Club Diary February 2010

By Dave Stratton

Wednesday 3rd February 2010

Mysterious Mars - A History of Speculation and Discovery

Mike got us going with the news that we now have 51 memberships. The village fete is on 10th July and we are invited to have a stall. The next Open Night is fast approaching on 20th Feb. We should be there by 17.00.

MIKE is giving a talk tonight:

Mars is currently very well placed for observing.

The Babylonians called it the God of Death. Mike showed a chart of its track for the year including its retrograde motion from 10th Dec. to 28th Feb. This phenomena is caused because Earth overtakes Mars so producing this strange effect.

He told us about how the Ptolemaic system to explain this motion had the Earth at the centre and the planets orbiting us but with little epicycles.

Whilst the Copernican system had the Sun in its proper place but the planets were still required to have epicycles.

Tycho Brahe in 1581 put the Earth back in the middle with the Sun orbiting the Earth but with the remaining planets orbiting the Sun. (You may want to read that again).

Tycho's assistant Johannes Kepler had a weird idea involving solid shapes such as squares, triangles and all sorts of more complex regular geometric solids separating each planet from the next one out. It kind of works in a silly way.

He also worked out that planets travel faster when their orbits bring them closer to the Sun. He further understood that the area that they transcribe whether further in of out remains the same. This led to his famous laws of planetary motion.

Galileo Gallilei in January 1610 was observing the Moon, Jupiter and Mars.

Francesco Fontaine looked at Mars saw a pill like shape sadly he saw the same on Venus so it sounds like telescope trouble. However he managed to produce a sketch of mars showing what looks like a vaguely triangular scribble but which we can recognize as Certis Major.

Jonathon Swift in Gulliver's Travels included a comment on Mars and referred to two close-in moons prior to their discovery. It appears he deduced this but it's still uncanny.

William Herschel concluded that the Martian day was about the same as ours. He wondered whether the people there could be contacted.

Ideas to do this included planting forests in geometric shapes that Martians could see and even a plan to build a giant mirror to burn markings on the Martian plains.

In 1877 one Asaph Hall during a close opposition managed to observe Phobos and Deimos. Phobos orbits in just 7 hours.

A certain Giovanni Schapparelli noted channels on Mars and published this information. Sadly this was mistranslated and became canals (i.e. constructed).

This info was grabbed by Percival Lowell, who incidentally discovered Pluto - christened Pluto by Percival because of his initials. Unfortunately he saw a major system of canals built on Mars and decided they were to conserve water.

E E Barnard, a renowned astronomer, saw craters but not canals and decided to keep quiet.

In the late 1800s H G Wells wrote War of the Worlds a scientific fictional work but based on fact. Mike took us through the story whilst playing the very powerful music of the Planet Suite - Mars.

Orson Wells in 1938 during a radio play in US of the War of the Worlds, which was using the first person for impact. Owing to people tuning in after the programme had started folk assumed it was a live news item. Much panic was caused. We heard a recording of the broadcast.

In Ecuador in 1948 a radio station was burnt down and 15 people killed in similar circumstances.

There have been several versions of the super story including Jeff Wayne's one in 1970s starring Richard Burton. Again we enjoyed a recording. RB's voice was just perfect for atmosphere.

Mars Attack in 1990s is a comedy spoof that started as a set of bubblegum cards.

The latest movie version stars Tom Cruise.

The Mariner probes gave us the first high quality pics of Mars. The Russians had eight goes at getting there - one made it but lasted about one second.

Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system at 400 miles across and 17 high.

The Viking mission in 1976 gave us superb pictures. Including the famous 'Face on Mars'. This is of course just a mountain but our brains lend themselves to seeing human like forms and Mike showed that Olympus Mons also has a face if looked at from the right angle.

The meteorite found in Antarctica in 1984 by Alan Hills and known as ALH 84001 caused some debate when examined as it was thought to contain evidence of the remains of some sort of life when examined by a SEM. This issue is to this day controversial. The life option is slowly gaining credence.

Our very own Beagle 2 was lost on landing or perhaps bounced off the atmosphere and missed the planet.

The Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity which were designed to last three to six months have managed six years to date. Spirit has traveled six miles and Opportunity 12.

Mike showed some super images from orbit where the rover could be seen also the tracks left by it.

The rovers are solar powered and it was assumed that the dusty environment would put a time limit on them. However the day was saved by the Martian dust devils, little whirlwinds that regularly pass by and give the solar cells a clean-off. Lovely little movie clip of them in action.

Methane has been found there and this is a powerful life indicator but it could be geologically sourced.

Mars will have some good oppositions in 2016, even better in 2018 and 2020.

The Martian sky is pink, which caused some errors at first because NASA tweaked the colour balance to get a blue sky. We saw a nice pic of a Martian sunset.

To finish Mike treated us to an image of Earth shown as just a dot in the sky. His closing thought was that Mars is much further on in its life that Earth so it is just a thought that we may be Martians!

A question from the floor asked why Phobos is eventually going to crash into Mars whereas our Moon is receding - Why? Mike explained that the planetary dynamics are quite different because of our oceans.

Wonderful stuff.

Wednesday 10th February 2010

Observing Evening

It was cold and it was clear - in between the clouds.

The night was far from promising and most of us missed Andrew's last minute call to get us to bring scopes. So we didn't have many.

Ed had his 6 inch reflector at the end of the car park and did sterling work with it.

Ron had his marvelous reproduction of Galileo Galilei's telescope which was made just over 400 years ago and used to view the Moon, Mars and Jupiter.

Ron was due to give us a short talk on the scope as a 'frantic fill-in' so I think he was quite pleased it was clear.

Ron showed us Mars through it. Mars is perfectly placed right now.

Ron has it mounted on a modern mount with manual slow motions and a Telrad fastened with elastic bands. Galileo probably didn't even have elastic bands. (Perhaps he used string for his Telrad).The instrument is quite difficult to use, even with these devices; it certainly made you appreciate the problems early astronomers faced.

We were blessed with no less than six visitors - one of whom, Daniel, had brought his 50mm Tasco along in the hope of seeing his first light through it.

Mike managed to assemble it and we all got a look. The view of Mars was quite similar to the Galilean. Daniel was chuffed to bits and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Wednesday 17th February 2010

Astronomy Question Time

Tonight was a bit of a mixed bag of tricks as when we arrived Ed had his scope set up and proceeded to show us the asteroid Vesta currently in Leo. We also got to see the Martian snow cap plus Saturn with its rings virtually edge-on.

It was a wonderfully clear evening but we were scheduled inside the hall for:-

Astronomy Question Time

This was hosted by Mike and Andrew and chaired by Andrew. This time it took a rather new and very interesting change of procedure. Instead of having a panel of 'Experts' we simply asked questions and the audience as a whole answered. Brilliant.

Q. The increasing issue of space junk is causing concern - what can be done?
A. A large metal sheet that is orbiting in the opposite direction to the targeted junk and the resultant collision causes the item to vaporise.
A. Space debris does reach the ground from time to time.
A. 150 years ago Richard Carrington saw a white light flare from the Sun. Aurora were seen as far south as Cuba. Electrical installations such as telegraph stations burst into flames. If it happened today it would be catastrophic. We are so reliant on electric gadgetry now society as we know it would fail. Including of course our satellite communications.

Q. A galaxy has recently been found that is not in its expected location. Why?
A. There is currently increasing doubt over the accuracy of object distances.
A. Lots of rebels who delight in making the establishment squirm. This is actually good as it keeps folk on their toes.

Q. Will the universe keep expanding?
A. As far as we know yes. It is continuing to expand faster and faster.
A. It may be that the universe is expanding at the speed of light and we cannot see beyond a boundary.

Q. Where is the centre of the universe?
A. Everywhere. Everywhere in the universe will be able to see the same distance as we can. I.e. 13.5 billion light years.
A. The universe is not restricted to three dimensions as we are. To date eleven (or possibly more..) have been mentioned.
A. If you Google 'AstronomyCast' it has podcasts on deep questions.

Q. What is the best telescope for beginners?
A. Don't get one, use binoculars.
A. A six inch Dob. Cheap, light and easy to use.
A. A Tal 1 4.5 inch very robust.
A. Something you can carry and store.
A. An older perhaps better off person may be better off with an 8 inch GoTo spending £1500.
A. Apparently there is a budget Newtonian for £50.

Q. Phobos will crash into Mars whilst our Moon is receding - Why?
A. Phobos orbits Mars in just 7 hours and is being affected by the atmosphere. In our situation the Earth's tides are gradually slowing our spin rate which causes the Moon to recede.
A. Years ago our tides were much larger and the Moon closer.

Q. Why is the speed of light finite?
A. This speed with current thinking is the ultimate speed of everything and cannot be exceeded. Light can in fact go slower than this.
A. If whilst travelling at light speed a beam was directed forward, an observer would record the light travelling at its normal speed.
A. Time is affected by speed - experiments with atomic clocks have proven this.

Q. How much energy would it take to get something up to the speed of light?
A. All the energy in the universe.

Q. Is time travel possible?
A. No. To travel back is probably utterly impossible.

Weird fact. A gentleman in Japan has just died who was in Hiroshima and witnessed the bomb drop. He took a train to Nagasaki and saw the second one as well!!

Wednesday 24th February 2010

Beginners' Evening

Tonight was meant to be Ron giving us his talk about his Galilean reproduction telescope but he was thwarted for the second time. This time because despite having most of the technical bits we were minus the digital projector. So at some time in the future it will be third time lucky - we hope.

We started with a debrief on last Saturday's Open Night. Which was considering the weather a great success. We had about 200 people and they donated £134.83. This will be shared with most going to the Country Park.

Bruce reported that he had over 40 folk taking their photo of the Moon which they will receive via email.

Andy's glimpse of what we thought might be the ISS turned out to be most likely an Iridium Flare.

There was general concern that we were experiencing long waiting times at the larger scopes. Mike advised that he was wondering whether to invite another club to join us.

The FFI (Frantic Fill-In) was decided to be:

Twenty Questions

The media we used our old blackboard and a stick of red chalk Mike just happened to have.

Mike started us off with the first item which we got in 12 with the answer 'aurora'.

Terry took over and had us beaten. After 22 we were told it was 'eyepiece'.

The next was real easy we got 'polestar' with just 6 questions.

We were on a roll as 'M57 the Ring Nebula' took only 10.

We failed on the next which was 'Martian Canals' Mike was very generous but we had to admit defeat at 22.

The last one which we got surprisingly easily was the 'Southern Cross' which fell at 9.

Mike - Space News

Furthering our recent discussions about the problem of space junk we heard that two satellites were going to pass within 50 metres until one was nudged to change its trajectory.

We learnt that an idea being considered to defect comets on collision courses with Earth could be defected by spacecraft equipped with mirrors to heat a spot on the comet thus causing it to gas which will change its path.

A space craft (SS1) with a solar sale is due to be launched in 2010.

Wonderfull Moments

Mike went around the room asking individuals to share with us their own special moments in astronomy.
Ted - Seeing a phase on Venus.
Ron - Using a large industrial lens and a crude eyepiece to see Saturn which he had thought was a star.
Terry - Remembered seeing Saturn for the first time.
Mike - Recounted the time when he decided to use his refractor hand-held to view the ISS with a webcam.
Andy - Recalled imaging Hale-Bopp with the aid of a Scotch Mount.
Hannah - Fondly remembered seeing the Milky Way in Yorkshire whilst enjoying a meteor watch.
Ted - Whilst camping in a field near Le Mons seeing the Milky Way.
Alan - Also rememberes the Milky Way when in Cornwall.
Paul - Remembered seeing the Milky Way from here when he was younger.
Jim - When he was 7 he used a cuckoo clock weight to knock a tin off a shelf to wake himself up in the night to use his 60mm Tasco but it was cloudy.
Ed - The Venus transit.
Terry - The Venus transit.
Chris - Also remembers the transit which he saw from work.
Kevin - Recalled that it was this transit that got him back into Astro. He also mentioned seeing Comet McNaught from Danbury and being frustrated that he had no one to share it with.
- He mentioned an amazing experience in the French Alps when he saw the sun rise and when he turned around stars were still out in the western sky.
- Recalled how a solar eclipse in Turkey was awe inspiring.
Cynthia - remembered during a partial eclipse seeing the crescent shapes as the sunlight passed through a tree on her patio.
Alan - Said that a meteor watch shared with others is wonderful experience.
George - Seeing luminescence on the sea at our Dark Site.
- Seeing an aurora from the cockpit of a Jumbo at 37,000ft.
Mike - Seeing aurora from a Star Party in Norfolk.
Dave - Also saw the above.
Andy - Recalled the wonderful time when he showed his elderly neighbour the Venus transit and managed to snap a wren at the same time.
Bruce - Said how he was impressed during the Patrick Moore visit that although it appeared chaotic Patrick knew where everything was.

Great evening.

Next week we have Mark Galloway (an ex-member) talking on the intriguing subject of Green Fuzzies.