Rainwater E-News 5/4/08
FINDING WATER ON MARS: THE PHOENIX MISSION
The next public program meeting of the Rainwater Astronomical Association will be May 9 at 7:00 pm. The presentation will focus on the Phoenix mission that will be landing on Mars May 25. To get more information on the mission go to http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/ Our May 9 program will look at preparation for the launch, the cruise to Mars, and the seven minutes of anticipation during the entry, descent, and landing. Teachers might want to encourage science students to come learn about the process of getting a spacecraft safely to another planet. The picnic pavilion is available if you want to come early and have a picnic. Weather permitting we’ll have a chance to observe Mars and Saturn after the talk as well as some galaxies and star clusters.
COMING EVENTS The web site calendar is now working
Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, Jackson: June 6, Tell Jim if you can bring a telescope.
Astronomy for Teachers: June 8-13 at Rainwater. 3 semester hours credit. www.outreach.olemiss.edu/teachers 662-915-7621 for info.
Next year’s Mid-South Star Gaze: April 22-25, 2009
NEWS FROM THE HILL
The Sangre telescope is a month old and the learning curve for using it is taking a while. If you are interested in becoming an operator, please let us know. One of the grants we are applying for will be to have a weekend workshop next fall for people to learn how to operate the facility and use it for education and research.
We are contacting people who have offered to become part of a “Friends of Rainwater” support group. The plan is to enhance the facilities by adding some gravel RV pads with water and electrical hookups and building a couple of bunk cabins. The group will also help in building financial support and letting people know about our work by arranging field trips for groups and setting up programs for civic groups away from our site. We will need your help to bring all this to reality. Contact us if you would like to be a part of this visionary venture.
It looks like the school is going to put higher speed internet to the new dormitory across the creek this summer and we could be able to tap into it and bring it to the Sangre facility. From there we will be able to use the already laid fiber optic cable to bring it to the classroom and set up a repeater to allow the hilltop to be an internet “hot spot”. We’ll have to pay for the switchers and repeaters ourselves.
Finally, we are looking for someone to work into a position at the observatory. The opportunities for Rainwater becoming a regional center for astronomy education and research are great, but without more staffing and help we are an “underutilized asset”. Contact us if you’re interested or if you know someone who might be.
ASTRO NEWS: If you have info or links you’d like to share, let us know.
MERCURY AND THE MOON: Innermost planet Mercury is emerging from the glare of the sun and putting on its best show of the year. A good time to look is Tuesday evening, May 6th, just after sunset when the crescent Moon glides by Mercury in the darkening western sky. A sky map and photos are available at http://spaceweather.com.
BIG GALAXIES IN SMALL SPACES
Modified from http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0811.html
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered young, surprisingly compact galaxies, each only 5,000 light-years across, but weighing 200 billion times the mass of the Sun--about the mass of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers looking at distant galaxies found nine young, compact galaxies, a fraction of the size of today's grownup galaxies but containing approximately the same number of stars. Each galaxy could fit inside the central hub of our Milky Way Galaxy. Other galaxies previously seen at similar distances were also small but contained far fewer stars.
DEALING WITH MOON HOAX FOLKS There are many web sites debunking moon landing conspiracies and the Bad Astronomy site is an OK one, but the site that stands head and shoulders above the rest is Clavius Moonbase : http://www.clavius.org/
If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of the technical details behind moon hoax claims and why they are wrong, there is no better site. It is maintained by someone who has a real background in the relevant area - aerospace engineering. The site's author was also prominently featured on National Geographic's show on the moon landing "Conspiracy" as part of their"Is It Real?" series.
NEW HORIZONS STILL CRUISING TOWARD PLUTO
Their spacecraft is cruising through a long stretch of electronic slumber, but New Horizons team members are anything but quiescent. Planning for the Pluto encounter is in full swing, writes Principal Investigator Alan Stern, and a full range of spacecraft system checks and tests are on tap for later this month. Click for the full story http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/piPerspectives/piPerspective_current.php.
GLOBULAR CLUSTERS MAY BE LESS EVOLVED THAN THOUGHT http://www.universetoday.com:80/2008/04/28/globular-clusters-are-less-evolved-than-astronomers-thought/
EARTH’S CITIES AT NIGHT http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/28/the-earths-cities-at-night/ check out these scary images
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