SKYWATCHERS NEWSLETTER OF THE CHINA LAKE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY Volume 41 No. 10 October 1, 2004 NEXT MEETING 7:30 p.m., Monday, October 4, 2004 Maturango Museum, 100 East Las Flores Avenue, Ridgecrest, California OCTOBER 4 MEETING - INTRODUCTION TO ORBITAL ELEMENTS The October meeting will have a discussion by Peter Eiserloh titled "Some Elements of Orbits." This will cover the orbital elements, and how to use them to calculate the position of objects such as planets and comets. Also covered is a brief introduction of how to determine the orbital elements using observations from your back yard. Editor's note: Orbital elements are a set of numbers used to describe the characteristics of an orbit. What is an orbit? It is the path taken by one object as it goes around another. Stated more properly, objects in orbit with each other each orbit around a common center of mass, called the barycenter. However in most cases, such as with the planets and the Sun, this point is essentially the center of the most massive object. DATES TO KEEP IN MIND Monday, October 4, 2004: Regular monthly meeting, see above. Wednesday, October 20, 2004: Deadline for next Skywatchers Newsletter Friday, October 15, 2004: Regular star party, see below. Monday, November 1, 2004: Regular CLAS Meeting at the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, 7:30 p.m. STAR PARTY SCHEDULE FOR THE 2004 SEASON: Star Parties will be held on the dates listed below. Star Parties are an activity where members and guests join together to share views of the skies. If you have a telescope, bring it. If not, come and look through someone else's. Star parties are held at a site in the open desert south of Ridgecrest. To reach the star party site from Ridgecrest, go south on China Lake Boulevard 6.5 miles from its intersection with Ridgecrest Boulevard. Continue straight across Highway 395 and you will be on Brown Road (Old Highway 395). Follow Brown Road as it curves to the right and goes west. After 2.3 miles there will be a 30-inch orange cone on the left. Turn left and follow the dirt road marked by 12-inch cones. The CLAS Star party is 0.5 miles along this road. Watch for signs and cones, which will be put out about a half-hour before viewing starts. Call Carroll Evans 760-375-5681, or Bruce Churchill 760-375-7247, for more information. Friday, October 15--Signs out at 6:30 p.m., Star viewing at 7:00 p.m. Friday, November 12--Signs out at 6:30 p.m., Star viewing at 7:00 p.m. THE SKY IN OCTOBER (Roger Brower) 1. Venus remains brilliant in the morning sky and presents a fine view in the east for very early risers. 2. Saturn will rise about 1 a.m. on the 1st and before midnight by the 31st. 3. Jupiter moves to the morning sky this month and well move close to Venus by the end of the month. 4. A partial solar eclipse will occur on October 13th but will only be visible from Asia, Alaska and Hawaii. 5. The Orionid meteor shower peaks on the 21st. 6. Total Lunar eclipse on the 27th. SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT (Repeated from last month) I was contacted by the Skirball Museum (in Los Angeles, on the way to UCLA) to see if we want to make a field trip to see a special exhibit about Albert Einstein. It will be showing from September14, 2004 to May 29, 2005. As a group we would have our own guide. There would be the modest charge of $10.00 each. We will talk about this at the September meeting. Here are the details. Making its only West Coast appearance at the Skirball, Einstein is the most comprehensive presentation ever mounted on the life and theories of Albert Einstein (1879-1955), one of the greatest scientists of all time. Co-organized by the Skirball, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the American Museum of Natural History, this exhibition brings together original manuscripts and personal treasures, most never before exhibited to the general public, with interactive exhibits that illuminate Einstein's most revolutionary theories. The exhibition will explore the legacy of Einstein both as a scientific genius who reconfigured our concepts of space and time and as a politically conscious individual who spoke out against segregation, anti-Semitism, McCarthyism, and nuclear armament, and who championed such causes as the formation of the State of Israel. STAR PARTY AT CERRO COSO COMMUNITY COLLEGE (Alex Shlanta) Friday evening 17 Sept 04 a star party was held at the Cerro Coso Community College (CCCC) Astronomical Observatory. Participants were the 3rd grade classes of Mrs. Weisz and Mrs. Sarbo from Gateway Elementary School. There were 63 students and parents in attendance at the event. The students were contagiously enthusiastic, there were a lot of "wows" and "neat" heard, and well behaved. To begin with at the site, I gave the students an orientation to the night sky constellations using a laser pointer. The students were given star charts taken from skymaps.com. Then the students wandered through the observatory compound looking through the various telescopes and binoculars that were set up there. There were six telescope stations and 1 set of binoculars for the students to look through and see various celestial phenomena. The students particularly liked seeing the moon (it was in a crescent phase) and Albireo (the cub scout star) was a big hit. They also enjoyed seeing the planets Uranus and Neptune, M57 the Ring Nebula (a big smoke ring), M31 Andromeda Galaxy, and M8 the Lagoon Nebula. The students also liked having what they were seeing through telescopes and binoculars pointed out to them with laser pointers. Manning the telescopes for this event were China Lake Astronomical Society members Roger Brower, Calvin Clayson, Chuck Morgan, Jerry Ott, Ken Pringle and myself. Richard L'Hommedieu, retired head of Operations and Maintenance for CCCC, manned the binoculars. The students really got jazzed when Chuck Morgan had them press the GOTO button on the Meade 12" LX200 each time they looked for a new object on that telescope. TELESCOPE FOR SALE (Maybe, this is repeated from last month) CLAS member Bill Manatt has a Colter Optics 13.1-inch f 4.5 Dobsonian telescope for sale. It is in good condition, it has always been kept indoors (except when actually in use). The suggested price is $200, call Bill at 760-375-2373 REPORT ON THE SEPTEMBER, STAR PARTY (Roger Brower) We had our September star pary on the 10th. The weather was clear and we had about six telescopes and a set of binoculars. We viewed the southern Milky Way and many of the Messier objects viewable at this time of year. Ken Pringle had members of his Earth Sciences class present. OCTOBER 4, 1957, A SPACE AGE MILESTONE. Some of us remember, and all of us have read about, the launch of the Earth's first artificial satellite by the Russians on October 4, 1957. Without re-living those days, just pause to consider how much our lives have been changed by artificial satellites. I will name a few things, you can think of many others. Satellite TV in your house or motor home. Instant credit card authorization at the gas pump. Global Positioning System (GPS). The Hubble Space Telescope. Weather satellites. Global communications. The International Space Station (ISS). And so on, how did we ever lead our humdrum lives before all this? ASTRONOMY AND SPACE NEWS PROVIDED BY EARL TOWSON TINY 'DAVID' TELESCOPE FINDS 'GOLIATH' PLANET: Fifteen years ago, the largest telescopes in the world had yet to locate a planet orbiting another star. Today telescopes no larger than those available in department stores are proving capable of spotting previously unknown worlds. A newfound planet detected by a small, 4-inch-diameter telescope demonstrates that we are at the cusp of a new age of planet discovery. See details at: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0408/24newplanet/ MARS ODYSSSEY: NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter is now working overtime after completing a prime mission that discovered vast supplies of frozen water, ran a safety check for future astronauts, and mapped surface textures and minerals all over Mars, among other feats. The spacecraft has been examining Mars in detail since February 2002, more than a full Mars year of about 23 Earth months. NASA has approved an extended mission through September 2006. NASA RELEASE: 2004-209;August 25, 2004. For more information about Mars Odyssey on the Internet, visit: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey METEORITES SUPPLIED EARTH LIFE WITH PHOSPHORUS: University of Arizona scientists have discovered that meteorites, particularly iron meteorites, may have been critical to the evolution of life on Earth. http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0408/24meteorite/ 14 EARTH MASS EXOPLANET DISCOVERED: A European team of astronomers has discovered the lightest known planet orbiting a star other than the sun (an "exoplanet"). The new exoplanet orbits the bright star mu Arae located in the southern constellation of the Altar. It is the second planet discovered around this star and completes a full revolution in 9.5 days. With a mass of only 14 times the mass of the Earth, the new planet lies at the threshold of the largest possible rocky planets, making it a possible super Earth-like object. Uranus, the smallest of the giant planets of the Solar System has a similar mass. However Uranus and the new exoplanet differ so much by their distance from the host star that their formation and structure are likely to be very different. This discovery was made possible by the unprecedented accuracy of the HARPS spectrograph on ESO's 3.6-m telescope at La Silla, which allows radial velocities to be measured with a precision better than 1 m/s. It is another clear demonstration of the European leadership in the field of exoplanet research. The full text of this press release with four photos is available at http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2004/pr-22-04.html MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION Basic CLAS dues are $20.00 per year, which includes the Skywatchers Newsletter. As a benefit of membership you may also receive Astronomy Magazine and/or Sky and Telescope Magazine. The fee schedule is as follows: Basic membership $20.00 per year Membership with Astronomy magazine $49.00 per year Membership with Sky and Telescope magazine $53.00 per year Membership with both S & T and Astronomy $82.00 per year Send your check to: Roger Brower, Treasurer, China Lake Astronomical Society, P.O. Box 1783, Ridgecrest, CA 93556. PRESIDENT - Earl Wilson - (email zearlw@hotmail.com) VICE-PRESIDENT - Bruce Churchill - 760-375-7247 (email bchurchill@atsecure.net) SECRETARY - Ted Hodgkinson - 661- 824-2738 (email longeyes@antelecom.net) TREASURER - 760-375-1181 (email brower@iwvisp.com) NEWSLETTER EDITOR - Carroll Evans Jr. - 760-375-5681 (email clevans@ridgenet.net) Meetings of the China Lake Astronomical Society are held at the Maturango Museum at 7:30 p.m. on the first Monday evening of each month, except when the first Monday is a holiday. SKYWATCHERS Newsletter of the CHINA LAKE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY POST OFFICE BOX 1783 RIDGECREST, CA 93556-1783 NEXT MEETING: 7:30 p.m., MONDAY, October 4, 2004: "Orbital Elements" AT THE MATURANGO MUSEUM, 100 EAST LAS FLORES AVE. WESTERN AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS WEB SITE CLAS WEB PAGE INDEX OF CLAS NEWSLETTERS