NEBULA is the official newsletter of the Goddard Astronomy Club (GAC), an employee organization of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771. GAC meets on the second Tuesday of each month.
WWW page: http://gac.gsfc.nasa.gov/
President: Cornelis DuToit, 301-286-1026.
Editor: Chuck Conner, 301-369-2800, X3060.
Cornelis duToit Presiding.
Scott Hull volunteered to be the new GAC Vice-President.
The group discussed and voted (positively) on whether to hold future meetings at the Vistor's Center.
Jeff Guerber talked about the Hopewell Star party.
Dr. Richard Barry spoke about his career in astrophysics.
If you attend a star party, we'd like a report (verbal or written).
The next New Moon is on December 16, 2009. Check out this site for new moon dates.
Leonids, Eclipsing Binary Stars, and Coyotes - by G.W.Gliba
Lynne and I were able to go up to our cabin at Mountain Meadows in Mathias, West Virginia for the peak of the Leonid Meteor Shower on the night of November 16/17. Although we knew that the weather prospects were only fair, we decided to take a chance anyway. It was mostly to partly cloudy most of the night, but we were able to get some nice views of the Milky Way when it was mostly clear, and later I was able to see several nice meteors.
By chance Lynne and I were able to see the naked-eye eclipsing binary star Algol near its minimum in the early part of the evening. We were able to watch it as it slowly got brighter coming out of eclipse. The very long period eclipsing binary star Epsilon Aurigae, which is now having one of it's rare eclipses that occur once every 27 years, was also seen about half way to it's minimum of 3.8 magnitude at magnitude 3.4 or so. More information on this strange star system can be found at: http://www.citizensky.org/forum/mini-observing-campaign-secondary-eclipse-zeta-aurigae
A nice old slow third magnitude Andromedid meteor was seen casually in the early part of the night moving East. These meteors are rather rare because the parent body, comet Biela, broke up years ago, which produced meteor storms of several thousand meteors per hour on November 27 of 1872 and 1885, but few of them are still seen nowadays. A couple very nice Northern Taurid meteors were also seen casually. The first one, which was the best meteor seen all night, was a nice magnitude -2 yellow one that was see in the South at around 7:47 P.M. EST. There was another nice magnitude 0 yellow Northern Taurid seen just before midnight. About that time, it got very cloudy, and I was losing hope that it would clear up again for the Leonids. However, there was a large sucker hole that opened-up around 3:30 A.M. EST, that allowed me to see some nice Leonid meteors.
I was able to get a good hour of Leonid watching in under partly cloudy skies with fairly good transparency. From 8:40 to 9:40 UT, I was able to see 14 Leonids. I can confirm the mini-outburst seen by Rich Taibi in Maryland, which was reported on the meteorobs newsgroup. In eleven minutes, from 8:59 to 9:10 UT, I observed nine Leonids, four of which were seen the minute of 9:10. In a few seconds I saw three of the four, which briefly reminded me of 2001, but it was over quickly. I had planned on going for another hour, but it clouded up completely, and it stayed cloudy the rest of the night.
During the last part of my meteor watch, I heard some coyotes that were yelping a short distance away down the mountain to my SE. A few minutes later, I heard them in the NE. It was more than one, and they seemed to be getting uncomfortably close. At that point, I became glad that it was getting cloudy, as I walked quickly with my lounge chair back to the cabin, about sixty feet away. I must admit it was kind of scary. Still, it was a good night overall.