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G O D D A R D A S T R O N O M Y C L U B
Issue 88 -- 2002 September
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 the second Tuesday of each month.
WWW page: http://gewa.gsfc.nasa.gov/~astro/gac.html.
President: Armen Caroglanian, Code 567.0/|\ 301-286-4340.
Editor: Scott Hull, Code 581/|\301-286-1317.
----------------------- LAST MEETING: August 13 -----------------------
Club members shared their Perseid Meteor observations. All agreed the observed rates were lower due to atmospheric haze. George Gliba presented observation reports for the Perseids and Comet Hoenig. We prepared for viewing asteroid 2002 NY 40 on August 17/18 by simulating the asteroid's position with the astronomical program The Sky.
Quick Notes and Reminders: We are not able to put the meeting location on the web page. This is due to a NASA policy. So, hold on to your emailed version of the Nebula for location information. Also, the club secretary will try to send out reminders before each meeting and will include the location information.
If you attend a star party, we'd like a report (verbal or written). If your Sky and Telescope subscriptions are up for renewal, be sure to get in touch with Matt Elliott, Treasurer. You can put your renewal in the interoffice mail to Matt's attention to Code 693.0. Club Star Party - Our monthly club star party at the club's GGAO observatory is most likely scheduled for September 6th (double check date with Howard Dew or Armen Caroglanian).
Greenbelt Astronomy Club Meetings - Last non-holiday Thursday of each month at the Owens Science Center at 7:30 pm.
The next Caroline Furnace weekend is October 4, 5 and 6. Contact Keith Evans for details.
Additional calendar of star parties can always be found at the
Sky & Telescopes Calendar page:
http://www.skypub.com/resources/calendar.shtml
NEXT MEETING: September 10th, Noon -1 PM, location TBA, Tom Van Flandern, president and chief research scientist at Meta Research, will prepare us for the upcoming Leonid Meteor Shower. Tom is among the few scientists worldwide who have accurately predicted the Leonid Meteor Shower activity in recent years. Please join us for what promises to be a very interesting presentation.
http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/objects/asteroids/
Ohio Star Party and the Perseids - by G.W. Gliba,
Lynne and I attended the annual OTAA (Ohio Turnpike Astronomers Association) convention and star party at the Mahoning Valley Astronomical Society Cortez Observatory in Braceville, Ohio on August 10/11. Following registration was a smorgasbord picnic supper. Later, there were drawings for door prizes, and I won a copy of the book Starlight Nights by Leslie C. Peltier. There was a nice evening talk on the Hubble Space Telescope followed by the star party. I was able to sweep-up comet Hoenig with an 8-inch F/5 Newtonian. It was elongated, moderately condensed, and about 8th magnitude. Later, I saw it with a 5-inch F/5 Jaegers RFT and a 12.5-inch F/5 Dobsonian. Several other deep-sky objects were also seen as was the ISS (International Space Station) and some Perseid meteors.
It was an excellent Ohio star party. This was the place that I saw my best Perseid Meteor Shower maximum back in 1967 when I saw 103 Perseids from 4am to 5am EDT. This is also the place that I really got my start in astronomy back in 1963 by meeting many other amateur astronomers. I use to attend this star party almost every year (minus 1969-1972 when I was in the USAF) up to 1979, when I left to work in Maryland at the NASA/GSFC in Greenbelt. So, my being back there after a 23 year hiatus was a sentimental journey.
The next night, Lynne and I went to Mountain Meadows, West Virginia for the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. The skies were clear but hazy, with a magn. limit that varied from 6.3 to 5.5. During the time period from 2:10 to 5:10am EDT I saw 105 Perseid meteors, 9 from the Aquarid complex, 6 Kappa Cygnids, 6 from the Northern Apex, 2 from the Southern Apex, 1 Alpha Capricornid, and 15 Sporadic meteors. The brightest meteor was a -3 Perseid bolide seen at 8:21 UT that was blue-green colored and had a nice train. Three of -2 and four of -1 magnitude were also seen. The best hour was from 8:10 to 9:10 UT when 42 Perseids were seen. There was good activity from the Kappa Cygnid radiant. From 7:10 to 9:10 UT six were seen with four seen between 7:21 and 7:41 UT.
It was a good Perseid peak, but the rates seemed lower than usual. This was probably due to the hazy conditions though. According to a recent IMO Perseid Circular, the rates were actually slightly above average (ZHR 90). After I had stopped recording meteors, in the morning twilight I saw a very fine 1st magn. Perseid that was saphire-blue colored against the light blue twilight sky that was not the brightest, but was the prettiest Perseid seen that night.
Time (UT) LM %Obst. PER AQR KCG NPX SPX CAP SPO Total FOV 6:10-7:10 6.0 0% 29 5 0 1 0 0 4 39 2.5+60 7:10-8:10 6.0 0% 34 2 4 2 1 0 7 50 3.0+47 8:10-9:10 5.7 0% 42 2 2 3 1 1 4 55 3.5+45 ---------------------------------------- 6:10-9:10 5.9 0% 105 9 6 6 2 1 15 144 Var. (sorry if this table becomes skewed; contact George for clarifications-SMH)
September Taurid and Aries-Triangulid Meteors - by G.W. GlibaDon't forget to help look for the possible new meteor shower reported in the September 2002 issue of Sky & Telescope tentatively called the "September Taurids". The peak should be around September 14th, and the radiant is between the Hyades and the Pleiades star clusters. The article in Sky & Telescope does mention that, besides S.J. O'Meara seeing an apparent outburst last year, that some activity may have been seen by Norman McLeod back in 1996 on September 11/12. Although this is true, the first contemporary observation of this radiant was the day earlier, on September 10/11, 1996 by Robert Lunsford, and announced on the meteorobs forum for meteor observers. So, as Norman McLeod is a member of the same group, he had knowledge of Lunsford's observations. I also observed and plotted activity from this area on September 11/12, 1996 while I was looking for the Aries-Triangulids (Alpha Triangulids) minor meteor shower. So, I helped to confirm Lunsford's discovery that year.
Although no significant activity from the Aries-Triangulid Meteor Shower is expected this year. It is important to watch anyway. Perhaps while looking for the September Taurids you could also look for the A-T meteor shower. The main radiant is near the star Alpha Triangulii, but a less active radiant is near the star Alpha Arietis. Historically, this shower seems to have a period of 5 or 6 years. The last outburst years were 1998 & 1999. Other active years were 1934, 1940, 1951, and 1993. So, next year could be an outburst. However, some activity may be seen this years; so it is important to watch.
A LOCAL SOURCE FOR DIAMOND DUST?
Crack open a primitive, carbonaceous meteorite, and you'll likely find countless microscopic flecks of diamond -- sometimes numerous enough to represent 0.1 percent of the meteorite's mass. Ever since their discovery in 1987, these meteoritic diamonds have been thought to be, quite literally, stardust, tiny crystals of high-density carbon forged in the expanding shock waves of supernova explosions....
However, a new study suggests that most of these "nanodiamonds" didn't come from the stars after all but instead were cooked up in the nebula that surrounded the infant Sun and its forming planets....
http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/objects/planets/article_669_1.asp
TWO COMETS IN THE NORTHERN SKY
Comet Hoenig passes through the northern circumpolar sky during August and September while remaining near 9th magnitude. Meanwhile another comet is gracing our skies -- Comet SWAN. Although two magnitudes brighter than Comet Hoenig, Comet SWAN is more difficult to see because it is at its brightest while low in the eastern sky as morning twilight begins. More information about both objects can be found on the Comets page of S&T's Web site.
http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/objects/comets/
AN INEXPENSIVE ROOFTOP FIREBALL PATROL
The whole thing cost just more than $200, it requires virtually no maintenance except a once-a-month dusting, and it provides a useful service that hasn't been widely available before. And it may just be the start of something big: an all-sky, all-night fireball monitoring program. Edward Albin, an astronomer at the Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta, built and set up the video system two months ago on the roof of his home just outside Atlanta (to avoid the city's light pollution at the science center itself)....
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/current/article_679_1.asp (perhaps something to think about for Leonids-SMH) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPACECRAFT BEGINS STARDUST COLLECTION Yesterday NASA's Stardust spacecraft began a four-month-long effort to collect microscopic bits of dust passing through our solar system. Far smaller than the width of a human hair, this interstellar dust is coming from the direction of the vast Scorpius-Centaurus Association of young stars. To capture it, Stardust has extended a tennis-racket-shaped collector. Particles will become trapped in the collector's layer of aerogel, where they will remain until the spacecraft returns to Earth in early 2006. The collector's flip side will be reserved for collecting gas and dust particles from the coma of Comet Wild 2, which will occur during a high-speed rendezvous in January 2004.
AN AVERAGE PERSEID METEOR SHOWER
Now that the predicted peak of the Perseid meteor shower has passed, early reports from around the world suggest that the shower performed pretty much at its average rate. Many skywatchers in the eastern United States, however, were disappointed by summer haze that dimmed the view of the stars and hid most of the meteors....
http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/current/article_696_1.asp
This years' Perseid Meteor Shower was just average according to early reports. A recent IMO circular says it may even be a bit above average. So, it looks like the ZHR was between 80 and 90. (GWG)
THE MOON THROUGH AN 8-METER EYE
European Southern Observatory astronomers have used a new adaptive-optics system on the 8.2-meter Yepun telescope, the fourth unit of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, to produce what may be the highest-resolution image of the Moon ever attained from Earth.... The exposure was taken through a narrow-band near-infrared (2.3-micron) filter on April 30th during testing of the NAOS-CONICA (NACO) adaptive optics camera. The image measures 25 arcseconds across and reveals an incredible number of tiny craterlets and detail as small as 0.07 arcsec, or 130 m on the lunar surface -- very close to the theoretical resolution of the telescope at this wavelength....
http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/current/article_694_1.asp
HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY* Last-quarter Moon on August 30-31.
* Comet SWAN is low in the eastern sky around the time morning twilight
begins for observers in the Northern Hemisphere. Look for it with binoculars. * Venus is low in the west-southwest in early twilight.For details, see This Week's Sky at a Glance and Planet Roundup:
http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/ataglance/