Greetings fellow astrophiles,
12:30 p.m. – Unfortunately, all of the weather sites are predicting increasing cloud cover for CNY into the afternoon, with rain possible in the early evening. As tomorrow is predicted to be even worse, we’ll be rescheduling our International SUNDay session for some time in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned!
Greetings fellow astrophiles!
Our friends at Liverpool Public Library are hosting one of three How-To Festivals (the other two being hosted at NOPL on June 23rd and Baldwinsville on June 25th) and, provided the sky holds, CNYO members will be in attendance with solar scopes and introductory brochures to give a How-To on the daytime and nighttime skies (if the skies do not hold, we’ll figure out an indoor activity, Mars rock and meteor fragments in tow).
There will be many organizations present at all three libraries this coming week, with attendees able to learn about a whole host of topics. From the official announcement on the LPL calendar:
Interactively learn new skills, gain insight into a variety of topics, or take something home of your own creation! Baldwinsville, NOPL and Liverpool collaborate to bring this fun, interactive and unique learning experience to the people of our community!
Learn how to: Grill Outdoors, Make a Lavendar Scrub, Raise Chickens, Face/Body Paint, Become a Foster Parent, Make a Smoothie, Release Stress using FasterEFT, Prepare for an Emergency, Create a Beautiful Look, Make a Duct Tape Flower Pen, View the Sun and the Moon, Create Cards and River Rocks with Pressed Flowers, Do a Self Breast Exam, Read Food Labels and create a Menu for Diabetes Mangement, Draw 3D for Beginners, Jump Start a Stuck Life, and more!
Observing update to follow Wednesday afternoon. We hope you can join us and several other local organizations at LPL!
Greetings fellow astrophiles!
Weather update: The forecast for CNY does not look promising for the official Int’l SUNDay on the 21st, so we’re going to instead run a session on Saturday afternoon at our usual downtown location. We’ll be providing a final weather update on Saturday, 12:00 p.m.
With special thanks to Stephen W. Ramsden, The Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project, Rainbow Symphony and Lunt Solar Systems, CNYO’s second hosting of International SUNday is going to include (for the first 100 people, anyway) an extra dose of solar safety. Stephen et al. have made available 100 solar glasses to send off to organizations hosting International SUNday events!
CNYO ran a session for International SUNday on the Onondaga Creekwalk last June 22nd (see the observing log HERE), complete with H-alpha and Baader scopes (and we even had a good day for it, which is a bit of a rarity in CNY). I learned about the event from Stephen’s talk at NEAF 2014, where I found his lecture to be equally informative and inspiring.
I urge you to check out the website and Facebook page for the Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Project – the amount of outreach Stephen does is tremendous (I am also happy to direct your attention to the Donate Button on the Project’s website to show a little love).
We’ll again host the session along the Armory Square slice of the Creekwalk – again next to Walt The Loch West Monster.
We hope you can join us on Saturday, June 20st in giving a little extra attention to our nearest star and reason why we’re all here!
Don your wet-suits and dive in with Timothy M. Corcoran, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer #187566 as he helps us learn about “The Science of Scuba Diving.”
Jump into the science of scuba diving! We will break the surface of this talk with a brief overview of diving, and then sink deeper into factors that a diver must consider when planning a dive and what the limitations are for the recreational diver. Are you familiar with Archimedes’ Law, Boyle’s Law and Henry’s Law, and how they apply to diving? Want to learn more about scuba gear and the purpose of each piece? Did you know that you can dive in Central New York? Take part in the adventure of scuba diving through this hands-on talk, including short videos from our training organization PADI and from actual dive trips.
People interested in learning more about scuba diving are invited to attend the free Junior Cafe presentation on Saturday, June 20, from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (MOST) in Syracuse’s Armory Square. Walk-ins are welcome.
Tim is the General Manager of Aquatic World in North Syracuse. Aquatic World (AW) is a 5 Star PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors), IDC (Instructor Development Center). AW has been on Business for over 40 years in one form or another. Aquatic World is located in North Syracuse off Taft Rd. and provides training, travel, gear and service to their customers. The AW Travel program is the biggest in Central New York, averaging 6 guided trips per year to locations around the world. AW has 18 instructors and 20 Divemasters. Tim is a PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer. He also functions as a Trip Leader for AW. His wife, Sharon, the Travel Director, and he have been on over 70 dive trips to locations around the world such as Fiji, Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea many locations in the Caribbean including Cuba and to the Sea of Cortez. Tim is retired from National Grid in Syracuse, where he worked for 34 years before taking over AW. Tim’s position at National Grid was Director of Data Center Services. He has a BS in Technical Manager from Empire State College and an AAS in Electrical Technology from Canton College.
TACNY Junior Cafe Scientifique, a program for middle-school students founded in 2005, features discussions about topics in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in an informal atmosphere and seeks to encourage students to consider careers in these areas. Students must be accompanied by an adult and can explore the MOST at no cost after the event.
Founded in 1903 as the Technology Club of Syracuse, the nonprofit Technology Alliance of Central New York’s mission is to facilitate community awareness, appreciation, and education of technology; and to collaborate with like-minded organizations across Central New York.
For more information about TACNY, visit www.tacny.org.
Greetings fellow astrophiles,
The NASA News service provides up-to-date announcements of NASA policy, news events, and space science. A recent selection of space science articles are provided below, including direct links to the full announcements. Those interested in receiving these news announcements directly from NASA can subscribe to their service by sending an email to:
hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov?subject=subscribe
NASA Selects Eight Projects for 2016 X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge
RELEASE 15-114 (Click here for the full article) – 8 June 2015
NASA is working with eight U.S. universities on new technology projects for deep space exploration, including the agency’s journey to Mars, as part of the 2016 X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge.
The challenge, which is led by NASA and the National Space Grant Foundation, has teams designing systems, concepts and technologies that will help improve NASA’s exploration capabilities and provide undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in technology development.
“These strategic collaborations lower the barrier for university students to assist NASA in bridging gaps and increasing our knowledge in architectural design trades, capabilities and technology risk reduction related to exploration activities that will eventually take humans farther into space than ever before,” said Jason Crusan, director of NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) division.
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For more information about previous challenges and current challenge requirements, visit: go.nasa.gov/x-hab and www.spacegrant.org/xhab/
For information about NASA and its programs, visit: www.nasa.gov
NASA Spacecraft Detects Impact Glass On Surface Of Mars
RELEASE 15-118 (Click here for the full article) – 8 June 2015
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has detected deposits of glass within impact craters on Mars. Though formed in the searing heat of a violent impact, such deposits might provide a delicate window into the possibility of past life on the Red Planet.
During the past few years, research has shown evidence about past life has been preserved in impact glass here on Earth. A 2014 study led by scientist Peter Schultz of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, found organic molecules and plant matter entombed in glass formed by an impact that occurred millions of years ago in Argentina. Schultz suggested that similar processes might preserve signs of life on Mars, if they were present at the time of an impact.
Fellow Brown researchers Kevin Cannon and Jack Mustard, building on the previous research, detail their data about Martian impact glass in a report now online in the journal Geology.
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For more information about CRISM, visit: crism.jhuapl.edu/
For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit: www.nasa.gov/mro
NASA Releases Detailed Global Climate Change Projections
RELEASE 15-115 (Click here for the full article) – 9 June 2015
NASA has released data showing how temperature and rainfall patterns worldwide may change through the year 2100 because of growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.
The dataset, which is available to the public, shows projected changes worldwide on a regional level in response to different scenarios of increasing carbon dioxide simulated by 21 climate models. The high-resolution data, which can be viewed on a daily timescale at the scale of individual cities and towns, will help scientists and planners conduct climate risk assessments to better understand local and global effects of hazards, such as severe drought, floods, heat waves and losses in agriculture productivity.
“NASA is in the business of taking what we’ve learned about our planet from space and creating new products that help us all safeguard our future,” said Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist. “With this new global dataset, people around the world have a valuable new tool to use in planning how to cope with a warming planet.”
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Additional information about the new NASA climate projection dataset is available at: nex.nasa.gov/nex/projects/1356/
The dataset is available for download at: cds.nccs.nasa.gov/nex-gddp/
OpenNEX information and training materials are available at: nex.nasa.gov/opennex
For more information about NASA’s Earth science activities, visit: www.nasa.gov/earth
NASA Hosts Media For Update On Asteroid Grand Challenge, Robotics Tour
RELEASE M15-091 (Click here for the full article) – 11 June 2015
Media and social media are invited to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland Tuesday, June 16 for an update on the agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge and the robotic systems that will be used on asteroid exploration missions.
To attend Tuesday’s 9:30 a.m. EDT event, reporters and social media representatives must pre-register with Dewayne Washington of NASA Goddard Public Affairs at dewayne.a.washington@nasa.gov or 301-286-0040 by 3 p.m. Monday, June 15.
In addition to an update on the agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge, participants will hear from Benjamin Reed, deputy project manager of Goddard’s Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO), and tour the facilities newest lab, dubbed The Cauldron. The SSCO is developing robotic systems for the agency’s Asteroid Robotic Redirect Mission (ARRM) and other NASA missions using space robotics.
NASA’s Hubble Telescope Detects ‘Sunscreen’ Layer On Distant Planet
RELEASE 15-121 (Click here for the full article) – 11 June 2015
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected a stratosphere, one of the primary layers of Earth’s atmosphere, on a massive and blazing-hot exoplanet known as WASP-33b.
The presence of a stratosphere can provide clues about the composition of a planet and how it formed. This atmospheric layer includes molecules that absorb ultraviolet and visible light, acting as a kind of “sunscreen” for the planet it surrounds. Until now, scientists were uncertain whether these molecules would be found in the atmospheres of large, extremely hot planets in other star systems.
These findings will appear in the June 12 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
“Some of these planets are so hot in their upper atmospheres, they’re essentially boiling off into space,” said Avi Mandell, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a co-author of the study. “At these temperatures, we don’t necessarily expect to find an atmosphere that has molecules that can lead to these multilayered structures.”
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For images and more information about Hubble, visit: www.nasa.gov/hubble
