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Vasquez Review Up! What’s for February The Local Group - Astronomy Club of the Santa Clarita Valley – Feb 2015 Visit our Web Site at www.lgscv.org Volume 31 Issue 7 Friday, February 13 Please check calendar at end of newsletter. We had a great turnout at our last meeting. Each month we try to provide really thought-provoking talks about astronomy with the intention to increase involvement of our club members and to attract more public interest in astronomy. Photo courtesy Amin Resapour Our February meeting will be no exception. Lecture planned is “Remembering John Dobson” presented Many of our members were there, some were new by Glenn Basore. It will be tied with club members experiencing their first club event and www.Griffithobservatory/events/celebratingJohnDo their first experience at Vasquez Rocks. bson. Glenn may also bring his Dobsonian telescope and give a brief discussion on how to use setting Although the crowds were lighter than expected circles. (despite advertising the event) we had a good time. We cordially invite The advantage of a small crowd is one can interact members and guests to more with the stargazer. attend and expand their understanding and The weather conditions were pretty good. Clear appreciation of skies, mildly cold temperatures and no wind made astronomy and of the for a pleasant evening. There were some clouds at many people who have about 10:00 pm which eventually shut everything contributed to the down but by this time most of us were packing up. science as we know it today. Thanks to the following members who came out in support of our first event of the year. Bert and Laureen DeMello Dave Flynn Robert and Jill Hubbell Robi Mukherjee Vasquez Review John Patwell Amin Resapour January 17, 2015 Christine and Larry Schmidt By Glenn Basore Brian Shurlow Steve and Robin Silvary This was our first event of the year and what better Johan Vandersande way to start the year than to have it at Vasquez Craig Whitehead Rocks. zirconium oxide, yttrium oxide and technetium. “These rare elements form by other heavy elements slowly capturing neutrons in or near the star’s increasingly extreme core.” It was a surprise to find the “’artificial’” element technetium in an S star’s spectra in 1952. With a half life of 4.2 million years, a short period of time for a star, the technetium must have been pulled up from the stars core very recently. “R Gem shows an unusual amount of it even for an S star. What a wonderful array of gems we see when we look into the night sky. Happy Heart Day! Photo courtesy Amin Resapour Staff Meeting Sunday Jan 26, 2015 Called to order at 7:08 pm Treasurers report: Presented by Christine Schmidt We have a $2,120.00 bank balance. Insurance has been paid. Oh yes “The Diamonds there do glitter” as I Membership is now 63. stated in the January Challenge Corner, but for Welcome new member as of November Steve and this Valentine’s Day a more affordable option Robin Silvary! could be Zircons. If you have any Zircons or Cubic Zirconia the Zirconium in those stones Next meeting lecture may be “Remembering John came from a red giant star like R Geminorum. Dobson.” May I direct you to page 51 of January Sky and The lecture may be tied in with Telescope magazine and an article written by www.Griffithobservatory/events/celebratingJohnDo Alan MacRobert about the star R Geminorum. bson. This star is between the stick figure twins of Glenn offered a talk about Setting Circles for one of Gemini and is “one of the brightest of the the future meetings. spectral type S stars” and is a variable with a one year and five day period of dim to bright and Spring Astronomy Day cannot be held at Valencia back to dim again. The star is 1,880 LY away Library this year as they have it booked for someone from us and is reaching its brightest around the else. Sierra Highway campus for COC was first of February. This is still not a naked eye star discussed for Astronomy Day. Vasquez was also and is visible in binoculars or telescopes at 07h suggested. Both places have areas to hold a lecture 07m 21.27095s Right ascension and +22deg and night viewing. Date suggested was April 18. 42’ 12.7077” Declination beginning in Dec 2014. Our Out Reach at Vasquez and could be expanded to include Astronomy Day and April 25 but there will be a full moon then. This star being a red giant is in “its unstable late stages of life” and presents spectra showing (Staff Meeting cont) We would like to invite Aqua Dulce Astronomy It may sound incredible Club to Vasquez. There was discussion of expanding the day to an all-day event for Astronomy Day. but the Pillars of Creation There was further discussion of Boy and Girl Scout troops and their pursuit of astronomy badges. We don't exist anymore need to contact the district scout leaders for more information. We may also have one person take the BY JESUS DIAZ training to be an astronomy advisor to the scouts. JANUARY 10, 2014 The last Out Reach at Vasquez raised one issue: there were people climbing the rocks in the dark with flashlights. People need to be reminded that the park is officially closed after dark and they should stay with the telescopes in the parking area. Tax time: Due 3-15-2015 our tax filing (no tax should be due.) Due by 4-30-2015 then every 2 years thereafter will be $20.00 for the State Corporate Statement of Information. This just reports who our board members and officers are. Pay Pal was discussed, still in the works. Refining the Website: Our website needs new content. Putting the news letter on the web site was discussed and also a font change to make the content more reader-friendly. The new Google acct was discussed and our new login for the LGSCV site. There will be more storage for photos and archived documents. Our logo clothing was also on the agenda. There may be printed T-shirts for $15.00 and long sleeved shirts and jackets will be embroidered for a slightly higher cost. We may be able to bring samples to the meeting. We would be able to take orders at that meeting. We discussed making the initial membership dues slightly higher and include a hat or NASA published new astonishing high definition shirt. Then the renewal for each following year images of the famous Pillars of Creation—two 4- would be less. light-year-tall columns located in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light years from here, first photographed in Meeting Adjourned 1995. The only problem is that the pillars don't Christine Schmidt exist—they were destroyed more than a thousand years ago. Limited by our understanding of reality and time, we Thanks to Craig Whitehead and look at objects in space as if they were mountains or Bruce Lathrop for suggesting the the ocean. We genuinely perceive these stellar following articles of interest. landscapes as something that is up there fixed, secure, rooted in our reality, the solid foundation of our existence. Some people see the work of gods in all this seemingly immutable show, hence the mythological names of planets, constellations, nebulas, and galaxies—or these Pillars of "Creation." Others just see scientific wonders, "a vast cosmic arena" in which the Earth is just a tiny "mote of dust suspended on a sun beam." Our diminutive perception of time, the same that makes us think we are the center of everything, is just an illusion. At the cosmic scale, just like in our individual lives, things move constantly. The architecture of the cosmos is ever changing and scientists know—since 2007, only a few years after they were observed—that these gargantuan structures don't exist anymore. As Paul Scowen—from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University in Tempe and one of the men who led the original 1 Hubble observations back in 1995—explains: This is a version of a story published on February 11, I'm impressed by how transitory these structures are. 2012. They are actively being ablated away before our very eyes. The ghostly bluish haze around the dense edges of the pillars is material getting heated up and evaporating away into space. We have caught these Colliding black holes pillars at a very unique and short-lived moment in their evolution. could warp space-time Rationally, I know why this happens. I know that, since the light has to travel a vast distance, it will itself arrive after the event has occurred. The further away something happens, the longer it takes to reach our By Michael Franco eyes. I know that when we look up to the sky we are looking at the past—seconds, minutes, years, centuries and millennia away. If the two black holes meet, they could release as much energy as 100 million supernova An amazing show is coming explosions as they shatter their galaxy, a new In one thousand years there will be one hell of a study finds. show. The shockwave is already arriving to the Pillars of Creation. Just like they were created, they will be destroyed, obliterated by the force of a dead star. The Universe is the most amazing of the time machines. We truly stand alone in the middle of this huge storm that is the Universe.
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