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The Running Man Nebula the Orion Nebula WESTCHESTER AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS JANUARY 2013 Sky tch The Running Man Nebula Olivier Prache captured this image of NGC 1977 (the Running Man nebula) in Orion. He employed a Hyperion 12.5 inch astrograph and a FLI ML16803 camera on a MI-250 Mount. The exposure was 100 minutes each R,G,B no binning with 10- minutes sub frames; acquired with CCD Commander and MaxImDL. The image was processed with CCDStack2 and Photoshop. NGC 1977 is a reflection nebula associated with the Great Nebula in Orion and lies at a distance of 1500 light yrs. The Orion Nebula Courtesy of Carl Lydon is this image of M42, the Great Nebula in Orion. This vast stellar nursery is one of the gems of the winter sky. Carl’s image combines four four-minute and 20 one-minute exposures. He stacked these in photoshop (with levels, curves and a high dynamic range filter). He used a Canon Rebel T3 camera, though an 11" Celestron 1100HD telescope. THE ASTRONOMY COMMUNITY SINCE 1983 Page 1 WESTCHESTER AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS JANUARY 2013 Events for January 2013 WAA Lectures • Newsletter Editor: Tom Boustead “Modern Telescope Mirror • Equipment Manager: Darryl Ciucci Manufacturing for Ground and Space The annual audit will be performed by Darryl Ciucci, Applications” Bill Newell. Friday January 11th, 7:30pm Miller Lecture Hall, Pace University The membership approved Bylaws amendments that Pleasantville, NY will permit official notifications from the club to be Mr. Charlie Schaub will discuss the techniques and made via email. equipment used to develop telescope mirrors for space and ground applications. It will highlight how modern 2013 Lecture Dates telescope mirror manufacturing involves a unique Lectures (Fridays, 7:30 pm, Miller Hall, Pace University) blending of the artisan classical finishing processes combined with modern computer controlled Winter-Spring Fall technologies. Mr. Schaub is the Director of Advanced Systems in the Intelligence, Surveillance, and January 11, 2013 (second September 6, 2013 Reconnaissance Division of the United Technologies Friday) Aerospace Systems group. A graduate of the Institute February 1, 2013 October 4, 2013 of Optics of the University of Rochester, he leads a March 1. 2013 November 1, 2013 team of scientists, engineers, and technicians in the April 5, 2013 December 6, 2013 development of advanced optical products for industry, the U.S. Government, and foreign May 3, 2013 governments. Free and open to the public. Directions June 7, 2013 and Map. Starway to Heaven More Upcoming Lectures There will be no public Starway to Heaven in January Miller Lecture Hall, Pace University or February. Starway to Heaven events will resume in Pleasantville, NY March. On February 1st, our speaker will be Brother Robert Novak, Ph.d., who will will present the latest results New Members. from Mars Curiosity. Lectures are free and open to the Stephanie Lester & John Naval - Dobbs Ferry public. Gary Telfer - Scarborough Annual Meeting Results Renewing Members. At the Annual Meeting on December 7, 2012, a new Hans Minnich - Bronx Larry and Elyse Faltz - Larchmont Board of Directors was elected. For 2013, the officers Jay Friedman - Katonah are: Bob Kelly - Ardsley • President: Larry Faltz Douglas & Vivian Towers - Yonkers • Senior VP: Charlie Gibson Mandira Roy - Hastings-on-Hudson • Treasurer: Doug Baum Anthony Sarro - Scarsdale • VP Membership: Paul Alimena Michael Rinaldi - Scarsdale • VP Lectures: Pat Mahon Jonathan Gold - Ossining • VP Field Events: Bob Kelly Ron Posmentier - Croton-on-Hudson Additional leadership positions appointed by the WAA APPAREL Board are: Charlie Gibson will be bringing WAA apparel for sale to • Assistant VP: Claudia Parrington WAA meetings. Items include: • Webmaster: David Parmet •Caps, $10 (navy and khaki) •Short Sleeve Polos, $12 (navy). THE ASTRONOMY COMMUNITY SINCE 1983 Page 2 WESTCHESTER AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS JANUARY 2013 Articles and Photos Some Discoveries by the Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope by Larry Faltz ! Gamma Rays argon-40, emitting a 1.460 MeV gamma ray and a neutrino. The adult human body contains about 160 Gamma (γ) rays are the highest frequency grams of potassium of which about 0.0117% is electromagnetic waves and therefore, by the particle/ potassium-40, whose decay produces about 4,400 wave duality of quantum mechanics, the most disintegrations per second. Considering that these energetic photons in the electromagnetic spectrum. energetic rays can ionize atoms in biologic We recall the Bohr equation for the energy of an molecules, they are potentially hazardous. Cellular electromagnetic wave, E=hν, where h is Planck’s and DNA repair mechanisms can deal with most of constant (6.626x10-34 joule-seconds) and ν (nu) is the the damage, but it is possible that some diseases, frequency (1/seconds). If you do the algebra, the particularly cancers, could be due to unrepaired seconds cancel and we get the value in joules, a unit genetic injury from intrinsic potassium-40 decay. of energy. Since we more commonly talk about Potassium-40 decay also contributes to the heating of wavelengths for electromagnetic waves, the the Earth’s core (about 20% of the total energy, the wavelength λ (lambda) is merely the speed of light in rest provided by uranium and thorium decay). a vacuum (c=2.99792458x108 meters/second) divided by frequency (so Bohr’s equation becomes E=hc/λ). Gamma rays from nuclear disintegration can be used Very energetic gamma radiation can have for medical diagnosis and treatment. The sugar wavelengths of less than a picometer (10-12 meters, analog fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) can be made with less than the diameter of an atom), frequencies fluorine-18. Taken up by metabolically active tissues, greater than 10 exahertz (or >1019 Hz) and energies the 18FDG emits a positron, which collides with a above 100 KeV (7,300 times the energy needed to nearby electron to produce a gamma ray. The camera ionize a hydrogen atom). Gamma rays are so on a positron-emission tomography (PET) scanner energetic that they can create matter in the form of detects the positrons and creates images. electron-positron pairs (recall E=mc2, therefore by Technicium-99m is taken up by bone mineral and simple algebra m=h/λc). Thank you, special relativity detected by gamma cameras to produce bone scans. and quantum mechanics! And since the basic laws of The deadly gamma emitter cobalt-60 was an early physics are reversible, an electron and positron can radiotherapy source, but in modern medicine it finds annihilate to form a gamma ray. its place in gamma knife devices for cancer radiosurgery. On Earth, gamma radiation is emitted by certain radioactive decays, in small amounts from lightning Another source of gamma radiation is and in large amounts from nuclear explosions. The bremsstrahlung, or “braking radiation.” These waves most common natural source of terrestrial gamma are emitted when charged particles decelerate as they radiation is the decay of potassium-40. This isotope follow curved paths in an electromagnetic field. has a half-life of 1.248x109 years. Although 90% of Diagnostic X-ray machines produce their radiation in the time it undergoes beta decay by emitting an this manner, but gamma rays can be produced if the electron and antineutrino to become calcium-40, 10% particles are at much higher energies. of the time it captures an electron to become THE ASTRONOMY COMMUNITY SINCE 1983 Page 3 WESTCHESTER AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS JANUARY 2013 The most energetic gamma radiation is produced by a vacuum; light moves slower in other media, like air, cataclysmic processes in the cosmos: supernovas, water or glass). This creates a kind of sonic boom, neutron stars and black holes. It is thought that most generating electron-positron pairs in an “air shower” of this radiation is the result of inverse Compton that in turn produces a cone of visible light. Special scattering and synchrotron radiation. In inverse telescopes in dark sites can detect these emissions. Compton scattering, low energy photons are kicked The spectrum of Cerenkov radiation has been well- up to higher energies by interaction with electrons studied, allowing the source, either gamma rays moving at relativistic speeds, such as in the accretion (photons) or cosmic rays (charged particles) to be disks around black holes. Synchrotron radiation is determined. produced when charged particles move along curved The first gamma-ray telescope was carried on board paths at ultra-relativistic speeds in a magnetic field. the American satellite Explorer 11 in 1961. Gamma- It’s the likely mechanism for the radiation component ray bursts from deep space were discovered by the of pulsar and black hole jets. An earthly example is Vela satellites, originally designed to detect nuclear radiation from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. explosions on earth. Throughout the 1970’s and 80’s, In the LHC, highly energetic protons travelling at smaller gamma ray detectors made a number of 0.999999991 c are kept on their 27-km circular path interesting discoveries, detecting many gamma ray by 1,600 superconducting magnets. They bursts and pulsars. The 1991 Compton Gamma Ray continuously emit gamma rays, and the flux is so high Observatory mapped thousands of sources. Their that anyone standing in the corridor next to the device distribution showed that they did not arise in the would be fatally irradiated in a fraction of a second. Milky Way. Gamma ray bursts are now known to The real problem for the experiment, though (since arise from supernovas and perhaps from the merger of the device is cleared of personnel before a run) is that two neutron stars. conservation of energy requires that synchrotron radiation carry energy away from the proton beam, On June 11, 2008, the Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope reducing its intensity. was launched. Originally called GLAST, the Gamma Ray Large Area Telescope, Fermi has had a remarkably productive scientific life using its two instruments, the Large Area Telescope and the Gamma Ray Burst Monitor.
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