March 2010 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

SPOC tonight (Friday) and maybe tomorrow
by Patrick Wiggins 12 Mar '10

12 Mar '10

Weather permitting SLAS will be hosting Messier Marathons at SPOC tonight, tomorrow night and next weekend. The weather looks much better for tonight than tomorrow. There will be training going on with the Grim early on but instructor Mark Bloomenthal told me folks will be welcome to look through the scope even during training. The scope's 80cm (32") primary mirror has just been cleaned so views should be even better than before. I'll have the refractor open tonight and Mark thinks others will have the Ealing open. Several portable scopes are expected to be set up on the grounds. At least three people have said they're bringing tents and plan on staying all night. Note that this is a private event for SLAS members and invited guests (which means if you're not a SLAS member email me and I'll invite you... <g>). patrick

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Pit n Pole Conditions Weather and Dirt
by JayLEads 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

Hey Joe, We are going out tomorrow, Friday the 12th. It is a SLAS event (and at SPOC). It is also scheduled for the 13th but weather isn't looking to good for Saturday. On 2010-03-12 03:50, Joe Bauman wrote: > Sorry I missed this earlier, Jay, but what day is your gang going out? Thanks, Joe > > > > > > > At Pit n Pole I show a temp. of 31 degrees with a dew point down to around 19 degrees with relative humidity at around 63%. I am not worried about Dew in this location like I was earlier this week. BTW, no mud and my 2005 Altima was perfect out at the site, no sinking not even a tire mark. Plenty of bugs at dusk on the road though. > > In terms of the ground I have taken pictures and will upload them later to my SLAS site, say by 10:00p.m. in case any one wants to look at the actual dirt conditions. Ground is hard, not soft, and I use a pick and my shoe to get down a couple of inches and no mud is there. There are ruts. When you turn off the gravel road and turn right to head to the pole the ruts there from ATV's in the mud from earlier this winter are large so go slow at that point. Around the pit there is more than enough room for many people and skies were pretty decent tonight (sans the high winds aloft). Nice and very dark which is good. Estimate (and others please correct) it as a Class 3 on the Bortle Scale. > > Cold? Yes, dress for winter observing remember to layer and layer and layer again. I will be wearing long underwear, a long tee shirt tucked into my longjohn bottoms, a wool pair of pants, a warm long sleeve fleece shirt, a pair of sweat pants, a fleece like sweater, snow pants, a hoody sweatshirt, and my winter coat. Then neo mittens and gloves with holes on the end for my fingers and thumb to still work; a pair of nylon type socks (forget the actual name, they absorb moisture really well) and over them a pair of wool socks. > > I may not be able to be at the LDS Church at Cove Fort at 4:30p.m. tomorrow. I am in training and thought I'd be done by 3:00 by I don't get out til 3:30p.m. so that puts me to Cove Fort between 5:00p.m. and 5:30p.m. I am meeting someone at the Maverick in Bluffdale so if someone wants to meet there and follow us that is fine. The GPS coordinates are available on the Utah Astronomers Observing List that Canopus/Kurt put out. I'll check here tomorrow when I get home around 4:00p.m. in case anyone wants to meet up at either the Maverick or meet me at the LDS Church Parking Lot at Cove Fort. > > > >

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Pit n Pole Conditions Weather and Dirt
by JayLEads 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

At Pit n Pole I show a temp. of 31 degrees with a dew point down to around 19 degrees with relative humidity at around 63%. I am not worried about Dew in this location like I was earlier this week. BTW, no mud and my 2005 Altima was perfect out at the site, no sinking not even a tire mark. Plenty of bugs at dusk on the road though. In terms of the ground I have taken pictures and will upload them later to my SLAS site, say by 10:00p.m. in case any one wants to look at the actual dirt conditions. Ground is hard, not soft, and I use a pick and my shoe to get down a couple of inches and no mud is there. There are ruts. When you turn off the gravel road and turn right to head to the pole the ruts there from ATV's in the mud from earlier this winter are large so go slow at that point. Around the pit there is more than enough room for many people and skies were pretty decent tonight (sans the high winds aloft). Nice and very dark which is good. Estimate (and others please correct) it as a Class 3 on the Bortle Scale. Cold? Yes, dress for winter observing remember to layer and layer and layer again. I will be wearing long underwear, a long tee shirt tucked into my longjohn bottoms, a wool pair of pants, a warm long sleeve fleece shirt, a pair of sweat pants, a fleece like sweater, snow pants, a hoody sweatshirt, and my winter coat. Then neo mittens and gloves with holes on the end for my fingers and thumb to still work; a pair of nylon type socks (forget the actual name, they absorb moisture really well) and over them a pair of wool socks. I may not be able to be at the LDS Church at Cove Fort at 4:30p.m. tomorrow. I am in training and thought I'd be done by 3:00 by I don't get out til 3:30p.m. so that puts me to Cove Fort between 5:00p.m. and 5:30p.m. I am meeting someone at the Maverick in Bluffdale so if someone wants to meet there and follow us that is fine. The GPS coordinates are available on the Utah Astronomers Observing List that Canopus/Kurt put out. I'll check here tomorrow when I get home around 4:00p.m. in case anyone wants to meet up at either the Maverick or meet me at the LDS Church Parking Lot at Cove Fort.

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Directions to Pit N Pole for non-SL Valley folks
by JayLEads 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

forgive my typing, I am on my way to Pit n Pole and will take pictures and report on conditions of the soil. Jay On 2010-03-11 20:29, Brent Johnson wrote: > > First of all, want to thank those that have made available the site, and given directions to Pit N Pole. I live in Tooele and have never been to PNP. Dont' think I want to drive to Lehi and follow the directions. Are there any directions to the location from the Tooele side? I am guessing it is close to the Utah Rocketry Club launch site (for those of you that are real Space Cadets :)

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Directions to Pit N Pole for non-SL Valley folks
by Canopus56 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

Brent asked: > I live in Tooele and have never been to PNP. . . . Are there any directions to the location from the Tooele side? Utah Amateur Astronomy Observing Sites C56 (a Google map) http://tinyurl.com/yfykfjc Scroll down to "Pit N Pole Rush Valley Obs Site" in the list on the lefthand side. Clicking on the title will center the Google map on the site. GPS coordinates are included. The Google "drive to-from" feature can be used to generate written driving directions. The "satellite" map display is helpful for these undeveloped areas. Clear Skies - Kurt

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Very Interesting Space Station Graphic
by Robert Taylor 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

Apologies in advance if this has been on the board before. I though this was interesting. http://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm Bob

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Where to buy large astronomy photos or posters
by Ann Blanchard 11 Mar '10

11 Mar '10

I'd love to get a large poster or photo of, perhaps, the Andromeda galaxy to hang in my living room. By large I'm thinking around 32 x 24 or larger. I realize that the more the picture gets enlarged, the less sharp it can be, so I wonder if any of you folks have ideas where to look. I'll try the Clark Planetarium (they said they don't have many) and I found a site on the web, allposters.com, that looks good, but I don't know how they would actually turn out to be . Any suggestions?

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Patrick's asteroid movie
by Canopus56 09 Mar '10

09 Mar '10

(X-posted to the DN blog). For me there are several main take-away points: 1) It continues to amaze me that Patrick can photograph a grey colored the size of a school bus at 122,000 miles. 2) More recent modeling of the 1908 Tungska airblast reduces estimates of the blast size from 20 Megatons to between 3 to 5 Megatons and can occur on the scale of several hundred years. Even these relatively smaller blasts can have ground effects. 3) Mortality models for a repeat of a Tungska like event take into consideration recent disasters, e.g. the Indonesian tsunami. Past discussions have centered around a scenario of Tungska-like airburst over land. More recent thinking, reflected in the NAS report, center on a 3 to 5 megaton airburst over water - the blast wave of which reaches the surface of the ocean and generates a tsunami. Because of higher population levels near coastlines (compared to 1908), such a tsunami would, although relatively small in size, would wash ashore and drown about 9,100 people once every 100 years. 4) The comparision of the estimates for risk of death by shark (3 to 5 people every 1) or death by asteriod (91 per year) to death by automobile (+1 million per year) is not properly equivocable. Two the estimates are infrequent by daily ordinary incidents. The third is a castrophic event. The above info may be useful for responding to "death from above" questions at this year's star parties. Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait's 2008 book - Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End - looks like a good entertaining read on this topic, but I haven't bought a copy.. Clear Skies - Kurt National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences. Jan. 23, 2010. Press Release on Issuing of Final Report titled "Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies" at pages 19-20. ----------------- Our understanding of the immediate damage produced by land impacts capable of producing craters is reasonably mature because their effects are constrained by nuclear weapon tests as well as craters on planetary surfaces. For airbursts, however, a lot of work is needed to improve our understanding of their consequences. For example, many groups have studied the 1908 Tunguska blast. Using insights from nuclear blast data as well as seismograms and barograph records of the Tunguska event, scientists estimated that the height of the explosion was about 10 km and that the energy yield was 10 to 20 MT (Chyba et al., 1993). According to the new estimate of size distribution made by Harris (2009), the average interval between such events on Earth would be on the order of one every 2,000 years. Work by Boslough and Crawford (1997; 2008), however, indicates that a much lower yield could produce the same effects. They found that asteroid airbursts do not act like point explosions in the sky (e.g., like a nuclear bomb explosion) but instead are more analogous to explosions along the line of descent. In an airburst, kinetic energy (see Appendix E) is deposited along the entry path, with significant downward momentum transferred to the ground. Accordingly, they suggest that smaller explosions with net yields of 3 to 5 MT may be sufficient to produce Tunguska-like impact events. If true, the average interval between Tunguska-like events using the Harris (2009) size distribution (see Figure 2.4) would be on the order of a few hundred years. These results would increase the calculated hazard from smaller objects, perhaps as small as 30 meters or so. Further research is needed to better characterize this threat. -----------------

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Talk by Dr. Garik Israelian on Spectrolscology to find Earth Like Planets
by JayLEads 09 Mar '10

09 Mar '10

Got this in an email today and thought it was quite fascinating. Dr. Garik Israelian a spectroscopist discusses his profession, solar flares from stars just like our sun that are massive, and the search for earth like planets using the science of spectroscopy. You can find the talk in either link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPLGuwXomYQ http://www.oneminuteastronomer.com/2010/03/09/spectroscopy-detect-life/ Hope others enjoy it like I did.

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large space pictures
by RON VANDERHULE 09 Mar '10

09 Mar '10

Hi , Go to www.muralsyourway.com<http://www.muralsyourway.com/> and type in "outer space" in the search area. Ron

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