March 2010 - 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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EPOD
by Patrick Wiggins 02 Apr '10

02 Apr '10

Many thanks to Kurt Fisher for writing the text and for suggesting I submit the image. http://epod.usra.edu patrick :)

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Super minor planet?
by Patrick Wiggins 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

Interesting thread on the Minor Planet Mailing List today. Seems NASA's WISE has found something now called 2010 DF64 "...with a perihelion distance of 1.42 AU and an assumed diameter of 6151 km." It goes on to say: "High overhead in Taurus, it is projected to move into Orion by midmonth and attain a whopping 3.7 magnitude." For scale Ceres is a bit less than 1,000 km an doesn't get brighter than about 6.9. One post suggested it's an early April Fool's joke but others have said the report is real. Others have suggested a problem with the data. I'm in the doubters camp. But I'm also try to image it. Interesting... patrick

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U of U lecture: Searching For Earth like planets orbits other stars
by Patrick Wiggins 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

Lecturer: Ronald Walsworth, senior physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Date: Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Time: 7:30 p.m. Place: Aline Wilmot Skaggs Biology Building Auditorium, University of Utah Free and Open to the public http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=032910-1 patrick

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OT: LHC in the news
by Richard Tenney 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

I thought this might be of interest to the lists. Large Hadron Collider Makes History, not Black Holes: http://inewp.com/?p=2119 /R

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Tyler's Observatory
by Patrick Wiggins 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

While speaking with Tyler this evening I discovered he's got his new observatory up and running (probably explains the weather... <g>). He said I could share the pictures. Here's where he's got them: http://www.allred-astro.com/gpage9.html Nice, patrick

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M-82
by Patrick Wiggins 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

I was between data taking projects tonight so I refocused the scope for the warmer temps that may finally be arriving. Once finished I shot five 30" test images of M-82 and stacked them. http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/M82.JPG I'm satisfied with the focus and I like the spiral arms and the detail near the core but wish I knew how to keep the core itself from burning out. patrick

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Tooele Valley Webelos Star Party for May 7th
by M Wilson 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

I recently saw on this newsgroup an invitation to anyone to help do a star party for a Webelos event in the Tooele Valley. Does anyone still have the name and e-mail address of the Scout leader in charge of that event? When that leader had originally contacted SLAS, thru me (board member in charge of club sponsored school star parties), I had to turn him down as I had already committed our club to another school oriented star party that same evening. I just received an e-mail from the school that we had committed the club's resources to, informing me that they had to canel their star party, thus freeing the evening up. Can anyone tell me who to contact so that I can make proper arrangements to committing our club to the Tooele event? Mike Wilson SLAS Board Member in Charge of School Star Parties

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Great Project that Some of us may want to try
by Project Pegasus 29 Mar '10

29 Mar '10

We have tried this on multiple occasions. We have launched balloons in Colorado, Utah, and Phoenix. We learned a lot of things from each flight. Yes the pictures are remarkable and so is the data you can get back. Our balloons have gone higher than 108,000 feet and brought pictures and data back. We also found out there was contest held by NASA to propose an experiment that you would like NASA take to Near Space on their balloon. There were four teams chosen nationally to go back to NASA in May to send their experiment on the NASA balloon; and compete against the other 3 teams chosen (all east coast teams).Our team based on a group of four high school students (from Stansbury high) and the advisors(myself, Mihir, Larry) was chosen and will be traveling back to NASA in May to compete against 3 other teams that were chosen to what NASA calls "Flight Days". All four teams will be judged on who comes up with the best experiment and conclusion. I recently found out there is less moisture in the stratosphere than previously thought. This is leading to why the earth is not heating as fast as people expected. So our experiment is to not only gather the moisture, temp, altitude along the flight but carry on an experiment that passes heat through the stratosphere moisture barrier and see how the results are and baseline them against historical data on the stratosphere and ground testing we will be doing beforehand. We are looking forward to the competition and are currently working with the High School students to get our experiment together. if anyone wants to do it, you can look at our site, or we would be glad to answer any questions. Our NASA team is called team Daedelus and our balloon team is called team pegasus. -- Jonathan & Mihir (Project Pegasus Team) http://sites.google.com/site/viewearthfromspace

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first sunspots spoted
by Gary Vardon 29 Mar '10

29 Mar '10

I spotted a couple of high altitude sunspots today. I have not seen any since 7/31/08. This is not to say that there were none just that I did not see them. My viewing was sporadic. Sincerely, Gary Vardon The book DO It Right will help you understand vital ideas leading to your greater success. GO to PublishAmerica.com Consulting For Profit is also available. Learn how to make money as a consultant.

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