DOCSLIB.ORG

Lowellobserver

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Lowellobserver THE ISSUE 112 WINTER 2017 LOWELL OBSERVER THE QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER OF LOWELL OBSERVATORY HOME OF PLUTO Lowell Observatory engineers Frank Cornelius and Ben Hardesty hoist the EXPRES vacuum enclosure. IN THIS ISSUE 2 Director’s Update 2 Trustee’s Update 3 Gerard van Belle Heads NPOI EXPRES By Debra Fischer, Yale University EXPRES is the EXtreme PREcision and acquisition system, new targets 4 Giovale Open Deck Observatory Spectrograph. Designed and built at always fell within a 10” radius of the Yale University, this will be the first fiber. David Sawyer, who was a system 5 Junior Astronomer Program spectrograph with the precision to detect engineer at Yale before becoming 7 Expanding LOCKs analogs of our Earth around nearby stars. Lowell’s technical project manager, said Lowell Observatory’s Discovery Channel this was the smoothest commissioning Telescope (DCT) is the perfect telescope that he has seen in his 25-year career. for collecting the photons that EXPRES One of the most important will use for exoplanet detection. efforts for extreme precision and the While work on the spectrograph detectability of Earthlike planets is the continued in the Yale Exoplanet Lab this ability to disentangle velocities that summer, the first stage of commissioning arise on the surface of stars from orbital at the DCT was completed, with velocities. We are making exciting installation of the three-ton vacuum progress with new statistical techniques 8 Stephen Riggs Joins Lowell enclosure; the front end module; and using simulated data. The high fidelity 9 The Next Chapter critical software – the data-taking data from EXPRES are critical to the GUI for controlling EXPRES and for successful application of the methods 10 The Lowells’ Love of Plants communicating with the telescope control continued on page 21 11 Dispatches from the Universe system. The DCT pointing exceeded 14 PLS Members the Sutherlands expectations. Thanks to the extraordinary 15 Spinning Comet support from the DCT team and Pluto Telescope and Dome the excellent planning by the Yale 16 IAU Names Pluto Features instrument team, a star was acquired and Renovation Photos 17 Observing an Occultation of Triton commissioning tests began 30 minutes after going on-sky. Once the pointing See page 12 for more! 19 Mars and Beyond offsets were determined for the guiding 24 Special Events THE ISSUE 112 WINTER 2017 years, raise the breadth and reach of Lowell’s scientific, technical, and outreach activities to yet another level. This year will be a critical one in ensuring these plans continue toward fruition. We will arrive at a full vision for our scientific and technical DIRECTOR’S UPDATE future, we’ll break ground TRUSTEE’S UPDATE By Jeffrey Hall on the GODO with hopes of By W. Lowell Putnam opening it by sometime next observatory and help all the I’d like to wish everyone a fall, and we’ll be defining and I don’t thank people good work in both science and very happy 2018, and thank you raising funds for the building enough. As I read the articles outreach that continues to get for your interest and support of and the detailed components that make up this issue of the done. As you can see from what Lowell Observatory. of our new outreach center. We Observer, I realize what a great is already going on we have Many good things happened look forward to keeping all of job everybody on Mars Hill is a lot in front of us that will in 2017: a number of new you up to date as things move doing and how fortunate I am help create a very exciting and research grants obtained along, and we appreciate your to be a part of this organization. successful 2018. My best wishes by the faculty, exciting new continued interest. I also want to extend my thanks to all of you and your families instruments arriving at our Happy New Year to all! to all of you who support the for the year ahead as well. Discovery Channel Telescope, a smashingly successful pair of events on Mars Hill and in Oregon for the Great From the LMI Gallery: American Eclipse, continued extremely strong attendance The Ring Nebula in the outreach programs, and steadily developing plans for The Ring Nebula (M57) is a planetary a new and expanded visitor nebula located about 2,300 light center to accommodate our years from Earth in the constellation growing visitation. Our recent Lyra. The Ring Nebula is easy to spot announcement of the Giovale using binoculars or a small telescope Open Deck Observatory because of its proximity to the bright (GODO) is, I hope, just the star Vega. first in a string of happy events Credit: Sanborn/Hayslip/Excelsior84/Lowell that will, over the next 5-6 Obs./NSF Astronomy Liaison A generous donation from Advisory Board member Bob Ayers is supporting the new position of Astronomy Liaison at Lowell. Duties will focus on interacting with amateur astronomy communities, the media, and the public to relay general information about astronomy and planetary science and specific information about current research being conducted at Lowell Observatory. The observatory has hired Alma Ruiz-Velasco, a familiar face around Lowell for several years, for the position. Alma earned her doctorate of sciences in astrophysics in 2012 from the University of Guanajuato in Mexico. She originally came to the observatory as a postdoc working with Gerard van Belle and for the past several months has served as an educator in the Public Program. In addition to giving tours and special programs, she has also partnered with a Navajo teacher as part of the Navajo-Hopi Alma Ruiz-Velasco stands in front of the Clark Telescope Astronomy Outreach program. Alma’s dual background in both during a recent tour. science and outreach make her an ideal fit for this position. 2 THE ISSUEISSUE 104 112 SUMMER WINTER 20172015 Gerard van Belle is one of Lowell’s well- respected astronomers. While he has carried out diverse research through his career, he has focused on building and using the highest resolution optical telescopes available. He uses these to learn about the sizes, shapes, and surfaces of stars, as well as to look for planets orbiting those stars. Credit: Andrew Holt Frazier Gerard van Belle Heads NPOI By Kevin Schindler, Historian research award at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2001, for the first-ever direct In May, Lowell Observatory Astronomer detection of stellar gravity darkening detection of stellar oblateness on rapidly Gerard van Belle was named the director of (a latitude-dependent brightness effect rotating stars. the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer on the surface of rapidly-rotating stars), Van Belle is the principal investigator (NPOI) in Flagstaff, Arizona. Van Belle has characterization of the disks around Be of the recently announced $3.27M been on the Lowell faculty since August of stars, and thousands of measurements of PALANTIR upgrade to NPOI. He said, 2011 and is a noted leader in astrophysical stellar diameters and binary star orbits. “There’s been some revolutionary new research and remote sensing utilizing Van Belle has a long history in the advances in optics and electronics, and telescope arrays such as NPOI. development of telescope instrumentation. by implementing those at NPOI—and NPOI is an advanced telescope array Before working at Lowell, he served as the capitalizing on the considerable existing at Lowell’s Anderson Mesa dark sky site, instrument scientist for the PRIMA and infrastructure of the facility—we should roughly 10 miles outside of Flagstaff, MATISSE instruments for the European be able to marry the high resolution an International Dark Sky City. Lowell Southern Observatory’s VLTI facility of NPOI with faint-object sensitivity. operates the facility in partnership with the (2007-2011) and an instrument architect for We’ll have the premier observatory of its Naval Research Lab (NRL) and the U.S. the Keck Interferometer (1996-2002). He kind for achieving some of the defining Naval Observatory (USNO). NPOI links has conducted scientific research on the astronomical discoveries of the 21st multiple optical telescopes spread over a IR Optical Telescope Array (IOTA), the century.” site many football fields in size to form Palomar Testbed a single, larger synthetic telescope. It is Interferometer the largest such operational facility in the (PTI), and Georgia world, with potential telescope separations State University’s up to 432 meters and the only one Center for expressly built for the challenge of visible High Angular light operations. Resolution The directorship of NPOI has rotated Astronomy between USNO, NRL, and Lowell over (CHARA) Array. the lifetime of the facility. The previous Van Belle’s director of NPOI, Donald J. Hutter, retired pioneering stellar from his position at USNO on April 30. surface imaging During his 13-year tenure as director, NPOI work at PTI won achieved a number of ground-breaking him the inaugural observations, including the first-ever direct Edward Stone Aerial view of NPOI. Instead of using a single telescope, this instrument combines the light from an array of up to six mirrors spaced tens of meters apart by precisely directing the beams of light from a star to a point. Each arm measures more than 800 feet long, giving NPOI the largest baseline of any single interferometer in the world. 3 THE ISSUE 112 WINTER 2017 GODO will be located near Lowell’s Pluto Walk and Pluto dome. To make room for it, the two large water tanks in that area will be removed and replaced by a single, more modern tank elsewhere on campus. This expansion of public observing facilities will allow staff to spread out the evening stargazing and telescope viewing experience, lessening congestion around the Rotunda and Clark Telescope areas.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Astro2020 APC White Papers the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer
    Astro2020 APC White Papers The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer Type of Activity: Ground Based Project Space Based Project Infrastructure Activity 4 Technological Development Activity State of the Professions Consideration4 Other Principal Author: Name: Gerard van Belle Institution: Lowell Observatory Email: [email protected] Phone: 928-255-7865 Co-authors: (names, institutions, emails) J. Thomas Armstrong (NRL, [email protected]), Ellyn Baines (NRL, [email protected]), Joe Llama (Lowell, [email protected]), Henrique Schmitt (NRL, [email protected]) Abstract: The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) is one of the premier U.S. long-baseline optical interferometric facilities, capable of providing sub-milliarcsecond imaging in the visible. We outline a plan for NPOI for 2020-2030 that will cement its leadership as the highest resolution optical system on the planet, with multi-kilometer baselines. This capability will serve a wide variety of Astro2020 science needs, resolving the sizes and shapes of stars, resolving AGNs, imaging protoplanetary disks, and observing the passage of exoplanets across their stellar disks. 1 1 Introduction The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI), a long baseline optical interferometer located on Anderson Mesa, near Flagstaff, Arizona, is operated as a partnership between Lowell Observatory, the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and the US Naval Observatory (USNO). It features a Y-shaped layout with 250 m arms, telescopes that can be moved among 30 stations along the arms, visible-band beam combiners, and a vacuum feed system to avoid ground seeing and differential longitudinal dispersion. NPOI currently operates with up to six telescopes simultaneously feeding the beam combination laboratory with 12-cm effective apertures, on baselines (separations between the apertures) up to 98-m.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is the Color of Pluto? - Universe Today
    What is the Color of Pluto? - Universe Today space and astronomy news Universe Today Home Members Guide to Space Carnival Photos Videos Forum Contact Privacy Login NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of http://www.universetoday.com/13866/color-of-pluto/[29-Mar-17 13:18:37] What is the Color of Pluto? - Universe Today Pluto on July 14, 2015. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI WHAT IS THE COLOR OF PLUTO? Article Updated: 28 Mar , 2017 by Matt Williams When Pluto was first discovered by Clybe Tombaugh in 1930, astronomers believed that they had found the ninth and outermost planet of the Solar System. In the decades that followed, what little we were able to learn about this distant world was the product of surveys conducted using Earth-based telescopes. Throughout this period, astronomers believed that Pluto was a dirty brown color. In recent years, thanks to improved observations and the New Horizons mission, we have finally managed to obtain a clear picture of what Pluto looks like. In addition to information about its surface features, composition and tenuous atmosphere, much has been learned about Pluto’s appearance. Because of this, we now know that the one-time “ninth planet” of the Solar System is rich and varied in color. Composition: With a mean density of 1.87 g/cm3, Pluto’s composition is differentiated between an icy mantle and a rocky core. The surface is composed of more than 98% nitrogen ice, with traces of methane and carbon monoxide. Scientists also suspect that Pluto’s internal structure is differentiated, with the rocky material having settled into a dense core surrounded by a mantle of water ice.
    [Show full text]
  • Jjmonl 1710.Pmd
    alactic Observer John J. McCarthy Observatory G Volume 10, No. 10 October 2017 The Last Waltz Cassini’s final mission and dance of death with Saturn more on page 4 and 20 The John J. McCarthy Observatory Galactic Observer New Milford High School Editorial Committee 388 Danbury Road Managing Editor New Milford, CT 06776 Bill Cloutier Phone/Voice: (860) 210-4117 Production & Design Phone/Fax: (860) 354-1595 www.mccarthyobservatory.org Allan Ostergren Website Development JJMO Staff Marc Polansky Technical Support It is through their efforts that the McCarthy Observatory Bob Lambert has established itself as a significant educational and recreational resource within the western Connecticut Dr. Parker Moreland community. Steve Barone Jim Johnstone Colin Campbell Carly KleinStern Dennis Cartolano Bob Lambert Route Mike Chiarella Roger Moore Jeff Chodak Parker Moreland, PhD Bill Cloutier Allan Ostergren Doug Delisle Marc Polansky Cecilia Detrich Joe Privitera Dirk Feather Monty Robson Randy Fender Don Ross Louise Gagnon Gene Schilling John Gebauer Katie Shusdock Elaine Green Paul Woodell Tina Hartzell Amy Ziffer In This Issue INTERNATIONAL OBSERVE THE MOON NIGHT ...................... 4 SOLAR ACTIVITY ........................................................... 19 MONTE APENNINES AND APOLLO 15 .................................. 5 COMMONLY USED TERMS ............................................... 19 FAREWELL TO RING WORLD ............................................ 5 FRONT PAGE ...............................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Orbital Evidence for More Widespread Carbonate- 10.1002/2015JE004972 Bearing Rocks on Mars Key Point: James J
    PUBLICATIONS Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets RESEARCH ARTICLE Orbital evidence for more widespread carbonate- 10.1002/2015JE004972 bearing rocks on Mars Key Point: James J. Wray1, Scott L. Murchie2, Janice L. Bishop3, Bethany L. Ehlmann4, Ralph E. Milliken5, • Carbonates coexist with phyllosili- 1 2 6 cates in exhumed Noachian rocks in Mary Beth Wilhelm , Kimberly D. Seelos , and Matthew Chojnacki several regions of Mars 1School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2The Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, USA, 3SETI Institute, Mountain View, California, USA, 4Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA, 5Department of Geological Sciences, Brown Correspondence to: University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, 6Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA J. J. Wray, [email protected] Abstract Carbonates are key minerals for understanding ancient Martian environments because they Citation: are indicators of potentially habitable, neutral-to-alkaline water and may be an important reservoir for Wray, J. J., S. L. Murchie, J. L. Bishop, paleoatmospheric CO2. Previous remote sensing studies have identified mostly Mg-rich carbonates, both in B. L. Ehlmann, R. E. Milliken, M. B. Wilhelm, Martian dust and in a Late Noachian rock unit circumferential to the Isidis basin. Here we report evidence for older K. D. Seelos, and M. Chojnacki (2016), Orbital evidence for more widespread Fe- and/or Ca-rich carbonates exposed from the subsurface by impact craters and troughs. These carbonates carbonate-bearing rocks on Mars, are found in and around the Huygens basin northwest of Hellas, in western Noachis Terra between the Argyre – J.
    [Show full text]
  • Bio-Preservation Potential of Sediment in Eberswalde Crater, Mars
    Western Washington University Western CEDAR WWU Graduate School Collection WWU Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarship Fall 2020 Bio-preservation Potential of Sediment in Eberswalde crater, Mars Cory Hughes Western Washington University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet Part of the Geology Commons Recommended Citation Hughes, Cory, "Bio-preservation Potential of Sediment in Eberswalde crater, Mars" (2020). WWU Graduate School Collection. 992. https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwuet/992 This Masters Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the WWU Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarship at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in WWU Graduate School Collection by an authorized administrator of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Bio-preservation Potential of Sediment in Eberswalde crater, Mars By Cory M. Hughes Accepted in Partial Completion of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science ADVISORY COMMITTEE Dr. Melissa Rice, Chair Dr. Charles Barnhart Dr. Brady Foreman Dr. Allison Pfeiffer GRADUATE SCHOOL David L. Patrick, Dean Master’s Thesis In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master’s degree at Western Washington University, I grant to Western Washington University the non-exclusive royalty-free right to archive, reproduce, distribute, and display the thesis in any and all forms, including electronic format, via any digital library mechanisms maintained by WWU. I represent and warrant this is my original work, and does not infringe or violate any rights of others. I warrant that I have obtained written permissions from the owner of any third party copyrighted material included in these files.
    [Show full text]
  • Appendix I Lunar and Martian Nomenclature
    APPENDIX I LUNAR AND MARTIAN NOMENCLATURE LUNAR AND MARTIAN NOMENCLATURE A large number of names of craters and other features on the Moon and Mars, were accepted by the IAU General Assemblies X (Moscow, 1958), XI (Berkeley, 1961), XII (Hamburg, 1964), XIV (Brighton, 1970), and XV (Sydney, 1973). The names were suggested by the appropriate IAU Commissions (16 and 17). In particular the Lunar names accepted at the XIVth and XVth General Assemblies were recommended by the 'Working Group on Lunar Nomenclature' under the Chairmanship of Dr D. H. Menzel. The Martian names were suggested by the 'Working Group on Martian Nomenclature' under the Chairmanship of Dr G. de Vaucouleurs. At the XVth General Assembly a new 'Working Group on Planetary System Nomenclature' was formed (Chairman: Dr P. M. Millman) comprising various Task Groups, one for each particular subject. For further references see: [AU Trans. X, 259-263, 1960; XIB, 236-238, 1962; Xlffi, 203-204, 1966; xnffi, 99-105, 1968; XIVB, 63, 129, 139, 1971; Space Sci. Rev. 12, 136-186, 1971. Because at the recent General Assemblies some small changes, or corrections, were made, the complete list of Lunar and Martian Topographic Features is published here. Table 1 Lunar Craters Abbe 58S,174E Balboa 19N,83W Abbot 6N,55E Baldet 54S, 151W Abel 34S,85E Balmer 20S,70E Abul Wafa 2N,ll7E Banachiewicz 5N,80E Adams 32S,69E Banting 26N,16E Aitken 17S,173E Barbier 248, 158E AI-Biruni 18N,93E Barnard 30S,86E Alden 24S, lllE Barringer 29S,151W Aldrin I.4N,22.1E Bartels 24N,90W Alekhin 68S,131W Becquerei
    [Show full text]
  • Indigenous Astronomies and Progress in Modern Astronomy
    Indigenous Astronomies and Progress in Modern Astronomy Clive Ruggles1 School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester University Road, LEICESTER LE1 7RH, U.K. E-mail: [email protected] From an anthropological point of view, the whole concept of a ‘path of progress’ in astronomical discovery is anathema, since it implicitly downgrades other cultural perspectives, such as the many ‘indigenous cosmologies’ that still exist in the modern world. By doing so, one risks provoking those who hold them and—as is most obvious in places such as Hawaii where the two ‘world-views’ come into direct contact—creating avoidable resistance to that very progress. The problem is complicated by the existence of ‘fringe’ and ‘new-age’ views that are increasingly confused with, and even passed off as, indigenous perceptions. In a modern world where widespread public perceptions include many that are unscientific in the broadest sense of the term, I shall argue that there are actually a range of positive benefits for progress in scientific astronomy to be derived from the mutual awareness and comprehension of ‘genuine’ cultural world-views whose goals—in common with those of modern science—are to make sense of the cosmos within which people live. While two-way education is clearly a prerequisite, I shall argue that the necessary level of reconciliation can only be achieved through more fundamental attempts by modern astronomers to understand, and ultimately to respect, both the non-Western frameworks of thought that give rise to other cultural perspectives and the heritage associated with them. One of the most obvious potential benefits could derive from common attitudes towards the natural heritage of astronomy, namely dark skies.
    [Show full text]
  • A Tale of Two Sides: Pluto's Opposition Surge in 2018 and 2019
    EPSC Abstracts Vol. 14, EPSC2020-546, 2020, updated on 27 Sep 2021 https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-546 Europlanet Science Congress 2020 © Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. A Tale of Two Sides: Pluto's Opposition Surge in 2018 and 2019 Anne Verbiscer1, Paul Helfenstein2, Mark Showalter3, and Marc Buie4 1University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA ([email protected]) 2Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA ([email protected]) 3SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, USA ([email protected]) 4Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, USA ([email protected]) Near-opposition photometry employs remote sensing observations to reveal the microphysical properties of regolith-covered surfaces over a wide range of solar system bodies. When aligned directly opposite the Sun, objects exhibit an opposition effect, or surge, a dramatic, non-linear increase in reflectance seen with decreasing solar phase angle (the Sun-target-observer angle). This phenomenon is a consequence of both interparticle shadow hiding and a constructive interference phenomenon known as coherent backscatter [1-3]. While the size of the Earth’s orbit restricts observations of Pluto and its moons to solar phase angles no larger than α = 1.9°, the opposition surge, which occurs largely at α < 1°, can discriminate surface properties [4-6]. The smallest solar phase angles are attainable at node crossings when the Earth transits the solar disk as viewed from the object. In this configuration, a solar system body is at “true” opposition. When combined with observations acquired at larger phase angles, the resulting reflectance measurement can be related to the optical, structural, and thermal properties of the regolith and its inferred collisional history.
    [Show full text]
  • Pluto's Far Side
    Pluto’s Far Side S.A. Stern Southwest Research Institute O.L. White SETI Institute P.J. McGovern Lunar and Planetary Institute J.T. Keane California Institute of Technology J.W. Conrad, C.J. Bierson University of California, Santa Cruz C.B. Olkin Southwest Research Institute P.M. Schenk Lunar and Planetary Institute J.M. Moore NASA Ames Research Center K.D. Runyon Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory and The New Horizons Team 1 Abstract The New Horizons spacecraft provided near-global observations of Pluto that far exceed the resolution of Earth-based datasets. Most Pluto New Horizons analysis hitherto has focused on Pluto’s encounter hemisphere (i.e., the anti-Charon hemisphere containing Sputnik Planitia). In this work, we summarize and interpret data on Pluto’s “far side” (i.e., the non-encounter hemisphere), providing the first integrated New Horizons overview of Pluto’s far side terrains. We find strong evidence for widespread bladed deposits, evidence for an impact crater about as large as any on the “near side” hemisphere, evidence for complex lineations approximately antipodal to Sputnik Planitia that may be causally related, and evidence that the far side maculae are smaller and more structured than Pluto’s encounter hemisphere maculae. 2 Introduction Before the 2015 exploration of Pluto by New Horizons (e.g., Stern et al. 2015, 2018 and references therein) none of Pluto’s surface features were known except by crude (though heroically derived) albedo maps, with resolutions of 300-500 km obtainable from the Hubble Space Telescope (e.g., Buie et al. 1992, 1997, 2010) and Pluto-Charon mutual event techniques (e.g., Young & Binzel 1993, Young et al.
    [Show full text]
  • Pluto's Atmosphere Dynamics: How the Nitrogen Heart Regulates The
    Pluto System After New Horizons 2019 (LPI Contrib. No. 2133) 7017.pdf PLUTO’S ATMOSPHERE DYNAMICS: HOW THE NITROGEN HEART REGULATES THE CIRCULATION. T. Bertrand1, F. Forget2, A. Toigo3, D. Hinson4,5, 1Space Science Division, NASA Ames Re- search Center Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA ([email protected]), 2Laboratoire de Météorologie Dy- namique, IPSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France ([email protected]), 3Johns Hopkins University Ap- plied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD 20723, United States ([email protected]), 4Carl Sagan Center, SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA,5Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA ([email protected]) Introduction: Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere is main- many Pluto years in order to be insensitive to the initial ly nitrogen and is in solid-gas equilibrium with the sur- state, which requires significant computing time. To face nitrogen ice [1]. Over the past three decades, solve this issue, a volatile transport model of Pluto is Earth-based stellar occultations have been an effective used to create initial states for the GCM which are the method to study the evolution of its temperature, com- results of 30 million years of volatile ice evolution and position, pressure, and density [e.g. 2-7]. In particular, contain equilibrated combinations of surface condi- these datasets revealed (1) a much warmer atmosphere tions, such as soil temperatures and ice distributions (70-100 K) than the surface (40 K), with a strong in- [23]. This approach enables 3D GCM simulations of version in the first 20 km above the surface, (2) a three- Pluto to be performed typically from 1984 to 2015, the fold increase of surface pressure since 1988, and (3) first 20 years corresponding to a spin-up time for the global-scale oscillations in the vertical density and atmosphere.
    [Show full text]
  • The Astronomy of Many Cultures: a Resource Guide
    The Astronomy of Many Cultures: A Resource Guide by Andrew Fraknoi (Fromm Institute, U. of San Francisco) Version 5.1; July 2020 © copyright 2020 by Andrew Fraknoi. The right to use or reproduce this guide for any nonprofit educational purpose is hereby granted. For permission to use in other ways, or to suggest additional materials, please contact the author at e-mail: fraknoi {at} fhda {dot} edu The teaching of astronomy in our colleges and high schools often sidesteps the contributions of cultures outside of Europe and the U.S. white mainstream. Few educators (formal or informal) receive much training in this area, and they therefore tend to stick to people and histories they know from their own training -- even when an increasing number of their students or audiences might be from cultures beyond those familiar to them. Luckily, a wealth of material is becoming available to help celebrate the ideas and contributions of non-European cultures regarding our views of the universe. This listing of resources about cultures and astronomy makes no claim to be comprehensive, but simply consists of some English-language materials that can be used both by educators and their students or audiences. We include published and web-based materials, plus videos and classroom activities. In this edition, we have made a particular effort to enlarge resources about African-American and Hispanic American astronomers. Note that there’s a separate listing about the role of women in astronomy at: http://bit.ly/astronomywomen Table of Contents: 1. General Resources on the Astronomy of Diverse Cultures 2.
    [Show full text]
  • April Meeting with Jack Szelka & Dave Huestis
    the vol. 37 no. 4 April Skyscraper 2010 Amateur Astronomical Society of Rhode Island 47 Peeptoad Road North Scituate, Rhode Island 02857 www.theSkyscrapers.org Seagrave Memorial Observatory is open April Meeting to the public weather permitting with Jack Szelka & Dave Huestis Saturdays 8pm - 10pm Please note that the observatory may be inac- Friday, April 2, 7:30pm cessible for several weeks following a winter North Scituate Community Center storm. See web site for updates. The Skyscrapers' Monthly Meeting on April 2, 2010 at the Scituate Community Center will feature two talks by Skyscrapers' members Dave Huestis and Jack Szelka. North Scituate Community Center Yerkes Observatory and Adler Planetarium by Jack Szelka All of our winter meetings (Dec-April) are held at the Community Center. From Seagrave Member Jack Szelka will present a Also presented, a tour of the Yerkes Observatory, the Community Center is the first Powerpoint presentation highlighting a visit Observatory including highlights of the building on the right side going south on Rt. to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois buildings, equipment and history of the 116 after the intersection of Rt. 6 Bypass (also and Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, many great astronomers who have worked Rt. 101) and Rt. 116. Parking is across the street. Wisconsin. there. The main feature is the worlds largest He will cover some of the astronomical refractor, the 40-inch Alvan Clark lens and a exhibits at the Adler; the Telescope display, night of viewing with this scope. Atwood Sphere and the other astronomy In this issue… related displays. 2 President’s Message The Sesquicentennial Birthday of Frank Evans Seagrave (1860-1934) by Dave Huestis 2 Sirius Dave Huestis, a Skyscrapers member Skyscrapers purchased Frank’s observa- 3 Sesquicentennial Birthday of since 1975 and the society’s historian for tory and 8¼-inch Alvan Clark refractor Frank Evans Seagrave many years, will be presenting a talk to on Peeptoad Road back in 1936.
    [Show full text]