TRANSIT The February 2014 Newsletter of NEXT TWO MEETINGS, each at Wynyard Planetarium Friday 14 February 2014, at 7.15 pm A year with a large-aperture Dobsonian Ian Morris, CaDAS o – o – o – o – o MONDAY 10 MARCH 2014 at 7.00 pm Extraordinary General Meeting To discuss & vote on involvement in the Planetarium's future Content p.2 Editorial p.3 Letter: Ken Mattingley visit Pat Duggan Observation reports & planning p.3 Websites – February 2014 p.4 CaDAS astrophotographic gallery: M82 nova, Jupiter, the Moon Various p.9 A life in the sky: a postscript on E.E. Barnard Rod Cuff p.9 A life in the sky – 2: J.R. Hind Rod Cuff p.14 Kiruna in Swedish Lapland Pat Duggan General articles p.15 Some thoughts on gravity and tides – Part 6: How Einstein changed the scene Ray Brown Free offer! p.18 Telescope needs a good home The Transit quiz p.19 Answers to January's quiz p.19 February's quiz Neil Haggath 1 Editorial Rod Cuff First of all, a warm welcome to members who've joined us in the past month or so – Ian Rudd; Alex, Helen & Megan Dudiak; Lynne, Peter & Sam Critchley; and Brian Rowland. The most important thing to note this month is this FORMAL NOTICE of an Extraordinary General Meeting of CaDAS on MONDAY 10 MARCH at 7pm in Wynyard Planetarium. Members of the CaDAS committee have been negotiating with officers of Stockton Borough Council over whether, and if so on what terms, an independent body could lease and take over the running of the Planetarium, preferably with CaDAS as a major player on the new body's board. It seems almost certain that both sides now agree on a positive way forward, and SBC's legal team are drawing up a proposed lease. We shall give CaDAS members further information on this as soon as we can, which will probably be the first week in March. The EGM will then follow on the 10th, when there will be a presentation of the full facts, including pros and cons of formal CaDAS involvement, and debate and comment will be welcome. The meeting will be asked to vote yes or no to a specific question, along the lines of 'Do you want CaDAS to have at least one representative on the board of the new body?' (precise wording is still to be decided). If you are (or will be by then) a paid-up member of CaDAS, please put the date in your diary and do your best to come and listen and/or take part. Back to the contents of this issue of Transit … Ray Brown continues his series on gravity, this time dealing with the paradigm shift in physics as Einstein upset the Newtonian applecart. There were some nice positive reactions to the first 'A life in the sky' article on E.E. Barnard in January's magazine, and so the second in the series appears here, and I'll try to include a new one as often as I can. There are more than the usual number of members' astrophotographs and drawings this month, which is almost entirely a good thing in my book, especially if it encourages others to observe and/or submit images. The 'almost' is because Peter Hanna, who very kindly prints and mails out the half- dozen or so copies of Transit that go to established members who don't have an internet connection, has pointed out that having many largely black images uses up a lot of ink, makes the paper wrinkly and can bleed through to the other side. So for some issues, such as the current one, I'll also produce a variant in which some images are displayed as negatives, and this is what will be mailed out. I'll ask our webmaster, Don Martin, to make both versions available on our website, starting with the current one. Finally, either the end or the beginning of an era, depending on how you look at it. Starting with this issue, Neil Haggath is taking over as the Transit quizmaster. I've set a quiz in the magazine virtually every month for more than five years, but am very happy to hand the responsibility over to the most experienced quiz setter in the north of England, bar none! Many thanks to contributors for this issue. Please let me have material for the next issue by 2 March. I may be pushed for editing time, so it probably won't be as long an issue as this one! Best wishes – Rod Cuff, [email protected] 1 Farndale Drive, Guisborough TS14 8JD (01287 638154, mobile 07775 527530) PS – There's a free telescope on offer on page 18 … 2 Letter Ken Mattingley visit from Pat Duggan Ken Mattingley, the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 16, is visiting Pontefract in April to give a lecture and speak at a dinner –The dinner places have sold out, but there are some lecture tickets left for Saturday 12 April. I have alerted the friends I went with to the Alan Bean meeting last year, but wondered whether anyone else from CaDAS might be interested. More information at www.space-lectures.com/intro_10.html. Cheers, Pat D OBSERVATION REPORTS AND PLANNING Websites – February 2014 Here are some suggestions for websites that will highlight some of what to look out for in the night sky in February. Jupiter, Mercury and supernovae feature prominently this month. BAA Sky Notes for February/March had not appeared online at the time of writing here, but presumably will eventually, linked from the public BAA YouTube Channel. I'd said last month that a PDF of the Notes is also always available from the BAA website, but on checking up it appears that the latest PDF is two years old! HubbleSite: a video of things to see each month (a transcript can be downloaded from the site as well): http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/tonights_sky Night Sky Info's comprehensive coverage of the current night sky: www.nightskyinfo.com Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics – The night sky: www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/astronomy/nightsky Telescope House monthly sky guide: http://tinyurl.com/pzzpmsx Orion's What's in the Sky – February: www.telescope.com/content.jsp?pageName=In-the-Sky-this-Month Society for Popular Astronomy's monthly Sky Diary: www.popastro.com/documents/SkyDiary.pdf 3 CaDAS astrophotographic gallery Mark Swinbank, Keith Johnson, Jürgen Schmoll, Rod Cuff There have been some good opportunities and celestial targets this month. Here's a selection of images and drawings from CaDAS members and friends. Further hardware & software details are available from the editor on request. M82 and its supernova SN2014J Dr Mark Swinbank, Institute for Computational Cosmology, U of Durham I obtained the image below on 26 January from one of the 14" telescopes on top of the Physics Department in Durham (1hr integration in total, 20mins each in B,V,R in (lousy) ~3.5" seeing). I've got the level-3 undergraduates monitoring the SNe to derive the light curve. M82 and SN2014J from Mark Swithinbank – excellent detail Keith Johnson The first cropped image below was captured at Dalby StarFest in August 2013, showing M81 and M82 as they then were. The other image, also cropped, was captured at Derwent Reservoir on 25 January 2014 and clearly shows the M82 supernova. 4 Keith's image of M82 (left) and M81 (right) in August 2013… … and in January 2014, complete with SN2014J in M82 Jürgen Schmoll I took 6 × 5min subs before high-altitude clouds screwed everything up. 250/2000mm, EOS40Da with CLS filter autoguided on EQ6 pro. (Image on next page.) 5 Jürgen's image from the early hours of 24 January Rob Peeling Hi, everyone – Managed to spot supernova SN2014J in M82 visually with my 12” ‘scope last night (25 January). Dead easy to see against the galaxy and a star that definitely wasn’t there before – I know M82 well. I’d guess brightness around 11th magnitude – so, well out of range of binoculars. You might see with something as small as a 6”. Rob's drawing of M82 and SN2014J 6 Jupiter Jürgen Schmoll Rod Cuff 19 January 2014, between about 8pm and 12 January 2014. The satellite is Callisto, with an angular 10pm. diameter of about 1.6 arcsec. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is just rotating into view at bottom left. (This is one of five images that Jürgen These three images show how just much astro- provided from the same night. – Ed.) photographical processing depends on personal choice! Keith Johnson 5 January 2014 at 00:46 UT. 7 The Moon Rod Cuff The main picture below shows the region around Copernicus, 12 January 2014, 01:03 UT. The labelled mini-version on the right identifies some of the features – it's a fascinating part of the Moon. 8 A life in the sky: a postscript on E.E. Barnard Rod Cuff The first article in the A life in the sky series (Transit, Jan 2014) concerned Edward Emerson Barnard (1857–1923), a gifted and largely self-taught observational astronomer and pioneering astro- photographer. Here's a (verbatim) anecdote from one of his obituaries. Think on this the next time the clouds roll in as you've just finished setting up …. In the early days of the [Yerkes] observatory the unkindly elements at times made observing a matter of great difficulty. During the second winter there had been a very heavy storm, bringing nearly two feet of snow.