Fort Worth Astronomical Society (Est. 1949) May 2012 Astronomical League Member. Share the Sky by Patrick McMahon

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1 Fort Worth Astronomical Society (Est. 1949) May 2012 Astronomical League Member : 2 Share the Sky by Patrick McMahon 1

2 May 2012 (times local) Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Full Moon 12:35 am Mother s Day FWAS Meeting 7pm Normal Room Annual DUES Solar Filter Workshop Check the e-group for details 20 Annular Solar Eclipse. Visible in path from Lubbock & Midland (@sunset) westward thru N Cali & S Oregon New Moon 6:04 pm Conjunction SA-ME 06:00am elongation 0.39 sep 6.3W esun Museum Star Party X-Men Rejoice! Werner X 20:44 TO 23:45 Memorial Day Jupiter s Moons In :48 TO 05:57 am Annual DUES Gate codes change & e-group access May is the time for Nomination for open positions of Officers and Directors. Check the recent e-group archives 2

3 June 2012 (times local) Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Ed Kotapish sez: Expand your observational logs this month with GC3079 (an Edge-On Spiral galaxy in Ursa Major) NGC5053 (a sparse Glob near M53) Xi Bootis (easy, beautiful Gold and Orange pair in Bootes) NGC4361(a star-like planetary in Corvus) 1 Conjunction VE-ME 08:00pm elongation 0.19 sep 6.6E esun 2 3 Full Moon 6:12 pm 4 Partial Lunar Eclipse visible at moonset Sunrise: 6:21 am Greatest 6:04 am Umbra 37.04% Moonset:6:29 am 5 TRANSIT of VENUS Father s Day Solstice 6:09 pm Museum Star Party FWAS Meeting 7pm Normal Room CLUB ELECTIONS Jupiter s Moons In :57 TO 05:22 am 3

Recent Club Outreaches photos by Patrick McMohan &

schools and at the monthly star party at the Fort

The next public club shares will be at the Museum star

This is a always a great time to meet and get to know

setups, as well as share the hobby with the community.

Transit of Venus on June 5 th ; check the e-group for

4 Recent Club Outreaches photos by Patrick McMohan & Juan Martinez The club shared the sky at several local schools and at the monthly star party at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. The next public club shares will be at the Museum star parties, May 26 th and June 23 rd. This is a always a great time to meet and get to know your other club members, see different telescope setups, as well as share the hobby with the community. There is discussion on location(s) for sharing the Transit of Venus on June 5 th ; check the e-group for details. (the top of the museum parking lot has a 10-foot security wall that will obstruct the horizon.) 4

Officers and Directors Will be Elected at June Meeting In the new current bylaws, the Executive Board consists of the Officers (President, Vice President, and Secretary Treasurer), and four Directors.

The bylaws are posted in the files section of the club s Yahoo! Pages.

Shawn presented the history of the club, described the membership and their interests, and the benefits of being a club member. PRESENTATION, Jim Craft showed off his homemade monocular.

5 Officers and Directors Will be Elected at June Meeting In the new current bylaws, the Executive Board consists of the Officers (President, Vice President, and Secretary Treasurer), and four Directors. The Officers will serve terms of one year, and the Directors will serve for terms of two years. Two Directors will be elected in even years, and two Directors will be elected in odd years. The bylaws are posted in the files section of the club s Yahoo! Pages. Meeting minutes for March 20 th meeting Lewis Westerfield CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by President Shawn Kirchdorfer. Members and guests were welcomed. Shawn presented the history of the club, described the membership and their interests, and the benefits of being a club member. PRESENTATION, Jim Craft showed off his homemade monocular. He then gave an informative presentation on his homemade magnetometer that detects electromagnetic radiation bursts from the sun. Cool stuff. The group watched a video presentation from the DVD series Understanding the Universe. Alex Filippenko from the University of California at Berkley presented Of Mars and Martians. NEW BUSINESS Nominations are now being accepted for club officers. Elections will be held during the June meeting. Novice Night and a Messier Marathon will be held at the Thomson dark site March 24, 2012 from 1700-midnight. There will be a picnic potluck. Hot dogs, burgers, chips, and water will be supplied. A mirror grinding class will be starting soon. More information will be forthcoming. OLD BUSINESS The next Young Astronomers Club meeting will be 4/21/2012 in Keller from The Astronomical League has several observing clubs the members can participate in; information can be found on the AL website. Cool FWAS stuff can be purchased from Café Press; the link to the website can be found on the e-group. The treasurer reported no new news. Progression on obtaining the 501(c)3 status is slow and steady. Construction at the Thomson dark site is nearing completion. When finished there will be a new road and electricity will be available at the pads. (This is completed) The Venus transit is 6/5/2012. The club plans to have viewing at the FWMSH and the Fort Worth Nature Center. ADJOURN The meeting was adjourned. - 5

6 Cloudy Night Library Media reviews by Matt J. McCullar, FWAS The Restless Sun by Donat G. Wentzel Published in 1989 by Smithsonian Institution Press 279 pages ISBN This is not light reading (snicker). The Sun is a complex machine and astronomers and physicists have been trying to figure it out for hundreds of years. What makes the Sun shine? Does it change over time? How did we figure out what we do know about it? What tools do astronomers use to study it? The Restless Sun provides some of the answers. Some solar phenomena may last only a tenth of a second, others billions of years, the author states. And there is a great deal to study. Despite its brightness, much of the Sun is beyond our ability to see and we must make educated guesses about what goes on beneath its surface. The Restless Sun discusses solar flares at length. Solar flares are explosions. Their energies dwarf those of any explosions on Earth. For perhaps a tenth of a second, explosion temperatures may reach several hundred million degrees! Moderate temperatures like 20 million degrees may last for a minute or more. At these temperatures, most flare radiation is in the form of X rays, which cannot pass through our atmosphere. That is why flares are best observed from space. But sunspots receive even greater attention. Galileo was one of the first scientists to study sunspots. His observations convinced astronomers that the Sun rotates but is not visually perfect, contrary to popular belief at the time. Galileo s observations forced a change of opinion. The recognition of the imperfectness of the Sun contributed to the rise of the heliocentric theory of the solar system. The book explains a lot about what sunspots are, or what we think they are. (Did you know that sunspots are highly magnetic?) They change slowly over the course of days or weeks. Some split into groups. We find more details of solar cycles here, even though some cycles are more regular than others. The 11-year sunspot cycle is only an average (in terms of intensity and length of the cycle). Sunspots have been recorded regularly since the 1600s. Thanks to the Sun, a number of important scientific discoveries came about often by accident. Early solar spectrum analysis revealed the presence of a chemical element in the Sun that had never been detected on Earth to that time; that element was named helium, after the Greek word helios, the Sun. But hydrogen makes up the overwhelming majority of the Sun s mass. The Sun turns mass into energy. We know how much energy it produces per second. Therefore, Einstein s equation tells us how much mass is destroyed That turns out to be 4 million tons per second. The Sun has been on this reducing diet for 4.6 billion years, yet the total mass lost is a negligible fraction of the Sun s mass. The Sun has been remarkably constant during all this time. Nuclear energy is the source of this constant activity. The author provides one bit of practical advice: When I watched an eclipse in Alaska in 1963, my colleagues and I were warned well beforehand to apply mosquito repellant even though there were no mosquitoes around at the time. Sure enough, the people who ignored this good advice were hunted by mosquitoes throughout the period of darkness and were too distracted to observe the eclipse they came to see. The temperature also drops. If you are not in the tropics, put a sweater on before the eclipse begins, while you have time. For me, the biggest surprise in The Restless Sun was discovering that astronomers have detected spots and flares on other stars, as well. Some stars appear to experience spot cycles rather like the Sun does, Wentzel relates. I wonder how the length of these spot cycles changes according to the size and class of star? Some starspots (we can t call them sunspots if they appear on other stars) are so big that they measurably change the brightness of their host star as they appear and disappear. Photographs and illustrations: There are enough of them here. You can see the same Sun only so many different ways. Plenty of accompanying drawings, charts and graphs. The big question, then, is why The Restless Sun is not as interesting or enjoyable to read as it could be. I could handle only a few pages at a time. The author is a college professor and it does read like a lecture: rather dry. No math to worry about, but there is enough material to digest to give pause to a casual reader. I wish I could recommend this book. I did learn a lot. The author obviously put a great deal of time and effort into it. The Restless Sun may be okay for the college student, but not for the hobbyist. There is very little to instruct amateur astronomers here. Not really recommended. 6

The Fine Print FWAS Contact information http://www.fortworthastro.

Center Research & Education Building, Room 100; 3500 Camp Bowie Blvd; Ft. Worth. Guests and visitors are always welcome. (Steve Tuttle) Web Site http://www.fortworthastro.

7 The Fine Print FWAS Contact information Officers: Shawn Kirchdorfer President John Dowell Vice President Lewis Westerfield Secretary - Treasurer Meetings FWAS meets at 7:00 PM on the third Tuesday of the month at the UNT Health Science Center Research & Education Building, Room 100; 3500 Camp Bowie Blvd; Ft. Worth. Guests and visitors are always welcome. (Steve Tuttle) Web Site E-Group (members only) You may post messages to the group by sending e- mail to fwas@yahoogroups.com. Any message sent to fwas@yahoogroups.com will be automatically sent to all members on the list. To subscribe, send a blank e- mail to fwas-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Include your real name. Outreach items concerning FWAS Outreach activities should be addressed to fwasoutreach@yahoo.com (Shawn Kirchdorfer) Prime Focus The FWAS newsletter is published monthly. Letters to the editor, articles for publication, photos, or just about anything you would like to have included in the newsletter should be ed to the address: info@fortworthastro.com. The editor Position is Open. See club President for details. FWAS Annual Dues - $40 for adults / families & households, $20.00 for students (half-price Jan 1 thru June 30); checks payable to the Fort Worth Astronomical Society; payments can be mailed to 6045 Worrell Dr. Fort Worth, TX 76133, or in-person at the next indoor meeting. Membership runs July 1 through June 30. (Lewis Westerfield) Discount Subscriptions Available Sky & Telescope ($32.95), and Astronomy (1 year for $34.00; 2 years for $60.00). A Sky & Telescope subscription through FWAS entitles you to 10% off purchases at Sky and Telescope s on-line store. (Lewis Westerfield) Astronomical League Membership Your FWAS membership also enrolls you in the Astronomical League. This makes you eligible for various observing certificates and you get their quarterly magazine, Reflector. League Observing clubs: (Tres Ross) Fort Worth Museum of Science & History Observing Site Reminders Be careful with fire, ban still in effect All members Sign the logbook in the camopainted storage shed. Inside the door on the left-handside. Put equipment back neatly when finished Leave a log note if there is a club equipment problem; also, please contact a FWAS Trustee to let them know Maintain Dark-Sky etiquette Turn out your headlights at the gate! Last person out, please Check all doors Closed, but not locked Make sure nothing is left out Lock the gate. Much Appreciated Kudos & Credits Cover Image: Share the Sky Patrick McMahon Observing Data Ed Dr K Kotapish, aka Edosaurusrex Middle School Star Party Pix Patrick McMahon Museum Star Party Pix Juan Martinez The interim editor s gallows humor: 7

Howdy and Welcome to the Texas Astronomical Society!

Howdy and Welcome to the Texas Astronomical Society! The Texas Astronomical Society of Dallas (TAS) is a group of individuals sharing and promoting their common interest in astronomy. People with all levels