January 2007 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

RE: [Utah-astronomy] Comet McNaught
by Tyler Allred 07 Jan '07

07 Jan '07

Rob Ratkowski said: <and just think, I did the look bare footed and in shorts too !!> Me too! The only difference is that I had to go to the hospital and get treated for frostbite when I was done viewing! :) You LUCKY DOG! Cheers, Tyler

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Comet McNaught
by Chuck Hards 07 Jan '07

07 Jan '07

Has anybody "caught McNaught" yet, visually? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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It has begun
by Chuck Hards 05 Jan '07

05 Jan '07

I uploaded the first of (hopefully) many in-process shots of my 17.5" Newtonian, to my Gallery page 4: http://www.utahastronomy.com/view_photo.php?set_albumName=Chuck&id=Seventee… With the mold ready, the plan is to do the fiberglass layup next week. It will be a traditional, one-piece solid tube, done in gloss white. The surface quality of the tube will be rough right out of the mold, since it will duplicate the inside of the Sonotube. I plan on refinishing it after fabrication, and bring it to a high gloss. I'm using the Wyorock 2" Crayford focuser, which utilizes a thread-on base, so you can unscrew the focuser and mount just about any piece of equipment at focus, gaining an additional 2.5 inches of back-focus if needed. Some of you know that I've had these optics since about 1986, the Sonotube has been hanging in my garage since 1991. This project is long overdue and I almost can't believe that it's finally off and running, but with only 2 house payments left, it's time. My goal is to have it operational in Alt-Az mode this coming summer, and equatorial mode by summer 2008. I'm leaning toward a split-ring for the portable equatorial mount, but eventually it will be used on a Babcock single-arm equatorial fork in my "retirement" observatory- thus the reason for the robust tube construction. You just can't hang much equipment on a portable truss-type Dob. I bought the last set of mount castings from Greg Babcock some years ago, my fellow old-timers will remember Greg's ads in S&T in the '70's. I'll post photos of the massive aluminum castings soon. This was and still is one of the coolest mounts I've ever seen. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Re: Astronomy Question
by Richard Tenney 04 Jan '07

04 Jan '07

Amber, I may be in a position, come March, to help with this; if not, I think it's likely I can find someone who can. I've copied your email to the local astronomy lists, and if someone out there can help, please reply to Amber (and cc me) if you would be willing to help out. If you don't hear back from me or someone else after a couple of weeks, please send me another reminder! -Rich --- Amber Withers <awithers(a)lflmail.org> wrote: > Hi Mr. Tenney, > > My name is Amber Withers. I work for a not for > profit that teachers character and life skills to > children. I am currently working with a school in > Orem providing monthly activities for the before and > after school children. These children are there for > extra homework help and the monthly activities are > intended to reward them for their hard work. The > principal and I have decided that a guest speaker on > the basics of astronomy would be something fun and > different for the students. The school apparently > has some kind of blow up thing that shows different > constellations, etc. The times are kind of awkward > and the students who come in the morning are > different from the students who stay after school. > I am looking for someone who can do a presentation > on astronomy. The times the students are in session > are from 8am - 9:15am and then again from 2:30pm - > 3:15pm. Would you or anyone you know be interested > and have the time to come and speak to these > students? If the same person had the time that > would be great, or if two different people could > come we would be happy for that as well. The day we > are looking at is March 16, 2007. > > If you could let me know either way I would > appreciate it. I apologize for the length of this > email. It's a lot of information. Please feel free > to email or call me if you would like anymore > information. > > Thanks much, > > > Amber > > > > Amber Withers > Learning for Life Executive > Utah National Parks Council > 801.437.4477 > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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New use for Hansen Planetarium
by Patrick Wiggins 03 Jan '07

03 Jan '07

This will be in Friday's News but it looks like something that some here might like to see now. I'd hate to see the place become a commercial building. I'm hopeful it will be turned into a museum. pw From Jewels of Sky to Earthly Gems? Tanner Co. is one of several interested in planetarium site. http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,650219959,00.html

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Free downloadable book
by Ann House 02 Jan '07

02 Jan '07

The night skies for 365 days in 2007. Thought I would pass it on. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/28/146203&from=rss -A

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO?
by sjseebergp＠webtv.net 02 Jan '07

02 Jan '07

Hi Ol Jan here. There have been similar reports from all over the world. One interesting report occured after sunset in a darkening sky. The only difference was observers could, for mere seconds see the craft soundlessly accelerate, then, a bright blue sunny sky where it had exited. The boys and girls that operate in the black areas of inovation do not inform the FAA, or anyone else what Zero Point fun stuff they want to show off. Show off just enough to let the bad guys know about it. Alien? Perhaps. But not just becase "it" is really DIFFERENT. We have been [we human folks that is] into Zero point experimentation for over 50 years. Just a thought. I have heard about sightings in China, S.E. Asia, and Russian skies. Whoever, or whatever wants to be seen. FACINATING! Sure wish one would pop in up here....or maybe not. Jan n Stan Vancouver Sidewalk Astronomers

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Imagine Earth without people
by Patrick Wiggins 02 Jan '07

02 Jan '07

An intriguing, good read: http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19225731.100 pw

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In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO?
by bau＠desnews.com 02 Jan '07

02 Jan '07

This story was sent to you by: Joe Bauman -------------------- In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO? -------------------- Video: UFO over O'Hare Airport? Jon Hilkevitch Getting Around January 1, 2007 It sounds like a tired joke--but a group of airline employees insist they are in earnest, and they are upset that neither their bosses nor the government will take them seriously. A flying saucerlike object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon. Was it an alien spaceship? A weather balloon lost in the airspace over the world's second-busiest airport? A top-secret military craft? Or simply a reflection from lights that played a trick on the eyes? Officials at United professed no knowledge of the Nov. 7 event--which was reported to the airline by as many as a dozen of its own workers--when the Tribune started asking questions recently. But the Federal Aviation Administration said its air traffic control tower at O'Hare did receive a call from a United supervisor asking if controllers had spotted a mysterious elliptical-shaped craft sitting motionless over Concourse C of the United terminal. No controllers saw the object, and a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said. The FAA is not conducting a further investigation, Cory said. The theory is the sighting was caused by a "weather phenomenon," she said. The UFO report has sparked some chuckles among controllers in O'Hare tower. "To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," said O'Hare controller and union official Craig Burzych. Some of the witnesses, interviewed by the Tribune, said they are upset that neither the government nor the airline is probing the incident. Whatever the object was, it could have interfered with O'Hare's radar and other equipment, and even created a collision risk, they said. The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (the term that extraterrestrial-watchers nowadays prefer over Unidentified Flying Object) was first seen by a United ramp worker who was directing back a United plane at Gate C17, according to an account the worker provided to the National UFO Reporting Center. The sighting occurred during daylight, about 4:30 p.m., just before sunset. All the witnesses said the object was dark gray and well defined in the overcast skies. They said the craft, estimated by different accounts to be 6 feet to 24 feet in diameter, did not display any lights. Some said it looked like a rotating Frisbee, while others said it did not appear to be spinning. All agreed the object made no noise and it was at a fixed position in the sky, just below the 1,900-foot cloud deck, until shooting off into the clouds. Witnesses shaken by sighting "I tend to be scientific by nature, and I don't understand why aliens would hover over a busy airport," said a United mechanic who was in the cockpit of a Boeing 777 that he was taxiing to a maintenance hangar when he observed the metallic-looking object above Gate C17. "But I know that what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out very clearly, and it definitely was not an [Earth] aircraft," the mechanic said. One United employee appeared emotionally shaken by the sighting and "experienced some religious issues" over it, one co-worker said. A United manager said he ran outside his office in Concourse B after hearing the report about the sighting on an internal airline radio frequency. "I stood outside in the gate area not knowing what to think, just trying to figure out what it was," he said. "I knew no one would make a false call like that. But if somebody was bouncing a weather balloon or something else over O'Hare, we had to stop it because it was in very close proximity to our flight operations." Some joke, others research The databases of various UFO-watching groups are full of accounts filed by pilots about sightings of unknown aircraft and anomalies that affected navigational equipment onboard planes. Whether any of the UFO incidents are real or merely the result of individual perceptions, some experts say the events pose a potential safety risk to pilots and their passengers. "There have been documented cases where safety appears to have been implicated, and more and more we are coming to the point of view that we are dealing with an intelligent phenomenon," said Richard Haines, science director at the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, a private agency. "We must be proactive before an aircraft goes down," said Haines, a former chief of the Space Human Factors Office at NASA's Ames Research Center. Haines is investigating the O'Hare incident. He said he has determined that no weather balloons were launched in the vicinity of O'Hare on Nov. 7. "It's absurd that the military would be conducting aerial test flights" near the airport, Haines said. All the witnesses to the O'Hare event, who included at least several pilots, said they are certain based on the disc's appearance and flight characteristics that it was not an airplane, helicopter, weather balloon or any other craft known to man. United denies UFO report They're not sure what was hanging out for several minutes in the restricted airspace, but they are upset that no one in power has taken the matter seriously. A United spokeswoman said there is no record of the UFO report. She said United officials do not recall discussion of any such incident. "There's nothing in the duty manager log, which is used to report unusual incidents," said United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy. "I checked around. There's no record of anything." The pilots of the United plane being directed back from Gate C17 also were notified by United personnel of the sighting, and one of the pilots reportedly opened a windscreen in the cockpit to get a better view of the object estimated to be hovering 1,500 feet above the ground. The object was seen to suddenly accelerate straight up through the solid overcast skies, which the FAA reported had 1,900-foot cloud ceilings at the time. "It was like somebody punched a hole in the sky," said one United employee. Witnesses said they had a hard time visually tracking the object as it streaked through the dense clouds. It left behind an open hole of clear air in the cloud layer, the witnesses said, adding that the hole disappeared within a few minutes. The United employees interviewed by the Tribune spoke on condition of anonymity. Some said they were interviewed by United officials and instructed to write reports and draw pictures of what they observed, and that they were advised by United officials to refrain from speaking about what they saw. Federal agency backtracks Like United, the FAA originally told the Tribune that it had no information on the alleged UFO sighting. But the federal agency quickly reversed its position after the newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request. An internal FAA review of air-traffic communications tapes, a step toward complying with the Tribune request, turned up the call by the United supervisor to an FAA manager in the airport tower, Cory said. Cory said the weather might have factored into what the witnesses thought they saw. "Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon," she said. "That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low [cloud] ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things. That's our take on it." ---------- Contact Getting Around at jhilkevitch(a)tribune.com or c/o the Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611. Read recent columns at chicagotribune.com/gettingaround Copyright (c) 2007, Chicago Tribune

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RE: [Utah-astronomy] In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO?
by David Dunn 02 Jan '07

02 Jan '07

I saw this on AOL this morning. One quote was especially amusing. At least one O'Hare controller, union official Craig Burzych, was amused by it all. "To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," he said. Dave -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces+david.dunn=albertsons.com(a)mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces+david.dunn=albertsons.com@mailman.xmissio n.com] On Behalf Of bau(a)desnews.com Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2007 2:31 PM To: utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com Subject: [Utah-astronomy] In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO? This story was sent to you by: Joe Bauman -------------------- In the sky! A bird? A plane? A ... UFO? -------------------- Video: UFO over O'Hare Airport? Jon Hilkevitch Getting Around January 1, 2007 It sounds like a tired joke--but a group of airline employees insist they are in earnest, and they are upset that neither their bosses nor the government will take them seriously. A flying saucerlike object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon. Was it an alien spaceship? A weather balloon lost in the airspace over the world's second-busiest airport? A top-secret military craft? Or simply a reflection from lights that played a trick on the eyes? Officials at United professed no knowledge of the Nov. 7 event--which was reported to the airline by as many as a dozen of its own workers--when the Tribune started asking questions recently. But the Federal Aviation Administration said its air traffic control tower at O'Hare did receive a call from a United supervisor asking if controllers had spotted a mysterious elliptical-shaped craft sitting motionless over Concourse C of the United terminal. No controllers saw the object, and a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said. The FAA is not conducting a further investigation, Cory said. The theory is the sighting was caused by a "weather phenomenon," she said. The UFO report has sparked some chuckles among controllers in O'Hare tower. "To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," said O'Hare controller and union official Craig Burzych. Some of the witnesses, interviewed by the Tribune, said they are upset that neither the government nor the airline is probing the incident. Whatever the object was, it could have interfered with O'Hare's radar and other equipment, and even created a collision risk, they said. The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (the term that extraterrestrial-watchers nowadays prefer over Unidentified Flying Object) was first seen by a United ramp worker who was directing back a United plane at Gate C17, according to an account the worker provided to the National UFO Reporting Center. The sighting occurred during daylight, about 4:30 p.m., just before sunset. All the witnesses said the object was dark gray and well defined in the overcast skies. They said the craft, estimated by different accounts to be 6 feet to 24 feet in diameter, did not display any lights. Some said it looked like a rotating Frisbee, while others said it did not appear to be spinning. All agreed the object made no noise and it was at a fixed position in the sky, just below the 1,900-foot cloud deck, until shooting off into the clouds. Witnesses shaken by sighting "I tend to be scientific by nature, and I don't understand why aliens would hover over a busy airport," said a United mechanic who was in the cockpit of a Boeing 777 that he was taxiing to a maintenance hangar when he observed the metallic-looking object above Gate C17. "But I know that what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out very clearly, and it definitely was not an [Earth] aircraft," the mechanic said. One United employee appeared emotionally shaken by the sighting and "experienced some religious issues" over it, one co-worker said. A United manager said he ran outside his office in Concourse B after hearing the report about the sighting on an internal airline radio frequency. "I stood outside in the gate area not knowing what to think, just trying to figure out what it was," he said. "I knew no one would make a false call like that. But if somebody was bouncing a weather balloon or something else over O'Hare, we had to stop it because it was in very close proximity to our flight operations." Some joke, others research The databases of various UFO-watching groups are full of accounts filed by pilots about sightings of unknown aircraft and anomalies that affected navigational equipment onboard planes. Whether any of the UFO incidents are real or merely the result of individual perceptions, some experts say the events pose a potential safety risk to pilots and their passengers. "There have been documented cases where safety appears to have been implicated, and more and more we are coming to the point of view that we are dealing with an intelligent phenomenon," said Richard Haines, science director at the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, a private agency. "We must be proactive before an aircraft goes down," said Haines, a former chief of the Space Human Factors Office at NASA's Ames Research Center. Haines is investigating the O'Hare incident. He said he has determined that no weather balloons were launched in the vicinity of O'Hare on Nov. 7. "It's absurd that the military would be conducting aerial test flights" near the airport, Haines said. All the witnesses to the O'Hare event, who included at least several pilots, said they are certain based on the disc's appearance and flight characteristics that it was not an airplane, helicopter, weather balloon or any other craft known to man. United denies UFO report They're not sure what was hanging out for several minutes in the restricted airspace, but they are upset that no one in power has taken the matter seriously. A United spokeswoman said there is no record of the UFO report. She said United officials do not recall discussion of any such incident. "There's nothing in the duty manager log, which is used to report unusual incidents," said United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy. "I checked around. There's no record of anything." The pilots of the United plane being directed back from Gate C17 also were notified by United personnel of the sighting, and one of the pilots reportedly opened a windscreen in the cockpit to get a better view of the object estimated to be hovering 1,500 feet above the ground. The object was seen to suddenly accelerate straight up through the solid overcast skies, which the FAA reported had 1,900-foot cloud ceilings at the time. "It was like somebody punched a hole in the sky," said one United employee. Witnesses said they had a hard time visually tracking the object as it streaked through the dense clouds. It left behind an open hole of clear air in the cloud layer, the witnesses said, adding that the hole disappeared within a few minutes. The United employees interviewed by the Tribune spoke on condition of anonymity. Some said they were interviewed by United officials and instructed to write reports and draw pictures of what they observed, and that they were advised by United officials to refrain from speaking about what they saw. Federal agency backtracks Like United, the FAA originally told the Tribune that it had no information on the alleged UFO sighting. But the federal agency quickly reversed its position after the newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request. An internal FAA review of air-traffic communications tapes, a step toward complying with the Tribune request, turned up the call by the United supervisor to an FAA manager in the airport tower, Cory said. Cory said the weather might have factored into what the witnesses thought they saw. "Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon," she said. "That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low [cloud] ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things. That's our take on it." ---------- Contact Getting Around at jhilkevitch(a)tribune.com or c/o the Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611. Read recent columns at chicagotribune.com/gettingaround Copyright (c) 2007, Chicago Tribune _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com

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