October, 2015 Next Meeting: Monday, Oct. 12th at 7pm at the HRPO Lunar Eclipse on Sept 27th, 2015. Image by BRAS member David Leadingham, one of the few that got a clear view for a couple of minutes through the clouds in our area! Click on the pic for more info on upcoming eclipses What's In This Issue? President's Message AstroShort: Simulating the Universe Secretary's Summary of Sept. Meeting Message From the HRPO Recent BRAS Forum Entries 20/20 Vision Campaign Observing Notes by John Nagle (He's Back!) President's Message “Astronomy is useful because it raises us above ourselves; it is useful because it is grand. It shows us how small is man’s body, how great his mind, since his intelligence can embrace the whole of this dazzling immensity, where his body is only an obscure point, and enjoy its silent harmony." – Henri Poincare, 19th Century mathematician and physicist We all have our reasons for being involved in astronomy. That quote elegantly expresses just one man’s thoughts. What attracted you to astronomy? What do you tell people who ask? I think we all have experienced some indefinable draw to the night sky and the wonders of the universe. Maybe that is it. Wonder. At least for me it is. Wonder, beauty, harmony, perspective. Where does it end? Think about those things and let me know if you have something about that you would like to say at our next meeting. Alternately, you could write up something for this newsletter. Well the total lunar eclipse certainly was a washout. Wasn’t it? Bummer. Two weeks of pristine weather and then the day of the eclipse rain and thunderstorms move in. OK, enough whining. The Deep South Regional Stargaze is November 3 – 8, 2015. That is Tuesday through Sunday. Barry said the Feliciana Retreat Center raised their prices a bit (to keep up with ever increasing costs of expenses) but agreed to offer us the same rate as previous years. Although it will not affect us this year, I want you to be aware that it will be a factor in next year’s event. There will be no vendors attending this year but several people said they will have scopes for sale, including a classic 8” SCT and CG-5 mount from Barry. Barry has also fielded a question about renaming the Deep South Regional Stargaze to simply the Deep South Stargaze (DSSG). If you have an opinion about that, log into the DSRSG Yahoo Group and leave a message on the thread. Brass is raffling an almost new 10” Orion SkyQuest Dobsonian Intelliscope. The hand control for the Intelliscope has some problems but we are checking to see if the firmware can be upgraded. Otherwise, it is a still very fine scope and a real bargain. $5 per ticket. Lastly, election season is coming up in December and we need to have nominations for the officer positions. Think about who you believe would be a good leader for the positions of President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary. I am currently President but I will be term- limited out and someone else will have to fill the position. Ben Toman is Vice President. Trey Anding is Treasurer. Rosalyn Readinger is Secretary. We can take nominations anytime, up to the moment of the election. You can nominate yourself, if you like. As always, if you have a topic you would like to present for a future BRAS meeting activity, let me know. Clear skies, Merrill Hess Simulating the Universe Astronomy has historically been an observational rather than a laboratory or experimental science. Except for lunar scientists or meteorite collectors (who can touch rocks from other solar system bodies), most astronomers can only point large telescopes, collect electromagnetic radiation, focus it onto detectors, and analyze what they observe. But now supercomputers and powerful computational techniques increasingly allow astrophysicists to experiment with the initial conditions and physical laws for astronomical processes, including the formation of the universe. Indeed, large cosmological simulations—computational working models— are the basis for much current astrophysical research. Latest and greatest: Bolshoi The most accurate cosmological simulation yet made of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the early universe is being described in a series of research papers that began to be published in Astrophysical Journal and other journals in October 2011. Named “Bolshoi”—the Russian word for “great” or “grand”—the simulation models the evolution of a representative volume of the universe about 1 billion light-years on a side, a volume that would contain over a million galaxies. The computer code took 6 million CPU hours to run on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA Ames Research Center. The calculated results—spectacular visualizations of what the universe was like at 180 different times from the Big Bang to the present epoch—were saved for later analysis. Some of the raw data plus detailed summaries and analyses of the outputs are now publicly available to the world’s astrophysicists. Co-principal investigators Joel R. Primack (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Anatoly Klypin (New Mexico State University) based the Bolshoi simulation on both the most precisely known observational data and the most robust physical theory. For observation, Primack and Klypin based the Bolshoi simulation on a meticulous data set combining ground-based observations with an extended run from the highly successful NASA Explorer mission WMAP (the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe). WMAP measured the detailed anisotropy (unevenness of temperature and other characteristics) over the whole sky of the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang that formed the universe 13.7 billion years ago. The anisotropy reveals a wealth of information about the history and composition of the early universe. For theory, the Bolshoi simulation is based on the Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmogony (ΛCDM for short), now accepted as the standard modern theoretical framework for understanding the formation of the large-scale structure in the universe. Ordinary atomic matter makes up less than 5 percent of the universe; only about half a percent is visible as stars, nebulae, dust, and planets. Some 23 percent of the universe is made of invisible, transparent “cold dark matter,” felt only through its gravitational influence. ΛCDM predicts that repeated mergers of smaller clumps of dark matter end up creating bigger dark matter “halos,” within which galaxies and clusters of galaxies form and congregate. The Greek letter lambda (Λ) in ΛCDM represents the fact that 72 percent of the universe is “dark energy,” causing the universe’s expansion to accelerate. Since ΛCDM says the universe is mostly made of invisible dark matter and dark energy, it might better be called the Double Dark theory. Revealing the invisible Thus, the Bolshoi simulation models not just how the minority of the visible universe of stars, gas, and dust evolved, but also how the vast majority of the invisible universe evolved—rendering the invisible visible for astronomers to study, and to predict structures that astronomers can seek to observe. - Trudy E. Bell, M.A. Further reading Details about the Bolshoi simulation appear at http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Bolshoi/ . The University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center (UC-HIPACC), based at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is a consortium of nine University of California campuses and three Department of Energy laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory). UC-HiPACC fosters collaborations among researchers at the various sites by offering travel and other grants, co- sponsoring conferences, and drawing attention to the world-class resources for computational astronomy within the University of California system. More information appears at http://hipacc.ucsc.edu . CAPTIONS: Snapshot from the Bolshoi simulation at a red shift z=0 (meaning at the present time), showing filaments of dark matter along which galaxies are predicted to form. CREDIT: Anatoly Klypin (New Mexico State University), Joel R. Primack (University of California, Santa Cruz), and Stefan Gottloeber (AIP, Germany). Secretary's Summary of September Meeting - Since Merrill was not able to attend due to work, Ben got the meeting started by announcing that coffee was available along with homemade butterscotch brownies courtesy of Ashley. He then called for old business. - Craig still has handouts and information available for ASTROCON 2017 as well as all the forms for the Deep South Regional Star Gaze (Nov. 3 – 8). - The Observatory is looking for volunteers to help out with the Lunar Eclipse on Sept. 27th; they will be open from 6:30 – 12:30. They are also looking for volunteers for Observe the Moon Night on Sept. 19th. Linda Gauthier will be here with lunar samples for 7:00 – 9:00 pm. Volunteers are also needed to help out at the BRAS booth for the Mini Maker Faire being held during the day on Sept. 26th at the main EBR library on Goodwood. - New business: There was a reminder that Light Pollution meetings are once a month (6:15 pm just prior to the regular BRAS Meeting at the Observatory the second Monday of the month). We still have the 20/20 Vision Campaign going on where we are trying to reduce the light pollution/increase the darkness from a sky quality meter score of 18 to a score of 20 by the 20th anniversary of the Observatory in 2017. Ben showcased the lightbox he put together to demonstrate the advantages of full cutoff lighting. This will be used for education at future outreach events. It will have the BRAS logo on one side and the recipients of the Good Lighting Award listed on the other side.