Volume 58 No. 1 January 01, 2021

January 4 CLAS Meeting – Members’ Astrophotography Showcase 2020 Have you taken any pictures of the night sky this year? Please share them with CLAS members at the January online Zoom meeting, and give us a brief explanation of the subjects and how you photographed them. Show us your favorite shots, and even the ones you tried that didn’t quite work out.

Send us your photos (and videos) via email and we’ll add them to the program, and you can talk about them if you wish when yours are shown We’ll also share them on our website. Guidelines 1. Email photos to Ralph Paonessa: [email protected] by Sunday, January 3. 2. Ideal size is around 1920 x 1080 pixels (full screen), but we can resize them if necessary. 3. Include a brief description with each photo including a. Subject and where it was taken b. Equipment and any details about how you shot it c. Your name

We look forward to seeing your astrophotography!

Zoom Meeting

China Lake Astronomical Society is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: AS Meeting Time: January 04, 2021 07:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6727499334?pwd=VWhuVGZ3aFphL283THRKNUNoZ0RSZz09

Meeting ID: 672 749 9334 Passcode: 9V8FQM One tap mobile +14086380968,,6727499334#,,,,,,0#,,562029# US (San Jose) +16699006833,,6727499334#,,,,,,0#,,562029# US (San Jose)

Dial by your location +1 408 638 0968 US (San Jose) +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 646 876 9923 US (New York) Meeting ID: 672 749 9334 Passcode: 562029 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/keA8HEm1mp President’s Message

While 2020 is a year we’d mostly like to forget, it at least has some notable memories for astronomers.

My favorite was the appearance of magnificent Comet NEOWISE in July. This was the best comet in the Northern Hemisphere since Hale-Bopp in 1996-97. This year, twenty-three years later, newly-discovered C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) finally arrived with its long tail I could see my naked eyes from a dark sky—and spectacular in binoculars or a camera.

I’m still hoping for the appearance of a true “Great Comet,” one that is easily visible to the naked eye—maybe even during the day! But I’m very satisfied with NEOWISE.

The planets also put on a good display this year. On July 14, Jupiter was at opposition—directly opposite the and thus high overhead at midnight. And nearest its closest to Earth, and so at its brightest and largest in our telescopes.

One week later, it was Saturn’s turn at opposition on July 20, making this lovely ringed world bright and large in our scopes. Throughout the summer, they remained high and bright in the sky, perfect for observing.

Not to be outdone, the red globe of Mars spend most of 2020 brightening until it reached opposition October 13, high in the winter sky where good views could be had in telescopes. (This year was the first time I could clearly see details on the Martian surface in a large telescope, a surprise that left me a little awe-struck.)

Fearing that their glory might be eclipsed by Mars, Jupiter and Saturn picked up the pace and sped to their historic Great Conjunction on December 21—the closest they’ve been visible in the sky in 794 years!! That was in the year 1226. (They were close in 1623, but then they were also close to the sun and so almost impossible for anyone to see.)

Sadly, we weren’t able to hold our planned viewing event because of the spike in coronavirus cases, but all you had to do was walk outside shortly after sunset and there they were, as close together as one-sixth the diameter of the Full Moon. A great way to celebrate the Winter Solstice and the longest night of the year, even if you had to do it alone. (But we’re planning another event for 2080, when they’ll be close again!)

This year has been one for the record books, and mostly in bad ways! But I hope you were at least able to get occasional comfort from going out at night and gazing at the heavens and all their wonders, from here on our little rock. Here’s hoping to a Happier and healthier New Year for all!

— Ralph Paonessa, President

Next CLAS Meeting: February 1st, 2021 at 7:30 PM.

Citizen astronomers map near-Earth asteroid Professional and backyard astronomers have teamed up to measure the shape of an asteroid using a unique new instrument. By Mark Zastrow | Published: Tuesday, December 29, 2020

The Unistellar eVscope is pictured here at Meteor Crater in this press kit photo. SETI Institute, Unistellar

In the battle to defend the planet from hazardous asteroids, amateur astronomers have taken on a new role — for the first time, helping to map a near-Earth asteroid (NEA), revealing its shape.The effort came as a collaboration between researchers at the SETI Institute and 26 citizen observers from seven countries who observed the 1.2-mile- wide (2 kilometers) asteroid 1999 AP10. All of the observers were using an eVscope — a new “smart” telescope model produced by the startup Unistellar. Amateur astronomers have always been on the front lines of planetary defense as discoverers of asteroids and comets. Their observations and submissions to organizations like the Minor Planet Center are invaluable in tracking objects that could one day collide with Earth.But this is the first time that amateur observers have teamed with researchers to generate a detailed model of the shape of an asteroid. They used a technique called light curve inversion, which analyzes how an object changes brightness as it tumbles and rotates through space, reflecting sunlight differently at every angle. Using the 81 sets of observations that eVscope users collected over October and November — plus some archival data from 2009 — the researchers were able to reverse engineer the asteroid’s physical shape.Previously, astronomers had determined the shapes of only 68 other near-Earth asteroids, mostly using powerful planetary radar facilities to do so.The team presented their results on December 9 at the 2020 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held online.The results are also a milestone for the eVscope, which began as a Kickstarter campaign in 2017. The initial campaign was so successful it spawned the company Unistellar, which has now shipped about 3,000 eVscopes to users.The eVscope’s main claim to fame is that instead of an optical eyepiece, it has a built-in CMOS sensor and can stack images on the fly. Users can view the results on a paired smartphone or peer into the telescope’s electronic “eyepiece,” which projects an image from an OLED screen, similar to electronic viewfinders commonly found on mirrorless cameras.Another key feature is that users can participate in observing campaigns developed through a partnership between Unistellar and scientists from the SETI Institute.

The observations from citizen astronomers resulted in this model of the near-Earth asteroid 1999 AP10. Credit: Josef Hanuš, Charles University & Franck Marchis, SETI Institute

Franck Marchis of the SETI Institute tells Astronomy that the ability to tap into a network of thousands of identical eVscopes is a “game-changer” because results from standardized equipment can be combined more consistently. “You know that the telescopes react with the same sensitivity, the same quantum efficiency, the same profile of different colors,” he says. “That means we can clearly identify if there is an issue coming from the seeing, from the sky quality, or from the wind.”Plus, instead of relying only on advanced amateurs who know how to calibrate their equipment and process their data, the science team can program the eVscope to do it automatically, allowing anyone to participate.Marchis hopes to compare their model of 1999 AP10 with forthcoming results from the Goldstone Radar, which also observed the asteroid this fall. But already the campaign has demonstrated the eVscope’s potential for including amateur astronomers in scientific research, he says.Other researchers agree. “I think this is a great public engagement project that can provide useful and helpful data for asteroid research, including planetary defense,” says Anne Virkki, who heads the planetary radar team at Arecibo Observatory.Arecibo’s 1,000-foot-wide (305 meters) radio telescope was the world’s most powerful planetary radar before it collapsed following a series of cable failures this fall. Its loss was a big blow to planetary defense efforts — NASA funded the observatory to observe near-Earth objects, mapping their shapes and surfaces.Although comparing the eVscope to a planetary radar like Arecibo is “a bit of an apples-and oranges comparison,” says Virkki, “more data is always a plus, and having the public engaged in participating and helping is even a bigger plus.”The crowdsourced light curve approach does have limitations. Unlike planetary radars such as Arecibo, the eVscope network struggles to detect depressions on an asteroid’s surface (e.g., impact craters). That’s because the math behind the light curve inversion approach assumes the object is entirely convex, with no low-lying regions.Arecibo could also observe more objects, obtaining high-resolution images of 20 to 30 NEAs per year, according to Virkki. Marchis hopes that the eVscope network will map one or two NEAs annually. But still, he says, the eVscope network represents an alternative approach that can help “fill up the gap left by Arecibo.”“Arecibo was a great telescope, but still a telescope that was built in the 1960s, when we were building these gigantic facilities to learn about the cosmos used by a few people,” Marchis says. “We are reaching a moment where we can democratize astronomy and make it accessible to a lot of people.” Source: Citizen astronomers map near-Earth asteroid | Astronomy.com

Here’s what we know about the signal from The best candidate for an extraterrestrial message in 42 years is probably manmade. But what if it’s not? By Robert Naeye | Published: Monday, December 28, 2020

An enigmatic radio signal from the direction of Proxima Centauri, the Sun’s nearest stellar neighbor, has set the internet ablaze with rumor and speculation. It could turn out to be the real deal — a calling card from another civilization. More likely, it’s much ado about nothing.

The discovery was leaked to the British newspaper The Guardian, which reported the story December 18. Researchers subsequently granted interviews to Scientific American and National Geographic. Since then, however, the discovery team has remained tight-lipped about the signal.

But the information revealed to date is intriguing.

A strange signalThe 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia picked up the faint signal in April and May 2019 while observing Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf 4.25 light-years from Earth. Notably, this feeble has at least , one of which is a super-Earth with at least 1.17 Earth that orbits in the star’s habitable zone — the region around a star where a planet with the right conditions could host liquid water on its surface. Astronomers were using Parkes to catch radio emission from powerful flares shooting off the star. But the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project, the world’s most advanced SETI endeavor, was piggybacking on the observations to simultaneously search for alien signals. In late October 2020, Breakthrough Listen intern Shane Smith, an undergraduate at Hillsdale College, found a narrowband transmission at a frequency of 982.002 megahertz — in a portion of the radio spectrum rarely used by human-made transmitters — buried in the data. Although the press reports are a bit unclear on exactly how and when Parkes detected the signal, it apparently showed up during five 30-minute periods over several days, all while the telescope was pointing directly at Proxima. Notably, when the telescope was turned away from the star, the signal vanished. Ultimately, the signal’s origin appears tightly constrained within a 16'-wide circle — roughly half the size of the Full Moon — around Proxima Centauri on the sky. Breakthrough Listen employs software filters that reject the cacophony of signals originating from Earth or Earth- orbiting satellites to isolate those coming from deep space. But this transmission was unlike anything the project has previously encountered. Team leader Andrew Siemion told Scientific American, “It has some particular properties that caused it to pass many of our checks, and we cannot yet explain it.” Digging deeper

The team has dubbed the signal BLC-1, for Breakthrough Listen Candidate-1. And they are emphasizing the word “candidate.”

Pete Worden, executive director of Breakthrough Listen’s parent organization, Breakthrough Initiatives, told Scientific American that the signal is 99.9 percent likely to be human radio interference. On December 19, he tweeted: “At this point we have some interesting signals we believe are interference but as of yet have not been able to track down the source.”

Based on the information that has been made public, the signal was concentrated into an extremely narrow range of frequencies — the hallmark of an artificial signal and distinctly unlike all known natural radio sources. The transmission was apparently monotone, meaning it was not modulated in a manner that conveys more complex information.

Over the course of the observations, it increased in frequency — essentially rising in pitch — by an unspecified amount, suggesting a source moving toward the telescope. “It could be from the orbital motion of a planet, or from a free-floating transmitter, or from a transmitter on a moon,” Penn State University astronomer Jason Wright wrote on his blog. But he quickly added, “The most likely explanation is probably that it is a source on the surface of the earth whose frequency is, for whatever reason, very slowly changing.”

Astronomers think the fact that the signal is very close to an integer MHz value strongly suggests a human origin, Wright also wrote. After all, why would aliens transmit signals that match such a specific value of a human-derived unit of measurement?

This artist's concept shows the rocky super-Earth Proxima b, which orbits in Proxima Centauri's habitable zone. Some astronomers have noted the extreme unlikelihood that the nearest civilization would also inhabit the closest planetary system. But Jasom Wright points out that one or more advanced civilizations could have set up a galactic communication network, with Proxima as the closest node to Earth for relaying messages. ESO/M. Kornmesser

What if?

On the off chance that BLC-1 turns out to be the real deal, it would raise the question of whether humanity should send a reply — something within our current means. Our message could potentially stimulate a response in less than a decade, starting an interstellar dialogue well within the lifetimes of most people alive today. That’s an incredibly exciting prospect.

But this possibility also raises concerning questions about our conversation partners: Who are they? What are their motives? Do they pose a threat? Technologically advanced beings at Proxima Centauri could reach Earth in a few decades if they can traverse interstellar space at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. After all, Breakthrough Initiatives is planning just such a venture with its Starshot project, which plans to use a powerful laser to accelerate about a thousand ultra-lightweight, centimeter-sized craft attached to light sails. Such craft can theoretically attain 15 to 20 percent the speed of light, meaning they could reach the Proxima system in 20 to 30 years. And what would such a nearby alien civilization know about us?

“I find it difficult to believe that a technological civilization on Proxima Centauri would not know about life on Earth,” says astrobiologist Jacob Haqq-Misra of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. “The only way they would not know is if they are almost exactly at our present-day level of technology, so that we are discovering them the same time they are discovering us. This is generally unlikely, because even a thousand-year difference between our two civilizations — a short time in astronomy — would lead to drastic differences in our detection capabilities.”

Next steps

The Breakthrough Listen team is now working on two scientific papers that will report more details on BLC-1. They are also undoubtedly trying to identify all possible sources of terrestrial interference, as well as determine whether the signal repeats by observing again with Parkes and other radio telescopes, or combing through archival data.

At least for now, BLC-1 is the most tantalizing SETI signal since Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope picked up the powerful “Wow!” signal on August 15, 1977. That 72-second narrowband transmission emanated from the direction of Sagittarius. The signal has never repeated, but it also remains unexplained.

If BLC-1 is simply — as is most likely — human interference, then it's no big deal, perhaps just a bit of an embarrassment to whomever leaked the story to The Guardian. But if BLC-1 is a bona fide extraterrestrial signal, it could change the course of world history. An alien radio transmitter just 4.25 light-years from Earth would be a game changer. No doubt this is why the discovery team has gone silent and is working hard to get its analysis right. Even if BLC-1 turns out to be human radio interference, detailed analysis will help SETI researchers refine their search parameters to make later searches more efficient.

“Ultimately, I think we’ll be able to convince ourselves that [BLC-1] is interference. But the end result will certainly be that it will make our experiments more powerful in the future,” Siemion told National Geographic. Source: https://astronomy.com/news/2020/12/heres-what-we-know-about-the-signal-from-proxima-centauri NASA astronaut Kate Rubins harvests radishes grown in space. By Samantha Mathewson December 25, 2020 Source: www.space.com/nasa-astronaut-harvests-radishes-space-station NASA astronaut Kate Rubins harvested fresh radishes grown in space, opening new doors for producing food in microgravity to sustain future longer-term missions to the moon and Mars.The radishes were grown in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) aboard the International Space Station. NASA shared a time-lapse video of the radishes as they grew inside the APH over the course of 27 days. On Nov. 30, Rubins harvested 20 radish plants from the APH, wrapping each in foil and placing it in cold storage. The radish plants will be sent down to Earth early next year on SpaceX's 22nd Commercial Resupply Services mission, according to a statement from NASA.

Related: Astronauts harvest 3 different crops and try new gardening tech

NASA astronaut and Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Kate Rubins harvested 20 radish bulbs as part of the Plant Habitat-02 experiment on the International Space Station. (Image credit: NASA) Radishes are the latest type of fresh produce to be successfully grown and harvested in microgravity, and were chosen for the Plant Habitat-02 (PH-02) experiment because the vegetable is well understood by scientists and reaches maturity in just 27 days. Radishes are also a viable test plant for future longer-term missions because they are edible and nutritious. The vegetable is genetically similar to Arabidopsis, which is a small flowering plant related to cabbage that has been studied frequently in microgravity, according to the NASA statement. "Radishes are a different kind of crop compared to leafy greens that astronauts previously grew on the space station, or dwarf wheat, which was the first crop grown in the APH," Nicole Dufour, NASA APH program manager at Kennedy Space Center, said in the statement. "Growing a range of crops helps us determine which plants thrive in microgravity and offer the best variety and nutritional balance for astronauts on long-duration missions." The PH-02 experiment allowed NASA scientists to study the ideal balance of care and feeding when growing quality plants in space. The radishes were grown using a precise quantity of minerals and required very little maintenance from the crew. The APH chamber uses red, blue, green and broad-spectrum white LED lights to stimulate plant growth, while a sophisticated control system delivers water to the plants as needed. The APH is also equipped with more than 180 sensors that allow researchers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center to monitor plant growth and regulate the temperature, moisture and carbon-dioxide levels inside the chamber, according to the statement.

"Radishes provide great research possibilities by virtue of their sensitive bulb formation," Karl Hasenstein, principal investigator for PH-02 and a professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said in the statement. Hasenstein has conducted plant experiments with NASA since 1995. In addition to the crop grown in space, researchers have been growing radishes in the control plant habitat in the International Space Station Environmental Simulator (ISSES) chamber at Kennedy Space Station Processing Facility since Nov. 17. The ISSES radishes were harvested on Dec. 14 to be compared with those grown in space. NASA astronauts will plant another round of radish seeds in the second science carrier of the APH fairly soon, allowing scientists to increase the sample size of radishes grown in space to enhance the accuracy of the experience, officials said in the NASA statement.

"It's a privilege to help lead a team that is paving the way to the future of space crop production for NASA's exploration efforts," Dufour said in the statement. "I've worked on APH since the beginning, and each new crop that we're able to grow brings me great joy because what we learn from them will help NASA send astronauts to Mars and bring them back safely." Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Source: NASA astronaut Kate Rubins harvests radishes grown in space | Space Astronomers Capture a Direct Image of a Brown Dwarf

The field of photography is just getting underway, with astronomers around the world striving to capture clear images of the more than 4000 discovered to date. Some of these exoplanets are more interesting to image and research than others. That is certainly the case for a type of exoplanet called a brown dwarf. And now scientists have captured the first ever image of exactly that type of exoplanet.

Brown dwarfs are “substellar objects” – they do not have enough to spark nuclear fusion in their core, and therefore were not able to become an actual star, but are much more massive than any traditional planet. The one imaged by a team of astronomers at the Subaru Telescope and the W. M. Keck observatory in Manuakea

has a mass 46 times that of Jupiter.

This particular brown dwarf is interesting for reasons other than its size though. Of primary interest is its orbital path and the stellar system it resides in. The planetary system it resides in is known as HD 33632. The star in HD 33632 is a main sequence star, in many ways similar to our sun. The brown dwarf, now named very creatively as HD 33632Ab, orbits around the star at a distance of about 20 AUs (approximately the distance from Mercury to Pluto). That solar distance combined with the similarities between HD 33632’s star and our sun make the existence of a brown dwarf in that system highly informative to models predicting how those systems might be formed. The image the scientists captured also provides valuable data points for the analysis of other directly imaged exoplanets. There is a chance the atmosphere of the HD 33632Ab may contain carbon monoxide and water, making it a useful barometer for comparing other exoplanets atmospheres. Our ability to see any exoplanet’s atmosphere, even one as big as HD 33632Ab, are thanks to advances in adaptive optics and near-infrared imaging systems. Those systems on the Subaru and Keck observatories joined together to snap this unique image. Subaru leveraged it’s exoplanet hunting system SCExAO/CHARIS while Keck contributed images from a near-infrared camera called NIRC-2. These combined instruments resulted in a much more clearly defined picture than would have been possible with only one of the observatories.This finding certainly won’t be the last application of that combination of powerful exoplanet imaging technologies. Nor will it be the last exoplanet, or brown dwarf, that we as a species will directly image. But as these images start to trickle in, what we will begin to find will hopefully become more and more fascinating as we begin to take a peek at these newly discovered worlds. Source: Astronomers Capture a Direct Image of a Brown Dwarf - Universe Today

Hubble Space Telescope Spots Enormous Einstein Ring Dec 14, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro | Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a striking photo of GAL- CLUS-022058-38303, the largest and one of the most complete Einstein rings known in the Universe.

This Hubble image shows GAL-CLUS-022058-38303, the largest, nearly-complete Einstein ring known. The image is made up of observations from Hubble’ s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. Three filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Saurabh Jha, Rutgers the State University of New Jersey / L. Shatz. GAL-CLUS-022058-38303, located in the southern constellation of Fornax, has an extreme diameter — approximately 20 arcseconds.Nicknamed the Molten Ring, which alludes to its appearance and host constellation, this spectacular object is the result of gravitational lensing by a foreground elliptical 4 billion light-years away.The ring shows two extremely distant (perhaps interacting), resulting in double arcs with striking differences in color.“First theorized to exist by Einstein in his general theory of relativity, this object’s unusual shape can be explained by a process called gravitational lensing, which causes light shining from far away to be bent and pulled by the gravity of an object between its source and the observer,” Hubble astronomers said.“In this case, the light from the background galaxy has been distorted into the curve we see by the gravity of the sitting in front of it.”“The near exact alignment of the background galaxy with the central elliptical galaxy of the cluster, seen in the middle of this image, has warped and magnified the image of the background galaxy around itself into an almost perfect ring.”“The gravity from other galaxies in the cluster is soon to cause additional distortions.”“Objects like these are the ideal laboratory in which to research galaxies too faint and distant to otherwise see,” they concluded.

January Celestial Calendar 2021 January 01 Saturn & Jupiter now 1.4° apart just after sunset January 03 Quadrantid Meteor Shower January 04 Mars diameter drops below 10” of arc. January 06 Last Quarter 9:37 UT January 09 Grouping of Jupiter, Saturn, & Mercury looking West-Southwest Just after sunset January 09-11 Grouping of the Moon,Venus, & Antares. Looking Southeast. January 13 New Moon 05:00 UT January 14-16 Grouping of the Moon, Jupiter, & Mercury Southwest after sunset. January 19-21 Grouping of Mars and the Moon overhead 1 hour after sunset. January 20 First Quarter 21:02 UT January 23 Saturn is in Conjunction with the Sun. January 28 Full Moon 19:16 UT January 28 Jupiter is in Conjunction with the Sun.

MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION

Basic CLAS dues are $25.00 per year - due in January. Students and Skywatchers Newsletter are FREE. Members also receive discounted rates for Astronomy Magazine and /or Sky and Telescope Magazine.

The fee schedule is as follows: Verify current magazine prices with Roger!

Basic membership $25.00 per year. Membership with Astronomy magazine is $59.00 per year. Membership with Sky and Telescope magazine is $58.00 per year. Membership with both S & T and Astronomy is $92.00 per year.

Send your Check or Money Order to:

Roger Brower, Treasurer, China Lake Astronomical Society, P.O. Box 1783, Ridgecrest, CA 93556.

PRESIDENT – Ralph Paonessa – 760-384-8666 (email [email protected])

VICE-PRESIDENT – Keith Weisz – 760-375-9114 (email [email protected])

SECRETARY – Ted Hodgkinson - 661-754-0561 (email [email protected])

TREASURER – Roger Brower - 760-446-0454 (email [email protected])

NEWSLETTER EDITOR – Ted Hodgkinson – 661-754-0561 (email [email protected])

Meetings of the China Lake Astronomical Society are held at the Maturango Museum at 7:30 p.m. on the first Monday evening of each month, except when the first Monday is a holiday.

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