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Syzygy
The Newsletter of the Kern Astronomical Society No. 497 April 2016
KAS Open Meeting
First Friday of
Every Month
___________________________
April 1, 2016 @ Round
Table Pizza, 4200
Gosford Road, Suite 101,
Bakersfield, CA ____________________________
Dinner & Social 6:30 pm
Meeting/Program 7:30 pm
Dues Point Reached – Sky Humanity
Dues WERE due in March, $24.00 per person to be
registered with Astronomical League. Dues can be paid at
meeting or remitted to Andrea Drake, 5700 March Meadows,
Bakersfield, CA 93313. Make checks payable to Kern
Astronomical Society. Include any e-mail address changes.
Round Table Pizza: You are able to order online or
through the phone prior to arriving to the monthly
meeting, by doing so you will receive customer rewards
http://www.roundtablepizza.com/rtp/
661-397-1111
This Month’s Events
The New
April 1st Meeting at Round Table with
speaker from JPL Dr. Bonnie Buratti
Solar outreach @ Panorama Preserve
April 1st
Our Dark Sky Nights: April 2nd&9th
@Lockwood Valley
1st Bakersfield Panorama Bluff Public
Star Party: April 16th
Thomas Jefferson School outreach
April 13th
April 28th KAS Board Meeting all
members are welcomed as guests
Wind Wolves Festival Solar Outreach
This year, the Wind Wolves Nature Festival will be held at the preserve on March 19th
and 20th. We will be participating on the 19th. While the festival will run from 8:30 am to 5:00
pm we may not get started with the solar viewing until after 9:00 am or when the sun clears the
trees. Last year we were set up on the south side of the main building. If you are bringing a
scope consider parking in close proximity to that side of the headquarters. Last year we were
able to use temporary parking in the upper parking lot to unload equipment, though it was a bit
hectic unless you arrived early. Bring your own food and water, hats and sunscreen. Weather
will determine your outerwear. The window for solar viewing will probably end around 4:00 pm.
Admission is free.
If needed, check our calendar for a map. More can be found out about the preserve at
wildlandsconservancy.org. If you click on the picture about the nature festival you will go to a
page with a video at the bottom of the 2015 festival featuring our own Darren Bly and some of
the telescopes from last year’s event. Even if you do not have a solar scope, this can be a fun
outing with plenty of activities, and you can stop by and see how we are doing. We should have
both white light filter telescopes for sunspots and PST’s for solar prominences and filaments.
All of the telescopes use special filters to protect your eyes
Dr. Bonnie Buratti
Dr. Bonnie Buratti is a Senior Research Scientist and technical manager at NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, with expertise on the structure and evolution of icy moons and other
small bodies. She holds degrees from MIT and Cornell in Astronomy. She is currently serving
on the Science Teams for both the Cassini and New Horizons missions, and she was recently
named the NASA Project Scientist for the Rosetta Mission to a comet. The author or coauthor
of over 200 scientific papers, Dr. Buratti was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement
Medal, and the International Astronomical Union recognized her work by naming asteroid
90502 Buratti after her. Her book “Worlds Fantastic, Worlds Familiar” will be published next
year
April Speaker / Talk
A hearty group of KAS volunteers put in a
full day at the festival on Saturday, March
19th. Andrea Lopez showed the
participants a wide field view of the sun
and sunspots, while Steve Andrews
exhibited enhanced views of two
sunspots in one common magnetic storm.
Andrea and Steve both used white light
filters.
Mike and Darren set up
hydrogen-alpha scopes. Darren
had a unique tree shaped
prominence in the Coronado
PST 60, while Mike was able
to get the two sunspots with
plage, some filaments and a
number of prominences of
various shapes around the
circumference of the sun. Photos By: Walter Albrecht
Articles submitted by: Steve Andrews
Photos by: Walter Albrecht
Kern Astro Public Outreach
On March 17, 2016, Richland
students, parents, and staff were treated
to an evening’s view of a three-quarters
moon, Jupiter with bands and moons,
and the Great Orion Nebula. KAS
members who put on a great show
included Darren Bly, Rod Guice, Andrea
Lopez, Aztlan Payne, Mike Ponek,
Gregg Pytlak, Walter Albrecht, Steve
Andrews, and Don and Sally Belflower.
Harris Elementary
The March 18, 2016 Harris Booster
Club event provided its constituents with
the same show as the night before. The
third quarter moon, Great Orion Nebula,
and Jupiter highlighted the viewing.
Mathew Hall, Irma Hall, Caitlyn Stitt,
Joshua Stitt, Andrea Lopez, Aztlan Payne,
Walter Albrecht, Steve Andrews, and
Darren Bly provided viewing opportunities.
The KAS solar outreach group, Aztlan Payne, Darren
Bly, Don Belflower, and Steve Andrews, hosted
groups of students from Edison to see a looping solar
prominence and three sunspot groups of types Bxo,
Cro, and Hsx. Some of the students got to see
sunspots with umbra and penumbra, and a sunspot
with two light bridges beginning the storm
disintegration. Clouds encumbered the viewing with
intermittent interference, but most of the students had
good viewing along with a safety lesson and
information about the sun from Darren.
Edison Middle School at Panorama
Preserve
Richland Jr. High, Shafter
Since 1956, the Kern Astronomical Society has
promoted community awareness of current events in
astronomy, and provides a forum for sharing of
knowledge and experiences among amateur
astronomers. Annual membership is $24.00 which
also provides membership in the Amateur
Astronomical League, access to their newsletter
(Reflector Magazine), and participation in
observational programs.
President: Andrea Lopez lopezand96@gmail.com
Vice President: Mike Ponek mponek@bak.rr.com
Treasurer: Andrea Drake adrake1310@gmail.com
Secretary: Heather Ponek heatronn@bak.rr.com
Star Party Coordinator: Darren Bly dcbly@bak.rr.com
According to a NASA website, Dr. Buratti’s interests include:
Seasonal transport of volatiles on the surfaces of the planets and satellites in the
solar system particularly Pluto and Triton
The composition, distribution, and nature of dark material in the outer solar
system and the relationship to similar material in the interstellar medium and in
star-forming regions and to prebiotic material
The microphysical nature of planetary surfaces and the possible existence of
water ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles
Rosetta
Rosetta is a project of the European Space Agency (ESA). The Mission,
Rosetta, was named after the Rosetta stone which was a decree written in three
script/languages, Hieroglyphics, Egyptian Demotic, and Classical Greek. The Phylae
lander was named after the Phylae obelisk which had Hieroglyphics and Greek
translations. After flybys of the asteroids Steins and Lutetia the mission reached comet
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in May 2014.
The mission will attempt to learn more about the origin of comets by
understanding connections between cometary and interstellar materials, thereby giving
clues to the origin of the solar system. NASA instruments have been sent to provide
information about the comet’s coma and tail and water and carbon monoxide/dioxide
(ALICE), the abundance of major gases and surface outgassing (MIRO), and the
formation of layers of the coma (IES). (IES) which is one of five instruments in the
Rosetta Plasma Consortium also analyzes particles ionized by the solar wind on the
comet as well as the asteroids.
ALICE
MIRO
RPC (IES)
Dawn
This mission was sent to the asteroid and possible future dwarf planet, 4 Vesta,
and to the past asteroid and current dwarf planet, Ceres. Two and a half times farther
from the sun than Earth, Vesta has no atmosphere to keep in heat, so temperatures are
-60°C (-76°F) during the day and -130°C (-202°F) at night. While it takes 3.6 Earth
years to orbit the sun, it turns on its axis every 5 hours and 20 minutes, which is not so
difficult for a body with an average diameter of 356 miles.
Red indicates higher elevations.
Vesta is the last rocky proto planet
with geological layers including an iron
core, a mantle, and a crust. There is
not much evidence of craters from the
Late Heavy Bombardment (HLB) less
than 4 billion years ago but it did
survive some large collisions, one of
which formed the crater, Rheasilvia,
giving Vesta a misshapen appearance
and sending shockwaves through the
crust and mantle 400 km away forming
the Divalia Fossa, which is slightly larger
than the Grand Canyon, Meteorites on
Earth have been identified as coming from
Vesta and this collision..
Ceres composes about a third of the
mass of the objects in the asteroid
belt and it has a 581 mi. diameter.
The Cererian day is 9 hrs. 4 min. and
its orbit around the sun is 4.6 Earth
years. It is rounded by its own gravity.
An icy mantle covers a rocky core.
The surface was believed to be a mix
of water, carbonates, and clay with
the possibility of internal water below
the surface. The process erasing the
LHB craters was different than that on
Vesta.
Other Projects on which Dr. Buratti has worked include:
Cassini-Huygens explores the ringed planet, its mysterious moons, the
stunning rings and its complex magnetic environment.
Moon Multispectral Mapper (M3) is one of the instruments that NASA is
contributing to India’s first mission to the Moon. Chandrayaan-1 (meaning
“Lunar Craft” in ancient Sanskrit), landed on October 22, 2008.
New Horizons is the first mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program of
medium-class planetary missions. It visited Pluto and its now 5 moons.
One of the two main “mysteries” of
Ceres is the bright spots made famous
by Spot 5 in the Occator crater. These
may be deposits of magnesium sulfate
hexahydrate similar to Epsom salt for
sore feet on Earth. The other is Ahuna
Mons the 3 mi. high dome and only
mountain on the flat surface, possibly a
result of cryovolcanic activity.
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