MESSAGE FROM THE TREASURER

Transcription

1 NEXT MEETING THURSDAY, 17 th November 2016 THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF HARINGEY VOLUME 45 : ISSUE 1 : November

2 0B SOCIETY NEWS 2BMEETING VENUE 3BMusic Block, Ashmole School, Southgate, London N14 5RJ. The day for meetings is usually the third Thursday of each month. The exceptions are August, when we do not hold a meeting, and this now currently applies to the July and December meetings, though that may alter in the future. However, in case of changes it is always advisable to double-check the dates below. Doors open pm : Main speaker pm : Finish pm sharp! For more on this, and general meeting information, also check the website page: Last minute changes will be on the Facebook page OBSERVING EVENINGS Regarding any changes to Observing Evening meetings, this is a continuing message to let Observing Officers Jim Webb, Alister Innes or Kyri Voskou know your mobile phone number. And, if not already on the list, your address - ed to observing@ashastro.co.uk - reaches all three. The Facebook page will also be used November 7 th : Jerry Stone : Nell, Esther and Aunt Effie - the explanation as to the title nearer the time!! December : no meeting this month 2017 : Provisional dates : January 19 th ; February 16 th ; March 16 th ; April 20 th ; May 18 th ; June 15 th ; September 21 st ; October 5 th - Space Week - BUT this will be rather close to the September date, as it's the latest it can possibly be in that month. Consequently the September meeting may move to the week before or become an Observing Evening; November 16 th. No meetings July, August or December. MESSAGE FROM THE TREASURER Dear members, please check, if you haven t renewed your subscription, this will be the last 2002 you will receive Many thanks, Kyri Voskou Treasurer ASH COVER This monument marks the spot where the world s first rocket powered by liquid-fuel was launched on 16 th March 1926, so its 90 th Anniversary this year. More on this event by our speaker, Jerry Stone, at this month s meeting Photo : Mat Irvine 2

3 SOCIETY NEWS For up-to-date information, we are using that necessary evil - Facebook. Note as this is an Open Group you do not have to be a member of Facebook to read posts and messages, you just need some form of Internet access. Go to : However if you want to interact (ie post messages), you have firstly to join Facebook, then, on the ASH Facebook page, ask to join our Group, and you will get signed up. The more the merrier! MEETING ROOM We currently meet on the first floor of the Main Music Block at the School. This is the two-storey building, (left) with the entrance marked with the arrow. We hope the first floor will be suitable for all, as there isn t a convenient lift. If anyone feels they will have difficulty, please let the Chairman know. Contact details on the back page. For historical reference the X in the photo on left was our original meeting room, the original Music Studio. This is now demolished, and the site has been redeveloped with a new structure. MEETING PREVIEW 21 st November 2016 : Jerry Stone : Nell, Esther and Aunt Effie 90 years ago, on 16 th March 1926, the world s first rocket powered by liquid fuel was launched from the back yard of Clark University Professor, Robert H. Goddard. From that all modern rockets, powered by liquids (as against the solid fuel of fireworks), have developed. And somewhere amongst all that are three ladies the Nell, Esther and Aunt Effie of the title. At the next meeting our regular speaker, Jerry Stone, will explain their presence and how they fit into the overall story! 3

4 MEETING REVIEW 6 th October 2016 : Michael Franks : Gold Rush Or Going Bust? Michael s talk proved to be most enlightening and entertaining. The initial part concentrated on space law, something which most of us are generally unaware of. The UN has been responsible for establishing a considerable body of laws pertaining to space and its usage by people. For example no one person or nation can own a celestial body; so planting a national flag on the Moon does not make it the property of that nation. 4 By the same token, people selling plots of land on the Moon (left) are essentially doing so illegally. Placing nuclear weapons in space is also illegal. Most of these laws have been ratified by both the spacefaring nations and others who are actively involved in the space industry. Also, any country launching an object into space is responsible for it, and any damage it may cause on any part of the Earth. It appears, though, that private entrepreneurs can do what they wish with small objects (such as asteroids) in deep space, much in the same way people can do what they wish in the high seas beyond territorial waters. Elon Musk, of SpaceX, has not only launched successful rockets into space but has also retrieved the first stages by landing them on sea-based barges. This dramatically reduces the cost of space launches and opens up the possibility of being able to send missions to nearby asteroids for the purpose of mining them for valuable minerals. His current rockets can be scaled up to make such missions a reality, but the real question is how profitable would such a venture be? This depends on the minerals to be found and also how easy it would be to determine what minerals are actually present. Once determined, the viability of returning a profitable amount of ore becomes the major question. Many factors will ultimately determine this. Also much of the mining process will be mechanised with little actual human presence on the asteroids. Time will tell as there are certain minerals which are running out on Earth. Jim Webb

5 MEETING REVIEW 20 th October 2016 : Observation Evening The session was attended by Jim and myself as hosts, along with Wayne Johnson, Dale Baker, Bryan Solomons and a possible new member, Christie Fewry, and started at about 8 o clock. It was a good viewing night as the sky cleared as the evening progressed and some good sights observed, starting with some double stars, several open clusters, the ring nebula in Lyra and the Pleiades. These were all observed with different instruments so that we could see what sort of magnification was best for different objects. Everyone said it had been a thoroughly enjoyable evening when we left at about 10 o clock. Right: Christie checks out the sky. Below : Jim does some viewing. Below left : the Ring Nebula, though unfortunately an image not taken during this session our scopes are good, but not that good so this is a Hubble image. Alister Innes Meeting Images: Wayne Johnson and Alister Innes, Ring Nebula : NASA/HST 5

6 November 'Question Time'... If you correctly insert answers to these questions in the spaces below, the boxes reading downwards will reveal something very small and very dense. 1. English county that last experienced a total solar eclipse 2. First American in space 3. UK s most recent astronaut 4. Layer of our atmosphere in which weather occurs 5. Solar System s biggest planet 6. November s main meteor shower 7. Type of lens used to multiply telescope magnification 8. Spiral Galaxy 2.5M Light Years away 9. Initial name for the Voyager outer planet program 10. Solar eruption 1. _ 2. _ _ 3. _ _ _ 6. _ _ 7. _ _ 10. Answers to October 'Question Time' 1 Aurora s northern version of Australis BOREALIS 2 Edmond, who gave his name to our most famous comet HALLEY 3 Minor Planet ASTEROID 4 Closest planet to the Sun MERCURY 5 The Sky at Night presenter for over half a century PATRICK MOORE 6 The Big Eye telescope at Palomar Observatory HALE 7 Mars largest moon PHOBOS 8 Earth s radiation belts VAN ALLEN 9 The Castor and Pollux constellation GEMINI 6

7 SPACE NEWS - compiled by Kyri Voskou WHY NOT VENUS? It seems as if Mars is the expected destination for any trips beyond the Moon, however one journalist in the USA has asked why this is. Journalist Brian Fung rightly points out that Venus is closer and far more Earth-like, however because surface conditions are so inhospitable we never give Venus a second thought. At 462 C the surface of Venus is hot enough to melt lead, but Fung raises the possibility of floating cities high in the atmosphere. Technology might not allow that at present but with gravity very similar to that of Earth, humans could live on Venus (or in cities high above it) without the biological problems that life on low-gravity Mars would cause. NASA has previously proposed a scheme called High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), which would see airship cities stationed in the Venusian atmosphere so if (current) President Obama aims to have humans on Mars in 20 years why not have them visiting Venus even sooner than that? It is commonly accepted that the atmosphere of Venus could be terraformed and in due course the planet s runaway greenhouse effect tamed. The process could take many thousands of years but an in-situ manned laboratory would be the first step on that road. MARS-QUAKES MIGHT BE A LIFESAVER We already know that the surface of Mars is inhospitable to life thanks to the high level of peroxides, but deeper below the surface things are different. Life forms buried safely away from the hostile surface could survive, but how would they get their nutrition? A new study has shown that quakes on Mars could release hydrogen which could then be used by microbes as a food source. Mars has a relatively inactive geology compared to Earth but over 10 tons of hydrogen could be released by quakes each year enough to sustain a minimal amount of life. We know that there are bacteria deep underground on Earth which survive in exactly this way, so why not Mars? 7

8 A supply of silicon and water, along with tectonic activity, would be enough to create the hydrogen. Even if the pockets of life are widely dispersed, the microbes could lie dormant for long periods, possibly thousands of years, until a release of hydrogen provides an opportunity to feed before becoming dormant again. Life on Mars? The infamous Face on Mars, which turned out to be is an odd co-incidence of light and shadow, is the closest we ve got to finding any MOON S SURFACE REFRESHED EVERY 80 THOUSAND YEARS It was thought that the Moon s surface was entirely refreshed by meteor impacts every ten million years, but a new study suggests that this figure is out by a factor of over one hundred. The latest estimate is 81,000 years. By pairing 14,000 photos taken in 2009 and 2016 researchers were able to identify 222 new craters, 80% of which measured at least 30 feet in diameter. The figure was a surprise as it was a third higher than expected and is thanks to the reliability of the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. There were also a further 47,000 impacts which were identified as splotches describing an impact which disturbs the surface enough to move material often to the immediate vicinity but sometimes several miles away. The Moon has very little atmosphere [so no good for parties : Ed (sorry)] just 1 molecule every millimetre, so it is constantly bombarded with material as opposed to Earth, which has the luxury of a thick atmosphere to protect it from the vast majority of incoming material. 8

9 HINTS TO EARLY GALAXY FORMATION ARE CLOSER THAN WE THOUGHT As our telescopes peer into the distance, we are also looking back in time. We ve learnt much about the Universe by looking at distant objects but the further we look, the more difficult it is to extract valuable detail from whatever it is we re looking at. Thanks to Terzan 5 we can now study the development of galaxies over a period of 12 billion years Terzan 5 being a huge globular cluster of stars that forms part of the central bulge of the Milky Way. As it s in such a densely populated part of the Galaxy the cluster is heavily obscured and wasn t discovered until 1968, but slowly the cluster is revealing its secrets. It is one of the Galaxy s earliest structures and saw its initial period of star forming when the Universe was still relatively young, but the cluster is so vast that when one of its stars produced a supernova, it was able to retain most of the gas from that event. That same gas then contributed to a second burst of star formation 4.5 billion years ago. It is rare that stars from two distinct periods of formation can be seen together in this way. Thanks to its size and relative mass, Terzan 5 has remained a distinct body that hasn t merged into the central hub of our Galaxy and so scientists studying Terzan 5 are looking for vital clues about the formation of the Milky Way. Francesco Ferraro, who leads a team currently studying the cluster, has dubbed the cluster a Galactic Fossil and says "In these fossils is written the history of the formation of the first cosmic structure at the time when the universe was a baby, just 1 billion years old." THERE ARE MORE GALAXIES IN THE UNIVERSE THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT Since its launch in 1990 the Hubble Space Telescope has been a greater success than could ever have been imagined especially considering the early problems that were experienced with the lens. One of Hubble s early hits was a contribution to the mid-90s estimate that there were between 100 billion and 200 billion galaxies in the Universe. That same Hubble data has been re-analysed in a project that has taken nearly 15 years and the latest conclusion is that there are more than twenty times as many galaxies as we thought at least 2 trillion of them! Only 10% of the galaxies can be seen by our telescopes because they are either too small, too faint, or beyond the edges of the observable Universe. 9

10 By looking at galaxies up to 13 billion years old astronomers were also able to confirm that the number of galaxies reduces over time as they collide and merge to form fewer, larger galaxies. The figure of at least 2 trillion was a surprise and astronomers aren t taking that number as gospel, but they won t have too long to wait before they can check that value - the James Webb Telescope, due for launch within two years, will help provide an updated and hopefully more reliable figure. Deep space is even more jam packed than we thought UNESCO SCIENTIST PROPOSES A NATION STATE IN SPACE Asgard is one of the nine worlds of Norse mythology, and if the head of UNESCO's Science of Space Committee has his way, the name will be the inspiration behind the creation of Asgardia a Nation in Space. Igor Ashurbeyli proposes that the nation will begin as a single satellite, with citizens having dual nationality of Asgardia and the country they actually live in. Ashurbeyli initially wanted 100,000 applications for citizenship to be made on the Asgardia website before petitioning the UN for official Nation status and managed to reach that number in just forty hours. By the beginning of November only a couple of weeks after launch - the number of applicants had reached half a million. Existing international law requires that a nation has to be somewhere that can be visited, has at least one permanent resident, and is officially recognised by at least one existing nation. Furthermore, no nation can claim ownership of space, so the viability of Ashurbeyli s plan is open to interpretation as members of our own Society will have learned in recent talks given by Michael Franks. Asgardia s goals include launching its first satellite within a year, and eventually building a shield to protect the Earth from asteroids. And see Chairman s Quarters, where Jim goes further into this project 10

11 CHAIRMAN S QUARTERS The Americans now have a new President. Odd how no-one has noticed the Yorkshire expression to trump - the local way of saying to fart! [Actually the comedians have definitely noticed Ed ] Oh well, such is the vagary of the press. So what has this got to do with outer space? Following on from Space News, that explains there is this group, proposing a project called Asgardia, which includes space experts based in Canada, Romania, Russia, and the USA, who announced their ambitions in a recent press conference in Paris. Their idea is to launch a robotic satellite, within the next 18 months, (60 years after Russia launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite), and subsequently follow it up with a permanent space station, "Where people can live, work, and have their own rules and regulations". What is their underlying hope? To democratize space! Effectively, this will be a new nation in space. The very name Asgardia, is derived from Norse mythology's city in the skies Asgard, where their gods lived. Ultimately, the organisers envision Asgardians building a State-of-the-art shield to protect all humankind from cosmic, man-made and natural threats to life on Earth such as space debris, coronal mass ejections and asteroid collisions". One of the founding members states, "We must leave Earth because it's very much in the nature of humanity. Humanity left Africa and covered the whole globe. The resources of Earth are being depleted. We have a wish to go where nobody has gone before." There are at least five active members of Asgardia, so far, but as the project is in its early stages it is hoped that the initial publicity will attract engineers, scientists, and other talents. In addition to experts, Asgardia is calling on members of the public to join its ranks. Its website will allow the first 100,000 people who register to become citizens of Asgardia alongside their nationality on Earth, according to their press release. It is also crowd-sourcing its own flag, insignia, and even a national anthem. It is not clear how much funding they actually have, but they are absolutely confident their first satellite will launch within 18 months. Given the price of space launches, it is likely they will need tens of millions of dollars to start out, and perhaps billions to sustain itself. Currently the cheapest ride into orbit, a couple of hundred miles above Earth, is the Falcon 9 rocket, and SpaceX charges roughly $60 to $65 million for the whole ride. It is worth noting that it took 18 nations and about $100 billion to build and operate the International Space Station (ISS). The next question is: Can you actually form a new nation in space? According to current international space law, (dealt with by Michael Franks at last month s meeting) the country that launches an object into space is responsible for it, including any damage it causes to denizens of Earth. This project claims to be creating a new framework for ownership and nationhood in space, which will adapt current space laws governing responsibility, private ownership and enterprise so they are fit for purpose in the new era of space exploration. By creating a new Space Nation, private enterprise, innovation and the further development of space technology to support humanity will flourish free from the tight restrictions of Earthbound state control that currently exist. How would this be any different from the ISS? The ISS is a joint venture. There's no actual entity called 'ISS' it is basically a facility, parts of which are controlled by different nations, a bit like a condo. The idea behind Asgardia is that this facility will become an independent nation with its own laws, government and even a President. The organizers expect to draw plenty of critics, including analogies to the fizzling Mars One project. However, they did point out that trying to form the first space nation a couple hundred miles above Earth is a lot different than trying to colonise Mars, as Elon Musk of SpaceX and Mars One intend. They commented, "We re sure people will ridicule Asgardia, but we re not worried. Anyone who tries out-ofthe-box things is initially ridiculed. Everything that's amazing starts with a crazy idea. After a while science fiction becomes science fact, and this is an idea which is just being initiated. It s less risky than going to Mars and you could more easily come back to Earth if you didn't like it." So here s to President Odin! See you at the Meeting. JIM 11

12 THE NIGHT SKY : THE PLANETS November - December 2016 MERCURY : could be visible low in the southwest after sunset by the third week of November. Magnitude -0.5 and with a disk some 5 arcs seconds across. Slowly climbs higher in the sky until it reaches its furthest angular distance from the Sun in mid December. In conjunction with Venus on the 23 rd November. Moon close on 1 st December. Reaches greatest elongation east, 11 th December. VENUS : sets around two hours after the Sun at the start of November in the west but an hour later by month's end, and will again dominate the evening sky. Magnitude increases from -4.0 to -4.2 during the month, whilst the angular size of its gibbous disk increases from 14% to 17%. But the overall the brightness won t change as the phase reduces from 78% to 70% at the same time. Moon close on 3 rd December. MARS : moving eastwards through eastern Sagittarius and Capricornus, dimming from magnitude +0.4 to +0.6 during November. The Red Planet can be seen low above the southern horizon throughout the month, but no surface features will really be discernable. JUPITER : the only planet in the pre-dawn sky this month rising some two and a half hours before the Sun at the beginning of the month at around 30 degrees above the south-eastern horizon by the end of the month. Not as bright as recent months, but still at magnitude -1.7, and with a 32 arc second disk. Moon close on 25 th November. SATURN : still just about visible low in the southwest after sunset, but is only some 10 degrees above the horizon 45 minutes after sunset. This gets shorter as the month progresses. The planet lies in the southern part of Ophiuchus some 7 degrees up and to the left of Antares in Scorpius. Saturn is now moving towards the southern part of the ecliptic so for a few years will only be seen at low elevations, unless you are planning a trip to the southern hemisphere. URANUS : In Pisces. NEPTUNE : In Aquarius. Stationary 20 th November. METEORS Northern Taurids shower, peaked around the 10th of November, but overall this can last up to 10 days, so could be around by the time you read this. But there are not many per hour. The meteors arise from Comet 2P/Encke. Leonids, which are far more of a stream, peak on the night of the 17th/18 th, the date of the meeting. They originated from Comet 55P/Temple-Tuttle. Geminids peak 14 th December. THE MOON New 30 th October First 7 th November Full 14 th Super Moon Last 21 st New 29 th November s Super Moon will be largest of all three this year, as its perigee is the nearest to the Earth. It will therefore appear slightly larger in the sky 12

13 THE NIGHT SKY : MAP 1 st December 2016, 18.0hrs GMT/UTC KEY MERCURY VENUS MARS JUPITER SATURN URANUS NEPTUNE PLUTO 13

14 Patron: Sir Arthur C. Clarke, C.B.E., B.Sc., F.R.A.S., F.B.I.S. President : Frederick W. Clarke, F.Ph.S.(Eng), F.B.I.S. Vice President : Walter T. Baker ASH COMMITTEE MEMBERS : CHAIRMAN : Jim Webb : chairman@ashastro.co.uk [ SECRETARY: Charles Towler : secretary@ashastro.co.uk TREASURER : Kyriakos Voskou : treasurer@ashastro.co.uk MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY: Alister Innes : memsec@ashastro.co.uk EDITOR, P.R.O. VICE-CHAIRMAN and WEBMASTER : Mat Irvine : editor@ashastro.co.uk [ GENERAL MEMBER : Mitchell Sandler GENERAL MEMBER : Nicholas Lucas GENERAL MEMBER AT LARGE : Gary Marriott GENERAL INFORMATION : info@ashastro.co.uk OBSERVING INFORMATION : observing@ashastro.co.uk