Highlights of the July Sky. -- -- -- 1st -- -- -- Dawn: Mars to upper right and Pleiades to upper left PPrime Focuss of Venus. Continues until the 9th. A Publication of the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society -- -- -- 3rdrd -- -- -- PM: Antares 1º to 4º left July 2009 of Waxing Gibbous Moon. -- -- -- 7th -- -- -- Full Moon -- -- -- 9th -- -- -- ThisThis MonthsMonths KAS EventsEvents AM: 5th magnitude star Mu Capricorni 19′′ NNWNNW ofof Jupiter; 7.8 magnitude General Meeting: Friday, July 10 @ 7:00 pm Neptune 17′′ NNWNNW ofof MuMu WMU Rood Hall - Room 1110 - See Page 8 for Details Capricorni. -- -- -- 15th -- -- -- Observing Session: Saturday, July 11 @ 9:00 pm Last Quarter Moon Delightful Double Stars - Kalamazoo Nature Center -- -- -- 18th -- -- -- Dawn: Pleiades, Mars, Board Meeting: Sunday, July 12 @ 5:00 pm Aldebaran, and Venus form reverse L in eastern sky an Sunnyside Church - 2800 Gull Road - All Members Welcome hour before sunrise. Observing Session: Saturday, July 25 @ 9:00 pm -- -- -- 19th -- -- -- Dawn: Waning Crescent Pleasant Planetary Nebulae - Kalamazoo Nature Center Moon to left of Venus. -- -- -- 20th -- -- -- Dawn: Pleiades are a few degrees to lower left of Waning Crescent Moon -- lowlow inin ENE.ENE. InsideInside thethe Newsletter.Newsletter. .. .. -- -- -- 21st -- -- -- June Meeting Minutes............................ p. 2 New Moon Board Meeting Minutes......................... p. 2 -- -- -- 23rd -- -- -- Dusk: Waxing Crescent Shedding Light on Black Holes............ p. 3 Moon below Regulus. What’s Next for Hubble?..................... p. 4 -- -- -- 28th -- -- -- First Quarter Moon NASA Space Place.................................. p. 5 PM: Southern Delta July Night Sky...........................................p. 6 Aquarid meteor shower peaks (ZHR = 20). KAS Officers & Announcements.........p. 7 General Meeting Preview..................... p. 8 -- -- -- 30th -- -- -- PM: Antares to left of the Waxing Gibbous Moon. www.kasonline.org June Meeting Minutes Board Meeting Minutes The general meeting of the KAS was brought to order by The KAS Board met on June 14th at Sunnyside Church. President Jack Price on Friday, June 5, 2009 at 7:12 pm. President Jack Price called the meeting to order at 5:10 pm. Approximately 125 members and guests were in attendance Present were Richard Bell, Jean DeMott, Dave Woolf, and at the Kalamazoo Area Math & Science Center. Much of the Roger Williams. credit for the above average attendance goes to an article in the Kalamazoo Gazette and a link on the Astronomy Picture The meeting began with a review of Astronomy Day. All of the Day (APoD) web site during the week of the meeting. agreed that the event had been very successful, and thanks The link on APoD also resulted in unprecedented numbers of were especially extended to Richard, without whose vision visitors to KAS Online. the event would never have happened on this scale. Jean cited a few lessons learned that would suggest future Our very special guest speaker was Dr. Robert Nemiroff, improvements, such as assigning a member to each speaker Professor of Physics at Michigan Technological University for the day to see that all of the guest’s needs were met. in Houghton, Michigan and co-editor of the world-famous Astronomy Picture of the Day web site. The title of Dr. In other Old Business, Jack is still planning to do some Nemiroff’s presentation was The Best Astronomy Images of electrical work and to add some air vents to Owl Observatory 2009 and (as the title suggests) featured some of the favorite as soon as time permits. It is also time for another cleaning images of the editor’s of APoD. Dr. Nemiroff began by event, which will need to be scheduled. Plans are also being giving a brief history of APoD. The site was launched on made to erect shelving in the rented storage unit on July 18th. June 16, 1995 thanks to a grant from NASA and additional funding by the National Science Foundation. APoD features In the area of public events, the next general meeting is th a new image of the universe each day with a brief caption scheduled for July 10 . Jack confirmed that Bill Nigg is written by either Dr. Nemiroff or Dr. Jerry Bonnell from willing to do a short demonstration of the proper cleaning of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Baltimore. APoD eyepieces, followed by an opportunity for members to give it now boasts the largest collection of annotated astronomical a try. Dave is also planning to bring some singers from his images on the internet. There are now dozens of mirror sites; school program, who will present astronomy-themed vocal many of which translate APoD into most major languages music. Jack made a note to contact Kirk Korista daily. The site now receives over 750,000 hits daily. immediately about whether Rood Hall would be available for this meeting, given the construction underway at KAMSC. Dr. Nemiroff then shared his top five favorite NASA images Other July events include Kindleberger Festival in of all time. These include an image of the Space Shuttle Parchment on July 11th and public observing sessions on July Columbia before its first launch, a twisted solar prominence 11th and 25th. Looking further ahead, the Perseid Potluck taken by SOHO, Apollo 17 on the Moon, Hubble’s famous Picnic will have the added attraction of Eric Schreur doing a portrait of the Eagle Nebula (M16), and Earthrise as presentation on his solar eclipse cruise. The question was photographed by Apollo 8. Dr. Nemiroff then shared his top raised as to whether Jim Kurtz would be willing to run the five favorite non-NASA images of all time. grill again, and if so, could he be given assistance in the transportation. Continuing his theme, Dr. Nemiroff then shared some “wow” images and the top images of 2008. Dr. Nemiroff Richard said that the belated Galileoscopes are still on order, then spent the remainder of the talk of going through his and we will need a plan for their use. One possibility choices for the best images (thus far) of 2009. KAS suggested was to use them in conjunction with the Members: Please contact Richard Bell if you’d like a copy of Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s inauguration of the new Dr. Nemiroff’s PowerPoint Presentation to see all the Digistar planetarium projector, to occur some time in the fall. wonderful images. There was also discussion of Mike Patton’s offer to provide space for a remotely-operated club telescope in his The June meeting was declared “Astronomy Day Volunteer observatory being constructed in Arizona. The Board agreed Appreciation Night.” Jean DeMott passed out cake and ice that more information would be helpful, and it was decided cream to all in attendance (not just AD2K9 volunteers). A that Mike should be invited to attend the next board meeting slide show of pictures taken on Astronomy Day was also to discuss his offer. shown during the snack break and throughout the business portion of the meeting. Jack Price presented Jim Kurtz with The date for the next meeting was set at July 12th, 5:00 pm at a certificate and pin for completing the Astronomical Sunnyside Church. The meeting was adjourned at 6:37 pm. League’s Double Star Club. Congratulations Jim! The meeting adjourned at about 9:35 pm. Respectfully submitted by Roger Williams Prime Focus Page 2 July 2009 SheddingShedding LightLight onon BlackBlack HolesHoles by Tom Koonce Black Holes... Just their name sounds like something out of would I go?” The straight-forward blunt answer? “To your science fiction. Maybe this is one reason why they have been death!” You literally would be torn to pieces by the gravita- the focus of misconceptions and misguided theories. This tional tidal forces during your approach to the event horizon month, the theme of the International Year of Astronomy is and then, with unerring certainty, what gelatinous mess re- centered on the objects that weigh heavily (pun intended) on mained would be squashed much, much flatter than a pancake the minds of theoretical physicists and leading astronomers… as your remains fell deeper into the gravity well. Black holes Black Holes. are not a mode of transportation to another universe, but they are efficient "matter compactors," sweeping up all mass that First a bit of background on the subject. passes too near. Of course they can’t draw in matter from light years away, but as matter falls into a black hole it be- The gravitational force exhibited by a celestial body is directly comes (perhaps) infinitely compressed by its overwhelming related to its mass and inversely proportional to the square of gravitational force. the distance which the object is away from that mass. So how does a black hole generate its enormous gravity even though Imagine what a black hole looks like and you probably pic- its mass is reduced to an infinitesimal point? ture the graphic popularized by the media; a two dimensional plane with a funnel-shaped hole descending towards the black Consider a star with the mass and radius of the red supergiant hole’s singularity (as pictured below). This stylized percep- Betelgeuse. Under normal circumstances, an object could tion of the three dimensional nature of the object has misled orbit the star at a distance outside of Betelgeuse’s stellar at- many people to think of a black hole as a hole in space, like a mosphere. But if the entire mass of Betelgeuse was com- hole in the backyard, or perhaps a tunnel in space-time lead- pressed down to become a black hole and in the absence of ing to other parts of our own universe. The event horizon is a Betelgeuse’s stellar atmosphere, the object could pass much spherical region around the black hole, inside of which the closer to the black hole’s center of mass… so close, in fact, black hole’s gravity is so strong that nothing can achieve es- that the gravitational force it could experience would be in- cape velocity - nothing, not even light.