January 2014

Wesleyan Christian School presentation Jan. 16

Want 5/6 telescopes; Steve Plank working with Jan Boomer at the school

Joyce Ritchie will present on the Winter stars incl. constellations like Orion to grades 4 and 5. She will compare the size of the Earth and Sun to other stars, and what telescopes do for us. Presentation inside at 6 pm, and outside with telescopes at 6:30 pm.

Scout merit badges: Steve Plank has been contacted about us working with Scouts on merit badges. Mr. Facione is the local troop leader and would like to know if there’s any way we could help with merit badges. The troop meets every Monday from 6-7:45 pm.

Next meeting Feb. 3: Mike Maloney on Radio Astronomy

Bartlesville Symphony fundraiser March 8 at Prairie Song. If you bring a telescope you can get a free chili dinner.

Astronomy news from Daryl:

Jupiter: Look for Jupiter in the eastern sky at about 40 degrees. Good viewing in the next month or so. Jupiter reached opposition Jan. 5.

Venus: In glare of the sun now—will be a morning star in a few weeks

Sunspots: We are in a quiet spell for sunspots, but reinvigorated within the last month. The sunspot cycle we are in now is an appx. 11 year cycle. Since the sun is gaseous, not all parts of the sun rotate at the same rate. Rotation is slower near the poles. Sunspots can drift on the solar surface due to magnetic field vibration. The sun’s magnetic field reverses polarity in the 11-year cycle. Solar energy output increases during sunspot maxima. This is a “further nail in the coffin” of global warming.

Website for more information: thesuntoday.org

China moon probe:

Launched late December and landed near Sirius Iridium. Their lunar lander has a rover with a camera on it and has foil on it.

See http://www.skyandtelescope.com

Presentation on the future of telescopes by Virgil Reese

Necklace Nebula—formed 10,000 years ago when an aging star ballooned, engulfing a small companion

Horsehead Nebula—13 light years wide, a stellar nursery

R. Dorados—largest apparent star in the sky; 200 light years away. Diameter is 3.5AU, larger than Mars’ orbit

Andromeda galaxy is 200, 000 light years across, 3 times bigger than had been earlier thought.

Types of telescopes, each of which take different types of images:

Radio

Infrared

Visible

Ultraviolet

Microwave

Radio astronomy resulted in the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, pulsars and quasars.

Need a desert environment for them to work. A New Mexico facility at 7000 ft altitude has 27 independent antennae and helped us learn about black holes.

A telescope in Chile at an altitude of 16,500 ft has 66 antennae, each 40 ft long. Became fully operational in 2013 with 10 times the resolution of the one in New Mexico. It is 5 times greater than the Hubble for what it does. It was built in partnership with Europe, the US and others.

Another “Array” telescope in development now will give the highest resolution images in all astronomy and will have a total collecting area of 1 sq km.

The European Space Agency’s Planck Microwave Space Telescope, built 2009-2013 is “out of helium” and cost 1 billion to make. It mapped microwave radiation from the Big Bang better than before.

Advances in ground based optical telescopes include—

Active optics

Adaptive optics (guide star on pulsed laser backscatter)

Speckle imaging/image stacking (take short exposures, then stack).

Aperture synthesis (interferometry)

The next generation of ground-based optical telescopes will include a large synoptic survey telescope estimated to be completed in 2021. It will photograph the entire available sky over a period of a few nights. It will take a 15-second exposure every 20 seconds. It will have a 9.65 degree field of view. The primary mirror will be 28 ft long, other mirrors will be 16 feet and 11 feet long. It will be in northern Chile at an altitude of 8000 ft .

Another telescope to be built in Chile at an altitude of 8000 ft is expected to be completed in 2020. This one is the “Giant Magellan”, a 30 meter telescope, extremely large. Cost 8000 million, with a lot of partners involved.

A 30 meter telescope to be built on Mauna Kea is estimated to be completed in 2020. Will be at 13,000 ft. Will have a 30 meter primary mirror with a precision better than 2.o arc seconds. Caltech and others are building it; cost 1.2 billion.

A European “extremely large telescope” is to be finished in the 2022s, in Chile at an altitude of 10000 ft. 40 meters wide, 39.3 meter primary mirror, with a secondary correcting mirror. It will measure the atmosphere of extra-solar planets and measure the acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Cost of this one estimated at 2 billion.

Another telescope project—an “overwhelmingly large telescope” with a 100-meter mirror.

NASA Chandra x-ray Observatory launched 1999 could be replaced appx 2028. It orbits 1/3 of the way to the moon and spends 68% of its time outside the Van Allen radiation belts.

The Hubble has been the most important telescope so far. Helped us calculate the age of the universe to be 13.8 billion years and discover the prevalence of black holes. Helped us get closer to the first galaxies. Also photographed Comet Shoemaker-Levy crashing into Jupiter.

NASA Spitzer space telescope, launched 2003, orbits the sun in a trailing orbit. It is an infrared space telescope, which makes it cooler and less bright. It is separating from us by .01AU/year. Its liquid nitrogen supply was exhausted in 2009.

Telescopes of the future:

James Webb Infrared Telescope with a very cold, 21 ft mirror, intended to study the birth and evolution of galaxies and the formation of stars and planets. It will have unequaled resolution and sensitivity, from long wavelengths to visible to mid infrared wavelengths. Cost: 8.8 billion. Planets and other objects do emit infrared. Planned to launch in 2018—originally planned to launch in 2011.

NASA large-aperture space telescope, estimated to be completed 2030, will have a 30 ft segmented mirror.

Cost comparison to the cost of constructing telescopes:

European Extremely Large Telescope 2 billion

San Francisco Bay Bridge replacement (2 mile bridge) 6 billion

James Webb telescope 9 billion

Annual U.S. expenditure on video games 27 billion

SETI astronomy

Telescope array with 350 six-meter dishes planned; 12 are operating now. Created a survey of 1 million stars for SETI emission.

Transiting Exoplanet Survey satellite (TESS), scheduled to launch 2017 (?), cost 200 million

Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope scheduled for 2023?. Potential uses—dark energy, extra-solar planets

Gravitational Wave Detectors? Laser Interferometer Space Antennae. 2.4 billion.

We are coming into…the “Golden Age of Astronomy”!