Caption: Mark DiOrio / Observer-Dispatch From left, Zach Handzel, Carol and Chuck Higgins, and Joel Seif of the Mohawk Valley Astronomical Society, stand with a Meade 16-inch telescope at the Barton-Brown Observatory at the Waterville Public Library, May 17, 2016 in Waterville, N.Y.
The club was formed in 1989 by a group of seven amateur astronomers at Hamilton College. The group would have its first public meeting July 12 of that year.
“The first meeting had 60 people in attendance,” according to information on the society’s website. “The evening’s speakers presented slides and photographs of the sky’s most noted features, from the moon to distant galaxies, the Milky Way, Comet Halley as seen from the Mohawk Valley and a brilliant aurora. Once the meeting adjourned, members and visitors used the telescope in Hamilton College’s observatory to view the moon and Saturn.”
It was an article published in the O-D previewing that first meeting that enticed Joel Seif, the club’s current president.
“I am the only person who comes to the meetings who was at the very first meeting,” Seif said. “I remember you couldn’t even find a parking space.”
Now, volunteering members meet on the second Wednesday of every month for a two-part session — about an hour of presenting, and then an hour of club business. The public is welcome to those meetings at the Waterville Public Library.
Come to Kopernik’s 8th annual RocketFest! There will be three rocket building/launching workshops (9 a.m., Noon, and 3 p.m.) and a variety of standard and advanced rocket models from which to choose.
If you have never built a model rocket, Kopernik’s rocket scientists will guide you through the entire process!
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 announcements from NASA can subscribe to their service by sending an email to: hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov?subject=subscribe
NASA’s Spitzer Maps Climate Patterns On A Super-Earth
Observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have led to the first temperature map of a super-Earth planet — a rocky planet nearly two times as big as ours. The map reveals extreme temperature swings from one side of the planet to the other, and hints that a possible reason for this is the presence of lava flows.
“Our view of this planet keeps evolving,” said Brice Olivier Demory of the University of Cambridge, England, lead author of a new report appearing in the March 30 issue of the journal Nature. “The latest findings tell us the planet has hot nights and significantly hotter days. This indicates the planet inefficiently transports heat around the planet. We propose this could be explained by an atmosphere that would exist only on the day side of the planet, or by lava flows at the planet surface.”
The toasty super-Earth 55 Cancri e is relatively close to Earth at 40 light-years away. It orbits very close to its star, whipping around it every 18 hours. Because of the planet’s proximity to the star, it is tidally locked by gravity just as our moon is to Earth. That means one side of 55 Cancri, referred to as the day side, is always cooking under the intense heat of its star, while the night side remains in the dark and is much cooler.
The first human-rated expandable structure that may help inform the design of deep space habitats is set to be installed to the International Space Station Saturday, April 16. NASA Television coverage of the installation will begin at 5:30 a.m. EDT.
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) will be attached to the station’s Tranquility module over a period of about four hours. Controllers in mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will remove BEAM from the unpressurized trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, using the robotic Canadarm2, and move it into position next to Tranquility’s aft assembly port. NASA astronauts aboard the station will secure BEAM using common berthing mechanism controls. Robotic operations begin at 2:15 a.m. and are expected to be complete by 6:15 a.m.
BEAM launched aboard Dragon on April 8 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. At the end of May, the module will be expanded to nearly five times its compressed size of 7 feet in diameter by 8 feet in length to roughly 10 feet in diameter and 13 feet in length.
…
For coverage times and to watch the BEAM installation live, visit: www.nasa.gov/nasatv
NASA has selected Aerojet Rocketdyne, Inc. of Redmond, Washington, to design and develop an advanced electric propulsion system that will significantly advance the nation’s commercial space capabilities, and enable deep space exploration missions, including the robotic portion of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and its Journey to Mars.
The Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) contract is a 36-month cost-plus-fixed-fee contract with a performance incentive and total value of $67 million. Work performed under the contract could potentially increase spaceflight transportation fuel efficiency by 10 times over current chemical propulsion technology and more than double thrust capability compared to current electric propulsion systems.
“Through this contract, NASA will be developing advanced electric propulsion elements for initial spaceflight applications, which will pave the way for an advanced solar electric propulsion demonstration mission by the end of the decade,” said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in Washington. “Development of this technology will advance our future in-space transportation capability for a variety of NASA deep space human and robotic exploration missions, as well as private commercial space missions.”
NASA is inviting media and viewers around the world to see a relatively rare celestial event, with coverage of the Monday, May 9 transit of the sun by the planet Mercury. Media may view the event at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Agency scientists will be available at the Goddard viewing event for live media interviews from 6 to 11:30 a.m. EDT. To attend, media must contact Michelle Handleman. To schedule an interview with a NASA scientist at the event, contact Claire Saravia.
Mercury passes between Earth and the sun only about 13 times a century, its last trek taking place in 2006. Due to its diminutive size, viewing this event safely requires a telescope or high-powered binoculars fitted with solar filters made of specially-coated glass or Mylar.
NASA is offering several avenues for the public to view the event without specialized and costly equipment, including images on NASA.gov, a one-hour NASA Television special, and social media coverage.
…
To view a NASA ScienceCast video on the rare opportunity the Mercury transit poses for professional astronomers and backyard sky watchers alike, go to: youtu.be/Gibaxh9x7O0
Images and animations for b-roll are available through NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio at: go.nasa.gov/1X51Duz
For fast facts about Mercury, and more information on the 2016 transit of the sun, visit: www.nasa.gov/transit
NASA To Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries During Media Teleconference
NASA is inviting media and viewers around the world to see a relatively rare celestial event, with coverage of the Monday, May 9 transit of the sun by the planet Mercury. Media may view the event at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Tuesday, May 10 to announce the latest discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.
The briefing participants are:
* Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington
* Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey
* Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California
* Charlie Sobeck, Kepler/K2 mission manager at Ames
For dial-in information, media must e-mail their name, affiliation and telephone number to Felicia Chou at felicia.chou@nasa.gov no later than 11 a.m. Tuesday. Questions can be submitted on Twitter during the teleconference using the hashtag #askNASA.
Poster’s Note: One of the many under-appreciated aspects of NASA is the extent to which it publishes quality science content for children and Ph.D.’s alike. NASA Space Place has been providing general audience articles for quite some time that are freely available for download and republishing. Your tax dollars help promote science! The following article was provided for reprinting in May, 2016.
By Dr. Ethan Siegel
If you want to collect data with a variety of instruments over an entire planet as quickly as possible, there are two trade-offs you have to consider: how far away you are from the world in question, and what orientation and direction you choose to orbit it. For a single satellite, the best of all worlds comes from a low-Earth polar orbit, which does all of the following:
* orbits the Earth very quickly: once every 101 minutes,
* is close enough at 824 km high to take incredibly high-resolution imagery,
* has five separate instruments each probing various weather and climate phenomena,
* and is capable of obtaining full-planet coverage every 12 hours.
The type of data this new satellite – the Joint Polar Satellite System-1 (JPSS-1) — will take will be essential to extreme weather prediction and in early warning systems, which could have severely mitigated the impact of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Each of the five instruments on board are fundamentally different and complementary to one another. They are:
1. The Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), which will measure the 3D structure of the atmosphere, water vapor and temperature in over 1,000 infrared spectral channels. This instrument is vital for weather forecasting up to seven days in advance of major weather events.
2. The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), which assists CrIS by adding 22 microwave channels to improve temperature and moisture readings down to 1 Kelvin accuracy for tropospheric layers.
3. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument, which takes visible and infrared pictures at a resolution of just 400 meters (1312 feet), enables us to track not just weather patterns but fires, sea temperatures, nighttime light pollution as well as ocean-color observations.
4. The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS), which measures how the ozone concentration varies with altitude and in time over every location on Earth’s surface. This instrument is a vital tool for understanding how effectively ultraviolet light penetrates the atmosphere.
5. Finally, the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant System (CERES) will help understand the effect of clouds on Earth’s energy balance, presently one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate modeling.
The JPSS-1 satellite is a sophisticated weather monitoring tool, and paves the way for its’ sister satellites JPSS-2, 3 and 4. It promises to not only provide early and detailed warnings for disasters like hurricanes, volcanoes and storms, but for longer-term effects like droughts and climate changes. Emergency responders, airline pilots, cargo ships, farmers and coastal residents all rely on NOAA and the National Weather Service for informative short-and-long-term data. The JPSS constellation of satellites will extend and enhance our monitoring capabilities far into the future.
Caption: an artist’s concept of the JPSS-2 Satellite for NOAA and NASA by Orbital ATK (top); complete temperature map of the world from NOAA’s National Weather Service (bottom).
About NASA Space Place
With articles, activities, crafts, games, and lesson plans, NASA Space Place encourages everyone to get excited about science and technology. Visit spaceplace.nasa.gov (facebook|twitter) to explore space and Earth science!
The following landed in my inbox from new friends at the Adirondack Public Observatory up in Tupper Lake, NY (likely the most prime-est observing location in New York State if the light pollution maps are any indication). For those who don’t know about our neighbor to the Northeast…
The Adirondack Public Observatory Inc. is a charitable organization recognized under the laws of the IRS 501(c)(3) Not For Profit, and is also incorporated in the state of New York.
The Adirondack Public Observatory provides quality educational experiences for people of all ages through the science, technology and history of astronomy.
The Adirondack Public Observatory is free and open to the public!
The Adirondack Public Observatory, located at 178 Big Wolf Road, is open for viewing on Friday evenings from Memorial Day through Labor Day; after Labor Day it is open for public viewing on the 1st and 3rd Friday of each month.
The three-day event is chock-full of instructional sessions during the daytime and plenty of (hopefully) clear dark skies at night. The informational brochure is available for download below. If you plan on going, tell’em CNYO sent you!
* Only Three Weeks to RocketFest!
Observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have led to the first temperature map of a super-Earth planet — a rocky planet nearly two times as big as ours. The map reveals extreme temperature swings from one side of the planet to the other, and hints that a possible reason for this is the presence of lava flows.
The first human-rated expandable structure that may help inform the design of deep space habitats is set to be installed to the International Space Station Saturday, April 16. NASA Television coverage of the installation will begin at 5:30 a.m. EDT.
NASA has selected Aerojet Rocketdyne, Inc. of Redmond, Washington, to design and develop an advanced electric propulsion system that will significantly advance the nation’s commercial space capabilities, and enable deep space exploration missions, including the robotic portion of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and its Journey to Mars.
NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Tuesday, May 10 to announce the latest discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.
