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Cosmic Cockroaches! Volume 16, Number 8 August 2007 In This Issue Sail Planes, Music, and ISS Page One Photos by Greg Ozimek, Dale Ochalek • Sail Planes, Music, and ISS • Cosmic Cockroaches! Inside Stuff 2 President’s Corner 3 Meeting Minutes 6 Next Meeting Agenda 7 FAAC Events 2007 7 Treasurer’s Report 7 Astro Imaging SIG 7 Items for Sale 8 GLSG5 – Reserve Your Spot 8 FAAC has Calendars- 2008 8 New Members Doug Bauer is saddled up in back, for a smooth glide in the skies (Greg Ozimek photo). 9 Crater Clavius Start with lots of good food, conversation, sunshine, and sail planes, add 10 Astronomy at the slide guitar music, then top it all with fireworks, a clear night for observing, Beach and even a late flyover by the International Space Station, and you’ve got a 11 Dark Sky Workshop successful, 2nd annual SEMTA/FAAC picnic (August 11 at Richmond Airport). ...continued on page 8 Cosmic Cockroaches! Dr. Tony Phillips Cockroaches are supposed to be tough, able to survive anything from a good stomping to a nuclear blast. But roaches are wimps compared to a little molecule that has recently caught the eye of biologists and astronomers— the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. ...continued on page 3 Page 2 STAR STUFF Ancient Knowledge – Set in Stone STAR STUFF AUGUST 2007 - VOL. 16 - NO. 8 President’s Corner Don Klaser, President, FAAC STAR STUFF is published eleven times each year by the While doing research for the presentation on the FORD AMATEUR ASTRONOMY CLUB P.O. Box 7527 calendar and western culture that I gave last year I came across the subject of archaeoastronomy. Dearborn MI 48121-7527 It is the study of sites, structures and instruments PRESIDENT: Don Klaser VICE PRESIDENT: Doug Bauer that ancient cultures used to study the heavens. At the time I thought that this would make an SECRETARY: Ken Anderson TREASURER: Gordon Hansen interesting topic for a future talk. NEWSLETTER EDITOR: Dale Ochalek Fast forward to August, 2007. An article in this CLUB INFORMATION month's Astronomy Magazine brought this idea back to mind. Authors Robert Benfer and Larry The Ford Amateur Astronomy Club (FAAC) meets on the fourth Adkins reveal their findings at an excavation site Thursday each month, except for the combined November/ December meeting on the first Thursday of December – at Henry north of Lima, Peru - uncovering a 4,200 year-old Ford Community College, Administrative Services and Conference building believed to be used to determine the Center in Dearborn. Refer to our website for a map and directions solstices, telling the Inca people when to plant (www.boonhill.net/faac). and harvest. It isn't an observatory as we know The FAAC observes at Spring Mill Pond within the Island Lake it, but rather an agricultural calendar - knowledge State Recreation Area near Brighton, Michigan. The club maintains necessary for their continued existence. an after-hours permit, and observes on Friday and Saturday nights, and nights before holidays, weather permitting. The FAAC also has use of the dark skies at Richmond Airport, Unadilla, given prior So I wondered how many other sites similar to permission. See the FAAC Yahoo Group* for more information. this one there are? A lot, as it turns out. In the Observing schedules and additional info are available on our Western Hemisphere, there's Machu Picchu, the website, or via the FAAC Yahoo Group.* Or call the FAAC Hotline, “Lost City of the Incas” also in Peru; the Mayan for info, and leave a message, or ask questions: 248-207-2075. Or Palace of the Governor in Uxmal and the send email inquiries to [email protected]. structures at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan, and the Membership in the FAAC is open to anyone with an interest in Great Temple at Tenochtitlan, modern day Mexico amateur astronomy. The FAAC is an affiliate of the Ford City. The present-day United States has several Employees Recreation Association (F.E.R.A.). Membership fees: Native American sites including Casa Rinconada Annual – New Member: $30 ($15 after July 1) and the Sun Daggar at Fadaja Butte at Chaco Annual – Renewal: $25 ($30 after January 31) Canyon in New Mexico, the Holly House ruin at Membership includes the STAR STUFF newsletter, discounts on Hovenweep near Monticello, Colorado, and the magazines, discounts at selected area equipment retailers, and Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming. after-hours access to the Island Lake observing site. In the “Old World,” there are the Great Pyramids ASTRONOMY or SKY & TELESCOPE MAGAZINE DISCOUNTS at Giza, Stonehenge in Britain (a hotly debated topic) and 19 stone pillars of the Namoratunga Obtain the required form from the FAAC club treasurer for a $10 discount. Send the completed form directly to the respective site in Kenya. There are also quite a number of publisher with your subscription request and payment. Do not send possible ancient astronomical sites around the any money directly to the FAAC for this. world, but with no verified data to prove it so, yet. All this shows me that ancient peoples were well- STAR STUFF NEWSLETTER SUBMISSIONS versed in the motions of the skies above them. And, while they were used to forecast agricultural Your submissions to STAR STUFF are more than welcome! Send cycles or to let them know when to celebrate your story and/or images to the editor at [email protected]. Email text or MS Word is fine. STAR STUFF will usually go to religious festivals, as opposed to the more press the weekend prior to each general meeting. Submissions scientific pursuits we use them for today, the received prior to that weekend can be included in that issue. knowledge they accumulated has certainly helped us in our quest to understand the universe. * FAAC Members are welcome to join our FordAstronomyClub Yahoo! Group. Messages, photos, files, online discussions, and “Hey, Don! That sounds like a great topic for a more! URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/FordAstronomyClub. presentation!” August 2007 Copyright © 2007 Ford Amateur Astronomy Club STAR STUFF Page 3 Cosmic Cockroaches... (continued from page 1) meteorites and many cold interstellar clouds—but who knew they were so tough? “This is our first Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs for short) evidence that PAHs can withstand a supernova are ring-shaped molecules made of carbon and blast,” he says. hydrogen. “They’re all around us,” says Achim Tappe of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics. Their ability to survive may be key to life on “PAHs are present in mineral oils, coal, tar, Earth. Many astronomers are convinced that a tobacco smoke and automobile exhaust.” supernova exploded in our corner of the galaxy 4- Aromatic, ring-shaped molecules structurally akin to-5 billion years ago just as the solar system was to PAHs are found in DNA itself! coalescing from primitive interstellar gas. In one scenario of life’s origins, PAHs survived and made That’s why Tappe’s recent discovery may be so their way to our planet. It turns out that stacks of important. “PAHs are so tough, they can survive PAHs can form in water—think, primordial seas— a supernova.” and provide a scaffold for nucleic acids with architectural properties akin to RNA and DNA. The story begins a few thousand years ago when PAHs may be just tough enough for genesis. a massive star in the Large Magellanic Cloud exploded, blasting nearby star systems and Cockroaches, eat your hearts out. interstellar clouds with hot gas and deadly radiation. The expanding shell, still visible from Find out about other Spitzer discoveries at Earth after all these years and catalogued by www.spitzer.caltech.edu. astronomers as “N132D,” spans 80 light years and This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has swept up some 600 Suns worth of mass. California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. July 26 Meeting Minutes Ken Anderson Attendance: 39+ Meeting officially started at 5:30 pm with pizza and pop available, in the Hackett conference room of the HFCC Health Careers Building. Don Klaser, President, chaired the meeting and led the introductions, and asked for observations. Using the IR spectrometer on the Spitzer Space Telescope, We welcomed new members Vincent Panzo, scientists found organic molecules in supernova remnant Randy and Pamela Smith. Ken Anderson N132D. observed and drew M3 and comet 2006 Linear VZ13 in the same view, and detected movement Last year “we observed N132D using NASA’s by 15 minutes. Gary Stahl mentioned the Spitzer Space Telescope,” says Tappe. Spitzer is Discovery Spirit on Mars may be crippled by a an infrared (IR) telescope, and it has a dust storm; but that it lasted 3 years longer than spectrometer onboard sensitive to the IR its 90- day requirement. Greg Ozimek observed emissions of PAHs. One look at N132D revealed with his brand new Denk Binoviewers and “PAHs all around the supernova’s expanding shell. Diagonal Switch on the first day, until his focuser They appear to be swept up by a shock wave of 8 locked up; he had to send in his Celestron SCT to million degree gas. This is causing some damage check out the focuser. Bob Boswell got a cover to the molecules, but many of the PAHs are for his Meade SCT and a solar filter. John surviving.” Kirchhoff observed a “UFO” (later confirmed to be a weather balloon) south of the moon at Astronomers have long known that PAHs are beginner’s night. It had the same diameter as abundant not only on Earth but throughout the cosmos—they’ve been found in comet dust, ...continued on page 4 Copyright © 2007 Ford Amateur Astronomy Club August 2007 Page 4 STAR STUFF Meeting Minutes..
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