1949 Celebrating 65 Years of Bringing Astronomy to North Texas 2014 Contact information: Inside this issue: Info Officer (General Info) – [email protected]@fortworthastro.com Website Administrator – [email protected] Postal Address: Page Fort Worth Astronomical Society May Club Calendar 4 3812 Fenton Avenue Fort Worth, TX 76133 Celestial Events 5 Web Site: http://www.fortworthastro.org Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/3eutb22 Moon Phase Calendar 6 Twitter: http://twitter.com/ftwastro Yahoo! eGroup (members only): http://tinyurl.com/7qu5vkn Mars/Venus Data Sheet 7 Officers (2013-2014): Jupiter Data Sheet 8 President – Jim Murray, [email protected] Vice President – Matt Reed, [email protected] Cloudy Night Library 9 Sec/Tres – Lewis Westerfield, [email protected] Young Astronomer News 10 Board Members: 2012-2014 Member Observing Report 11 Phil Stage Bruce Cowles Constellation Families 12 2013-2015 13 Bill Nichols AL Observing Club of the Jim Craft Constellation of the Month 14 Cover Photo Constellation Mythology 15 Composite photo courtesy FWAS Prior Club Meeting Minutes 17 members, Chris Mlodnicki and Jim Murray General Club Information 20 That’s A Fact 20 Observing Site Reminders: Be careful with fire, mind all local burn bans! November’s Full Moon 20 Dark Site Usage Requirements (ALL MEMBERS): Maintain Dark-Sky Etiquette (http://tinyurl.com/75hjajy) FWAS Foto Files 21 Turn out your headlights at the gate! Sign the logbook (in camo-painted storage shed. Inside the door on the left- hand side) E di t or : Log club equipment problems (please contact a FWAS board member to in- form them of any problems) Shawn Kirchdorfer Put equipment back neatly when finished Last person out: M ont hl y FWContributors: Check all doors – secured, but NOT locked Matt McCullar Make sure nothing is left out Russ Boatright Brian Wortham The Fort Worth Astronomical Society (FWAS) was founded in 1949 and is a non-profit scientific educational organization incorporated in the state of Texas. This publication may be copied Patrick McMahon and distributed for free only. This publication cannot be uploaded or distributed into any me- dia unless it is in its original, full, unaltered, published form. All rights reserved by FWAS. AS PAGE 2 FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY MAY 2014 MayMay 20142014 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 Meridian State Palo Pinto Park Star Party Mountains State Park Star Party 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1961—Alan Shepard becomes 1st American in space (aboard Free- Museum Star Party dom 7) Eta Aquarids Peak FQ 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Young Astronomers Meeting 1973—Skylab launched, Starts @ 7pm-9pm 1st Space Station Born: (1944) George Lucas, Writer and Director, Star Wars. FM 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 FWAS Monthly Meeting Starts @ 7pm Born: (1939) Francis Scobee, astronaut, died in Challenger Space Shuttle explosion. LQ 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1959—Monkeys Able & 2012—A SpaceX Drag- Baker zoom 300 mi on becomes the first (500 km) into space on commercial spacecraft Jupiter missile, became to dock at the Interna- 1st animals retrieved from a space mission tional Space Station Born: (1953) Colm Meaney, NM actor (Star Trek Deep Space 9) See our full FWAS Event Calendar at: http://www.fortworthastro.com/meetings.html for the latest updates on what our club has scheduled PAGE 4 FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY MAY 2014 CELESTIAL EVENTS THIS MONTH May 01 - --:-- Venus: 42.8° W May 14 - 14:16 Full Moon May 01 - 10:51 Moon-Aldebaran: 2.1° S May 16 - 15:10 Moon South Dec.: 19° S May 02 - 10:59 Moon North Dec.: 19° N May 18 - 06:58 Moon Perigee: 367100 km May 05 - 01:26 Eta Aquarid Shower: ZHR = 60 May 21 - 07:59 Last Quarter May 06 - 05:22 Moon Apogee: 404300 km May 25 - 01:59 Mercury Elongation: 22.7° E May 06 - 22:15 First Quarter May 25 - 10:43 Moon-Venus: 2.4° S May 10 - 12:50 Saturn Opposition May 25 - 12:56 Moon Descending Node May 11 - 08:32 Moon-Mars: 3.2° N May 28 - 13:40 New Moon May 12 - 07:47 Moon-Spica: 1.8° S May 29 - 19:38 Moon North Dec.: 19° N May 12 - 17:06 Moon Ascending Node May 14 - 07:41 Moon-Saturn: 0.6° N (* Times are Local) INTERESTING OBJECTS Deep Sky* - (M3) Globular Cluster, (M5) Globular Cluster, (M13) GC Hercules, (M44) Beehive Cluster, (M81) Bode’s Galaxy Double/Multiple Stars** - Alpha Canum Venaticorum (α CVn), Delta Serpentis (δ Ser), Rho Herculis (ρ Her), Zeta Cancri (ζ Cnc), Xi Ursa Majoris (ξ UMa), Constellations* - Canes Venatici, Serpens Caput, Hercules, Cancer, Ursa Major Asterisms*** - Bull of Poniatowski (Serpens), Hercules’ Club (Hercules), Manger (Cancer), Broken Engagement Ring (Ursa Major) Lunar Features**** - Reiner Gamma (R28), Rheita Valley (R68), Schiller-Zucchius basin (R70, R71), Kies Pi (R53) *Distant Suns—C = Caldwell Catalog / M=Messier Catalog **Double Stars ***Asterisms ****R = Rükl Index Moon Map Key to Geocentric Ephemeris of the Moon: http://astropixels.com/ephemeris/moon/moonkey.html MAY 2014 FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY PAGE 5 M N Data and Image Source: http://www.calsky.com/ PAGE 6 FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY MAY 2014 M A R 8 May 2014 18h Mars Magnitude dims to -1 mag 19 May 2014 20.5h Mars Stationary: Getting Prograde (relative to ecliptic) 21 May 2014 4.3h Mars Stationary: Getting Prograde (relative to equator) 11 Jun 2014 19h18m Mars Descending Knot Passage 22 Jun 2014 22h Mars Apparent Diameter shrinks to 10 arcsec (Brightness: -0.1 mag) S 28 Jun 2014 16h Mars Magnitude dims to 0 mag VENUS May 01 May 15 May 31 Data and Image Source: http://www.calsky.com/ MAY 2014 FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY PAGE 7 Great Red Spot Transits Jovian Moon Positions JUPITER JUPITER Charts and Data generated with JupSat Pro Software . PAGE 8 FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY MAY 2014 Book/Video Reviews By: Matt McCullar, FWAS tion, and interviewing astronomers, hobby- ists, doctors, researchers, and even police The End of Night: officers. I thought at first that The End of Searching for Natural Darkness in an Night dealt strictly with light pollution oblit- Age of Artificial Light erating the stars, but the book goes much further than that: Exactly why do we light by Paul Bogard up our homes and structures so brilliantly? Part of it may be a primal fear of the dark. “400 years ago, every- It may also have to do one in Florence could with the way we do see the stars, but only business: people want Galileo had a telescope. to go where people are, Now everyone has a and light attracts cus- telescope but no one tomers. Not only are can see the stars.” gas stations and parking I chanced upon this lots blazing with lights, book at the library re- but they are lit up ten cently. While “The End times as brightly as they of Night” may sound were just 20 years ago. like the title of a sci- Curiously, Bogard claims ence-fiction novel or a that studies show there soap opera, it's actually is no solid link between a good non-fiction book bright lights at night about our arch-enemy: and security. Most peo- light pollution. ple assume that lighting “Already, some two- up a school, a ware- thirds of Americans and house, a public park, or Europeans no longer even their own homes The End of Night: experience real night – at night provide an ex- Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial that is, real darkness – Light tra measure of security. and nearly all of us live Published 2013 by Little, Brown and Co., 325 pages (I think commercial in areas considered ISBN 978-0-316-18290-4 businesses want to pro- polluted by light,” Bo- tect themselves against gard writes. potential lawsuits by flooding their property The author traveled the world, examining with light as a safety measure, not just to dark sites and cities bursting with illumina- (Continued on page 16) MAY 2014 FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY PAGE 9 Young Astronomers nce again our young astrono- mers were building their future O telescope fleet with the help of verteran FWAS member John Dowell and YA! facilitator Shawn Kirchdorfer. We worked on mounting the mirrors to the mirror cells and mounted several of them in the tubes. We showed the kids (and parents) how to align the primary and secondary mirrors so they are “collimated”. We weren’t able to finish the build this session once again, so we will finish them for sure this next meet- ing, and the First Light star party for the YA! members will be pushed back to June. As John said, this is normally a 9 hour build workshop for one weekend’s worth of work that we have been squeezing into 2 hour chunks each meet- ing. That makes it a little more difficult to coordinate and finish in a timely man- ner. We hadn’t planned for that issue. But the kids seem to be really getting into building the telescopes that will be their group’s own to use. Thanks to Beth Hayes for her patience in the scheduling delays for the star party. She has volunteered to host the get together at their home out in the country. The May meeting will finish the build and we will also bring some tele- scopes to view a little in the parking lot like we had been prior to this telescope build workshop. e PAGE 10 FORT WORTH ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY MAY 2014 An Observing Letter By Russ Boatright We got a small posse together out at Fort Griffin seemed to last Friday for a spot of stargazing.