October 2003 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Re: [Utah-astronomy] Cheap APO
by UTAHDEB＠aol.com 09 Oct '03

09 Oct '03

Chuck, I read the favorable review on cloudynights.com. This would be a good travel scope to take on a plane. Debbie

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Cheap APO
by Chuck Hards 08 Oct '03

08 Oct '03

Has anyone purchased, or looked through the new Orion 80mm ED APO? At $429, this would be an excellent price if the chromatic abberation of a non-APO doublet were at least halved. F/7.5, Stock #9895 C. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

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Horowitz Reminder
by David L Bennett 08 Oct '03

08 Oct '03

Just a quick reminder about the Horowitz lecture this evening: FRONTIERS OF SCIENCE LECTURE Strange Views of Space and Time: From Einstein to String Theory Lecturer: Gary T. Horowitz, professor of physics, UC-Santa Barbara Date: Weds, October 8, 2003 Time: 7:30 p.m. Place: Aline Wilmot Skaggs Biology auditorium, University of Utah FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Modern physics has presented a picture of space and time which is very different from our usual "common sense" understanding. Precise experiments have confirmed that space and time really do have very strange properties. Most of these properties were predicted by Einstein. In this talk, professor Horowitz will describe some of them, including: 1) The time you experience depends on your state of motion. This means that not only your mechanical watch, but also your biological clock which governs aging, proceed at different rates depending on how you move in space. The time you experience also depends on nearby gravitational fields. Time slows down in a gravitational field. 2) Different people can disagree about which things happen at the same time. The notion of two events being simultaneous is not fundamentally well defined. 3) Space is curved by matter. Light rays, traveling along the straightest possible paths, are bent when they pass near heavy objects. Black holes are excellent examples of this. Modern work on string theory has suggested even more strange properties of space and time. Although they have not yet been confirmed by experiment, many physicists take them seriously. These include the possibility that space has more than three dimensions. Horowitz will explain what this means and why it does not obviously conflict with observations of our world. Some recent speculation about these extra dimensions includes the possibility of parallel universes.

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RE: [Utah-astronomy] Reeeeeeeeeeeeeemote Backup
by Kim Hyatt 07 Oct '03

07 Oct '03

Interesting concept. Who will go to service the hardware? (I volunteer...maybe.) -----Original Message----- From: Dale Hooper [mailto:Dale.Hooper@sdl.usu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 3:14 PM To: Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Reeeeeeeeeeeeeemote Backup This is very remote backup http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1200789,00.asp _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy

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[Utah-astronomy] Apollo XVII astronaut - Dr. Harrison Schmitt to speak at USU - Oct 14th
by Dale Hooper 07 Oct '03

07 Oct '03

Hi All, I hope you don't mind me sending this out with only partial info. And apologies to OASers who are - of course - getting this twice. Dr. Harrison Schmitt - Apollo XVII astronaut and the only scientist to step on the Moon, will be speaking to the public at Utah State University on October 14th at 2:30pm. I don't have the location of where on campus yet, but I wanted to let you know about this as quickly as possible so that you could set up your plans. I'll send the rest of the details as soon as I have them. Clear skies, Dale Hooper.

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15x70's are back
by Richard Tenney 06 Oct '03

06 Oct '03

FYI Although the Sportsman Guide 15x70 Galileo binoculars were out of stock when I sent the last emailing out about them, a list member checked back today and they are in stock again. The total with ground shipping is $82.45 Chuck Hards also informs me that he still has 2 sets of Solar Filters for these babies leftover from his last e-bay auction; $25 a pair (it's a steal). -Rich __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Dwarf Galaxy
by Jim Cobb 03 Oct '03

03 Oct '03

The Sagittarius Dwarf is a galaxy (lying outside the Milky Way) that happens to lie within the IAU boundaries for the constellation Sagittarius. The stars that form the familiar Sagittarius figure do, indeed, lie within the Milky Way. (I glibly said that the dwarf galaxy lay outside the Milky Way, but in fact the situation is more complex. The Sky & Telescope article explains that it is in the process of being merged into the Milky Way, so one could quibble that it doesn't lie outside...) The amazing fact in the article is The dwarf galaxy's tidal tails -- drawn out in the course of several eccentric orbits around the Milky Way -- trace nearly a complete circle around the dome of the sky. Jim ---- Original message ---- >Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2003 06:23:36 -0700 (PDT) >From: Jim Gibson <xajax99(a)yahoo.com> >Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Dwarf Galaxy >To: "Visit http://www.utahastronomy.com for the photo gallery." <utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com> > > In a recent article in Sky & Telescope > http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1058_1.asp > the first sentence reads : > > > > September 26, 2003 | Astronomers have derived a > new map of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, which > currently is merging with the Milky Way. > > > > I do not understand this. I thought that > Sagittarius is part of the Milky Way Galaxy so is > this saying that the Milky Way has a sub Dwarf > Galaxy with in it? > > > > Jim

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NGC 584 and 586
by Richard Tenney 03 Oct '03

03 Oct '03

I did some googling around on the web tonight to verify my observation and sketch, and determined that NGC 586 was definitely the faint elliptical galaxy I spotted next to the much brighter NGC 584. You can see a good image here: http://www.ngcic.org/dss/n/0/n586.jpg -Rich --- Jim Gibson <xajax99(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > After I saw what Don wrote I went back to my > SkyAtlas and noted that NGC 586 is not shown there. > I also noticed in the NGC 2000 catalog that 586 is a > 13.2 mag galaxy. I believe that the SkyAtlas 2000 > does not show objects under a certain magnitude and > probably didnt list 586. The NGC 2000 describes 586 > as vF, vS, R which is very faint, very small and > round. My guess is that you saw 596 which is bigger > and brighter. > > > > Jim > > > > "Don J. Colton" <djcolton(a)piol.com> wrote:Rich > Companion to NGC 584 is NGC 586. Also in field of > view at 115x are NGC 596, > PGC 5754 and IC 127. > Clear Skies > Don Colton __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Report on Friday nights Star Party at Wolf Creek
by David L Bennett 01 Oct '03

01 Oct '03

A 'quick' note on last night at Wolf Creek as I have been up all night a need a few zzzz's...sorry if my rambling is more discombobulated than usual....wow! my spell checker says I spelled discombobulated correctly even in my current state (Utah), what are the odds? As Jim mentioned, the clouds from the NE went to bed fairly early and left us with good dark sky for the remainder of the night. The satellite animation that I saw yesterday afternoon showed both the incoming bands of clouds from Wyoming and the smoke from the Cascade Uncontrolled Burn. In the animation, the smoke was blowing between Utah Lake & Strawberry Reservoir so I thought our chances looked good and they were. You could see the layer of smoke skirting the SW & S horizons but it never crept up to interfere with viewing. There seemed to be a fire to the East of the site but again the smoke on the eastern horizon stayed low and removed. I just checked the National Weather Service satellite site again and today's animation shows not a tenth of the smoke I saw yesterday and the forecast is for clear for the area from Salt Lake to Duchesne. The temp remained 40-45 for most of the night with occasional bouts of wind chill factor. Not nearly as cold as I had imagined it would be and was prepared for. I left my back-up heavy coat off all night. We saw a 25 hour-old moon last night through a pair of 10x70 binoculars after looking at Venus. Mars started out with Solis Lacus nicely placed (about 115 CM) for easy identification before it rotated out of view. Mare Sirenum then took over as well as Mare Cimmerium later on...look for the connection between these two Maria...it isn't shown on most Mars maps. We also tried out a Sirius Optics Mars 2003 filter with very encouraging results...more on that later. Kim found both Uranus & Neptune. I hunted (and do I mean hunted) down Comet Encke which is directly below (East) of Beta & Gamma Triangulum and which is also directly below 22nd magnitude...lol...or so it seemed. I just found out it was a little over 13th mag, quite diffuse and can attest that it was very tricky to find. This comet is predicted to reach 6th or 7th mag by the end of November or early December so keep an eye out for it. http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/comets/article_1036_1.asp Limiting magnitude (using stars in Ursa Minor) was 7.1 and the seeing varied throughout the night. At one point near 5am I was using Jim's 12.5" f/7 at 318x & 462x to look at Saturn...the 318 held details fairly steady and at 462 I glimpsed Encke's Gap for the briefest of moments. Jupiter stayed mostly in the soup but I did get a nice high power (318) view just before sunrise. Mercury was just below Jupiter (3 or 4 degrees) and was quite easily seen for almost an hour. Through Kim Hyatt's 10" f/5 dob at 90 power I could make out its gibbous shape despite the frantic scintillation. I took quite a few photos (astro & the fall colors) and will post the better ones on my homepage after I wake up...in several weeks. G'nite, Dave Bennett P.S. Many thanks to Jim Gibson, Tom Watson, Mike Bailey, Kim Hyatt, Steve (?), Damon and Christina for letting me commandeer their great telescopes throughout the night. Amateur astronomy sure attracts some wonderful people. P.P.S. Watch out for road delays caused by sheep. Advice: bring your own sheep dog! Theirs were useless.

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Saturday @ Wolf Creek?
by David L Bennett 01 Oct '03

01 Oct '03

Hi Folks, Did anyone make it up to Wolf Creek on Saturday night? How were the observing and smoke conditions? Dave

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