June 2011 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Lakeside
by Michael Vanopstall 23 Jun '11

23 Jun '11

Debbie -- No, it was NGC 6723 (actually in Sagittarius, but closest stars to figure from are in Corona Australis). This is a very easy one. It must have been just a bit to southerly for Messier. There's a bunch of good stuff nearby. I like the look of 6541. I wish I had looked in my atlas yesterday. It should be barely doable from Utah at about 2:00 am these days. Also, maybe it's neighbor glob 6388 would be reasonable. Low, though. ---- Rev. Michael A. van Opstall Department of Mathematics, University of Utah Office: JWB 313 opstall(a)math.utah.edu

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Spaceflight
by Joe Bauman 23 Jun '11

23 Jun '11

Utah and the nation may be back in the crewed spaceflight business! http://www.deseretnews.com/blog/47/10012026/Nightly-news-astronomy-Great-Ne…

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SN 2011dh leveling off at 12.5 mags
by Canopus56 22 Jun '11

22 Jun '11

The AAVSO light curve and recent observations table is showing the M51 supernova leveling off at V 12.5 mags after a slow three week rise in brightness. Clear Skies - Kurt

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Celestron Edge HD
by Debbie 21 Jun '11

21 Jun '11

Has anybody looked through one of these? I wondered how doubles would look through this telescope? I think globulars would look good. It seems like 8 inches is the minimum aperature to resolve globulars. Any thoughts about this scope? Debbie

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joining the group
by Wayne Sumner 21 Jun '11

21 Jun '11

Hi Patrick, I have a friend who would like to join the utah-astronomy group. How does one go about joining? Wayne A. Sumner Math/Physics/Astronomy/Engineering Boy's Tennis Coach Northridge High School Davis School District (801) 402-8610

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Miller Megaplex leader
by Canopus56 21 Jun '11

21 Jun '11

Congrats to Rodger Fry and all for arranging the publicity op for the public service leader to be shown at Larry Miller Megaplex theaters. It was very professionally done. The SPOC part is towards the end around minute 3:00. Clear Skies - Kurt

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Neptune one orbit later
by Patrick Wiggins 21 Jun '11

21 Jun '11

According to S&T 12 July marks one Neptunian year since its discovery in 1846. Seems like a good time to see it so to that end I've reserved SPOC's refractor. Neptune will not rise that night until about midnight so in order to see it on the 12th I've reserved the scope for the morning of the 12th from 00:01 to 01:00. Open to all. Y'all come! patrick

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Observing Earth from Space
by William Lockman 20 Jun '11

20 Jun '11

I sent Patrick a jpg I made from Google Earth showing a fairly straight line of fires that suddenly appeared yesterday morning. He might post it so all here can see it. This is what I wrote to Patrick in the email to which I attached the JPG: "I don't know if you remember me or not. Back in the late 80's I was a member of SLAS. Now I live in Morenci, Arizona. I've been keeping a pretty close eye on the Wallow fire because there is a slight possibility that it could end up coming down here to threaten Morenci. I've been using the U. S. Forest GOES fire detection system data that can be overlain on Google Earth. So yesterday morning, I opened Google Earth to check the Wallow Fire situation. I noticed a distinct line of fires, that started just north of I 10 near Wilcox AZ and ended up over in Texas. In the attachment, I drew a path to make it easier to see what I'm talking about. You can overlay the data on Google Earth yourself to see that the dots are really there. Just go to: http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/googleearth.php?sensor=goes&extent=conus <http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/googleearth.php?sensor=goes&extent=conus> and select the GOES button then down in the KML box, next to fire detections, Current. It takes a little while to overlay Google Earth. After about 6 days the dots will disappear from the data. Since the line is something like 560 miles long and the dots appeared close enough in time together that they have changed color from red to orange to yellow at the same times, the dots had to have appeared within about 15 minutes of each other. The only things I think could cause this was if the satellite interpreted a fireball passage or space junk re entry as fires. What do you think? I decided to send the attachment to you because they don't like people attaching things to Utah Astronomy posts, but you have the capability of posting it somewhere to which you can put a link in a Utah Astronomy post." Then I thought I should post this here, in case there are some other minds that want to ponder what made the path of fires.

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Alcon writeup in sltrib.
by Daniel Holmes 20 Jun '11

20 Jun '11

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52019765-78/bryce-canyon-park-national.ht… Good article. Dan -- Sent from my Incredible. Please excuse any mispelings or errors.

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Ride from SLC to Bryce and Back - ALCON
by Robert L. Taylor 20 Jun '11

20 Jun '11

We have gotten couple of requests for rides from SLC to Bryce from people coming in from out of state. Here is one from a guy from St. Louis who needs a ride and is flexible and is willing to throw in gas money but he can't afford to rent a car. He's looking for Wed- Sun but is flexible. He will have a backpack and a small refractor (4") as luggage so he doesn't need a lot of room. If you can help and have a seat in your car, van or truck you can make available please respond directly to him, his name Grant Martin, his e-mail and phone number are below. Unfortunately I won't have room otherwise I would. Please see below and thanks, hopefully someone can help him out. Bob > My name is Grant Martin and I am a member of the St Louis Astronomical > Society (SLAS). I would dearly love to attend the ALCON convention but I > am having trouble lining up transportation from Salt Lake city to Bryce > canyon and back. > > I am on a very tight budget so a single car rental is out of the question. > Can you advise of any regular low cost round trip transportation options > to and from the event if they exist? I would also be more than willing to > pay reasonable fuel costs (and a bit extra) if I could catch a ride with a > club member who may be attending all days. > > I have not registered with ALCON yet (they have not responded to my > questions and so I have missed the 17 June star-B-Que banquet registration > deadlines) nor have I purchased airline tickets yet so time is running > short. > > Thank you very much in advance - Grant Martin > > gmartin(a)slasonline.org > www.slasonline.org > cell: 636 634 6607

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