SEPTEMBER 2019 President’S Corner SEPTEMBER 2019 Face of Jupiter Or Saturn Because They Have Welcome to the September No Tangible Surface
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ReflectionsReflections Newsletter of the Popular Astronomy Club SEPTEMBER 2019 President’s Corner SEPTEMBER 2019 face of Jupiter or Saturn because they have Welcome to the September no tangible surface. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus 2019 edition of “Reflections”, and Neptune are gas giants—they don’t have the universe’s best astronomy a hard surface upon which one can stand. But newsletter. I am always imagine we could! Ok. So assuming we amazed by the level of activi- could stand on the equator of all the planets in ties and enthusiasm for the our solar system (and the Moon), I made hobby our club members con- some quick calculations to estimate the speed tinue to demonstrate. You can read about these activities in you would have just passively standing there. this edition. This summer, we Below is a table of my calculations: have had a number of very Alan Sheidler successful public observing sessions, all of which are documented in this Diameter Rotation Equatorial newsletter. One of the aspects of public observ- Planet (mi) Period (hr) Speed (mph) ing sessions is the possibility to engage visitors, Mercury 3032 1407.6 6.8 not only to glimpse objects in the eyepiece of the 7523 -5832.5 telescope, but also to discuss some of the physi- Venus -4.1 cal attributes of those selfsame objects. During Earth 7928 23.9 1042 one of these sessions, I was involved in a discus- Moon 2160 655.7 10.3 sion about the planet Jupiter about how quickly 4221 24.6 the Red Spot rotates into and out of view as seen Mars 539 in the telescope. During the course of a typical Jupiter 88865 9.9 28200 public observing session, if the Red Spot is visi- Saturn 74914 10.7 21995 ble, it is not unusual to see it move significantly or Uranus 31770 -17.2 -5803 even rotate out of view. It is also very surprising 30782 16.1 how fast the moons in the Jupiter system (the Neptune 6006 Galilean moons: Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Eu- These calculations are indeed interesting. On ropa) move. Jupiter and its moons move very earth, for example, at the equator, if you were quickly indeed and depending on where they are standing there in blissful calm, you would in in their orbits, can even be seen to change posi- fact be moving with a speed of over 1000 tion almost in real time. miles per hour! This is fast, but look at Jupi- ter. If you could stand on Jupiter’s equator Anyway, the speed with which astronomical ob- you would be moving at more than 28,000 jects move got me to wondering about how fast miles per hour! This high speed is amazing to planets rotate. In this case I am talking about the me. But at the other end of the spectrum, speed a person would be moving at if they were consider the slothfulness of Venus. On Venus theoretically standing (or could stand) on the you would only be moving at a speed of 4.1 equator of a planet as it is spinning on its axis. miles per hour. This is the speed at which you Obviously, it is not possible to stand on the sur- could walk (quickly) or jog. Notice though, the (Continued in next column) (Continued on next page) 1 (Continued from previous page) (Continued from previous page) negative sign? This means Venus rotates in the oppo- Popular site direction of earth and most of the other planets. Astronomy Club Pretty interesting, but the speed is at the rate of a fast Officers walk or a jog. So on the one hand, you have planets like Jupiter and Saturn, spinning at hypersonically fast speeds and Mercury and Venus that move only at a crawl. PRESIDENT - Alan Sheidler 3528 56th Street Court, Moline, IL, In any event, we have earth with an equatorial spin 61265 speed of 1042mph. This is indeed fast, but comfortably Phone: (309) 797-3120 between that of Jupiter and Venus—in the “Goldilocks Zone” of spin speeds, if you will. I would like to throw VICE PRESIDENT – Dino Milani 2317 this out as another key characteristic of a planetary can- 29 1/2 Street, Rock Island, IL, 61201 didate for in-depth investigation for life. What do you Phone: (309) 269-4735 think? Give this some thought as you peruse the pages of yet another superb newsletter for your reading enjoy- SECRETARY - Terry Dufek ment. Thanks and keep looking up! 2812 W. 65th Street, Davenport, IA, 52806 Phone: (563) 386-3509 Alan Sheidler TREASURER – Dale Hachtel 1617 Elm Shore Drive, Port Byron IL, 61275 Phone: (614) 935-5748 CONTENTS ALCOR – Roy E. Gustafson 11 Deer Run Road, Orion, IL, 61273 Phone: (309)526-3592 Page Topic 1 Presidents Corner DIRECTOR OF OBSERVATORIES - 2 Index /Officers List Rusty Case 3 Announcements/ Info 2123 W. 16th Street, Davenport, IA, 4-5 Contributions 52804 6-10 PAC Outreach Events Phone: (563) 349-2444 11-12 Astronomy in Print 13 Upcoming Events PAST PRESIDENT - Wayland Bauer 14 Astronomical Calendar of 3256 Pleasant Drive, Bettendorf, IA., Events/ The Planets 52722 15 Sky Views Phone: (563) 332-4032 16 Deep Sky Wonders 17 Spotlight: IC 1396 Elephants Trunk Nebula NEWSLETTER EDITOR - Terry Dufek 18 NASA Space Place 2812 W. 65th Street, Davenport, IA, 19-20 News Links 52806 21-22 Member Observations Phone: (563) 386-3509 23-26 Paul Castle Observing Sessions 27-30 2019 PAC Picnic Contact for Information 31 2019 Banquet Registration Form or questions here: [email protected] 2 READY FOR MEMBERSHIP OR TO RENEW? Click Here LOOKING FOR OLDER ISSUES OF REFLECTIONS NEWSLETTER? Click HERE YES! We have HISTORY OF PAC? openings for….. Click HERE Newspaper Articles , Programs and Popular Astronomy Club Constellation reports on Facebook? Click HERE See meeting notes page for list of openings or Please contact Dino Milani if Interested Do you have a great astronomy photo that you would like to submit SUBMISSIONS for the cover photo on the If you have an article or photos to Facebook Popular submit or items of interest, Astronomy Page? Would like to we encourage you to send them in change out every 30 days. by the 25th of the month. Links to Email to [email protected] stories are welcome also. Thank you! EMAIL HERE TO SUBSCRIBE Do you subscribe to the Northern Lights newsletter? It is free and full of information on what is going on in the North Central Region (NCRAL) Click on link above to subscribe by email and receive monthly! (Click HERE to see latest issue) 3 CONTRIBUTIONS BBC’s The Sky At Night BBC The Sky at Night 2019 The Moon The Mission and The BBC CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO YOU TUBE VIDEO https://store.astroleague.org The North American eclipse of 1869 What The Sun Looks Like From Other Planets Story Here Contributed by Sara Sheidler Contributed by Joel Carter See Story HERE 4 CONTRIBUTIONS CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO MAGAZINE CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO MAGAZINE 5 Illiniwek Campground Outreach August 3rd, 2019 Here are a few pictures of some of the folks who came out last night to sup- port the observing session at Illiniwek Campground. This was a fantastic public event with probably 150-200 visi- tors. I think there were about 10-12 telescopes set up last night including scopes visitors brought to the campground. We observed the cres- cent moon, Jupiter, Saturn, various double stars such as Albireo, Mizar, and Polaris, globular star clusters M13 and M22, planetary nebulas such as M57 (the Ring Nebula) and M27 (the Dumbbell Nebula), and many other ob- jects which graced the beautiful sum- mer sky last night. Saturn and Jupiter were particularly interesting objects last night. Saturn is just past opposition meaning it rises just as the sun sets. This makes Saturn an ideal ob- ject to observe since it is visible all night long. Saturn's rings were spec- tacular and several of Saturn's moons (Titan, Rhea, Dione and Tethys) were also visible. Jupi- ter's moons put on a real show last night too. At around 10:35, we watched as Io, Jupiter's inner- most moon, passed in front of Jupiter in what is known as a transit. A transit is similar to an eclipse; one object passes in front of another ob- ject, but because Io is many times smaller than Jupiter, it cannot completely block our view of the planet. The really cool thing about the transit is we could literally watch as Io approached and passed in front of Jupiter--we witnessed Io's or- bital choreography play out in real time as Io transited Jupiter. It's something to behold. Keep looking up. Thanks. Alan Sheidler (Continued on next page) 6 (Continued from previous page) 7 Niabi Outreach August 17th, 2019 The weather cooperated for a beautiful public observing session last night at Niabi Zoo. Approximately 100 visitors attended the event. Club mem- bers in attendance were Way- land Bauer, Rusty Case, Terry Dufek, Dale Hachtel, Alex Holt, Mary Holt, Tim Holt, Dino Mila- ni, Eric Sheidler, and Al Sheidler. Six scopes were set up including the PACMO to view numerous objects including Saturn, Jupiter, the Moon, double stars (Albireo, Mizar, Polaris), planetary nebulae, globular cluster M13 (the Hercules Cluster), open clusters M29 (The Cool- ing Tower) and M39, the deep red super giant carbon star La Superba and many other ob- jects. One of the planetary nebulae we observed was NGC6826 in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. NCG6826 is called the "Blinking Plane- tary".