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Download the attached 46min radio show audio and play!

On 10/10/2020 9:23 PM, Jerry wrote these notes to guide our conversations:
>
> Monday, October 12The constellation Cetus the Whale is rising in the southeast as darkness falls. You can track it over the next few hours, as its stars climb higher in the sky. Focus in on one star in particular: the variable star Mira, whose very name means “wonderful.”
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>    You can find Mira, also cataloged as Omicron (ο) Ceti, roughly in the center of the constellation, about one-third of the way on a line drawn southwest from Menkar (magnitude 2.5) toward Diphda (magnitude 2). Mira is a long-period variable, swinging from 2nd to 10th magnitude and back over the course of 332 days. That means its brightness changes by a factor of 1,600 between its brightest and its dimmest.
>
>    Consider visiting this variable once every one to two weeks this fall and winter to see if you can note its change over time in comparison to other, nearby stars. You can check out Phil Harrington’s column in Astronomy’s October 2020 issue for more details on this wonderful little star and step-by-step instructions on how to track its brightness in the coming months.
>
>
> Tuesday, October 13
>
>    The big night is finally here: Mars reaches opposition at 7 P.M. EDT, just one week after its closest approach to Earth. It’s blazing at magnitude –2.6 in the southeast, amid the stars of Pisces and about 10° high in the east an hour after sunset. It will climb higher as the hours tick by; the best time to observe the Red Planet is late this evening in the hours leading up to local midnight, when it is high above the horizon. It’s in a relatively dark part of the sky and in a faint constellation, so it will be easy to pick out, thanks to its brightness and its distinctive red color.
>
>    Mars’ disk appears 22.4" across tonight, just 0.2" smaller than at its closest approach last week. At 11 P.M. EDT, the dark swath of Mare Cimmerium is visible, with Syrtis Minor rotating onto the disk. Follow the planet for a few more hours overnight, and you’ll see the bright Hellas basin appear. Also prominent will be the dark Syrtis Major region. Although astronomers once thought observed seasonal changes in this distinctive feature might be due to martian vegetation, today we know that its fluctuating appearance is actually due to sand blowing across the planet’s desolate surface.
>
>    The Moon passes 4° north of Venus at 8 P.M. EDT, although both are still below the horizon. We’ll come back to them in just a few hours.
>
>    Mercury is stationary at midnight EDT. It’s well below the horizon by then, but you can view it tomorrow at sunset.
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>
> Wednesday, October 14
>
>    Today holds amazing solar system sights for both morning and evening observers. For those up before the Sun, you can spot the delicate crescent Moon — with just eight percent of its surface lit — join the planet Venus in the morning sky. Look east in the two hours before sunrise to glimpse the pair in the southern portion of Leo the Lion, about 9° southwest of Denebola (which you may remember from earlier this week marks the tip of Leo’s tail). See if you can spot any earthshine on the lunar surface, which occurs when sunlight bounces off Earth and lights up the portion of the Moon in Earth’s shadow.
>
>    Lucky — and speedy — evening observers can catch magnitude 0.9 Mercury low in the western sky at sunset tonight. It’s only 5° high as the Sun sinks below the horizon and is completely gone within about 30 minutes.
>
>    As Mercury disappears, look to its north. Higher above the horizon, you’ll see the bright star Arcturus in Boötes pop out in the darkening twilight. This red giant shines 113 times more brightly than our Sun and weighs about one-and-a-half times as much as our star.
>
>
> Thursday, October 15
>
>    Jupiter and Saturn set before local midnight in the south, still embedded within the stars of Sagittarius. You can find the giant planets to the northeast (upper left) of the Teapot asterism. The two planets are currently just under 6.5° apart, with magnitude 0.5 Saturn east of magnitude –2.3 Jupiter.
>
>    Tonight, focus in on Jupiter with binoculars or a telescope after dark to see all four of its largest moons off to the planet’s east. But not for long — just after 9:40 P.M. EDT, the closest moon, Io, slips onto the disk. About 80 minutes later, its shadow follows, as Io is already more than halfway across Jupiter’s face. Jupiter is still about 4° above the horizon for observers at 40° north latitude when Io leaves the planet’s western limb just before midnight EDT. Observers on the East Coast and in the Midwest won’t get to see Io’s shadow disappear (around 1:13 A.M. EDT) before the planet sets, but West Coast observers will be able to catch the show’s finale.
>
>
> Friday, October 16
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>    New Moon occurs at 3:31 P.M. EDT. The Moon is also at perigee today, the closest point in its orbit to Earth. It currently sits 221,775 miles (356,912 kilometers) away.
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> Unauthorized access.
>
>    New Moon is the best time to seek out dim objects — and constellations — washed out by our satellite’s bright glare. Tonight, try to catch Delphinus the Dolphin high in the southwest after dark. This tiny constellation, which ranks 69th in size among the 88 official constellations, consists of four stars that form the dolphin’s body, as well as one additional star that marks its tail. The four stars of Delphinus’ body also create an asterism known as Job’s Coffin, which measures just 1.3° by 2.7°.
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>    Although this aquatic constellation may not look like much to the naked eye, turning binoculars or a small scope on the region can bring out a wealth of field stars to enjoy on a dark night like tonight.
>
>
> Image.png
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>
>
> SBAU Workshop back on
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>    It’s been a gloomy year for amateur astronomy, including the SBAU. Our face to face public outreach events remain on hold until at least the new year. But we are trying to resuscitate our Tuesday evening Telescope Workshop using Zoom and have had two meetings so far with good results. These trial meetings were hosted by Joe Doyle using  his personal zoom account. The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History has now provided their zoom account so meetings can now be closer to the traditional 90 minute length. These meetings are focused on telescope designs, repair, use, imaging, or general astronomy questions from the general public. To participate, send an email to Jerry Wilson President of the SBAU. Email address can be found at www.SBAU.org
>
>
> Last, but not least: Remember that cool video of stars orbiting the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Well...
>
>    Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, today was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics.
>
>    Ghez shares half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel of UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. The Nobel committee praised them for “the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.” The other half of the prize was awarded to Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.”
>
>    In July 2019, the journal Science published a study by Ghez and her research group that is the most comprehensive test of Albert Einstein’s iconic general theory of relativity near the monstrous black hole at the center of our galaxy. Although she concluded that “Einstein’s right, at least for now,” the research group is continuing to test Einstein’s theory, which she says cannot fully explain gravity inside a black hole.
>
> Ghez studies more than 3,000 stars that orbit the supermassive black hole. Black holes have such high density that nothing can escape their gravitational pull, not even light. The center of the vast majority of galaxies appears to have a supermassive black hole, she said.
>
>    “I’m thrilled and incredibly honored to receive a Nobel Prize in physics,” said Ghez, who is director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group. “The research the Nobel committee is honoring today is the product of a wonderful collaboration among the scientists in the UCLA Galactic Center Orbits Initiative and the University of California’s wise investment in the W.M. Keck Observatory.
>
>    “We have cutting-edge tools and a world-class research team, and that combination makes discovery tremendous fun. Our understanding of how the universe works is still so incomplete. The Nobel Prize is fabulous, but we still have a lot to learn.”
>
> Sent from my iPad


32
200928 KZSB SBAU radio 1290AM Crop ads 46min mono const24kps joint stereo Baron CMcP JW TT

Download and play attached file!

On 9/25/2020 11:34 PM, Jerry wrote:
> 
>
> Monday, September 28
>
>    Saturn will halt its westward motion, coming to an apparent stop against the background stars at 8 P.M. PDT tonight. It will now begin moving eastward again — although not as quickly as Jupiter. The largest planet in the solar system switched directions September 12 and is tracking east much faster than Saturn. Jupiter will ultimately catch up with the ringed planet December 21 for an extraordinary close conjunction that will bring Saturn (apparently) as close as Jupiter’s own moons.
>
>    Our own Moon has pulled away from Sagittarius, where the giant planets now sit, so consider spending some time in this constellation tonight. The tiny dwarf planet Pluto, currently around magnitude 14, lies roughly between Saturn and Jupiter, about 3° west-southwest of Saturn and just under 4° east-southeast of Jupiter. You’ll need at least a small scope and clear skies to see it.
>
>    Other celestial delights in Sagittarius to turn your telescope on include numerous star clusters. Open star clusters in this constellation include M18, M21, M23, and M25; globulars include M22, M28, M54, M55, and M75.
>
>
> Tuesday, September 29
>
>    The Moon passes 4° south of Neptune at 7 P.M. PDT tonight. You can find the pair in Aquarius the Water-bearer in the southeast at that time, although you’ll need large binoculars or a small scope to catch Neptune’s nearly magnitude 8 glow, especially in the glare of our satellite.
>
>    For a planet that’s much easier to spot, look east to find magnitude –2.5 Mars about 16° above the horizon. Currently appearing about 22" across, Mars is headed for a brilliant opposition next month you won’t want to miss.
>
>    Between Mars and Neptune on the sky is main-belt asteroid 68 Leto, which reaches opposition 8 P.M. PDT. It’s roughly magnitude 10 — best seen with a telescope. Discovered in 1861, Leto is 76 miles (123 kilometers) across. It’s currently traveling through the constellation Cetus the Whale.
>
>    You can find yet another planet, Uranus, by looking 15° east-northeast of Mars, closer to the horizon. The nearer of our solar system’s two ice giants is magnitude 5.7 and should show up in binoculars, though beware the Moon’s nearby glow.
>
>
> Wednesday, September 30
>
>    Jupiter’s moons are having a busy week: Callisto’s shadow will begin creeping onto the planet’s disk around 6:04 P.M. PDT tonight. The shadow is so large that it takes roughly 10 minutes to fully slip onto the northeastern limb. Keep your eye on the gas giant overnight and you’ll also see tiny Io reappear from eclipse about 9:03 P.M. October 1. It should spring into view roughly 22" from the Jupiter’s eastern limb.
>
>    With a nearly Full Moon tonight, many deep-sky objects are off limits. But it’s a great time to take in one of the summer sky’s most appealing double-star sights: Albireo (Beta [β] Cygni), the head of Cygnus the Swan. Still high overhead tonight, this pair of stars offers contrasting colors of gold and blue. Also known as the UCLA star. The magnitude 3.1 and 5.1 pair has a separation of 34", making the two stars easy to resolve in binoculars. Use a small scope (even 2 inches will do) to really bring out their vivid colors.
>
>
> Thursday, October 1
>
>    Mercury reaches greatest eastern elongation (26° from the Sun) at 9 P.M. PDT today. You can spot the solar system’s smallest planet this evening, but you’ll need to be quick — it’s only 3° high in the west-southwest 30 minutes after sunset, but glowing at bright magnitude 0. The planet sets 20 minutes later. By then, some of the brightest stars should be popping out of the twilight: Arcturus, Vega, Deneb, Altair, and near the southern horizon, Fomalhaut. Jupiter and Saturn should appear about the same time.
>
>    Full Moon occurs at 2:05 P.M. PDT. Our satellite will rise in the east just moments after sunset and remain visible in the sky all night. It’s the first of two Full Moons this month — the second, called a Blue Moon when two Full phases take place in the same month, will occur October 31.
>
>
> Friday, October 2
>
>    Venus and the bright star Regulus in Leo are a mere 0.5° apart an hour before sunrise this morning. The pair rises together in the east around 1:00 A.M. local time, so you’ll have at least three hours to catch the sight. Earth’s sister planet glows a bright magnitude –4.1, which is about 145 times brighter than nearby Regulus. Venus’ disk currently spans about 15"; with magnification, you’ll see it’s a 72-percent-lit crescent. The planet will pass 0.09° south of Regulus at 5 P.M. PDT tonight, and they’ll be 41" apart by next morning.
>
>    The Moon passes 0.7° south of Mars at 8 P.M. PDT. At that time, the Red Planet will be on view high in the southeast. Both should be readily visible, thanks to Mars’ brilliance. The dim stars of Pisces around them, however, will likely be washed out by the Moon’s bright light.
>
>
>
> ISS Dodges Space Junk.
>
>    On Tuesday night, the International Space Station (ISS) had to swerve out of the way of a piece of incoming space junk.
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>    It’s the third time this year alone that the ISS has had to pull an evasive maneuver, according to SpaceNews. The junk sailed past without incident, but now NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is calling for more funding to help the agency better track and manage the growing sea of dangerous garbage orbiting our planet.
>
>    Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Jonathan McDowell later suggested that it was a piece of an upper stage of a Japanese rocket that launched in 2018 before being left in upper orbit.
>
>    The debris object that ISS avoided is now available on SpaceTrack as 2018-084CQ, 46477, from the breakup of Japan's H-2A F40 rocket stage. At 2221:07 UTC it passed within a few km of ISS at a relative velocity of 14 6 km/s, 422 km over the Pitcairn Is  in the S Pacific
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>    The ISS crew used the thrusters of a docked spacecraft to push the station out of the way. The NASA crew hid in a Soyuz spacecraft as a safety capsule, according to SpaceNews, out of what NASA described as an “abundance of caution.”
>
>
>
> Would you survive having witnessed formation of the Barringer Crater in Arizona?   
>
>    If the Barringer Meteor Crater impact event in Arizona occurred in a modern city, it would completely destroy it. As the question implies, distance from the point of impact is directly related to one’s survival. The key to determining a safe distance lies in the energy of the impact event. Estimates of that energy exist, but the range of uncertainty can have significant consequences. If the energy was sufficiently small, one could have had a spectacular view of the impact event from Anderson Mesa, a long volcanic ridge about 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of the crater. However, for some of the larger energy estimates, that location may have been uncomfortably close, if not deadly. I have often thought that a very nice — and safe — vantage point would have been Mount Elden, a towering volcanic dome in Flagstaff nearly 40 miles (60km) northwest of the crater.
>
>    The impact produced a shock wave and air blast that radiated across the landscape. If the impact energy was 20 megatons, it was immediately lethal for human-sized animals within 4 miles (6km) of the impact. A sharp change in pressure caused by the shock wave produced severe lung damage within 6 to 7 miles (10 to 12 km) of the impact. Winds were also catastrophic, with speeds in excess of 900 mph (1,500 km/h) within the inner 4-mile-diameter zone and still more than 60 mph (100 km/h) at radial distances of 12 miles (20km). Those winds would have picked up debris and hurled it across the landscape like a shotgun blast. Mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths were among the unfortunate victims of the impact event. Let’s hope we are able to mitigate future events of that size and larger so that we never have an opportunity to witness them from any distance.
>
> David Kring
>
> Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston
>
> Astronomy Magazine April 27, 2015
>
>
> Life on Venus?
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>    On September 14, 2020, a new planet was added to the list of potentially habitable worlds in the solar system: Venus.
>
>    Phosphine, a toxic gas made up of one phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms (PH3), commonly produced by organic life forms but otherwise difficult to make on rocky planets, was discovered in the middle layer of the Venus atmosphere. This raises the tantalizing possibility that something is alive on our planetary neighbor. With this discovery, Venus joins the exalted ranks of Mars and the icy moons Enceladus and Europa among planetary bodies where life may once have existed, or perhaps might even still do so today.
>
>    It’s critical to point out that this detection does not mean that astronomers have found alien life in the clouds of Venus. Far from it, in fact.
>
>    Although the discovery team identified phosphine at Venus with two different telescopes, helping to confirm the initial detection, phosphine gas can result from several processes that are unrelated to life, such as lightning, meteor impacts or even volcanic activity.
>
>    However, the quantity of phosphine detected in the Venusian clouds seems to be far greater than those processes are capable of generating, allowing the team to rule out numerous inorganic possibilities. But our understanding of the chemistry of Venus’ atmosphere is sorely lacking: Only a handful of missions have plunged through the inhospitable, carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere to take samples among the global layer of sulfuric acid clouds.
>
>    There are two possibilities: Either there is some sort of life in the Venus clouds, generating phosphine, or there is unexplained and unexpected chemistry taking place there. How do we find out which it is? We go there and see.

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200914 SBAU radio KZSB AM1290 VP DJ BaRonH JW CMcP BM TT 46min ads cropped
Download attached file and play

34
download attached mp3 file and play.
We talked about September astro events shown on graphic found by SBAU President JerryW, also attached.

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The SBAU hour on KZSB radio 1290AM, VP DJ Baron Ron Herron, Pres Jerry Wilson, Outreach Chuck McPartlin, Tom Whittemore, Bruce Murdock.  Talk on Betelgeuse dimming, star magnitudes, etc.  Please download attached file to play.

36
Attached is the audio file of August 28, 2020 SBAU Space Gossip with Vice Pres and DJ Baron Ron Herron, Pres Jerry Wilson, Chuck McPartlin, and Tom Totton.  We were on at 730 and 830am for 15 min each time.  Extra conversation with LadyK and Joe Danely is also included in the middle.  Download the file and play.

37
Please download the attached MP3 file of the radio program, ads were deleted.
Also, a transcript of the program was made by MS Word online transcribe function...20 pages of approximate conversation that will need some careful consideration of what is being said and by whom...is attached as well.

 Topics that were to be considered:

On 8/22/2020 10:42 PM, Jerry wrote:
>
> Monday, August 24
>
>    Pegasus the Winged Horse is rising in the east after sunset, climbing higher in the sky as evening proceeds. This large constellation is home to the globular cluster M15 (NGC 7078), sometimes called the Great Pegasus Cluster. M15 is located just over 4° northwest of magnitude 2.4 Enif, the brightest star in Pegasus despite its designation of Epsilon (ε) Pegasi. You’ll find Enif west of the Great Square of Pegasus, roughly 20° west of Markab. Enif, which means “the nose” in Arabic, is typically drawn as the flying horse’s mouth or muzzle.
>
>    M15 itself is magnitude 6 and spans 12.3'. It lies about 33,600 light-years away and is one of our galaxy’s oldest globular clusters. M15 will look noticeably fuzzy in binoculars, especially compared to the 6th-magnitude star located just to its west.
>
>    This dense globular cluster is also the first globular discovered to contain a planetary nebula, which is the shell of gas blown out by a dying star and subsequently lit up by that star as it fades. The nebula, Pease 1, is challenging to spot even with a large (15 inches or greater) telescope and requires dark skies and patience to pick out from the busy background of the packed cluster. If you’re an experienced observer or photographer looking for a challenge, push the magnification to 300x or greater and look about 1' northeast of the cluster’s core for the tiny, bubblelike nebula.
>
>
> Tuesday, August 25
>
>    First Quarter Moon occurs at 1:58 P.M. EDT. Because it rises at essentially the same time, our satellite is visible all evening, already in the sky at sunset and sinking below the horizon just shy of midnight. It’s a great time to settle back for some easy lunar observing. The terminator, which divides night from day, is moving relatively fast; between sunset and moonset, you may be able to detect its motion if you come back to the Moon several times.
>
>    Several of the Moon’s large seas are on display for Northern Hemisphere observers: Frigoris, Serenitatis, Tranquillitatis, Nectaris, Crisium, and Fecunditatis. The large crater at Fecunditatis’ eastern edge is Langrenus. From directly above, the 81-mile-wide (130 km) crater is a near-perfect circle; but from our perspective here on Earth, it appears more as an oblong shape, thanks to the curvature of the lunar surface.
>
>
> Wednesday, August 26
>
>    Already high overhead at sunset, Cygnus the Swan is your target tonight. Lurking within this graceful grouping of stars is the sky’s surest black hole, one of two components of the binary system called Cygnus X-1. Although the black hole itself is invisible, its companion star — a hot, blue-white giant with the inauspicious designation HDE 226868 — is not. HDE 226868 (also designated HIP 98298, among a few other names) is an 8th-magnitude star less than 0.5° east of Eta (η) Cygni. It’s detectable with binoculars and more easily with a telescope.
>
>    HDE 226868 orbits its black hole companion every 5.6 days, flung around by the compact massive object’s immense gravity. Astronomers suspect the pair is so close that the black hole is actively feeding on HDE 226868 as well, pulling material off the star and onto a disk of material that ultimately swirls into the black hole like water flowing down a drain.
>
>
> Thursday, August 27
>
>    With a brilliant opposition coming up October 13, we’re now in peak Mars observing season. The best time to observe it is a few hours before sunrise, when the Red Planet is high above the southern horizon, shining at magnitude –1.7 in southeastern Pisces. Its disk is currently 90 percent lit and spans 18". By the end of the month, it will span 19" and grow to 92 percent lit.
>
>    Summertime is approaching in the Red Planet’s southern hemisphere; if you observe the planet with a telescope, you’ll see that its southern polar cap, tilted toward Earth, is relatively small. Because of its brilliance, the bright Hellas basin is often confused for the polar cap. The large basin is visible around 1 A.M. EDT and rotates off the disk within about three hours. Come back tomorrow night at the same time for a bit more time to search it out — thanks to the Red Planet’s rotation rate of 24 hours 37 minutes, Mars’ features appear to move slightly backward when viewed at the same time on successive nights.
>
>
> Thursday, August 28
>
>    Dwarf Planet 1 Ceres reaches opposition at 8 A.M. EDT. It’s glowing at magnitude 7.7 — within reach of binoculars or a small scope — and visible in Aquarius both early this morning and late this evening. The tiny world is currently 186 million miles (299 million km) from Earth. You’ll find it this morning about halfway on a line drawn between the bright stars Fomalhaut in Piscis Austrinus and Skat in Aquarius. It’s moving slowly west but is still roughly between the same stars by evening.
>
>    While you’re in the area, look about 13° northeast of Skat to find Neptune. For a closer signpost, the planet is less than 3° east of 4th-magnitude Phi (φ) Aquarii. At magnitude 7.8, our solar system’s outermost planet is roughly the same brightness as Ceres.
>
>    Asteroid 20 Massalia reaches opposition at 5 P.M. EDT, when it is nearly 147 million miles (236 million km) from Earth. It, too, is in Aquarius, about 14° due west of Neptune but glowing a much fainter magnitude 9.4.
>
>    The Moon passes 1.4° south of Jupiter at 10 P.M. EDT. The pair, along with Saturn just 8.3° east of Jupiter, is in Sagittarius. The constellation is southwest of where you’ll find Ceres, Massalia, and Neptune in Aquarius.
>
>
> ASTEROID SAMPLE RETURN IN DECEMBER
>
>    The Hayabusa2 spacecraft is trekking back to Earth with a sample capsule full of material snagged from a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which runs the mission, has long planned to deposit that capsule in the vast desert of Australia, but the new announcement marks that country's official approval of the plan.
>
>    Over the course of its stay at Ryugu, Hayabusa2 collected samples from the asteroid's rocky surface, shot the asteroid to create an artificial crater, and collected some of the subsurface material uncovered by that impact as well. The diversity of samples means that scientists will be able to learn more about Ryugu's interior and how it has responded to the harsh forces of outer space, like the solar wind, a constant stream of highly energized particles called plasma flowing off the sun.
>
>    But even with advanced spacecraft, scientists can always do more detailed analyses in laboratories on Earth, hence the need to land that capsule. Hayabusa2's predecessor, another asteroid sample-return mission called Hayabusa that visited a space rock called Itokawa, also returned its material to Australia, and the current mission will follow suit, with the deposit scheduled for Dec. 6.
>
>    However, unlike Hayabusa, the current spacecraft will not return in full; it will only deposit a sample capsule back to Earth. JAXA is evaluating sending the Hayabusa2 probe on to visit a second asteroid about a decade from now.
>
>
> COMET IN THE MAKING
>
>    Like the mythical half-human, half-horse creatures, centaurs in the solar system are hybrids between asteroids and comets. Now, astronomers have caught one morphing from one type of space rock to the other, potentially giving scientists an unprecedented chance to watch a comet form in real time in the decades to come.
>
>    “We have an opportunity here to see the birth of a comet as it starts to become active,” says planetary scientist Kat Volk of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
>
> The object, called P/2019 LD2, was discovered by the ATLAS telescope in Hawaii in May. Its orbit suggests that it’s a centaur, a class of rocky and icy objects with unstable orbits. Because of that mixed composition and potential to move around the solar system, astronomers have long suspected that centaurs are a missing link between small icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and comets that regularly visit the inner solar system (SN: 11/19/94).
>
>    These “short-period” comets, which are thought to originate from icy objects in the Kuiper Belt, orbit the sun once a decade or so, and make repeat appearances in Earth’s skies. (Long-period comets, like Halley’s Comet, which visits the inner solar system once a century, probably originate even farther from the sun, in the Oort cloud (SN: 10/25/13).)
>
>    All previously found short-period comets were spotted only after they had transitioned into comets (SN: 8/6/14). But LD2 just came in from the Kuiper Belt recently and will become a comet in as little as 43 years, Volk and colleagues report August 10 at arXiv.org.
>
>    “It’s weird to think that this object should be becoming a comet when I’m retiring,” Volk says.
>
>    In 2019, she and colleagues showed that there’s a region of space just beyond Jupiter that they call the “Gateway”.  In this area, small planetary objects hang out while warming up and transitioning from outer solar system ice balls to inner solar system comets with their long tails. It’s like a comet incubator, says planetary scientist Gal Sarid of the SETI Institute, who is based in Rockville, Md.
>
>    After hearing about LD2, Volk, Sarid and their colleagues simulated thousands of possible trajectories to see where the object had been and where it is going. LD2’s orbit probably took it near Saturn around 1850, and it entered its current orbit past Jupiter after a close encounter with the gas giant in 2017, the team found. The object will leave its present orbit and move in toward the sun in 2063, where heat from the sun will probably sublimate LD2’s volatile elements, giving it a bright cometary tail, the researchers say.
>
>    “This will be the first ever comet that we know its history, because we’ve seen it before being a comet,” Sarid says.
>
>    The fact that LD2 is fairly new to the inner reaches of the solar system suggests that it’s made of relatively pristine material that has been in the back of the solar system’s freezer for billions of years, unaltered by heat from the sun. That would make it a time capsule of the early solar system. Studying its composition could help planetary scientists learn what the first planets were made of.
>
>
>
> DO WE LIVE IN A MULTIVERSE?
>
>    For as long as humans have gazed skyward, a question has loomed in the back of our collective mind: How do we know everything that we see is everything there is?
>
>    Decades of astrophysical research beginning in the late 19th century established the universe as we see it, culminating with the Big Bang theory. We now know the universe is about 13.8 billion years old and at least 150 billion trillion miles across. But in recent years, astronomers have begun to address a staggering possibility — the universe we can observe, and in which we live, may be one of many that makes up the cosmos.
>
>    The suggestive evidence for this comes from several directions, from the idea of cosmic inflation, from string ttheory and the existence of the famous cosmological constant. Some of the notions that come out of these lines of evidence are pretty counterintuitive. Yet that doesn’t worry astronomers. “I fully expect the true nature of reality to be weird and counterintuitive,” says cosmologist Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “which is why I believe these crazy things.”
>
>    The idea of multiple universes, or multiverses, poses the notion of the universe existing like a giant sponge. Each bubble is a distinct universe, like ours, but others could exist separated by giant voids.
>
>    What’s the evidence for all this? First, measurements of distant supernovae suggest the expansion of the cosmos is accelerating. Second, more and more evidence supports the inflationary scenario of the early history of the universe. Third, ideas about inflation suggest many Big Bangs may have occurred. Fourth, recent notions about string theory suggest universes of very different types may have formed. Altogether, these notions suggest it was possible, if not probable, that multiple universes of different types formed in the past, and they coexist with the familiar cosmos we can see.
>
>    Even without other universes, astronomers know the universe is larger than what we see with our telescopes. The view horizon now spans about 14 billion light-years; and if you count the knowledge that distant objects have expanded far beyond what we now see, the “currently” existing horizon is at least 40 billion light-years across.
>
>    Accepting an inflation-based universe of the size we see, Jaume Garriga of the University of Barcelona and Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University have proposed a cosmos peppered with numerous “O-regions,” observable universes like ours. Part of the idea goes that inflation, the hyperexpansion in the early universe, never completely stopped. It stopped where we are, producing our O-region, and many others. But in other areas of the universe at large, it continues. This creates a concept called eternal inflation — a universe unlike a simple sphere, instead rather like a sponge, pocked with holes that are bubble universes.
>
>    How convincing is this to astrophysicists? Tegmark remains open. “As scientists,” he says, “We’re not testing the general idea of a multiverse. We’re testing inflation — a mathematical theory that predicts a multiverse and all kinds of other stuff.” Vilenkin looks ahead to an exciting future of learning more about multiverses. “By doing measurements in our own region,” he says, “We can test our predictions for what lies beyond.”

38
Missed the first 5 min of the 730 segment.  recording has a bit extra news stuff, but what the hay.
Download the attached mp3 file and play.

730am
-stars near the sun
-CME viewing? 
-comet neowise, orbit time, shape, oumoamoa? origin
-last meteor shower was perseids

830am: news, earth/sky commercial
-sbcc astro mention,
-art harris pandemic jokes....times are rough; wurst case senario
-sun used to have binary companion
-cloud of dust around vega, seen w infrared
-betelguese star dimming, puff of dust
-debris avoidance measures DAM, ISS moves; air leak

-perserverance

more news

39
Please download and play attached mp3 file to listen to two 15min shows stitched together (30min) of various astronomy topics or "Space Gossip"!

40
Download the attached file and listen to the broadcast

On 8/8/2020 11:11 PM, Jerry wrote:
>
> Monday, August 10
> Today is 30th anniversary of the Magellan radar mapper’s arrival at Venus. Magellan was a keystone mission in our understanding of Earth’s sister planet, mapping 98 percent of the venusian surface down to features smaller than 328 feet (100 meters).
>
> You can find Venus in the east this morning, rising higher in the three hours before sunrise. It glows a stunning magnitude –4.5 and appears 24" across. Its disk is nearly 50 percent lit. The planet is located in the northeastern corner of Orion, between Taurus (above it) and Gemini (below) on the sky. The Hunter’s familiar figure stretches southwest of the planet. In addition to the familiar three stars of Orion’s Belt, look for golden-hued Betelgeuse and bright, blue Rigel, the figure’s right shoulder and left knee, respectively. They’ll be easier to spot as the constellation rises higher in the slowly brightening dawn.
>
> The Moon passes 4° south of Uranus at 5 P.M. EDT. Like Venus, the ice giant is also a morning object; two hours before sunrise, you’ll find it high in the east, glowing at magnitude 5.8 in the constellation Aries. At that time, the Moon is about 8° southwest of the planet and located in Cetus the Whale. Given the bright Moon, finding our seventh planet may be a bit of a challenge in binoculars or a small scope. It’s a mere 4" across and should appear as a dim, “flat” star with a soft gray color. Although the Moon will stay in this region of the sky for several days, it will continue to wane and dim, so you may want to revisit Uranus in a few days to see if it’s easier to locate with less background light.

[Clavius crater image]
>
> Tuesday, August 11
> Last Quarter Moon occurs at 12:45 P.M. EDT. Just like First Quarter Moon, now is a great time to look at features along the terminator dividing night from day on our satellite. In this case, however, the early morning hours are the best time to observe the Moon, as it rises before midnight and sets this afternoon, then won’t rise again until after midnight on the 12th.
>
> For Northern Hemisphere observers, some of the best features visible through binoculars or a small scope during this lunar phase are the dark, smooth Mare Imbrium and Mare Nubium; the bright, rayed crater Copernicus, and the sweeping line of the Apennine Mountains. Other large craters you may spot include Plato, Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus, and Arzachel. In the rugged lunar south, Clavius may stand out as a large crater with several smaller craterlets creating a swooping curve within it. Clavius was made famous in the motion picture “2001 A Space Odyssey” as the crater containing the moon’s monolith.
>
> [Perseid meteor shower image]
>
> Wednesday, August 12
> The well-known Perseid meteor shower peaks this morning with a maximum rate of 100 meteors per hour. These spectacular meteors come from the trail of debris left by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the Sun every 133 years.
>
> The shower’s radiant is high in the northeast around 2 A.M. local time. With the relatively bright Last Quarter Moon nearby in Aries, you will likely see rates much lower than the expected maximum. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth taking an early-morning stroll outside — the Perseids streak into our atmosphere at nearly 40 miles per second and bright meteors often leave behind long, glowing persistent trains.
>
> Venus reaches greatest western elongation (46°) at 5 P.M. PDT. The planet remains an early morning object, however, so the best time to view it is in the hour or two before sunrise.
>
> Thursday, August 13
> Tonight is a great night to check out two famous circumpolar constellations: Ursa Major the Great Bear and Cassiopeia the Queen. These familiar celestial sights are situated on opposite sides of North Celestial Pole, so during the night they appear to swing around Polaris, the North Star. From higher latitudes they never appear to set, always visible above the horizon.
>
> An hour after sunset, you can find the two constellations at roughly the same height above the northern horizon. The most recognizable part of Ursa Major is the Big Dipper asterism, which at this time appears on its side with its handle sticking straight up. In reality, the Big Dipper is only a small portion of the Great Bear, representing her stretched-out tail and hindquarters. Across the North Celestial Pole is Cassiopeia, whose equally recognizable W shape is tilted at about a 45° angle to the horizon. As the hours tick by, you’ll see the Big Dipper swing low, its cup tilting upward, while Cassiopeia swings higher. She first tips onto her side and ends the night upside-down as dawn on the 14th streaks the sky with light.
>
> Friday, August 14.
> As darkness falls following sunset, swing your scope to Jupiter, hanging above the southeastern horizon in the constellation Sagittarius. The planet shines at magnitude –2.7 and should be easy to spot, with magnitude 0.2 Saturn just 8° to its east. Both will stay in the south all night, setting in the southwest in the early morning hours before sunrise on the 15th.
>
> By dusk, Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, is in the middle of a trek across the face of the planet, finally slipping off the disk at 10:51 P.M. EDT. Following the moon is its dark shadow, which slips onto the planet just before Ganymede exits and takes about three hours to cross. At 11:24 P.M. EDT, Io slides in front of Jupiter’s eastern limb; the smaller moon is much closer to the planet and its shadow follows just 44 minutes later, when Ganymede’s shadow is merely halfway across.
>
> If you happen to miss the moons’ trek across Jupiter, don’t worry — you’ll have another chance later this month to watch them take a similar journey overnight on August 21/22.
>
>
> This Week
> For a few hours after sunset, Scorpius the Scorpion is visible in the southern sky. It should be easy to pick out his golden magnitude 1 heart, Antares, so named because it is easy to mistake the bright star for Mars. The star’s apparent brightness, even at its distance of 550 light-years, means it’s extremely luminous — about 10,000 times brighter than the Sun. With a mass at least 10 times that of the Sun, it will someday explode in a supernova, certainly visible from Earth.
>
> If you have binoculars or a small telescope, shift your gaze less than 1.5° west of the star to find M4 (NGC 6121), a magnitude 5.4 globular cluster just over 26' across. A group of more than 100,000 old stars, M4 often appears as a faint, wispy ball like a puff of cotton. Larger binoculars or telescopes should pick out some of the cluster’s outer stars, although the center, packed with so many glowing suns, may still appear nebulous.
>
>
> Main belt asteroid 7 Iris is headed toward a hairpin turn next week against the background stars of Sagittarius. It’s located less than 1.5° southwest of M23 (NGC 6494), a young open star cluster discovered in 1764. The best time to find the faint magnitude 9.8 point of light is between sunset and moonrise; wait until the sky is as dark as possible, which will aid in your search.
>
> Over the next several days, try returning to this region with your telescope to photograph or sketch Iris’ position each night. You should see the asteroid track westward day by day, approaching a magnitude 9.5 star that marks its turnaround point. It will swing around the star next Saturday, quickly starting to move east again after that.
>
> SPACEX SN5 TEST HOP SUCCESS
> On Wednesday August 4 at the SpaceX facility in Boca Chica in Texas, the lower portion of the StarShip (fuel and engine section) successfully completed a take off and landing. The SN5 assembly performed perfectly, rising to a height of about 150 meters, using one Raptor rocket motor. The full up starship with the nose cone and passenger section plus a full load of fuel, will be outfitted with 6 Raptor engines. To achieve Earth orbit the Starship will also sit atop a booster powered by 37 Raptor engines.
>
> The booster will land back on Earth for later re-use while the Starship itself is designed to land on and take off from the moon or Mars. It will not require the booster section, except from Earth.
>
>
> Black Neutron Star?
> For more than a decade, astrophysicists have wondered why nature appears to show an odd restraint in the way it slays stars. In life, they range from pip-squeaks to behemoths.  Small ones simply burn out and fade away, but something more curious happens to the jumbo-size variety. When such a star dies, its great bulk causes its innards to implode as a core-collapse supernova. The process sparks a cataclysmic explosion and compresses some of the remains into astrophysical exotica—often a neutron star or, for the very heaviest suns, a black hole. Yet a pronounced rift appears to divide the weight classes of these two types of massive stellar corpses. Although astronomers have spotted neutron stars weighing up to around two solar masses and black holes as light as five, middleweight cadavers have gone entirely missing—until now.
>
> Last Tuesday the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration announced the first conclusive detection of a stellar remnant falling into the so-called mass gap between neutron stars and black holes. After months of calculations, researchers at LIGO and the Virgo gravitational-wave detector in Italy concluded that such waves rippling through Earth last August—an event dubbed GW190814 that was initially classified as a black hole consuming a neutron star—actually came from a 23-solar-mass black hole swallowing a mysterious 2.6-solar-mass object. Whether the smaller body is the heaviest known neutron star or the lightest known black hole—or a truly exotic beast, such as a star made of particles distinct from those of normal stars—its existence suggests that the theories describing the most extreme stellar fates need updating.
>


41
Filling in for Madame K, Vice President Baron Ron Herron had SBAU space news to fill in for two 15 minute segments at 730am and 830am on Thursday, August 6, 2020.  Attached is audio recorded. Download and play!
President Jerry Wilson, Outreach Coordinator Chuck McPartlin, and Weebmaster Tom Totton participated.

42
Attached is audio file of the program, so download that and play.

Topics for discussion were made by President Jerry Wilson:
On 7/25/2020 11:21 PM, Jerry wrote:
>
> Monday, July 27
> First Quarter Moon occurs at 8:33 A.M. EDT, making this evening is an excellent time to consider some lunar observing. With moonrise occurring in the afternoon, the Moon will still be high in the south at sunset and won’t set until after midnight. Even a small telescope or pair of binoculars will bring out immense detail on our satellite’s face, which appears to observers on Earth as half in daylight and half in darkness during this phase. The line dividing the two is called the terminator, and it’s an excellent starting point for your observing campaign. Along this line, features will appear with the sharpest contrast, as taller mountaintops and crater rims catch the sunlight, while lower-lying areas remain in shadow. Along the terminator at First Quarter are several craters, including Archimedes, Ptolemaeus, Alphonsus, Arzachel, and Maginus.
>    Also visible are several darker “seas,” or maria, which are actually the smooth remnants of ancient lava flows. Among those that are easy to spot at First Quarter are the isolated Mare Crisium in the Moon’s upper right quadrant (for Northern Hemisphere observers), as well as Mare Serenitatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, and Mare Fecunditatis, which form much of the large, dark region to Crisium’s lower left.
>
> Tuesday, July 28
> If you have a larger telescope with an aperture 10 inches or greater, this morning after moonset (around 1 A.M. local time) is the perfect time to observe the famous Eagle Nebula (M16), home to Hubble’s famous Pillars of Creation. Of course, you won’t get quite that good a view, but you’ll still enjoy this beautiful emission nebula and its embedded star cluster (NGC 6611) in detail, particularly if you’re set up for even some simple astrophotography.
>    M16 is roughly 25° high at 1:30 A.M. local time for northern observers. You’ll find it in the same region of the sky as bright Jupiter and Saturn, so swing your scope to the planets before or after for some stunning views. A low-power eyepiece will make finding the nebula easier once you’re in the right region of sky, about 6.5° southeast of magnitude 3.3 Sinistra (Nu [ν] Ophiuchi). Once you’ve spotted the Eagle, you can increase the magnification and use averted vision — looking slightly away from the region you want to see — to bring out its dimmer, delicate detail. It may even appear to glow with a faint green light to your eye.
>
> Wednesday, July 29
> The Southern Delta Aquariid meteor shower peaks early this morning with a maximum rate of about 20 meteors per hour. The best time to watch for meteors is an hour or two before sunrise — at 4 A.M. local time, the shower’s radiant in Aquarius will be about 30° high in the south-southwest for observers at mid-northern latitudes. You’ll find the radiant about 17° northwest of the bright star Fomalhaut in Piscis Austrinus.
>    Early morning meteor hunters will also get an added bonus: Jupiter and Saturn both lie nearby in Sagittarius. Jupiter shines at magnitude –2.7, while Saturn is magnitude 0.1. Both make great targets with binoculars or a small telescope, which will reveal Saturn’s rings and, depending on when you look, three or four of Jupiter’s largest moons. Io disappears behind the giant planet’s western limb about 4:10 A.M. EDT, emerging from the shadow 6:50 A.M. EDT. The sky will likely be too bright for East Coast observers to catch its reappearance, but those in western states stand a good chance of seeing the tiny moon pop back into view.
>
> Thursday, July 30
> Neptune, Mars, and Uranus create a trio of planetary delights early this morning. By 1:30 A.M. local time, all three are well above the southeast horizon, with the Red Planet blazing at magnitude –1. It’s currently among the dim stars of Pisces the Fish, but you can use two nearby bright stars to find it: Draw a line between Hamal in Aries and Fomalhaut in Piscis Austrinus, and Mars is the only bright object halfway along it.
>    27.5° west of Mars is magnitude 7.8 Neptune — you’ll need at least binoculars to see its small, bluish disk, but a telescope is better. And just 23° east-northeast of Mars is magnitude 5.8 Uranus. Keen-eyed observers may see it without optical aid from a dark location, but binoculars or a small scope will bring its gray disk into view for anyone to enjoy.
>    Follow the line from Mars to Uranus further still, and you’ll hit the sparkling Pleiades. This open star cluster is easily recognizable and requires no optical aid to enjoy. Many mistake it for the Little Dipper because of its small, dipper-shaped configuration, but the former is both larger and currently much higher overhead in the north, sprouting from the North Star (Polaris) at the end of its handle.
>
> Friday, July 31
> Step outside an hour before sunrise this morning to view Venus and Mercury, preceding the Sun in the eastern sky. At that time, Venus is 24° high, while Mercury is just 3° above the horizon. The two will gain altitude with time but the sky will continue to brighten as well.
>    Although its phase is increasing, magnitude –4.6 Venus is receding from Earth. This morning, it appears 43 percent lit, but its disk is only 27" across. It’s located about between the bright stars Aldebaran in Taurus and Betelgeuse in Orion, just northeast of a line between the two. It’s nearly level with magnitude 3 Alheka, Taurus’ zeta star.
>    Mercury, at magnitude –0.7, is 68 percent lit and 6" wide. It’s located in Gemini the Twins, whose bright stars Castor and Pollux glow nearby. Pollux is just 7° northeast of the planet. See how long you can follow the planets and stars into the brightening dawn.
>
> The Earth has a new mini-moon, for a while anyway. Near Earth asteroid 2020 CD3 has been captured into an Earth orbit. It actually orbits the sun in an orbit very near to earth’s orbit. It was spotted by Catalina Sky Survey on February 19 of this year, as a dim object moving swiftly across the sky. Multiple observations have confirmed that it has been gravitationally bound to the Earth for about 3 years. The object is very small and faint at about 2 to 3.5 meters in diameter. The orbit is not stable so that it will soon be flung away from the Earth. This is the second NEO known to have captured as a mini moon. The first was 2006 RH120 which orbited the Earth from June 2006 to September 2007. 2020 CD3 is expected to leave Earth orbit this year.
>
> Five years since its historic flyby of Pluto and 18 months since meeting Arrokoth, NASA’s New Horizons is now involved in a new astronomical endeavor. Together with the Subaru Telescope, it will observe yet-to-be-discovered celestial bodies and maybe even visiting ones.
>    New Horizons is in a region of space known as the Kuiper Belt, which is believed to be rich in fragments of the Solar System’s formation known as small bodies. Despite large numbers of these objects, finding them is a challenge because they are tiny and spread out over large distances.
>    “We are using the Subaru Telescope because it is the best in the world for our search purposes. This is due to its unique combination of telescope size – one of the very largest anywhere – and Hyper Suprime-Cam’s (HSC) wide field of view, which can discover many Kuiper Belt objects at once,” Dr Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission, said in a statement.
>    The area being studied by Subaru’s HSC is equivalent to 18 full moons in the sky. Astronomers estimate that hundreds of new Kuiper Belt objects will be discovered in this way and about 50 will be observable with New Horizons.
>    Kuiper Belt objects from Subaru’s point of view will appear fully illuminated by sunlight. From New Horizons' perspective, it will be only partly illuminated as it is much closer to these objects than Earth. This difference will provide researchers with important data about these cosmic fragments.
>    “The search area is within the Milky Way, and thus there are many nearby stars including bright ones, which make the observations even more difficult. The observation team is doing its best to take high-quality data by utilizing the unique capabilities of the Subaru Telescope, and to investigate the origin of the Solar System together with New Horizons,” added Dr Tsuyoshi Terai, a core member of the observation team and a support astronomer for the Subaru Telescope in charge of HSC.
>    It is certainly possible that one of the newly discovered objects is in the right orbit for a future rendezvous with New Horizons. For example, Arrokoth was discovered in 2014, 12 years after the spacecraft was launched.
Even without another flyby, New Horizons continues to provide insight beyond its core mission of studying Pluto. Just last month, it was used to perform the furthest parallax experiment yet.
> The above article is from IFLScience! by Alfredo Carpineti.

> Helicopter_Still_Image-web.jpg
> Name  Ingenuity
> Main Job > A technology demonstration to test the first powered flight on Mars. The helicopter will ride to Mars attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover.
> Launch Window> July 30 - Aug. 15, 2020
> Launch Location> Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
> Landing> Feb. 18, 2021
> Landing Site> Jezero Crater, Mars
> Length of Mission> One or more flights within 30 days
>> Key Objectives
> • Prove powered flight in the thin atmosphere of Mars. The Red Planet has lower gravity (about one- third that of Earth) but its atmosphere is just 1% as thick, making it much harder to generate lift.
> • Demonstrate miniaturized flying technology. That requires shrinking down onboard computers, electronics and other parts so that the helicopter is light enough to take off.
> • Operate autonomously. Ingenuity will use solar power to charge its batteries and rely on internal heaters to maintain operational temperatures during the cold Martian nights. After receiving commands from Earth relayed through the rover, each test flight is performed without real-time input from Mars Helicopter mission controllers.
>> Dimensions
> • Height: about 19 inches (0.49 meters)
> • Rotor system span: about 4 feet (1.2 meters)
>> Key Features
> • Weighs 4 pounds (1.8 kg)
> • Solar-powered and recharges on its own
> • Wireless communication system
> • Counter-rotating blades spin about 2,400 rpm
> • Equipped with computers, navigation sensors, and
> two cameras (one color and one black-and-white)

> Program Management
> The Mars 2020 Project and Mars Helicopter Technology Demonstration are managed for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of Caltech in Southern California.
> At NASA Headquarters, David Lavery is the program executive for the Mars Helicopter. At JPL, MiMi Aung is the Mars Helicopter project manager and J. (Bob) Balaram is chief engineer.
> For more information about the Mars Helicopter and NASA’s Mars Exploration Program,
> visit: mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter


43
Jurgen & all!
Please click on attached file to download the radio program, that I removed the commercials from.  Here is what JerryW gave as suggested topics for the show:
On 7/12/2020 12:01 AM, Jerry wrote:
>
>
> Monday, July 13
>
> If you’ve got a clear view to the south, try finding M24, also known as the Sagittarius Star Cloud, near the plane of the Milky Way tonight. It’s located just above the bow of Sagittarius the Archer and covers about 1.5°. Discovered in 1764, this gauzy grouping of stars is visible to the naked eye under good conditions, with detail more easily made out using binoculars or a small telescope. Despite its name, the Star Cloud is not actually a cloud, a galaxy, a nebula, or even a star cluster — it’s really a gap in the dark, dusty plane of the Milky Way where there is simply less dust present, letting us see all the way to the distant Sagittarius spiral arm. Imagers will likely spot the red-hued emission nebula IC 1284, which lies nearby, in wider shots.
>
>
> Tuesday, July 14
>
> Jupiter reaches opposition at 4 A.M. EDT. At that time, the gas giant will sit 385 million miles (619 million km) from Earth and will appear nearly overhead at midnight. You can catch it this morning in the southwestern sky, blazing at magnitude –2.8 in the constellation Sagittarius. Its disk spans 48" and at the time of opposition, all four of its Galilean moons will be on display. But act fast — by 4:17 A.M. EDT, Europa will disappear behind the planet’s western limb. It won’t reappear before sunrise.
>
>    6.8° east of Jupiter is magnitude 0.1 Saturn, on its way to its own opposition early next week. Its disk currently spans 18" and its rings stretch nearly 42" east-west. The nearly 3,000-mile-wide (4,800 km) Cassini Division is on full display.
>
>    The Moon passes 4° south of Uranus at 8 A.M. EDT. You can catch the magnitude 5.8 ice giant easily with binoculars or a small scope in the predawn hours. It currently lies in Aries, roughly halfway along an invisible line drawn between the bright stars Hamal and Menkar. An hour before sunrise, Earth’s satellite has already approached to within 10.8° of the planet, lying directly east of the ice giant.
>
>    Today also marks the 55th anniversary of Mariner 4’s flyby of Mars — the first successful Red Planet flyby ever achieved. It is the 5th anniversary of New Horizons’ flyby of Pluto, also the first of its kind.
>
>    Pluto reaches opposition tomorrow afternoon, so keep scrolling to find out how to observe it.
>
>
> Wednesday, July 15
>
> Pluto reaches opposition at 3 P.M. EDT. The tiny world shines at magnitude 14.3 and is 3.07 billion miles (4.95 billion km) from Earth. Nestled close to Jupiter and Saturn in the sky, Pluto is visible all night, with the best viewing later in the evening and early into tomorrow morning, when it’s highest above the horizon.
>
>    To find it, center bright Jupiter in your scope — you can’t miss it. Pluto is about 1.8° east-southeast of the gas giant, with a disk less than an arcsecond across. If you can spot it visually, it will simply appear as a dim, dull “star.” Imaging through larger scopes with even a simple digital camera should help reveal it.
>
>    The New Horizons flyby, now five years ago, revolutionized our understanding of the dwarf planet. Although the spacecraft’s brief visit is long over, its data is still revealing new details, including the possibility that Pluto formed “hot” through collisions, rather than through “cold” material slowly building up over time in the outer solar system.
>
>
> Thursday, July 16
>
> C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) should now be readily visible in the evening sky, soaring nearly 15° high in the northwest an hour after sunset. It will remain well above the horizon for those at northern latitudes for the next few hours. To get the best seeing, or atmospheric steadiness — which diminishes toward the horizon — you’ll want to observe as soon as darkness begins to fall. The comet has left Auriga and is now in Lynx; tonight, it’s about 26° west (below) the easily identifiable cup of the Big Dipper as the asterism sits sideways in the sky with its handle pointing upward early in the evening.
>
>
>
> Friday, July 17
>
> The Moon passes 3° north of Venus at 3 A.M. EDT. Two hours later, most observers should be able to catch the pair about 10° above the horizon, with Venus hanging between and just below our Moon and the bright star Aldebaran in Taurus the Bull. The waning Moon is a mere 12-percent-lit crescent; Venus has it slightly beat, now a 33-percent-lit crescent. Just northwest of the planet is the loose open Hyades star cluster, which spans roughly 5.5°.
>
>    Today also marks the 45th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz link-up in Earth orbit, the first international space mission. Three American astronauts aboard an Apollo capsule and two Soviet cosmonauts in a Soyuz spacecraft launched hours apart from the U.S. and Kazakhstan on July 15, 1975. Two days later, on the 17th, the craft rendezvoused; the spacecraft hard docked at 12:12 P.M. EDT and about three hours later, at 3:17 P.M. EDT, the crews met.
>
>
>
> SpaceX to launch unmanned mining probe onto the  asteroid Pysche in 2022. The potential revenue stream of asteroid mining offers SpaceX another financial pipeline that may potentially fund scientific research outside of core, publicly viewed operations. Revenue from space mining operations could quickly surpass the high revenue projections of Starlink. Collectively, it’s all about operational independence (to the extent possible).
>
>    ASTEROID experts at NASA have begun building a spaceship to explore the metal-rich Asteroid Psyche, potentially worth more than $10,000 quadrillion.
>
>    There are so many valuable metals buried within the asteroid, it could make every single person on Earth a billionaire if it were returned to the planet. US-based space agency NASA has started building the unmanned probe that will fly to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, launching on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in August 2022.
>
>
>
> This month a cosmic visitor is gracing the skies. A comet swept past the sun on July 3, and it has since become visible to the naked eye. The rare opportunity to glimpse the chunk of ancient ice from the outer solar system should continue next week, when astronomers hope it will become even brighter.
>
>    Scientists using the Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) space telescope first spotted the comet as it hurtled toward the sun on March 27. Informally dubbed NEOWISE after the telescope but officially labeled C/2020 F3, the comet gradually brightened as sunlight and solar wind caused it to release gases and form a tail. In early June it reached the far side of the sun, as seen from Earth. The resulting glare prevented astronomers from observing the comet for several weeks. By late June, however, it swam back into the optics of another space telescope, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Its fate was still unclear, however: Would Comet NEOWISE brighten or fade?
>
>    On July 3 observers watched closely as the comet began the most perilous part of its journey: its nearest approach to the sun, which brought it within 44 million kilometers of our star. The intense light and heat from such close proximity tends to make comets disintegrate and disappear from the night sky. Earlier this year, such breakups befell two other comets, ATLAS and SWAN, that astronomers had hoped would light up Earth’s skies. But NEOWISE survived and emerged brighter than before to dazzle stargazers—provided they know where to look. Now, for the next few days at least, residents of the Northern Hemisphere can greet the passing visitor at dawn.
>
>    “For many people in the Northern Hemisphere, especially if you’re closer to the midlatitudes, [the comet] should be visible an hour before sunrise, very low in the northeastern sky,” says Kerry-Ann Lecky Hepburn, a meteorologist and astrophotographer who captured an image of Comet NEOWISE over Toronto. “Right now it’s located in the constellation Auriga.” She recommends finding the comet’s exact spot using specialized smartphone apps with interactive maps of the constellations. Although already visible to the naked eye, the object is still faint, and binoculars would offer a better view.
>
>    Starting around July 12, Comet NEOWISE will be visible in the evening as well, Lecky Hepburn says. About an hour after sunset, it will appear near the northwestern horizon. As the month progresses, it will rise higher in the sky, moving from the constellation Lynx toward the Big Dipper. On July 22 the comet will reach its closest point to Earth—a distance of 103 million kilometers—before continuing its cosmic flight. Whether it will still be visible to unaided eyes by then is uncertain, however.
>
>    ‘Comets are like cats,” says Franck Marchis, an astronomer at the SETI Institute. “They are unpredictable.” If Comet NEOWISE’s outgassing exhausts its reserves of icy material, its bright tail could dissipate, effectively removing the object from view. On the other extreme, ongoing heating from the sun could cause the comet to disintegrate in a bright outburst, potentially resulting in a highly visible “great comet” of historic significance. This possibility would be “a spectacular event and a great show for the earthlings,” Marchis says. But “personally, I recommend walking up early and going to see it now, while we know it’s here.”
>
>    After this encounter, astronomers expect Comet NEOWISE to bid farewell for quite some time. Its long, looping orbit around our star will next bring it back to Earth’s vicinity some 6,800 years from now.
>
>
>
> July is the month of Mars.
>
> Three missions are poised to launch toward the Red Planet this month, including NASA's car-sized Perseverance rover, which will hunt for signs of ancient Mars life and cache samples for future return to Earth.
>
>    The action will start next week, if all goes according to plan. The United Arab Emirates' (UAE) first-ever interplanetary effort, the Hope Mars mission, also known as the Emirates Mars Mission, is scheduled to launch on July 14.
>
>    The Hope orbiter will reach Mars in early 2021, then use three science instruments to study the Red Planet's atmosphere, weather and climate from above. The probe's observations should help researchers better understand Mars' long-ago transition from a relatively warm and wet world to the cold, desert planet we know today, mission team members have said. That transition was driven by the stripping of Mars' once-thick atmosphere by the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing from the sun.
>
>    The Hope spacecraft was built by the UAE's Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center, in partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder, Arizona State University and the University of California Berkeley. And the project is breaking ground for more than just the UAE: Hope is the first planetary science mission led by an Arab-Islamic nation.
>
>    China will follow with a landmark launch of its own a little more than a week after Hope takes flight. On July 23, China's first-ever fully homegrown Mars mission, known as Tianwen-1, is scheduled to lift off atop a Long March 5 rocket. (China put a piggyback orbiter called Yinghuo-1 aboard Russia's Mars mission Fobos-Grunt, which got stuck in Earth orbit shortly after its November 2011 launch.)
>
>    Tianwen-1 is an ambitious project that consists of an orbiter, a lander and a 530-lb. (240 kilograms) rover that's the size of a small golf cart. Chinese officials have remained characteristically tight-lipped about the mission — they still haven't publicly announced a final landing site for the lander/rover pair, for example — but these robots' scientific gear suggests that Tianwen-1 will conduct a broad reconnaissance of the Martian environment.
>
>    The orbiter sports six instruments, including a high-resolution camera, a magnetometer and a mineral spectrometer, which will allow mission team members to determine the composition of surface rocks. The rover also has six instruments, including a weather station, a magnetic field detector and a ground-penetrating radar, which could spot subsurface water ice down to a depth of about 330 feet (100 meters).
>
>    If Tianwen-1 is successful, China will become just the third nation, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to land a spacecraft on Mars. And that epic touchdown may lead the way to even bigger things in the near future: Chinese space officials have voiced a desire to mount a Mars sample-return mission, which could perhaps launch as early as 2030.
>
>    The United States and Europe also plan to bring pristine Red Planet material to Earth, and that project will really get up and running with Perseverance's launch. The 2,315-lb. (1,050 kg) rover, the centerpiece of NASA's $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission, is scheduled to lift off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on July 30 and land inside Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.
>
>    Perseverance will use its seven onboard instruments to characterize the geology of Jezero and search for signs of ancient Mars life in the rocks of the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) crater, which hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago.
>
>    The six-wheeled robot will also collect and cache several dozen samples from particularly promising study sites. This material will be recovered and brought to Earth, perhaps as early as 2031, in a campaign conducted by NASA and the European Space Agency. Scientists in labs around the world will then scrutinize the Mars material in great detail, looking for signs of life and clues about the planet's evolutionary history.
>
>    Mars 2020 also aims to lay groundwork for crewed missions to the Red Planet, the first of which NASA wants to launch in the 2030s. For instance, like the Tianwen-1 rover, Perseverance is outfitted with ice-hunting ground-penetrating radar. And another of the NASA rover's instruments, the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE), will generate oxygen from the thin Martian atmosphere, which is 95% carbon dioxide by volume. ("ISRU" stands for "in situ resource utilization." NASA is big on acronyms, in case you hadn't noticed.)
>
>    MOXIE isn't Mars 2020's only technology demonstration. A 4-lb. (1.8 kg) helicopter called Ingenuity will journey to the Red Planet on Perseverance's belly. After touchdown, Ingenuity will drop free and make a few short test flights in the Martian sky — the first-ever aerial exploration of a world beyond Earth.
>
>
> Sent from my iPad

44
Download and play the attached unedited audio file for our radio show from 858am to 10am Monday, June 22, 2020

On 6/20/2020 10:35 PM, Jerry wrote:
> Folks
> Here’s Mondays suggested topics. The bottom two are carried over from two weeks ago. We never got to them.
> See you Monday, Jerry
>
> MONDAY, JUNE 22
> ■ In bright twilight look for the slim crescent Moon, less then two days old, low in the afterglow of sunset. It's lower left of Pollux and Castor. Bring binoculars.
> TUESDAY, JUNE 23
> ■ The central stars of the constellation Lyra, forming a small triangle and parallelogram, dangle to the lower right from bright Vega high in the east. The two brightest stars of the pattern, after Vega, are the two forming the bottom of the parallelogram: Beta and Gamma Lyrae, or Sheliak and Sulafat. They're currently lined up vertically. Beta is the one on top.
> Beta Lyrae is an eclipsing binary star. Compare it to Gamma whenever you look up at Lyra. Normally Beta is only a trace dimmer than Gamma. Sooner or later, you'll probably catch Beta when it is definitely fainter than usual.
> One of the best globular clusters, M13, lies half way between Beta and Gamma. It is spectacular in even a small telescope.
> WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24
> ■ Look left of the Moon for Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo, in late twilight.
> THURSDAY, JUNE 25
> ■ Now spot Regulus to the Moon's lower right.
> ■ As evening grows late, even the lowest star of the big Summer Triangle shines fairly high in the east-southeast. That's Altair, a good three or four fists at arm's length below or lower right of Vega.
> Look left or lower left of Altair, by hardly more than one fist, for the compact little constellation Delphinus, the Dolphin.
> Next, look for Jupiter and Saturn very low three fists to Altair's lower right.
> FRIDAY, JUNE 26
> ■ Every morning now, Venus is getting a little higher and easier to spot in the east-northeast as dawn brightens. It is a thin crescent easily seen in binoculars or a small telescope.
> SATURDAY, JUNE 27
> ■ First-quarter Moon tonight and tomorrow. (The Moon is exactly first-quarter at 4:16 a.m. Sunday morning EDT.) On Saturday evening for North America, the Moon shines in the hind feet of the Leo stick figure, about 8° under Leo's 2nd-magnitude tail-tip star, Denebola.
> Denebola forms an almost perfectly equilateral triangle with brighter Spica off to its left and Arcturus, brighter still, above them. All three sides of the triangle are close to 35° long (35.3°, 35.1°, and 32.8°). This has been called the Spring Triangle, a name that certainly fits.
>
> THIS WEEK'S PLANET ROUNDUP
> Mercury is lost in the sunset.
> Venus is low in the dawn; look for it just above the east-northeast horizon. Look early enough before dawn grows bright, and you may be able to catch the Pleiades 9° above it. Binoculars help. Venus is on its way up to a fine showing as the bright Morning Star through summer and fall.
> Mars rises in the east around 1 a.m. daylight saving time, shining bright orange (magnitude –0.4) at the Aquarius-Pisces border. Watch for it to clear the horizon lower right of the Great Square of Pegasus. By the first light of dawn, Mars shines high and prominent in the southeast.
> In a telescope Mars has grown to 11 arcseconds in apparent diameter; we're approaching it as Earth speeds along in our faster orbit around the Sun. Mars is as gibbous as it gets, 84% sunlit. Look for the bright South Polar cap and for subtler dark surface markings.
> Mars will appear fully twice this diameter when it passes closest by Earth around opposition in the first half of October.
> Jupiter and Saturn (magnitudes –2.7, and +0.3, respectively) now rise around the end of twilight: Jupiter first, then dimmer Saturn following about 20 minutes behind, lower left of Jupiter. They're 5½° apart. Farther to Jupiter's right, the Sagittarius Teapot rests upright.
> The two giant planets shine at their highest and telescopic best around 2 or 3 a.m. daylight-saving time. They straddle the border of Sagittarius and Capricornus. Jupiter will reach opposition on the night of July 13th, Saturn on July 20th.
> Uranus (magnitude 5.8, in Aries) is very low in the east just before dawn.
> Neptune (magnitude 7.9, in Aquarius) is well up in the southeast before dawn begins, in the vicinity of Mars.
>
>
> Earth like planet around a Sun like star.
> By Katy Pallister   > 05 JUN 2020, 15:30
> In amongst archived data from the Kepler mission, a team of German and American researchers has identified an Earth-like planetary candidate, KOI-456.04, situated within its host star’s habitable zone. What sets this discovery apart from other known Earth-like exoplanets is that its star, Kepler-160, bears a striking resemblance to our Sun. Although the planet’s presence is yet to be confirmed, this exoplanet-star pairing could be one of the closest matches to the Earth-Sun system that we’ve found so far.
> “KOI-456.01 is relatively large compared to many other planets that are considered potentially habitable,” Dr René Heller of Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany, and lead author of the research, said in a statement. “But it’s the combination of this less-than-double the size of the Earth planet and its solar type host star that make it so special and familiar.”
> Located over 3,000 light-years away from Earth, the star Kepler-160 is around 1.1 times the size of the Sun and has a surface temperature of 5200˚C, only 300 degrees less than Sun. The star is already known to have two exoplanets – Kepler-160 b, a rocky super-Earth, and Kepler-160 c, a Neptune-like gas giant – but the duo’s orbits are very close to the star, and are thought to be too hot to be habitable. Yet the possibility of a third planet, hinted at by variations in Kepler-160 c’s orbital period, tempted astronomers to take another look at the planetary system.
> Both previous planets were discovered by searching for periodic dips in Kepler-160’s brightness that indicates a transiting object. However, these temporary dimmings are hard to detect from smaller exoplanets, therefore Heller and his team created a new search algorithm that could more accurately pinpoint the presence of these planets.
> Lo and behold their improved approach found KOI-456.04. With an incredibly similar orbital period to Earth of 378 days, KOI-456.04 lies at a distance from Kepler-160 conducive to the existence of liquid water. But further analysis showed that this was not the culprit of Kepler-160 c’s distortions. There was in fact another non-transiting planet that was responsible, Kepler-160 d.
> “Our analysis suggests that Kepler-160 is orbited not by two but by a total of four planets,” Heller said.
> As described in their paper, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, indirectly confirmed Kepler-160 d has a mass between 1 and 100 Earth masses, and an orbital period from 7 to 50 days. However, this planet has fallen into the shadows of the more intriguing combination of the Earth-like KOI-456.04 orbiting within the habitable zone of the Sun-like Kepler-160.
> Most Sun-like stars discovered by Kepler have a Neptune-sized planet in a much closer orbit, too hot to be habitable (like Kepler-160 c). On the flip-side other Earth-sized planets that have been found in a star’s habitable zone, have tended to have red dwarfs as hosts – small, faint stars with a low surface temperature. These stars also differ from the Sun, in that they emit mostly infra-red radiation, rather than the visible light that we receive from the Sun. For this reason, amongst many others, the habitability of planets around red dwarfs is heavily debated.
> However, these concerns are not shared for Kepler-160, as not only does it radiate visible light, but it does so at a luminosity similar to the Sun. Meaning that newly found KOI-456.04 receives about 93 percent of the amount of sunlight that we experience on Earth. The researchers suggest that if KOI-456.04 were to have an inert atmosphere with a mild Earth-like greenhouse effect its surface temperature would be around 5˚C, roughly 10˚C less than Earth’s average temperature.
> Boasting an 85 percent chance of planetary possibility, KOI-456.04 has not yet reached the 99 percent benchmark needed for full confirmation. Astronomers suspect that they may need to wait for future space missions, such as ESA’s PLATO spacecraft before they get complete validation.
>
>
> Mars may have once had a giant ring that eventually got smooshed to form one of its oddly-shaped moons, new research suggests.
> Mars has two small, lumpy moons, Phobos and Deimos. Phobos orbits closer to the Red Planet and follows the line of Mars' equator. Deimos orbits farther away, along an orbit that's tilted by 2 degrees off the plane of the Martian equator. The wonky orbit adds evidence to the idea that Phobos may once have been a giant ring that eventually coalesced into its present shape.In 2017, a team of researchers argued in the journal Nature Geoscience that the Martian moons go through cycles — ripped apart into thin rings by the planet's gravity, then eventually forming moons again. In each cycle, the moon formed from the ring is smaller than its former self, with bits of the rings falling out of orbit and drifting out into space. Over billions of years, generations of moons would have gone through these cycles of ring-moon-ring, scientists suspect.
> Now, in a new paper published June 1 to the arXiv database,which has not yet been peer-reviewed, an team of researchers (some who were involved in the Nature Geoscience paper) showed that an ancient Martian moon, 20 times the size of Phobos, could have jostled Deimos into its current orbit.
> “The fact that Deimos' orbit is not exactly in plane with Mars' equator was considered unimportant, and nobody cared to try to explain it," lead author Matija Ćuk, a research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, said in a statement. "But once we had a big new idea and we looked at it with new eyes, Deimos' orbital tilt revealed its big secret."
> Two moons that follow similar paths around a planet can end up in a situation called "orbital resonance" where one bobs up and down around the other's orbit. As Live Science has previously reported, two moons of Neptune are currently resonating with each other like this.
> Here's what the scientists think happened in this ring-moon cycle to explain the current Mars setup: Deimos formed billions of years ago, and since it has sort of just been overlooking the dynamic ring-moon party. Over that same time, a giant ring encircling Mars got squished into a moon (or moons), dispersed back into a ring and then into a moon again, and so on. During one of these iterations, one of the moons (the giant mystery moon) knocked Deimos into its current ring, and then just like that this mystery moon vanished into its ring form. Then, a remnant of that ring, the scientists suspect, formed Phobos, which is the younger of the two Martian satellites.
> In order for this theory to work, the long-lost moon that formed out of a Martian ring would have needed to start moving away from Mars and into a resonance with Deimos that would have produced the more distant moon's current, angled orbit.
> Eventually, part of the ring-moon cycle will repeat again. The younger moon Phobos is losing altitude over Mars, and researchers expect that it will eventually break up and form a disintegrating ring around the planet.
> That will leave little Deimos orbiting alone, with only its lopsided orbit as a record of what else used to exist around Mars.
>

45
Download the attached file and listen to about 46min of the program, mostly w/o commercials

46
Catadioptric / For Sale: Meade 8", LX50, wedge mount + great accessories
« on: January 05, 2020, 12:45:18 PM »
[Folks, this looks like a great deal with a clean scope and lots of useful accessories!  Aim that wedge at Polaris and you will be able to track the stars accurately.  Not sure why the photos are sideways, sorry!  TomT]

January 1, 2020
Here is the complete description and photos as you requested. This would need to be for local sale also due to shipping costs. (I would be willing to meet up anywhere from Goleta to Carpinteria if that helps.)

General Description
Meade 8" (203.2 mm), F/10 FL = 2000 mm Schmidt Cassegrain Model LX50 with 8 X 50 Finder scope, Fork, Wedge, Tripod, Hand Controllers and full set of eyepieces and adapters.

Specifics
Complete, Easy to set-up, and suitable for astrophotography (camera mount not included).
Eyepieces, and accessories included:
Plossl Eyepieces: (1-1/4” diameter) 40mm, 26mm, 20mm, 10mm, 6.3mm
Meade 2X Telenegative amplifier, air-spaced triplet (2X Barlow), 1.25" eyepiece holder, 2” eyepiece adapter, 2" to 1.25" eyepiece adapter, 90 degree and 45 degree prism star diagonals and Meade series 4000 f/6.3 Focal Reducer, one manual two-axis hand controller and one Meade Magellan II computer/corrector hand controller, Orion Carrying case to hold all eyepieces and accessories.

I'd like a price of $600 (Cash sale).

People from the club are welcome to respond directly to me at my email scottorlosky@yahoo.com.  Unlike Craig's list - amateur astronomers are a pretty trustworthy group.
Happy New Year.
Kind regards,
Scott Orlosky

47
Outreach & Events / 2019 Holiday Dinner sign-ups
« on: November 15, 2019, 10:51:23 PM »
Sign-ups for the 2019 SBAU Holiday Dinner at Harry's Plaza Cafe [see flyer here:
http://www.sbau.org/191107%202019%20SBAU%20Holiday%20Dinner%20Party%20Wed%20Dec%2011%20$30%20for%20$45%20app-buffet-dessert%20no%20drinks%201pg.pdf

Thanks to the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit Officers and Appointees, plus the many volunteers bringing in refreshments and participating at the many telescope outreaches and events.  Thanks to those also officially recognized by the Museum of Natural History by becoming Verified Volunteers.  Thanks to the Museum for providing the facilities, the Gladwin Planetarium and Farrand Hall, and for their staff's help.

SBAU Holiday Dinner Party –2019 Wednesday December 11
Harry’s Plaza Café-Appetizers at 6 pm: Sliders, Santa Barbara Rolls, Coconut Chicken Skewers, Spicy Dill Meat Balls, Fried Calamari and Potato Skins
Buffet Dinner at 6:30 pm: Tri-tip Roast, Grilled Chicken, White Fish Picatta, Fresh Vegetables, Baked Potatoes, and House Salad
Dessert: Cheesecake or Mini Sundae
Beverages:  Purchase your own –Sodas are $4

Wednesday December 11, 2019
Harry’s Plaza Café, In the Ranchero Room
3313-B State St. in the Loreto Shopping Center near Gelson’s

Appetizers at 6 pm; Buffet Dinner at 6:30 pm; Dessert at 730pm. 
Cost is $30 (for a $45 meal), however, "Purchase your own drinks (soft, beer, wine, hard)"
$300 deposit to reserve room made by Totton's; Club reimbursed via Treasurer ColinT

•Contact Tom and Cez to Sign up: 805-562-8795 or RefreshCoord@cox.net
CHECKS--MAKE OUT TO SBMNH (note: for 2019 SBAU Holiday Dinner)
SEND TO: Tom Totton, 7242 Del Norte Drive, Goleta, CA 93117

NAME                                       #     $        PAID?                                             (ENTREE PREFERENCE)               
Martin/JanetMeza                    2     60     chk#1101-CT-Museum did process
PeggyO'Rork                            1     30      chk #1101-as above
ArtHarris                                  1     30      cash-TT
Pres. Jerry/PatWilson               2     60     cash-TT
Chuck/PatMcPartlin                  2     60      cash-TT
Tom/CezanneTotton                 2     60      cash-TT
EdgarOcampo                           1     30      chk#2648-TT
VP. BaronRonHerron                1      30     cash-TT
TessaFlanagan/DuffKennedy   2      60     cash-12/6-CT
Treas. ColinTaylor/LindaLiker   2      60     chk#8977-TT
Tim & KarenCrawford               2      60     cash-11/15-TT
SecretaryCarol + 1 Moore        2      60     chk#575-11/15-TT from Charles
Farshad/RomaBarman              2      60     chk#2236 12/6-TT                                 (fish)
KenPfeiffer/LisaOsborn            2      60     chk#423 11/19-TT
KarlBlasius/ElisaJorquez          2      60      chk#151 11/19-TT
John/SueWest                          2      75      chk#4971 11/21-TT
BrandiAckerman                        1      30      cash-12/6-TT
JoeDoyle/ConiEdick                    2      60      chk#5199 11/21-TT
SuzanneSpillman                      1      30      chk#2171 12/2-TT
Bob/ChristaBrown                    2       60      chk#4331 12/4-TT
Bruce/BonnieMurdock               2      60       chk#4570 12/6-TT
SteveRosenburg                       1      30       chk#2709 12/6-TT

                                     Total#  37 as of 12/11/2019

48
Diagonals / test msg in diag board
« on: August 09, 2019, 08:20:51 PM »
just a test to see if admin gets notification to approve post or at least know there is a new post to approve

49
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:    Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain 10” LX200 Telescope
Date:    Wed, 24 Apr 2019 14:33:15 +0000
From:    Ron Skinner <ron.skinner@moxi.org>
To:    Ron Skinner <ron.skinner@moxi.org>
Hello Santa Barbara astronomers,
I have a Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain 10” LX200 telescope and equipment for sale that was purchased new in 2000. It is in excellent condition. I prefer to sell everything together and am asking $1,500. Here is a list of the equipment:
    Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain 10” LX200 f/10 telescope
    Meade standard field tripod
    Beigle/Bryant Engineering ScopeSaver
    Bonney Lake Astro Works Milburn Wedge
    1206 electric focuser
    Meade 18V DC power supply
    1812 DC adapter (12V to 18V)
    610 Dew cap
    8 x 50 mm finderscope
    Telescope carry bag
    07182 eyepiece holder
    07202 diagonal prism
    07067 plossl 9 mm illuminated reticle eyepiece with 6’ cord and plug
    07270 2 x telenegative barlow lens
    07175-02 26 mm super plossl
    07173-02 15 mm super plossl
    07171-02 9.7 mm super plossl
    07170-02 6.4 mm super plossl
    Color filter sets 1, 2, 3 (07530, 07529, 07528)
    Nebula filters 908, 908B, O-III
    Original Meade manual
    Misc star charts
If you are interested please text or call me at (805) 748-5005. If you know someone who might be interested, please forward this email to them.
Thanks, Ron
Ron Skinner, Director of Education
MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation
125 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
Office: 805.770.5004
Web: moxi.org   |  @MOXIsb

50
Re: Happy Holidays
Mike Chibnik
Sat, Dec 29, 2018, 10:34 AM (3 days ago)
to bkm, me, Cezanne, TomT, Tim, Tim, Tom, Richard, Mike, Mark, Jerry, christopher, emilanes
COMET_46PWirtenan48.jpg
To all who asked how it took my images:
The first two were taken using my 80mm flourite Megrez using the CDS-600 camera.  The exposures for the Horse head nebula was 5 min exposures for a total of 15 min.  The comet pictures used 60 sec exposures as I haven't learned how to use the offset tracking with the Mesu-200 mount.  With a suggestion from Mark the Polemaster I've been able to get polar alignment that's nearly dead on so 5min exposures with the Megrez is no issue.   I used 48 - 60 sec exposures for that.  Attached to this new email is the comet using my C-8 fro a close in image.  It also used 60 sec exposures.  I have to admit that there didn't seem to be a difference in the pictures between the Megrez and C-8, maybe just a slightly larger nucleus.  As a matter of fact when I'm viewing the comet using binoculars I've been seeing something similar with just a hint of a smaller nucleus.  All images taken are with the new Opti-Pro light pollution filter which results in much darker backgrounds in spite of the new LED lights that have been installed.  The only issue is that when I try to use flats I get a rainbow effect with the filter not seen before. 
Mike


On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 12:44 AM bkm <spamcollector@cox.net> wrote:
    Tom and Mike,
    Seasons Greetings from the Isla Vista Shores.
    Tom, I like your early evening shot and the blue background.  Nice crisp star images.  The Pleiades have great detail.  Ally's Braid shows up nicely.
    Mike, your Horsehead Nebula picture did not survive going through Tom's reply.
    Here are my pictures of 46P/Wirtanen taken with my Nikon D500, C11 scope (2,800 mm focal length), and Orion Atlas Pro mount in sidereal tracking taken December 27th and 28th.
    The night was clear, low humidity (46%), and cold (41°F).  It was also windy, so the clear night sky wiggled.  I was up the entire night, and went to bed at 5AM.  Venus was brilliant then, low in the east, sort of like a first-quarter moon, and extremely wiggly.  I didn't take pictures.
    I found and photographed Comet Wirtanen.  It was high overhead between Auriga and Ursa Major.  All photographs that follow are single exposures.  This photograph was 30 seconds, ISO 6,400.  More photographs later.
>
I've done a fair amount of work on the mount electronics, and my alignment and tracking are now much better.
    1) Small 3-amp circuit breakers were added to the battery output connectors, as I had read on Cloudy Nights about a heater controller fire using just a battery power supply.
    2) Objective and eyepiece heaters were added to the Pentax 75mm SDHF APO finder scope.  When it was really humid (85%) at Bacara, both the unheated Pentax objective and eyepiece fogged up.  I already have an Astrozap eyepiece heater and dew shield on the C11.
    3) The Astrozap heater controller failed on both outputs simultaneously (no heat).  There was a gate-to-drain short in both big output FETs (field effect transistors) that drive the heating elements.
    In the controller, FET's are used as electronic switches to provide pulse-width modulated voltage to the heaters (either 12-volts, or 0 volts, variable duty cycle at a 400 Hz rate).  The failure was characteristic of electro static electricity damage (ESD).  The Astrozap controller has no protection from ESD.  I suspect the ESD damage occurred at Kings Canyon, where the relative humidity was only 19% - perfect for static electricity buildup.  Voltages in excess of 2,500 volts can easily be generated by clothing brushing against conductors, like dew heaters and scope mounts.  When the dew heaters with 2,500+ volts stored static charge are plugged into the Astrozap controller, the 55 volt breakdown rating of the FETs is exceeded, and they catastrophically fail.
    I added protection on both outputs and the 12-volt input using 27-volt TransZorbs.  Also, the output FET's were oscillating at very high frequency, a well known problem.  The solution was to add small resistors in series the the FET gates.  I also posted on Cloudy Nights about the problem.  Here is a picture collage of the components added to the pc board that is inside the Astrozap box.  It works well now.
>
The scope collimation was tweaked (it was slightly off).
I found that my mount was not well counterbalanced, which screwed up initial alignment.  I think the stepper motors lose steps with unbalance.  I also read on Cloudy Nights, that higher supply voltage helps eliminate the step skipping (like 15 or 18 V).
Heavens Above provides Comet Wirtanen ephemeris for the current date and  time: https://www.heavens-above.com/comet.aspx?cid=46P .  I got good initial mount alignment (about 4-minutes of arc from the CNP), and put in the RA and dec specified from Heavens Above.  Voila! there was Wirtanen.  Once I put my camera on the C11, I only had the Pentax 75mm SDHF APO finder scope with 20 mm 72° SWAN eyepiece for centering (25 power).  In the finder, Wirtanen was only visible as a smudge using averted vision.  Once I got it in view in the camera, centering was easy.  I ran the camera ISO to 102,400 and took 1-second exposures, and used the mount RA and dec buttons to center the comet in the camera display.
I wasn't aware of just how much turbulence fuzzies up images.  Here is a side-by-side comparison of Wirtanen taken at 1 second, ISO 102,400 and 30 seconds, ISO 6,400.  The 1 second exposure is noisier, but the stars are crisp.
>
Tonight, I was going to take pictures at ISO 204,800, or 409,600.  I can go to ISO 1.64 million, but these images are noisy. 
Tonight, even though the humidity is 54% and the temperature 46°F, the sky was not particularly clear.  I didn't set up.
During the astro photo session last night, I noticed that Wirtanen moved from picture-to-picture.  The D500 controller was then set to take a sequence of 30 second exposures at 1-minute, 15-second intervals.  The D500 was set for long exposure noise reduction.  It takes the picture, then immediately takes the same exposure with the shutter closed.  The second picture is subtracted from the first in the camera.  I also had the camera set for 2-second shutter delay mode, i.e., it raises the mirror, waits 2-seconds (for mount vibration to settle), then takes the exposure.  Thus, an exposure and noise reduction takes about 1-minute, 4-seconds.
Here is a collage of these pictures.  The comet can clearly be seen to move from frame-to-frame.  I didn't blacken the background or use star masks because I wanted to preserve the diffuseness of the comet.  The night sky was light polluted enough from Goleta's new bright LED streetlights, that neither the ion or dust tails were visible.
>
    Enjoy,    Bruce

    On 12/28/2018 10:50 PM, Tom Cez wrote:
>     Mike,
>     Very nice shots.  What is the camera that you are using?  Did you track the comet (46P/Wirtanen?) & for how long?
>     Attached is a 8 second wide shot with the faint comet between the Hyades and Pleiades, Dec 15 early evening east, iso12800, Olympus OM-D EM5II, adjusted with Windows 10 Photo program.
>     Tom Totton
>
>     On Fri, Dec 28, 2018 at 3:31 PM Mike Chibnik <chibnikm@gmail.com> wrote:
>         If I don’t have a chance to give you a call I want to wish you all a Happy New Year.
>         After all the fires, smoke, rain and winds I managed to get some imaging in.  The one thing that I’m learning about the one-shot CMOS camera I have is you need enough exposure to get into the area for decent detection while trying not to saturate the pixels which will cause you to loose color rendition.  The Horse Head Nebula image shown is a stack of three five minute exposures.  This gave much better results than stacking 30-60 min of 60-120 second exposures.  The main reason for my reluctance to try 5 min and longer exposures was due to the fact that all exposures were unguided.
>         With respect to scope making I’m coming up with a new Foucault light source using a fiber optic jumper and a high power green led source.  I’m looking into figuring how to couple more light into the fiber without having to resorting to an expensive GRIN lens.  I hope the point source will give better Mirror readings .
>         Again Happy holidays from the Sacramento Delta
>         Mike

51
CCD or DSLR Images / Venus Moon conjunction by BruceM January 1, 2019
« on: January 01, 2019, 11:54:03 AM »
Happy New Year.

I looked out when I awake at 5:30 this new year's morning, and was surprised and pleased to see the Moon and Venus in conjunction.  Please see the attached photo collage of the occurrence taken with my Nikon D500 camera with lens focal lengths from 18mm to 500 mm, all handheld.  Notice the Moon and Venus are both in phases as shown in the second attachment.

Enjoy,

Bruce Murdock

52
Outreach & Events / 181112 SBAU hour KZSB radio B JW TT 2nd Monday
« on: November 12, 2018, 01:21:31 PM »
, rough program notes.txt
--download the attached file [below] and play back on your computer...commercials have been removed

00:00.000  B-mention JW, TT, BM SBAU coming in
00:17.602  B-Quorum SBAU soon
00:25.021  B-yesterday was armistice day, veterans day, JW-WWI war to end all wars. B-but led to WWII, Vimar Republic.  TT-Oumuamua light sail?  JW-not sure of shape if needle or pancake, only 2 dimensions.  B-Hawaii telescope? JW-14K ft high.  JW-maybe pocket of CO2 popping off.  CMcP w/ Pat Bday.
04:55.161  Donny TT-view to ocean from Victoria down SB st.
05:29.346  Donny traffic, pool playing nuns
06:49.501  B-Walter Cronkite voice, raise it high, then you drop.
07:16.558  KZSB voices SBAU
07:21.359  Earth & Sky mass of the Milky Way may be 1.6T solar masses [does this include dark matter?].
08:51.696  "
09:21.518  TT-volunteering planetarium, Javier teaches SBCC astronomy, Sean Kelly star party, Mezas helping always.

11:29.678  music: "it was a calm & cloudless night...1609 Galileo.." B-did he see crescent moon? JW-he made drawings of all the moon phases.  Intros TT, food, TT-depends on members.  December meeting Tessa will do a talk.  Javier not at meetings?  TT-works late  on Thursdays, so burned out by Friday.  B-lost Adrian Lopez, at JPL.  B-book an astronaut? Buzz light yr based on Buzz Aldrin? must be a toy.  JW-JPL, Ames RC provide speakers. B-still test rockets at JPL?  JW-no, but used to up against the mtns, moved testing to White Sands. JW-ph msg fr TT.  B-Mercury probe.  JW-another lander to Mars TT-Insight Mission.  B- 58 types of topography on Mars.  B- 188 members.  B-ArtH missed on Saturday. B-Holiday dinner Flightline.  B-What is up?  JW-what would you like to know?  B-probes?  TT-Juno, Insight, Mercury [BepeColumbo?], Parker mission around Sun. Look at Corona. JW-protons, electrons from Sun.  TT-solar wind.  JW-flags on moon are bleached white.  B-moon like asphalt?  JW-little color on moon if photo saturated. green--TT-must be trees on moon?  B-backside of moon not the same as front. JW-Russian named craters on back. TT-why Russian? JW-they were 1st to see backside.  Bacara non-public outreach mentioned. music: Gato Europa.

22:14.260  music: "it has been a long road gettin from here to there..." B-what is this? TT-got to have faith not going to be hit by an asteroid traveling thru the universe.  Star Trek Enterprise show.  B-William Shatner on Dr. Oz, 85 yrs old.  Cosmic rays, blocked by atmosphere.  B-carbon dioxide.  JW-we know how to heat up planets. magnet in front of Mars.  B-someone pushing Nasa to do Mars mission.  Elon Musk. Tesla orbits Sun. B-it is painted red? JW-it will decompose. BFR.  spacesuits.  JW-takes research to make long lasting materials.  SPRR tested yellow in Wyoming best paint.  Nasa has rule that nothing can go into space without being in space before, catch-22.  B-critics said landing on moon, improvising items? Nasa wanted to minimize mechanisms to avoid failures.  New Horizons needed to tip to pan camera on Pluto mission.  Brilliant risk management program.  TT-James Webb defects.  JW-build up and test at each level.  unfolding heat shields tore, but passed at earlier time.  cause 2yr delay to 2021 launch.  B-position of JW telescope 1M from earth.  JW-keep out of Earth heat signature. Lagrangian L2? point gravity of Sun/Earth balance. Solar orbit.  sensor cooled by liquid He. music: Gato B Europa.

37:56.039  music: "as a spaceship flies, thru the endless...black hole" B-acient Greek on stars, people names on probes?  TT-Juno mission, JW-Hubble, Keck [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Myron_Keck#Philanthropy founded:Superior Oil Co], Hale 200" telescope conceived by him.  B-Sagan, Tyson names?  JW-landing site on Mars is the Sagan site.  Need to be dead.  TT-Curiosity landing was complicated.  B-why not use landing balloons? JW-too heavy.  B-Russians got landing on Venus, US did not.  TT-ballooning around Venus? JW-Venus might have been liveable  initially.  B-carbon dioxide.  TT-33% increase on earth last 100 years. JW-may be last generation on earth to be able to reverse problem.  JW-US govt has known about global warming since Kennedy.  Military is planning for that future no matter the politics.  B-Maine lobsters diminishing, moving N.  music: kazoo.

45:31.654 music: "long road getting from here to there"  B-ph# mighty 1290.  Future of mankind...what is coming up?  TT-school science nights.  Westmont why refractor better than reflector?  JW-contrast better,  not diffraction limited.  B-Mt. Wilson big  telescopes etc, warm room off the side, but Westmont no? JW-Westmont does have room below, and JW runs scope at home from inside the house.   Hale telescope had photo plate that required manually moving for fine control.  B-small telescopes cannot compete with Hubble.  music: "once i had enuf of a mass, i became a star of gas..."

53:10.760  music: GatoB Europa.  B-lost in space, danger will robinson.  JW-First Man movie was good, chick flick switching w/ guy flick.  B-did not like Ryan Gosling to be Neil Armstrong.  Val Kilmer looked like Jim Morrison.  TT-telescope workshop...takes 40hrs... JW-if no "go-backs".  B-how does grinding work?  JW-top disk hollows out due to more gravity on its center, D/3 stroke, center over center.  hogging out is chordal stroke.  Then pitch lap w/ cerium oxide polish.  B-thot u did lenses the size of manhole covers?  JW-up to 18".  TT- do not buy from Costco, get 8" dob from Amazon  B-sbau.org
59:38.586 end

53
Outreach & Events / 180924 SBAU hour KZSB radio B JW CM TT BM 2nd Monday
« on: September 24, 2018, 04:20:28 PM »
180924 SBAU hour KZSB radio B JW CMcP TT BM 2nd Monday

00:00.000 star trek ship corridors light therapy
00:39.538  butterflies
01:18.883 Oumoamoa asteroid
01:44.794  GVAA , state banking
04:54.036 bud bottoms, jerryW, pic to News press? talk to; docent training today, butterflies, B-did not have one land on him.
09:05.080  B- inflation: craig allen jerryw trump chuck; crypto currency
13:13.437 B-what to talk about?  JW-you said Oumuamua?  go after? japan landing jumping on asteroid. philea in crevice, other craft landed also. 
16:37.267 butterflies are free except at sbmnh museum $10, or member $65?
17:30.239  tiger woods is back, fame is fleeting.  Earth/Sky volcanoes little ice age? 1275-1300ad. others say sun changed, but volcanoes better.
19:15.225  chuck outreach history, number of constellations.

20:57.140 music: it was a calm and cloudless night...galileo  B-

31:33.578 music: it's been a long road, getting from here to there... 
music: and the engine died

44:07.478 music:  freightened crew...black hole  B-what happens if you fall in?

52:23.233 music: GatoB "europa" 

62:47.196 music:  it's been a long road... star trek enterprise tv show

66:56.513 end







54
180827 KZSB SBAU radio hour Baron CMcP TT BM incomplete notes
[download attached 51min 9MB mp3 audio file to listen w/o adverts]

00:00.000  Baron speculate on SBAU attendees
00:22.190
00:36.694  Craig D Allen website
00:58.992  Donny double moon due to Mars? TT tries to clarify that it is a rumor since 2003
03:27.284  Chuck enters, 30s promos, B-used to commute on 350cc motorcycle, canyons cool sometimes.  B-oumuamua gone? CMcP-going out.  B-Bruce M on phone.

05:10.547  music: "it was a calm and cloudless night...shaking of the universe was about to occur...1609".  B-Jerry get well, tt in his seat, CMcP, BM on phone, B-any outreach? BM-planets good.  B-Saturn ears?  CMcP need 30x to see rings.  Mu Cephi, TT-Herschel garnet star hyper giant is beautiful.  CM-August 27 rumor, email said 75x tele will make Mars look size of Moon, but now each year email/twitter goes out saying just look at moon, mars will look same size.  polo club event other night someone brought it up as well.  B-is Mars dust storm abating?  CM-polar ice caps warm up and puffs up atmosphere and creates dust clouds.  pics of progression of storm can be seen.  B-delay a satellite landing?  CM-no  B-go to Mars in 10-15 yrs?  CM-hope not, should go to moon first and practice living in remote environment.  B-and find black slab on moon.  CM-tr u mp is pretty clueless.  water.  B-30M miles out, 2yr orbit, launch when close? CM-yes.  B-total recall Arnold movie, take a while to colonize.  CM-air gets ablated away.  cheaper to explore w/ robots, but people smarter still.  B-rocket man song,  "mars is cold as he ll".  TT-ave temp on mars is -81F vs 58F on earth.  B-air CM-solar wind breaks up.  BM-phase diagram, CO2 goes to gas from solid.  B-Europa moon all water?  CM-lots there, title flexing creates liquid water.  B-break, JW, thks for not showing up with cold!  music:  "its been a long time...see my dream come alive at night, not going to hold me down...faith of the heart" (enterprise TV song)

17:43.589  Music: Gato B Europa.  B-or Strauss? 2010 movie: ghost: do not touch Europa.  B-Astrovangza?  CM-wed, Carp; Thurs, Bacara; Fri, Refugio; Sat, Cachuma; Sun, Bacara;  camp-out Sept 28/29 potluck; etc Sept 7 1st Fri Prof Will van dam meeting; Sept 8 Astrovangza, make comets, charge to enter museum. Theme Star Wars villains.  B-planetarium shows? yes (Jason barrios).  B-ask Dr Van Dam to go easy CM-keep the quanta small.  B-lots of planets to see.  B-how to get to mars, CM-Insight mission on its way. BM-mars elliptical orbit.  TT-Ceres CM-Dawn mission.  B-vandenberg getting active? polar orbits, can go west? CM-possible to go retrograde.  B-Iridium CM-Next, multiple orbital planes to ensure signal available. Russians use Kazakhstan.  BM-did 115 outreaches last year.  B-fun women, wives of SBAU astronomers.  Jupiter mnemonic, I Eat Green Cheese...TT: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto.  CM: some moons 1-2km mile diameters.  B-Neil degrasse Tyson, stars names are like phone numbers.  Music: Gato Europa.

28:21.461  music: as a spaceship flies, tho the endless space, stumbles on black hole, engine dies, frightened crew..  B-Bruce theater organ show?  TT-Buster Keaton  BM-The General  TT-great organist.  BM-does not block view.  B-Colin good officers.  members can come to board meetings.  B-what is going on in space?  CM-Parker solar probe, has to slow down, going around Venus. 3M miles from Sun.  B-only inner solar towards sun? CM-no, Cassini to Saturn went around Venus.  BM-Io goes around Jupiter in 2 days.  Juno mission.  radiation, cosmic rays, magnetosphere trapped radiation. Sun polar direction changes 22 yrs N-N, sunspot cycle 11 yr max-max.  B-Parker mission getting hot.  crazy.  BM-Venus hot due to CO2 atmosphere.  Mars lost magnetic field vs. Venus.  B-suns rays reflect from Venus, should be cool?  CM-heat penetrates. Earth greenhouse effect.  B-love this global warming.

37:39.991  music: calm and cloudless...summertime 1609, Galileo used his tele for very 1st time... B-everything crammed into a dot (start of universe).  CM-Osiris-rex mission to bennu asteroid, primarily metallic. Osiris is Egyptian goddess.  tt-sample return. CM-majority of asteroids are stony.  BM-SBTOS open console 2nd Sat of month usually.  TT-skip that one due to Astrovangza!  B-not at plan meet? BM-diabetic.  TT-BM inherited 11" mirror fr Bob Richard.  CM-star party up front with bright monitor.  B-Ojai light ordinance working?  CM-doing low temp LED's.  B-Camino lights?  CM-Tele Tues.  BM-Mojave great.  CM-DMZ btw north/s Korea was very dark.  B-galaxy light goes across CM-sometimes in May all around horizon.  B-are all solar systems randomly positioned?   CM-to see transit of exoplanets must pass in front.  5000+ detected. TESS will find more.  BM-many stars have planets  CM-80% of stars have multiple planets.  60% of stars are binary.  B-Parker slowing.  TT-Iridium sats coming up this month.

46:17.931  music: once i had enough of a mass  B-Parker solar probe, named for him.  slow it down?  CM-use Venus slingshot to slow it down [speed varies w/ each orbit see diagram at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe and   https://qz.com/1353429/the-parker-solar-probe-is-the-fastest-man-made-object-ever/  Venus fly-bys slightly slow the probe to allow it to orbit sun closer, but at a faster perihelion speed each time over several years] B-not sure if TT understands this, close to me in this, why does not probe speed up on approach?  CM-depends on approach.  BM-last speaker did great job of explaining orbits.  B-so some how it slows going around Venus, not using rockets.  B-grand tour?  BM-like Voyager 1/2.  B-both have gold records of Carl Sagan.  BM-out past heliopause.  B-let us know next theater organ event. music: Gato
51:22.850 end

55
180813 KZSB SBAU radio show poor notes, using VLC to record stream http://ice7.securenetsystems.net/KZSB , edit using Audacity.  Download the attached file and listen!

Baron Ron Herron, JerryW, ChuckMcP, RubenG by phone

00:00.000  B-heck of a deal, $10, half full a/c SB Airbus, leave Museum of Natural History by 8am, Science Museum, has Endeavor, King Tut is extra,
01:26.841  TomT not coming in
02:02.805  bus trip and sept astrovangza
03:42.218  JW, Donny, CM
06:13.678  Parker solar probe
06:43.502  KZSB
07:32.331  earth sky advert
08:10.050  what to talk about, 8sec, solar probe

08:38.997  music: Gato Europa.  B-after viewing meteors all night. CM, outreach; JW-back from class reunion, Pat seemed most popular of 600 people in class, 200 showed up.  B-spouses loneliest people in world at reunion.  JW-people were very friendly, did not break up in clics.  Van Horn HS, Independence Mo. CM-Pat San Marcos grad.  jw-august dog days, sun in canis major CM-Sirius. doldrums.  brh-sept 7, 8  1st Fri meet, Astrovangza at Museum, solar scopes, plan meet, star party. Sept 10 radio show. CM-solar cycle CM-but quiet phase, 11 or 22 yr cycle.  brh-Parker (91yr old physicist) solar probe, what for?  CM-corona, why 1.5MKelvin, what is energy transport, maybe micro flares, magnetic reconnections? corona is not dense.  B-trajetory, gravity assist? CM-downhill B-elliptical like jupiter juno.  B-carbon used CM-peak around shield JW-hide behind the shield and side away from Sun is cold to dump heat.  CM-Sun is 880,000miles in dia. B-Mercury hot B-hard to get signal back, sun noise on signal? CM-directed beam back. B-how long in space?  B-postponed, but up next day.  Webb is postponed years.  Earth shadow on Webb?  CM-not likely, in Lagrangian point.  B-nice blankets geing sold. music: Gato Europa.  JW-seats avail?  CM-30, M&J might get 3 more.  music: Gato- Europa.

18:47.466  music: Galileo used his telescope for the very first time.  RubenG-called B-interview Q's to Ruben about Calif Sci Center trip.   CM-looked at meteors of Perseid shower last night, seem to originate from Perseus constellation.  JW-comet orbit Sun and leave dust behind the Earth runs into.  Leonids from Leo.  Halley's comet leaves trail the Orionids. B-what size reaches the earth surface? JW-Chelybinisk CM-60ft across.  B-how to take photo of meteors?  B-some people can hear sizzling?   B-where were you looking at meteors?  CM-end of west camino  Music: strong embrace of a black hole (Kazoo playing).

32:11.253  music: star trek, faith of the heart.  B-TT will do planetarium, like CM.  B-love to see Huygens probe landing, Cassini mission.  hits Titan atmosphere CM-heat shield.  B-Europa is another one, more water there.  B-Huygens took time to float down w/ parachute.  JW-pics taken in diff directions  Cm-rocks looked like they had been eroded by water.  B-Juno will crash into Jupiter, like Cassini into Saturn?  JW-Juno trying to get under clumps of radiation in Jupiter mag belts.  B-four forces: Strong nuclear JW-binds quarks to form protons, Weak nuclear JW-holds nucleus of atom together, electromagnetism, and gravity.  B-my brain in mid of night, why 0-186Kmps instantly photons?  B-photons do not need to be pushed?  CM-self pushed, generated    B-will next speaker talking about quantum physics be appreciated. 
CM-bartender says we do not serve your type around here, then a tachyon walks into the bar.  music: Gato: Europa

42:10.657  music: it was a calm and cloudless night, summertime 1609..  B-galileo looked at meteors? CM-if summertime, must be looking at Perseids. JW-i use chaise lounge.  JW-LaGrange points.  Webb telescope.  several pts around the earth 5pts, Sun-Earth 1 & 2, ahead and behind, pts 3&4,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point  Hubble failures cannot be fixed by Shuttle missions anymore. 
B-what are deep fields?  JW-photos taken by space telescopes.  110 messier objects, depending on political views.
"B- visit Cal Sci Center, show up Museum by 8am $10.  music: Once I had enuf mass, I became a star of gas, firery blast.

49:54.684  music: Gato  B-Perseids?  CM-go on 2wks either side of peak.  3rd Fri at Westmont, Cachuma, 3rd Tues at Camino, Thurs 23, 30, sept 2 at Bacara.  Sept 1 wed carp.  Sept 7 meeting, Sept 8 Sat: Astrovangza, star party...etc.  B-$20 for two tomorrow trip.  how to become a member?  CM-www.sbau.org  B-Prof Wm Van Damme next meeting, two places at once?  CM-superposition.
54:22.223 end





56
180709 KZSB SBAU radio hour Baron CM TW TT BM 2nd Monday 9am

00:00.000 B, CM, TT computer malware, social telescope outreach problems?
01:41.499 B  traffic, B idea coffee stick like an oil dipstick, Blue Blood motor oil remark. "I'm down a quart".  B-who was affected by Friday night fire?  CM-5 miles away from us.  TT-thought it would burn down to the ocean.  cars can vaporize.  more fire thots.
06:02.831 Craig Allen State St financial thots with B.
13:37.515 Donny Risdin traffic
15:20.942 natural disasters, Thai boys in cave, Elon Mush submarine, sedate kids?, Richard Dugan, winch. Chilean miners hole, but time & geology unstable.  Ingenuity. all divers want to help.  CM-news travels more than 50years ago. RD-training kids CM-but Seal diver died.  B-Colbert will have them on?
19:00.000 Goleta fire news, Wildlife Care Network losses.
19:46.897 Earth/Sky:  Russia fireball 1910 Tunguska river, flattened trees, event.  no meteorite fragments. 
21:23.000  CM-think a comet

22:00.346 song: "as a spaceship flies...strong embrace of a black hole..."  B-Mac's favs, intros TT, TW newsletter julian Nott cancel, Bruce Murdock on phone.  B-things about cosmology leaving people behind, (DE, DM, expansion, etc) what happens at various outreaches.  CM-there was gunshots at Lake Lopez, TomW no longer goes there.  B-school events, last to leave CM-some other sci presenters like to come by.  B-How do folks know that you are there at state beaches?  TT-posters.  B-SBMNH Star Parties? CM-Museum has notices on web page.  B-baby at telescope?  BM-usu 1-2 years, they do not know where to look.  If you do not get light on your pupil, you will not see anything.  CM-forehead or nose, look sideways.  TW-helps if looking at moon, cause image shows on their eyes.  B-fill eyep with moon?  TW-yes, diff ways of checking out moon.  CM-can not see flags on moon.  BM-large tele needed. CM-6 mile dia.  B-satellites crossing sky.  CM-in city lights no.  Cachuma Iridium flare was -8 magnitude, very bright.  polished microwave antennas on old version.  B-Mars close?  CM-closest in 15 yrs.  B-when to launch to mars? CM-every 2yrs.  TT-close every year?  B-speed of planets around sun?  TT- Merc-100Kmph, Earth-70Kmph, Pluto-10Kmph.  music: Gato B Europa.

33:32.114 music:  "it was a calm and cloudless night...summertime 1609...Galileo..." B-thot of day: Galileo: "cannot teach people anything, only find it within itself"  B-teach summer at Westmont? TW: already over, 5 wk session.  B-newsletter?  TW: proofreader is CM.  B-Cal Sci Center, Endeavor trip August 14, RubenG arranging.  B-physicists in club.  But B did program asking questions.  What youtube video to pick if you want to?  Several billion to choose from.  CM-watch no videos.  BM-I watch Star Trek  B-spaceship shape  CM-submarine like is more likely.  BM-big screen tv has internet built in, Netflix, Hulu.  TW-books, mags for me, NYTimes crossword, Amy was answer to old jazz song, Dean Martin.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yd-gGXWfwE  .   B-I will give TW the next segment.  B-what is coming up for outreaches?  TT-1st Friday meetings.  CM-no one for August.  B-Astro on Tap speakers are good.  TT-over 125 members.  B-trip organizer, RubenG, event coming up.  $25 bus ride.  B-Endeavor shuttle, big area  BM-earthquake supports on shuttle.  B-how shuttle attached?  CM-3 points, well engineered.  not sure about explosive bolts.  B-seems it would fall over  CM-balanced.  B-exterior tanks lost?  CM-they never left them in space, dumped in ocean.  https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/index.html  .  B-orange tank.  CM-list of outreach events.
song:  "spaceship...call is heard"

46:30.740  music: GatoB "europa" B-descending on Mars now, intros.  BM-open console July21, Sat 9-11am, and Aug 19, Sunday silent movie, "The General" Buster Keaton (locomotive).  www.sbtos.org B-keep us posted B-TW, NY Times article, Shannon Hall, tilt of planet vs life on a planet.  Mercury no tilt, Uranus 90deg tilt.  Earth 23.5deg, Mars 25.9deg.  Could life depend on seasonal tilt?  Mars nutates, big tilts over millions of years.  TT-because without a big moon?  B-water floats when ice, fish live underneath.  Equator folks have little seasons.  CM-but seasons may cause effects there.  B-maybe 20-30 planets in Milky Way galaxy with life?  CM-life may be more common than we think, altho multi-cellular life is big step.  Tech life another step.  CM-spread spectrum comm may look like noise signal.  Adam Frank "Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth"   https://www.amazon.com/Light-Stars-Alien-Worlds-Earth/dp/0393609014/ref=sr_1_1/134-4614237-0578756?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531168731&sr=1-1&keywords=adam+frank .  Global warming might be tough on life.  CM-evolution makes you selfish, so hard to share resources[?]

55:22.558  music: GatoB "Europa"  B-talking astrophysics, cosmology  BM-plate is full.  I like to look at objects that people like, like Saturn, M13 globular cluster.  B-rings around planets fairly common?  BM-outer planets  B-either a moon or a disk around a planet? BM-Saturn rings are mostly ice, 200Kmile dia.  TT-earth has a ring  CM-centaur asteroid has a ring TW-handles on Saturn  B-Galileo time they diappeared.  Webb tele 2021.  CM-infrared, mainly to see red-shifted cosmic dawn B

62.17.838 Music: GatoB  B-back with a vengence.  TomW, if inside a rotating drum in space giving 1g (2001 said to be rotating too fast); if in middle of drum, zeroG. so if run backwards and jumped up, would float?  TT-2001 movie shows them on ladder to center of drum.  BM-gravity depends on the radius and v2/r.  B-concave vs convex TT-head vs feet gravity effects?  BM- if 6ft tall in 7ft diameter drum.  TT-Ringworld, all are spinning.  B-Kelly astronaut changes.  Star party this Saturday.
68:16.218 end

57
180611 KZSB SBAU radio hour Baron, JW, CM, TW, TT crumby notes, download attached audio file to listen in.

00:00.000  JW-Nasa found organic compounds on Mars that might indicate life once existed there.  Also a fluctuation in atmospheric methane in different seasons.  B-JPL organic molecules, means was from living organisms.
01:33.687  be right back
01:46.862 Money: craig allen, TT - SpaceX as a good investment? B-Boring Co tunnels? Trump Singapore G7 1-805-898-1400.   Risden B's dentist
07:56.404  Earth/Sky Pandas food and climate change
09:26.187  B- JW-back on air TT-program on Polo Wednesday? like Croquet?  JW-crossword puzzle says only played right handed.  B-lots of questions.  What today for Astrophysics?  Mars? CM-mudstone.  B-Blueberries? CM-magnetite, lots of iron.  B-joined now by TomW bringing bread...off for the summer at Westmont? TW-fresh baked.  B-this was found on Mars?  TW-baking bread for the summer.  Went to Ojai music festival, director female violinist, orch from Moldova (next to Romania).  jazzy bit. went Thurs, Fri, Sunday.  missed SBAU potluck.  Bread to CM since they brought cookies to Tues telescope workshop.

15:04.501 music: it was a calm and cloudless night...1609 Galileo.  B-where did you get? CM- web Astro Capella.  Intros, CM, JW, TW, Westmont grades last May 9, TT.  B-relationship to local observatories? CM-volunteer arm for Museum, no pay.  JW-several worked on tweaking telescope. CM-closed recently due to construction.  B-nice pathways.  B-What dept runs Westmont Obs? TW-Physics, 200yds away. B-how to decide whre to put Obs?  TW-best place would have been tennis courts where previous scope was.  CM-baseball folks wanted to paint Westsmont  obs black, but that would have been worse for heat.  TW-I wanted to put up net.  CM-sprinklers. B-take students over to obs? TW-yes students solar and variable star work.  B-most lectures electrical?  TW-person retired on electrical circuits, so happy to take over. B-grand time at planetarium at Museum by TT. B-July meeting, Julian Nott to talk about balloons, July 6.  TW-Sky & Telescope, naked eye astronomy articles, Venus, Mercury will be available, but low in the east.  B-will share my Q at the planetarium next. music: Gato Europa.

24:36.380 music: ?  B-back w a vengence, poss becoming vp by the end of the year. TT, TW, JW, CM.  TW-June S&T mag, asterisms to view w/ naked eye.  Big Dipper, just a part of Ursa Major. Summer Triangle belongs to 3 constellations.  3 leaps of the Gazelle, the paws of Ursa Major, three pairs of stars have Arabic names.  CM-poke hole in bottom of dipper and it drips onto Leo.  B-Mr. Trotter sent story on double doubles, CM-those were eclipsing pairs, all gravitationally related.  JW-fairly easy gravitational calculations. B-wish I could show what you are doing with your fingers.  B-supposedly our solar system came from group of dust,  how to get two stars?  CM-see Jupiter.  JW-turbulences in disks, swirls condense.  B-how many asterisms?  CM-huge # if going telescopic.  B-planets on ecliptic? CM-projection of our orbit into the Sun.  JW-planet X possibly.  CM-may argue that it does not exist also.  B-Neptune CM-plane widens farther from Sun.  TT-Pluto way off, so Dwarf Planet.  B-New Horizons.  JW-high reliability, fewer parts, reaction wheels.  CM-just woke up New Horizon for next object.  B-also MakeMake out there?  CM-yes.  B-not on itinerary.  B-asteroid belt, kuiper belt, Oort all the same?  CM-more ice away from Sun.  B-Oort cloud, typical of most stars.  JW-may be another star will pass thru within a few years.  music star trek enterprise tv show...not gonna hold me down

38:15.490 music: as a spaceship flies, thru the endless void, black hole..and the engine died... B-SBAU hour, 93M miles, give or take, 2or3%.  TW-coming up on Solstice. newsletter. TT-RubenG info on Cal Sci Center.  TT-what is TNO? CM-trans neptunian object.  beyond Neptune, incl kuiper, scattered disk, oort.  B-Jupiter gravity JW-12x TW-sun 30x.  JW-stand on Jup, everything pulls on you.  but inside, pull evens out.  JW-drill a hole all the way thru the earth and jump in, you weigh nothing at center of earth (no air resistance for fall).  TW-90 min to go thru, just like orbiting earth.  B-Jules Verne story.  all the gold in the middle of earth? CM-Juno mission says Jupiter is not that concentrated in the core.  B-radar? CM-gravitational pull. B-how long will Juno orbit? CM-53 day orbit.  JW-if they lose fuel or lose funding, they will crash it into Jupiter.  B-intelligent life orbiting earth?  how do you know? TT-I love Lucy broadcasts. music: same

46:54.671 music: once i had enuf of a mass, i became a star of gas...B-from CM collection of silly songs of the cosmos. CM-Westmont 3rd Friday, ...etc events.  B-telescope clubs up Calif? CM-y.  JW-any events related to Mars. CM-Mars opposition end of July, best might be Refugio.  Cachuma events.  B-Lisa Osborn met at campout
TT-go to sbau.org events page.  B-looking for Ibrahim giving poem on bus to Cal Sci Center trip.  July 6 1st Fri meeting.  7p sharp planetarium show.  JW-thinking of Capital Steps show.  B-200x events year? CM-about that.  B-star party? CM-about 80 people.  B-SBAU blanket? CM-$20-25  B-TT doing food...TT-Cezanne doing most of the work.   music: helium...

56:17.605  music: burning so fast...B-going to see Dr Lance Boil.  B-SBAU best club name. B-groups? TT-ASP, CM-Western, AL TT: NSN? CM-night sky network.  B-asterisms seen against club purpose? JW-we look at anything up there.  made flashcards of constellations as a kid.  TW-coathanger  B-learned about Leonids meteor shower  TT-Tuttle comet debris CM-Swift-/Tuttle.  B-what TW doing this summer? TW-banjo, electronics.  TT-banned our electronic music at museum potluck, maybe have banjo?  B-Holst Mars only one that is loud enuf.  B-what talk at home?  JW-wife wants car in garage...208inches avail, car is 200in.
01:03:18.382 end




58
180528 KZSB SBAU radio 1290AM Baron JW PatF 46min 180603 replay quick skippy notes:

00:00.000  News Press radio 1290AM. music: Gato Europa.  B-deep space.  JerryW President SBAU.  PatF wife with him.  B-used to do compatible couples and did "newlywed game" questions.  eggs? etc.  What attracted Pat to Jerry?   jerryW met patF in 1996.  married 2002?   JW-worked at SBRC, Raytheon bought in 1998.  B-read his article?  Pat-Neutron stars.  SBAU news letter article...Baron-Neutron stars, fused protons and electrons? JW- orbits vs. orbitals shell.  JW-Deuterium;  Fuse D into water, get D2O. in an atom stabelfor every.  But if Neutron on its own has15min half life.   anti-matter electron is positron.  everything is a balance in stars, gravity vs. heat pushing out.  if heat stops, gravitational compression heats core, fuses helium, carbon, highest fusion is iron, gravity pulls iron atoms together, protons become neutrons.    music: "Music of the Night") is a song from the 1986 musical The Phantom of the Opera. The music was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber with lyrics by Charles Hart.

10:37.561
music: "a star of gas"  B-Memorial Day show, replayed several times.  Pat Friendship Center board member.  Solar eclipse Monmouth, Oregon, (also Australia).  Daughter becoming a registered nurse.  Pat-another daughter, JW-son phd environmental engineering, basically marine biologist.  JW-built 1st telescope in hs, small spot tele at 10yr, other friends also had them.  lay on ground, tripod on bench, then look up thru telescope.  we hear stars are points, but looked like disks in the out of focus star.  Newton made 1st reflecting telescope.  JW-holding tele is universal mount.  B-aware of what navy uses as periscopes?  JW-video camera now.  PF-7 teles?  JW-14" and 18".  telescope workshop w/ 3 others.  B-ChuckMcP camera use typical?  JW-camera integrates image photons over time, so makes much brighter image like people see in magazines.  Hubble is above atmosphere, but costs a lot to put up, 96" mirror, full resolution, but now adaptive optics, a rubber mirror in optical train, measure distortion of atmosphere if on earth, so much bigger telescopes can be used on earth.  B-takes a lot of pictures and averages them out?  JW-no, software stacking adding images together.  B-what is binary star system?  more than half of stars are.  music: Gato, Europa.

25:13.068
music: "music of the night"  Pat/Jw wedding song.  JW-as a kid, went to Griffith Obs, planetarium, stars come out and music played, so I associate songs w/ stars.  Debussey.  B-Holst planets, Disney Fantasia.  JW-saw Berstein play Peter and the Wolf, love for 3 oranges, listen in person is best, w/ eyes closed, to not be distracted by visuals.  B-Disney did good visuals w/ music.  JW-Disney and Salador Dali did one, loneiness, "Destino".
B-Neutron stars is subject of month in SBAU newsletter.  TomW edits newsletter.  1st Friday of June not happening, as potluck is June 8  JW-parking not avail on June 1.  B-bring covered dish, JW-for members and guests. 

33:02.079
music: Phantom of the Opera riding in boat J w/ mask on, Pat looking on. Richard on hold.  B-is water flowing in basement of church? JW-opera house.  PatF - chandelier comes crashing down.  RDupree-Do any Neutron stars have names?  JW-no, just number designations.  RD-57 named stars?  normal stars?  JW-yes diff categories, shown no H-R diagram, most stars are not "normal".  B-stars collapse and blow up?  JW-black hole has event horizon, neutron star event horizon is inside itself.  electron degenerate stars, exclusion principle.
If you see a business show chart with wiggle, compared to the straight line drawn, this is like types of stars.  B-singularity is where time stops?  JW-no, this is at surface of bh.  space ship appoaching black hole would seem to slow to stop, time goes slower.  Magnetar-so strong atom on surface, layers that are superconducting.

41:08.246
music: Gato Europa B-elected VP of high school as a joke, still in touch w/ folks.  SBAU.org . join if u want munchies.  B-see LaLaLand?  dance among stars at Griffith.  PatF-talk about new VP...JW-guarantee to get elected, or appointed for rest of year.  JW-always talking about how few young folks attend club.  JW-going to iModonari next. See u next lunch.
46:10.355

59
180514 KZSB SBAU radio hour 2nd Tues BaronH JW CM TW TT BM

00:00.000 music: GatoB Europa jazz saz.  Baron intros, June8 potluck, JW-dying to join right then, B-no custom calendars, so generic from ?  CM-Sky & Telescope.  TW-article S&T how detecting 1st galaxies.  B-Hubble deep field, 1 million seconds of exposure. TT-took a few months.  TW-13.4B light is so faint, so use Lyman cut-off of H, image shift of spectrum, 92.1nm UV, image above and below, since Universe expanding, you can watch the cutoff shift into the infrared.  James Webb Tele will be better.  B-light photon leaves a star, 1B stars in a galaxy, so only one star seen?  TW-no the ensemble of light from all the stars in the galaxy.  JW-Milky Way looks like cloud, light is combined.  CM-TimC says ultra deep field was 2 million seconds.  B-how stay aligned to take photo?  BM-reaction wheel torque.  CM-Hubble can point N/S without having earth in the way.  B-Hubble still op?  JW-until funding runs out or breaks.CM-should boost then pick up for Smithsonian someday.  music: summertime 1609, Galileo used telescope for very first time.

11:23.937 music: long road getting from there to here.  B-SBAU hour.  goes by fast.  Last Friday Sean Kelly gave great speech, long, had to hold questions, food would be more important.  TW-SEan talked about magnetism.  B-which is bigger mag field, ac or dc?  BM-relates to peak current  Beta/h amperes going thru coil.  B-Edison vs Telsa ac, Edison electrocute elephant to show danger of ac. JW-public did not like that demo.  BM-dc tends to throw you off.  ac field two directions.  JW-lightning transients go both directions.  B-why not spike onlyin one direction?  JW-fast videos can showthe action due to air breaking down at high voltages.  TW-when at grad student at Uof Arizona, they study that there due to monsoons in Tucson area.  Dr. Kriter's riders to see lightning events.  B-Neptune has even stronger.  TT-lightning rods?  Mark Twain story of adding more and more.  BM-cloud to cloud lightning.  CM-static on radio.  BM-ac +/- 5kHz of 1290KHz.  JW-dc current seems more of nature oddity.  electric eels....JW-evil thots.  music: i became a star of gas..

21:22.469 music:  as a space ship flies tho the endless space...stumbles onto a black hole embrace...B-TW classes finished 4 labs, 65 students.  TT-planetarium shows, 5th graders, 100k yrs across Milky Way text message.  BM-tours of Arlington theatre organ, SBTOS.org. Hal Conklin. B-take bus to Calif Sci Center w/ SBAU club in August.  TT-satellites, Imax CM-aircraft TT-rose garden. $30 bus fee. space shuttle costs.  BM-King Tut exhibit.  near USC.  B-took son to see wrestling, fake, but son loved it.  Exposition park.  B-tar pits? BM-bubbling. JW-bones, things float up.  B-outreaches?  CM-2nd Sat at Museum, etc.  TT-what in night sky?  CM-Jupiter, Venus.  Telescope workshop Broder building.  B-much done in 1.5 hrs?  JW-sure. cheering TimC on 8"  music: Gato Europa.

31:17.837  music:  Star Trek Enterprise tv show music.  B-bees in space?  BM-Beehive cluster, groups of three CM-1100 ly away.  BM-binary star stable, triple less stable over time.  B-alpha Centauri?  CM-two like sun, one red dwarf orbiting others.  B-Proxima like earth?  CM-star barf may cook planet.  JW-globular clusters, planets can be passed around.  B-about every 100yrs, get novas.  not in Globs?  CM-yes it happens, makes blue stragglers.  JW-25K yrs a star will come within 1 ly of our sun, may disturb Oort field of comets.  BM-may be more black holes in universe than stars.  TT-black hole could pass thru sun w/o us knowing.  JW-thru earth...tiny one.  Kip Thorne helped with Interstellar movie.  JW-time passes slowly in black hole field.  B-worm hole is due to black hole?  TW-often found in apples.  Music: Galileo telescope

39:46.712 music:  Gato-Europa.  B-Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit club.  2nd/4th mondays radio show.  B-Webb delayed to 2020.  CM-close pass 2am 300ft across asteroid.  mag 12.  B-gravity assist.  does that happen to passing asteroids?  CM-could be faster or slower after passing.  B-how to program a satellite to go to planets?  JW-all the physics needed to direct by Newton BM-and Kepler.  B-nudge could be way off.  BM-one ft per year over 100k yrs.  JW-course corrections can be done.  BM-thrusters.  B-Voyager 1/2 in Kuiper belt, where going? CM-Aldeberian.  B-how to get near sun?  JW-  B-solar sail?  CM-trouble expanding sails. 

60
180409 KZSB SBAU radio hour 2nd Tuesday B, JW, CM, TW...lousy notes by TT:
-so download and play back cropped 50 min of show time audio file attached.

00:00.000 B-DelTopia beach problem
00:17.391 B-AU hour blurb
00:43.791 Earth/Sky moon halo
02:13.566 TomT not here, doing planet shows, new person Danny here,  Chuck M8RX talk, B-well done, but had to leave. CM-music to astro data talk also was great.

03:34.175 music: 2001 movie.  B-Kubrick ship going too fast to be accurate. TomW, JerryW, ChuckMcP, B-was your speech to be about anything? CM-speak about modern Am Astro and contribute to Science.  B-3 types of teles? CM-refract, reflect, cat. (has both lens and mirror).  JW-workshop does mirrors. TW-started it.  TimC cancelled this week.  He was working on f/5 8"  focal length 40".  JW-like camera light coming in.  B-like Hubble? CM-use reaction wheels, as rocket contaminate area. TomW-lost two Mike Dilley, f/2, 12.5 port hole and Mike Chibnick 14" port hole glass. B-some members only come out rarely.  This show counts as an outreach.  B-what to write in news?  JerryW-   Isabel Lipartito was Friday speaker (distortion) talked about superconductors at low temps, BruceM gave some extra description in emails.  maybe write about superconductors next time. B-computers faster? JW-is a heat issue. 70s Cray-1 was fast, compact, but hidden chiller room.  SBRC computer rooms were air conditioned, but operator in hot room. B- 25yr old lady, Lipartito, w/ her lab people, has her camera been done before?  JW-new one is a little different, but been done before, but superconductors are faster. saw pulsar at 33/second. CM-patent may be Jerry's!

15:32.924 music: "on a calm and cloudless night...1609 Galileo..." B-felt earthquake?  JW-maybe a cat fight, but wife ran out of shower.  TW-class schedule.  B-reading BruceM email re: TT Q .   JW-disagree any stumble.  CM-just a detector like any new camera.  Several large telescopes they attach to.  B-is Hubble same cold?  CM-not cold enuf.  JW-James Webb will be a little cooler, but will run out of coolant.  Cm-gets away from earth heat and noise.  Lipartito is down to milliKelvin.  TW-trying to direct image, not using wobble or transit techniques.  B-look at firefly Fl to Seattle?  JW-if enuf light, get spectra for exoplanets, like she showed for Venus vs. Earth.  B-Gliese 581 rocky planets? in habitable zone, 20LY away.  TW-Sun.  JW-we are looking for intelligent life.  CM-4K exoplanets so far w Kepler.  B-basics of electr:  inductance resist change in current?  B-ohms?  JW-that is resistance.  B-why delay when JohnP reports?  CM-microwave system.  B-anti-electron, positron? JW-neg stuff moves, current is tech opposite of electron flow, eng vs sci talk.  BM and JW email.  j is imaginary, complex number, discuss.  JW- Chuck has pw that uses last three digits of Pi.  music: black hole

26:21.873 music: "so the frieghtened crews stranded fall into a black hole"  B-great SBAU members: CM amazing outreach guy.  AdrianL going to CalTech.  Isabel young ladies, hope they attend more.  TomW-bread, fabulous rye based on SF bakery, no Knead.  starter, real sour dough, slow fermentation.  B-rye and other grains make whiskey?  TW-  B-work at Panera? TW-I make better bread.  TW-James Webb, going up in 2020.  concerned about sunshield unfolding.  B-always face away from Sun? TW-yes.  B-13th constellation? CM-variance from orig astrology over thousands of years.  TW-Ophiuchus.  B-Webb up from Canaveral, but local?  CM-Insight mission from Vandenberg.  JW-picked a spot to drill on Mars.  CM-hit a golf ball to NY City from here.  JW-Mars Curse.  B-Venera to Venus.  TW-April Sky/Tele, article on 1st galaxies, well written. B-Hubble deep field, CM-Ultra.  B-earliest galaxies?  CM-13.8B old universe, see 13+ back.  B-can we look complete sky? CM-they have done some different parts of sky.  Univ has expanded since begin.  JW-10^-32sec.  CM-everywhere is the center of the universe, just diff view for everyone.

36:18.963 music: Gato-Europa.  B-talk with brighter bulbs in town.  TW-teaching 4 labs this semester.  2 others in dept. Summerland and Kihlstrom.  JW-Goleta corridor, Voyager has signiture on it.  Built spectrometer, etc.  B-works perfect?  JW-rovers work better close up.  CM-blueberreis on Mars.  B-can we land on Olympus Mons on Mars?  JW-want to look for water.  CM-landed on poles.  B-lava tube on Moon.  JW-Mars also.  TW-earth also, near Lassen Volcanic park.  B-Sea of Tranquility, CM-frozen lava lake.  B-meteor strikes, fry on earth, but hit moon.  CM-people look for those on Moon.  B-CM does Occultation viewing.  star blinks out as asteroid goes by.  peanut shape. CM-if a number of people along path of shadow, can determine shape.  Some Trans-Neptunian objects, not all in the ecliptic.  B-are all occultations on zodiac?CM-a lot due to asteroid belt is there.  folks doing since early 70's.  564-1290

44:46.278 music: Gato-Europa.  B-club, summarize like CM talk at M8RX, no tele needed.  JW-trip.  CM-2nd Sat, 3rd Tues, 3rd Fri Westmont, April 21, Sat., Intl Astro Day.  Not at Earth Day.  JW-should put Tesla stickers on telescopes.  TW-students today at 2p, lesson plans ready, modify every year. Spring next yr, teaching cosmology, part of astrophysics.  origin of universe.  B-hit a time when we know too much.  TW-want to cover Hawking radiation, black hole evaporation.  B-SBAU stuff.  Thx. music: 2001.
49.35.266 end


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