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The Last Shuttle Flight STS-135 Atlantis FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY (est. 1949) AUGUST 2011 The Last Shuttle Flight STS-135 Atlantis In This Issue: Club Calendar ... 2 August Sky Chart ... 3 Observation & Outreach ... 4 Tribute to the Space Shuttle ... 5 Cloudy Night Library ... 6 This Month’s Constellation - Sagittarius ... 7 Meteor Watch - The Perseids ... 11 Rocky Mountain Star Stare 2011 ... 12 PRIME FOCUS - FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY AUGUST 2011 August 2011 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 1 2 3 4 5 6 8:00 PM Museum Star Party - Vesta Fiesta! Caroline Herschel 4 Vesta at discovers first of 8 Opposition www.nasaimages.org comets in 1786 5:00 AM 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Peak of Perseids meteor shower 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 7:00 PM FWAS Club Meeting 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 8:00 PM FWAS Young Astronomer’s Neptune at Opposition 6:00 PM 28 29 30 31 FWAS Club Officer Election Results President - Shawn Kirchdorfer Vice President - John Dowell Secretary / Treasurer - Lewis Westerfield New Executive Board Members - Matt Reed and Ronnie Newman New Moon Jupiter is Thank you for your time and energy devoted to (Lunation 1097) stationary FWAS, its membership and activities. 2 PRIME FOCUS - FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY AUGUST 2011 August Night Sky Chart August 15, 2011 @ 10:00pm CDT Sky chart courtesy of Chris Peat and http://www.heavens-above.com/ Planet Viewing This Month Mercury dims and vanishes into the evening twilight early in the month, and reappears in the dawn sky by the end of the month. Inferior conjunction occurs on the 17th. Venus is not visible this month. Mars can be found in the eastern morning sky in Gemini. During the summer months, its visibility improves as its western elongation from the Sun slowly increases and the inclination of the ecliptic becomes steeper. Jupiter rises north of east near midnight in Aries. Retrograde motion begins on the 30th. Saturn is low in the western mid-evening sky and set in the late evening. Uranus rises in the late evening in Pisces. Neptune is visible all night. Great viewing this month as it will be at opposition on the 22nd, 4.0 light-hours from Earth, 2.3° in diameter and 12° south of the celestial equator. From the Observer’s Handbook 2011, by The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 3 PRIME FOCUS - FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY AUGUST 2011 Observation & Outreach Opportunities FWAS & Noble Planetarium Star Party - Vesta Fiesta! Star Parties are the public outreach events of the society. Club members volunteer their time and telescopes to educate the public about the night sky. Star parties are also excellent opportunities for those new to astronomy, as they give the beginner a chance to use different kinds of equipment or ask experienced club members for assistance with their own equipment. The star party will be a little different in August. It won’t just be a party, but a “Fiesta”, the “Vesta Fiesta” specifically. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will begin its orbital reconnaissance of 4 Vesta that weekend, and we hope to spend the entire day doing things to celebrate and bring that craft to the public’s attention. The festivities and star party may be held in the center of the big circle or maybe the south lot , since Capricorn is low in the southern sky, the path of Vesta. Stay tuned to the FWAS Yahoo! group for more info, and get your sombreros ready. OUR NEXT STAR PARTY: August 6 , activities all day and star party from 8:00 to 11:00 PM (weather permitting) Three Rivers Foundation (3RF) Star Party 3RF invites you out to Comanche Springs near Crowell, Texas for a night under the stars. The dark skies of Big Ranch Country provide a spectacular view of the universe. The party starts with solar observing two hours before sunset. Evening activities begin with a short educational introduction to astronomy. The observatories and Star Field are then opened to the public to enjoy the use of many different kinds of astronomy instruments. If you would like additional information about programs at Comanche Springs Astronomy Campus, contact: Three Rivers Foundation or call 940-684-1670. Other information on the Comanche Springs, Driving Directions and Observing Conditions pages. Dark Sky Observation: August 6, about 6:00 to 11:00 PM Estero Llano Grande State Park - Full Moon Party Come celebrate the full moon and see all that the park has to offer after hours. We will take a night hike, learn about the stars and constellations, search for scorpions, tarantulas, common pauraques, frogs and owls and much more! Accessible for the mobility, visually and hearing impaired. Contact Phone (956) 565-3919. August 13, 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM, Estero Llano Grande State Park - World Birding Center Purtis Creek State Park - Stargazing Make a star wheel and learn how to use it, learn about the solar system and view the night sky through a telescope. Weather permitting, meet at the over flow camping parking lot. Contact Phone (956) 565-3919. August 20, 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM, Purtis Creek State Park Copper Breaks State Park - Sun Fun and Starwalk Begin your celestial journey in the afternoon with Sun Fun, which features solar viewing of our closest star, the sun. In the evening take a Star Walk for a naked eye tour of the night sky over the park followed by a closer look through telescopes and binoculars. Accessible for the mobility impaired. Call for specific times; fees free for Texas State Parks Pass members, $2 non-members, $1 senior citizens, free for children 12 and under. Contact Phone (940) 839-4331. August 27, 5:00 PM to 05:00 PM, Copper Breaks State Park 4 PRIME FOCUS - FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY AUGUST 2011 Tribute to the Space Shuttle NASA Space Shuttle Program 1981 - 2011 To continue in our quest into space A new fleet of aircraft, to take the place Of the Apollo spacecraft, old and worn So a new type of craft was so welcomingly born! Wings like an aero plane, but so much more Flying to heights like no aircraft before! Rockets to carry her above the earth’s sphere Once disengaged, she was alone, that’s clear 7 men aboard her on a most historical flight April 12 1981, must have been an amazing night Cleared for lift-off the rockets boomed Columbia in all of her glory, on the landscape loomed! Her mission pure and simple To put the systems to the test To orbit the earth and safely return Was all that could be hoped for, at best! Triumphantly she won the day, an amazing feat indeed As she re entered the earth’s atmosphere, at unprecedented speed Gracefully she approached the runway, John Young and his team As the elated Commander of this flight, completed an impossible dream! Other shuttles followed, to join this amazing fleet Of reusable winged spacecraft, an aircraft hard to beat Challenger was lost to us, in the quest for outer space Endeavour was built to stoically take her place The missions they have carried out, have enabled us to explore With the placing of the Hubble Telescope Beaming back pictures down to earth That we could have never seen before! To build an international space station, so very near its completion In July 2011, we will see the Shuttle deletion! With just flight remaining the fleet will enter history! We wonder what will follow them, what sort of craft it will be! To all of the crews who have flown with them We admire their courage and vision To the crew of the Atlantis flight We wish you a safe, successful, final mission!! Photos courtesy of Beau Hartweg. He and his family staked out a great ~ ~ ~ Elizabeth Ostafijczuk ~ ~ ~ location in Titusville and were able to snap a few pictures of the last Space Shuttle launch. Thanks, Beau! 5 PRIME FOCUS - FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY AUGUST 2011 been successfully Cloudy Night Library put into practice in Book review by Matt J. McCullar, FWAS large observatories with gigantic optical telescopes). A The Jodrell Bank Telescopes British engineering by Bernard Lovell firm designed the Published in 1985 by Oxford University Press overwhelming majority 292 pages, ISBN 0-19-858178-5 of the structural hardware for Jodrell It is my unfortunate duty to report that this is my Bank’s radio dishes. first negative review for “Cloudy Night Library.” I am interested in just about all facets of astronomy, and I have The biggest problem read some good books about radio astronomy, but The with the book is that Jodrell Bank Telescopes is simply not worth reading. I had it is simply not written high hopes for it, because the famous radio observatory very entertainingly. in Great Britain has been around for decades and has Lovell may have been contributed greatly to our knowledge of the universe; a brilliant scientist, but when he sat down to write he one would think that it would have a fascinating story merely presented far too many irrelevant details about to tell. Unfortunately, this book reveals precious little government board meetings and communications about how these gigantic radio telescopes actually between various officials. A smart editor could have work, and Lovell merely glosses over their astronomical erased about a third of the book and made the rest even results. The book is actually a long, drawn-out report of better. British government bureaucracy. It is not even about the There are several black & white photographs and line telescopes themselves, per se, but more about big civilian drawings to break up the text.
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