SMCAS Monthly Meeting October 2 at 7:30

Roundup at the Kepler Corral: The Race to Detect the First Earth-sized Planet in the Habitable Zone of a Sunlike Star Dr. Jeffrey Van Cleve, SETI Institute at NASA Ames More information at: http://www.smcas. com/events/ meetings/ upcoming_ meetings/ Members meeting starts at 7:30pm in the Planetarium, presentation starts at 8:00pm Parking is free in adjacent lots. Directions can be found at: http://www.smcas. com/events/ activities_ at_csm/ Hope to see you there! College of  San Mateo         1700 West Hillsdale Blvd., Bldg 36-100 , San Mateo, California

CSM Astronomy website

In the Mail and In the eMail

Table of Contents

Directions to College of  San Mateo

Star Parties at Crestview Park

Events and Club News

Other Astronomy Events in Our Area

SMCAS Monthly Calendar

Club Websites, Membership Application

SMCAS patches on sale  

Update, June 12

Kepler Star Wheels

Local Copy

Update, July 25, 26, September 12

At the bottom on this page is a review of the amateur astronomer briefing given by Brian Day at the Fremont Peak Star BQ on July 25 and updated
at the AANC meeting September 12.

The impact event will happen on October 9 at about 4:30 AM pacific time
plus or minus 5 minutes.
Amateur's preparations should be complete by the evening of October 8.

The event is expected to be visible in moderate sized amateur telescopes but will last only about 90 seconds.
The moon will be high in the sky from San Francisco, 70 degrees altitude and
135 degrees azimuth from true north. ( Somewhat east of south. )
The event will appear at the south cusp of the gibbous moon.
( Where the lunar limb meets the lunar terminator. )
Timing and target destination updating will be final 9 hours before impact.
Telescopes invert the image in various ways so be sure to confirm you are, for sure,
looking at the lunar south.

Update, August 13

Lunar Graze Expedition

Update, August 20

Help save the Observatory on Fremont Peak,
Background

Update, October 28

Final entry for October Newsletter

 

 

 

Crestview Star Parties

Number of people in attendance
subject to weather.

Crestview 2005/7 Sun Chart

Scobee Star Chart
    Scobee Planetarium

The Solar System Live

==================================================================
REACH FOR THE STARS AT CSM!

With its planetarium, variety of astronomy courses, top-notch faculty,
and special events such as Star Parties, when the College partners with the
San Mateo County Astronomical Society...or with CSM's many A.A., A.S., and certificate programs, its scenic and historic campus, the ease with which
you can sign up for classes online as a first-time or returning student...
The possibilities are astronomical.

COLLEGE OF SAN MATEO.  Visit us on the web at http://gocsm.net
=================================================================

 

 

Astronomy Events in Our Area  ( Edited for October )

Bay Astro,  Ken L's Event List

IYA2009 at Berkeley  
This UC Berkeley Speaker series for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 Public Talks,
Hosted by the UC Berkeley Astronomy Department
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~scroft/iya/

Dark Secrets: What Science Tells us About the Hidden Universe
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A free panel discussion open to the public.

Part of Berkeley Lab's "Science at the Theater" Series

When: Monday, October 26, 7 pm - 8:30 pm

Where: Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley, CA

For more information, see: http://www.lbl.gov/Community/

For directions, see: http://www.berkeleyrep.org/planyourvisit/index.asp

No mystery is bigger than dark energy ­- the
elusive force that makes up three-quarters of the
Universe and is causing it to expand at an
accelerating rate.  KTVU Channel 2 health and
science editor John Fowler will moderate a panel
of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
scientists who use phenomena such as exploding
stars and gravitational lenses to explore the dark cosmos.

Panelists:

Saul Perlmutter heads the Supernova Cosmology
Project, which pioneered the use of precise
observations of exploding stars to study the
expansion of the Universe. His international team
was one of two groups who independently
discovered the amazing phenomenon known as dark
energy, and he led a collaboration that designed
a satellite to study the nature of this dark
force. He is an astrophysicist at Berkeley Lab
and a professor of physics at UC Berkeley.

David Schlegel is a Berkeley Lab astrophysicist
and the principal investigator of Baryon
Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), the
largest of four night-sky surveys being conducted
in the third phase of the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey, known as SDSS-III. BOSS will generate a
3-D map of two million galaxies and quasars,
using a specially built instrument outfitted with
1,000 optical fibers and mounted on the SDSS telescope in New Mexico.

Alexie Leauthaud is Chamberlain Fellow at
Berkeley Lab who received her Ph.D in
astrophysics from LAM in France in 2007.  Her
work probes dark matter in the Universe using a
technique called gravitational lensing.  When
gravity from a massive object such as a cluster
of galaxies warps space around it, this can
distort our view of the light from an even more
distant object.  The scale and direction of this
distortion allows astronomers to directly measure
the properties of both dark matter and dark energy.

Dean Lectures  
 California Academy of Sciences 
https://www.calacademy.org/event_tickets/.
____________________________________
Benjamin Dean Lecture Series in Astronomy
Morrison Planetarium
California Academy of Sciences
55 Concourse Drive
San Francisco, CA 94118
415-379-8000
deanseries@calacademy.org
http://www.calacademy.org/events/index.php




SLAC Physics Lecture Series at Stanford Linear Accelerator
           http://www.slac. stanford. edu/welcome/ location. html (how to get to SLAC)

 

Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series
 Foothill College 
Los Altos Hills, CA
Public Lecture, Open to Everyone:

Wednesday, Oct . 7, at 7 pm:

Hubble Breakthrough: The First Photos of a Planet Orbiting Another Star

Prof. Paul Kalas, University of California, Berkeley

part of the 11th Annual Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures
in the Smithwick Theater, Foothill College,
El Monte Road and Freeway 280,
in Los Altos Hills, California.

Free and open to the public.
Parking on campus costs $2.

Call the series hot-line at 650-949-7888 for
more information and driving directions.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Kalas was the leader of the team who managed
the long-sought feat of actually taking a photograph
of a planet orbiting another star.  Before this, all the
planets outside our solar system were found by indirect
means.  He will describe how they achieved the
breakthrough using the Hubble Space Telescope
and discuss the wide range of planets out there that
astronomers are discovering. (The discovery was
named one of the top ten science achievements
in 2008 by the journals Science and Nature.)

Dr. Kalas is Associate Professors in the Astronomy
Department at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is an observational astronomer focusing on imaging
dusty disks around nearby stars, using some of the world's
largest telescope.

No background in science will be required for
this talk.  Seating is first come, first served.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One unit of astronomy course credit at Foothill is
available to those who attend all six of the
Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures in 2009-2010 (you
may watch one on the Web) and write a short paper.
Lectures are always on Wednesday evenings, and there
are two each quarter, from October through May. To
register for the course, Astronomy 36, go to:
http://www.foothill.edu/reg
or pick up the paperwork on October 7th.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The lectures are co-sponsored by:
* NASA Ames Research Center
* The Foothill College Astronomy Program
* The SETI Institute
* The Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

This talk is part of the local events celebrating the International
Year of Astronomy in 2009.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Past Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are now available
in MP3 format at:
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/podcast/index.html
================================
Andrew Fraknoi, Chair, Astronomy Program
Foothill College, 12345 El Monte Rd.,
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022, USA

Seti Seminar Series
The colloquiums are free and open to the public, and run from noon to 1 pm on Wednesdays at the SETI Institute, 515 N. Whisman Road, Mountain View, California.

 

UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science  
http://www.lawrencehallofscience.org

Lick Observatory

Plan to arrive after noon and before 3 PM for best access to Public Areas.        This is an all day trip climbing to 4200 feet on the historic          Mount Hamilton Road, Route 130. Alum Rock off of 101 or 680.          Please don't pass bicyclists on the blind curves.   Gift Shop

Lick Observatory Summer Evening Visitor's Programs.

Mt Tam Enthusiasts-
  Mt Tam , website:  mttam.net 

From: Tinka Ross

Subject: Mt Tam Astronomy 10/24

Don't miss the final Mt Tam Astronomy Program of 2009!  
Saturday, October 24 at 7:00pm in the Mountain Theatre, Professor Michael Dine, from the Physics Department of UCSC,  will discuss “The Dawn of the LHC Era: The Convergence of Particle Physics and Astrophysics.”  Over the past year, the Large Hadron Collider, an extraordinary scientific instrument, has begun to operate in Geneva.  It offers the possibility of answering some of the great questions we confront in understanding the universe, including the identity of the dark matter and the asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

Weather permitting, the talk will be followed by observing in the Rock Springs Parking Lot, telescopes courtesy of the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers.   

These programs are sponsored by the Mt Tam State Park, are FREE and open to the general public.  Students and youths are encouraged to attend.  Bring flashlights and dress warmly.  Car pool if possible, as parking is limited.

The 2010 Astronomical Pocket Diary is now available.  This handy guide has observing information (moon phases, planets, meteor showers, eclipses, etc.) all calculated for the Bay Area plus an eclectic collection of trivia.  Our program dates are listed so you won’t miss a program.  Check it out at www.y23.com/apd.  They make planning your observing sessions a breeze and make great holiday gifts for outdoor enthusiasts on your list. There will be copies for sale at the mountain for $10,  or you can order one by sending a check payable to MTIA (Mount Tamalpais Interpretive Association) for $11 (includes postage/handling) to Tinka Ross, 89 Dominican Drive, San Rafael, CA 94901.  This is the only fundraiser for our programs, other than the donation box at the actual events, and your support is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for sharing this information with others, and come enjoy our last program for this year.

  

 

Exploratorium in San Francisco
http://www.exploratorium.edu/

 

The Tech Museum, downtown San Jose

Western Amateur Astronomers

Peninsula Astronomical Society

OTHER CLUBS & EVENTS - For regularly-updated information on other astronomical organizations and events, we refer you to the website of the Astronomical Association of Northern California; 
www.aanc-astronomy.orgJane H J on your I-Pod,
http://education.jpl.nasa.gov/amateurastronomy/index.html

Astronomical Society of the Pacific
  ASP Website

U.S. Department of the Interior
U.S. Geological Survey,
       Public Programs:
http://online.wr.usgs.gov/calendar/

The Intel Museum

Computer History Museum

For those familiar with the streets of the SF Mission,
Bay Area Science Cafe
http://www.sciencecafesf.com/
http://www.atlascafe.net/

Lockheed Martin Palo Alto Colloquia

The NASA Exploration Center is open to the public free of charge. For information about the Exploration Center, please visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/home/exploration.html

To learn about other events hosted by NASA Ames, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/events/index.html

Astronomy at College of San Mateo College of San Mateo Maps

 

Webmaster's Links

Return to smcas.htm

 

 

 

 

SMCAS Patches

The SMCAS patches are on sale for six dollars each. 

Actual diameter is 9 centimeters or about 3 1/2 inches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

LCROSS Briefing July 25 and
updated September 12 ( review with comments by Bob Fies )

Background

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, ( LRO ) has been in the planning for many years.  The objective being to obtain detailed sub meter resolution pictures of the entire lunar surface.   The LRO is now in orbit around the moon.

At some point in the design of the LRO it became apparent due to the configuration of the Atlas launch vehicle that there would be room for additional equipment.

The LCROSS package was added to the adapter ring that sits atop the centaur third stage and below the LRO package.  After third stage burnout the centaur was not jettisoned as is usually the case.
The LRO separated from the centaur and LCROSS and injected itself into the lunar orbit.
The LCROSS package made a near flyby of the moon and is now in a 39 day orbit around the earth.
The near lunar flyby of LCROSS allowed the plane of its orbit to be shifted so that it could impact the moon
at an 80 degree angle into an always shaded crater on the south pole of the moon.

The mission objective is to determine from the plume of impact debris if there is ice trapped at the bottom of
eternally shaded craters on the lunar south pole.  The secondary objective is to determine the nature
of the lunar surface chemistry.  The instrumented LCROSS will separate from the inert centaur nine hours before impact and impact the crater bottom nearby four minutes after centaur impact.
The centaur crater is expected to be about 3 meters deep and 20 meters in diameter and to throw debris
about  about 10 km above the lunar surface.  Craters of this size are continually formed on the moon by
impacts but unfortunately at unexpected random locations.

 

Observations of Impact and Amateur Astronomer Briefing.

Previous lunar missions have determined the almost certain presence of increased hydrogen at the lunar
poles and there is some inconclusive evidence for crystalline ( ice? ) crystals.
Atomic hydrogen would not stay on the moon so the hydrogen must be chemically bound in some way.

The immediate thought is to look at the optical spectra for the presence of the atomic oxygen spectral line
in the impact flash. There are two problems with this ( although Brian Day insist he is discouraging no effort ).
One problem is that the flash will most likely be below the crater rim as viewed from earth.  The other is that there is the expectation that there is indeed oxygen present but not in the form of ice.
There was stated that the impact would be viewed by the Space Telescope and comment that the NICMOS
instrumentation on the Space Telescope was appropriate.

Observations from the Earth will be possible in general to the west of the Mississippi.
Although the moon will be visible from the east coast the 4th to 5th magnitude debris plume will be lost
in the daytime sky.  It was stated that, at the time of impact, the moon will be too low in east to view from Japan.
Perhaps the primary terrestrial observations will be made from Mauna Kea in Hawaii where many large
telescopes will be dedicated to observations of the impact.  But keep in mind it all happens in 90 seconds
and if a cloud were there all data from Hawaii could be lost.
Arizona is another prime area for observations.
The high, and dry deserts of Chile will be hampered by a low lunar elevation above the horizon.

Large telescopes are designed to drive at sidereal rate and some of the spectrograph slits are only
.5 arc seconds in width.  This makes pointing the telescope in advance quite tricky since the moon
besides not traveling at sidereal rate also has parallax and liberation and the view from a rotating earth
is not in the moons orbital plane.

The pointing problem plus the fact that the OH, hydroxyl spectra is a band and not a spectral line tend to
pre dispose me toward the use of infra red band pass filters. ( Bob Fies )
Multi layer infra red band pass filters are already available and might be 'off the shelf' items.
Amateurs have been using webcams at the telescope prime focus.  These cameras have a frame rate of maybe 30 frames per second.  If a filter wheel could be synchronized with the frame rate then two IR filters
could be used, one filter excluding the main OH bands and the other including the main OH bands.
Data reduction would involve subtracting non OH frames from OH frames.
Comment was made that a camera with wide dynamic range would be required. ( bits per pixel )
Comment was made that a telescope aperture of more than a meter might be required depending on
filter band pass and filter efficiency.  But no calculations were done.

Another opportunity for advanced amateurs is the creation of stereoscopic image pair ( or triplet ).
With a base line of a few thousand miles the parallax will be adequate to produce 3D images.
The 3D structure of the plume will give some information about the surface slope and conditions at the impact point.  ( Brian Day )   There was discussion of resources available to create 3D digital representations of the plume at the PAS meeting September 11.

From my limited experience I would recommend a telescope in the 8 to 10 inch range unless 'seeing'
conditions could be expected to be more than excellent.  ( Bob Fies )
The short F# ( fast ) telescope setups normally expected in astronomical photography will be a disadvantage in photographing the LCROSS event. Since the subject is very bright it is recommended
that the exposure be biased toward the under exposed setting. ( Bryan Day )  
The detector needs a wide dynamic range and the brightest pixels need to be well below detector saturation.

 

Appearance in the Amateur Telescope

Since the event lasts only about 90 seconds preparation is
important.  It is recommended that those with serious
expectations find 4th and 5th magnitude stars that are near
the moon to learn what to expect visually.  
A grazing occultation of a 4th magnitude star by the moon
would be an excellent simulation.  There was discussion
of using an occulting mask at the prime focus to reduce
some of the glare from the gibbous moon. ( July 25 )
Had the launch been made as originally scheduled the plume would be on the lunar limb and viewed against the black sky.
As it now stands the plume will be against a sunlit background. ( or mostly sunlit )
The lunar libation will have the lunar south pole tilted slightly earthward.

The plume is expected to look like an upside down lamp
shade. It will appear first as a slightly out of focus star then
spread in width to about 20 arc seconds.  

e lyrae is commonly used by amateur telescope makers for
testing telescope resolution. Commonly called the
double-double, the closely spaced pairs have a separation
of about 2 arc seconds.  Although e lyrae will not be part
of the LCROSS the spacing and brightness may be used to give an expectation of the size and brightness of the LCROSS event.

Lunar surface brightness estimated to be about -17 magnitude, very bright.

NASA/LCROSS has setup an extensive website for amateur's observations and comments.

There will also be a Google groups called LCROSS observations.

 

also on this page

More LCROSS information

NASA is to crash a used rocket booster into an always
shaded crater on the moon.
See attached page from Sky & Telescope and links:
http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/index.html

There is also a web page for coordinating amateur astronomers.
http://groups.google.com/group/lcross_observation?lnk=srg

Update September 12

If the amateur astronomer portion of the NASA LCROSS website becomes overloaded ( not expected ) the event may also be viewed on NASA TV.

Update October 3

You are invited.

FPOA will be hosting a special public event for the LCROSS Lunar Impact very early Friday morning, October 9, 2009 at 4:30am.  Yes, that's AM, not PM.  The public event be from 3AM until 5AM.  We will be attaching a sensitive video camera and recording the event.  The recorder will be connected to the projector in the classroom adjacent to the observing room.  This way, we can accommodate about 50 or more people with the ability to see the event live.  RSVPs are required. 

See www.fpoa.net for details.

Dave Samuels
Vice Pres, FPOA

www.fpoa.net

Finding the lunar impact location.
small/medium		medium

_______________________________________________
FPOA-Members mailing list
http://www.fpoa.net/mailman/listinfo/fpoa-members

Related links from November 'Sky and Telescope'

http://iota.jhuapl.edu/

http://www.lunar-occultations.com/entersite.htm

Update, October 8, AANC

 

Graze Expedition

Have you ever participated in a Graze Expedition?
They are great sport for techno nerds, such as I am.

There is one which can be observed from Skyline Blvd. just south of Haynes Rd., Hillsborough.
... and at the convenient time of about 1:53 am. 
Please let me know.

Bob ( B. )

Walt M., a great grazer, sent this to me:

Late Thursday night/early Friday morning, August 13/14 will be the occasion 
of the “last good crescent-Moon Pleiades passage visible from the USA until 
the next series starts about 2023” (quoting David Dunham).  
Large graze expeditions are planned across the country for several of the 
Pleiades stars.  In Northern California our best opportunity is a northern 
limit graze by magnitude 3.7 Electra (17 Tauri), at about 1:53 a.m. Friday morning 
(UT 8:53).  Electra is the third brightest of the Pleiades stars.  
Its ZC number is 537.

Lunar circumstances:
  Cusp angle 6.2 degrees north
  Altitude 18 degrees
  Azimuth 73 degrees
  Moon 43% illuminated, waning

A more comprehensive description from David Dunham will be pasted in below.  
This notice is rather late, but no one has stepped up to lead a Bay Area expedition.  
Each person can instead find a suitable place near their home, using tools 
I’ll describe below.

Occult indicates that this graze will be visible with binoculars, but larger optics 
are always preferred.  Video records are best, but the traditional audio recordings 
with the observer’s voice superimposed on a WWV signal are still very useful.

Besides being an unusually bright star, the extra attraction of this graze is the 
recent availability of profiles an order of magnitude better than those used previously.  The explanation is rather complicated (and I don’t fully understand it myself), but in a nutshell: place yourself 500 to 1000 metres southeast (measured perpendicularly) of the predicted graze line and it is highly probable that you will have multiple peaks.  The profile is rather flat by normal standards, but its improved accuracy is expected to compensate for that.

The general path crosses the southern part of the San Francisco peninsula, 
Hayward, Danville, I-5 north of Stockton, and the Sierra foothills.

The best map to use for this graze is available at 
  http://www.poyntsource.com/New/index.htm

Click on Google Maps (top center).  Down a way on the right side of the resulting 
screen, click on Electra Graze August 14 – 50m.  The next screen will have an 
interactive map, but it is necessary to scroll down a couple screens to see it.  
Click and drag to get the red circle (map center) positioned on northern California, 
and zoom in.  The green line is the graze limit.  The gray lines are displaced 
+5 and -15 km from that.  

Just above the map are two lines where you can change the offsets of the gray lines.  
Change the values to +0.5 and +1.0, then click on the Click Here box to the right 
each time.  The gray lines will move to 0.5 and 1.0 km south of the green line.

Your only remaining task is to drag the map around, zooming as appropriate, 
until you find a place between the gray lines where you can set up your scope 
and have the moon in view.

That process ignores a small offset for elevation 
(which is assumed to be 50 metres for the green line shown).  
If your elevation will be greater than 100 metres a small offset should be included, 
and I will figure out how to explain that and send an announcement Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, see if you can’t find a nearby location and schedule a little time to 
use your scope early Friday morning.

Walt M.

  *    *    *    *
(Message from David D.  --  I hope it shows up all right)

A spectacular crescent-Moon occultation of the brighter Pleiades
stars will occur Friday morning, August 14th. For observers
throughout the USA and Canada, it will be their last chance to
observe such an event until 2023, so it's worth some effort, at
least to observe the total occultation dark-side reappearances
visible from their homes. The message below also describes three
good grazing occultation paths across populous parts of North
America; those within an approximately mile-wide band will see the
bright star flash off and on as it is repeatedly covered and
uncovered by lunar mountains and craters along the dark northern
edge of the Moon. There are many paths for other grazing
occultations of stars of mag. 5 to 8 that also cross the continent,
possibly one near you, and these can also provide interesting views.
The Pleiades occultation events will occur mainly within an hour of
9h UT (5am EDT, 4am CDT, 3am MDT, or 2am PDT)

For Pleiades occultations, region of visibility maps and
predictions for hundreds of N. American cities for the brightest
6 stars are on the IOTA lunar occultation prediction Web site at
http://www.lunar-occultations.com/iota/pleiades/pleiades.htm .
Predictions for all of 2009 for stars to mag. 6.0 for 40 of the
larger N. American cities can be downloaded in .zip files from
http://www.lunar-occultations.com/bobgraze/index.html .
You can also download IOTA's Occult 4 program at no cost from
http://www.lunar-occultations.com/iota/occult4.htm and compute your
own predictions. That has the advantage that you can use it to
create views of the Moon showing the locations of each reappearing
star in the predictions that you generate.
_________________

The grazing occultations are certainly the most spectacular events,
so if possible, you are encouraged to try to "go mobile" and observe
one in your area; see below. If you can't do that, at least try to
observe the total occultations from a convenient location as
described above.
___________________

Lunar Grazing Occultations during the passage

You can zoom in on some of these paths using Brad Timerson's
interactive Google maps Web site at http://www.timerson.net/IOTA/ .
But you need to know the offsets for the graze zone in your area; we
can help you determine that. One of the best grazes will be the
one of 4.3-mag. Taygeta (19 Tauri = ZC 539) that will be visible
along a path extending from s.e. of New Orleans, to north of Mobile
and s. of Montgomery, AL; south of Atlanta; south of Petersburg, VA;
and over the Delmarva Peninsula, crossing the Atlantic coast over
the southern part of Assateague Island. Taygeta is a relatively
long-period spectroscopic binary that has apparently been resolved
during some past grazes and high-speed photoelectric recordings of
total occultations. Unfortunately, the current weather forecast is
poor for the Mid-Atlantic region, but good farther southwest along
the Taygeta graze path, from where it crosses I-75 about halfway
between Atlanta and Macon, Georgia to s.e. of New Orleans.

Another spectacular graze will be one of 3.9-mag. Maia (20 Tauri =
ZC 541) with the path extending from near El Paso, Texas, to Kansas
City, MO; Racine, Wisc.; and s. of Sudbury, Ont. Also, there will
be a spectacular graze of 3.7-mag. Electra (17 Tauri = ZC 537)
visible from the San Francisco Bay area; near Carson, Nev.; and
northeast from there to Twin Falls, ID and s.e. of Regina, Sask.
Both of these stars are also spectroscopic binaries, and although
there have been some past claims of resolution, it's likely that the
separations of these pairs is too small to resolve from occultation
observations.

There are many other grazes of 8th to 5th-mag. stars that will also
be spectacular with small telescopes, visible along many other
paths, possibly one near you; see a Web site that I've set up about
this Pleiades passage at http://iota.jhuapl.edu/pleds814.htm,
especially for Mid-Atlantic region information. For an overview
of the better events across N. America, see pages 177 (table) and
180 (map), and for general info. pages 166 - 172 of the RASC
Observer's Handbook for 2009; the table, map, and path predictions
are also at http://iota.jhuapl.edu/grazemap.htm . For detailed
interactive maps to select local sites for many of the grazes, see
Brad Timerson's site specified above, click on "times" to see the
list of times and circumstances along the path, and click on the
star number at the top of the map for the interactive Google map. In
that, change the numbers in the two boxes to +2.0 and 0.0, and click
on them, to very approximately define the graze zone between the two
gray lines that will be plotted. The best multiple events range
will be narrower; for the brighter grazes, I'll give some guidance
in an update to this message tomorrow - see below.

A recent analysis of past Taygeta grazes, and 2006 Apr. 1/2 Maia
graze observations, using much improved profile data derived from
the Japanese Kaguya mission show excellent agreement with the
observations, so we can select locations that will guarantee many
events using the predicted Kaguya profile for this event.
Links to the Kaguya profiles are given below. During the 2006 Apr.
2nd graze, a spectacular video recording was obtained with my
telescope; you can download (it'll take awhile, it's 247 megabytes)
from http://iota.jhuapl.edu/20060402MaiaGrazeSA.avi . Videos of
another good graze, to see what the phenomenon is like, are also on
my Web page about it at http://iota.jhuapl.edu/muari612.htm ;
especially good are my northern station video and Bob Sandy's video
that are posted there.


KAGUYA LUNAR PROFILES

Much improved lunar profile data derived from the Japanese Kaguya
mission show excellent agreement with past graze observations, so we
can select locations that will guarantee many events using the
predicted Kaguya profile for this event. You can see the past
observed graze reductions using Kaguya data at
http://optik2.mtk.nao.ac.jp/~somamt/grazes-kaguya.html
(the comparison/improvement over the old Watts profiles is striking)
and the predicted Kaguya profiles for the Taygeta, Maia, and Electra
grazes are at the bottom of
http://optik2.mtk.nao.ac.jp/~somamt/grazes.html . Also at the
bottom there is a "star path" figure that you can print, either on a
transparency or cut out along the curve; you can then move this up
and down on the predicted Kaguya profile (which is plotted with the
Moon's mean limb as a horizontal line, so the star paths are curved)
keeping the center at the axis angle of central graze for your
longitude (which you can get from the northern limit data on my
Pleiades Web site, or from the "times" lists on Timerson's site).

August 15, 2009

 

Attached is a movie made of 4 frames I took last night via an 80mm APO.

It was 2 frames of 20 seconds and 2 frames of 30 seconds, obviously the moon looks like its on fire but you can make out M45 and the motion of the moon in the foreground.

 

Enjoy

Chanan

Local copy of file:
http://www.alcoat/smcas/09-08aug/Moon_and_M45_Aug_14_2009.wmv