SKYWATCHERS
NEWSLETTER OF THE CHINA LAKE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 41 No. 11	November 1, 2004


NEXT MEETING 7:30 p.m., Monday, November 1, 2004
Maturango Museum, 100 East Las Flores Avenue, Ridgecrest, California

NOVEMBER 1 MEETING - BIG BANG THEORY SUPPORTED
Most of us have heard John Dobson's ideas about cosmology. John believes 
that advocates of a Big Bang are confusing the changes in the universe 
with the nature of the universe. Tom Koonce, of the Antelope Valley 
Astronomical Society, has prepared a rebuttal in support of a Big Bang. He 
will present his case at our November meeting.


DATES TO KEEP IN MIND
Wednesday, October 27, Total Lunar Eclipse, see details on the third page 
of this newsletter.
Monday, November 1, 2004:  Regular monthly meeting, see above.
Friday, November 12, 2004:  Regular monthly Star Party
Tuesday, November 23, 2004: Deadline for next Skywatchers Newsletter
Monday, December 6, 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, November 12--Signs out at 6:30 p.m., Star viewing at 7:00 p.m.

PUBLIC STAR PARTIES WILL RESUME IN MARCH 2005


CANADIAN HANDBOOKS AND CALENDARS ARE ON ORDER
We hope to have our annual supply of Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 
calendars and Observer's Handbooks in time for the November meeting.  
Otherwise, they will be available at the December meeting. 


THE SKY IN NOVEMBER (Roger Brower)
1. Venus remains brilliant in the morning sky and presents a fine view in 
the east for early risers.

2. Saturn will rise about 11 p.m. on the 1st and 8 p.m. by the 30th. Also, 
on the 30th, the moon will rise with Saturn and only 5 degrees apart 
forming a fine pair.

3. Jupiter will be close to Venus in the morning sky the first week of 
November. Jupiter will slide past Venus and be closest on the 4th and 5th. 
Also, on the 9th, Jupiter will be occulted by the moon for east coast 
viewers.

4. Leonid meteor shower peaks on the morning of the 17th. It is not 
expected to be as good this year as the last few years, but meteor showers 
are very hard to predict.



OUTREACH PROGRAM
On the night of October 14th, a CLAS outreach star program was held for 
all of the 5th grade classes at Gateway Elementary School. CLAS members, 
Roger Brower, Chuck Morgan, Dick Johnsen, Mack Hope and Neal Barry arrived 
early in order to set up their telescopes and prepare for the evening. 
Also arriving early was CLAS member Carroll Evans Jr who was going to 
present the slide show for the evening. CLAS member, Ken Pringle was also 
on hand to add further assistance around the telescopes and answer 
questions from students. Around 6:45 p.m, students and their parents met 
in the cafeteria where Ms Jackie Ponek, 5th grade teacher and school 
coordinator of the event, talked about the evening schedule. I took a few 
moments to talk briefly about night sky objects and discussed safety and 
etiquette while around the telescopes. Students and parents were then 
separated into three smaller yet manageable groups and at 7:00 p.m. the 
evening events began. Over the next couple of hours each group rotated 
between the telescopes, slide show and computer lab. Mixed in between each 
session was time for bathroom breaks and time for hot chocolate and 
cookies. I estimated we had at least 60 students and parents with some 
arriving later in the evening. The weather was great and the night sky was 
decent considering the amount of sky glow around the school. Some objects 
observed were M57, M27, M31, M33, M22, M16, Antares (the Scorpions Heart), 
Mizar and Alcor, and the binary system of Alberio (the Cub Scout stars). A 
GREAT time was enjoyed by everyone. A lot of enthusiasm and interesting 
questions by students, parents and even teachers. A follow up solar 
observing program will be conducted wit
hin the next month.


ANOTHER OUTREACH PROGRAM (Roger Brower)
On Wednesday October 13th we had an outreach for Alex Shlanta's class at 
the college. The students were assigned tasks to complete with the 
telescopes. The first was to align the scope and then find selected 
objects in the sky.
 

REPORT ON THE OCTOBER STAR PARTY (Bruce Churchill)
Our October star party was held on Friday the fifteenth. Conditions were 
imperfect because of some wind and haze, but there was much that could be 
seen, and there was a good turnout of viewers and telescopes. There was no 
Moon, and no planets until Saturn's ascension near 11 PM, so it was a good 
opportunity to focus on stars and deep sky objects. The prize of the early 
evening sky in autumn is the M3l Andromeda galaxy. M32 and MilO were also 
seen in Andromeda. M33 in nearby Triangulum was also observed. Remnants of 
the summer sky included Albireo, the spectacular blue and yellow double 
star in Cygnus, the M13 Hercules cluster and the M5l Whirlpool Nebula in 
Canes Venatici.


CLAS NEWSLETTER BY EMAIL
Skywatchers is available by email, please request it from the Editor, 
clevans@ridgenet.net


ASTRONOMY AND SPACE NEWS PROVIDED BY EARL TOWSON

LUNAR ECLIPSE: September's full moon, better known as the Harvest Moon was 
everything we've come to expect in the fall; a large, warmly glowing 
golden ball peeking above the trees just after sunset. But the splendors 
of several consecutive nights of beautiful moonlight can't compare to the 
show the moon will put on in late October. October offers us a chance to 
see a truly amazing spectacle, a total lunar eclipse on October 27/28th. 
It will have started just before the rising of the moon. Seek a an open 
view low to the east. As twilight fades, westerners will see the 
shadow-bitten Moon coming into stark view low above the landscape, and by 
the time totality begins, the sky will be getting quite dark and the Moon 
will be fairly high.
http://www.universetoday.com/am/uploads/2004-1013eclipse-full.jpg

SUNSPOT MINIMUM? On October 11, solar astronomers saw something they 
haven't seen on the Sun in six years... nothing. Not a single sunspot. 
Within a couple of days, of course, a sunspot popped up, and they're on 
the Sun right now. This is a clear indication to astronomers that the Sun 
is on its way to the low point of its 11-year cycle of activity, called 
the "solar minimum". During the solar minimum, the Sun can be without 
spots for days or even weeks, and solar flares subside. Astronauts will 
breath a sigh of relief; it's a safer time to be out in space. 
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/18oct_solarminimum.htm  
AND http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/18oct_solarminimum.htm?list55866

EARTHQUAKES AND GRAVITY: Geophysicists in Japan have detected a change in 
the Earth's gravitational field caused by an earthquake for the first 
time. Yuichi Imanishi of the University of Tokyo and colleagues used an 
array of superconducting gravimeters to detect an increase of less than 1 
micro-Galileo (10-8 meters per second per second) near the epicenter of 
the Tokachi-oki earthquake, which occurred in September 2003. The results 
agree with theoretical predictions and could help interpret measurements 
of the Earth's gravity made by satellites (Science 306 476). 
http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/10/9

GENESIS: As scientists begin to unpack more than 3,000 containers of 
samples  of the sun brought to Earth by NASA's Genesis mission, the Mishap 
Investigation Board has identified a likely direct cause of the failure of 
Genesis' parachute system to open. 
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/14genesis/

MORE EVIDENCE FOR WATER ON MARS: Now operating three times longer than 
originally expected, NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers are still turning up 
fresh evidence that liquid water once flowed on Mars. Opportunity has 
found a rock, dubbed "Escher", which has a network of cracks similar to 
cracked mud when the water has dried up. On the other side of Mars, Spirit 
is still climbing up the "Columbia Hills", and it seems that every rock it 
looks at shows evidence that it was altered by water. "We haven't seen a 
single unaltered volcanic rock, since we crossed the boundary from the 
plains into the hills, and I'm beginning to suspect we never will," said 
principal investigator Dr. Steve Squyres. 
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2004-253

CASSINI IMAGES MIMAS: Gazing beyond Saturn's magnificent rings, Cassini 
spotted the cause of the dark gap visible in the foreground: Mimas. The 
gravitational influence of Mimas is responsible for the 2,980 mile-wide 
Cassini division, which stretches across the lower left portion of this 
view. The little moon is at a nearly half-full phase in this view. 
http://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/041011mimas.html

MER PROBLEMS: A problem with the wheels on NASA's Spirit rover has stopped 
it dead in its tracks on the surface of Mars. For some reason, the rover's 
right-front and left-rear wheels stopped operating as commanded on Oct. 1. 
NASA engineers have performed a series of diagnostic tests to understand 
which systems could be affected, and they're still analyzing the results.  
One fix would be to permanently disable the brakes on those wheels, but it 
could put the rover at an increased risk. Spirit has now traveled 3.6 km 
(2.2 miles) across the surface of Mars; much further than it was designed 
for, so it's no surprise it's starting to have some mechanical problems.  
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2004-249


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, November 41 2004: "The Case for the Big 
Bang"
AT THE MATURANGO MUSEUM, 100 EAST LAS  FLORES AVE.

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