimentary patterns, mineral spherules nicknamed “blueber-ries,” and evidence of liquid-based erosion all tell the same story: that of a wet, watery past. But although we’ve found plenty of evidence for molecular water on Mars in the solid (ice) and gaseous (vapor) states, including in icecaps, clouds and subsurface ices exposed (and sublimated) by digging, that in no way meant there’d be water in its liquid phase today.

Sure, water flowed on the sur-face of Mars during the first billion years of the solar system, perhaps

Ethan SEigEl

Images credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona, of a newly-formed gully on the Martian surface (L) and of the series of gullies where the salt deposits were found (R).

producing an ocean a mile deep, though the ocean presence is still much debated. Given that life on Earth took hold well within that time, it’s conceivable that Mars was once a rich, living planet as well. But unlike Earth, Mars is small: small enough that its inte-rior cooled and lost its protective magnetic field, enabling the sun’s solar wind to strip its atmosphere away. Without a significant atmo-sphere, the liquid phase of water became a virtual impossibility, and Mars became the arid world we know it to be today.

But certain ions — potassium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, chloride and fluoride, among others — get left behind when the liquid water disappears, leaving a “salt” residue of mineral salts (that

may include table salt, sodium chloride) on the surface. While pure liquid water may not persist at standard Martian pressures and temperatures, extremely salty, briny water can indeed stay in a liquid state for extended peri-ods under the conditions on the Red Planet. It’s more of a “sandy crust” like you’d experience on the shore when the tide goes out than the flowing waters we’re used to in rivers on Earth, but it means that under the right temperature conditions, liquid water does exist on Mars today, at least in small amounts.

The measured presence and concentration of these salts, found in the dark streaks that come and go on steep crater walls, combined

How we know Mars has liquid water on its surface

See “Martian Water” on page 16

2 • pete rboroughas t ronomy.com

President’s Message

The Reflector is a publication of the Peterborough Astronomi-cal Association (P.A.A.) Founded in 1970, the P.A.A. is your local group for astronomy in Peterborough and the Kawarthas.

The Reflector

www.peterboroughastronomy.com • [email protected] Phone: 705.292.0729Club Mailing AddressRodger Forsyth, PresidentPeterborough Astronomical Association536 Robinson Road RR #1Peterborough, ON K9J 6X2

November, A Time to Reflect

As the Cold Approaches …

The paa has had a very busy year. We participated in events on Armour Hill, Warsaw Caves, Activity Ha-

ven, Emily Park and the monthly viewing sessions, including the President’s bbq. We now have our final regular meeting of 2015. In December we will have our Annual General Meeting which will include a report from each of our dedicated directors and the election of officers for the next term. I will be stepping down as president of the paa and I must admit this has been a re-warding experience for me. To lighten the boredom of business details and the elec-

W e ponder packing in for the sea-son. For your reading pleasure there is November’s edition of

The Reflector to help occupy your mind.The paa was busy last month. Students

from Cawthra Park Secondary School in Mississauga de-camped for their annual trip to the Warsaw Caves. Boyd Wood led a contingent of membership volunteers to as-sist in an astronomy viewing session. John Crossen reports on the evening while Ken Sunderland provides his perspective on the evening as part of his article summarizing his great week of stargazing.

Rodger Forsyth reports back on the paa’s participation in the Recreation Expo at Activity Haven. The club was invited by organizers to table at the event and various members volunteered their time to do some public outreach.

Rick Stankiewicz submitted some fabu-lous photographs of last month’s dawn planetary conjunctions and explains what was occuring astronomically.

Of course John Crossen submitted his usual bounty of words of wisdom. It’s a shame we only have so much room for him.

tion we will be offering a humorous movie about space travel albeit with a Hollywood twist.

There are a number of executive positions to be decided on this year. Please consider raising your hand to offer your help in the running of this great organization.

The paa is vibrant with a great collection of enthusiastic members. Let’s keep it go-ing.

Rodger Forsyth PAA President

Perhaps we should dedicate a couple of month’s editions just for him. Mmm … on second thought we don’t want to wear out too much of a good thing. So if you want more Crossen then you’ll have to wait an-other month.

Do not forget that December is the club’s annual general meeting and executive election. Please consider putting forth your name to run as a candidate for various posi-tions. Be seeing ya.

Phillip Chee Editor, The Reflector

Vo l 1 4 • I s sue no. 9 • November 20 15 • 3 The Reflector

John CroSSEn

For the last five years Tricia Fitzpatrick, The Head of Science at Cawthra Park Secondary School, has

been bringing her grade eleven and twelve students to the Warsaw Caves Conservation Area for a camp out. The kids are from the city so Warsaw Caves is their chance to get in touch with nature and the night sky. The Peterborough Astronomical Association has been a part of her learning program for each of those years.

The event came to be when Randy Attwood, currently the Executive Director of the Royal Astronomical Society of Can-ada, contacted paa member Mark Coady and put him in touch with Tricia. That was in May of 2010. After a bit of organizational fiddling and red tape snipping the gather-ing was approved and has taken place every year since — weather permitting.

This year the night sky was spectacularly crisp, clear and dark. It was dark enough to see both the Double Cluster and the An-dromeda Galaxy quite easily naked eye.

The Perseus Arm of the Milky Way stood out magnificently against the dark blue/black sky. In short, it was an astronomer’s dream night.

Warsaw Caves’ Dark Sky Amazed Our Audience and Us

A group of about 30 ecology and science students lined up behind our scopes to see both of the aforementioned naked eye targets up close as well as the Ring Nebula, globular clusters M13 and M92 in Hercules plus the Helix Nebula. They also learned how to connect the dots/stars that comprise about a half-dozen constellations.

Some of the city-dwellers had never seen the Big Dipper before. So when paa members showed them how to use the Big Dipper to find Polaris and the Little Dipper (exaggerated though this may sound) it was a mini mind blower for them.

Others got their first look at Cas-siopiea — the big “W” in the sky. More students were introduced to the Summer Triangle and the double-double stars (Epsi-lon Lyrae) in the constellation Lyra. It was an amazing night for the students as well as the paa members who made the short, one-hour trek to the caves.

Thanks to paa members Boyd Wood, Mark Coady, Sean Dunne, Ken Sunderland and John Crossen for donating their time. They were amply rewarded by the students’ enjoyment of the night sky. Next time there’s an outing like this, be sure you’re part of it.


T he PAA was asked to participate in a Recreation Expo at Activity Haven put on by The Council for

Persons with Disabilities (cpd). Club mem-bers Bridget Gallagher, Boyd Wood, Dean Shewring, Ken Sunderland, Sean Dunne and myself took up the challenge. We were provided with a display table and I think the presentation was quite good.

Recreation Expo

We had two telescopes on display, the club’s 70 mm refractor and Sean’s LX90.

The two telescopes were trained on the “Rose Nebula”, no, not the Caldwell object but a bouquet of artificial flowers at the end of the hall. Bridget got a nice shot through the eyepiece on the LX90 using her cell phone.

I got a wider view through the 70 mm with my cell phone. Lots of fun.

The day shift was relieved by Boyd Wood and Ken Sunderland. They stayed until about 7:30 p.m. and gathered up the mate-rial belonging to members and the club.

Was this a successful event? I suppose the only way to find out is to contact Caitlyn Costello (cpd) and ask her. From my per-spective we had a good turnout of helpers and a good display. In all we were there from 2:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. There were a number of associations and vendors at the event but the most obvious was a lack of people attending the event.

Text and photos by Rodger Forsyth


See “Leonids” on page 15

Here’s What’s Up in November

WOODCUT OF 1833 METEOR SHOWER. This the famous woodcut made of the 1833 Leonid Meteor Shower just three years afterwards. Keep your heads down and run.

When it Comes to Moons, Jupiter Outshines Them All

John CroSSEn

P lanet buffs had better get their Keurigs fired up early. That’s be-cause four of our solar system’s

five naked-eye planets will be visible in the predawn sky. Brightest of the batch will be Venus looking a lot like an aircraft landing light. Joining Venus will be Jupiter, Mars and diminutive Mercury.

Three of the four are stationed in the constellations Leo and its next door neigh-bour, Virgo. Mercury makes its entrance little more than 4 degrees above the south-eastern horizon just a half hour before the Sun rolls back its bed sheets and greets the morning. So you’ll have to be hawk-eyed to catch the speedy messenger of the gods.

The last planet visible without binoculars or a telescope is Saturn. Unfortunately the good views of the ringed thing are done for the year and the planet is nearly lost in the glare of the setting Sun. By the end of

the month it will be all over — including the shoutin’.

Uranus, Neptune plus dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres will be with us for most of the night. Both the dwarf planets will be in the constellation Sagittarius and so will be setting by around 10:00 p.m. Uranus and Neptune are binocular targets in the con-stellations Pisces and Aquarius.

Look for a light blue dot in the case of Uranus and a blue-green dot for Neptune. If you’re a dusk-to-dawn kind of person (vam-pires need not apply) you might just be able to squeeze all eight planets and the dwarves into a long night’s marathon.

Nothing special is happening for luna-tics this month. November kicks off with a Gibbous Waning Moon. By November 3 it’s down to a Third Quarter Moon and on the 11th we are at New Moon (no Moon). The


riCk StankiEwiCz

Planetary Dance of October

For those who got up early this past month and looked to the east be-fore dawn in clear skies, were treated

to a “dance of the planets” that has not been seen so dramatically for some time.

The main players were dazzling Venus, stunning Jupiter and mesmerizing Mars, with miniscule Mercury and a punctuat-ing Moon having a role too. Over the past month there were daily changes in posi-tion of all these heavenly bodies, relative to each other and mostly against the back-ground stars of Leo the Lion. There were lots of cloudy mornings, but no matter when you were able to pick-up the dance, it was always different than the time before. Whether a day in between or a week, the co-lours and brightness of these planets would easily give away their location, so you never needed a dance card to know who was tangoing with whom. Venus was shining at a brilliant -4.7 magnitude and Jupiter was a respectable -1.7 magnitude, with Mars and

its redness looking more star-like, at about 1.8 magnitude.

In the early part of the month, the waning crescent Moon joined the planets with its glorious earthshine and then it abandoned the trio to perform on their own the rest of the month. Even Regulus, the brightest star of Leo, figured prominently early in the month, but was soon left behind as Venus headed for the horizon. Mercury never left the twilight glow of the horizon, so it was difficult to find. The moves were most dra-matic around the end of the month when Venus and Jupiter gathered and appeared to change positions over just a few days. As you can see from the accompanying images, there was a lot of movement in relatively short timeframes. Whether in a straight line or the shape of a triangle, it was fun to watch. The angle of separation was a small as ½ degree, but for the last ten days of the month all three planets were never more than 4.5 degrees from each other.

Planet conjunction of Jupiter, Mars and Venus with Moon near Regulus in Leo. Taken by Rick Stankiewicz on October 8.

continued on next page


Planet Conjunctions. From left to right October 18, 26 and 27, respectively. Photos by Rick Stankiewicz.

Close up of conjunction of Mars, Jupiter and Venus on October 20. Photos by Rick Stankiewicz.

continued from previous page

It was well worth the early morning hours every now and then, in order to witness this dance of the October planets. There will not be another conjunction like this, with these planets, until November of 2111.

All images were tripod mounted and using either a Canon 400D or 50D DSLR camera, but settings varied between iso 400-1,000, ƒ/4.5, for 2-10 second exposure and a Sigma 17-70 mm lens at various focal lengths (20 to 35 mm).


PHOTO GALLERY

Lagoon Nebula

Hi Everyone,

The M8 Lagoon Emission Nebula Complex in Sagittarius, located just above the spout of the Teapot, is easily vis-ible as a bright glowing patch of light to the human eye from a dark location and looks great in binoculars too!

M8 is approximately 5,000 light-years away, and roughly 130 light-years across in the longer dimension. Composed primarily of hydrogen, much of it ionized (heated or energized) by radiation from the nearby superstar Herschel 36, M8 is known as an emission nebula or star-forming region, often called a stellar nursery.

There is an open star cluster, NGC 6530, of young hot, blue stars probably only a few million years old. In addition to these young stars, there are also many dark nebulae visible or “Bok” globules of condensing gas and dust on their way to becoming “proto-stars” and eventually full-fledged stars like those already formed nearby.

In this image that I captured Saturday night 5 September 2015 you can see the M8 Lagoon Emission Nebula Complex in Sagittarius with open star cluster NGC 6530 in front of the Nebula, also a globular star cluster in the bottom left corner is NGC 6544, and upper left of center is a small blue wisp of Nebulosity called IC 4678 reflec-tion nebula. If you look near the brightest star on the Lagoon Nebula, you will see the tiny Hour Glass Nebula, so named for its distinctive shape. The Hour Glass Nebula has its shape because of matter propelled by the star Herschel 36, look for the tiny star next to the tiny Hour Glass.

Image observed in a 5.5 inch F5 Newtonian reflector scope and photographed with a modified Canon Rebel Xsi DSLR, ISO 1600, 72 minute exposure at my observatories at JBSPO in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Best Regards,John Chumak www.galacticimages.com

http://www.galacticimages.com


The Milky Way

A crisp clear Thanksgiving Weekend sky afforded the opportunity to take a grand view of an arm of our galaxy, The Milky Way. My Nikon D200 DSLR camera with Nikkor 10.5mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens was pointed at the zenith to take in its expanse from the east (top) to the west (bottom).

Phillip Chee

1 0 • pete rboroughas t ronomy.com

kEn SundErland

A Good Week of Stargazing

It’s Saturday morning, the 10th of October, before 6 am. I am awake. I remember that the pre-dawn sky is

supposed to have a nice line-up of planets. So, wrapped in my bathrobe, I stumble onto the patio and look east and … WOW! Climb-ing up the steeply inclined ecliptic, there is the elegant smile of a waning crescent Moon, then Jupiter with his string of pearls, ruddy Mars above, and finally dazzling Venus. All this in the company of Leo, standing on the ecliptic, leaping up from the horizon. Sweeping my eye around to the southwest I see the brilliant winter constel-lations. It feels like cheating, this stealing a peek into the future. There’s Orion with his great nebula and attendant dogs, with The Twins gazing down from high above. It’s all so sharp and visually stunning that I think “This must be shared!” And so it was that I braved calling my spouse out to the patio before sunrise to see the “Morning Show”. She liked it!

Same thing the next morning, except the Moon has all but vanished being replaced by elusive Mercury. No complaints here. Getting four naked-eye planets grouped together all at once is a memorable sight.

It’s Wednesday October 14th and Boyd Wood has arranged for a club outreach at Warsaw Caves Conservation Area. Our audience is students from Cawthra Park Secondary School in Mississauga. We have very good observing conditions, including a southern exposure. The skies are reasonably dark because more than a dozen stars are visible inside the Great Square of Pegasus indicating better than limiting mag 6 condi-tions.

Figure 1 was created using Stellarium and illustrates what one expects to see in these conditions. In the city, usually no stars are visible inside the Great Square indicating limiting mag 4. If only 4 stars are visible, then conditions are limiting mag 5. So, the Great Square provides a quick way to judge limiting magnitude.

See “Stargazing” on page 13Figure 1 : Stellarium screenshot of the Great Square with limiting mag 6.2Credit : K J Sunderland

Vo l 1 4 • I s sue no. 9 • November 20 15 • 1 1 The Reflector

ART OF MILKY WAY GALAXY. We are just one small speck in a galaxy that is 110,000 light years across. Im-age courtesy of CalTech.years ago.

The Amazing Merry-go-Rounds We Live On

John CroSSEn

E verything in space is moving and the speeds they are traveling are astounding.

Our galaxy rotates (spins around) com-pletely once every 225 million years. Each rotation is called a Cosmic Year. The rota-tional speed in a Cosmic Year is 220 km/s. In just 90 seconds we travel 20,000 km on our path around the galactic centre. No wonder Mom told you to buy a snug-fitting hat. Let’s put those big numbers into a time-line.

Most scientists agree that our universe popped into existence 13.7 billion years ago. Our Galaxy formed 13.1 billion years ago, give or take 800 million years.

It was a very different place then. Solar systems had yet to be born. Stars were still forming. There were no constellations be-cause there was no one to dream them up. The giant stars that eventually created the heavy elements that gave birth to life were just forming. Seeing as how there wasn’t much to look at, let’s spin the cosmic clock forward.

Our Sun was born about 4.5 billion years ago and our solar system formed (co-alesced) from the gas and dust surrounding our infant Sun 500 million years later.

Since our solar system formed, it has orbited the galactic centre nearly4.44 times — and a lot has happened here on Earth.

The early Earth rotated once in 16 days. You wouldn’t spend as much time at the office but a single weekend would spin by in just 32 hours. The Moon (having just been created when a small planet slammed into the Earth) was about 25,000 km from Earth. It filled the night sky. Tides were terrific. Today the Moon averages 385,000 km away.

The first microbial life forms appeared just a few million years after Earth formed

or about 3.5 billion years ago. Continental drift (tectonic plate movement) geographi-cally split us from a single super continent referred as Pangaea into today’s 7 major continents. But the speed of continental drift was a tad slow — more like one inch per Earth year. Barring any nail biting, that’s how long your finger nails grow be-tween birthdays.

Dinosaurs were around for 180 million Earth years — barely three-quarters of one Cosmic Year. Mankind’s earliest ancestors appeared on Earth about 1.5 million years ago — mere moments if you’re still thinking in terms of the Cosmic Year.

Today the Earth rotates more slowly. Instead of a 16-hour day/night cycle it takes Earth 24 hours to spin once around. Our rotational speed is roughly 1,670 km/h de-pending on whether you are at the equator or Earth’s poles.

You’re probably on number overload so I’ll stop for now. Meanwhile, keep looking up, keep wondering and keep on asking questions.


See “Outer Space” on page 15

Facts vs. Human Imagination

I seldom write an article based on personal opinion. But I’m writing this one because to me there is a lot of bunk

around about space ships, nasa cover ups and Mars creatures.

Just so you know where I stand, I believe there are other life forms in the near-end-less number of galaxies in our universe? Are they visiting us now? Perhaps, but that’s about as likely as driving your granddad’s Buick to the island of Hawaii.

Humans were not created in the image of some invisible deity, but evolved into creatures best suited to living on our planet. Keeping gravity in mind, if our planet were six times larger in mass, we would weigh six times more. Therefore we’d either have legs like the trunk of a sequoia or be talking pancakes.

If a planet is covered in water, whatever critters inhabited it would be adapted to their watery realm. The same goes for ex-

John CroSSEn

1953 MOVIE POSTER - IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE. The creature in this poster is probably closer to the truth than the strikingly humanoid aliens waltzing across your 50-inch Sony’s screen today.

treme weather and geological conditions on a planet. The inhabiting creatures wouldn’t look like you and me. They’d look like whatever it takes to survive in their environ-ment.

Given that a space alien would have evolved on another planet that is assuredly different from Earth, how come our current version of aliens have two eyes, two legs, two arms and a bulbous head? The horrific (to us) creature we saw in the 1953 sci-fi flick; It came from outer space is more likely to be the case.

Are their UFOs? I’ve been looking up for years and nothing has confronted me that can’t be explained. In fact there are few to none in the community of astronomers who claim to have seen an Unidentified Flying Object.

For years we reportedly saw flying sau-cers. Now the Triangle has become the shape of the month. Are there new aliens

Vo l 1 4 • I s sue no. 9 • November 20 15 • 1 3 The Reflector

See “Water Constellations” on page 15

continued from page 10Stargazing

Returning to the students, they provide the raw material for the following vignettes.

a. While pointing out the Milky Way, one student is surprised to learn that it is not high altitude clouds. I pass her my binocu-lars. The mind-blowing moment comes when she sees that those clouds are actually the innumerable stars in our galaxy. I am reminded of a related misconception. Be-ginners often think that when viewing the night sky they are seeing stars from across the universe. Granting exceptions like M31, and the Magellanic Clouds, it can be shock-ing to realize that everything you see naked-eye is confined to our galaxy. Never mind the universe.

b. I am tracking the double star Ras Al-gethi — an easy split at about 5 arc seconds.

“Anyone wanna see a double star?” I shout into the parking lot abyss.

I have a taker.“Can you see there’s really two stars?”“No.”“Try adjusting the focus. Can you see it

now?” I ask hopefully.“No.”Time passes.“I think I see it.” he says … doubtfully.Hmmm … It is a reminder that one needs lots of

practice at the eyepiece. What for you and me is an easy split is a challenge for this tyro because he doesn’t know what he’s looking at, or how to look. The mind must be trained so that the eye can see with con-fidence.

c. Both Uranus and Neptune are well po-sitioned in the southern sky. Students are excited to see these small discs for the first time and can instantly isolate them from the field stars because of their steady blue-green colour. How readily these young eyes perceive colour compared to, well, older eyes. Limitations are annoying but, per-haps like me, you’ve got to be careful before calling a colour. Evidently, young rods and cones make better detectors.

d. It is satisfying to be able to show the students a variety of objects; named stars, constellations, open clusters, globular clusters, planetary nebulae, double stars, planets, and of course the Milky Way it-self, which they never see from the GTA. Sure … throw in the occasional shooting star. It’s a good show Boyd has arranged. For some kids, the hook is set (I can tell from their enthusiasm) and it makes me proud of the paa’s outreach activities. If you, fellow member, have yet to participate in this gratifying activity, I highly recom-mend it to you.

Once the students have departed, I move on to my own selfish needs, setting my sights on the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293). A recent article by Glenn Chaple in Astronomy magazine entitled “Understanding Bright-ness” has thrown down the gauntlet. Chaple points out that while the Helix may be mag 7, that brightness is spread out over a 15’ diameter object. It’s entirely different than viewing a mag 7 star concentrated in a point source. The Helix is a challenge object requiring steady air and dark skies. I get it at 80 × in my 8 inch SCT using a 25 mm eyepiece with a 39’ FOV. The nebula covers about one third the FOV. Mark Coady, John Crossen and Boyd Wood all confirm the sighting. Mark offers the use of his UHC filter which defines the outline even better. No spectacular object through the eyepiece, the thrill is in successfully tracking down this “faint-fuzzy”. Chaple suggests that the bigger thrill comes through the mind, in contemplating what must have happened to a Sun-like star some 12,000 years ago to produce this expanding sphere of gas and residual white dwarf.

Saturday night, the 17th of October, brings freezing temperatures to Charles-ton Lake in Eastern Ontario for my cottage shutdown. Not ideal for pulling docks, but truly ideal for stargazing. If the dark skies at Warsaw Caves had been very good on Wednesday, these conditions are superb. Crystal clear air produces stars like dia-


The Sky this MonthMercury still visible in the morn-ing for the first few days of the month. Heading toward superior conjunction on the 17th.Venus visible high in the morning sky and reaches its third conjunction with Mars for the year on the 3rd, separated by 0.7°. Mars in the morning sky in Virgo ris-ing after 3 AM.Jupiter in the east after midnight in Leo.Saturn vanishes into the evening twi-light mid-month and is in conjunction with the Sun on the 30th.N. Taurid Meteor Shower peaks at 6 PM on the 12th.Leonid Meteor Shower peaks at midnight on the 18th.Zodiacal Light from the 11th for the next two weeks in the east before morning twilight.

Moon PhasesLast Quarter 7:24 AM November 3New Moon 12:47 PM November 11First Quarter 1:27 AM November 19Full Moon 5:44 PM November 25

Vo l 1 4 • I s sue no. 9 • November 20 15 • 1 5 The Reflectorcontinued from page 5

continued from page 12

continued from page 13Water ConstellationsLeonids

Outer Space

best night for observing lunar craters will be on November 19 when dear old Luna will be at its First Quarter phase. That’s when its positioned in its orbit around Earth to pro-duce the longest shadows and best defined crater images.

No discussion of November would be complete without mentionning the Leonid Meteor Shower. It rains down on the night of November 17/18. Bring a comfortable chair, lots of coffee and be prepared to stay up late…very late.

The Moon will have set earlier in the evening so you’ll have a good dark sky as a background for the cosmic streakers. They are the debris trail left by Comet Tempel-Tuttle and can be the most spectacular me-teor shower of the year. In 1999 I sat up with four friends and we counted 1,200 meteors in an hour! But that’s nothing compared to the Leonid Meteor Storm of 1833 that sent frightened people home to hide or off to church and prayer at its peak.

Those are the celestial high points for November. There’s lots to see if you’re an insomniac. Clear skies and hot coffee.

monds. The Great Square is littered with stars. M31 is a magnificent naked-eye object and wait … is that a hint of M33? A quick check with (8× 42) binoculars confirms it. Now this is really dark because seeing the Triangulum Galaxy demands it. The nor-mally faint watery constellations like Cap-ricornus, Piscis Austrinus and Pisces are all well-defined. While Scorpius remains my favourite constellation, especially when fully seen from southern latitudes, western Pisces must get my vote for containing the most graceful curve of stars ending at Al Rischa. Just beautiful. Yes, dark, and even darker, skies really do make a difference. If you’re going to take up the hobby of staring into the infinite mystery, this is the way to go.

It has been a good week of stargazing. Most of the delightful sights were largely unexpected and unplanned. You never know. As Rick Stankiewicz’s email signa-ture reminds us all, you’ve got to “Keep looking up.”

Reference1. Chaple G., “Understanding Brightness”,

Astronomy (October 2015), 18.

in different space craft observing us? And if they’re observing us, why don’t they just walk up and say howdy?

What about the creatures on Mars? A lot of pictures don’t stand up to close scrutiny and turn out to be rocks that just look like Earth critters from a distance. The face on Mars only looked like a face when viewed from one direction at a specific time of day.

The same goes for the gorilla-shaped creature in the “Rodin’s thinking man” pose. Could he, she or it have adapted to Mar’s thin atmosphere and frigid climate? Perhaps, but like a rock, it never got up and moved.

I didn’t write this article with the inten-tion of offending anyone’s beliefs. Instead I simply ask that you be skeptical of seem-ingly impossible events and wild claims.


ArticlesSubmissions for The Reflector must be received by the date listed below. E-mail submissions are preferred (Microsoft Word, OpenDoc, ASCII and most common graphic formats are accept-able). If your article contains photso or graphics, please provide a separate file for each. Typed or hand-written submissions are acceptable pro-vided they are legible (and not too long.) Copy-righted materials will not be published without written permission from the copyright holder. Submissions may be edited for grammar, brev-ity, or clarity. Submissions will be published at the editor’s sole discretion. Depending on the volume of submissions, some articles may be published at a later date. Please submit any ar-ticles, thoughts, or ideas to:[email protected]

Next submission deadline:November 26 2015

Meetings The Peterborough Astronomical Association meets every first Friday of each month, except July and August, at the Peter-borough Zoo Guest Services and Rotary Educa-tion Centre (inside the main entrance at the north end of the Zoo) at 7 p.m. P.A.A. general annoucements will begin each meeting with the guest speaker starting at 7:30 p.m.

continued from page 1Martian Waterwith our knowledge of how water behaves under certain physical and chemical condi-tions and the observations of changing fea-tures on the Martian surface supports the idea that this is the action of liquid water. Short of taking a sample and analyzing it in situ on Mars, this is the best current evi-dence we have for liquid water on our red neighbor. Next up? Finding out if there are any single-celled organisms hardy enough to survive and thrive under those condi-tions, possibly even native to Mars itself!

This article is provided by NASA Space Place. With articles, activities, crafts, games, and lesson

plans, NASA Space Place encourages everyone to get excited about science and technology.

Visit spaceplace.nasa.gov to explore space and Earth science!

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov

Documents

The Reflector: January 2010€¦ · magnetic field, enabling the sun’s solar wind to strip its atmosphere away. Without a significant atmo-sphere, the liquid phase of water became