June 2009 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Happy Solstice
by Joe Bauman 21 Jun '09

21 Jun '09

No, just a backyard party with a bunch of friendly folks, many of them past or present reporters. It was complete with invocations to various directions with their meanings. Speaking of Burning Man, I MAY have convinced Cory that we should go to Black Rock Desert this year, if only for a day. Or maybe not. I've been there twice, once to cover it for the paper, another time just to soak in the atmosphere. -- Joe --- On Sat, 6/20/09, Patrick Wiggins <paw(a)wirelessbeehive.com> wrote: From: Patrick Wiggins <paw(a)wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Happy Solstice To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com> Date: Saturday, June 20, 2009, 11:01 PM T-minus 45 minutes to Solstice... On 20 Jun 2009, at 22:20, Joe Bauman wrote: > I just attended a great Druidic celebration, complete with a maypole in June! -- Joe Are you talking about the regional Burning Man at Seabase? They should be having their major burn as I enter this. Of course I forgot about it until now. :( patrick _______________________________________________ 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.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com

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Quick analysis - imaging ops for LCROSS during cruise orbit one
by Canopus56 21 Jun '09

21 Jun '09

http://groups.google.com/group/lcross_observation/web/finders-cruise-orbits The above page presents my quick analysis of favorable imaging windows to acquire the LCROSS-Centaur spacecraft during its cruise orbit one. Lunar phases during cruise orbit one favor attempts to image the LCROSS-Centaur spacecraft by observers in the southern hemisphere between July 19 through the First Quarter Moon on July 28. Northern hemisphere observers are disfavored and have only a brief low-altitude imaging window before the First Quarter Moon of June 29 as LCROSS rises of the northwest horizon beginning on June 26. Clear Skies - Kurt

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Mark your calendars: 0530 MDT 2009 OCT 09
by Canopus56 21 Jun '09

21 Jun '09

> Kurt, Thanks for this great info. I'm wondering, with 1 m. resolution, whether any of the Apollo sites will show up. Best wishes, Joe Yes. The LEM lower stages are much larger than the Mars Rovers that have been imaged by the MRO from orbit using a similar camera from a higher orbital altitude. But since the lunar denial-conspriacy crowd are more of a religion than a discussion, I doubt such photos will make them re-adjust their tin foil hats. - Kurt

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Happy Solstice
by Joe Bauman 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

I just attended a great Druidic celebration, complete with a maypole in June! -- Joe --- On Sat, 6/20/09, erikhansen(a)TheBlueZone.net <erikhansen(a)TheBlueZone.net> wrote: From: erikhansen(a)TheBlueZone.net <erikhansen(a)TheBlueZone.net> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Happy Solstice To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com> Date: Saturday, June 20, 2009, 2:49 PM > Or a pagan. Celebrate the solstice. Take a druid to lunch. > _______________________________________________ > 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.slas.us/gallery2/main.php > Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com > _______________________________________________ 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.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com

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TeleTrack GoTo mount - use report -
by Chuck Hards 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

I used the TeleTrack mount last night with a 70mm f/4.5 refractor at 20x, 27x, & 40X. It's a home-made refractor using a surplus achromat of the "Clark" configuration (A Clark uses a fairly large air-space between the elements, in this case, around 5mm. Most modern refractors are of the Fraunhofer type, which use a thin air-space. Typically a foil spacer is all that is used, but with this Clark type, a metal spacer ring is used.) that displays remarkably little uncorrected color for such a fast doublet. I used a 2" WO enhanced-aluminum diagonal for right-angle viewing. This telescope is ultimately destined to be a large finderscope on a planned large Newtonian, but in the meantime it is a nice compact RFT that is only about a foot long, and perfectly adapted to a small GoTo mount. It would also be a fine backpacking telescope coupled with a compact tripod and decent pan/tilt fluid head. The mount is a breeze to set up. After leveling, I typically use the 2-star method, and re-sync using the "PAE" function after tweaking each found object, if needed. At these low powers, though, it's only noticeable after a very long slew. I quickly knocked-off most of the Messier objects visible from my back yard location. Much of the north and northeastern sky is obstructed from that spot but the south, west, and overhead are clear. The globulars of Ophiuchus were found: M10, M12, M14, M107. M4 was in the soup but still easily visible thanks to it's huge size. Moving northward, the mount had no trouble picking up M13, and even smallish M92 was easy. M57 was plainly visible but at these low powers was very small- a novice with a low-power scope would probably not be able to pick it out of the star-field. M27 was a much more visible planetary, due to it's large size. Brocchi's Cluster (the "coat hanger") is just a delight in this type of telescope. My daughter was delighted in noticing the color contrast of the components of Alberio. M3 can sometimes be a pain in the butt due to the lack of nearby guide stars but that's no problem for a computerized mount. The occassional broken cloud cover last night really reduced visibility of many non-stellar objects, because of the reflected light pollution reducing contrast. Small apertures suffer the most in the suburban environment. I want to try this setup again at SPOC under a better sky in the not too distant future. So far I am happy with my purchase. Remember that I bought this mount initially just to mount my PST, to emulate Kurt's terrific PST tracking setup. The night-time use is a bonus.

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Mark your calendars: 0530 MDT 2009 OCT 09
by Joe Bauman 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

Kurt, Thanks for this great info. I'm wondering, with 1 m. resolution, whether any of the Apollo sites will show up. Best wishes, Joe --- On Sat, 6/20/09, Canopus56 <canopus56(a)yahoo.com> wrote: From: Canopus56 <canopus56(a)yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Mark your calendars: 0530 MDT 2009 OCT 09 To: "Utah Astronomy List Serv" <utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com> Date: Saturday, June 20, 2009, 2:50 PM The USNO table for SLC shows astronomical twilight at 05:02 on October 9. This will be cutting it close, particularly, as I believe, that at the last minute the LCROSS Team will slip the impact time to bias the impact +4 hours to put the Moon directly over the Keck and IRTF in Hawaii. The LCROSS Team has always stated that their desire has been to have Keck and IRTF as the primary ground based scopes. But, the matter is inherently uncertain. If the weather is bad over Hawaii, the LCROSS Team has some control over the exact moment of impact and may bias it towards the New Mexico scopes - again, where the weather is bad in Hawaii. Even if none of the above pans out, the LCROSS Team will be streaming live Ranger-era style video from the craft as it does the kamikse run - watching the booster impact from above. In addition to having a nice breakfast, you can also watch the impact in the spacecraft driver's seat so to speak. Less clear is whether on the June 23 gravity assist flyby of the Moon is whether the LCROSS team will be streaming live video. At a news conference earlier this week, one of the project team members indicated that they would be. Because of these uncertainties, I have not been recommeding a formal club event built around LCROSS. It may be possible to build a club event around acquiring images of the Centaur booster in cruise orbit over the next three months. On the other hand, there have only been two major U.S. missions to the Moon since Apollo (Clementine and Prospector). A once in 10-20 year event is worth monitoring. Finally, the club may wish to consider the potential for increased general public interest in lunar observing over the summer. LRO will reach lunar orbit in a few days and after a shake-down period will start streaming back HD images from an 80 km orbit with a nearly live release schedule - like the images from the Mars Rovers and MRO. These images will be so stunning (1 meter resolution) and will be hyped by the NASA p.r. machine such that it will hopefully pique the interest of a new younger generation of U.S. observers. (1% of the images will have 50cm resolution.) My suggestion to club members is to dust of your lunar maps now and start refreshing your recollection of crater names for use at July and August star parties. Clear Skies - Kurt P.S. - USNO Astrometric server basic sunrise/sunset data for Oct 9 ================= Sun and Moon Data for One Day The following information is provided for Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah (longitude W111.9, latitude N40.8): Friday 9 October 2009 Mountain Daylight Time SUN Begin civil twilight 7:05 a.m. Sunrise 7:33 a.m. Sun transit 1:15 p.m. Sunset 6:56 p.m. End civil twilight 7:23 p.m. MOON Moonrise 9:40 p.m. on preceding day Moon transit 5:38 a.m. Moonset 1:35 p.m. Moonrise 10:43 p.m. Moonset 2:28 p.m. on following day Phase of the Moon on 9 October: waning gibbous with 68% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated. Last quarter Moon on 11 October 2009 at 2:56 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time. ========== P.P.S. - Unlike the Kayuga impact video (that Patrick linked a couple of days ago) and SMART-1, LCROSS is engineered as a high-angle (+67 degrees), high-energy impact. Kayuga and SMART-1 were simple orbit deterioration impacts at less than 10 degrees - where the impact energy is dispated due to the impact angle and the impact cloud sprays horizontally and would have been expected to rise into the sunlight. _______________________________________________ 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.slas.us/gallery2/main.php Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com

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Sun in stereo
by Patrick Wiggins 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

Once Chuck finally convinced me it really is possible to see 3D using crossed eyes I started looking for stereo pairs to try it with. I just came across this page from NASA's STEREO mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/multimedia/LeftRightImages.html I first tried looking at each pair separately but suddenly found I was seeing all 6 pairs in stereo at the same time. Fun. patrick

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Mark your calendars: 0530 MDT 2009 OCT 09
by Canopus56 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

The USNO table for SLC shows astronomical twilight at 05:02 on October 9. This will be cutting it close, particularly, as I believe, that at the last minute the LCROSS Team will slip the impact time to bias the impact +4 hours to put the Moon directly over the Keck and IRTF in Hawaii. The LCROSS Team has always stated that their desire has been to have Keck and IRTF as the primary ground based scopes. But, the matter is inherently uncertain. If the weather is bad over Hawaii, the LCROSS Team has some control over the exact moment of impact and may bias it towards the New Mexico scopes - again, where the weather is bad in Hawaii. Even if none of the above pans out, the LCROSS Team will be streaming live Ranger-era style video from the craft as it does the kamikse run - watching the booster impact from above. In addition to having a nice breakfast, you can also watch the impact in the spacecraft driver's seat so to speak. Less clear is whether on the June 23 gravity assist flyby of the Moon is whether the LCROSS team will be streaming live video. At a news conference earlier this week, one of the project team members indicated that they would be. Because of these uncertainties, I have not been recommeding a formal club event built around LCROSS. It may be possible to build a club event around acquiring images of the Centaur booster in cruise orbit over the next three months. On the other hand, there have only been two major U.S. missions to the Moon since Apollo (Clementine and Prospector). A once in 10-20 year event is worth monitoring. Finally, the club may wish to consider the potential for increased general public interest in lunar observing over the summer. LRO will reach lunar orbit in a few days and after a shake-down period will start streaming back HD images from an 80 km orbit with a nearly live release schedule - like the images from the Mars Rovers and MRO. These images will be so stunning (1 meter resolution) and will be hyped by the NASA p.r. machine such that it will hopefully pique the interest of a new younger generation of U.S. observers. (1% of the images will have 50cm resolution.) My suggestion to club members is to dust of your lunar maps now and start refreshing your recollection of crater names for use at July and August star parties. Clear Skies - Kurt P.S. - USNO Astrometric server basic sunrise/sunset data for Oct 9 ================= Sun and Moon Data for One Day The following information is provided for Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah (longitude W111.9, latitude N40.8): Friday 9 October 2009 Mountain Daylight Time SUN Begin civil twilight 7:05 a.m. Sunrise 7:33 a.m. Sun transit 1:15 p.m. Sunset 6:56 p.m. End civil twilight 7:23 p.m. MOON Moonrise 9:40 p.m. on preceding day Moon transit 5:38 a.m. Moonset 1:35 p.m. Moonrise 10:43 p.m. Moonset 2:28 p.m. on following day Phase of the Moon on 9 October: waning gibbous with 68% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated. Last quarter Moon on 11 October 2009 at 2:56 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time. ========== P.P.S. - Unlike the Kayuga impact video (that Patrick linked a couple of days ago) and SMART-1, LCROSS is engineered as a high-angle (+67 degrees), high-energy impact. Kayuga and SMART-1 were simple orbit deterioration impacts at less than 10 degrees - where the impact energy is dispated due to the impact angle and the impact cloud sprays horizontally and would have been expected to rise into the sunlight.

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Happy Solstice
by Chuck Hards 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

Celebrate the solstice. Take a druid to lunch.

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Mark your calendars: 0530 MDT 2009 OCT 09
by Patrick Wiggins 20 Jun '09

20 Jun '09

http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov predicts LCROSS impact will be at 0530 MDT on Friday October 9. patrick

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