PAS-Times The newsletter of the Pontchartrain Astronomy Society July 2018 visit us online www.astronola.org Volume 59, Issue 7 Next PAS General Meeting Friday, July 27th,2018 at 7:30pm UNO Science Bldg. Room 1001 M16 Eagle Nebula PAS Photo of the Month by Philip Wollenberg
Page 2 PAS Officers for 2018 President: Bill Johnson paspres@astronola.org 1st Vice-President: David Williams Program Chairman pas1vp@astronola.org 2nd Vice-President: Kent Birkle PAS-Times Editor pas2vp@astronola.org Treasurer: John Scholl pastreas@astronola.org Secretary: Nanette Johnson Archivist passec@astronola.org SPMOS: Ron Marella passpmos@astronola.org Community Outreach: Jerry LaBauve pasoutreach@astronola.org ALCOR (Astronomy League): Jerry LaBauve pasalcor@astronola.org President s Message By: Bill Johnson Mars! Mars! Mars! Yes, it s July, and Mars is the hot topic in Astronomy. Why? Because it s so close! We have been looking forward to this event for a while, and its finally here. On July 27th, Mars will be at Opposition and on July 31, the closest it s been to us since 2003. The Red Planet won't be this close again until 2035, so get ready to see Mars in incredible detail! Mars' disk will be 24.3 arc-seconds across (or two-thirds the size of Jupiter s disk) and shine with a visual magnitude of -2.8. You should be able to see incredible detail with it this close. On a night with clear, steady air, even with a small telescope you should be able to see Mars' polar cap of frozen carbon dioxide and water ice, along with darker and lighter regions on the planet. Larger telescopes should have no problem viewing Mars two moons, Phobos and Deimos. It is an opportunity we don t want miss. One issue that has popped up is a huge dust storm that currently affects the entire planet of Mars. There is no way to tell how long it will last. It could be done in a few weeks, or it could last for months, greatly diminishing the viewing detail of Mars. Recent observations on July 5th seem to think that the storm has reached its peak and is beginning to diminish. So cross your fingers that the dust storm abates before July 27. You may want to get in a few observing nights now to see for yourself if the dust storm seems to be fading before opposition, and to be ready for the Main Event. Filters will enhance features on the Red Planet. Orange (W21, W23A) further increases contrast between light and dark features, penetrates hazes and most clouds, and limited detection of dust clouds. Red (W25, W29) gives maximum contrast of surface features, enhances fine surface details, dust clouds boundaries, and polar cap boundaries. Green (W57) darkens red and blue features, enhances frost patches, surface fogs, and polar projections. Blue- Green (W64) helps detect ice-fogs and polar hazes. Blue (W80A, W38, W38A) and deep blue (W46, W47) shows atmospheric clouds, discrete white clouds, and limb hazes, equatorial cloud bands, polar cloud hoods, and darkens reddish features. Magenta (W30, W32) will enhance red and blue PAS Times Volume 59, Issue 7 features and darkens green ones. Improves polar region features and some Martian clouds. You may want to try these out if you are not familiar with them. While Mars is the center of attention, let s not forget the other players in the celestial arena. We are enjoying the parade of planets in the summer evening sky, with Mercury and Venus visible as the sun sets, Jupiter follows, and Saturn shortly behind. Mars brings up the rear, rising about 9:00PM in Mid-July and earlier each day. What a treat to have all the visible planets stretched across the evening sky and prime for viewing. I hope you can find some time to view the celestial neighbors when they put on a show like this. Our next meeting i s on July 27, and, depending on the weather, we hope to have several telescopes available to view Mars after the meeting for any members who wish to stick around and take a look. You are all welcome to bring your own telescope and set up out at UNO with us. Our presentation at the July meeting will be "2018 - In Search of Dark Skies" presented by our own longtime member Barry Simon. It should be very enlightening. I hope to see all of you at the next meeting. Bring a guest! Bill Johnson PAS President 2018 LIGO photo by Nanette Johnson
Page 3 Secretary s Report June 29th 2018 General Meeting By: Nanette Johnson 7:30 Meeting called to order. In attendance 21 members 5 ne w members and guests Bill opened the meeting by greeting guests and new members. There was a brief discussion of the PAS field trip to the L IGO research facility. Members agreed it was a good outing but some felt it may be more interesting to go when when LIGO is actually observing. Officer Reports: David Williams- 1st Vice President: Not present due to recovering from car accident injuries. Kent Birkle- 2nd Vice President: Kent encouraged everyone to submit photos or article for the PAS Times. Kent advised the deadline for this month's newsletter is July 17 John Scholl- Treasurer: Not present. Nanette Johnson - Secretary: Nanette announced the winner of the May photo of the month contest and presented the award to Barry Simon. Nanette then announced the PAS is now on Twitter. The address is @PAS_Nola. This will be an additional tool to notify members of PAS news. Ron Marcella - SPMOS Site Manager: Ron spoke of the recent upgrade of the air conditioner at SPMOS. He also mentioned that someone left the air conditioner running after leaving SPMOS. Ron asked again that anyone using the air conditioner while SPMOS please turn it off when leaving. Jerry LaBauve: Alcor Rep: Not present. New Business: Mars opposition later in July. Bill suggested if the weathe r is good that we have a short meeting on July 27th and then move out to the lawn outside of the Science bldg for an informal star party to see Mars. Most all present were in agreement. Annual Club Picnic is to be held on Saturday, October 6th at Walter Sarrat's place in Covington. A poll was taken of those present regarding choice of time to begin the picnic. It was decided to ask Walter and abide by his wishes for starting time of the picnic. November - Officer elections are held in November. December - Club Christmas party. Bill asked those present if they were satisfied with the party being held at a restaurant. Most agreed they like going to a restaurant. It was asked if there were any suggestions for a different restaurant this year. No suggestions. Bill advised if you have a suggestion for a different restaurant other than Porter & Luke's to please send it through the inquiry on the PAS website for consideration. 8:10 BREAK 8:20 Meeting resumed with the introduction of Gabe Dickens and his presentation on Astronomy Economics. Following Gabe's presentation, Barry Simon gave a short presentation on the new venue for the Deep South Star Gaze - White Horse Christian Retreat Center near Columbia, MS. 9:30 Meeting adjourned.
Page 4 LIGO: June 16th, 2018 The PAS took a field trip to LIGO. Thirty family, friends and PAS members attended this free event!. The LIGO Center is in Livingston, LA. The trip was very inf ormative regarding the research done at LIGO. We watched videos pertaining to the detection of gravitational waves, visited the control room and viewed the famous tunnels used in the detection process. Our guide, a graduate student from LSU currently working at LIGO, answered many questions from the PAS group and was most happy to explain and discuss many aspects of the work done at LIGO. What is LIGO? Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory! This facility recently made a tremendous discovery of Gravitational Waves. What are Gravitational Waves? Gravitational waves are 'ripples' in the fabric of space-ti me caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity. As a side note, Astronomy Magazine issue just received (July 2018?) had a very nice detailed article regarding LIGO and Gravitational Waves. Photos and report by PAS Secretary, Nanette Johnson. In this glass case was an example of the mirrors used in the detection process at LIGO.
Page 5 LIGO PAS members Mike Danielson and Bill Johnson participating in the Gravity Well exhibit in the Science Education Center at LIGO in the control room. FEILD TRIP PAS group on top of one of the tunnels
Page 6 A Close-Up View of Mars By Jane Houston Jones and Jessica Stoller-Conrad In July 2018, skywatchers can get an up close view of Mars-even without a telescope! In fact, on July 31, Mars will be closer to Earth than it has been in 15 years. Why is that? Like all the planets in our solar system, Earth and Mars or bit the Sun. Earth is closer to the Sun, and therefore it races along its orbit more quickly. Earth makes two trips around the Sun in about the same amount of time that Mars takes to make one trip. Sometimes the two planets are on opposite sides of the Sun and are very far apart. Other times, Earth catches up with its neighbor and passes relatively close to it. This is called Mars's closest approach to Earth, and it's happening this year on July 31. The Moon will be near Mars on that night, too! Keep in mind that even during its closest approach, Mars is still more than 35 million miles away from Earth. That's really far. So, Mars won't appear as big as the Moon in the sky, but it will appear bigger than it usually does. July and August will be a great time t o check out Mars. Through a telescope, you should normally be able to make out some of the light and dark features of the Red Planet-and sometimes even polar ice. However, a huge Martian dust storm is obscuring these features right now, so less planetary detail is visible. There is another important Mars date in July: Mars oppositi on. Mars opposition is when Mars, Earth and the Sun all line up, with Earth directly in the middle. This event is happening on July 27 this year. Although you may see news f ocusing on one of these two dates, Mars will be visible for many months. For about three weeks before and three weeks after opposition and closest approach, the planet will appear the same size to a skywatcher. From July 7 through September 7 Mars will be the third brightest object in the sky (after the Moon and Venus), shining even brighter than Jupiter. The best time to view Mars during this time is several hours after sunset, when Mars will appear higher in the sky. Mars will still be visible after July and August, but each month it will shrink in size as it travels farther from Earth in its orbit around the Sun. In other sky news, there will be a partial solar eclipse on July 13, but it will only be visible from Northern Antarctica and southern Australia. On July 27 (beginning at 20:21 UTC), a total lunar eclipse will be visible in Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and South America. For those viewers, Mars will be right next to the eclipsing Moon! If you're wanti ng to look ahead to next month, prepare for August's summer Perseid meteor shower. It's not too early to plan a dark sky getaway for the most popular meteor shower of the year! You can catch up on NASA's missions to Mars and all of NASA's missions at www.nasa.gov This image to the right... In 2018, Mars will appear brightest from July 27 to July 30. Its closest approach to Earth is July 31. That is the point in Mars' orbit when it comes closest to Earth. Mars will be at a distance of 35.8 million miles (57.6 million kilometers). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Page 7 Upcoming Events PAS General Meeting - Friday, July 27th, 2018 at 7:30pm UNO Science Bldg. Rm.1001 Presentation - "2018 - In Search of Dark Skies" by DSSG director Barry Simon Northshore Observers Group Meeting - Third Wednesday of every month, see website PAS Picinic - Early October Go To www.astronola.org for more information Deep South Star Gaze - 36th Annual - Nov. 6th to 11th at White Horse Retreat Center Go To www.astronola.org On the Cover M16 Eagle Nebula, submitted by Philip Wollenberg Shot from SPMOS on June 1, 2018. TV NP101IS / SBIG STF- 8300M / Baader Ha / Losmandy G11 / OAG / 4x10min Ha On the Back Cover A star chart of Sagittarius from Urania's Mirror - A View of the Heaven 2018 PAS Meeting Dates July 27 August 24 September 21 Picnic - early Oct. October 19 November 16 December 14 Holiday Party August 2018 PAS-Times Deadline Sunday, August 12th Please submit all things astronomical to be included in the next edition of PAS-Times to the editor at the following address: pas2vp@astronola.or The presentation for the July 29th general meeting will be "2018 - In Search of Dark Skies" Description: This program will take a look at how skies, affected by different levels of light pollution, are classified, just to what lengths we have to go to get reasonably dark skies, and how the skies we observe from stack up. This will include looking at city locations, outreach locations, SPMOS, various Deep South Star Gaze venues and other locations further afield such as the location of the Texas Star Party and other nationally known venues. Note - t he above photo shows most of Louisiana and stretches from Houston on the left side to just past Pensacola on the right side. Brighter skies are under white areas, next brightest would be red, then orange, yellow, green, blue, gray, and finally black. In Louisiana both SPMOS and the Feliciana Retreat Center are considered Bortle 4 sites, typically with a naked eye magnitude range of between about magnitude 6.0 and 6.4. The very best locations in Louisiana and Mississippi are blue, which would be Bortle 3. We have to go 600 to 700 miles west to get to Bortle 2 skies in the western part of the Texas Hill Country. We need to get further west (west of the Pecos River) to get to darker skies still, better Bortle 2 skies and even to Bortle 1 in some spots. By: Barry Simon (PAS member, Director Deep South Star Ga ze)
Pontchartrain Astronomy Society, Inc Kent Birkle, PAS-Times Editor 21067 Lowe Davis Rd. Covington, La. 70435 The Pontchartrain Astronomy Society, Inc. is an organization of amateur astronomers representing the greater New Orleans area, southeastern Louisiana and adjacent parts of Mississippi. Our members come from many walks of life, and have a common interest in astronomy and observing the sky. The PAS aims to enhance the study and enjoyment of astronomy among our members, and to promote an understanding of astronomy in our local community. Sagittarius is the southern most constellation in the Zodiac and one of those listed by Ptolemy (circa AD140) Messier listed 15 objectsin this part of the sky.