February 2013 - Utah-Astronomy - mailman.xmission.com

Frontiers of Science tomorrow (plus Mayan & Bernson)
by Wiggins Patrick 14 Nov '13

14 Nov '13

Frontiers of Science talk tomorrow (Thursday) https://www.facebook.com/events/106708762820137/ Evidence that the Mayan calendar does not end this year: http://www.zazzle.com/the_2013_mayan_calendar-158713461120501542 And now we know where Dave Bernson arrived on Earth: http://nationexplorer.com/feature/1448512 Clear skies! patrick Sent from my iPad

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Utah Star Party
by Jay Eads 01 Apr '13

01 Apr '13

Daniel hit the nail on the head. Bryce, Great Basin are wonderful events but the emphasis is on outreach to the public. This is to be in the vein of the Texas Star Party or The Golden Gate Star Party or the Oregon Star Party. This is a place for amateurs to gather, to share views together and to spend the nights observing together. The goal is to start small and build the tradition over time. The nearest Star Party like this is either the Golden Gate Star Party that I am aware of. You can see in this link (copy and paste it) from the Golden Gate Star Party site the quality of the dark areas of the skies where they observe from. We have that in northern Utah and in southern Utah. There are also good sites that the US Forest Service is willing to work with us on using. I also have land that I have purchased for my family's recreational use and also primarily for observing. I don't think I'll have that ready though until 2014 for something like this. http://www.goldenstatestarparty.org/home/comparing-dark-skies If someone doesn't want to go, with Bryce and Great Basin being enough for them, great, no problem. This isn't meant to take the place of these events. It is to be a private star party that people register for, attend and observe for four or so nights up here in northern Utah. I believe we can pull in people from Nevada, some from southern Idaho, northern Utah, central and southern Utah perhaps and maybe even other neighboring states. In the end, even if only some of us go, that is just fine. However, it is time I believe for Utah to have its own Star Party that is private for amateurs to attend in addition to all the public outreach that is done by the many amateurs in the state from various clubs. Hopefully over time Utah can add to the star party traditions like Golden Gate, Texas Star Part,y, Oregon, Mount Baker, the Nebraska Star Party etc. If your interested in helping organizing it let me know.

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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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2012 DA14 parallax demonstration
by Patrick Wiggins 01 Mar '13

01 Mar '13

I recently posted a request on the Minor Planet Mailing List asking to hear from anyone who happened to be imaging 2012 DA14 at the same time I was. My hope was to find a picture taken at the same time as one of mine and to use the two images to show the effects of parallax. Happily a guy who had been using the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope in Arizona that night to shoot 2012 DA14 replied and we were able to determine that one of his many images had been taken within half a second of one of mine. The FOV of his image was smaller than mine so I had to do a bit of Photoshopping to align the two and then add a third image taken from the STScI Digitized Sky Survey to show context. I thought that since there is about 800 km between our two sites and 2012 DA14 was still pretty close (~210,000 km) I'd see some parallax but was actually surprised at how much: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=68&g2_page=8 Clear skies, patrick

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Possible Mars comet collion 2014
by D P Pierce 01 Mar '13

01 Mar '13

http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/26/17107085-comet-just-might-hit-m… Wow! Deloy

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Spica graze tonight
by Chuck Hards 28 Feb '13

28 Feb '13

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/The-Moon-Meets-and-Hides-Spic… We're too far north to see an occultaion, but it's going to be a VERY close graze.

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Possible Mars Comet Collision in 2014
by jcarman6＠q.com 28 Feb '13

28 Feb '13

The article should keep the meters/miles people on this board very happy. We might have ISOM in November and then we might have this one in 2014 (I'm hoping for an impact - that would be sweet). Well, comets don't always live up to the hype - but we can hope.

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2012 DA14 Time-Lapse Video
by Ed 28 Feb '13

28 Feb '13

Has anyone found anything similar to this? Near-Earth Asteroid 2012 DA14 Captured in a Time-lapse Video http://www.petapixel.com/2013/02/20/near-earth-asteroid-2012-da14-captured-… Ed

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] 2012 DA14 parallax demonstration
by Joe Bauman 27 Feb '13

27 Feb '13

Cool! And how is our friend Rob? I haven't heard from him in a while. ------------------------------ On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 9:38 PM MST Patrick Wiggins wrote: >Howdy, > >On 27 Feb 2013, at 15:55, William Lockman wrote: > >> Great demonstration. > >Thanks. It was a fun experiment to run. > >> if 210,000 miles... > >Actually it was 210,000 km. :) > >> presents such dramatic parallax at 800 km camera locations, then you could regularly get parallax demonstrating photos by contacting out of state friends and arranging to image the moon at the same time. > >Folks that have been on the list a long time might remember that I did just that a few years ago with list member Rob on Maui. > >We coordinated efforts and shot images of the Moon both here and there at the exact time time. > >I could have sworn I'd posted the images on the SLAS Gallery but I just checked and saw they were not there. But I did find them on my server. Have a look. > >Here with the Utah image on the left and the Hawaii image on the right. >http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/stereo/uh.jpg > >Here with the Hawaii image on the left and the Utah image on the right. >http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/stereo/hu.jpg > >And here with both sets together. >http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/stereo/uhhu.jpg > >Now that it's clouded over, I may just finally get around to posting them to the SLAS Gallery. > >Clear skies, > >patrick >_______________________________________________ >Utah-Astronomy mailing list >http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy > >Send messages to the list to >Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com > >The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club. > >To unsubscribe go to: >http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy >Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options".

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ISON this evening, 2013 FEB 28
by Patrick Wiggins 27 Feb '13

27 Feb '13

Here's tonight's ISON pair. I had a comment about the arrows I had been inserting into the images were causing problems. So I've stopped putting them in figuring that by now most folks will know to look in the exact center for a tiny, fuzzy smudge that moves between images. http://users.wirelessbeehive.com/~paw/temp/C_2012_S1.2013FEB28.JPG It'll be nice when the smudges becomes something other than a smudge. patrick

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