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March 2019 Issue

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March 2019 Issue Highlights of the March Sky - - - 1st - - - DAWN: A waning crescent Moon is 3° right of Saturn. - - - 2nd - - - DAWN: The crescent Moon is 4½° right of Venus. - - - 6th - - - New Moon 11:04 am EST KAS - - - 11th - - - PM: A waxing crescent Moon is 7° le of Mars. General Meeting: Friday, March 1 @ 7:00 pm th - - - 12 - - - Kalamazoo Area Math & Science Center - See Page 12 for Details PM: The crescent Moon is near the Hyades cluster in Taurus. Observing Session: Saturday, March 9 @ 7:00 pm th - - - 13 - - - Messier Marathon - Richland Township Park - See Page 11 for Details PM: The Moon is between Aldebaran and Zeta Tauri. - - - 14th - - - Board Meeting: Sunday, March 10 @ 5:00 pm First Quarter Moon Sunnyside Church - 2800 Gull Road - All Members Welcome 6:27 am EDT - - - 18th → 19th - - - PM: A waxing gibbous Moon and Regulus start the night 2° apart and widen to 5½° by dawn. Inside the Newsletter. - - - 20th - - - Full Moon 9:43 pm EDT February Meeng Minutes................ p. 2 - - - 24th - - - Board Meeng Minutes..................... p. 4 DAWN: The Moon is between Zubeneschamali Observaons...................................... p. 5 (le) and Zubenelgenubi in NASA Night Sky Notes........................ p. 6 Libra. th From the KAS Library......................... p. 6 - - - 27 - - - DAWN: A waning gibbous Opportunity’s Mission Ends............... p. 7 Moon is 4½° le of Jupiter. March Night Sky................................. p. 10 - - - 28th - - - Last Quarter Moon KAS Board & Announcements............ p. 11 12:10 am EDT General Meeng Preview.................. p. 12 - - - 29th - - - DAWN: A waning crescent Moon is 3½° le of Saturn. February Meeting Minutes The general meeting of the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society emission nebula. Ultraviolet radiation from hot stars, a was brought to order by President Richard Bell on Friday, shockwave from a supernova, or colliding gas clouds February 8, 2019 at 7:15 pm EST. Approximately 31 triggered that dense concentration of material into motion. It members and guests were in attendance at the Kalamazoo began to rotate and flatten out. Most of the matter fell Area Math & Science Center (KAMSC). The meeting was toward the center, forming our Sun, while some of the postponed one week due to Kalamazoo Public Schools remaining material coalesced to form the planets. closing all their facilities because of the Polar Vortex bringing double digit sub zero temperatures across the Evidence for this hypothesis first came in 1983 with the region. They even vowed to terminate any staff or faculty launch of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), which member (i.e. Mike Sinclair) that accessed a KPS building gave us our first infrared view of the entire sky. It discovered during the closing! Snow and still rather frigid temps also no dusty disks around stars like Beta Pictoris. In 2008, doubt affected attendance for the postponed meeting. astronomers using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) discovered a planet orbiting Beta Pictoris. The Hubble Space Richard gave the feature presentation of the evening, which Telescope revealed protoplanetary disks (known as Proplyds) was entitled Infinite Worlds: Searching for Extrasolar in the Orion Nebula in 1995. In more recent times, the Planets. Overall, this was Richard’s fourteenth solo Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) presentation for the KAS. He explained that he originally had has revealed numerous disks around young stars and in 2015 no plan to give another solo talk so soon, but he failed to find the VLT has even captured a planet in the process of forming a member of the New Horizons team to give a Skype around the protostar PDS 70. presentation on the Ultima Thule encounter and thought a video presentation wouldn’t attract many members to the The first exoplanet may have been discovered in 1989 by a meeting. Richard gave the first version of this talk in March team led by David Latham. It orbits HD 114762, a type F9V 2002! He said it was the last talk he ever gave using slides star located 126 light-years away in the constellation Coma and overheads. Berenices. However, the possible planet, known at HD 114762 b, has a minimum mass of 11.069 times that of According to Richard, the discovery of planets around other Jupiter and may be as massive as 63.2 Jupiters. This puts it in stars is the “biggest foregone conclusion in the history of the realm of brown dwarfs, substellar objects ranging in mass science.” Philosophers like Lucretius of Rome and Giordano from 13 to 75 or 80 Jupiters. These are “failed stars” that Bruno speculated about planets orbiting distant suns. In more lacked sufficient mass to undergo hydrogen fusion in their recent times, we’ve been “exploring strange new worlds” in cores. Two planets were discovered around the pulsar PSR science fiction literature and television shows like Star Trek B1257+12 in 1992, with a third added in 1994. for decades. We currently have confirmed the discovery of nearly 4,000 To understand the first observational evidence for extrasolar exoplanets in almost 3,000 planetary systems. This confirms planets (or exoplanets for short), we have to review the that planet formation is a very common byproduct of star formation of the solar system. Known as the Solar Nebula formation. With 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Theory (or the Nebular Hypothesis), it says that our solar Galaxy and at least 200 billion galaxies in the observable system began as a dense collection of gas and dust in a larger universe there are approximately 25,000 billion billion star systems in the universe! Richard then went into the five main detection methods that made these discoveries possible. The Astrometric Method takes advantage of astrometry, precise measurements of a star’s position. A star’s position will slightly change due to a planet’s minute gravitational tug on its parent star (like a small dog tugging on its owner’s leash). This method is very difficult to use from Earth’s surface due to the effects of the atmosphere. However, approximately 3,000 planets may await discovery in data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia probe. Gaia has measured the precise position of 1.7 billion stars since being launched in 2013. One of the more successful methods is the Radial Velocity Method (a.k.a. Doppler Spectroscopy). As with astrometry, radial velocity measures slight changes in a star’s position as Richard used a hula hoop to demonstrate that an the star and planet move about their common center of mass. extrasolar planet’s precise mass can only be known if we In this case, however, the motion detected is toward and can view the inclination of the system as viewed from away from observer and measured via Doppler shifts in the Earth. Typically not possible, since we never actually see star’s spectrum. This method led to the discovery of the the planet. Photo courtesy of Arya Jayatilaka. planet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi in 1995. This discovery is Prime Focus Page 2 March 2019 widely considered the first exoplanet found around a solar type star. The planet, 51 Pegasi b, recently given the official name of Dimidium (Latin for half), has a minimum mass of 0.472 Jupiters. However, its average distance from 51 Pegasi is only 0.0527 Astronomical Unit (AU) and completes one orbit every 4.23 days. Planets like this, now referred to as “Hot Jupiters” must migrate closer to their parent star as they pull in material during their formation. The most successful method to date is the Transit Method. If a planet passes directly between a star and an observer’s line of sight, it blocks out a tiny portion of the star’s light, thus reducing its apparent brightness. The first exoplanet found to transit its star is HD 209458 b (Osiris). This is another Hot Jupiter that orbits its star every 3.52 days at a distance of 0.045 AU. Since its orbit is nearly edge-on (86.1°), we know its mass is precisely 0.71 Jupiters. The Gravitational Lens Method is derived from one of the insights of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity; gravity bends space. We normally think of light as traveling in a straight line, but light rays become bent when passing through space that is warped by the presence of a massive object such as a star. This method has only led to a handful of discoveries. Lastly, is Direct Detection. This method is very difficult in visible light due to the star’s overwhelming glare. Several observations have been made in the infrared in young systems still warm from their formation. The VLT captured an image of a 4 Jupiter mass planet around the brown dwarf The Gemini Planet Imager on the Gemini South 2M1207 in 2004. It is the first direct image of a planetary telescope. In the photo, GPI comprises the three box-like companion, and the first discovered to be orbiting a brown components attached to the telescope and hanging dwarf. Should we call it a planet since it orbits a brown closest to the observatory floor. Other box-like dwarf and not a full fledged star? The VLT also imaged a components on the telescope are other instruments. planet around the T Tauri star GQ Lupi in 2004. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered a distant planet around mission ended on November 15, 2018 after exhausting its Fomalhaut in 2008. The planet takes about 1,700 years to maneuvering fuel. orbit the A-type star. The Gemini Planet Imager (a special camera with a coronagraph attached to the 8-meter Gemini The Kepler data determined that the most common type of South telescope in Chile) has imaged gas giant planets planet has a mass between that of Earth and Neptune.
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