February 2008 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

RE: [Utah-astronomy] Utah amateur radio astronomy mentor sought
by Canopus56 21 Feb '08

21 Feb '08

Thanks to all for the referrals, I think I'm set with the Henchy contact info. Slumming around on the net, it also turns out that there is a Utah amateur radio society that next meets on Mar. 6 in the Warnock Engineering Bldg. at the U of U. I may show up at the next meeting and try to get some advice. http://www.xmission.com/~uarc/ Yolo is a kind of telescope design; Yagi's the antenna; Yoko broke up the Beatles; Yin and Yang are another topic altogether. http://bhs.broo.k12.wv.us/homepage/alumni/dstevick/yolo.htm - Kurt ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

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eclipse
by Kim 21 Feb '08

21 Feb '08

We’ve had low clouds with some snow and rain all day. I just checked outside again – not even a sucker hole. Any better “up north”? Kim Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.31/1128 - Release Date: 11/13/2007 11:09 AM

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Rob done good
by Patrick Wiggins 21 Feb '08

21 Feb '08

Rob's added some nice shots to his UA gallery page: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=5819&g2_page=4 I really like the one of the "double shadow" on the Moon but am most impressed by the ones showing what may be debris from the 193 engagement. Good going Rob! patrick

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RE: [Utah-astronomy] Re: NASA coins
by Canopus56 21 Feb '08

21 Feb '08

Kim - Suffice it say the marketing is - well - tacky. The coins appear to be legal tender - thus appropriately should be called a "coin". At least they are made out of real gold and silver metal. >From a NASA Press release: "Inspired by the 'NASA and JPL 50th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act' which authorizes the US Mint to produce a $50 gold coin with an image of the Sun and nine $1 silver coins each representing one of the nine planets in our solar system, Discovery Collectibles worked with NASA to create a coin line that complements the anniversary and celebrates one of the agency's greatest accomplishments in the Hubble Telescope." http://prweb.com/releases/2007/12/prweb575301.htm Sorry, I could'nt find the as passed version of the bill. I believe it was 110th Cong. HR 2750 passed in the summer of 2007, but again, couldn't find a record of full passage: http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:3:./temp/~c110iET51m:e183: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.2750: In various versions of the bill, there is a $50 to $75 surcharge depending on whether the coin is made from silver or gold. Under various bill versions, the first $4 million of the surcharge is split to the NASA Family Assistance Act - a fund for NASA employees injured in the performance of official duites - and the balance goes to a science education fund and the National Air and Space Museum. Since I could not find the as passed version, I'm not sure where the surcharge is going. As noted in the text of 110th Cong., HR 2750, all such commenerative coins issued by the U.S. Mint are legal tender under 31 USC 5103. See the US Code search page at: http://uscode.house.gov/search/criteria.shtml The Congressional Budget Office analysis of an earlier bill version indicated that the bill would have a minimum or no impact on the federal budget since by the act, the surcharge must exceed the cost of production and proceeds of the surcharge will go the NASA Family Assistance Fund, which potentially offset NASA's preexisting duty to compensate NASA personnel injured in the performance of their duties. In that sense, if you want to waste your money on it, that's a personal choice. It's not really a federal tax subsidized transaction. Personally, the coin designs do not appeal to me. But I'm not into coin collecting and do not consider my own pecularity of getting get turned on by big mirrors to be odd. Each to their own. -:) - Kurt ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

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NASA coins
by Kim 20 Feb '08

20 Feb '08

OK, I saw NASA’s ad for the Hubble commemorative coins, but they don’t seem to be approved by the US Mint. In other words, they are not legal tender. I think the ad is misleading and should designate the “coins” as “commemorative medals.” Am I wrong? Kim Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.31/1128 - Release Date: 11/13/2007 11:09 AM

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Regional news
by William Biesele 20 Feb '08

20 Feb '08

http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2008/02/strike_on_washington.php

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USA 193 engagement from a Russian viewpoint
by Patrick Wiggins 20 Feb '08

20 Feb '08

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080220/99714020.html patrick

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Current weather 3:45pm
by Canopus56 20 Feb '08

20 Feb '08

The IR Sat map is showing the trailing edge of the current front over Nevada and a clear pocket between the west stateline of Nevada and major storm in the Pacific off the California coast. http://www.weather.gov/sat_tab.php?image=ir The six hour water vapour weather loop shows an ambiguous storm course for the rest of the evening. http://www.weather.gov/sat_loop.php?image=wv&hours=6 The South Mtn Tooele County web cam shows socked in weather - similar to the current overcast in SLC. http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/slc/camera/single/SouthMountain.php But, the Wendover Nevada web cam shows hazy sunshine. http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/slc/camera/single/WestWendover.php In conclusion, some potential for a late evening clearing of the cloud deck that might allow some visibility of the tail end of the eclipse. - Kurt ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

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Follow-up to last night's SLAS meeting - Apollo booster impacts
by Canopus56 20 Feb '08

20 Feb '08

Apollo S-IVB stages where crashed into the Moon on mission Apollo 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 in support of geophone measurements. I can't say I know the location of all of them. The Apollo 14 S-IVB site is at S8Â°10', W26Â°03' selenographic coordinates. Its impact streak mark appears on Lunar Topographic Orthophotomap (LTO) 76-D1. Such lunar targets are too small to be detected using Earth-based amateur telescopes. Generally, the impacts are discussed in each Apollo mission's preliminary science report. Here's a link to the Apollo 16 report: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/a16psr.html (65mb) The S-IVB impacts are discussed on page 9-20 and 9-21 of the Apollo 16 report. Also of entertainment reading interest is the "Stalin organ" - an automatic mortar launcher - left on the Moon at the Apollo 16 site - shown on page 10-21 of the Apollo 16 report. The mortar rounds were used to generate siesmic signals in order to probe the structure of the subsurface terrain around the landing site and to calibrate the geophones. Apollo geophones operated for some years, recording thousands of microearthquakes and meteor impacts on the Moon. Most of the moonquakes are from a layer near the Moon's surface. From that data, only a partial, incomplete picture of the Moon's deep interior has been built up. This is mostly because all the geophones are located on the near side of the Moon and all the S-IVB impacts were also on the near side. Although siesmic waves from some of lunar quakes have returned limited data on the structure of the deep interior and core of the Moon, modeling of the Moon's core is subject to varying interpretations because of the limited data. One of the science objectives of the current return to the Moon initiative - with the "land anywhere" capability of the "LEM on steriods" that you saw in last night's presentation, is to complete a siesmic station grid by placing more stations on the backside of the Moon. Ziggy asked about the potential for creating lunar orbiter stations from expended booster parts. There are no fuel-free stable low (<200km) orbits around the Moon. This is because there are sizeable mascon's - massive gravity concentrations - beneath the lunar surface - that disrupt any stable orbits. Because of the stable-orbit fuel requirement, a permanent low lunar orbit station is out-of-the-question. Usually, lunar "orbit" stations are discussed in terms of lunar transfer stations - refueling stations placed at the _lunar_ leading and trailing LaGrange points. The LaGrange points are relatively fuel-free in terms of station keeping requirements. If there is any water at the lunar poles, it could be turned into fuel and then ferried up to automated LaGranage transfer stations for use by that Earth-to-Moon ferry that you remember from 2001: A Space Odyessy. Prior to Apollo, the lunar mascons were relatively unknown. The mascons were indirectly discovered during the Lunar Orbiter missions and as part of correcting large errors in models that drove the Apollo 12 navigation system. Initial navigation models for lunar landings had large errors in them (2 kilomters). After the effect of the mascons were taken into account, Apollo 12 was able to land within 30 meters of the prior Surveyor robot lander. The mascons again reared their heads at the end of the 1972 Apollo 16 mission. A small subsatellite, PFS-2 ("Particles and Fields Subsatellite"), was thrown out the back of the Apollo 16 Command Module with the idea of leaving it in an unpowered low lunar orbit (89 to 122 km). The PFS-2 satellite would remain in orbit and measure charged particles in the very thin - but existant - lunar atmosphere over the next year. Back then, the extent of the lunar mascons were not fully understood. The mascon's gravitational effect perturbed the unpowered PFS-2 orbit. Instead of staying in lunar orbit for a year - the satellite crashed into the lunar surface 35 days after deployment. The PFS experiment is discussed - sans dicussion of the lunar mascons and the experiment's early termination - in Chapter 21 of the Apollo 16 Preliminary Science Report. The effect of the mascons on the early termination of the PFS-2 experiment is discussed in this NASA press article - http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/06nov_loworbit.htm . The PFS-2 experiment was still a success. The thirty five days of low lunar magnetic readings expanding our understanding of the distribution of the lunar magnetic field. That there are no fuel-free low lunar orbits around the Moon may have changed last year. Some enterprising physicist published a paper claiming to have come up with a theoretical highly elliptical lunar orbit that would be fuel-free and stable. The suggestion was to use it to orbit at series of small communications satellites, e.g. - GPS and cell phone service for the entire Moon. If such a fuel-free orbit does exist and if a chain of lunar GSP and communications relays could be set up, it would revolutionize lunar exploration. It means you could have a network of Mars-type rovers - run in almost real-time - by shirt-sleeved Earth based scientists. Having a lunar GPS system is also a good safety measure for human exploration. If you lunar lander blows a tire, it's nice to know that AAA could use a lunar OnStar to send the tow truck to just the right place. The mascons also present a hurdle for theorists who model the early evolutionary history of the Moon. As we all know from experience, heavy, dense objects sink to the bottom of bathtub; lighter, less dense objects float on top. The relatively near surface mascons present a counter-intuitive dilemma for modeling the Moon's early formation. If the early Moon was a totally molten liquid, it should have separated into layers by density like some popular drinks you can buy in any local bar. How do you model an early Moon that gets the mascon concentrations - which consist of relatively heavy materials near the surface of the Moon, floating on top of layers of the relatively lighter, less dense materials that are closer to the Moon's core? Enjoy the eclipse. - Kurt ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

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Lunar Eclipse Question
by Ann Blanchard 20 Feb '08

20 Feb '08

I'm sure this is an obvious question for you folks, but why is the lunar eclipse always at a full moon? (We may not get to see it tonight, but I'd love to at least learn something). Thanks for putting up with what I'm cringing to think is a dumb question. Ann M. Blanchard Executive Assistant to the Associate VP Undergraduate Studies 110 Sill University of Utah (801) 581-3188 a.blanchard(a)ugs.utah.edu

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