ASTRONOMY CLUB OF TULSA
OBSERVER
September
2002
http://AstroTulsa.com
ACT, Inc. has been meeting continuously
since 1937 and was incorporated in 1986. It is a nonprofit; tax
deductible organization dedicated to promoting, to the public, the art
of viewing and the scientific aspect of astronomy.
What
The Astronomy Club of Tulsa Club
When
Friday, 20 September 2002 at
7:30 PM
Where
Room M1 inside Keplinger Hall, the
Science & Engineering Building at TU. Enter the parking lot on the
East Side of Keplinger Hall from Harvard and 5th Street. This will take
you directly toward the staircase to enter the building. Room M1 is the
first room on the left.
President’s Message
Denny Mishler
September started with a bang when upwards
of 100 members, visitors and guests turned out for our Club Star Party on
September 6th. I was out of town and couldn't attend the largest monthly
Club Star Party that anyone can remember (outside of the Leonid Meteor
invasion in 98 or 99), but I heard that we had a large enthusiastic group
with lots of new faces. Some of you even stayed past 3am. On Friday October
4th (rain date Oct. 5th) we will hold our next Club Star Party. This will
conflict with those attending the Okie-Tex Star Party at the end of
Oklahoma's Panhandle; however Star Parties at this time of year are usually
ideal. Summer's haze is usually gone and temperatures are almost always
ideal. Clear skies should bring out another big crowd with viewing prospects
even better.
Our September meeting on the 20th will
have three very interesting presentations of research being conducted by
Students from the University of Tulsa. First up will be Justin Mitchell and
Aaron Coyner from the University's Zero Gravity Granular Dynamics
Team. The other members of the team are Matt Olson, Rebecca Ragar,
Whitney Marshall, Jeremy Cain, Adrienne McVey and Ian
Zedalis. The team is conducting weightless granular clustering
experiments aboard a NASA KC-135 cargo plane and investigating the potential
application of granular dynamics to asteroid formation and other
astronomical events.
Next will be Michelle Stevenson, a
graduate of Jenks and a TU Engineering Physics Major. Michelle is studying
micrometeorites that are washed down to the Earth's surface during heavy
rains. The sediments that could be of extraterrestrial origin are collected
using neodymium magnets. They are then analyzed using a scanning electron
microscope. Michelle plans to obtain a Doctorates Degree in Astrophysics and
would like to become a NASA Astronaut or Spacecraft Designer. She has
achieved numerous Academic Honors and Awards and it will be a pleasure to
hear from a young person who has such lofty goals.
Ian Zedalis is a
TU Physics Major and a graduate of Holland Hall where he was awarded the
Service to Community award for volunteer work with his School and the
Community. Ian as previously mentioned is a member of the Granular Dynamics
Team. He has participated in research to locate Martian craters that are
possible candidates for the origin of the famous Allen Hills Martian
Meteorite. Ian has attended NASA's Astrobiology conferences in 2000 and
2002. He will discuss the new and developing field of Astrobiology.
Once again, we will have refreshments
following the meeting so please feel free to bring your favorite cookie or
treat. And don't miss this chance to learn from bright young minds about
Asteroid Formation, Meteorites, Life in Space, and Neodymium Magnets.
The Year In Space
Each year at this
time we take orders for the beautiful The Year in Space desk calendars. The
52 spectacular pictures and info alone are worth the price, even if you have
no need for the calendar. The retail price is $14.95, but with the club
discount, the price will be $9.00. You can see a preview of the 2003 issue
on www.YearInSpace.com . Gerry
Andries will be taking orders at the Sept 20th meeting. If you cannot make
it to the meeting, you may email Gerry at < Gerry Andries e-mail >,
or call him at 369-3320 before Sept 30th.
Gerry
Awards
Astronomy Club of
Tulsa member and former club President, KC Lobrecht, has earned
several Astronomical League observing awards. A few of these awards have
been scanned into the computer and posted on the web. You can see some of
those awards at: http://www.ionet.net/~richie/kc_awards.html.
Congratulations KC.
Schedule of Events
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Please note the events away from the observatory that we
will need people to bring scopes. PLEASE CALL or email me if you can help
with these. If you do not own a scope but would still like to help, let me
know. The club can usually provide scopes for you to operate provided you
warn us in advance.
The Holland Hall School event at Camp Wahshahshe on Sept
20th is near the Woolaroc Park south of Bartlesville. I will get exact
directions and instructions later for those who express an interest in
helping with this event.
Tentatively scheduled dates below are bracketed with
question marks. The number of persons expected is in parenthesis.
EVENTS AT RMCC OBSERVATORY:
SEP
09-13-02 Fri 07:00 GS Troop 428 (20)
09-14-02 Sat 07:00 Back up for 09/13
09-15-02 Sun 07:00 Fellowship (30)
09-21-02 Sat 07:00 BS Troop 716 (15)
09-22-02 Sun 07:00 Back up for 09/15
09-27-02 Fri 06:45 CS Pack 239 (20)
FEB
02-03-03 Mon 06:15 BA Home School (30)
EVENTS AWAY FROM OBSERVATORY
SEP
09-19-02 Thu 07:00 Back up for 09/12
09-20-02 Fri 07:30 Regular meeting (at TU Chapman Hall)
09-26-02 Thu 06:45 Holland Hall School @ Camp Wahshahshe
-- NEED VOLUNTEERS
OCT
10-01-02 to 10-05-02 Okie Tex Star Party (At Camp Billy
Joe, Black Mesa, OK)
10-18-02 Fri 07:30 Regular meeting (at TU Chapman Hall)
NOV
11-11-02 Mon 06:00 BA High S @Spring Creek Elem
11-13-02 Wed 06:00 Hoover Elem @Hoover School
MidStates Astronomical League Convention
Our club
will be hosting the MidStates Astronomical League convention next summer in
June. Lots of planning needs to take place so that we can have our publicity
ready by early 2003. If you are willing to share your ideas, time and
talents there will be plenty for you to do. We need meal planning,
registration forms, mail outs, Door Prizes, signs and parking, nametags,
T-shirts and much more. Basically we have a firm date June 20 to 22, 2003
and a place to meet at TU. The rest needs to get rolling. Aaron Coyner
has a working web page and the other clubs in the region are already asking
for information.
If we plan it well,
they will come! Contact < John Land e-mail >
if you are willing to help.
Magazine Subscriptions
You can get
substantial discounts for Sky & Telescope and Astronomy
magazine by ordering thorough the Astronomy Club. If your magazines are
coming up for renewal, try to save the mailing label or renewal form you get
in the mail.
Sky & Telescope
is $30/yr, and Astronomy is $29 for 1 year, or $55 for 2 years. Astronomy
magazine is requesting that renewals from Sept 02 to Feb 03 be sent in by
Sept 30, 2002
Order your 2003 Calendar
Twelve Stunning
Astronomy images from the 2003 Astronomy Calendar Regular $12 with a bulk
order through the club we can get them for $8 each ! and NO Shipping if you
pick them up at a meeting. They will make a great Christmas gift. Plan to
get your order in by Nov 1. Please plan to pay at time of order.
Club Membership
Adults $25 and
Students $15 per year. Most of our club members will need to get their club
dues in by December 2002. You can check your mailing label to see when your
club dues expire. Avoid the cash crunch at Christmas time and renew early.
Summer Star Parties
We’ve had some
great groups of people and guests at our summer star parties. Sept 6 we had
from 70 to 80 people present sharing views of the night sky. If you’ve
brought guests to our summer events be sure to send their Email address or
street address to John Land so we can get them on our mailing list.
John Land
Membership Chairman
< John Land e-mail >
David's Astro Corner
UFO or NEW MOON?
By David Stine
A very unusual and strange object was recently detected
on September 3rd. It has caused allot of speculation as just exactly what it
is. Bill Yeung discovered the object on images taken with a 0.45-meter
telescope in Benson, Arizona. At first it was thought to be a comet or
asteroid, but within a few days it was determined that it was orbiting the
Earth, yes that's right the Earth, not the Sun. As Duncan Steel, an
astronomer and asteroid expert at the University of Salford stated,
"This is bizarre, I don't know of anyone having suggested an asteroid
in orbit around the Earth before." The object has been designated
J002E3 which is an asteroid designation however an asteroid normally orbits
the Sun not the Earth. It circles the Earth every 49.5 days. The size is
uncertain. If it is rock, the light reflected from it would put it in the 50
meters across range, however if it does turn out to be an old rocket body it
could be only 10-20 meters in length. Now comes the real mystery. Why hasn't
it been picked up before now? Its bright enough 16th MG. to be picked up by
large backyard telescopes, and would have been picked up a long time ago. So
if it isn't some manmade space junk then it would have to be a very new
piece of rock/asteroid that Earth just now captured. Nasa researchers have
guessed that it was captured by Earths gravitational field similar to how
Jupiter acquired its harem of moons. The theory is that is was captured
sometime in the April/May period when it strayed to a spot where the Suns
and Earths gravitational tug canceled each other. There still is a chance
that it will turn out to be a lost rocket casing, but if it should turn out
to be a new moon it will be declared S/2002E1. The S stands for satellite,
the E1 for the first satellite of Earth discovered in 2002. As this exciting
story continues to unfold, in the next few weeks we may find out that Earth
now has another moon, or it may turn out to be just an old spent off rocket
casing. Then again, maybe we are being watched from a satellite from another
galaxy, just kidding. Watch for updates.
A storms a brewing and we are only a couple of months
away. This storm doesn’t produce lighting and wind but when it comes, its
like nothing you have ever seen before. The Leonid's are just around the
corner and from all indications they could once more put on an awesome show.
Comparing all of the Leonid predictions for the 2001 storm, most astronomers
agree that everyone was right about some things of the shower and wrong
about others, however Esko Lyytinen was considered the most accurate
overall. If we take his predictions for 2002, this is what we can expect.
There will be three peaks; the first will come at 10:03P.m. CST. On the
night of the 18th of November from the 1767 stream. This is to peak at 3500
meteors per hour for a period of 106 minutes. For Tulsa we might be able to
catch some Earth grazers but not much more from this trial. Then at
12:36A.m. CST November 19, the Earth will pass through the 1833 trail with a
peak of 160/hr. Then the 1866 trail, which will be our best bet, comes at
4:40a.m. and lasts for 122 minutes. Again this is only Esko's prediction and
I will have a complete Leonid Storm 2002 story in next month’s newsletter.
Start planning now for the big event. Most people are saying that the best
place to be will be the hills of North Carolina, but if the weather is good,
Tulsa should be in a good area for an awesome event. Keep your fingers
crossed.
That's it from my corner this month.
UPDATE: DAVIDS ASTRO CORNER
NASA now thinks the mystery object is a spent off rocket booster from Apollo 12. Nothing is definite, but the odds are heavily in favor of the rocket booster being the object. Also if the object turned out to be a new moon it would actually be Earths 3rd Moon. I bet you were unaware of Earths 2nd Moon. It is called
Cruithne, also known as asteroid 3753 or 1986(the year it was discovered) TO. This moon takes about a year to circle the Earth.
NASA is also planning to launch the Space Shuttle between November 10-20. What a birds eye view of the Leonid Storm. Wouldn’t you like to be on that mission.
Newly found object could be leftover Apollo rocket stage
Posted: September 12, 2002
NEAR-EARTH OBJECT PROGRAM OFFICE NEWS RELEASE
An analysis of the orbital motion of the newly discovered
object J002E3 indicates that it could be a leftover Saturn V third stage
from one of the Apollo missions, most likely the Apollo 12 mission, launched
on November 14, 1969.
The new object was discovered on September 3 by Bill
Yeung, who noted that it was moving quite rapidly. Initial orbit
computations by the Minor Planet Center indicated that the object was only
about twice as far away as the Moon, and was actually in orbit about our
planet. This fact, combined with the rather faint intrinsic magnitude,
immediately led astronomers to suspect that the object is actually a
spacecraft or rocket body, not an asteroid. But the object could not be
associated with any recent launch.
J002E3 is currently observable at magnitude 16.5; it is
easily detectable in asteroid surveys, and even bright enough to be seen by
many amateur astronomers. If it is a leftover piece from an old launch, why
was it not discovered until last week? A backwards analysis of the orbital
motion provides the answer: the object was apparently captured by the Earth
from heliocentric orbit in April of this year. The capture occurred when the
object passed near the Earth's L1 Lagrange point, a location where the
gravity of the Earth and Sun approximately cancel. This point serves as
"portal" between the regions of space controlled by the Earth and
Sun. J002E3 is the first known case of an object being captured by the
Earth, although Jupiter has been known to capture comets via the same
mechanism. (For example, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which collided with Jupiter
in 1994, had been captured by Jupiter decades earlier.)
Analysis of J002E3's pre-capture orbit about the Sun
shows that the object was always inside the Earth's orbit, and that it may
have come within the Earth's vicinity in the early 1970s or late 1960s. Many
of the test cases in our analysis in fact passed through the L1 portal, back
into Earth orbit (going backwards in time) during the early 1970s. In other
words, this object was very likely orbiting the Earth during this period
before escaping into the heliocentric orbit from which it was captured in
2002. It seems quite likely that this object is one of the Apollo Saturn S-IVB
third stages which flew by the Moon during this era (Apollos 8 through 12).
The brightness of J002E3 seems to match the expected brightness of an S-IVB
stage. Further circumstantial evidence suggests that this object is in fact
the Apollo 12 stage, which was left in a very distant Earth orbit after it
passed by the Moon on November 18, 1969. This spent rocket body was last
seen in an Earth orbit with a period of 43 days, not much different from
J002E3's current orbit.
The future motion of J002E3 is also very interesting. A
similar orbital analysis which takes into account the current orbit
uncertainties shows that the object has a surprisingly large 20 percent
chance of impacting the Moon in 2003. Such a lunar impact would not be
unprecedented: NASA intentionally impacted five Apollo S-IVB stages on the
Moon from 1970 through 1972 (Apollos 13 through 17), as an experiment to
study the interior structure of the Moon. Looking further into the future is
problematic, due to the chaotic nature of J002E3's orbit, but our current
analysis shows the object to have about a 3 percent chance of impacting the
Earth within the next 10 years. This should not be of concern to the public.
Apollo stages have impacted the Earth before, in the 1960s, and the larger
Skylab re-entered in the 1970s. (The even larger Mir Space Station was
intentionally impacted into the Pacific Ocean in March 2001.)
Additional positional observations of this object are
being received daily, and our knowledge and modeling of its orbit continues
to improve. The collision probabilities mentioned above will change as we
are able to make more precise predictions.
Animations showing how J002E3 was captured into its
current chaotic orbit around the Earth are available on the Near-Earth
Object Program website: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov
2002 Calendar of events
| When |
Where |
| 20 September |
Meeting at TU |
| 4 October |
Star Party - RMCC |
| 18 October |
Meeting at TU |
| 1 November |
Star Party - RMCC |
| 15 November |
Business Meeting
Dinner |
| 6 December |
Star Party - RMCC |
| 13 December |
Meeting at TU |
Club Memberships
Astronomy Club of Tulsa Membership
Application / Renewal Form
Name: ________________________ Phone: ( )
____ _______
Address:
___________________________________________________
City / State /
Zip____________________/____________/_____________
________________________________________________________
E-mail address - print clearly
Check Lines below for YES
____ I would prefer to receive E-mail
notification when club newsletter is posted to the web.
____ I choose to receive my newsletter by
E-mail ONLY instead of postal mail. (Usually 3 or 4 days earlier *
Must have web access )
____ Notify me by E-mail of late breaking
Astronomy Events
Please check all that apply:
___ New Membership ($25) ___ Student
Membership ($15)
___ Membership Renewal ($25) ___ Student
Member Renewal ($15)
___ Sky & Telescope Subscription ($30) /
year
also includes 10% discount on most Sky &
Tel products
___ Astronomy Subscription ($29) / year ($55)
/ two years
* Magazine rates may change / prices
available with membership only.
Please bring this application along with a
check for the total amount made out to the Astronomy Club of Tulsa to the
next meeting or mail the payment and application to:
Astronomy Club of Tulsa / 25209 E. 62nd St /
Broken Arrow, OK 74014
For questions contact John Land
How did you hear of the Astronomy Club of
Tulsa? ___________________________________________________________
How long have you been interested or active
in astronomy? ___________
Do you have a telescope? _______ Type
__________________________
Have you been a member of other astronomy
clubs? ____
Where / when
________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
What astronomy club activities would you like
to participate in?
____________________________________________________________
Astronomy
Club of Tulsa,
918.688.MARS
President: Dennis Mishler
Vice
President:
Teresa Kincannon
Treasurer:
Nick Pottorf
Assistant
Treasurer: John Land
Secretary:Aaron Coyner
RMCC
Observatory Manager: Gerry Andries
Observing
Chairman: David Stine
Web
Master: Tom McDonough
New
Membership: Dennis Mishler
Newsletter:
Richie Shroff
|