NGC 2244 (The Rosette Nebula) by LAS member Gary Garzone

Longmont Astronomy Society Newsletter November 2011 From the President:

LAS Meeting - Thursday, November 17 The November meeting of the Longmont Astronomical Society is this Thursday, November 17th at the IHop Restaurant, 2040 Ken Pratt Blvd., Longmont, CO. A group of us will meet for dinner around 6 pm at the restaurant; you are invited to join us! The general meeting will begin at 7 pm.

The speaker this month is Robert Arn who is an award-winning astrophotographer. His presentation is about "Nightscape Photography". He has dozens of astro-imaging publications from sources such as NASA's APOD, NASA's EPOD, Sky & Telescope POD, AAPOD, and several others. During the daytime, Robert is pursuing a Ph.D. at CSU in Mathematics. His current professional research interests include computer vision, signal processing, and large-scale data analysis. Early this June Robert published an e-book, " Photography at Night: An Introduction to Astrophotography on a Budget" .

LAS Officer Nominations for 2012 Please consider volunteering to be LAS officer in 2012. We need volunteers to spend a few hours of their time to help operate the club. All positions are open for election each year. Nominations for next year's officers will be at this Thursday’s meeting.

Next will be discussion about possible construction of an observatory. Last evening the city of Longmont Parks & Rec Directory Jeff Freisner, Larry Mills Golf Operations Manager for the City, Dan Davis, Gary Garzone, and myself met to discuss using a location on city land near the Sunset Golf Course club house for an observatory built and operated by LAS. They seem generally supportive of the idea but of course want to know more details about what we might propose. We need to decide if we indeed want to do this and if so begin writing proposal to the city.

Please let myself or other execs know your opinions! Special thanks to Dan for arranging the meeting and championing LAS with the city.

In the sky this month: Meteor Showers Leonids night of November 17 Moon rises around midnight Geminids night of December 13 Moon just past full

Planets Mercury: Just past greatest elongation in the evening sky Venus: evening sky in the west Mars: 76 degrees up in the morning sky, improving Jupiter: The prize of the evening sky, high in the east Saturn: 28 degrees up in the east in the morning sky

Interesting Stars/Galaxies

Club Calendar: Chrismas party plans to come.

Fiske Planetarium: Admission costs $3.50 for kids and seniors and $6 for adults Friday, November 18 7:30 pm City of Stars Saturday, November 19 2:00 pm The Planets Uncovered Thursday, December 1 7:30 pm CO Skies: Mars Science Laboratory Friday, December 2 7:30 pm Season of Light Saturday, December 3 2:00 pm Astronomical Star of Bethlehem Thursday, December 8 7:30 pm CO Skies: Winter Skies Friday, December 9 7:30 pm Astronomical Star of Bethlehem Saturday, December 10 2:00 pm Stories under the Stars Saturday, December 17 2:00 pm Astronomical Star of Bethlehem

Blast from the past (LAS Journal, 20 years back)

Internet Resources: Observing Jupiter: directions and discussions at http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingblog/130422068.html including this picture of the stripes (picture by Vern Raben) This month’s field trip:

Taking the Temperature of Ancient Mars

Mention the meteorite Allan Hills 84001 in a room full of planetary scientists, and they'll know exactly what you're taking about. Scooped from atop the icy wastes of Antarctica in 1984, ALH 84001 became a prized specimen several years later when geochemists realized that it had been blasted off the surface of Mars. But it absolutely burst onto the public stage 15 years ago when a team of NASA researchers announced that they'd found fossil evidence for microbes inside it. But now we do know — at least for the spot on Mars where ALH 84001 called home (wherever that was). In a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , three researchers explain how they've been able to take the temperature of ancient Mars by subjecting the meteorite to something called clumped-isotope thermometry. Developed by coauthor John Eiler (Caltech), this technique precisely measured the isotopes of carbon and oxygen present in the ALH 84001 carbonates. The relative abundances of the rare isotopes oxygen-18 and carbon-13 is very sensitive to formation temperature, and in this case they imply a formation temperature of about 64°F (18°C). "The thing that's really cool is that 18° is not particularly cold nor particularly hot," says co-author Woody Fischer in a Caltech press release . "It's kind of a remarkable result."

Upcoming Space Missions:

MAVEN Mission Primary Structure Complete Lockheed Martin completed building the primary structure of the MAVEN spacecraft at its Space Systems Company facility near Denver. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/overview/index.html for the mission profile. Current Space Missions:

Expedition 29 Welcomes New Crewmates The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft carrying three new Expedition 29 crew members docked to the International Space Station at 12:24 a.m. EST Wednesday. "Your experiment, 250 miles above Earth, for the whole world to see." That is the promise made at the end of the video on the official YouTube Space Lab contest Website. NASA has partnered with Space Adventures to support this competition. Space Adventures is collaborating with YouTube and Lenovo. Armed with initiative and imagination, students have the chance to envision and design their own experiment with the ultimate prize—flying it on the International Space Station.

› Watch YouTube Space Lab video

The contest opened on Oct. 11, 2011, and will continue to accept submissions in the form of a two-minute duration video through Dec. 7. Students age 14 to 18 can become researchers in their own right by proposing up to three separate original entries on the official YouTube Space Lab contest website. Participants can enter as either individuals or in teams of up to three people. Entries must include an experiment question, hypothesis, method, and expected results. Club Pictures:

NGC 7790 and NGC 7788 are two small open clusters in the constellation Cassiopeia, at distances of about 10,000 and 8,000 light-years respectively. NGC 7790 is in the upper right and NGC 7788 is in the lower left of this image. The beautiful bright copper colored star, at the top of this image, is SAO 20954 at 6.63 magnitude.

NGC 7790 is astronomically important because it contains three Cepheid variable stars. These three Cepheids are useful for determining a zero point distance for this special type of star. Cepheid variables are used to determine galactic distances. Picture by LAS member Brian Kimball