August 2007 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

M57 +73PSW-3
by daniel turner 27 Mar '13

27 Mar '13

Mark your calendar for early evening May 7. Their will be a close encounter between the Ring nebula and periodic comet 73P. The comet will be close to earth so its exact position in the sky will depend stongly on your location on the globe. Go to spaceweather.com and use the link at the bottom of the page for "Observable Comets". 73p is in the list and includes orbital elements and a link for daily ephemerides. DT __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Re: F/40 & F/20 projects
by Chuck Hards 01 Oct '07

01 Oct '07

Observing report with the F/40 singlet configuration: Lunar craters along the terminator clearly discerned as such. Any detail on the face of the moon, however, was too awash with color to clearly see. Jupiter was a colored disk, tint depending on just where the eyepeice was racked in relation to the part of the spectrum in focus at that particular point. No Jovian moons seen in a bright dusky sky. I may try later if I don't fall asleep first. Right now I feel very grateful for modern optics, and a renewed appreciation for astonomical pioneers who made some incredible discoveries with stinko telescopes.

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Re: SLAS on NPR
by Kurt Fisher 02 Sep '07

02 Sep '07

The story version posted on the Utah Public Radio ( http://www.upr.org ) now has a link to Patrick's pictures for the eclipse party night. Click on the "view pictures" link under the "Lunar Eclipse" story. - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Are we human because we gazeatthestars?(MostlyOT)
by Olhomorto＠aol.com 01 Sep '07

01 Sep '07

So, this latest variation (time) on the thread is very interesting. Is there anyone out there who feels capable of attempting an explanation of how a cause need not precede and effect? Layman's terms would be preferable for someone such as myself who has difficulty comprehending "billions and billions". Mike ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour

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alpha Aur unusual meteor shower tommorrow monring 9-1 5:33 am MDT
by Kurt Fisher 01 Sep '07

01 Sep '07

As noted in Patrick's news, tomorrow morning's alf Aur shower peak (5:33 am MDT) may have the potential for a 100-200 zhr rate. Unlike the Persids, the alf Aur radiant will be well-positioned at a high 60-70 deg altitude, although a near quarter Moon and the Sun at -14 deg alt presents sky wash-out problems. The predicted high-magnitudes of the meteors from the shower are expected to overcome this constraint. The two leading researchers on meteor shower prediction are Peter Jenniskens and Jérémie Vaubaillon. Jenniskens is guessing ~200 zhr; Vaubaillon is being more conservative: "For the level, I personnally think that ZHR~100 will be reached AT BEST, but some colleagues are more optimistic, so, suspense, suspense!!!" The other unique characteristic of this shower is that it is the only long-period comet that will produce a significant shower in the next fifty years. The Persieds had a white color to the streamer. In the 1994 alf Aur outburst, observers reported green and blue colors. Although the reason for the color is unknown, it may be related to the primordial nature of the surface of the long period comet. - Kurt Some other alf Aur resources: Aurigid Mac Mission Shower highlights page (Peter Jenniskens page) (radiant maps) http://aurigid.seti.org/#report IMO alpha Aur Live Meteor page http://www.imo.net/live/alpha-aurigids2007/ Jérémie Vaubaillon's prediction article http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/EOS.pdf Vaubaillon's site on alf Aur http://www.imcce.fr/page.php?nav=en/ephemerides/phenomenes/meteor/DATABASE/… IMO Shower Calendar http://www.imo.net/calendar/2007 IMO radiant data alf-Aurigids (AUR) Dates Aug 25 - Sep 08 Max date Sep 01 ecliptic 158°6 J2000 alpha 84° J2000 dec +42° v 66 r 2.6 ZHR 7 _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net

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alpha Aur unusual meteor shower tommorrow monring 9-1 5:33 am MDT
by Kurt Fisher 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

Please scratch that last email. I had the wrong settings on the Ames meteor FLUXOMETER predication calculator at http://aurigid.seti.org/ . The Fluxometer ( wasn't that something in _Back to Future_? -:) ) is showing for Salt Lake City, a narrow bell curve for 1/2 hour around 5:30am, with the following peak meteor visibility predications by observing location: mountaintop: 211 p/h countryside: 166.4 p/h suburbs: 112.8 p/h downtown-urban sky: 39.9 p/h The Ames calculator also states that "All rates were calculated by taking into account the Moon light, which is pretty bad during the Aurigids." Sorry for the multiple posts on this one. - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net

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alpha Aur unusual meteor shower tommorrow monring 9-1 5:33 am MDT
by Kurt Fisher 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

With respect to the Perseids, there was a discussion on this list about the how the ZHR rate changes with the altitude of the radiant above the horzion. One of the reference pages ( http://aurigid.seti.org/ ) includes an applet - the Ames "FLUXOMETER" - about mid-webpage that predicts the shower rate for western U.S. cities. Salt Lake is showing about a rate of about 30 meteors at 2:30 am and 50 meteors per hour at 5:30am. 30 p/h is about what the Perseids a few weeks ago. There is some uncertainty to predicting the peak. The FWHM period is 25 minutes around 5:36 MDT but the shower may last longer. Vaubaillon is recommending watching an hour around the predicated peak. Because of approaching sunrise at our location, Utah is limited to the 4:30 am to 5:30 am tail. - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net

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Eclipse Watch podcast on KUER moved to Tuesday
by Patrick Wiggins 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

I just received this from the reporter that produced the podcast: +++++ There's been a change of schedule for the story on KUER. It will air Tuesday morning at 6:30am. They switched it from Monday because it's a holiday and Tuesday there will be more listeners. It should also be posted on the web on Tuesday at kuer.org. It's a slightly different version than the one that aired on UPR. +++++ pw

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Re: Misc follow-up on last night's star party
by Kurt Fisher 30 Aug '07

30 Aug '07

Moderator, Obviously another misdirected post. Please delete this thread. My apologies. - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net

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Misc follow-up on last night's star party
by Kurt Fisher 30 Aug '07

30 Aug '07

Paul - Visual binaries are true binary stars whose separations can be observed visually as opposed to spectrographic binaries, which require a spectrometer or interferometer. Optical binaries are the ones that are not true binaries, but only appear to be. Alberio (bet Cyg, WDS 19307+2758, ADS 12540, CCDM19307+2758) shows up as binary in the 6th Catalogue of Orbits of Visual Binary Stars. The cool thing about the 6th Catalogue at - http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/orb6/orb6frames.html - are its orbital diagrams, e.g. gam Vir http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/orb6/PNG/wds12417-0127r.png Alberio http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/orb6/PNG/wds19307+2758k.png - which makes for a good teaching graphic. The diagrams are supposed to launch automatically. On my MS-IE 7.0 browser the javascript is crashing and I have to manually build up the links to retrieve the diagrams. Alberio has an orbital grade of "4" meaning - "Individual elements entitled to little weight,and may be subject to substantial revisions. The quantity 3 log(a) - 2 log(P) should not be grossly erroneous. This class contains: orbits with less than half the ellipse defined; orbits with weak or inconsistent data; orbits showing deteriorating representations of recent data..." - Kurt P.S. - See also Kaler's description stating that the system is a triple, with Alberio A having a companion: http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/albireo.html P.P.S. - Looks like I blew the description of basic spectroscopy and Alberio for your prospective student. Hot solid body = continuous spectrum Hot gas = emission spectra Cool gas = absorption spectra _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net

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