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

Firefighting planes grounded by 'meteor shower'
by Patrick Wiggins 22 Jun '12

22 Jun '12

I wonder if this is for real. patrick Firefighting planes grounded by 'meteor shower' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2162067/Could-things-worse-Firefigh…

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Solar activity
by Chuck Hards 21 Jun '12

21 Jun '12

The sun is totally spotless today, at least at low and medium magnifications typical of the amateur arsenal. Those with higer-end gear may note some miniscule blemishes not seen at lower powers and resolution. YMMV. Figures, since SLAS has sun parties scheduled. "Look at the sun through safe, special telescopes! There's NOTHING to see but a blank disk!" LOL. Hopefully something will spring into life at any moment. Such is the life of an astronomical missionary (don't deny it. You know who you are). And the sun, *fortunately.* I did, however, watch a neat little loop prominence morph over a half hour or so, in the 7-o'clock position as seen through the PST on an alt-az tripod. Views through the white-light scope verified that there were absolutely NO sunspots visible, at least with a home-made refractor with 50mm aperture at 28X (16mm old-manufacture Japanese Erfle EP), using Baader filter material. The loop prominence morphed and changed during the 20 minutes or so that I watched it. There was also a small "spike" prominence visible, associated with the triple group that I posted about previously, but has now rotated beyond the solar limb. Kind of a wimpy solar max, if you ask me. At least today. Makes for dull sun parties, dammit, but those are the ones that bring out the club gossip, so all is not lost. ;-) That said, I'm still totally in-love with my PST. Probably one of the greatest astronomy products ever developed and sold to the mass-market. Even better since my ex-wife didn't get it, or demand via her lawyer that it be sold. Whew!

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Eclipse Romance
by Craig Smith 21 Jun '12

21 Jun '12

I just thought I'd share a story -- a co-worker of mine took his girlfriend to Bryce Canyon for the eclipse last month. At maximum eclipse he proposed to her, using the ring of fire as a lead-in to presenting her with the engagement ring. I thought it was pretty creative of him to make the connection. Those who helped at Bryce can take some credit for the happiness of this young couple! And yes, she accepted.

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Triple sunspot group
by Chuck Hards 21 Jun '12

21 Jun '12

The sun is currently fairly blemish-free, except for one group of three rather large individual spots. There's another group that will be rotating into view soon, you can just see it on the solar limb. I'm going to hurry and get out the PST before "Hell's Kitchen" and "Master Chef" come on. May have to abandon the "Big Bang Theory" re-run, lol. I've seen it already. But Gordon Ramsay is my preferred summer TV entertainment, par excellence. "Donkey!" lol. I dream of Beef Wellington...drool...but promises of prominences await... Just before the Venus transit, I replaced the Baader film on my home-made 50mm solar refractor. The film lasted some 12 years, and the biggest reason I replaced it was dust, not pinholes. Had I been more careful in my storage practices, the first film installation would still be in-use. Glad it's only a 50mm aperture and my big sheet of film didn't take much of a hit. I own several glass solar filters, by different manufacturers, including TO and Celestron. I used none of them for the eclipse or the transit. Baader film consistently gives the best visual views, IMHO. More detail, better contrast, and no fakey orange, green, or blue tints. The tints just reduce the contrast.

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Known planets drawn to scale.
by Daniel Holmes 20 Jun '12

20 Jun '12

XKCD today has the currently known planets drawn to scale: http://xkcd.com/1071/ Make sure you hover your mouse over the image to get the alt-text. It's an interesting factoid. Dan -- Daniel Holmes, danielh(a)holmesonics.com "Laugh while you can, monkey boy!" -- Lord John Whorfin

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NASA continues shuttle program
by Patrick Wiggins 19 Jun '12

19 Jun '12

http://www.oregonlive.com/comics-kingdom/?feature_id=Pardon_My_Planet&featu… Patrick. :) Sent from my iPad

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Lakeside tonight
by Joe Bauman 19 Jun '12

19 Jun '12

Hi all, I'm not trying to upstage Jay, but Lakeside is more convenient for me. I'm going there for just tonight -- it'd be awful to camp there and I don't want to miss the SLAS meeting tomorrow night. But if anyone would like to join me, welcome! Thanks, Joe

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Antares
by erikhansen＠thebluezone.net 19 Jun '12

19 Jun '12

The death of US manned space flight is fiction. http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/Publications/Antares_Fact.pdf This launch vehicle has 10 slated missions between 2012 and 2015 to the ISS. BTW, we currently have 6 Astronauts orbiting in a US Space Vehicle. Erik

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Vernon Tuesday and Wednesday
by Jay Eads 19 Jun '12

19 Jun '12

Conditions will be good tonight and all weather websites show outstanding conditions tomorrow for the solstice for observing. May be a short night but what a night you can put in for 5 or 6 hours of observing. I am heading out to the Vernon Reservoir area on Forest Road 006 in about an hour to hopefully camp out and observe the next two nights. If your available, especially on Wednesday or either night feel free to come out. I'll have a 5 man tent set up and room for one or two to sleep if they can put up with my snoring or my sleep apena mask that I hope to bring. I'll be at Forest Road 006 at one of the camping sites, hopefully the first one. If you don't go to Vernon get out the next two nights, or especially on Wednesday as I really believe weather and condition whys it will be a terrific night to observe. On Thursday and Friday look for Mercury to be right under Castor and Pollux with the waxing thin crescent moon above. Should make for a nice visual or image observation. -- Jay

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Fw: UVAA Activities
by Richard Tenney 19 Jun '12

19 Jun '12

Anyone on the list want to weigh in here? /R --- On Mon, 6/18/12, Dan Washburn <malvado(a)seds.org> wrote: From: Dan Washburn <malvado(a)seds.org> Subject: UVAA Activities To: retenney(a)yahoo.com Date: Monday, June 18, 2012, 5:37 PM Hello Richard, I see a little bit of activity on the UVAA mailing list but I wondered if there were any informal outings that are coming up. I live in Provo and I have wanted to get involved in some amateur astronomy projects, like learning how to tracking variable stars. Can you recommend anyone that could mentor around that? Thanks, Dan Washburn

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