All year long, astronomers have been writing about Comet ISON: will it sizzle or will it fizzle? I was chomping at the bit, waiting for the visual magnitude to brighten enough to try viewing this comet through my own telescope (shown on the right). Finally, the [...]]]>

Comet ISON October 6, 2013 by Jane Houston Jones

All year long, astronomers have been writing about Comet ISON: will it sizzle or will it fizzle? I was chomping at the bit, waiting for the visual magnitude to brighten enough to try viewing this comet through my own telescope (shown on the right). Finally, the weekend, a dark sky, comet magnitude and perfect weather all came together Saturday night, October 5th and Sunday morning, October 6th.

First, backtrack 16 years. I fondly recall the great comet of 1997 – Comet C/1995 O1, Comet Hale-Bopp, which ruled the skies for 18 months. When it passed perihelion on April 1, 1997, it was brighter than all stars in the sky except for Sirius. With its 50 degree long tails it spanned the evening sky, and was the talk of the town, the water cooler and even led the commute chatter among the passengers in my van pool. Everybody saw it. I sketched it. Astronomy clubs flourished with eager new stargazers. Telescopes were literally flying off the shelf. Then, two years after it faded from view, in April 1999, I observed Comet Hale-Bopp from Ayers Rock in the Australian Outback, through my 12.5-inch telescope, as it scooted in front of the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was over 8 AU/700 million miles away, as far away as Saturn is from Earth. I’ve been remembering the anticipation then the excitement of Hale-Bopp while impatiently waiting for ISON.

Comet ISON’s magnitude is somewhere in the magnitude 10-11? range at the time of my Sunday morning sketch, tho’ all the sources I use show different magnitudes. On October 5, when I observed and made this little sketch these three sources I regularly use show different magnitudes. Magnitude 10.6 here. Magnitude 10.7 here. And magnitude 10 (or even brighter 9.something) here.

So for my observation, I thought it would be more interesting to show the magnitude of many of the the nearby stars I could see in my eyepiece. I used my 12.5-inch f/6.75 reflector and a 19mm Nagler Panoptic eyepiece for a magnification of 96x. Conditions were spectacular, very steady seeing at 5:00 am, and away from the the Zodiacal Light and Milky Way the limiting magnitude had been an impressive 6.5. I was able to see three 14.0 magnitude stars, two very near the comet. I tried higher and lower magnification (over 200x and under 50x) and couldn’t see the comet in any eyepiece over 125x. The sketch shows the comet a bit brighter than it really appeared. It was like an oval puff of barely-there cloud with a brighter condensed area, I assume was the coma. It was much larger than I was expecting. No tail visible. Can’t wait to observe and sketch it again on October 26th despite a big bright moon and November 2nd which should be a perfect moonless viewing night. Until then, I’m looking forward to hearing about more visible reports. Photos are great, but star-stuff hitting your eyes is the best!

Perihelion or bust!

There’s nothing quite like a half century to [...]]]> Note: this is the unedited version my dad sent out to the family 2 weeks ago. After living through this, I loved the original version the best, but here is the September 2, 2013 published version Marin Voice: Marches on Washington — 1963 and 2013 as well.

There’s nothing quite like a half century to provide perspective on one’s own little chunk of history.

We lived in Denton, Texas in 1963, a university town with two major campuses, 24,000 students, and a large house that was known on campus as the “Student Center”.

Denton disproved the theory that university towns are always liberal bastions of tolerance and acceptance. When I arrived on campus, I was amazed to find that although the universities had begun to accept black students, they were not yet allowed in university housing.

Each person had to search for off-campus accommodations in the black ghetto of the town (no paved streets or central sewage, little if any city services, few public accommodations).

Gradually, as the movement for civil rights was beginning to get traction nationally, the movement for social equality and civil rights began to excite our students—black and white.

Rumors circulated early that summer about how a big national gathering was to be held in Washington, D.C. in August. Maybe some of us could attend.

Reality then kicked in to remind everyone that we had plenty of “desegregating” to do right here at home. The black students who had formed the “Denton Integration Movement” began to use our Student Center as their central office and meeting space.

We were shocked by the assassination of NAACP field director Medgar Evers on June 12. He was well known and the murder galvanized our movement. Demonstrations began. Progress was slow.

It was then that I invited Aaron Henry, a NAACP colleague of Evers to speak on campus. Evers had driven Henry to the airport in Jackson shortly before he was murdered in his home driveway.

The search began for a place to host the meeting featuring an African American speaker. The churches and the university rejected our inquiries. The editor of the principal paper refused us ad space in his paper saying, “we just can’t afford to offend southern sensibilities”.

We pressured an embarrassed dean to finally open a lecture hall and Aaron spent his two days in Denton speaking and meeting with students.

As the planning for the March on Washington began, A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and a longtime leader in the struggle for economic justice, assumed the lead in the organizing.

Randolph understood that injustice and racism had many dimensions. The 1963 march is remembered as a demonstration for civil rights. But it was billed first of all as a demand for “Jobs and Freedom”. It was virtually a Labor Day march.

On Labor Day this year, social freedoms are wider, but the unemployment rate, and the high school drop out ratios for black males are still double that among whites. The dream is yet to be fulfilled.

Many of the presentations were predictable at the 1963 march, but Martin King’s speech will remain as a political, social and moral guidepost in our future human rights struggles.

The economic barrier that concerned Randolph is still sitting smack in the middle of the road blocking the creation of good jobs for all people. Labor Day in 2013 is more than ever a reminder of the continuing economic and educational injustices faced by millions of working people.

My bosses were upset that we allowed “colored” people to use our student center that summer of ‘63. So, I resigned and a year later we packed up and headed for the Bay area.

Looking back, most of the leaders of that 1963 march—Marian Anderson, Philip Randolph, Mrs. Medgar Evers, John Lewis, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, Mahalia Jackson—would have been generally pleased with much of the progress of the last half-century.

But they would have agreed with Martin King when he said, “1963 is not an end, but a beginning”. He left it to all of us to move ourselves, our neighbors, and our nation forward.
______________________________________________________
Alan Miller, August 26, 2013

About Alan Miller

Alan S. Miller served on the faculties in Environmental Science, Policy and Management, and Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he began teaching on the Berkeley campus in 1973. He is the author of numerous articles and books including A Planet to Choose: Value Studies in Political Ecology (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1978), I Hope You’re All Republicans: Controversial Quotations from Ronald W. Reagan (Berkeley CA: Catalyst Press 1981), Global Stakes: The Linkages of Peace (Wellington, New Zealand: Pacific Institute of Resource Management Press, 1988), and Gaia Connections: An Introduction to Ecology, Ecoethics and Economics (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991 and 2003 (revised 2nd Edition).

Alan Miller taught courses in Global Environmental Issues, Environmental Philosophy, Bioethics, Nuclear Safety, and World Order and the Environment. He has been a parish minister, a university chaplain, the director of an ecumenical higher education agency, a community organizer, and an editor with Pacific News Service in San Francisco. He continues to write regular opinion/editorials for San Francisco Bay Area newspapers. A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, he and Barbara Jones Miller have five children and have resided in Marin County, California since 1965.

Omega Centauri globular cluster 35 degrees below Spica

Springtime is my favorite observing season. In the course of an evening you can face away from our own galaxy and feast your eyes on other Milky Ways, while tracking down some of the most spectacular [...]]]>

Follow the dipper arc to Arcturus, then spike to Spica

Omega Centauri globular cluster 35 degrees below Spica

Springtime is my favorite observing season. In the course of an evening you can face away from our own galaxy and feast your eyes on other Milky Ways, while tracking down some of the most spectacular objects tangled among the stars and dust of our own galaxy.

Omega Centauri is one of them. It’s the largest of the 150+ globular clusters discovered in our own Milky Way Galaxy. There may be even more undiscovered globular clusters hidden behind the gas and dust of our galaxy. Omega Centauri was discovered by Edmund Halley in 1677 as a nebula, but it had been listed in Ptolemy’s catalog 2000 years ago as a star! It’s located about 15,800 light-years from Earth and contains several million Population II stars. The stars in its center are so crowded that they are estimated to average only 0.1 light years away from each other. It is about 12 billion years old, and there is some speculation that Omega Centauri may be the core of a dwarf galaxy which was disrupted, destroyed and absorbed in an encounter with the Milky Way.

This spectacular object is well known to southern hemisphere observers, but it may come as a surprise that it can be seen from many northern hemisphere locations as well. If you are south of the 25th parallel or 25° (degrees) North latitude you should be able to see it 20° above the horizon, and located 35° below Virgo’s great blue-white star, Spica. I’ve observed it from 37° North (Lake Sonoma, CA) several times (from a hill with a negative horizon) and at 33° N in this writeup, where it appeared less than 20° above the horizon definitely! It’s been seen from 42° North as well, from a very flat horizon. It’s a naked eye object, but often the horizon is hazy, so scan with binoculars if you don’t see it with your eyes.

NGC 5128, Centaurus A Galaxy, and NGC 5139 Omega Centauri, the largest Globular Cluster in our Milky Way

To find Omega Centauri, you’ll first have to find Spica, the brightest star in Virgo. It helps right now that golden Saturn is near by. To find Spica, continue the curve of the big dipper handle and “arc to Arcturus, and then spike to Spica”. Spica transits — when it reaches its highest point in the sky — at around midnight daylight saving time. Use this table of transit times for major solar system objects and bright stars and select your observing dates, object (Spica in this case) and your location and press “compute”. “Alt” next to the transit time at your location indicates Spica’s altitude above the horizon. Spica and Omega Centauri transit at the same time, so look about 35° (one clenched fist is 10°) directly below Spica to look for an oval hazy cluster the size of the full moon. Can you see individual stars? Does it look round or oval? Try with your eyes, then with binoculars.

After confirming my view of Omega Centauri and making this little sketch (sketch view as seen through my binoculars), I opened my Herald Bobroff AstroAtlas to the Centaurus constellation pages and looked at what else was in the vicinity of Omega Centauri. I remembered a favorite galaxy, NGC5128, officially named Centaurus A, but nicknamed the hamburger galaxy for obvious reasons. Now I’ve seen both of these objects from Australian skies where they are not hugging the horizon. But even through a partially cloudy horizon, I was able to see this fabulous object, with its dark dust lane bisecting the oval galaxy.

NGC5128 is one of the closest radio galaxies to Earth, so its active galactic nucleus has been extensively studied by professional astronomers, and a supernova was detected in the galaxy’s dust lane in 1986. The Spitzer Space Telescope studies have confirmed that Centaurus A is colliding with and devouring a smaller spiral galaxy! Centaurus A is located approximately 4° north of Omega Centauri, and because the galaxy has a high surface brightness and relatively large angular size (2/3 the apparent size of Omega Centauri), it’s visible to the naked eye under good conditions. My sketch was made with difficulty, by aiming my 14.5-inch reflector (with a 10mm Radian eyepiece for 200x) nearly horizontal and half-perched uncomfortably on the bottom step of my observing ladder.

M68 cluster in Hydra, NGC2903 Galaxy in Leo

Before moving on, I observed another object in the southern sky line between Spica and Omega Centauri, Globular Cluster M68, or NGC4590 in the constellation Hydra. I sketched an oval glow of stars within a diffuse squarish haze of fainter stars.

Now it was time to get vertical and observe some other objects higher in the sky. The beautiful constellation Leo was still well placed in the southwest sky after midnight. I opened my Night Sky Observer’s Guide Volume 2, the Spring and Summer volume to Leo. Gamma Leonis, or Algeiba, is a beautiful deep yellow/orange and pale yellow double star in the sickle (or backwards question mark or lion’s mane) of Leo’s head. Next, I moved to a fascinating red dwarf, Wolf 359, near the famous Leo galaxies M95, M96 and the Leo “trio” of galaxies. Wolf 359 moves 4.71″ (arcseconds) per year or 8′(arcminutes) in a century. It’s the third closest star to the sun, at 7.75 light years away. Only Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s Star are closer. At magnitude 13.6 (similar to Pluto’s magnitude) it’s faint, but the striking red color helps distinguish it from the other nearby stars.

Leo 1 near Regulas, Leo’s heart was my next target. A faint dwarf galaxy overshadowed by bright Regulus is a member of the local group of galaxies, and may be one of the most distant satellites of the Milky Way. Faint NGC2903 — a very pretty magnitude 9 barred spiral galaxy tangled in the starry lion’s mane was worth a sketch. It’s 31 million light years away, local but not attached to any local galaxy group. I had to go and have a look at the supernova in Leo’s M65 galaxy – here is Mojo’s animation of M65,combining two images of M65, one shot on 3/9/13 at Amboy Crater, and one shot on 4/6/13 at Chuckwalla Bench located at N 33° 39′ 37″, W 115° 32′ 26″

Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) shot before dawn on 4/7/13, five-minute exposure

It dawned on me I hadn’t observed Saturn yet. Under fabulous steady skies, I was able to pump up the magnification of my 15-inch Litebox reflector to over 300x using a 6mm Televue Radian eyepiece. When I say “my” 14.5-inch Litebox, I mean Mojo’s — I have a 12.5-inch and 17.5-inch version of these fabulous time machines. This image taken by Anthony Wesley the same night shows Saturn as I viewed it. My visual view was not quite this vivid, but the contrast of the colors is very similar to what I saw, including the dark north polar region, so famous in the Cassini North Polar Hexagon images. The distinct band colors and darker north polar area I saw and sketched were varying shades of butterscotch and chocolate.

All that was left now was Comet PanSTARRS, and we had to wait until about 4:00 a.m. for Andromeda to rise in the northeastern sky. I observed it in my 7×50 Carton Adlerblick binoculars quickly and then pooped out and went to sleep until well after dawn. Mojo stayed up and took this lovely image, plus several more including a time sequence showing the comet’s motion. It’s really worth a look and a read and here’s the link. Until next dark sky observing night on May 11, I’m signing off!

Mojo’s images and report from the same night

Here’s Mojo’s atrophotography post from the same evening.

After some months away from dark skies, everything looks foreign, even to long time observers like me. I recognize the familiar constellations, but sometimes I forget where some of my favorite telescopic targets are located. On nights like this, I don’t just revisit [...]]]>

Start your night with binoculars

Here’s Mojo’s atrophotography post from the same evening.

After some months away from dark skies, everything looks foreign, even to long time observers like me. I recognize the familiar constellations, but sometimes I forget where some of my favorite telescopic targets are located. On nights like this, I don’t just revisit the same old objects with my telescope. I sit down and scan the sky — from horizon to horizon — with my binoculars, until a stargazing project presents itself to me.

There are a lot of binoculars out there. When I was beginning my amateur astronomy hobby 25 years ago, I bought a pair of Carton Adlerblick 7 X 50 (7 times magnified) binoculars. I still use them, though I do have more powerful binos, which weigh more, which is why I rarely use them. These Adlerblicks are my go-to binoculars. They are lightweight and are great for both terrestrial and celestial viewing.

So, on some dark sky nights, I start my observing session by scanning the sky with my binoculars, and hope to find an object or theme of objects to observe. I end up with an old favorite in the binocular view pretty quickly almost every time.

Sky Map Pro sky chart crop showing Kemble's Cascade with the location of NGC 1502, 1501 and IC 342 shown

Kemble's Cascade, sketched from 7 x 50 binocular view

That happened last night (March 9, 2013), as I scanned the northern constellations from Amboy Crater, our current favorite dark sky site. All of a sudden, my entire binocular field of view was bisected by a line of bright stars, Kemble’s Cascade, an old favorite of mine! This is one of the joys of visual observing. I love to scan the sky with binoculars, then dig a little deeper to see what is in the neighborhood using my star charts. After years of observing “lists” of projects, I really enjoy just letting my binoculars be my guide to a night of stargazing.

Kemble’s Cascade is a nearly straight line of stars as long as 5 full moons lined up side by side. It completely spanned my binocular field of view. Kemble’s Cascade is one of the finest binocular objects in the winter sky, but is located in one of the most difficult constellations to actually see: Camelopardalis, the camel leopard (or the Giraffe). It’s located near Polaris, between and above Cassiopeia and Perseus. Quick hint: I aim my binoculars at the Perseus Double cluster, and scan up from there until I find it. This asterism (not a constellation, but a group of stars forming some shape) was named after Father Lucian J. Kemble, an amateur astronomer from Canada who first saw this cascade of faint stars.

I took out my sketch notebook and sketched this view from my binoculars. Now my evening stargazing project had a start. After I made this sketch, I opened my Night Sky Observer’s Guide (NSOG) to the constellation Camelopardalis to remind myself what else was in the neighborhood. This two (three, actually – the third being southern skies) book series is organized by constellation with one book for summer and spring constellations, and another volume for autumn and winter. It’s my go-to observing book. I can open it to any constellation and find a wonderful starhopping project for the night.

Camelopardalis is a northern circumpolar constellation. Find Polaris, the North Star and you are in the celestial neighborhood of the camel-leopard, or Giraffe constellation.

One of the finder charts in the chapter on Camelopardalis showed several objects near the Kemble’s Cascade line of stars – a star cluster, a planetary nebula and a galaxy. I hadn’t looked at these for a while – two are on William Herschel’s small project list, the Herschel 400, which I observed many years ago. So I settled in for a pleasant hour of starhopping. Through the telescope, only a few of the stars of Kemble’s Cascade filled each eyepiece view. So first I just rode along the cascade, star by star. The first of the deep sky objects soon was in my eyepiece.

Open Cluster NGC 1502

Planetary Nebula NGC 1501

Face-on spiral galaxy IC 342

NGC 1502 – The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (NGC) is a well-known catalogue of deep sky objects compiled by Dreyer in 1888, as a new version of John Herschel’s Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars. NGC 1502 is a stunning open cluster near the south end of Kemble’s Cascade, 2,680 light-years away, and estimated to be only 11.2 million years old. Once you memorize where to find the Cascade (I can see this cluster naked eye from our dark sky observing spots, and use it to find Kemble’s Cascade), you have a second easy-to-find, and crowd pleasing object to share with others. The cluster is rich with bright stars, shines at magnitude 5.7, making it naked-eye visible from a dark sky. It will remind experienced stargazers of the ET Cluster, NGC 457 in nearby Cassiopeia. (At least it reminds me of that nearby cluster)! They both have two prominent non-human “eyes” comprised of brighter stars. Take some time looking at this cluster, and find the pretty blue and gold double star embedded in it.

NGC 1501 is a bright planetary nebula with a blue color visible from a dark sky, glowing at magnitude 11.5, located 4,900 light-years distant. Though it’s not naked eye visible, it’s easy to find in a moderate-sized (6-12 inch) telescope. It will remind experienced observers of the Eskimo nebula in Gemini. If your sky conditions allow, view this nebula at high power – I used a 9mm eyepiece on my 12.5 inch f/5.75 reflector for a magnification of 202X. At this power I was able to see the faint blue color, dark and light markings, and see that it was wider in the middle. 8-10 inch telescopes will show this detail at high power from a dark sky.

IC 342 (IC stands for Index Catalogue, one of two supplements to the NGC. The first was published in 1895 and contained 1,520 objects, while the second was published in 1908 and contained 3,866 objects, for a total of 5,386 IC objects). IC 342 is a spiral galaxy seen face-on. The nucleus is bright and the spiral arms are visible in a dark sky through moderate sized telescopes such as my 12.5 inch reflector. The magnitude is an easy 9.1 — easy through a telescope, not naked-eye visible. It is 6.5 million light years away. On the SW side of the galaxy, a string of foreground Milky Way stars – 6 stars in a straight line – are easy to see. IC 342 is one of the brightest two galaxies in the IC 342/Maffei Group of galaxies, one of the galaxy groups that is closest to our Local Group. In 1935, Harlow Shapley declared that this galaxy was the third largest spiral galaxy by angular size then known, smaller only than the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33), being wider that the full moon. (Modern estimates are more conservative, giving the apparent size as one-half to two-thirds the diameter of the full moon). It is almost hidden from view behind the veil of stars, gas and dust clouds in the plane of our Milky Way galaxy!

Don’t be afraid to scan the sky with binoculars, even if you don’t know where you are looking or what to do you once you see something interesting. Ask a nearby astronomer, and in many cases, she will be able to aim her telescope at your new binocular discovery. It’s a great way to start your stargazing hobby!

Saturn cut from Susan's Luminaria

Luminaria for Mojo (that's a cutout galaxy which was super difficult to cut out)

I started writing this just after Susan died, but couldn’t bring myself to finish it. Today is the one year anniversary of [...]]]>

2012 Monrovia Relay for Life Luminaria in honor of Susan Niebur, @whymommy

Saturn cut from Susan's Luminaria

Luminaria for Mojo (that's a cutout galaxy which was super difficult to cut out)

I started writing this just after Susan died, but couldn’t bring myself to finish it. Today is the one year anniversary of her death on February 6, 2012. Today is the day to finish, add, publish. Today, like every day, I am missing Susan.

“All that survives after our death are publications and people. So look carefully after the words you write, the thoughts and publications you create, and how you love others. For these are the only things that will remain.” –Susan Niebur

A year ago I was reminiscing back to the day I met Susan and jotted down the next few paragraphs.

“I follow you on Twitter” she said as she looked down to my name badge at March 2010′s, 41st Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference, near Houston TX. I looked at her name badge, and my eyes popped out a little. I was talking to @womenplanetsci! Susan Niebur!

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning at the Women in Planetary Sciences networking breakfast, won’t I”? and before I could open my mouth to form the word of my reply, she was gone. She was down the hall inviting another woman she didn’t know to the networking breakfast.

On the day after that memorable and inspiring 2010 breakfast, I was in the conference hotel elevator with Susan and her husband Curt, who I knew from my work on the Cassini Mission to Saturn at JPL. Susan was rushing home, due to illness, I overheard in hushed elevator-abbreviated spouse-speak. I didn’t know anything about her cancer. All I knew about Susan was her science and her amazing personal presence. If you are lucky enough to meet someone in your lifetime with this electric aura, you’ll know it in an instant. I knew it. I knew she was a super-star the moment we met.

When I got home from that conference, I followed @whymommy in addition to @womenplanetsci on Twitter, found Susan’s Toddler Planet blog, and her Mothers with Cancer website. I read through several years of posts non-stop. I was sucker-punched with the news of her cancer, her cancer and science outreach, advocacy, and her fierce love for her family. My own sister Wendy had just completed breast cancer surgery and was about to start radiation at exactly the same time I met Susan. And at the same time my darling beloved husband Mojo was recovering from prostate cancer surgery, and had yet to receive his first post-op PSA. (Both are now three years cancer free.)

I was so very sad (heartbroken actually) to have missed the 2012 LPSC conference, held shortly after Susan died. Mostly, I wanted to feel Susan’s spirit there at the Women in Planetary Science luncheon, and share remembrances, laughs and tears with colleagues.

Oh, I miss her so.

I added this today: Four months after Susan died, it was time for our local Monrovia CA Relay for Life event. The cancer survivors take the first lap around the park, walking through and past hundreds of luminaria – hand decorated white paper lunch bags illuminated with a glow stick (no candles allowed, fire marshall regulations) inside – each remembering a loved one or thanking a caregiver.

Each year, the walkers stop and look at the moon or planets through our Sidewalk Astronomy club telescopes. This year, in addition to sharing the night sky with the crowds at my telescope, I made three luminaria. One was for my sister Wendy who is breast cancer free since 2010. One was for my hubby Mojo – who is prostate cancer free since 2010. The luminaria I made for Susan had a cutout of the planet Saturn for the light to shine through. I observed Saturn through my telescope, and thought of Susan, then colored the bits of luminaria cutouts to match the planet’s golden yellow hue, and made this special view of Saturn. I dedicated it to this amazing woman whose light and inspiration continues to shine on so many of us every single day.

Here are a few links I haven’t seen mentioned in other blogs:

But first, I really missed Susan’s DC Mom friends blog & Twitter posts. Getting a little caught up today.

Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) announcement

Dr Jim Green presents Susan with the NASA Planetary Science Public Service Award (video)

Susan speaking about Women in Planetary Science and leading NASA Missions (video)

NASA Solar System Exploration Susan Niebur’s NASA Solar System Exploration “people” page with great links!

Susan’s blog Turning awareness to action: donate, educate, advocate, volunteer

My cancer blogs with tips from Susan to Donate, Educate, Advocate, Volunteer

Here’s Emily Lakdawalla’s February 2012 Planetary Society blog about Susan.

ISON in December 2013

Comet ISON first spotted by amateur astronomer Bruce Gary and has been imaged by many [...]]]> All year long, astronomers have been writing about Comet ISON: will it sizzle or will it fizzle? Both! Here’s my What’s Up video, with December status (written in mid November, but luckily, the comet didn’t completely fizzle)

ISON in December 2013

Comet ISON first spotted by amateur astronomer Bruce Gary and has been imaged by many eagle-eyed observers with good astrophotography equipment since mid August. A selection of images and data are shown here. I’ll update this frequently as more is understood about Comet ISON. Meanwhile, here is a wesbite with current Comet ISON magnitude and location which is constantly updated!

Comet ISON survived its close pass of the sun on November 28. Scientists are unsure what is actually left of the comet. A fragmented nucleus? Nothing but orbiting dust? Stay tuned!

Here’s an excellent Star Chart showing Comet ISON’s path in November, courtesy of Skyhound’s Skytools3 software. (These are the charts I use for my own deep sky observing.) The chart has not been updated for December as of November 30th.

Latest visible comet news here.

December 2013

ISON will be visible both before dawn and after sunset this month, though it is fading as of November 30th! It will appear higher in the sky at dawn than at sunset, providing a better chance to see it. During the second half of December, Comet ISON should fade rapidly as it moves north. It will be closest to Earth in its orbit on December 26.

You may have noticed a very bright ‘star’ in the western sky. That’s Venus! Venus shines at its very brightest, magnitude -4.9 this month. It sets about three hours after sunset at the beginning of the month and one and a half hours after sunset at the end of the month. This is a great month to view the dramatic changes in the apparent diameter and phases of Venus as it races towards its conjunction with the sun. The first observations of the phases of Venus were made by Galileo in 1610!

Mars continues to grow brighter and rises near midnight, and Jupiter rises earlier in the evening, heralding the best viewing season for Jupiter watchers.

The beautiful Geminid meteor shower will only slightly be marred by moonlight on the night of December 13 and 14. The radiant lies near Gemini with brilliant Jupiter above and the constellation Orion below. From a dark sky, but even from the city, the mighty hunter Orion is easily visible in the southeast sky. Take a look at Orion’s shoulder star, red Betelgeuse and its knee star, blue Rigel and the Orion Nebula.southwestern horizon.

The Milky Way and all the visible planets and comets should encourage stargazers to escape the city lights this month. Join me in the California Desert November 30, at MOjave National Preserve. We have no chance to See ISON for another week, but there are other nice comets, planets, stars, and dark sky objects too enjoy from dusk to dawn.

If Comet ISON survives its perihelion pass we should have a spectacular view of the comet’s dust tail in December.

The times to look will be just after dusk, low to the horizon at sunset, and higher at dawn for northern latitudes the first half of the month. On December 1, look for a pretty diagonal lineup of the comet, Mercury and the crescent moon just before sunrise in the southeast. Then for the second half of the month, the comet becomes circumpolar. It will appear near the constellation Draco on December 26th, when it is half an a.u. (0.42 a.u.to be exact) from Earth. Will the comets’ tail span a quarter of the sky? I’ll update this as more info is available.

Jupiter reaches opposition January 4th, 2014, and rises earlier in the evening. Venus bright as it ever gets – a whopping magnitude -4.9. It will be a fabulous view – a particularly good astrophoto and sketching target as it grows in diameter, but shrinks in phase. Mars increases in brightness and rises earlier (after midnight). Mars will be a great target for 2014.

That’s all for this year, I’m Jane Houston Jones

]]> http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2013/01/07/whats-up-in-2013-at-a-glance/feed/ 2 http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2012/08/18/venus-kissed-the-moon-a-daytime-occultation-of-venus/ http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2012/08/18/venus-kissed-the-moon-a-daytime-occultation-of-venus/#comments Sat, 18 Aug 2012 21:41:26 +0000 jane http://jane.whiteoaks.com/?p=6789 going

going

gone!

Venus reappears!

If you were up before sunrise on Monday, August 13th, 2012 you might have seen a very bright “star” next to the moon. As dawn turned to daylight, you could still see that star, or rather, that planet in the daytime snuggled up to the crescent moon.

That planet was [...]]]>

going



going



gone!



Venus reappears!

If you were up before sunrise on Monday, August 13th, 2012 you might have seen a very bright “star” next to the moon. As dawn turned to daylight, you could still see that star, or rather, that planet in the daytime snuggled up to the crescent moon.

That planet was Venus, and the moon was about to pass directly in front of it as seen from our vantage point on Earth. An occultation occurs when a solar system body passes in front of a more distant one or a star. Each one is only visible from a certain part of Earth. This occultation of Venus by the moon was only visible over northern Asia and Japan at night and over North America during the daytime.

I set an alarm to remind myself to step outside at about noon on Monday. It was a challenge to find the slender crescent moon, but I had a great view, shielded from the sun by the tall wall of my office building. The shadow helped by boosting the viewing contrast a little, too!

I had no difficulty seeing Venus naked-eye. And for about an hour I held court on the steps to JPL’s famed Space Flight Operations Facility or SFOF for short, and showed a daytime planet to several dozen of my colleagues. At about 1:30 p.m. PDT the moon passed in front of Venus after inching closer for over a half hour.

I was reminded of folksinger Christine Lavin’s lovely song Venus Kissed the Moon from her 1990 album Attainable Love. The lyrics go like this:

Venus kissed the Moon tonight
We watched her in the Sky
She’s been flirtin’ with him for centuries
Too bad he’s so shy
He’s waxing
He’s waning
You don’t see Venus complaining
She’ll steal a kiss whenever she can
Not ’till 2031
Will this happen again

There have actually been several Venus/Moon occultations since Christine wrote this song, but that doesn’t matter. I hummed her sweet song, and watched Venus flirt closer and closer to the moon. I’m listening to it as I write these words, too!

My friend Akkana Peck wrote “If you’ve never seen a Venus occultation before, you’ll be amazed at the difference between the brightness of Venus and the dimness of the moon’s limb. We think of the moon as bright, but it’s actually dark grey, about the same albedo (reflectivity) as asphalt; whereas Venus is covered with brightly reflective clouds.” See Akkana’s images of the Venus occultation and her blog here.

I snapped a few pictures with my hand-held Canon PowerShot SX260 HS with its nifty 20x zoom. I zoomed nearly all the way out for these images.

The next opportunity to see a lunar occultation of Venus from North and Central America will be on December 7, 2015. From Los Angeles, we’ll get to see this event from 7:30 am to 11:30 am.

I’m so glad we don’t have to wait until 2031 to see Venus kiss the moon, Christine!

]]> http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2012/08/18/venus-kissed-the-moon-a-daytime-occultation-of-venus/feed/ 1 http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2012/06/20/observing-in-the-neighborhood/ http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2012/06/20/observing-in-the-neighborhood/#comments Thu, 21 Jun 2012 05:09:52 +0000 jane http://jane.whiteoaks.com/?p=6605 Summer Milky Way, Scorpius and dark nebulae, image by Morris Jones

Observing near the summer solstice means a short observing night sandwiched between a late sunset and an early dawn. Rather than rush through an observing project I find it’s a great time of the year to sit back and trace familiar constellations in my [...]]]>

Summer Milky Way, Scorpius and dark nebulae, image by Morris Jones

Observing near the summer solstice means a short observing night sandwiched between a late sunset and an early dawn. Rather than rush through an observing project I find it’s a great time of the year to sit back and trace familiar constellations in my minds eye, and marvel with anticipation as the eastern horizon brightens. Soon, the stars of Scorpius and Sagittarius will rise and the “clouds” on the horizon take shape as lumps and glittery clusters, bisected by dark nebulae — those mysterious star-less regions within our Milky Way Galaxy.

It’s hard not to just sit and gaze at the unfolding spectacle. So for the first hour or two after darkness last Saturday night (June 16, 2012) I sat in my meteor observing chair and observed the sky with my own eyes. Every now and then I jumped up and eyeball-aimed Mojo’s 15-inch Litebox reflector at this cluster or that nebula. The sky conditions at Amboy Crater were near perfect.

We have 360 degree perfect horizons at this site, with small light domes from 29 Palms, and from departing trains. Temperatures are warm with just a hint of breeze, hot before sunset, shirtsleeve observing all night long, humidity 10% rising to 20% at dawn. Conditions are dry and warm. No dew. Ever! Here’s the Clear Sky Chart for Amboy Crater.



Lyra



Ophiuchus and Poniatowski's Bull



the demoted constellation Poniatowski's Bull and Ophiuchus

As I was looking at the constellation Lyra and its gem-of-a-telescope-target, the Ring nebula, M57, I spotted an asterism nearby, in the northeastern section of Ophiuchus that looked just like Lyra, except it was upside down.

That looked like a good place to select an observing project, so I cracked open my copy of the Night Sky Observers Guide, volume 2 Spring and Summer to the constellation Ophiuchus. I noticed this little group of stars that looked like Lyra were part of an open cluster, and that there was another pretty cluster in the neighborhood.

Best of all, Barnard’s Star was within the cluster! Barnard’s Star is the second closest star to the Earth — only 6 light years away, shining at a faint magnitude 9.5. The Alpha Centauri system, including Proxima Centauri, together are about 4 LY away, but we can’t see them from the US. Barnard’s Star has the greatest proper motion — the angular annual movement across the line of sight against the distant stellar background of any star. It moves 10.4 seconds of arc per year. That compares to a quarter of a degree in a human lifetime, roughly the angular diameter of the full Moon.

Amateur astronomers, carefully sketching or imaging Barnard’s Star once a year for a couple years can actually track the movement of the star. It’s a cool red dwarf. And it’s listed in Jim Kaler’s fabulous book The Hundred Greatest Stars. Jim writes “Barnard’s Star has a metal content only 10 percent that of the Sun. That coupled with its high velocity shows it to be a special, rather rare, kind of star called a “subdwarf” that more belongs to the metal-poor and ancient halo of our Galaxy (the Sun belonging to the disk). It is merely passing through our local neighborhood.”

You’ll definitely need a star chart to find it. Here’s one showing Barnard’s Star within the Melotte 186 star cluster with pretty IC 4665 nearby. This tiny faint red dwarf is a challenge, but it’s worth it, as are the two clusters.

The neighborhood it’s passing (to our line of sight), is through the demoted constellation Poniatowski’s Bull. This V- shaped set of stars looks like a bull’s head and horns in northeastern Ophiuchus. I see Lyra, instead, by adding a few other stars. It was named Poniatowski’s Bull (Taurus Poniatovii), to honor Stanislaus Poniatowski, King of Poland from 1764 to 1795. Named by Polish-Lithuanian astronomer and mathemetician Marcin Odlanicki Poczobutt whose observatory at Vilnius gained royal favor from the King.

So now, when you are looking at our Milky Way, notice Vega and her constellation Lyra. Then turn your head ever so slightly to the right, and you’ll see huge Ophiucus, which looks like a big percolator coffee pot to me. It’s above and between Scorpius and Sagittarius. The left star of the “lid” of the coffeepot is part of my “upside down Lyra”.

Nothing beats visual astronomy. Without taking the time to sit down and just look at the sky, and trace the constellations I never would have discovered this lovely demoted constellation for the first time!

There is always something to observe that you’ve never seen before, even if it is the same old stars. That’s what makes visual astronomy my go-to hobby. Pun intended!

Mojo’s images and writeup from the same night: predawn planets & astrophotography

More Fast Moving Stars

More Demoted Constellations

Early morning hikes – the Chuckwallas of Amboy Crater

]]> http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2012/06/20/observing-in-the-neighborhood/feed/ 0 http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2012/05/08/nasa-social-at-dryden-flight-research-center-may-4-2012/ http://jane.whiteoaks.com/2012/05/08/nasa-social-at-dryden-flight-research-center-may-4-2012/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 21:53:06 +0000 jane http://jane.whiteoaks.com/?p=6277 This way to the first @DrydenSocial

New NASA Social lanyard, badge and patch, old tweetup pins

Here I am inside the Astronaut CTV (Crew Transport Vehicle) I would have laid down on the bed I'm sitting on, but I was too excited!

Here are the fabulous handouts and books for the attendees

My other [...]]]>

This way to the first @DrydenSocial



New NASA Social lanyard, badge and patch, old tweetup pins



Here I am inside the Astronaut CTV (Crew Transport Vehicle) I would have laid down on the bed I'm sitting on, but I was too excited!



Here are the fabulous handouts and books for the attendees



My other car is not an F-18 Hornet

I was one of the lucky attendees at the first NASA Social at Dryden Flight Research Center last Friday, May 4, 2012. Here’s my first blog about the event — a play-by-play rundown of the speakers and tours on the agenda. NASA selects attendees who use social media, so naturally we’re encouraged to share the experience. Who wouldn’t want to do that, anyway? Here’s my social self for you to follow if you’d like: @jhjones on Twitter and JaneHoustonJones on Facebook. My NASA video podcast, What’s Up, with RSS feed and iTunes link is here, on YouTube here, and expanded with educational activites, starcharts and web links here.

But, first of all, I’d like to offer my sincere thanks to the Dryden Office of Strategic Communications team for a flawless and exhilarating experience! Thank you Kevin, Lisa, Terry, Beth, Leslie, and the many others who put this event together. Thanks to the speakers, the pilots, and the many interpreters, managers, AV team, oh, gosh thanks everyone at the Dryden Flight Research Center for allowing 50 Aeronautical geeks/social media savants into your world for a day. We really appreciated it!

In looking over the agenda, I noticed a url below every single speaker’s name and most of the aircraft and other venues we visited. What a brilliant addition to the program!

Introductions
Kevin Rohrer, Chief of the Office of Strategic Communications Kevin’s Bio
Stuff I learned: Kevin makes his own beer, and drinks it too!

Welcome
David McBride, Center Director David’s bio
Stuff I learned: Dryden has the most manned launches of ANY @NASA center! And David watches my What’s Up podcast via itunes on his iPad.

History of Dryden Flight Research Center
Christian Gelzer, Chief Historian About Dryden Stuff I learned: Dryden started in 1946 to test the X-1 and find out if supersonic flight was possible (and survivable).

Sonic Booms
Ed Haering, NASA Aerospace Engineer
Sonic Booms
Dryden sonic boom research Stuff I learned: “The boom you heard today started in 1947. You look out on the lake bed and realize how blessed you are to be doing this.”

Historical aircraft tour
Pete Merlin, Dryden Historian
X-1E
LLRV-Lunar Landing Research Vehicle Stuff I learned: The LLRV was used to study and analyze piloting techniques needed to fly and land the Apollo Lunar Module in the moon’s airless environment
M2-F1 lifting body I learned: M=Manned, F= Flight. The wingless, lifting body aircraft design was initially conceived as a means of landing an aircraft horizontally after atmospheric reentry.

Global Hawk (unmanned)
Phil Hill, NOAA Pilot
Global Hawk Learned: is an unmanned aircraft for high-altitude, long-duration Earth science missions. 111,000 nautical mile range, 30-hour endurance.

Ikhana (Predator B unmanned)
Hernan Posada, Mark Pestana
Ikhana – unmanned science demonstration aircraft. I learned Mark Pestana’s daughter is an intern at JPL, in fact, I’m meeting her tomorrow I met her two days ago and took her on a tour of JPL’s Space Flight Operations Facility “Darkroom”. And I learned Ikhana is a Choctaw Native American word for “intelligent, conscious, or aware, and this drone is used to conduct long-duration Earth observations. One more thing I learned: Mark Designs NASA Mission Patches in his spare time!

Gulfstream- III
Ethan Baumann and Natalie Spivey, NASA Engineers
Gulfstream-III Learned – it’s a multi-role cooperative research platform testbed for a variety of flight research experiments.

Dryden Pilots
Nils Larson, Acting Chief pilot Nils’ bio
Stuff I heard: Great quotes on working at Dryden: “”You look out at the lakebed and you think ‘It’s so cool’…It’s like being paid to eat ice cream.” “U-2 most difficult plane to fly, F/A-18 most fun, F-15 is the Cadillac” Why did you choose @nasaDryden? “Dryden is Mecca for test pilots” “flew between 90 & 100 different planes, blimps, etc. U2 is fun to fly because it can have bad day!”

Link to all Dryden Pilots (warning, includes many astronauts who worked here at Dryden.)

Lunch Break in the Dryden cafe – I had chicken salad with pilots in flight suits! @Camilla_SDO seated (perched) at the next table, gave me the stink-eye >.<

Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology
Mark Skoog, Project Manager
Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology Link to awesome avoidance vids posted soon. I learned to follow the lunch break with collision avoidance videos. Wow!

Flight Opportunities Program
John Kelly, NASA Program Manager
3 min Flight Opportunities vid Stuff I learned: Flight Opportunities system has tested orbital emergency surgery techniques and fire extinguishers prior to use on ISS, helping private companies test in more space-like environs, gets suborbital flights for payloads needing to fly in 0g, stuff like that.

Experimental Fabrication Lab
Ed Swan, Structural Fabrication Branch Chief
Experimental Fabrication Labs What I learned: Best quips of the day. “No aircraft flies here without something pointy sticking out of it.” and “What was your most interesting job?” / “Cutting a four-engine airplane in half.” “@NASADryden understands that parts need to be perfect, they give us our time. Parts can be worth millions in data. Best Quote: “You have a whole project waiting on the part, you don’t have time to tweet”. Here’s another Fabrication Lab feature.

Life Support
Phillip Wellner, Aircrew Life Support Technician
Dryden Aircrew Life Support Systems Stuff I learned: If a pilot flew above the Armstrong limit using only an oxygen mask and no pressure suit, the water wetting his lungs would boil as would the saliva in his mouth. Blood would boil too.
Stuff I watched: Phillip inflated a SR-71 flight suit with a shop vac, High-altitude flight suit fashion show, Helmet foo. Stuff I ate: high altitude Chicken a la king, Sloppy Joes, applesauce in a silvery toothpaste-ish tube.

Flight Load Labs
Larry Hudson, Chief Test Supervisor
Flight Loads Lab What I learned: Watched a plane flap its wings during flight load testing in fast motion. Large quartz lamps apply radiant energy to test airframes to simulate heat in flight. Flight Loads Lab tests not only structural loads, but heat and environmental loads, too!

Photography
Jim Ross, Multimedia Supervisor
Jim Ross link. Stuff I learned: Astronaut Gordon Fullerton, retired, former Chief Pilot at Dryden is mentioned in nearly every presentation. He referred to Jim Ross (and other video/photog staff) as “self loading baggage” with a wink, I bet. (I tweeted that!) Bonus: We all got autographed shuttle/747 picture by Jim (#NASA904 and #OV103).

Videography
Lori Losey, Senior Video Producer/Director
Here’s the video we saw. Lori Losey award writeup. What I learned: Awesome presentation, more great quotes from Lori: I have the best seat in the house. “You can Puke in a bag at 3G’s. You tie it off, put it in your suit, and keep filming.” “Compressed my spine, dislocated my shoulder, bruises from harnesses.”

Hangar 4802 (Aircraft tour and F-18 cockpit photos)
F-18 Hornet aircraft It was an FA-18 flyover test with a sonic boom for the @DrydenSocial!
Crew Transportation Vehicle Learned: Seven seats (and a few beds) for seven Shuttle astronauts in the Crew Transport Vehicle.
YO-3 Only 11 YO-3′s built in the Vietnam era and this is the only remaining functional one. Used for baseline sound tests (it’s very quiet) YO-3A propeller: 78 layers of birch.
T-34 At Dryden, the T-34C is primarily used for chasing remotely piloted unmanned air vehicles which fly slower than NASA’s F-18′s mission support aircraft can fly. It is also used for required pilot proficiency flying.
T-48 This is the 1st time the public has been allowed to see the X-48C Hybrid Wing Body.
Gulfstream II NASA 944, one of four Gulfstream II Shuttle Training Aircraft, arrived at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center from the Johnson Space Center in Houston Aug. 19 in preparation for its retirement and eventual static display.
Beechcraft Kingair One of Dryden’s King Air aircraft, NASA 801, (N801NA) serves as a testbed for various research projects, and is also flown for a range of mission support activities.

Media and blog links

May 1, 2012 feature Behind the Scenes @NASADryden

May 7, 2012 feature NASA Social: Behind the Scenes at Dryden

See what the #DrydenSocial attendees tweeted here!

Flying through the Leonid Storm of 2002, aboard NASA Dryden’s DC-8 Airborne Research Laboratory with Astronaut Gordon Fullerton as our pilot. Lots of interior DC-8 photos of our scientific equipment, too.

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