Suddenly, those dark spaces between stars don’t appear [...]]]> Exploring the universe is a bit like groping around a dark room. Aside from the occasional pinprick of starlight, most objects lurk in pitch darkness. But with the recent launch of the largest-ever infrared space telescope, it’s like someone walked into the room and flipped on the lights.

Suddenly, those dark spaces between stars don’t appear quite so empty. Reflected in the Herschel Space Observatory’s 3.5-meter primary mirror, astronomers can now see colder, darker celestial objects than ever before—from the faint outer arms of distant galaxies to the stealthy “dark asteroids” of our own solar system.

Many celestial objects are too cold to emit visible light, but they do shine at much longer infrared wavelengths. And Herschel can observe much longer infrared wavelengths than any space telescope before (up to 672 microns). Herschel also has 16 times the collecting area, and hence 16 times better resolution, than previous infrared space telescopes. That lets it resolve details with unprecedented clarity. Together, these abilities open a new window onto the universe.

”The sky looks much more crowded when you look in infrared wavelengths,” says George Helou, director of the NASA Herschel Science Center at Caltech. “We can’t observe the infrared universe from the ground because our atmosphere blocks infrared light, and emits infrared itself. Once you get above the atmosphere, all of this goes away and suddenly you can look without obstruction.”

Herschel launched in May from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana aboard a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket. Since then, it has expanded the number of distant galaxies observed at far infrared wavelengths from a few hundred to more than 28,000. And with the instrument testing and system check-out phases finally completed, the discoveries are only now beginning.

Beyond simply imaging these dark objects, Herschel can identify the presence of chemicals such as carbon monoxide and water based on their spectral fingerprints. “We will be able to decipher the chemistry of what’s going on during the beginnings of star formation, in the discs of dust and gas that form planets, and in the lingering aftermath of stellar explosions,” Helou says.

And those are just the expected things. Who knows what unexpected discoveries may come from “flipping on the lights?” Helou says “we can’t wait to find out.”

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission, with science instruments provided by a consortium of European-led institutes and with important participation by NASA. See the ESA Herschel site at sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=16. Also, see the NASA sites at herschel.jpl.nasa.gov, www.herschel.caltech.edu, and www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel. Kids can learn about infrared light by browsing through the Infrared Photo Album at The Space Place, spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/sirtf1/sirtf_action.shtml.

This article was provided courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption:

The Herschel Space Observatory has 3.5-meter primary mirror, allowing astronomers to see colder, darker celestial objects than ever before.

-Dollar for Dollar MATCH every donation to CAAS …via PAYPAL

I believe in our amazing group of Amateur Astronomers so much, and us using PayPal to take in Donations , Dues , TShirt money, etc.; that I will personally MATCH every donation $1 for $1, no matter what the size of your donation though [...]]]> by Bill Engberg

-Dollar for Dollar MATCH every donation to CAAS …via PAYPAL

I believe in our amazing group of Amateur Astronomers so much, and us using PayPal to take in Donations , Dues , TShirt money, etc.; that I will personally MATCH every donation $1 for $1, no matter what the size of your donation though Feb28 up to $100.00 total

Simply go to PayPal.com, login, and click on “Send Money” and then send it to treasurer@caasastro.org You can even pay with your Credit Card!

I’ll report to the entire group how much comes in during the next 2 weeks and the names of the donors (unless you wish to remain anonymous).

-Who was at the Meeting?

The best news during the Feb 13^th Meeting was the attendance of 4 new members. Please welcome them the next time you see them.     (p.s. for these new members:  –How do you want your name written on the Name Tags I’m making for everyone?)

There were 16 people at the meeting:

Don Lewis,  Jim and Samantha Dixon, Rocky and Carol Togni, Don and Carolaina Ferren, Lev Guter (New member!), Carl Freyaldenhoven, Rick Friday (New member!), Michelle Stinson (New member!), Paul Deeter, Gentleman in ball cap (sorry missed your name), John Reed, Kevin Krug  (New member!), and me  … your humble scribe.

-DUES via PayPal

If you owe dues, simply go to PayPal.com, login, and click on “Send Money” and then send it to treasurer@caasastro.org -or- mail a check to our treasurer:  

Andy Reed, 312 Maranes Circle, Maumelle, AR  72113

-Photo Log

John Reed took excellent photos of the meeting:    http://tinyurl.com/y8qkhwt

-TShirts

Order your TShirts before 28Feb… buy now, because we are getting a HUGE discount with this first big order. AFTER the initial discounted order is placed, price will probably increase to about $15-$18, so get one now while it is inexpensive!          Mail the check to Andy Reed -or- PayPal the funds as described above.

Tell him the size you want via email (andy.reed72@gmail.com)

$12.10   up to XXL

$14.10   3XL and larger

We passed a motion to buy from our CAAS Treasury funds:   FIVE “Large”,  FIVE “XL” T-shirts for future buyers and members. They will sell for about $15 (so get yours while it is cheap!)

-Hubble Over Flight visible at meeting!

Carl tipped us off that the Hubble Space Telescope was making a flyby. Funny quote of the evening (in best Austin Powers voice) “I’m looking with my naked eye, at a telescope… in space… and I’m not using a telescope…and it’s freaking me out, man!”

We all got to see it travel from West to East in the southern hemisphere of the sky. Thank you Carl!

-Lawn Care Donation via PayPal

Special thanks to Don and Carolaina Ferren for donating $20 for Wade’s project to hire a trimming and lawn care/brush cutter service (about $130 needed?)     I also donated $20 and hope you will to.

Cut all the brush = Better viewing  +  keeps the bugs far away!

Simply go to PayPal.com or mail a check.

-Presentation

I gave a Power Point Presentation on “How to build a telescope”

There were so many great questions, the 20 minute brief took almost an hour. The presentation used images taken by Wade and Danny ( awesome photos, fellas !!! )

Later, an “in depth photo journal” was shared for people that really wanted to get deep into the details and pitfalls of building a Dobsonian reflector with a 24″ mirror.

-Need your ideas for my Radio Show on Wed/Sat nights (Perryville 96.5 KQIX)

Every week I host a radio show, but I need your ideas on ASTRONOMY RELATED TOPICS. Help!

-Driving Directions

I’m making an improved set of driving directions for our members. Hopefully even more will attend our meetings, when they have easy to read/easy to follow directions that can be downloaded from our website!  They will be complete with:

Photos of “turn points/intersections”

Odometer measurements between turn points

Google map

17 Degrees….Kelvin

Tonight was a great night at CAAS for friendship, camaraderie, all the delicious chili you could hope to eat, and to watch an excellent documentary, with a few people doing some winter observing after. In attendance were: Carolaina and Don Ferren, Andy Reed, Carl Freyaldenhoven, John Reed, Eric Walker, Allen Lee, Sandy [...]]]> by Bill Engberg

17 Degrees….Kelvin

Tonight was a great night at CAAS for friendship, camaraderie, all the delicious chili you could hope to eat, and to watch an excellent documentary, with a few people doing some winter observing after. In attendance were: Carolaina and Don Ferren, Andy Reed, Carl Freyaldenhoven, John Reed, Eric Walker, Allen Lee, Sandy Pat, Coy Scott, and me… your humble scribe.

Our new President, Carolaina, started the year off right bringing lots of energy and she hit the ground running with club business, fun future goals and projects.

• Club T-Shirts- Allen Lee volunteered to get info on “bulk cost�? from a T-Shirt printer in Sherwood. We all talked about how nice it would be to all have a cool looking “club shirt�? for members only that has “glow in dark�? printing as an outline on a 2-color ink design.  Non-members will get to buy a different color or style. Free T to the person who volunteers to be main point of contact for the T-shirt printing! Who would like to get that free T-Shirt and be a club hero for heading this fun project?

• Related to that, does anyone have any contacts with the staff or teachers at a local Middle and High School? We’d like to involve as many schools as possible for “CAAS�? logo design, which will also be used on the T-Shirt, as well as get a digital image created of the “Red River�? logo which is on our entry sign. Do we already have a digital “Red River�? logo?

• 2010 Dues were paid by those attending (http://www.caasastro.org/join-caas ). If you missed the meeting, please mail dues to Andy Reed. Andy, please email your address.

• Calendar events and some future CAAS presentations were determined:
  • Feb 13 (club meeting) –  Bill Engberg will present “How to plan/build a telescope�?
  • Mar 13 (club meeting) –  Don Ferren  will present “How to do a Messier Marathon�? which interested parties can do that same night!
  • Mar 20 – Woolly Hollow State Park Star Party (in lieu of club meeting)
  • Apr 10 – (club meeting)
  • Apr 24 – Astronomy Day (Pinnacle Mountain State Park)
  • Email us what other events you think should be put on our calendar.

• Glow in the Dark Name Tag pins for everyone!!   I’ve volunteered to get them made. Need to have everyone who wants one, please email me their “preferred name�? as you want it printed. We will keep the name tags on a foam board in the Club House.   –  It is important that we help break the ice (when we have visitors / new members) and make them feel welcome with everyone wearing their Glow In The Dark name tag during the meetings and when observing. This way, newcomers can relax and call us by name, rather than feel awkward when trying to learn 30 new names in one night and having only “Hey you�? to call out to people.

• Jim Fisher provided us an update:   Mayor sent 2 notes requesting that they use IDA Approved lights that are “Full Cut Off.�?   We learned that the city’s Phase1 (due to budget problems) are planned to have no lights to be installed at all at soccer fields, so we have time to engage them.

The temperatures were legendary last night. 17 Degrees…wow that is cold. It felt like it was 17 Degrees on the Kelvin scale.  We all had to walk around pools of liquid nitrogen to get into the club house. Okay…maybe not…, but the temps felt like it.

We watched a brand new and just released excellent PBS documentary on “400 Years of the Telescope.�?  (Thank you Jim Fisher for your generous donation to our video library!)

Then, Carl and I did some binocular observing; saw a huge meteor… slow, big, bright and the bolide left a thick orange trail as it arced past Mars to the east.

John Reed brought out his fantastic camera with macho wide angle lens  http://tinyurl.com/ygvgwkz and captured Orion and some other brilliant celestial objects in the nights sky. If you’ve ever seen the scary SciFi movie “The Thing�? with Kurt Russell, we think John Reed captured a view ( in image #8 ) of one of those hideous alien creatures standing in front of the “dome observatory.�? For comparison: http://tinyurl.com/ycpmr5a You be the judge…scary!

A great time was had by all. We can’t wait to see you all out for the next meeting on 13 Feb. I promise it will be warmer by then.

Always remember, CAAS is our family. We stick together as a family should. If anyone ever has good news to share or needs help, we are always here for each other. Come to us in good times and in rough times. On the day we all pass on, what makes us rich isn’t the money in a bank… what makes us rich are the friendships we have made and memories we have created with each other. I’m so proud to be a member of such a great group of people: articulate, friendly, trustworthy, funny, creative and skilled in so many areas.

I wish you all a blessed New Year.

Bill Engberg

Club Scribe

///—  Club Meeting Minutes for 9Jan2010  —///

They are as [...]]]> The 2009 Central Arkansas Astronomical Society (CAAS) Annual Meeting marked the end of the rainiest, cloudiest astronomy season on record. ¹ Eighteen members braved mild weather and darkness to attend the festivities. After socializing and sampling seasonal fare, we got down to CAAS business and elected next year’s officers and board members.

They are as follows:

• President: Carolaina Ferren.
• Vice-President: Jim Fisher.
• Treasurer: Andy Reed.
• Secretary: Bill Engberg.
• Board Members:  Carl Freyaldenhoven, Don Lewis, John Reed,  and Rocky Togni.

After the voting, we also discussed our new membership in the International Dark Sky Association and some other items of interest for the coming year.
We closed the 2009 Annual Meeting at about 8:30.

¹ Based on data collected from a window next to my desk in West Little Rock.

Old Business:

This cataclysmic scene has happened countless times in countless solar systems. In fact, scientists think that such [...]]]> Two small planets hurtle toward each other at 22,000 miles per hour. They’re on a collision course. With unimaginable force, they smash into each other in a flash of light, blasting streams of molten rock far out into space.

This cataclysmic scene has happened countless times in countless solar systems. In fact, scientists think that such collisions could have created Earth’s moon, tilted Uranus on its side, set Venus spinning backward, and sheared the crust off Mercury.

But witnessing such a short-lived collision while pointing your telescope in just the right direction would be a tremendous stroke of luck. Well, astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer space telescope recently got lucky.

“It’s unusual to catch such a collision in the act, that’s for sure,�? said Geoffrey Bryden, A cosmic Crashspitzer_an astronomer specializing in extrasolar planet formation at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a member of the science team that made the discovery.

When Bryden and his colleagues pointed Spitzer at a star 100 light-years away called HD 172555, they noticed something strange. Patterns in the spectrum of light coming from nearby the star showed distinctive signs of silicon monoxide gas — huge amounts of it — as well as a kind of volcanic rock called tektite.

It was like discovering the wreckage from a cosmic car crash. The silicon monoxide was produced as the high-speed collision literally vaporized huge volumes of rock, which is made largely of silicon and oxygen. The impact also blasted molten lava far out into space, where it later cooled to form chunks of tektite.

Based on the amount of silicon monoxide and tektites, Bryden’s team calculated that the colliding planetary bodies must have had a combined mass more than twice that of Earth’s moon. The collision probably happened between 1,000 and 100,000 years ago — a blink of an eye in cosmic terms.

The scientists used the Spitzer space telescope because, unlike normal telescopes, Spitzer detects light at invisible, infrared wavelengths.

“Spitzer wavelengths are the best wavelengths to identify types of rock,�? Bryden says. “You can pin down which type of rock, dust, or gas you’re looking at.�?

Bryden says the discovery provides further evidence that planet-altering collisions are more common in other star systems than people once thought. The “crash-bang” processes at work in our own solar system may indeed be universal. If so, Spitzer has a front row seat on a truly smashing show.

See Spitzer Space Telescope’s brand new Web site at http://spitzer.caltech.edu/. Kids can learn about infrared light and see beautiful Spitzer images by playing the new Spitzer Concentration game at http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/en/kids/spitzer/concentration.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption:

Artist’s rendering of cosmic collision involving two objects whose combined mass was at least twice that of our Moon. Discovered using the Spitzer Space Telescope in the planetary system of a star called HD 172555 100 light-years away.

Woolly Hollow State Park was a huge hit Saturday night:

November, 2009

By Tom Koonce

Antelope Valley Astronomy Club, Inc.

Lancaster, California

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall…�?  This is certainly true of stars.  When single stars condense from a star forming nebula, their life history is pre-written based upon their initial mass and the cloud’s composition.  High mass stars burn very hot, have very [...]]]>

November, 2009

By Tom Koonce

Antelope Valley Astronomy Club, Inc.

Lancaster, California

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall…�?  This is certainly true of stars.  When single stars condense from a star forming nebula, their life history is pre-written based upon their initial mass and the cloud’s composition.  High mass stars burn very hot, have very short stellar lifetimes then explode in spectacular Supernovae, forming either Neutron Stars or Black Holes.  On the other end of the mass scale, low mass single stars have relatively cool temperatures, but live extremely long lifetimes and may radiate dimly for many, many billions of years

Over time, higher density regions within giant nebulae like the Orion Nebula or the Eagle Nebula begin to contract gravitationally, and as they do, the cloud rotates.  As the gas contracts and rotates faster, the gas begins to heat up to become a Protostar.  Once its temperature reaches approximately 15,000,000 Celsius, nuclear fusion initiates in the cloud’s center causing the Protostar to begin to radiate brightly.   The smallest stellar objects that form in the star forming regions are called Sub-Stellar Objects.  These form with masses between 0.013 and 0.08 times the mass of our own Sun (our Sun = one solar mass).  These stars radiate briefly as a dim star, but gradually collapse, cool as they evolve further into Brown Dwarf stars.  Eventually the Brown Dwarf will cool further and it will cease radiating at all.

The stars known as “Red Dwarf�? stars have between 0.08 and 0.4 solar masses when they form.  These are the most common type of stars in the observable universe and have lifetimes longer than 13 billion years.  As these small, long living stars eventually cool, they die and become Black Dwarf stars.

Stars approximately the size of our Sun with 0.4 to 8 solar masses are called “Intermediate�? stars and will swell into Red Giant stars as their fuel is expended.  Eventually, these stars will end their lives as White Dwarf stars.

Nebulae and stars are typically composed of 74% hydrogen, 25% helium and 1% everything else in the periodic table by mass.  A star’s initial mass is determined by the amount of material available within the nebula from which the star forms.  Very dense nebulae can produce the most massive stars – true giants with 8 times (or greater than) our Sun’s mass.  Those stars with between 8 and 25 solar masses will expand into Super Giant stars then explode as supernovae and end their lives as Neutron Stars; those stars with greater than 25 solar masses will expand into Super Giant stars, explode as supernovae and become Black Holes.  It isn’t known what the upper limit is to a star’s initial mass is, but in the early 1990’s, a star nicknamed the “Pistol Star�? was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope near the center of the Milky Way galaxy with a mass of 100 solar masses and a radius of 100 million miles, comparable to the Earth-Sun distance of 93 million miles.  The Pistol Star is called a Blue Hyper Giant and is so hot that its gravity can’t stabilize it and it is expected to go supernova within only 1 to 3 million years.  A great deal of gas and matter is expelled during these supernovae explosions which then give rise to future generations of stars, repeating the cycle of stellar birth.

Smaller stars burn dimly, but may burn for billions and billions of years.  Giant stars burn with incredible intensity, but go through their hydrogen and helium fuel in as little as millions of years, and then end their lives in dramatic supernovae explosions.  I can think of a few analogous Hollywood situations…but that’s for another type of “Star�? article altogether.

References and image credit: NASA StarChild initiative, NASA Hubble Space Telescope, Wikipedia.

Other Newsletter inserts:

The zodiac names we use today are actually the names our ancestors gave to special star groups known as constellations. How many of the ancient constellation names can you correctly identify? Place the constellation’s letter on the line next to its description.

STAR SIGNS ANSWER KEY

A. Gemini – The Twins

B. Cancer – The Crab

C. Aries – The Ram

D. Libra – The Scales

E. Ursa Major – The Great Bear

F. Capricornus – The Goat

G. Leo – The Lion

H. Draco – The Dragon

I. Pegasus – The Winged Horse

J. Taurus – The Bull

K. Pisces – The Fish

L. Aquarius – The Water Carrier

M. Sagittarius – The Archer

N. Scorpius – The Scorpion

O. Orion – The Hunter

How many star terms can you find hidden in the puzzle below? Words may be written

horizontally, vertically, diagonally, left to right or right to left. Circle each word as you

find it.

Star Terms:

hot, atoms, nebula, supernova, neutron, red giant, cycle, sphere, energy, fusion,

core, galaxy, hydrogen, evolve, gas, cloud, glow, x-ray.