Syzygy

The Newsletter of the Kern Astronomical Society No. 497 April 2016

KAS Open Meeting

First Friday of

Every Month

___________________________

April 1, 2016 @ Round

Table Pizza, 4200

Gosford Road, Suite 101,

Bakersfield, CA ____________________________

Dinner & Social 6:30 pm

Meeting/Program 7:30 pm

Dues Point Reached – Sky Humanity

Dues WERE due in March, $24.00 per person to be

registered with Astronomical League. Dues can be paid at

meeting or remitted to Andrea Drake, 5700 March Meadows,

Bakersfield, CA 93313. Make checks payable to Kern

Astronomical Society. Include any e-mail address changes.

Round Table Pizza: You are able to order online or

through the phone prior to arriving to the monthly

meeting, by doing so you will receive customer rewards

http://www.roundtablepizza.com/rtp/

661-397-1111

This Month’s Events

The New

April 1st Meeting at Round Table with

speaker from JPL Dr. Bonnie Buratti

Solar outreach @ Panorama Preserve

April 1st

Our Dark Sky Nights: April 2nd&9th

@Lockwood Valley

1st Bakersfield Panorama Bluff Public

Star Party: April 16th

Thomas Jefferson School outreach

April 13th

April 28th KAS Board Meeting all

members are welcomed as guests

Wind Wolves Festival Solar Outreach

This year, the Wind Wolves Nature Festival will be held at the preserve on March 19th

and 20th. We will be participating on the 19th. While the festival will run from 8:30 am to 5:00

pm we may not get started with the solar viewing until after 9:00 am or when the sun clears the

trees. Last year we were set up on the south side of the main building. If you are bringing a

scope consider parking in close proximity to that side of the headquarters. Last year we were

able to use temporary parking in the upper parking lot to unload equipment, though it was a bit

hectic unless you arrived early. Bring your own food and water, hats and sunscreen. Weather

will determine your outerwear. The window for solar viewing will probably end around 4:00 pm.

Admission is free.

If needed, check our calendar for a map. More can be found out about the preserve at

wildlandsconservancy.org. If you click on the picture about the nature festival you will go to a

page with a video at the bottom of the 2015 festival featuring our own Darren Bly and some of

the telescopes from last year’s event. Even if you do not have a solar scope, this can be a fun

outing with plenty of activities, and you can stop by and see how we are doing. We should have

both white light filter telescopes for sunspots and PST’s for solar prominences and filaments.

All of the telescopes use special filters to protect your eyes

Dr. Bonnie Buratti

Dr. Bonnie Buratti is a Senior Research Scientist and technical manager at NASA’s Jet

Propulsion Laboratory, with expertise on the structure and evolution of icy moons and other

small bodies. She holds degrees from MIT and Cornell in Astronomy. She is currently serving

on the Science Teams for both the Cassini and New Horizons missions, and she was recently

named the NASA Project Scientist for the Rosetta Mission to a comet. The author or coauthor

of over 200 scientific papers, Dr. Buratti was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement

Medal, and the International Astronomical Union recognized her work by naming asteroid

90502 Buratti after her. Her book “Worlds Fantastic, Worlds Familiar” will be published next

year

April Speaker / Talk

A hearty group of KAS volunteers put in a

full day at the festival on Saturday, March

19th. Andrea Lopez showed the

participants a wide field view of the sun

and sunspots, while Steve Andrews

exhibited enhanced views of two

sunspots in one common magnetic storm.

Andrea and Steve both used white light

filters.

Mike and Darren set up

hydrogen-alpha scopes. Darren

had a unique tree shaped

prominence in the Coronado

PST 60, while Mike was able

to get the two sunspots with

plage, some filaments and a

number of prominences of

various shapes around the

circumference of the sun. Photos By: Walter Albrecht

Articles submitted by: Steve Andrews

Photos by: Walter Albrecht

Kern Astro Public Outreach

On March 17, 2016, Richland

students, parents, and staff were treated

to an evening’s view of a three-quarters

moon, Jupiter with bands and moons,

and the Great Orion Nebula. KAS

members who put on a great show

included Darren Bly, Rod Guice, Andrea

Lopez, Aztlan Payne, Mike Ponek,

Gregg Pytlak, Walter Albrecht, Steve

Andrews, and Don and Sally Belflower.

Harris Elementary

The March 18, 2016 Harris Booster

Club event provided its constituents with

the same show as the night before. The

third quarter moon, Great Orion Nebula,

and Jupiter highlighted the viewing.

Mathew Hall, Irma Hall, Caitlyn Stitt,

Joshua Stitt, Andrea Lopez, Aztlan Payne,

Walter Albrecht, Steve Andrews, and

Darren Bly provided viewing opportunities.

The KAS solar outreach group, Aztlan Payne, Darren

Bly, Don Belflower, and Steve Andrews, hosted

groups of students from Edison to see a looping solar

prominence and three sunspot groups of types Bxo,

Cro, and Hsx. Some of the students got to see

sunspots with umbra and penumbra, and a sunspot

with two light bridges beginning the storm

disintegration. Clouds encumbered the viewing with

intermittent interference, but most of the students had

good viewing along with a safety lesson and

information about the sun from Darren.

Edison Middle School at Panorama

Preserve

Richland Jr. High, Shafter

Since 1956, the Kern Astronomical Society has

promoted community awareness of current events in

astronomy, and provides a forum for sharing of

knowledge and experiences among amateur

astronomers. Annual membership is $24.00 which

also provides membership in the Amateur

Astronomical League, access to their newsletter

(Reflector Magazine), and participation in

observational programs.

President: Andrea Lopez lopezand96@gmail.com

Vice President: Mike Ponek mponek@bak.rr.com

Treasurer: Andrea Drake adrake1310@gmail.com

Secretary: Heather Ponek heatronn@bak.rr.com

Star Party Coordinator: Darren Bly dcbly@bak.rr.com

According to a NASA website, Dr. Buratti’s interests include:

Seasonal transport of volatiles on the surfaces of the planets and satellites in the

solar system particularly Pluto and Triton

The composition, distribution, and nature of dark material in the outer solar

system and the relationship to similar material in the interstellar medium and in

star-forming regions and to prebiotic material

The microphysical nature of planetary surfaces and the possible existence of

water ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles

Rosetta

Rosetta is a project of the European Space Agency (ESA). The Mission,

Rosetta, was named after the Rosetta stone which was a decree written in three

script/languages, Hieroglyphics, Egyptian Demotic, and Classical Greek. The Phylae

lander was named after the Phylae obelisk which had Hieroglyphics and Greek

translations. After flybys of the asteroids Steins and Lutetia the mission reached comet

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in May 2014.

The mission will attempt to learn more about the origin of comets by

understanding connections between cometary and interstellar materials, thereby giving

clues to the origin of the solar system. NASA instruments have been sent to provide

information about the comet’s coma and tail and water and carbon monoxide/dioxide

(ALICE), the abundance of major gases and surface outgassing (MIRO), and the

formation of layers of the coma (IES). (IES) which is one of five instruments in the

Rosetta Plasma Consortium also analyzes particles ionized by the solar wind on the

comet as well as the asteroids.

ALICE

MIRO

RPC (IES)

Dawn

This mission was sent to the asteroid and possible future dwarf planet, 4 Vesta,

and to the past asteroid and current dwarf planet, Ceres. Two and a half times farther

from the sun than Earth, Vesta has no atmosphere to keep in heat, so temperatures are

-60°C (-76°F) during the day and -130°C (-202°F) at night. While it takes 3.6 Earth

years to orbit the sun, it turns on its axis every 5 hours and 20 minutes, which is not so

difficult for a body with an average diameter of 356 miles.

Red indicates higher elevations.

Vesta is the last rocky proto planet

with geological layers including an iron

core, a mantle, and a crust. There is

not much evidence of craters from the

Late Heavy Bombardment (HLB) less

than 4 billion years ago but it did

survive some large collisions, one of

which formed the crater, Rheasilvia,

giving Vesta a misshapen appearance

and sending shockwaves through the

crust and mantle 400 km away forming

the Divalia Fossa, which is slightly larger

than the Grand Canyon, Meteorites on

Earth have been identified as coming from

Vesta and this collision..

Ceres composes about a third of the

mass of the objects in the asteroid

belt and it has a 581 mi. diameter.

The Cererian day is 9 hrs. 4 min. and

its orbit around the sun is 4.6 Earth

years. It is rounded by its own gravity.

An icy mantle covers a rocky core.

The surface was believed to be a mix

of water, carbonates, and clay with

the possibility of internal water below

the surface. The process erasing the

LHB craters was different than that on

Vesta.

Other Projects on which Dr. Buratti has worked include:

Cassini-Huygens explores the ringed planet, its mysterious moons, the

stunning rings and its complex magnetic environment.

Moon Multispectral Mapper (M3) is one of the instruments that NASA is

contributing to India’s first mission to the Moon. Chandrayaan-1 (meaning

“Lunar Craft” in ancient Sanskrit), landed on October 22, 2008.

New Horizons is the first mission in NASA’s New Frontiers program of

medium-class planetary missions. It visited Pluto and its now 5 moons.

One of the two main “mysteries” of

Ceres is the bright spots made famous

by Spot 5 in the Occator crater. These

may be deposits of magnesium sulfate

hexahydrate similar to Epsom salt for

sore feet on Earth. The other is Ahuna

Mons the 3 mi. high dome and only

mountain on the flat surface, possibly a

result of cryovolcanic activity.