Winter 2011-12 EVENTS CALENDAR Issue 96 (unless otherwise noted, all events are at the Edwin Ritchie Observatory, Battle Point Park) DECEmbER Quarterlywww.bpastro.org Bainbridge Island, WA December 2 To Mars and December 7 7 p.m. BPAA Board Meeting Beyond? December 10 Seeing Stars: Astronomy 0.001 Total Lunar Eclipse December 13 Geminids Meteor Shower Peak December 17 December 21 Winter Solstice (9:30 p.m. PST) December 22 Ursids Meteor Shower Peak December 24 JANUARY Together It – [DIT] Do Hackerspace Lisbon’s from Image MAKER SPACE January 1 magine a shared work area where people mix art, design, technology, food, Iscience, and internet culture. A breeding ground for creative projects. A January 5 workshop where you play. A place for tinkering and experiment. A place to Earth at Perihelion (0.983AU make things up, tear things apart, and put them back together. A laboratory, a from Sun) place to spend time and share ideas with fellow-tinkerers. It doesn’t matter if it’s January 9: woodworking, electronics, metal working, biology, robots or even software. What January 11 does matter is DOING things. This is a maker space. There is even a magazine 7 p.m. BPAA Annual Meeting devoted to the idea: Make Magazine, http://makezine.com/. and board election; open to all This type of space is an ideal learning environment for the technically-inclined. members While opportunities for sports, music, and arts enrichment abound, there’s remarkably little available for adults or children with a technical bent. And the kids January 14 are our future engineers and scientists. Without them, the future is bleak. 7 p.m. Planetarium Show and Americans learn most of their science and engineering through informal channels Star-gazing such as workshops, museums, and planetarium shows. A maker space is a great way January 16 to jump-start this learning. It may be the best way there is. And it’s not just for the January 23 school-aged or future engineers. It lends itself to all sorts of creative arts and crafts, January 31 from hand-cranked luminescent jewelry http://www.breadboardphilly.org to vertical window gardens http://wiki.metrixcreatespace.com/workshops. Does a maker space fit within the mission of BPAA? I believe the answer is yes. FEBRUARY Our charter refers repeatedly to astronomy and doesn’t mention science in more general terms. But astronomy encompasses thousands of years of history, as well as the foundations of math, navigation, philosophy and physics. The founders February 1 included a workshop in their original plans. There is no reason that the workshop 7 p.m. BPAA Board Meeting should be limited to telescope building: solar pendulums, trebuchets, even February 10 bubblebots (all projects from a recent issue of Make Magazine) are all linked to Deadline for Spring issue of BPAA principles of astronomy. Newsletter Could the Observatory become a maker space? It requires workshop space Calendar con’t page 2 Maker Space con’t page 2 Quarterly 2–Winter 2011-12 CALENDAR Notes: Yeah, well, it had to end. How many years could it go on? I’ve been doing calendar duty for almost a decade and I’m 67 years old! Calendar February 11 Girl? At my age, forget it. Time to give it up. 7 p.m. Planetarium Show and The calendar duty goes to Cheth Rowe, who will do a terrific job. He’s got a Star-gazing science background and a keen interest in astronomy. February 14 I’m pleased to be going out with the winter sky, my favorite. Last time you’ll February 21 have to hear from me about Orion and how fond I am of the fact that it actually bears a resemblance to its namesake. Then there all those Any member who is planning to bright stars in the winter sky: Rigel, observe can invite others to join Betelgeuse, Sirius, Aldebaran, Capella, in by sending an email to bpaa@ Castor, Pollux, Procyon, and that most yahoogroups.com. To join our email group, bpaa- wonderful of clusters, the Pleiades. send an email with your name to [email protected] and we can en- They’re all well worth freezing your you- roll you. If you want to have web access know-what off on a clear, cold winter Pleiades image by Ed Lunt to the messages and files, you can join the night. Yahoogroups by clicking the register link Winter will bring other highlights. There’s a total eclipse on December 10. Folks for new users on http://groups.yahoo.com/. in Asia and Australia will get the full meal deal, but we in the Pacific Northwest Request to join at http://groups.yahoo.com/ will be able to see the Moon slip into Earth’s shadow and start to emerge before the group/bpaa/. The system will send us a moon sets. And there are meteor showers on December 13 and December 22, well message, and we’ll approve your request worth bundling up and dragging out that chaise lounge for a night of viewing. after we verify your membership. The starting time for the planetarium shows in January, and February is 7:00 p.m. The shows continue to draw large crowds, thanks to the hard work of the volunteers who publicize, present and assist at the showings. And don’t forget BPAA’s Annual Meeting on January 11. This meeting is for all members and includes election of officers.—Diane Colvin, BPAA Events Manager Maker Space con’t from p. 1 and tools and people to oversee and still operate as a workshop. We would If BPAA cannot independently organize them. Can we do that within need to find someone who has mastered sponsor a maker space, then perhaps the existing BPAA facilities? Perhaps. In the equipment and is willing to devote it can help create one elsewhere. the past, we’ve run robotics workshops hours, on a regular, predictable, basis to One option, and I think it is a good and built telescopes. This meant hauling opening the building, mentoring, and approach, would be to work with and tools and supplies to the Observatory, supervising the shop. support the proposal for a community then taking them home again. The I’m not proposing that BPAA set up a workshop and arts and crafts center space was cramped, and now is devoted, maker space. But there is a need for hands- at the old ‘Hope Center’ building on on a more or less permanent basis, to on science in the community, and a maker Moran Rd, just off 305 across from the the planetarium. However, we could space is a great way to address that need. main fire station http://g.co/maps/e4dwz. Current ideas include a community woodworking shop and, quite possibly, other arts and crafts spaces. A maker space, adding technologies like electronics, programming, and 3D printing, would be a tremendous asset to the Center, as well as to Bainbridge Island.—Malcolm Saunders Noisebridge (San Francisco) Arduinos For Total Newbies workshop, July-2011. Image by Mitch Altman, CC Share Alike Quarterly 3–Winter 2011-12 Phobos-Grunt: When funding fails, amateur astronomers fill in Economic frugality seems to be the way of it these days. Government cost cutting is the norm. Science and NASA face serious funding issues. Everywhere you look times are tough, but austerity would be a step up for the Russian space program since the fall of the Soviet Union. They’ve had a hard couple of decades. Now, in a major setback, Phobos-Grunt, the rocket headed for the Mars moon Phobos, could not scale the heights. The launch went off as planned, but the unmanned probe failed to follow its intended course. The Russians have had repeated web Space courtesy Russian Image rocket failures. In December, a rocket and its payload of three communications The $170 million Phobos-Grunt was follow the troubled craft. The first of satellites fell into the Pacific Ocean Russia’s first interplanetary mission since two crucial rocket burns was scheduled after failing to reach orbit. A military Soviet times. (A previous 1996 robotic while Phobos-Grunt sped over South satellite was lost in February, and in mission to Mars crashed in the Pacific America, but observers in Brazil did mid-August the Express-AM4, described following an engine failure.) not see the engine fire, Oberg said.” by officials as Russia’s most powerful Phobos-Grunt was originally set to That’s right, amateurs in Brazil did the telecommunications satellite, was lost. blast off in October 2009; but launch was work that most space programs use Phobos-Grunt was a daring attempt postponed because the craft wasn’t ready. professionals for. Amateur astronomers to reach one of the moons of Mars and The latest failure was first noticed have been a primary source of to bring soil samples back to Earth. No by amateur astronomers tracking the information ever since. one has done anything like it. launch. The Russians were too frugal As BPAA’s Chief Astronomer, The Zenit-2 booster rocket launched to send an observation ship to South Malcolm Saunders, has said many times, from the Russian-leased Baikonur America. According to the Washington astronomy is one of the few areas left in cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Post, “Early Wednesday, Roscosmos science where amateurs can contribute November 8th. The probe separated called on amateur satellite trackers to materially to the field.—Charles Higgins from the booster 11 minutes later. It was then supposed to fire its engines Sources and background information: twice to put itself on the path to Mars.