January 2012 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

A rare night
by Patrick Wiggins 18 Jan '12

18 Jan '12

What a night! 10 hours of telescope time, over 300 galaxies checked for SN (saw 2 known SN but none new), followed up on a newly discovered Near Earth Object, nice view of Comet Garradd (no tail seen) and all with beautifully crisp, clear skies, no equipment malfunctions and no frost on the corrector (despite the -14 reading on my outside thermometer just now as I'm closing up). I'm going to bed this morning with a smile on my face but I'm guessing the next few nights are not going to be as nice. patrick :) BTW, for the techies on the list, one of the aviation groups I hang out with is having a talk this evening (Tuesday) on the GPS system, preceded by what SLAS would call an "ATS" except in this case the sponsor is picking up the tab. Let me know off list if you'd like details. Hey, it just occurred to me that it will be held out by where Barrett keeps his new meteor finding toy. I wonder if he'd show it off... :)

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Comic
by D P Pierce 17 Jan '12

17 Jan '12

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/comics/Bizarro.dtl Deloy

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jupiter's moons
by Gary Vardon 17 Jan '12

17 Jan '12

I used a computer program called Jovian 1 to plot the positions of Jupiter's moons. I compared it to Sky and Telescope's plotting of Jupiter's moons. They agreed. Jovian 1 is an old DOS program on a 5.25 inch floppy. Jupiter 1 is old but still works.j 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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Observing Jan. 13th 2013 Blog and Sketches Posted
by Jay Eads 16 Jan '12

16 Jan '12

Just in case anyone wants to know. I posted the six sketches I did at FR006 from Friday night, the 13th. Man, I wish the weather would go back to clear for new moon! I think Mat and I have figured out that it was a Great Horn owlet calling for food that we heard. The parent brought the food and then we saw it fly off. There must a nest there and I read online they do nest in January and February and perhaps got started early because of the mild winter so far? http://jaysastronomyobservingblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/observing-session-fr… -- Jay Eads

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Forest Road 006 South of Vernon
by Jay Eads 16 Jan '12

16 Jan '12

Directions are located on my astronomy blog located at http://jaysastronomyobservingblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/directions-to-south-… They are also sticked to my blog at the Astronomy in Utah forum (another reason a local forum is nice, one can sticky things so they don't disappear). http://astronomyinutah.forumer.com/driving-directions-to-forest-road-006-si… If you want to see it on Google Docs and zoom in then go here: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=211755030117194028721.00049324662bf653d… It is FR006 Site 1 on the left side. On 2012-01-16 15:45, Julie Clyde wrote: > How about directions?!

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FW: Smart Kid That We Are Sure To Hear More From In The Future! (Link on Last email didn't work)
by Rodger C. Fry 16 Jan '12

16 Jan '12

I am resending this because the way it formatted the hyperlink on the last email it didn't work. Sorry, Rodger C. Fry From: Rodger C. Fry [mailto:rcfry@comcast.net] Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2012 8:46 PM To: utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com Subject: Smart Kid That We Are Sure To Hear More From In The Future! All, I don't know if any of you watched 60-minutes tonight but they had a story of a 12-year old boy (Jake Barnett) who is attending Purdue University Indianapolis. He is absolutely off the scale smart. Follow this link and you might find it interesting: http://tetrahedral.blogspot.com/2011/03/jacob-barnett-astromathephysical-chi ld.html I am going to watch for him in professional astronomical publication in the near future. Rodger C. Fry

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Forest Road 006 South of Vernon
by Jay Eads 16 Jan '12

16 Jan '12

Just wanted to give a quick update on our night at Forest Road 006 Observing Site 1 which is south of Vernon. First off using the Mesonet the temperature at the site stayed in the low 20's during our observing time from 6:00p.m. until 12:00a.m. Humidity never got above 42% (once at 45% for 15min). Pit n Pole started at 24 degrees and did a free fall to 3 degrees by 12:00a.m. Humidity started in the low 40% and ended up at 65% at 12:00a.m. Lakeside by comparison started at 31 degrees F at 6:00p.m. and went to 24 degrees F (so basically the same as Vernon) while the humidity levels started at 41% and went up to 70% by 12:00a.m. The Vernon site is about 65 miles from my home in Herriman, 22.1 miles farther out than Pit n Pole. It took an hour and a half to drive it because of the rough road after Pit n Pole on the Pony Express and the 6 mile dirt road drive out to the site in the National Forest. The site has a layer of grass and both Mat and I commented that we didn't need our mats to lay down at the site. I came home with no dust! I'll be doing a blog entry on the objects I observed and sketched but I got 13 new objects off the NGC in, mainly consisted of emission, reflection, open clusters and galaxies in Orion. I also saw the IC supernova remnant in Gemini. I then spent time looking at some eye candy. The site is dark, much darker than Pit n Pole (SQM reading of 21.4 at the Pit which is my best on record vs 21.8 at Lakeside vs 22.2/22.3 at this site). There is some slight lights to the north from Vernon but they are like the Freeway lights to the southwest at Lakeside and with the car or junipers blocking the path, they are of no impact. Seeing conditions were just fantastic starting at an Antoniadi II and moving to an Antoniadi I. At one point we watched Sirius be still and only had a very slight twinkle about every 3-5 seconds. We focused on deep sky stuff til the moon came up around 10:50p.m. and then spent an hour or so on open clusters. There was a lot of meteor activity and they were all large and very bright. One that I saw actually faded into orange. Finally, Mat was eating/drinking some tomato soup he had brought and we were talking when I heard a sound. I asked if that was Mat. Yep and we continued. The sound kept going on and it was a very interesting sound. Mat heard it and it kept coming. So I flashed a light down by the road and Mat had me shine it in one of the Juniper trees and a very large owl flew out. I guess the owl didn't like what we were doing and was letting us know. Wish I knew what type it was. After packing up and then looking at another possible site, Mat noticed that the clouds came flying in so as we left, it was a very good thing. Probably one of the best nights I've had in six months and we never needed the heaters or my dew equipment. I will say this, Pit n Pole is done for me. I'll drive another 30 minutes to have the darkness I had last night, and only one truck came up the forest road which is over 3/4 of a mile away and no one was out there shooting things up! It was one of the quietest places I've observed and very peaceful. Even the Milky Way was extremely visible with structure while we had white lights on to set up. Shut off the lights, WOW! -- Jay Eads

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Smart Kid That We Are Sure To Hear More From In The Future!
by Rodger C. Fry 15 Jan '12

15 Jan '12

All, I don't know if any of you watched 60-minutes tonight but they had a story of a 12-year old boy (Jake Barnett) who is attending Purdue University Indianapolis. He is absolutely off the scale smart. Follow this link and you might find it interesting: http://tetrahedral.blogspot.com/2011/03/jacob-barnett-astromathephysical-chi ld.html I am going to watch for him in professional astronomical publication in the near future. Rodger C. Fry

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Observing Tonight south of Vernon
by Jay Eads 15 Jan '12

15 Jan '12

Mat and I are going to either site 1 or site 2 on Forest Road 006 as seen on my blog: http://jaysastronomyobservingblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/vernon-reservoir-and… Were leaving the Herriman area at 5:00p.m. so won't get out there until 6:15p.m. or so. Moon will come up around 11:00p.m. so we can get 4 hours of observing. Temperatures are cold, very cold around 0 degrees F to 5 degrees F but humidity there is around 50%, lowest of all sites. If you want to join us feel free to let me know and you can meet us in Lehi or out at the LDS Church Parking Lot in Cedar Fort which is right off the Highway 73. If you want to find the locations we'll be at FR 006 Observing Site 1 or 2. Here is my Google Map with the sites: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=211755030117194028721.00049324662bf653d… I'll have my propane heater so if you get cold you can get warm, and I'm sure Mat will bring his. -- Jay Eads

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check this
by WAYNE S CLARKE 14 Jan '12

14 Jan '12

<b><span style="font-size: 27pt;"> <a alt="zrsnl4ywwnl601w6qbo gre0xq9vfk82oq2pj7ba 879xzjhhc2j1zepkh53d" id="50e9mctry856gaztwdh 0siyhtcv9llx9x5ooi4n" href="1l6mt35juavezo.l91.me/sc_utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com/q3lb yw4xrbiupt5l18celt_ViewMsg" > Click here to see the attached video</a>

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