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Shasta Astronomy
To the Shasta Astronomy Club/Network
We'll have our September star party this Sat. the 19th, weather permitting, at the mines parking lot at Whiskeytown Lake Park about 8:00 PM. Bring your scopes, I think we'll need them. We've had pretty good crowds lately.
If you can receive the History channel, tune into the Universe series on Tuesday nights. It's a new series this year and very current and well done. They usually have the episode from the week before and then the new one for the current week. It's channel 269 on my Direct TV receiver.
There are a lot of good sites with this letter for you to look at. Jupiter captured a comet as a temporary moon. Infinity, is that the state of our universe? Temporary radiation belt on Saturn. How long have the flowers been on Earth, probably only 120 million years or so. There will be a coming impact on the moon by NASA for you to look at with your scope. M-31 galaxy in Andromeda is taking over little M-33. We're next. Amateur astronomers needed by the astronomy community, sign up. Titan's methane mystery where it acts like water on that moon of Saturn. The ups and downs of oxygen on the Earth. Now we're up. Where have all the sunspots gone and will they come back? Mini ice age coming or false alarm. Do salt water currents and tides in the oceans create our magnetic field? That should keep you busy for a while. Enjoy this golden age of astronomy that we're now in.
Clear skies, Bob
www.meetup.com/Shasta-Photo-Club/
Below are some interesting astronomy articles from the last few months.
Dark matter apparently not needed for galaxy formation
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/41011/title/Galaxy_mix_No_dark_matter_required
A Green Visitor Makes It's Approach: A new comet (Lulin) can be seen for the next few days. It will be at about mag 5. Look in the southeast at about 3-4 AM and look for a green object. It will be very close to Earth and so will move about 5 degrees/day. Use binocs for the best result but remember it will be hard to see a green object. Monday and Tuesday will be the closest approach. But try it on any clear morning. If you get a picture, send it to me and I'll send it out to the club.
science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/04feb_greencomet.htm
Colossal Black Holes Common in the Early Universe. They were probably around before some of the larger galaxies formed and became the engines for those galaxies. Even today it's still true after 14 billion years.
www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=873
New Fermi Space Telescope Discovers Gamma Ray Spewing Pulsar. We wouldn't want to be within 2 or 3 hundred lightyears of this thing.
www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=874
Search for Antimatter in the Universe may Prove More Difficult. Sure, much of it would be gone by now atter this long a time: 14 billion years.
www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=877
16-Year Long Study Tracks Stars Orbiting the Milky Way Black Hole
www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=885
Billions of Particles of Anti-Matter Created at Lawrence Livermore Labs. There goes the Bay Area. Bye, Bye.
www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=881
The 1843 Eruption of Eta Carinae may Represent a New Class of Star Explosion. I saw this star system a few years ago from Tahiti and it looks like a bright star with a cloud around it using binocs. It may be about ready to go boom, or maybe it already has and we don't know it yet.
www.astromart.com/news/news.asp?news_id=882
The Evolution of Darwin's Theory: It may be a theory, but it's the way nature works. It's also a theory that the Earth orbits the Sun and also rotates once every day or so. That's also the way nature works.
www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-evolution8-2009feb08%2c0%2c3139110%2cfull.story
See you soon, clear skies, Bob
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