ECLIPSE NEWSLETTER

The Eclipse Newsletter is dedicated to increasing the knowledge of Astronomy, , and related subjects.

VOLUMN III - NUMBER I JANUARY – FEBRUARY 2019

PLEASE SEND ALL PHOTOS, QUESTIONS AND REQUST FOR ARTICLES TO [email protected]

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CONTENTS:

CONSTELLATION ORIAN

WHAT ARE THE MESSIER OBJECTS?

MESSIER OBJECT NUMBER 42

WHAT IS THE LIFECYCLE OF A ? PART 1.

DARK MATTER

MCAO PUBLIC NIGHTS AND FAMILY NIGHTS.

HOW TO FIND

HYPERLINKS IN BLUE

DEFINITIONS IN RED

ORION Around this time of , I like to revisit the Constellation. I have always thought of Orion as the Archer. He has drawn his bow. His arrow is pointing at Antares, the bright red heart of , the scorpion. The archer is avenging Orion, who was slain by the scorpion's sting.

Others view Orion as the Hunter.

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To others, Orion is viewed with a club and Lions head.

As the old saying goes, it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Once you have chosen how you prefer to view Orion, we can move on to some interesting information.

Orion is clearly visible in the night sky from November to February. Orion is in the southwestern sky if you are in the Northern Hemisphere.

Alnilam, Mintaka and Alnitak, which form Orion’s belt, are the most prominent in the Orion constellation. , the second brightest star in Orion, establishes the right shoulder of the hunter. Bellatrix serves as Orion's left shoulder. We can also find in the Orion Constellation, the Orion .

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The — a formation of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases rather than a star — is the middle "star" not exactly, in Orion’s sword holder, which hangs off of Orion's Belt. The Horsehead Nebula is also nearby. Other stars in the constellation include Hatsya, which establishes the tip of Orion's sword that hangs off the belt, and Meissa, which forms Orion's head. Saiph serves as Orion's right knee. Rigel, Orion’s brightest star, forms the hunter's left knee.

WHAT ARE THE MESSIER OBJECTS?

The Messier objects are a set of over 100 astronomical objects first listed by French astronomer in 1771.[1] Messier was a hunter, and was frustrated by objects which resembled but were not , so he compiled a list of them,[2] in collaboration with his assistant Pierre Méchain, to avoid wasting time on them. The number of objects in the lists he published reached 103, but a few more thought to have been observed by Messier have been added by other astronomers over the .

For a list of Messier objects:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List of Messier objects

THE ORIAN NEBULA 42.

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The Orion Nebula is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky, and is among the most intensely studied celestial features. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust.

The nebula is visible with the even from areas affected by some light pollution. It is seen as the middle "star" in the "sword" of Orion, which are the three stars located south of Orion's Belt. The star appears fuzzy to sharp-eyed observers, and the nebulosity is obvious through or a small telescope. The peak surface brightness of the central region is about 17 Mag/arcsec2 ( Mag/arcec (is a value used to define surface brightness)) (about 14 milliunits) (a unit of measurement) and the outer bluish glow has a peak surface brightness of 21.3 Mag/arcsec2 (about 0.27 milliunits). (In the photo shown here the brightness, or luminance, is enhanced by a large factor.) The Orion Nebula contains a very young , known as the Trapezium due to the of its primary four stars. Two of these can be resolved into their component binary systems on nights with good seeing, giving a total of six stars. The stars of the Trapezium, along with many other stars, are still in their early years. The Trapezium is a component of the much larger Orion Nebula Cluster, an association of about 2,800 stars within a diameter of 20 light years. Two million years ago this cluster may have been the home of the runaway stars AE Aurigae, 53 Arietis, and Mu Columbae, which are currently moving away from the nebula at speeds greater than 100 km/s.

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Orion Nebula Trapezium is in the center of the green area.

WHAT IS THE LIFECYCLE OF A STAR?

Our Star, the , is considered by most to be a 3rd generation Star. Two other generations of Stars preceded it. They are known as 1st and 2nd generation Stars.

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The is constantly evolving. Even today, clouds of dust and gas swirling among the vast reaches of space remain capable of giving birth to new stars just as they did billions of years ago. Obviously, not all stars came into existence at the same time. At 4.3 billion years old, the star the Earth orbits and that humans call the sun is among the younger stars known which are referred to as 3rd generation stars. However, there were two generations of stars that came before the 3rd generation. More on that later. Like so many things in the universe, stars begin very small -- mere particles in vast clouds of dust and gas. Far from active stars, these nebulae remain cold and monotonous for ages. Then everything stirs up when a newcomer speeds through. This disturbance might take the form of a streaking comet or the shockwave from a distant supernova. As the resulting force moves though the cloud, particles collide and begin to form clumps. Individually, a clump attains more mass and therefore a stronger gravitational pull, attracting even more particles from the surrounding cloud. Refer back to the picture above. As you can see, the process starts with a nebula which turns into a dust cloud then a Globule and then a Protostar. One of two things will happen to the Protostar. Become a full-blown star or a Brown Dwarf. More later. For now, let’s consider the 1st generation of stars. The best evidence yet for the very first generation of stars, ones made only from ingredients provided directly by the they being made from essentially only hydrogen and helium. These 1st generation stars concentrated in the disks of spiral . Second generation stars tend to be found in globular clusters (a large compact spherical ) and the nucleus of a . They tend to last longer therefore being older than the 1st generation of star we can still observe and less luminous and cooler than 1st generation stars which are predicted to be enormous in size, live fast and die young.

Until recently, many astronomers had thought they would never be able to see such stars, because they would have all burned and died in the universe’s early history therefore too far for us to see. But using new instruments on the world’s top telescopes, a group of astronomers found a uniquely bright galaxy that seems to bear all the hallmarks of containing 1st generation stars.

The space between stars, termed the interstellar medium, is filled with gases and traces of molecular elements. Most abundant in the interstellar medium is hydrogen gas, followed by helium. Certain pockets of space are so cold and lacking in energy that gravity can pull these gases together with particles of dust, eventually giving rise to stars. For this reason, scientists believe that the first stars were composed primarily of these abundant gases, hydrogen and helium.

2nd generation stars tend to be older, less luminous and cooler than 3rd generation stars.

Stars may be classified by their heavy element abundance, which correlates with their age and the type of galaxy in which they are found. 3rd generation stars which includes the sun tend to be luminous, hot and young, concentrated in the disks of spiral galaxies. They are particularly found in the spiral arms which is where we find our star. Back to the life cycle. How does a nebula change into a protostar? A nebula is made of clouds of gas and dust. There is hydrogen gas, of course, and hydrogen atoms. Due to gravity, hydrogen gas tends to clumped together, and the hydrogen atoms

Page | 7 will start to spin and pulls up more hydrogen atoms that will cause collision. This collision of the hydrogen atoms causes the hydrogen gas to heat up. When the temperature reach 15,000,000 C , (27,000.000 F) nuclear fusion starts. A protostar is then formed. Let’s go back to the Life Cycle of a Star picture above and start with a Nebula. The most common Nebula∘ for us is the Orion Nebula.

The above shows the location of the Orion Nebula.

The best-known image from the Orion Nebula is the Horse Head but is not all inclusive of this Nebula. The Horsehead Nebula is a dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of the star Alnitak, which is farthest east on Orion's Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.

Let’s review a bit. Stars begin as a particles in clouds of dust and gas called Nebula. A Nebula will remain cold and basically inactive for ages. Then, the Nebula begins to stir up due to a disturbance. That disturbance can come from a distant supernova which sends shock waves out in all directions. As the result, this force moves though the Nebula creating

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a stronger gravitational pull, attracting even more particles as the cloud begin to form clumps. This is known as gravitational collapse of a molecular cloud.

This is an actual photo of a Supernova coming apart.

In the next issue, March – April

More about a Protostar and a Supernova.

DARK MATTER

One of the most maddening mysteries in modern is that of and dark matter. As the name suggest they are unknown material and energy that observations propose exist in the universe more than normal matter, but that we can’t see. Researchers believe that these two together account for up to 95 percent of the total mass in the cosmos. Now, a scientist at the says a new theory might explain all that “dark phenomena” — and it’s a totally a mind-bender.

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The study, issued in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, proposes that dark matter and energy can both be understood if they’re looked at as a “ fluid.” Essentially, this unseen fluid acts as the opposite way of all normal materials: if you were to push it, it would move toward you instead of away. Jamie Farnes, the Oxford astrophysicist who came up with this new theory, designed a computer model to discover how this would affect the cosmos. He discovered that it could clarify why galaxies hold together as they rotate instead of flying apart — a tempting clue that his new model might solve existing astrophysical puzzles.

In an article for The Conversation, Farnes acknowledges that the negative mass theory could be incorrect — but also shows hope that, if it’s validated by future observations, it might deliver a new model for explaining the mysteries of the universe.

Farnes writes: “Despite these efforts, a negative mass cosmology could be wrong. The theory seems to provide answers to so many currently open questions that scientists will — quite rightly — be rather suspicious. However, it is often the out-of-the-box ideas that provide answers to longstanding problems. The strong accumulating evidence has now grown to the point that we must consider this unusual possibility.”

The following is the article referred to above.

J. S. Farnes (Submitted on 18 Dec 2017 (v1), last revised 26 Oct 2018 (this version, v2)) Dark energy and dark matter constitute 95% of the . Yet the physical nature of these two phenomena remains a mystery. Einstein suggested a long-forgotten solution: gravitationally repulsive negative masses, which drive cosmic expansion and cannot coalesce into light-emitting structures. However, contemporary cosmological results are derived upon the reasonable assumption that the Universe only contains positive masses. By reconsidering this assumption, I have constructed a toy model which suggests that both dark phenomena can be unified into a single negative mass fluid. The model is a modified ΛCDM cosmology, and indicates that continuously-created negative masses can resemble the and can flatten the rotation curves of galaxies. The model leads to a cyclic universe with a time-variable Hubble parameter, potentially providing compatibility with the current tension that is emerging in cosmological measurements. In the first three-dimensional N-body simulations of negative mass matter in the scientific literature, this exotic material naturally forms haloes around galaxies that extend to several galactic radii. These haloes are not cuspy. The proposed cosmological model is therefore able to predict the observed distribution of dark matter in galaxies from first principles. The model makes several testable predictions and seems to have the potential to be consistent with observational evidence from distant supernovae, the cosmic microwave background, and galaxy clusters. These findings may imply that negative masses are a real and physical aspect of our Universe, or alternatively may imply the existence of a superseding theory that in some limit can be modelled by effective negative

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masses. Both cases lead to the surprising conclusion that the compelling puzzle of the dark Universe may have been due to a simple sign error.

Ultraprecise atomic clock network on the hunt for dark matter.

Researchers are putting a global network of the most precise timekeepers ever made to the task of hunting for dark matter, the invisible and largely intangible substance that researchers think makes up about five-sixths of all matter in the universe. The existence of dark matter is suggested via its gravitational effects on the movements of stars and galaxies. However, it remains a mystery as to what it might be composed of, and projects ranging from the most powerful atom smasher ever built to vats of chilly liquid xenon have failed to find a trace of it so far, lead study author Piotr Wcisło, a physicist at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, told Space.com.

Scientists have largely eliminated all known particles as possible explanations for dark matter. One remaining possibility is that dark matter is made of a new kind of particle; another is that dark matter is not made of particles at all, but rather a field that pervades space much like gravity does. [8 Baffling Astronomy Mysteries] Previous research suggested that if dark matter is a field, structures could emerge within it — "topological defects" shaped like points, strings or sheets and potentially reaching at least the size of a planet, Wcisło said. These structures might have formed during the chaos after the Big Bang, and essentially froze into stable forms when the early universe cooled down.

Now scientists are testing the existence of dark-matter fields by looking for disturbances in some of the most accurate scientific instruments ever constructed — atomic clocks. These instruments keep time by monitoring the quivering of atoms, much as grandfather clocks rely on swinging pendulums. Nowadays, atomic clocks are so accurate that they would lose no more than 1 second every 15 billion years, longer than the 13.8-billion-year age of the universe.

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Interacting with a topological defect could make an atomic clock's atoms temporarily shake faster or slower. By monitoring a network of synchronized atomic clocks that are spread far enough apart for a topological defect to have an effect on some clocks but not others, scientists could detect the existence of these ghostly structures and measure some of their properties, such as their size and speed.

The researchers employed optical atomic clocks, which use laser beams to measure the motions of atoms when they are slowed down by cooling them to temperatures near absolute zero. They calculated that passing through a topological defect could increase or decrease the fine-structure constant, which describes the overall strength of the electromagnetic force. Such changes would alter how atoms respond to lasers and the rate at which those clocks ticked.

Another possible explanation for dark matter is that its effects are caused by fields that vary in strength over time, which in turn lead to regular fluctuations in the strength of the electromagnetic field. Atomic clocks could, in theory, help detect such "coherently oscillating classical scalar fields," the scientists noted.

By analyzing four atomic clocks on three continents — in Colorado, France, Poland and Japan — the researchers could look for subtle variations in the fine-structure constant with about 100 times greater sensitivity than previous experiments. However, they did not detect any signal consistent with dark matter.

One of the major problems of optical atomic clocks is that they can currently only operate continuously for about a day, Wcisło said. One reason for this is that optical atomic clocks need to keep many lasers operating in sync in order to work, and over time at least one of these lasers fall out of sync. However, Wcisło noted a key advantage of their network is that it does not require all its clocks to operate at the same time.

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The scientists aim to double the number of clocks in their network in the next year or two, Wcisło said, which could increase the sensitivity and observation time of their network by a factor of 10 or more.

The scientists detailed their findings online in the Journal Science Advances.

WITH LOVE FROM NORWAY

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ULTIMA THUEL You're looking at the farthest object ever visited by a spacecraft. New Horizons sends back images of Ultima Thule, a billion miles past the orbit of Pluto. The spacecraft took the image 17000 miles away from the object. According to NASA scientists, both these rocks collided in the early times of the 's formation.

Image Credit: NASA

MCAO PUBLIC NIGHTS AND FAMILY NIGHTS. The general public and MCAO members are invited to visit the Observatory on select Monday evenings at 8PM for Public Night programs. These programs include discussions and illustrated talks on astronomy, planetarium programs and offer the opportunity to view the planets, moon and other objects through the telescope, weather permitting. Due to limited parking and seating at the observatory, admission is by reservation only. Public Night attendance is limited to adults and students 5th grade and above. If you are interested in making reservations for a public night, you can contact us by calling 302-654-

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6407 between the hours of 9 am and 1 pm Monday through Friday. Or you can email us any time at [email protected] or [email protected]. The public nights will be presented even if the weather does not permit observation through the telescope. The admission fees are $3 for adults and $2 for children. There is no admission cost for MCAO members, but reservations are still required. If you are interested in becoming a MCAO member, please see the link for membership. We also offer family memberships. Family Nights are scheduled from late spring to early fall on Friday nights at 8:30PM. These programs are opportunities for families with younger children to see and learn about astronomy by looking at and enjoying the sky and its wonders. It is meant to teach young children from ages 6-12 about astronomy in simple terms they can really understand. Reservations are required and admission fees are $3 for adults and $2 for children. MCAO WEB SITE IS mountcuba.org

PUBLIC AND FAMILY NIGHTS SCHEDULE

Monday, January 7, "The Solar Wind: From the Sun to the 8PM Ben Marucca 2019 Earth and Beyond" Monday, January 21, "How to Use the New Telescope You Got 8PM Greg Weaver 2019 for Christmas" Monday, February 4, 8PM Scott Jackson "Galileo’s Neptune" 2019 Monday, February 18, "Rare Earth, Rare Life, or Rare 8PM Matt Shultz 2019 Intelligence?" Monday, March 4, 2019 8PM Stan Owocki "Colliding Galaxies" Monday, March 18, Dylan "The Drake Equation and the Search 8PM 2019 Hilligoss for Extra Terrestrial Life" "The Latest and Greatest in Monday, April 8, 2019 8PM Judi Provencal Astronomy" Monday, April 22, 2019 8PM Paul Stratton "Big Bang in Layman's Terms" "Magnetospheres from Planets to Monday, May 6, 2019 8PM Matt Shultz Stars" "Getting Started in Amateur Monday, May 20, 2019 8PM Rob Lancaster Astronomy" Harry Monday, June 10, 2019 8PM TBD Shipman "Star Charts, Atlases and Phone Apps Monday, June 24, 2019 8PM Budd Howard for Beginners"

NEW AT MOUNT CUBA We now have a new store of sorts. Anyone can buy the following items. Pencils ...... 25 Bookmarks...... 25 Galaxy Pens...... 50 Star Charts...... $4.00 Page | 15

Mugs...... $6.00 Hats...... $20.00 Soon to be added: stickers, water bottles and stress balls. These items are in a cabinet just to your left after you enter the main doors. See Kim or Greg for payments.

HOW TO FIND CONSTELLATIONS

Step 1. Orient the Star Chart. You will notice there are two sides to the chart. One side is for viewing the sky to the North. The other side is for viewing to the South. Let’s start with the side for the North. You will notice that the white part of the chart rotates. At the bottom, you will see months. Above the month is the date and above that the time. The month and date will rotate so now line them up with the time you are ready for viewing. Simply look at the chart to pick out the object then look up at the sky. Compare the stars on the star chart and the stars you see in the night sky. 2. To view South, turn the chart over and turn around to face South.

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