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Southeastern Iowa Astronomy Club the Sidereal Times

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Southeastern Iowa Astronomy Club the Sidereal Times SOUTHEASTERN IOWA ASTRONOMY CLUB THE SIDEREAL TIMES JANUARY 2013 A M EMBER SOCIETY OF THE ASTRONOMICAL LEAGUE CLUB OFFICERS : IMPORTANT INFORMATION Here's a link to a short summary Executive Committee ~ IMPORTANT CHANGE: We President Libby Snipes WILL be holding a club meeting of the Lightscape Project: http:// Vice President Judy Hilkin JANUARY 17, 7:00 PM, at the www.growburlington.com/ Treasurer David Philabaum downtown_dev_lightscape.cfm Secretary Vicki Philabaum BURLINGTON PUBLIC LI- Chief Observer Dave Philabaum BRARY, Room B. Though we Members-at-Large Jim Hilkin Here's a link to their informative had originally planned to skip the Terry Durbin brochure =( : http:// Katie Powers meeting in January, we really www.growburlington.com/ Board of Directors should meet to finalize a letter to downloads/Steeple% Chair Claus Benninghoven the Burlington Downtown Part- 20Brochure.pdf Vice Chair Duane Gerling ners representing our club's posi- Secretary Ray Reineke Members-at-Large Terry Durbin tion on their proposed Lightscape Here's a link to a Dark Skies As- Jim Hilkin Project. Other items on the agen- sociation webpage with some Katie Powers da include an update of spending AWESOME pamphlets with Witte Foundation Funds and an great information to use and/or Audit Committee Ray Reineke (2009) overview of club activities in print and share: http:// www.darksky.org/resources/99- Karen Johnson (2011) 2012. Snacks will be provided :-) Dean Moberg (2012) quick-reference-materials (continued on page 3) INSIDE THIS ISSUE : Space Place 2, 4 UPCOMING DATES Minutes (cont.) 3 ~ The January meeting is ~ February’s meeting Looking Back 3 Thursday, January 17, will be at the Burlington Treasurer’s Report 4 2013 at the Burlington Library on Tuesday, Feb- Public Library, Room B, ruary 12. Observer’s Report 5 at 7:00 pm ~ The March meeting Calendar 6 ~ Deadline for the Feb- time and place will be ruary newsletter is determined at a later Sky Maps 7-8 Wednesday, February 6, date. 2013 PAGE 2 THE SIDEREAL TIMES THE ART OF SPACE IMAGERY BY DIANE K. F ISHER When you see spectacular space imag- nebulae. es taken in infrared light by the Spitzer Space Telescope and other non-visible Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera -light telescopes, you may wonder (IRAC), for example, is a four-channel where those beautiful colors came camera, meaning that it has four dif- from? After all, if the telescopes were ferent detector arrays, each measuring recording infrared or ultraviolet light, light at one particular wavelength. we wouldn’t see anything at all. So are Each image from each detector array the images “colorized” or “false col- resembles a grayscale image, because ored”? the entire detector array is responding to only one wavelength of light. How- No, not really. The colors are translat- ever, the relative brightness will vary ed. Just as a foreign language can be across the array. translated into our native language, an image made with light that falls out- So, starting with one detector array, “...an image side the range of our seeing can be the first step is to determine what is made with light “translated” into colors we can see. the brightest thing and the darkest that falls Scientists process these images so they thing in the image. Software is used to outside the can not only see them, but they can pick out this dynamic range and to re- range of our also tease out all sorts of information compute the value of each pixel. This seeing can be the light can reveal. For example, process produces a grey-scale image. wisely done color translation can re- At the end of this process, for Spitzer, “translated” veal relative temperatures of stars, we will have four grayscale images, into colors we dust, and gas in the images, and show one for each for the four IRAC detec- can see.” fine structural details of galaxies and tors. (continued on page 4) This image of M101 combines images from four different telescopes, each de- tecting a different part of the spectrum. Red indicates infrared information from Spitzer’s 24-micron detector, and shows the cool dust in the galaxy. Yellow shows the visible starlight from the Hubble tele- scope. Cyan is ultraviolet light from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer space tele- scope, which shows the hottest and youngest stars. And magenta is X-ray en- ergy detected by the Chandra X-ray Ob- servatory, indicating incredibly hot activ- ity, like accretion around black holes. JANUARY 2013 PAGE 3 Looking Back in the Sidereal Times 25 Years Ago - January, 1988 Quality viewing has certainly been scarce in the last few weeks. The overabundance of cloudy skies seems to have driven some stargazers over the edge. A few warped individuals were seen aending the Christmas Eve Star Search even though the clouds were so thick nothing could shine through. But the snacks and the conversaon were good and helped to take our minds off of the cold and the disappointment. The first clear evening came on New Year's Eve. Even though the moon was so bright that viewing was difficult at best, it sll didn't keep some people away. ( The 12 day old moon was in Taurus ) Dave and Marion Bachtell have contacted the Peoria Astronomical Society and they have arranged for our club night to be spent with the Peoria club to see their 24 inch telescope. The plan is to meet at the auditorium and leave from there. ( Trip reports indicate that M42, M81,M82, M51 along with the Horsehead Nebula were some of the objects viewed before clouds ended the viewing at 10:30 ) 10 Years Ago - January, 2003 The dome is on ( Stone-Kelly ). The door is also on so the building is secure. Workers are currently waing for the electrical panel and outlets. Saturn passes in front of the Crab Nebula on the night of January 4-5, an event visible from North America. A 9 th magnitude comet was discovered by Tetuo Kudo on December 14 th . It has been named Kudo-Fujikawa. Ac- cording to B. G. Marsden, this object will be at perihelion someme in late January. ( The comet was also inde- pendently discovered by Shigehisa Fujikawa and reached magnitude 5.6 in late December ) According to the latest informaon Jupiter now has a grand total of 40 satellites. ( NASA currently lists 50 named satellites and another 16 provisional ones with a numeric designaon ). INFORMATION (CONT . FROM PAGE 1) I hope to see you at the library Thursday, January doors and hardware for the roll-off, protective cov- 17 @ 7 PM. er for the Ealing telescope, a cabinet to store eye- -Libby Snipes- pieces, and advertising expenses. Club members are currently checking on prices for these items. ~ There are no minutes for December. The De- A thank you note has been sent to the John H. Wit- cember meeting was cancelled due to the weather. te Jr. Foundation for the grant money. -Judy Hilkin- ~ The Southeastern Iowa Astronomy Club re- ceived the $1.900.00 requested grant from the John H. Witte Jr. Foundation this month. The proceeds from the money will go to the following: new tracking motor for the Fecker telescope, eye- pieces for the telescope in the roll-off, covers for the Fecker and Brandon telescopes, two steel PAGE 4 THE SIDEREAL TIMES THE ART OF SPACE IMAGERY (CONT . FROM PAGE 2) Matter of different temperatures emit different Download a new Spitzer poster of the center of the wavelengths of light. A cool object emits longer Milky Way. On the back is a more complete and wavelengths (lower energies) of light than a colorfully-illustrated explanation of the “art of warmer object. So, for each scene, we will see space imagery.” Go to spaceplace.nasa.gov/ four grayscale images, each of them different. posters/#milky-way. Normally, the three primary colors are assigned to This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion these gray-scale images based on the order they Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, appear in the spectrum, with blue assigned to the under a contract with the National Aeronautics shortest wavelength, and red to the longest. In the and Space Administration . case of Spitzer, with four wavelengths to repre- sent, a secondary color is chosen, such as yellow. So images that combine all four of the IRAC’s infrared detectors are remapped into red, yellow, green, and blue wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum. TREASURER ’S REPORT 12/1/2012 Beginning Balance $2,294.16 Deposits 12/4/2012 Memberships, donations, Ast. Cal. $170.00 12/31/2012 Witte Grant #2 $1,900.00 Total Deposits $2,070.00 Expenses Check Payee 12/4/2012 410 MTC, Nov. phone $29.29 12/24/2012 411 MTC, Dec. phone $29.76 Total Expenses $59.05 12/31/2012 Ending Balance $4,305.11 General Fund $1,742.40 Witte Grant #1 Balance $662.71 Witte Grant #2 Balance $1,900.00 Total in Checking Account $4,305.11 JANUARY 2013 PAGE 5 OBSERVER ’S REPORT FOR JANUARY /F EBRUARY BY DAVE PHILABAUM Mars remains where it has been since late summer, transit. Also at this me Callisto will be passing just low in the southwestern sky but things begin to change north of the planet. Saturn, in Libra, rises about 01:30 in January. Mars sets about 1.5 hours a er the Sun in CST in the middle of January and by the middle of Feb- the middle of January but by the middle of February it ruary rises at 23:30 CST. Saturn reaches western quad- sets a half hour earlier and begins to get lost in the rature on January 30 th making this a good me to look glow of twilight.
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