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EYEPIECE Journal of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York
September 2012 Volume 61 Number 9 ISSN 0146-7662
Lynn Helen Darsh, president of the
Amateur Astronomers Association from
1992 to 2002 and a guiding force in the
club’s deliberations and growth for more
than 30 years, died August 23 at St. Luke’s-
Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan following
a valiant battle with lymphoma. She was
61.
Many years ago, while lying on her
back on a friend’s boat in Long Island Sound, Lynn saw a sky
awash in stars, and decided to learn more about astronomy. After joining the club, she was mentored by two of its giants,
John Marshall and Fred Hess, and joined the board in 1979.
She eventually succeeded Hess as president.
A native of Waterbury, CT, Lynn grew up in nearby Wa-
tertown. She graduated from Cornell University in 1973 as a
College Scholar, a prestigious honor. After four years with the
New York City Department of Social Services, Lynn joined
Chemical Bank and, after 25 years with major New York
banks, closed her career as a vice president in information
technology at JP Morgan Chase. In 1989, she juggled her work
with receiving a master’s in business administration from Co-
lumbia University.
A major AAA activity launched during Lynn’s presi-
dency, in 1995, was Urban Starfest at the Central Park Sheep
Meadow. Each fall, amateurs and professionals gather with a myriad of telescopes to show the public the night sky. Having
successfully put together four nights of observing in the Sheep
Meadow when Shoemaker-Levy whacked Jupiter in 1994,
Lynn and other AAA members spearheaded the idea of Star-
fest, originally a joint effort by four organizations, now run by
the AAA and the Urban Park Rangers. It was the first official
city large-scale star party to take place in Central Park.
As Starfest has demonstrated, if you look up, you can
indeed see stars from the heart of the city. And that was a con-
stant subtext to Lynn’s activities as president. In a 1999 inter-
view with The New York Times for an article, “Stargazing De-
spite Bright Lights, Big City,” focusing on observing at Floyd
Bennett Field in Brooklyn, she said: “When you live in the
city, you can be blinded to the stars by all the lights, which is sad because the sky is spectacularly beautiful. When you go to
places like Floyd Bennett Field where there are very few
lights, you're still in the city, but you can see the stars and get a
whole new perspective on the universe.''
Lynn Darsh, Who Led the AAA for 10 Years, Dies at 61 By Dan Harrison
Lynn was a Renaissance woman. She was a mirror-and
telescope-maker, scuba diver and four-time Himalayas trekker.
She was knowledgeable and articulate on any number of sub-
jects, from science to literature, from art and music to politics,
from history to psychology, and she enjoyed escaping into the
world of science fiction. One of her favorite people was Jane
Austen, most of whose novels she read multiple times. In gen-eral, Lynn gulped down books at an astounding rate. She loved
good food, good conversation and travel. She was devoted to
her large, tight-knit family and to her friends. In short, Lynn
was a woman of unbounded intelligence and great good cheer.
AAA members were excited May 16 when Lynn, despite
the battle she was waging, came to the annual meeting, where
she was effusively greeted by all who knew her. Katherine
Avakian’s comment was typical of many:
“It was wonderful to see her with so much energy, talk-
ing animatedly and gesturing with her hands. So it was an es-
pecially cruel twist when, a few short months later, that impla-
cable foe, with whom she had been dueling so bravely and for
so long, finally claimed victory over her.”
“What can't be vanquished, however, are her major ef-
forts over the years to disseminate knowledge about astronomy
to the public through the AAA. And what is remembered most
by those whose lives she touched are her stellar qualities: her
strong character, sense of fairness and generous spirit.”
Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson said:
“People like Lynn Darsh are rare. She was the sum of so many
personal traits, any one of which the rest of us would aspire to reach. She was smart, dedicated and loyal. She was a leader.
She was courageous. And she always sought what was best for
others. Most importantly, to Lynn, the future was not some-
thing to hope for. It was something within our power to create.
I'll miss her, but the world may just miss her a bit more.”
AAA treasurer Tom Haeberle, who knew Darsh for 12
years, said that his “one big regret was not to have known her
longer. She was a good friend and my mentor regarding the
affairs of club. I was honored that she appointed me to the
board after Lee Baltin stepped down as financial secretary.
There are many things I will miss about Lynn: times shared at
observing sessions and newsletter mailings, or coffee klatsch-
ing at some nearby café. But what I will miss most is her
strength and leadership, and most of all her friendship.”
Eulogizing her sister at a funeral Mass August 28 at St. John the Evangelist Church in Watertown, Doreen Darsh noted Lynn Darsh— continued on Page 2
Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 Commander, Dies at Age 82 Story on Page 7
2
EYEPIECE September2012
Henry Stern honored Lynn with a Nom du Parc at a ceremony
at the Central Park Arsenal a few years ago. Her name will
forever be Andromeda.
On a personal note Lynn was instrumental in helping me find work at the Food Network. She had mentioned that a per-
son across the hall from her worked there and she handed off
my resume to that person. It took a while, but I landed the job
and worked there for five plus years. All thanks to Lynn for
putting two and two together.
For the last year or so, I made soup that I would deliver
to her when I felt it might cheer her up. On the day before she
died, I dropped off some coconut-corn-ginger soup. I thought
it might be an easy palliative for her. When I returned home
that night, I had the nicest message from Lynn thanking me.
Her voice was almost chirping with delight. I was so happy to
hear her in strong, good spirits. She said she would call me
“tomorrow.”
I was a little surprised when she didn’t call. But now I
know why. And I find it very hard to accept that Lynn’s life
was taken from her, and she from us, so quickly, and too soon.
I will keep her last message in my computer so I’ll be able to
hear her voice again when this sadness fades away. And when
I look into the heavens at night, I’ll hope she’ll somehow be
connected to my eyes, so we can observe together again. ■
Eyepiece, June 2011
AAA Gets Update on Kepler Search
for Earthlike Exoplanets
By Lynn Darsh
“Is Earth unique?” The Kepler Space Telescope’s mis-
sion is to find the answer, according to Dr. Andrea K. Dupree, senior astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Obser-
vatory, part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophys-
ics in Cambridge, Mass. Speaking on “Searching for Exoplan-
ets with Kepler” at the AAA’s annual John Marshall Memorial
Lecture at the AMNH March 4, Dupree said that she and her
colleagues are searching for planets that could have liquid wa-
ter. “We don’t want it to be too hot, we don’t want it to be too
cold, we want it to be just right, and with a sufficient mass …
so there would be some atmosphere.”
The .95-meter Kepler telescope, launched in March 2009,
searches a 100-square-degree field in Cygnus, between Deneb
and Vega, looking along the Orion spur and slightly above the
plane of the Milky Way for a distance of about 3,000 light-
years. This field includes older stars that are slightly metal-
poor. Some have traveled from other birthplaces, but, Dupree said, “The orientation and positioning of the satellite and the
CCDs was exquisitely designed to avoid all the very bright
stars.”
A large array of CCD detectors, with 95 megapixels,
images 156,000 target stars every 30 minutes, and collects
Lynn Darsh: AAA Gets Update - continued on Page 3
Lynn Darsh - continued from Page 1
that "Lynn shared with us the words her friend John Marshall
used to comfort her during his last hours. ’It will be harder for
you than for me. There are never enough days no matter how
many we have.' We all wish we had more days with Lynn,
too."
In addition to Doreen, of Middlebury, CT, Lynn is sur-
vived by her mother, Donna Darsh, of Watertown; three other
sisters: Deirdre McDonald of Middlebury, Holly Casperson of
Brookfield, CT, and Lisbeth Darsh of Scotts Valley, CA; and
nine nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held Sunday, September 23 at
2 p.m. at All Souls Unitarian Church, Lexington Avenue and
80 Street.
Contributions in Lynn’s memory can be sent to: the Lym-
phoma Research Foundation, 115 Broadway, Suite 1301, NY,
NY 10006; or Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
at mskcc.org/giving. ■
Michael O’Gara
Remembers His Friend Lynn Darsh
Lynn wasn’t a Buddhist, but her approach to life was
informed by many ethical traditions of that discipline. Gener-
osity, patience, understanding and support are attributes that
Lynn practiced daily, in her dealings with club members and
the public.
Lynn was extremely intelligent. I could always rely on
her for the answer to any question, astronomical or otherwise.
For some reason I’ll never understand, Lynn thought I had the
stuff to be a member of the board of directors early on. She,
John Marshall and I would have executive planning meetings
at John’s apartment, and I always felt out of my league. But
Lynn encouraged me to stick with it, and encouraged me to
become vice president when she was elected president. Lynn and I were a team for 10 years, and then she convinced me to
run for president. She was extremely helpful as I delegated
responsibilities and took control over aspects of the club that
needed to be vetted. Without her help, I’m sure I would have
foundered.
Lynn was dedicated: to the public’s awareness of our
club, to her friends and family, and to simply getting it right.
She was smart, articulate, and quick, and she knew her facts
when it came to astronomy. She was a telescope maker in the
old days of the optics division at the AMNH, and later became
a telescope-making instructor in that group.
Whenever we were called on to bring out scopes, Lynn
was there. I’ll never forget standing outside the new Rose
Center when it was conducting its biggest event, a huge fund-
raiser with the absolute cream of New York society. It was a
cold and cloudy night, but Lynn, Bruce Kamiat, and I were
there with our scopes, and at one point it started to snow. Lynn
and I were howling at how ridiculous it was for us to be out
there, but we stayed. Dedication.
Lynn respected and enjoyed people who she believed
were like her: dedicated to making New York a better, exciting
place to live. Maybe that’s why then - Parks Commissioner
Lynn Darsh was an avid supporter of Eyepiece, writing
numerous articles that can be found on the club website. To
honor her memory, we reprint her last article below, written
in June, 2011. - Evan B. Schneider, Editor -
3
EYEPIECE September2012
techniques of imaging and coronagraphy, and the indirect
planet finding techniques of astrometry, pulsar timing and
gravitational microlensing. Another indirect planet-finding
technique, radial velocity, has found more than 400 extrasolar
planets by measuring changes in a star’s velocity caused by the
gravitational tug of a planet, and is being used with Earth-
based telescopes to confirm Kepler’s findings. ■
NASA Update: Kepler Space Telescope Mission
Less than a year after identifying the first circumbi-
nary planet, Kepler-16b, NASA's Kepler mission has discov-
ered multiple transiting planets orbiting two suns for the first
time in the Kepler-47 system. Known as a circumbinary plane-
tary system, it is 4,900 light-years from Earth in the constella-tion Cygnus. The discovery proves that more than one planet
can form and persist in the stressful realm of a binary star and
demonstrates the diversity of planetary systems in our galaxy.
Astronomers detected two planets, a pair of orbiting stars eclipsing each other every 7.5 days. One star is sized similar to
the Sun but only 84% as bright. The second star is only one-
third the size
of the Sun and
less than 1%
as bright.
"In con-
trast to a sin-
gle planet
orbiting a sin-
gle star, the
planet in a
circumbinary
system must
t r an s i t a 'moving tar-
get.' As a consequence, time intervals between the transits and
their durations can vary substantially, sometimes short, other
times long," said Jerome Orosz, of San Diego State University
and lead author of the paper. "The intervals were the telltale
sign these planets are in circumbinary orbits."
The inner planet, Kepler-47b, orbits the pair of stars in
under 50 days. While not directly viewed, it is thought to be a
sweltering world, where the destruction of methane in its super
-heated atmosphere might lead to a thick haze that could blan-
ket the planet. At three times the radius of Earth, Kepler-47b is
the smallest known transiting circumbinary planet.
The outer planet, Kepler-47c, orbits its host pair every
303 days, placing it in the so-called "habitable zone," where
liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet. While not a
world hospitable for life, Kepler-47c is thought to be a gaseous
giant slightly larger than Neptune, where an atmosphere of
thick bright water-vapor clouds might exist.
"Unlike our Sun, many stars are part of multiple-star sys-
tems where two or more stars orbit one another. The question
always has been - do they have planets and planetary systems?
This Kepler discovery proves that they do," said William
Borucki, Kepler mission principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center. "In our search for habitable planets,
we have found more opportunities for life to exist."
Lynn Darsh: AAA Gets Update - continued from Page 2
additional data on a set of 512 additional targets every minute.
Kepler’s instruments are sensitive enough to pick up variations
in the light output of a star as small as 80 parts in a million.
Kepler does its work in a heliocentric orbit so the Earth
cannot block the view. The mission, designed to last for more
than three and a half years, released the first 90 days of data
last June. On February 1 of this year, the second data release
of four months of observations included the discovery of 15
extrasolar planets and more than 1,200 “active planetary candi-
dates.”
“We have a handful in the habitable zone and this is only
from the first four months of Kepler data,” Dupree said. “Of
the dwarf stars, about 19% of them have planets, with orbital
periods less than 125 days. There are more planets around
smaller stars than larger stars and this will tell us something
about the formation of planets. This is already challenging
what we know. Theoretically nothing really works at this
point.”
“The first five planets we have found are close in but
they are very, very massive.” These are “the easy ones, the big
ones.” All are hot planets with orbits between 3.2 and 4.9 days. Four are larger than Jupiter, and the fifth is about four times
the mass of Earth.
It will take time to find a possible “Goldilocks planet.” The Kepler team estimates the geometric probability of a
planet being in the correct plane to transit its star from Ke-
pler’s vantage point is 0.5%-10%. Many stars must be ob-
served, almost continuously, for three years, to discover terres-
trial planets in habitable zones or show that terrestrial planets
are rare.
The size of this habitable zone changes. “When stars are
very hot, the habitable zone is further out. And simply observ-
ing a transit is just the beginning. When one observes a transit,
a lot more needs to be done to verify that it is not something
else. There could be another star in the field that produces the
signal mimicking a transit.” Kepler also measures radial ve-
locities of a star to confirm it’s moving in a way that agrees
with the transit.
Dupree described the “exciting” Kepler 10 system that
has at least two planets. “The transit tells us the size of the
planets. Then we measure radial velocity to determine a
planet’s mass. With this knowledge, we know the radius and
the mass, and it turns out it is a planet which is rocky, just like
Earth. It has a period of about .84 days. It has a radius about 1.4 times the radius of Earth and a mass 4.6 times Earth’s. This
rocky planet…is locked into the host star. One side is very hot-
-1,800 degrees, the temperature of molten lava--and the other
is very cold.”
Kepler 11 is a star with six planets. If the six were placed in our solar system, they’d be within Venus’ orbit. “They’re
bigger and more massive than Earth, and more massive than
Kepler 10, which is the rocky planet. So they’re probably a
mixture of things, where they have hydrogen and helium, and
maybe some are a little bit rockier than others.”
The common transiting method of finding exoplanets is
far more successful (122 planets found) than the other direct
4
September’s Evening Planets: There's not too much of
interest in the evening sky this month. Saturn, Mars and the
star Spica form a grouping low in the west early in the month. Saturn and Spica are lost by midmonth, while Mars's quick
movement to the east keeps it in view for a while longer.
September’s Evening Stars: The Summer Triangle domi-
nates the stellar sky. From a dark-sky location track the Milky
Way from Cygnus the Swan through Aquila the Eagle on to Sagittarius the Archer. Look for the autumn constellations
Pegasus, Andromeda and Perseus.
September’s Morning Planets: As the month begins Jupi-
ter rises about midnight. Look for it close to the Moon on Sept
8. By the end of the month Jupiter will rise at 10 p.m., and will
continue to appear earlier in the upcoming months. On the other hand, brilliant Venus rises earlier, from 3 a.m. on the
first of the month, but falls back towards the Sun and by the
end of September sets at 4 a.m. Late in the month Venus en-
ters the constellation Leo.
September’s Morning Stars: Orion is now well up by 2
a.m. Surrounding him are Taurus the Bull (above and right),
Auriga the Charioteer (above), Gemini the Twins (above and
left), Canis Major the Large Dog (below left) and Canis Minor
the Small Dog (left).
September 8 Jupiter is 1.5 degrees above right of the Moon Last Quarter Moon at 9:15 a.m. (EDT)
September 12 Venus is 4.7 degrees east of the Moon
September 15 New Moon at 10:11 p.m. (EDT)
September 17 Spica is 4.4 degrees north of the Moon
Saturn is 5.0 degrees north of the Moon
September 19 Mars is 1.2 degrees upper right of the Moon
September 22 Autumnal Equinox at 10:49 a.m. (EDT)
First Quarter Moon at 3:41 p.m. (EDT)
September 29 Uranus is at opposition, closest to the Earth
and up all night.
Full Moon at 11:19 p.m. (EDT)
For additional information visit: www.aaa.org/month1209
WHAT’S UP IN THE SKY
AAA Observer’s September Guide
By Richard Rosenberg
EYEPIECE September 2012
September’s “Skylights”
NASA’s Spitzer Reveals: Early Universe Burned Hot
The faint, lumpy glow from the very first objects in the
universe may have been detected with the best precision yet
using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The objects could be
wildly massive stars or voracious black holes. They are too far
away to be seen individually, but Spitzer has captured new,
convincing evidence of what appears to be the collective pat-
tern of their infrared light. The observations help confirm the
first objects were numerous in quantity and furiously burned
cosmic fuel.
"These objects would have been tremendously bright," said Alexander "Sasha" Kashlinsky of NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., lead author of a new paper
appearing in The Astrophysical Journal. "We can't yet directly
rule out mysterious sources for this light that could be coming
from our nearby universe, but it is now becoming increasingly
likely that we are catching a glimpse of an ancient epoch.
Spitzer is laying down a roadmap for NASA's upcoming
James Webb Telescope, which will tell us exactly what and
where these first objects were."
Spitzer first caught hints of this remote pattern of light,
known as the cosmic infrared background, in 2005, and again
with more precision in 2007. Now, Spitzer is in the extended
phase of its mission, during which it performs more in-depth
studies on specific patches of the sky. Kashlinsky and his col-leagues used Spitzer to look at two patches of sky for more
than 400 hours each.
The team then carefully subtracted all of the known stars
and galaxies in the images. Rather than being left with a black,
empty patch of sky, they found faint patterns of light with sev-
eral telltale characteristics of the cosmic infrared background.
The lumps in the pattern observed are consistent with the way
the very distant objects are thought to be clustered together. ■
Nebula of the Month: Dumbbell (M27)
In 1794, while compiling a list of diffuse objects not to
be confused with comets, Charles Messier inadvertently dis-
covered the first hint of what will become of our Sun. The
Dumbbell Nebula (M27) is a planetary nebula, the type our
Sun will produce when nuclear fusion stops in its core, some 4
-5 billion years from now. M27 is one of the brightest plane-
tary nebulae in the sky, and can be seen toward the constella-
tion of the Fox
(Vulpecula) with
binoculars. It takes
light about 1360
years to reach us, so
train your binoculars
and scopes skyward
to see this beautiful
hourglass shape in
the constellation
Vulpecula, the Fox.
Above Photo by Bill Snyder, Bill Snyder
5
EYEPIECE September2012
most extreme active galaxies and study the origin of cosmic
rays and extreme
physics around col-
lapsed stars.
Now fully op-
erational, NuStar is
the first focusing
hard X-ray tele-scope to orbit Earth.
It will allow as-
tronomers to study
the universe in the
high energy X-ray
(6-79 keV) region
of the electromag-
netic spectrum.
Orbiting telescopes
like the Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton
observe the X-ray universe at low energy levels. ESA’s satel-lite INTEGRAL does provide high energy X-ray images, but
does not employ true focusing optics. Instead, coded apertures
with intrinsically high backgrounds and limited sensitivity are
employed.
From the first relayed images, NuSTAR’s perform-
ance clearly exceeds that of other observatories operating at X-
ray and gamma-ray energies. Its first images were taken on
June 28 of Cygnus X-1, a black hole in our Milky Way galaxy,
about 6,000 light-years from Earth. Cygnus X-1 is siphoning
off gas from a giant-star companion while emitting high-
energy X-rays. This particular black hole was chosen as a first
target because its brightness in X-rays allows the mission team
to easily see where the telescope's focused X-rays fall on the
detectors. NuSTAR will help answer several fundamental
questions about the universe including: How are black holes
distributed through the cosmos? How were heavy elements forged in the explosions of massive stars? What powers the
most extreme active galaxies? Why We Explore- continued on Page 6
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Act of
1958 established NASA as an aerospace research and develop-
ment agency that sponsors and conducts flight missions to
obtain data in furtherance of its objectives. But what are those
objectives? NASA’s current Strategic Goals for Space Explo-
ration are stated in three directives:
Extend and sustain human activities across the solar system
Expand scientific understanding of the Earth and the uni-
verse in which we live
Create the innovative new space technologies for our explo-
ration, science, and economic future
Popular focus on NASA tends to revolve around
manned space flight. In fact, its current Agency Priority Goals
include human exploration and operations, along with the ISS,
Mars Science Laboratory, and development of space technol-
ogy. With the dismantling of NASA’s space shuttle program,
many enthusiasts feel that US space initiatives have stalled.
But a manned space program cannot exist without thriving and
productive unmanned space exploration. In his 2007 article
“Why Explore Space?” former NASA Administrator Michael
Griffin noted: “The Pilgrims were only a few thousand miles from home, and they were accomplished farmers and artisans.
And yet, when they came to an unfamiliar land, they didn’t
know how to survive in its harsh environment… If we are to
become a space-faring nation, the next generation of explorers
is going to have to learn how to survive in other forbidding,
faraway places across the vastness of space.”
We must be daring, but also be prepared. So, how do
we prepare for a frontier with mysteries as infinite as its ex-panse? We do what we have always done: we ask questions.
Beyond claims of space superiority or fulfilling a primal urge
to blaze trails and chart new lands, space exploration taps into
our more profound and essential human desire to answer ques-
tions about ourselves and our universe. NASA embraces curi-
osity and preparedness through its Science Mission Director-
ate, which oversees four main areas of scientific research in
space exploration: Earth Science, Planetary Science, Helio-
physics, and Astrophysics. The Astrophysics division focuses
on perhaps the largest questions of all: How does the universe
work, and what are its origin and destiny?
NuSTAR is a NASA mission that seeks to answer
these profound scientific questions, feeding our curiosity far
into the new frontier. Launched June 13 as part of the Astro-
physics Explorer program, NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) will conduct a census of black holes for
NASA’s Physics of the Cosmos program and study the birth of
elements for the Cosmic Origins program. Utilizing wide-field
surveys of extragalactic fields and the Milky Way’s galactic
center, it will map radioactive material in young supernova
remnants. It will also observe relativistic jets found in the
NuSTAR launched from a Pegasus XL
rocket carried by the L-1011 "Stargazer" plane. Five seconds before launch, the rocket dropped, ignited, and propelled NuS-
TAR into space. Plane-assisted launches are less expensive than ground launches, because less fuel is needed to boost cargo
away from the pull of Earth’s gravity.
NASA Mission: Our Human Desire to Explore By Amy Wagner
WHY WE EXPLORE
“To reach for new heights and reveal the unknown, so that what we do and learn will benefit all humankind.” The NASA Vision
Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array
Astrophysics Explorer Launched June 13, 2012
6
EYEPIECE September 2012
Why We Explore - continued from Page 5
Unlike visible light that easily bounces off surfaces,
X-rays tend to be absorbed. However, if an incoming X-ray
grazes a surface at a very small, glancing angle, it will be re-
flected. By nesting mirrors of different sizes and angles, more
X-rays can be reflected and focused onto the same spot. NuS-
TAR’s, mirror optics help it see high-energy X-ray light in
greater detail than ever before. The two onboard optical units
each consist of 133 fingernail-thin nested cylindrical mirror
shells. Conceived of 15 years ago by principal investigator Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology, NuS-
TAR’s ability to focus higher energy X-rays is a major ad-
vance in that spectral region. “It’s like putting on a new pair
of glasses and seeing aspects of the world around us clearly for
the first time,” Harrison explained.
Knowing how the laws of physics behave at the extremes of
space and time, near a black hole or a neutron star, is an
important key to understanding how the universe is con-
structed. Although NuSTAR is a Small Explorer Mission, it
will contribute to answering large questions about the behavior
of matter, energy, space, and time in diverse conditions of the
cosmos, and about the origin and evolution of the universe to
produce the galaxies, stars, and planets we see today. ■
Apple Shares Kepler’s Journey
A new app brings thousands of alien worlds to the
fingertips of iPhone and iPad users.
The app, called Kepler Explorer, provides interactive
displays of the 2,300 alien planet candidates that NASA's Ke-
pler Space Telescope has detected thus far. It's available for
free at the iTunes App Store and runs on Apple's iPhone and
iPad. It was developed by astronomers, artists and designers at
the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Kepler Explorer starts with drop-down menus listing
the nearly 1,800 Kepler-discovered planetary systems, plus our
own solar system, researchers said. Users can select a system,
which is then displayed in a view that shows the planet or
planets in orbit around their host star.
Users can zoom in and move around the system, and
tapping on an individual planet brings it up for further explora-
tion. Another view shows the relative sizes of the planets com-
pared to their host star, researchers said.
Armchair astronomers can also manipulate the composi-
tion of the alien planets and their atmospheres, seeing which
mixtures of components fit best with Kepler’s observations.
"I have pretty good intuition for what the likely com-
position of a planet is based on its size, but the app allows
anyone to explore the properties of many different planets
very quickly," UCSC astrophysicist Jonathan Fortney, who
works on the Kepler mission and helped develop Kepler Ex-
plorer, said in a statement.
The $600 million Kepler observatory launched in
March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size alien planets in the habit-
able zone of their parent stars, where liquid water, and perhaps
even life as we know it, might be able to exist.
Kepler detects alien planets using what's called the
"transit method." It searches for tiny, telltale dips in a star's
brightness caused when a planet transits - or crosses in front of - the star from Earth's perspective, blocking a fraction of the
star's light.
So far, the Kepler mission has discovered 61 con-
firmed alien planets, along with roughly 2,300 exoplanet "candidates" that await vetting by follow-up studies. Kepler
scientists say the vast majority of these candidates - 80 percent
or more - should end up being the real deal.
Automatic updates for the Kepler Explorer app will
add new planet candidates as they are discovered, researchers
said. ■
Eyepiece Staff - September Issue
Editor
Evan B. Schneider
Writing Staff: Richard Brounstein, Joseph Fedrick,
Stan Honda, Amy Wagner
Special Sections: Marcelo Cabrera, Joshua Erich, Edward Fox,
Richard Rosenberg
Kleegor’s Universe By Joshua M. Erich, www.pixelatedparchment.com
AAA Members - Eyepiece Staff Openings Interested in joining our growing team of AAA Eyepiece
staff members? Enjoy researching, writing and editing? If so, we
would like to hear from you.
September’s issue marks the 12th edition published by our
new and innovative staff. We have expanded coverage, added
color to our online Eyepiece, and created fascinating monthly
columns to stimulate our club members’ imaginations and in-
form all on the latest astronomical news.
Come be a part of something out of this world...
Evan B. Schneider, Editor
Email me at: [email protected]
7
Hello members:
We note the sad passing of one of AAA’s strongest supporters and former president, Lynn Darsh, whose dedica-
tion and intellect helped AAA to evolve into what it is today. She will truly be missed by us all.
Last month NASA landed another fully equipped robotic roving laboratory on Mars. Curiosity had the most diffi-
cult landing sequence in history and NASA engineers executed it without any problems. I expect many new discoveries to
come from Curiosity in the next few months.
Summer is not over yet; we still have two more trips to North-South Lake scheduled, and many other observing
sessions around the city. Check out our full calendar at: http://www.aaa.org/calendar
Urban Starfest, our most popular stargazing event, is scheduled for October 20, with a rain date of October 21.
The event will be held at Central Park's Sheep Meadow. It is organized in conjunction with the NYC Urban Park Rangers
and this year's honored guests include David Eicher (editor in chief) and Richard Talcott (senior editor) from Astronomy
magazine, and Tele Vue founder and chief optical designer, Al Nagler. Joining the event as well will be Michael Peoples
from Adorama Camera, a longtime friend and supporter of AAA. For more details, please visit http://www.aaa.org/
starfest.
Sincerely,
Marcelo Cabrera
President, AAA
A Message from AAA President Marcelo Cabrera
EYEPIECE
Neil Armstrong, the Apollo 11 astronaut who died
Aug 25 at 82, said he did not want to live his life as an icon,
remembered only for that electric night in 1969 when he and
Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.
But when you have done what he did -- stepped out,
alone, onto another world while half a billion Earthlings
watched your television transmission -- the world recalls.
Armstrong's moonwalk as one of those events that brought the
world together. Most people who are old enough to have seen
it can tell you exactly where they were when it happened.
"His one small step will inspire generations to come,"
said space shuttle astronaut Nicole Stott on Twitter. She
quoted Armstrong from a 1994 speech: "There are places to go
beyond belief."
"No other act of human exploration ever laid a plaque
saying, 'We came in peace for all mankind," tweeted Neil De-
Grasse Tyson, the astrophysicist.
President Obama -- whom Armstrong criticized two
years ago for cutting NASA's exploration plans -- was never-
theless effusive: "Neil's spirit of discovery lives on in all the
men and women who have devoted their lives to exploring the
unknown -- including those who are ensuring that we reach higher and go further in space. That legacy will endure --
sparked by a man who taught us the enormous power of one
small step."
Armstrong would doubtless have been uncomfortable
with all the tributes. People who knew him said he was not a
recluse, but he was a private man who quickly deflected credit
to others. He described himself, more than once, as a "nerdy
engineer." He often protested that while he and Aldrin made
the first lunar landing, they merely piloted a mission made
possible by thousands of others.
In his later years, Armstrong publicly complained about
Washington politics. He said the space program had become a
"shuttlecock" in the budget battles between the White House
and Congress, which could not agree on its direction or how
much America
could afford to
spend on it.
" N A S A
has been one
of the most successful pub-
lic investments
in motivating
students to do
well and achieve all they can achieve," said Armstrong in an
interview in Australia this spring. "It's sad that we are turning
the program in a direction where it will reduce the amount of
motivation and stimulation it provides to young people. And
that's a major concern to me."
His family, in their statement announcing that he had
died, asked people to dispense with words:
"For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we
have a simple request," they said. "Honor his example of ser-
vice, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you
walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down
at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."
Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 Commander, Dies at Age 82
September 2012
Contacting AAA
Membership: [email protected]
Eyepiece: [email protected]
General Club Matters and Observing: [email protected]
Telephone: 212-535-2922 Website: www.aaa.org
8
tively expensive.
But there is a better way: build a mobile colony on a
near-Earth asteroid to establish a permanent presence in space. Consider private venture firm Planetary Resources, Inc. They
plan to send probes to mine nearby asteroids for rare Earth
metals. Launching equipment into space and landing on an
asteroid are not daunting tasks like landing on Mars. It’s simi-
lar to docking with another spacecraft.
What if, in addition to drilling for materials, they
carved out a sizeable human habitat? The size can be increased
just by continued excavation with solar-powered, remote con-
trolled equipment, negating the need to launch heavy modules
into space. The habitat would be protected from solar radiation
and menacing meteorites by the asteroid’s rocky exterior.
When humans arrive, they only need to bring water recycling
equipment, grow food, and maintain the habitat’s oxygen at-
mosphere. Solar panels would provide renewable energy.
Hopefully, some water ice reservoir would be discovered that
can be used to create rocket fuel. Now we’re on our way.
The next problem is creating gravity. This would be
challenging, but possible. If an asteroid is at least 3,000 ft.
long, then we need to rotate it so the centrifugal force creates gravity. This requires harnessing sufficient energy to force the
rotation. What a great day it will be when humans have
learned to leverage the materials in space, allowing us to move
forward into the cosmos.
Many scientific and engineering challenges must be
addressed before an asteroid can be occupied. We don’t know
if sufficient materials exist to be profitably mined or harnessed
- the economics of private space ventures must work to
achieve these goals. We must learn more about the availability
of water ice, and develop a design to force its rotation. We
need a methodology to put large automated drilling machines
into space, and a way to extract materials for energy consump-
tion. Hydroponic farming needs further development, and cre-
ating water and oxygen from water deposits is still a concept.
Established human colonies will one day become a
great resource, advancing scientific research and becoming the
space refueling stations needed to colonize our solar system.
Consider the advantage of launching a space probe or manned
vehicle. The first stop could be an asteroid colony where stores of fuel are waiting to send astronauts or probes further on their
journey. An added benefit to controlling an asteroid is to fi-
nally develop technology to move a future body from its de-
structive path with Earth. Our planetary defense system would
be enhanced.
There are so many benefits to exploring these un-
knowns. Once one or two colonies are established on local
asteroids, it could become common throughout the inner solar
system. Would we then start building colonies on comets in
the outer solar system or in the Kuiper Belt? This might be the
way humanity finally leaves Earth to become a great space-
faring civilization. Asteroids and comets might really be the
islands of our solar system. ■
Richard Brounstein’s monthly column, “WHAT IF,” explores what today
seems improbable or impossible. Stay tuned for more fascinating concepts.
Europeans established their first permanent col-
ony in Jamestown, Virginia. Brave explorers carved out a life
in harsh conditions, using local resources. They brought tools
and weapons to fashion the land and protect their interests.
They could not bring materials to build homes or wood to fuel
their fires. They learned to grow food in a new environment,
make clothing, and hunt in what was for them, an alien land.
In many ways, humans today have the same challenges as we
look to establish the first permanent colony away from Earth.
Building a self-sufficient space colony requires a
source of energy, fuel for space propulsion, a hydroponic farm,
potable water, sufficient gravity, and building materials for an
oxygen-filled habitat. There are other needs, but let’s focus on
these pivotal requirements first.
To date, space stations have been impressive. Without
access to raw materials, they are routinely re-supplied from
Earth. We have not yet built a space station that provides arti-ficial gravity. Without it, human muscles and bones rapidly
deteriorate in space, limiting astronauts’ tours to only a few
months.
In theory, mankind could build a rotating space sta-
tion as depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, this
large spinning wheel must be over 3,000 ft. in diameter (10
football fields or 10 times the size of the current ISS) to be
effective. Considering the enormous cost to supply materials to
the ISS, creating a permanent colony in space utilizing Earth
material is just too expensive.
Could we build colonies on the Moon or Mars? We
have a similar problem there as well. Launching large habitats
and safely landing them on a remote world is cost prohibitive.
Consider the energy and equipment required to land the 2,000
lb. Mars Curiosity rover. A human habitat would be signifi-
cantly heavier. There is no current technology other than enor-
mous amounts of rocket fuel to do the job, which again is a
logistical improbability.
We need to learn from the historic lessons of Jamestown,
to build habitats using local materials. Could humans con-
struct remote living environments underground? Possibly, but
we still have to resolve the constraints of limited gravity. Lu-nar or Martian
gravity is too
low to keep
h u m a n s
healthy. Also,
the engineering
problems still
remain. Land-
ing multiple
crafts large
enough to sup-
port humans is again prohibi-
EYEPIECE September 2012
WHAT IF??? Asteroids: Islands of the Solar System
By Richard Brounstein
DigitalSpace conceptual drawing - NEO asteroid docking
9
more than ten times wider than other comparably sensitive
amplifiers, can amplify strong signals without distortion, and
introduces nearly the lowest amount of unavoidable noise. In
principle, the researchers say, design improvements should be
able to reduce that noise to the absolute minimum. The team
recently described the new instrument in the journal Nature
Physics. One of the key features is that it incorporates super-
conductors - materials that allow an electric current to flow with zero resistance when lowered to certain temperatures. For
their amplifier, the researchers use titanium nitride and nio-
bium titanium nitride, which have just the right properties to
amplify the weak signal. The team says that the instrument can
directly amplify radio signals from faint sources like distant
galaxies, black holes, or other exotic cosmic objects. Boosting
signals in millimeter to submillimeter wavelengths (between
radio and infrared) will allow astronomers to study the cosmic
microwave background and to peer behind the dusty clouds of
galaxies to study the births of stars, or probe primeval galax-
ies. The team has already begun working to produce such de-
vices for Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO)
near Bishop, California. These amplifiers could be incorpo-
rated into telescope arrays like the Combined Array for Re-search in Millimeter-wave Astronomy at OVRO, of which
Caltech is a consortium member, and the Atacama Large Mil-
limeter/submillimeter Array in Chile. Instead of directly am-
plifying an astronomical signal, the instrument can be used to
boost the electronic signal from a light detector in an optical,
ultraviolet, or even x-ray telescope, making it easier for as-
tronomers to tease out faint objects. Because the instrument is
so sensitive and introduces minimal noise, it can also be used
to explore the quantum world. For example, Keith Schwab, a
professor of applied physics at Caltech, is planning to use the
amplifier to measure the behavior of tiny mechanical devices that operate at the boundary between classical physics and the
strange world of quantum mechanics. The amplifier could also
be used in the development quantum computers - which are
still beyond our technological reach but should be able to solve
some of science's hardest problems much more quickly than
any regular computer.
Driving Miss Curiosity NASA's Mars rover Curiosity spent its first weekend on Mars transitioning to software better suited for tasks ahead,
such as driving and using its strong robotic arm. The rover's
"brain transplant," installed a new version of software on both
of the rover's redundant main computers. This software for
Mars surface operations was uploaded to the rover's memory
during the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's flight from
Earth. "We designed the mission from the start to be able to
upgrade the software as needed for different phases of the mis-
sion," said Ben Cichy, NASA/JPL chief software engineer for
the Mars Science Laboratory mission. "The flight software version Curiosity originally used was really focused on land-
ing the vehicle. It included many capabilities we just don't
need any more. It gives us basic capabilities for operating the
rover on the surface, but we planned all along to switch over
after landing to a version of flight software that is really opti-
mized for surface operations." A key capability in the new
version is image processing to check for obstacles. This allows
for longer drives by giving the rover more autonomy to iden-
tify and avoid potential hazards and drive along a safe path the
rover identifies for itself. Other new capabilities facilitate use
of the tools at the end of the rover's robotic arm. Curiosity car-ries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large
as the science payloads on NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and
Opportunity. Some of the tools, such as a laser-firing instru-
ment for checking rocks' elemental composition from a dis-
tance, are the first of their kind on Mars. Curiosity will use a
drill and scoop, which are located at the end of its robotic arm,
to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then
sieve and parcel out these samples into the rover's analytical
laboratory instruments. To handle this science toolkit, Curios-
ity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Oppor-
tunity. The Gale Crater landing site at 4.59 degrees south,
137.44 degrees east, places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater's interior mountain. Observations from or-
bit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower lay-
ers, indicating a wet history.
New Eye Sweeps the Gamma Sky
The four 12 meter-telescopes of the H.E.S.S. observa-
tory (High Energy Stereoscopic System), dedicated to investi-
gating cosmic gamma-rays in Namibia, received reinforce-
ment: The new telescope H.E.S.S. II has a 28-meter-sized mir-
EYEPIECE September 2012
AAA BRIEFS IN ASTRONOMY
Curiosity sets off on its first quarter mile trek across the surface
New H.E.S.S. II observatory poised for discoveries
10
Twinkle, Twinkle Little...Boom!
Type Ia supernovae are violent stellar explosions.
Observations of their brightness are used to determine dis-
tances in the universe and reveal that the cosmos is expanding
at an accelerating rate. But there is still too little known about
how these supernovae form. New research, led by Stella Kafka
of the Carnegie Institution for Science, has identified a star
system, prior to explosion, which will possibly become a type Ia supernova. The widely accepted theory is that type Ia super-
novae are thermonuclear explosions of a white dwarf star that's
part of a binary system. The white dwarf has mass gradually
donated to it by its companion. When the white dwarf mass
reaches 1.4 solar masses, it explodes to produce a type Ia su-
pernova. The crucial questions are: What is the nature of the
donor star and how does this white dwarf increase its mass.
Also, how would that process affect the properties of the ex-
plosion? Scientists have been searching for candidate systems
that could become type Ia supernovae. There are thousands of
possibilities, none of which have yet been observed to produce an explosion. Using data from the DuPont telescope of the Las
Campanas observatory in Chile, Kafka and her team looked at
these gas signatures and identified a binary star called QU
Carinae as a possible supernova progenitor. It contains a white
dwarf, which is accumulating mass from a giant star, and so-
dium has been detected around the system. "We are really ex-
cited to have identified such a system," Kafka said.
"Understanding these systems, the nature of the two stars, the
manner in which mass is exchanged, and their long-term evo-
lution will give us a comprehensive picture on how binaries
can create one of the most important explosions in the uni-
verse."
Slip Sliding Away - on Iapetus
Saturn's moon Iapetus frequently plays host to a huge
type of landslide or avalanche that is rare elsewhere in the so-lar system, scientists report. Sturzstroms or "long-runout land-
slides" move faster and farther than geological models predict
they should. They have been seen on Earth and Mars, but there
is debate about their causes. Now, images from the Cassini
space mission suggest that heating of icy surfaces helps the
landslides keep going. On Earth, landslides typically travel a
horizontal distance that is less than twice the distance that the
material has fallen. Long-runout landslides, by contrast, can travel as much as 30 times the vertical falling distance. Now,
Kelsi Singer of Washington University and colleagues report
that the geography of Iapetus is a unique setting to test these
theories. According to Singer, "They give us examples of giant
landslides in ice, instead of rock, with a different gravity, and
no atmosphere. So any theory of long-runout landslides on
Earth must also work for avalanches on Iapetus." The icy sat-
ellite has more giant landslides than any solar system body
other than Mars. The reason, says Prof William McKinnon,
also from Washington University, is Iapetus' spectacular to-
pography. "Not only is the moon out-of-round, but the giant
impact basins are very deep, and there's this great mountain ridge that's 12 miles high, far higher than Mount Everest," he
explained. "So there's a lot of topography and it's just sitting
around, and then, from time to time, it gives way." It appears
that this faster-moving ice seen on Iapetus has a lower friction
coefficient than that of slow-moving ice measured in Earth-
bound laboratories. The team suggests that the tiny contact
points between bits of ice debris in such a landslide may heat
up considerably, melting it and forming a more fluid - and thus
less friction-limited - mass of material.
Phoenix Cluster is Hot Stuff
Astronomers have found an extraordinary galaxy
cluster, one of the largest objects in the universe, that is break-ing cosmic records. Observations of the Phoenix cluster with
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the National Science
Foundation's South Pole Telescope, and eight other world-
class observatories may force astronomers to rethink how
these structures and the galaxies that inhabit them evolve.
Stars are forming in Phoenix at the highest rate ever observed
for the middle of a galaxy cluster. It is also is the most massive
and powerful producer of X-rays of any known cluster. The
data also suggest the rate of hot gas cooling in the central re-
gions is the largest ever observed. Phoenix is located about 5.7
billion light years from Earth. It is named not only for the con-stellation in which it is located, but also for its remarkable
properties. "While galaxies at the center of most clusters may
have been dormant for billions of years, the central galaxy in
this cluster seems to have come back to life with a new burst
of star formation," said Michael McDonald, a Hubble Fellow
at MIT and the lead author of an Aug 16 paper that appeared in
the journal Nature. "The mythology of the Phoenix, a bird
rising from the dead, is a great way to describe this revived
object." Astronomers think the supermassive black hole in the
central galaxy cluster pumps energy into the system, prevent-
ing cooling of gas from causing a burst of star formation. "This
spectacular star burst is a very significant discovery because it suggests we have to rethink how the massive galaxies in the
centers of clusters grow," said Martin Rees of Cambridge Uni-
versity, a world-renowned expert on cosmology who was not
involved with the study. "The cooling of hot gas might be a
much more important source of stars than previously thought."
EYEPIECE September 2012
AAA BRIEFS IN ASTRONOMY
A giant landslide reaches halfway across a 75-mile impact crater (Credit: NASA/JPL Space Science Institute)
11
NASA Straps on a Radiation Belt
NASA has just launched two Radiation Belt Storm
Probes (RBSP) designed to study the harsh environment of our
planet's Van Allen Radiation Belts. The probes will help scien-
tists understand the Sun's influence on Earth and near-Earth
space by studying radiation belts on various scales of space
and time. The instruments on the RBSP mission will provide
the measurements needed to characterize and quantify plasma
processes that produce very energetic ions and relativistic elec-
trons. The mission is part of the broader NASA's Living With
a Star (LWS) program, conceived to explore fundamental
processes that operate throughout the solar system and in par-
ticular those that generate hazardous space weather effects in
the vicinity of Earth and phenomena that could impact solar system exploration. RBSP instruments will measure the prop-
erties of charged particles that comprise the Earth's radiation
belts, the plasma waves that interact with them, the large-scale
electric fields that transport them, and the particle-guiding
magnetic field. The two RBSP spacecraft will have nearly
identical eccentric orbits. The orbits cover the entire radiation
belt region and the two spacecraft lap each other several times
over the course of the mission. The RBSP measurements dis-
criminate between spatial and temporal effects, and compare
the effects of various proposed mechanisms for charged parti-
cle acceleration and loss. The spacecraft are designed to fly
and operate in the heart of the most hazardous regions of near-
Earth space to collect crucial data. The data will help research-
ers develop an understanding of the Van Allen radiation belts,
two rings of very high energy electrons and protons that can
pose hazards to human and robotic explorers. "We will turn our attention from planet Mars to planet Earth, both immersed
in the atmosphere of our Sun," said Barbara Giles, director of
NASA's Heliophysics Division. "RBSP will further explore the
connection of solar variability and its impacts on Earth's radia-
tion belts."
Mirror, Mirror, on the Webb
One of the most challenging parts of NASA’s huge
new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the building of its
ultra sophisticated mirror system, is now finished, and the mir-
rors are ready for delivery. Send-off ceremonies held on Aug.
15 saluted the completion of 18 beryllium primary mirror seg-ments and billed Webb as the successor to NASA's venerable
Hubble Space Telescope. Ball Aerospace, the principal sub-
contractor to manufacturer Northrop Grumman for the JWST,
is also responsible for JWST’s secondary and tertiary mirrors,
a fine steering mirror assembly and several engineering devel-
opment units. Ball’s optical technology and lightweight mirror
system at the heart of the telescope - an astronomical project
that is now pegged to cost roughly $8.7 billion and to be lofted
in the fall of 2018.
Round, Round, Get Around
The Sun is nearly the roundest object ever measured.
If scaled to the size of a beach ball, it would be so round that
the difference between the widest and narrow diameters would
be much less than the width of a human hair. The Sun rotates
every 28 days, and because it doesn’t have a solid surface, it
should be slightly flattened. This tiny flattening has been stud-
ied with many instruments for almost 50 years to learn about
the Sun’s rotation, especially the rotation below its surface, which we can’t see directly. Now Jeff Kuhn and Isabelle
Scholl from the University of Hawaii, Rock Bush from Stan-
ford University, and Marcelo Emilio from the State University
of Ponta Grossa in Brazil have used the Helioseismic and
Magnetic Imager (HMI) aboard the Solar Dynamics Observa-
tory satellite to obtain what they believe is the definitive - and
baffling - answer. Because there is no atmosphere in space to
distort the solar image, they were able to use HMI’s exquisite
image sensitivity to measure the solar shape with unprece-
dented accuracy. The results indicate that if the Sun were
shrunk to a ball one meter in diameter, its equatorial diameter
would be only 17 millionths of a meter larger than the diame-ter through its north-south pole, which is its rotation axis. They
also found that the solar flattening is remarkably constant over
time and too small to agree with that predicted from its surface
rotation. This suggests that other subsurface forces, like solar
magnetism or turbulence, may be a more powerful influence
than expected. Kuhn, the team leader, said, “For years we’ve
believed our fluctuating measurements were telling us that the
Sun varies, but these new results say something different.
While just about everything else in the Sun changes along with
its 11-year sunspot cycle, the shape doesn’t.”
EYEPIECE September 2012
AAA BRIEFS IN ASTRONOMY
Artist's rendering shows the two Radiation Belt Storm Probes
that will study the Van Allen Radiation Belts in the Earth's magne-
tosphere and the sun's effects on Earth. Charged particles can be
hazardous to both spacecraft and astronauts. (Credit: J. Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab)
Sun image taken by the
Solar Dynamics Observatory
(Credit: NASA)
12
crossing the eastern sky. A particularly bright plane shows up
as a vertical line on the left side. I also noticed streaks that
were probably satellites, though they appear only faintly in the
final photo. The ghostly figures of people also can be seen.
I ended up combining 100 frames for a 50-minute
exposure of our session. Stars rotate around Polaris and a few
wispy clouds can be seen on the horizon. I darkened the sky
just a bit for more contrast with the stars. The sky is not the
real black you would see in a more remote place, but it wasn’t bad. With all that’s happening in the frame, the photo can be
described as psychedelic, but I’m pretty happy with the results.
Many national parks are becoming more aware of
artificial lighting and its effect on the night sky. I was at Chaco
Culture National Historical Park in May to do some night pho-tography and observe the annular eclipse. The skies there are
stunning, with incredible blackness between the stars. One
night I photographed the Milky Way over Fajada Butte, a sa-
cred site for the ancient Chacoan people. From one angle, I
could see the galaxy arch over the sky in amazing detail de-
spite the glaring visitor center lights. They pointed west,
mostly lighting up the vast desert expanse. I shot a wide-angle
photo of the visitor center with the Milky Way above, and
oddly enough, the lights didn’t have much effect on the sky.
I sent the photo to Jim Von Haden, the natural re-
sources program manager at Chaco, who helped me photo-graph over several nights. He has been on a mission to dim or
eliminate the visitor center lights, which aren’t really neces-
sary. Jim asked to use the photo in his presentations as he at-
tempts to dim work with the park administration to gain dark
sky status for Chaco. It’s a small contribution, but I think each
of us can help in the effort to preserve our night sky. ■
FOCUS ON THE UNIVERSE
Light pollution is the scourge of astronomers world-
wide. As night photos of the Earth show, city lights make it
difficult to see truly dark skies. We happen to live in one of the
brightest metropolitan areas on the planet. For photographers
shooting night landscapes, artificial light is especially chal-
lenging. Long exposures needed for night photography allow
the camera to record any and all types of light - even faint light
you can’t see.
Driving 50 miles from NYC isn’t enough to get away
from the glow of these artificial lights, so the AAA spring/
summer class headed to Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Westchester County for a night of observing in mid-August.
The night was unusually clear, with a few high clouds in the
west dissipating after sunset. Though the Sun set at 7:55 p.m.,
it was well after 9 p.m. before light faded completely from the
sky. A distinct glow on the southwest horizon, the lights from
Westchester and NYC, could be seen. Because moisture scat-
ters light, the high humidity produced a steady brightness
above. Added to that was a glaring light at the entrance to the
park, seemingly shining directly at our location.
A faint Milky Way could be seen - a huge improve-
ment from the city view. Through the telescopes, Saturn,
looked magnificent, and members of the group were able to
find various star clusters, galaxies and nebulae.
But for night sky photography, it was still not quite
dark enough. Airplanes constantly flying overhead created yet
another distraction. But even with the interference, it’s always
worth a try to see what you can capture in different situations.
Sometimes you get unexpected results.
I decided to set up a camera with a wide-angle lens to
capture our group and the sky from north to east. I had a 14-
24mm zoom set at 14mm on my Nikon D700. The camera was
set at f 2.8, 30-second exposures at ISO 1600. I took a few test
pictures around 9 p.m. The sky seemed a little bright, but I assumed that over the course of an hour it would darken. My
goal was a long exposure showing the star trails and the activ-
ity of AAA members observing. I used a second camera to
take single shots of the sky and observers, but didn’t get very
good results because the sky was too bright.
The intervalometer trigger was set to take 120 photos
- one hour’s worth (30-second exposures X 120 frames = 60
minutes). This generally allows some leeway in assembling
the final photo. If some pictures at the beginning or end aren’t
good, I would still have 45-50 minutes worth of photos. I
cringed when a car drove into the parking lot midway through
the hour, hoping the headlights wouldn’t wash out the scene.
At home, I began to combine each frame to show the
star trails. I was amazed at how well it came out. The camera
was pointed almost directly at Cassiopeia and that part of the
rising Milky Way, so a large number of stars could be seen in
the center of the photo. The red flashlights of the club mem-
bers lit up each telescope and tripod and created wavy lines as
people walked around. Airplanes were very noticeable, mainly
EYEPIECE September 2012
Stan Honda is an accomplished professional photographer and
contributing writer. In this continuing series of articles, he shares his
extensive knowledge of photographic equipment and techniques.
Please visit www.stanhonda.com or submit your photography
questions to [email protected].
Night Skies Over Ward Pound Ridge Reservation By Stan Honda
Stan’s ghostly image of the AAA observers (Westchester, 2012)
13
EYEPIECE September 2012
Hark! Hark! Sark is Dark! The Little Island that Could
By Dan Harrison
As my plane took off in early May for an 18-day
vacation to the English countryside and the Channel Islands, I
had no idea the trip would yield a story for Eyepiece. That
changed in a nanosecond near the end of the trip, when I
picked up a paperback called A Year in Sark. Covering Octo-
ber 2010 to October 2011, it had a piece for January 2011 ti-
tled called “The World’s First Dark Sky Island.”
Sark is a tiny channel island: four-and-a-half square
miles, 600 year-round residents, and no paved roads, cars
or streetlights. I bought the book on Guernsey, one of the two
main channel islands (Jersey is the other), and decided to take a day trip to Sark, which turned out to be a perfect combina-
tion of ferry, horse-drawn wagon and very friendly people.
Back in New York, I got to work. I learned that
Sark’s path to dark-sky designation began in 2010, when local stargazer Felicity Belfield heard Galloway Forest Park in Scot-
land had been singled out by the International Dark-sky Asso-
ciation (IDA) for the quality of its night sky. She and others
felt Sark deserved the same honor, so they contacted the IDA,
beginning a year of assessment and community consultation.
The award followed a long process that included as-
sessment of sky darkness and an audit of all external lights on
Sark. A comprehensive lighting-management plan was created
by Jim Patterson of the Institute of Lighting Engineers. Many
local residents and businesses altered their lighting to become
more dark-sky friendly, ensuring as little light as possible
spills upwards.
Annie Dachinger is “starfleet commander” of the
fledgling Sark Astronomical Society (SAstroS), which got off
the ground in the wake of the dark-sky designation and now
has 36 members. There were starfests in October 2011 and
March of this year, with a third planned for this month.
“It was agreed in this first celebratory year to have a
starfest in October 2011 with a guest speaker, an astronomer-
in-residence and to hire a mobile planetarium, plus music and
performers, including a belly dancer we dubbed the Heavenly
Body!” she recalled. “Our speaker was Prof. Andrew Coates
from the Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of Central London, who spoke about his work, especially ex-
ploring the solar system’s planets and moons. Steve
(darkskyman) Owens was astronomer-in-residence and took
parties on guided star walks.”
The March event was a mini starfest to close the win-
ter stargazing season, with Dr. Marek Kukula, public astrono-
mer from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Star walks and
talks were featured. Kukula returns for this month’s starfest
and will speak about “Black Holes: Do They Really Exist?
He’ll also talk about the exhibit Sark is hosting: winners of the
Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition co-
sponsored by BBC Sky at Night and Royal Observatory,
Greenwich.
Karen Brown, a Sark tourist official, observes that
“Since gaining dark-sky status, Sark is better able to promote
itself as a winter tourist destination. Until now, Sark has been
mainly seen as a summer destination, and our season for visi-
tors traditionally runs from Easter till October. However, we
now have hotels and guest-houses which [are staying] open
year round, and there is a small but steady increase in out-of-
season visitors who want to come and look at our amazing
skies.”
Fundraising is proceeding apace. Sark held its first
masked ball in June. Locals raise funds to cover the cost of
bringing speakers to Sark. “We hope eventually to have
enough money to invest in a small observatory, a further en-
couragement for professionals to visit and enjoy the excep-
tional quality of the clear sky here,” Dachinger said.
As for the woman who started it all, Belfield is 90 years young
and has lived on Sark for 30 years. In addition to being an
amateur astronomer, she’s an artist and an amateur geologist
who this year wrote a book about Sark rocks.
Another area in the United Kingdom that recently
received dark-sky certification is Exmoor National Park in
southwest England. Its designation was sought because the
park authority values tranquility as a key asset, and a dark sky
is part of that mission. There’s also an opportunity for Exmoor
to extend its tourist season through winter, using dark skies to
attract astrotourism, as is being done by Sark and Galloway.
Exmoor’s designation means the UK is the only
country that has the full spectrum of IDA designations. It has a
dark-sky park (Galloway), a dark-sky community (Sark) and a
dark-sky reserve (Exmoor).
Dark-sky park designation is intended for parks with
little or no population, the model being U. S. national parks.
Dark-sky community status is aimed at towns, cities, or islands
that want to preserve their night sky. Dark-sky reserve status,
while also meant for large parks, allows communities to exist
within the reserve, surrounding a dark-sky core, which is
strictly protected, while public engagement and awareness of light-pollution issues spread from that core to the surrounding
reserve.
Hark! Hark! Sark - continued on Page 14
Sark ‘s Dark Skies Abound
14
Hark! Hark! Sark - continued from Page 13
As Sark revels in its dark-sky status, there’s a potential cloud
on the horizon. Belfield told me Sark’s exceptionally dark
skies “are in danger of sabotage all the time. Almost all Sark
people are in favor of keeping [them], but sadly there’s one
multimillionaire family, based in Monaco, who want to own
Sark, purely for tax avoidance, and who long to develop it,
upgrading hotels, etc., and introducing streetlights. This fam-
ily has bought up much of the island, and although we’ve man-
aged to keep them out of our democratically elected parlia-
ment, it’s an ongoing battle.
“What’s so good about Sark, and unusual, is that you
can come and stay here in a first-rate hotel, and eat a fabulous dinner, and then simply walk outside to survey the heavens
without having to go in search of a clear view.”■
“Saturn on Steroids” Exoplanet Found
An enigmatic object detected five years ago in
space may be a ringed alien world comparable to our own gas
giant Saturn, the first such world discovered outside our solar
system, scientists now say.
The finding, announced in January at the 219th meeting
of the American Astronomical Society, came from studying an
unsteady eclipse of light from a star near the mysterious body.
"After we ruled out the eclipse being due to a spherical
star or a circumstellar disk passing in front of the star, I real-
ized that the only plausible explanation was some sort of dust
ring system orbiting a smaller companion - basically a Saturn
on steroids," said study co-author Eric Mamajek at Cerro
Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
The find occurred as astrophysicists investigated the
Scorpius-Centaurus association, the nearest region of recent
massive star formation to the Sun, using the international Su-
perWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) and All Sky Auto-
mated Survey (ASAS) projects. Specifically, the researchers
analyzed how light from sunlike stars in Scorpius-Centaurus
varied over time.
One star in particular showed dramatic changes in the
intensity of its light during a 54-day period in early 2007, sug-
gesting it was getting eclipsed by an orbiting body.
The star in question is technically known as 1SWASP
J140747.93-394542.6. It has a mass similar to the Sun but, at
about 16 million years of age, is much younger, just 1/300th as
old as the Sun. It lies about 420 light-years away.
Whatever is eclipsing it is relatively close to the star, 1.7
times or so the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
If a simple spherical object had passed in front of the
star, the intensity of the star's light would have steadily
dimmed and reached a low point before gradually increasing.
Instead, scientists saw a long, complex eclipse with significant
on-and-off dimming. At the deepest parts of the eclipse, at
least 95% of light from the star was getting blocked by dust.
The nature of these shifts in light - the "light curve" - was
very similar to that of EE Cephei, a hot, giant star occasionally
eclipsed by a companion star that is surrounded by a thick
protoplanetary disk. However, instead of just one dip in light
as one would expect of a single disk, Mamajek and University
of Rochester graduate student Mark Pecaut saw several dips.
The eclipsing body seems to be an object "with an orbit-
ing disk that has multiple rings of dust debris," Mamajek said.
This would be the first system of discrete, thin dust rings de-
tected around a very low-mass object outside our solar system,
he noted.
So far the research team has discovered one dense inner
disk and three tenuous outer disks, respectively named Roch-
ester, Sutherland, Campanas and Tololo, after the sites where
the eclipsed star was first detected and analyzed.
The outermost ring stretches up to 37 million miles from
the body it encircles. If the rings are similar to Saturn's, their
combined mass is probably as much as eight times that of
Earth's moon. "Each of these rings is probably made of thou-
sands and thousands of rings," Mamajek said. "Amateur as-tronomers can really look at this star with a backyard telescope
and help us learn more about this system through monitoring it
for more eclipses from the ring system."
Artist’s concept of the massive ring system exoplanet
Many questions remain about the nature of the ringed
body - whether it is a planet, a very low-mass star, or a brown
dwarf. If less than 13 times the mass of Jupiter, it would likely
be a planet similar to Saturn. If 13-75 times Jupiter's mass, it
would be a brown dwarf. If larger still, it would have enough
mass to sustain nuclear fusion, making it a star. Future tele-
scope observations can determine how much of a gravitational
tug this object exerts on its star, and thus reveal its mass.
Just as interesting as the rings are the gaps between the
gaps, signs that massive bodies are sculpting the ring edges. If
this object is a planet, moons could be carving the rings; if a star, newborn planets may be responsible. "One might imagine
rings around the smallest stars like rings one sees around Sat-
urn," Mamajek said. "Our inner solar system could've looked
like this long ago in its first tens of millions of years."
"I think these rings are how we're going to study moon-
forming disks around gas giants," Mamajek said. ■
EYEPIECE September 2012
15
AAA Events on the Horizon September 2012
Tuesdays, September 4,11,18,25 8:30 - 10:30 p.m., P, T, C Observing on the High Line, Manhattan/Enter at 14th Street Next dates: Tuesdays in October
Thursdays, September 6,13,20,27 7:30 - 9:30 p.m., P,T,C Observing at Brooklyn Bridge Park/Pier 1, Brooklyn Waterfront
Next dates: Thursdays in October
Wednesday, September 12 6:30 - 9 p.m., Board Only
AAA Board Meeting Cicatelli Center, 505 Eighth Avenue, 20th fl
Saturday, September 15 7:30 - 11 p.m., P, T, C
Observing at Great Kills Gateway National Park, Staten Island Next date: October 20
Saturday, Sept 15 (8 p.m.) - Sunday, Sept 15 (1:30 a.m. ), P,T,C
Observing at North-South Lake, Haines Falls, NY
Wednesday, September 19 7:30 - 11 p.m., P, T, C Observing at Brooklyn Heights Promenade/At Montague Street Next date: TBD
Friday, September 21 7:30 - 11 p.m., P, T, C Observing at Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn/50 Aviator Road Next date: October 19
Friday, September 28 7:00 - 11 p.m., P, T, C Observing in Carl Schurz Park, Manhattan/East End Ave & 86th
Next date: October 26
Saturday, September 29 10:00 a.m. - noon, P, T, C
Solar observing in Central Park, At the Conservatory Water Next date: October 27
Legend for Events: M: Members; T: Bring telescopes, binoculars, etc.
P: Open to the public C: Cancelled if cloudy
For the latest information about all AAA events, visit www.aaa.org
AAA 2012/2013 Lecture Series Calendar Oct 16 Michael Paul—The Google Lunar X Prize - The
Launch of Private Exploration of the Solar System
Nov 9 Timothy Creamer - NASA Astronaut Corps.
Dec 7 David Sobel - A More Perfect Heaven
Jan 4 Jerry Bonnell - NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Feb 1 David Hogg - The Sloan Atlas of Galaxies
Mar 1 Shane Larson - Topic TBA
Apr 5 Andrew Kessler - Author of Martian Summer
Apr 26 Special event to be announced
I pointed my 60mm f/15 achromatic refractor at the
Sun at 6PM EDT on August 2, and projected the image onto
an 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper using an old 20mm eyepiece.
The projected image displayed numerous sunspots in two par-
allel bands, one band on either side of the solar equator. One
sunspot was almost as large as the disk of Venus as it transited
the Sun nearly two months earlier. This spot displayed a dark umbral center and fairly well defined penumbral zone sur-
rounding the umbra. I then used my jury-rigged solar scope
consisting of an old pair of 10x50 binoculars with one objec-
tive completely blocked off and covered, and the other objec-
tive having one lens (actually a dense filter) of an Astronomy
magazine eclipse glasses taped in front of it. A rather dim,
dusky gray- orange image of the Sun was visible through this
apparatus along with several sunspots, including the large
round spot almost as large as the disk of Venus. However, this
large sunspot was nowhere nearly as dark as the India ink, jet-
black disk of Venus I saw suspended in front of the Sun on
June 5. I noticed the observed sunspot activity was also rather intense in early July, but after a solar flare was noted by the
news media, images of the Sun on the internet showed the in-
tense source of the flare rotating away toward the solar far side
and a relatively spot-free zone was rotating into view. Perhaps
what I am seeing is persistent activity on only one side of the
Sun that rotates into view early in the month (29 days) rather
than actual spiking of solar activity at the beginning of each
month. In any case, sunspot activity is weaker than it was one
year ago. The sunspot cycle is supposed to peak next year, so
we may yet see if this cycle is weaker than the last one or just
delayed. ■
EYEPIECE September 2012
AAA ONLINE STORE IS NOW OPEN
AAA Presents: A new and exciting wide selection of
logo merchandise
for our members to
purchase online
“Shop the Stars”
www.aaa.org/store
NEXT MONTH IN EYEPIECE Our Look Ahead to October: Updates on Mars Rover
Curiosity as it blazes new trails on the Martian surface; Amy
Wagner’s continued new journey: “Why We Explore;” Stan
Honda teaches us photography in his “Focus on the Universe”
series; Richard Brounstein presents: “Robot Scientists” in his
“What If” column; Ed Fox reviews “The 4% Universe;” Alan
Rude brings us “Gravity Waves and LIGO:” “Kleegor’s Uni-
verse” explores the funny side of astronomy; Ed Fox’s AAA
Briefs in Astronomy bring the universe to us; Rich
Rosenberg’s “What’s Up in the Sky” points our scopes in the right direction, plus Nebula of the Month, Astronomical Fact
of the Month….and more!!!
Sunspot Activity Surges in Early August By Joe Fedrick
International Observe the
Moon Night Coming
September 22, 2012
Want to look at the
Moon? Go outside at night and
look up. It’s easy. You don't
need super advanced technology
to gaze up at the wonder that is
Earth's natural satellite. Watch
this month for events surround-
ing this yearly tribute to our
neighbor in the sky. The event is sponsored by NASA’s Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter that just returned images of the flag
planted by the Apollo missions!