Newsletter of the Peterborough Astronomical AssociationThe ReflectorVolume 14 • Issue 1

January 2015ISSN 1712-4425peterboroughastronomy.comtwitter.com/PtbAstronomical

see “Suomi” on page 12

In late July 2013, Tropical Storm Flossie barreled furious-ly toward Hawaii. The question

was not if it would strike, but when and where it might do so.

During the afternoon hours of July 29, forecasts predicted land-fall later that week on the state’s Big Island; however, by the time residents of the 50th state awoke the following morning things had changed. noaa’s Central Pacific Hurricane Center warned that the islands of Oahu, Molokai and Maui were now at a greater risk.

Kieran Mulvaney

Keeping an Eye on Storms and More

S-NPP captured this image of Tropical Storm Flossie heading toward Hawaii using its VIIRS Combined Day-Night Band sensor. Credit: NOAA.

This overnight recalculation was thanks to the Day/Night Band viewing capabilities of the Vis-ible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, or viirs, on board the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partner-ship (Suomi npp) satellite. viirs is able to collect visible imagery at night, according to Mitch Gold-berg, program scientist for noaa’s Joint Polar Satellite System (jpss), of which Suomi npp is a part. That means it was able to spot some high-level circulation further north than expected during the night-

time hours. This was an important observation which impacted the whole forecast. Without this fore-cast, said the Hurricane Center’s Tom Evans, “we would have basi-cally been guessing on Tropical Storm Flossie’s center.”

Polar-orbiting satellites, like Suomi npp and the future jpss-1 and jpss-2 (scheduled for launch in 2017 and 2021, respectively), sweep in a longitudinal path over Earth as the planet rotates be-neath them — scanning the globe

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President’s Message

Letter from the Editor

The Reflector is a publication of the Peterborough Astronomi-cal Association (P.A.A.) Founded in 1970, the P.A.A. is your local group for astronomy in Peterborough and the Kawarthas.

The Reflector

www.peterboroughastronomy.com • rforsyth@nexicom.net Phone: 705.292.0729Club Mailing AddressRodger Forsyth, PresidentPeterborough Astronomical Association536 Robinson Road RR #1Peterborough, ON K9J 6X2

Happy New Year

Welcome To Another VolumeW elcome back hardy readers! I

hope you are looking forward to the new year.

John Crossen is back. Did he ever leave? Even though he has retired the Buckhorn Observatory he has not retired his pen, er keyboard. We’ll be publishing his wonderful words of wisdom until he really decides to retire. His first article this year brings news that Rogers Communications is planning to erect a cellphone tower near Camp Kawar-tha and he explains what this means for rural dark sky viewing in that neck of the woods.

Our other new retiree, Rick Stankiewicz, is hard to pin down to one location these days as he trots the globe in search o f ad-venture. This month he reports on his visit to China.

If you ever wondered what a Geminid meteor shower looks like then wonder no more. Regular astrophotography contribu-tor and paa friend, John Chumak, delights us with two beautiful examples of this sometimes brilliant but often missed event.

Another year is underway and I’m confident that the paa will have a banner year once again. The weath-

er this past year wasn’t the best for many of our astronomy related events, hopefully this year will make up for that.

We closed the year with our Annual Gen-eral Meeting. Only one change was made to your executive with Ken Seale taking over as secretary from John Cameron. I welcome Ken to the executive and I thank John for his support and a job well done.

As usual we will have an executive meet-ing early in the year to formulate plans for activities and the general business of the

paa. Among the many items addressed last year at this meeting included a change to the start time of our meetings and a shift in the format of the meetings. Both of these worked out well. If you the membership would like to see some changes to the meet-ings or operation of the paa please let us know as soon as possible.

I’m looking forward to another great year of astronomy related activities and I hope that many members are as well and will par-ticipate in making the year successful.

Rodger Forsyth PAA President

Dean Shewring was kind enough to submit a photograph of an Award of Merit certificate presentation to long-time execu-tive member, Margaret Scorthoren-Brons. And first-time contributor, Jamie Morales, sent in some photos of our annual general meeting.

So let’s hope for clear skies and interest-ing astronomical events this year. Enjoy this month’s issue.

Phillip Chee Editor, The Reflector

Vo l 1 4 • I s sue no. 1 • Januar y 20 15 • 3 The Reflector

John Crossen

See “Eclipse” on page 15

“Write” wasn’t a gram-matical error. I will carry on writing an astronomy

column for The Lakefield Herald, The Mill-brook Times and the Peterborough Astro-nomical Association. So despite the fact that the observatory is shut down, there’s still life in this old geezer. I just can’t stand in one place for long and my 100 yard dash is more like a toddle. But there are some things that I can do. One of them is talk.

Thanks to an invitation from Camp Kawartha I recently had the honour of speaking to a gathering of outdoor educators and environmentalists. The focus of my talk was astronomy and I’m pleased to say that even the November sky co-operated with a clear, star-studded display.

While I was delighted with the response from my group, there was something that I found quite distressing. Rogers Communi-cations is planning to erect a 93-metre tall tower a scant 50 metres from the camp’s nature trails.

Suddenly the camp’s near-century old tradition of giving youth the experience of being one with nature is at risk thanks to a pillar of blinking red lights. This will be particularly evident when they are doing

night hiking. Plus there are environmental concerns for the wildlife, many of whom are night time foragers.

Rather than start a one-man battle which I am ill-prepared to lead, I simply ask that you keep this environmentally risky situa-tion in mind. It would be a pity to lose a 97-

year old teach-ing institution to a cell-phone tower. For a quiet, isolated institution to have an aesthetically unpleasant “Tower of Babble” locat-ed right next door would be like waking up to Las Vegas in your back-yard.

To those who have

followed my column in the Herald and the paa Reflector for the last 7 years, thank you. To readers of The Millbrook Times and you others, there is no escape. I shall continue doing astronomy, either via my laptop or my claptrap.

Clear skies to all.

Buckhorn Obervatory carries on with the “Write Stuff”

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continued on next page

All the Way to China

riCK stanKiewiCz

T o see what, you might ask? What did and didn’t my wife and I see on our recent month-long trip to China?

In travelling from Beijing in the north to Hong Kong in the south, there were many wonders to experience in this country.

In Beijing we stood in the Temple of Heaven and walked through its huge com-plex; strolled through Tiananmen Square (5 th largest city square in the world); en-tered the Forbidden City (home for almost 500 years of every Emperor, including the last one in 1924); we walked on the Great Wall; looked up at a Buddha statue over 56’ (17 m) tall in Luoyang (saw enough other Buddha’s to last a lifetime); travelled over 305 km/h on a Bullet Train to Xian and stood in front of 6,000+ life-sized terra cotta warriors; cruised almost 2,000 km in 10 days on the Yangtze River (3rd longest river in the world @ 6,300 km) from the largest city in China (Chongqing — regional population of 42 million) to Shanghai (the 2nd largest city with a population almost the size of Canada at 31 million); cruised the Lei River to see the famous karst limestone pinnacles; observed up close and personal the world’s only Giant Panda triplets (only 100-days-old), and some of the cutest Red Pandas too; stared at a “fresh” looking 2,150 year-old mummy; overlooked the world’s largest hydroelectric installation at the Three Gorges Dam; saw how silk garments, cloisonne and porcelain are made and how to properly drink tea; practiced tai chi; travelled into the hills to see terraced rice paddies and how the locals live; marveled at the skyline of Shanghai and some of the 17,000 high-rise buildings that now fill the city (30 years ago there were only 300 build-ings over 10-stories); ate Chinese food every lunch and dinner for a month (mostly with chopsticks), so we can now pick-up marbles from a bowl of water with chop-sticks,

faster than some locals; and there was so much more.

The preceding was a few of the highlights that are not astronomy related, but these made the whole trip worthwhile. However, it is hard believe that anyone is still alive there with their lack of road safety aware-ness (no helmets, no lights, honking means: “get out of the way”, traffic lights often mean nothing, more like, if you think you can make it, go for it!) They are surviving though, all 1.34 billion and counting.

However, even on an organized tour with no astronomical focus there were things to be seen.

At times the smog and pollution was like I imagine living on Titan would be, with its thick obscuring atmosphere, plus we were a little late in the season, so their fall in the southern part of the country turns to cloud and rain. So, between the weather and the pollution, not one star was visible the whole

Vo l 1 4 • I s sue no. 1 • Januar y 20 15 • 5 The Reflectorcontinued from previous page

trip! I felt lucky to have seen the Sun and Moon at all.

Around the time of the Last Quarter and Full Moon I saw our celestial neighbour a few times and the nicest was in broad day-light when we were at the Great Wall.

I did see the Sun early in the morning a few days and even though it was several de-grees above the horizon, the “atmosphere” helped allow for naked eye views. One memorable time in Xian involved a huge sunspot (ar2214).

At the White Emperor Palace (on an island in the Yangtze River) I saw the “Ob-serving Stars Pavilion”, where centuries ago oracles would apparently help develop strat-egies and predict the outcome of battles.

In the Hubei Provincial Museum, Wu-han, I saw the almost 2,500 year old astro-nomical suitcases from the Marquis of Yi, of the Warring States period of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (Pre-Qin). It will be worth a separate article just about these unique items at some point in the future.

China Post did have some space related stamps I was able to acquire, but given China’s recent space achievements, like the Chang’E III lunar lander/rover mission, this was no surprise. More about these in future articles though.

Then I did spot one observatory dome on a building right in downtown Guangzhou (Canton), likely part of their university. They might be able to observe the Sun or the Moon, but little else from this location with a population of 13 million.

So, never give up when it comes to seek-ing out the astronomical. It is out there if you look for it.

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Photo Gallery

Geminid Meteor Shower

Here is one of my shots from the Geminid Meteor Shower 2014, more to come later, I captured some time lapse as well, but will need more time to process all that, and I’m just too busy filling Christmas orders all this week! In the meantime enjoy this image I captured above my best friend’s Home in Warrenton, VA. The Geminid meteors often show the Color in their trails nicely! I included a cropped close-up of the Meteor from the original image to help you see the color! Enjoy!

Canon 6D dslr and 24mm L lens, ƒ/4.0, iso 3200 for a 10 second exposure, camera on a tripod, captured in the early morning hours of December 15, 2014.

Best Regards,

John Chumack www.galacticimages.com

Vo l 1 4 • I s sue no. 1 • Januar y 20 15 • 7 The Reflector

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2014 Brought outer space closer to home

John Crossen

When i was a kid, outer space was filled with strange planets, mysterious alien creatures and

Unidentified Flying Objects. I’m glad it wasn’t on my paper route.

Today those flying objects are ours. Their crews are no longer mysterious aliens. Instead they are Taikonauts from China, Cosmonauts from Russian and Astronauts from Japan, the US and India as well as the participating countries of esa, the Euro-pean Space Agency.

Last year esa’s Rosetta Mission landed on a comet. 2014 also saw nasa’s New Ho-rizons Spacecraft begin the final leg of its journey to Pluto. We’ll get our first pictures of Pluto (a.k.a. Planet X in 1930) in July of 2015.

For me, the big news was made by the Orion Spacecraft — nasa’s new dream machine. Orion is designed to take a multi-member crew far beyond our Moon to explore deeper space — perhaps even Mars. On December 5, 2014 Orion made a 4.5 hour unmanned test flight and returned safely to Earth.

Suddenly the gateway to outer space and real space travel had opened wide. My imagination began to wander across the crater-marked landscapes of nearby asteroids and up the sand hills of Mars. Even exploring the depths of the oceans on Jupiter’s moon Europa and the geysers of Enceladus were within the new realm of possibilities. Could we find extraterrestrial

life forms lurking as close to home as our own solar system?

The past year also saw a dramatic rise in the number of exoplanets discovered and confirmed. Exoplanets are planets orbiting stars far from our own solar system. Cur-rently 2,000 of them are confirmed and the technology for analysing them has multi-plied too.

Today we can begin to analyse an exo-planets atmosphere, estimate its surface elements and even ascertain the probability for it being habitable by life forms much like ourselves. We can do all this from light years away! Mind you, we still haven’t fig-ured out how to get to an exoplanet yet, but all it takes is a breakthrough in propulsion technology and we could be just a decades away from becoming an inter-galactic spe-cies.

The question then becomes how will hu-mans adapt to this new kind of life? Imag-ine being gone for what are just a few years for you because you were travelling faster than light-speed. Yet when you return home your daughter is an old woman and all your friends are dead. That’s a hurdle human be-ings will someday have to vault.

In 1954 I was a 10-year-old kid. I hid my head when the Martians invaded Earth at the old Frolic Theatre. But I still haven’t reached the bottom of my popcorn box or my enthusiasm for space. So “thank you” 2014 and “hello” 2015 — what’s new?

Vo l 1 4 • I s sue no. 1 • Januar y 20 15 • 9 The ReflectorBook review

Looking for Life in the Universe: The Search for Extraterrestrial IntelligenceEllen JacksonHMH Books for Young Readers, 2002, 64 pages ISBN 978-0618548866

riCK stanKiewiCz

A s you can see, this is not a new book, but it is new to the paa

library. We just inherited a good copy, so I thought it would be worth reviewing for those that are interested in the search for extraterres-trial intelligence (seti). The author takes a little different approach by “humanizing” the subject. Instead of the focus being on seti spe-cifically, the main subject is astrophysicist Dr. Jill Tarter, then director at the seti Institute in Mountain View, California and current-ly holds the Bernard Oliver Chair there. Much of this books 59 pages covers the days that Jill spends at the facility of the world’s largest single-aperture radio telescope (305m) in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. This is the same dish that figured quite prominently in the cult classic sci-fi film, Contact (1997), as well as Species (1995), and action flicks like, the James Bong film, Golden Eye (1995). The book is heavily illustrated, so you get a sense of what the facility is like from a user’s perspective.

There is a basic discussion about what extraterrestrial life may look like and therefore what kind of signal scientists should be looking for. I found it inter-esting and it becomes easy to see why or how they get their fair share of false alarm radio signals, given all the poten-tial sources for interference.

You also get a glimpse into the early life and development of Dr. Tarter and you learn that Contact’s author, Carl Sagan wrote the main character (Dr. Eleanor Arroway) in his book, loosely on the life and career of Jill Tarter. How-

ever, it is not all about far off worlds in other solar systems. seti is also involved in life of any form right here in the planets and moons of our own solar system. Whether it is the planet Mars or Jupiter’s moon Europa, seti has a hand in research that goes on in the search to this day.

For a quick and interesting read, why not loan this little gem from your local paa Library. Contact Librarian, Mike McCarthy to make your arrangements today.

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The Sky this MonthMercury is well placed in the west-ern evening sky from the 1st to the 24th, reaching greatest elongation east (19°) on the 24th. Less than 1° west of Venus on the 14th.Venus is low in the SW evening sky at the beginning of the year.Mars is low in the SW evening sky and crosses into Aquarius from Capricornus on the 9th.Jupiter rises in the ENE in early eve-ning and retrograding in Leo as it heads to toward opposition on February 6th.Saturn is in the dawn sky in Libra and moves into Scorpius on the 17th.Quadrantid Meteors peak at 9 PM on the 3rd.

Moon PhasesFull Moon 11:53 PM January 4Last Quarter 4:46 AM January 13New Moon 8:14 AM January 20First Quarter 11:48 PM January 26

Vo l 1 4 • I s sue no. 1 • Januar y 20 15 • 1 1 The Reflector

PAA AGM. The December club meeting was also the paa Annual General Meeting. Jamie Morales was kind enough to send us some photos of the socializing.

PAA Annual General Meeting

See “Interstellar” on page 12

Margaret Scorthorne-Brons receives her Award of Merit certificate for her service on our executive as paa Mem-bership Director from 2011-2013. Presented at a special Luncheon on December 21st by paa Vice-President Dean Shewring.

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ArticlesSubmissions for The Reflector must be received by the date listed below. E-mail submissions are preferred (Microsoft Word, OpenDoc, ASCII and most common graphic formats are accept-able). If your article contains photso or graphics, please provide a separate file for each. Typed or hand-written submissions are acceptable pro-vided they are legible (and not too long.) Copy-righted materials will not be published without written permission from the copyright holder. Submissions may be edited for grammar, brev-ity, or clarity. Submissions will be published at the editor’s sole discretion. Depending on the volume of submissions, some articles may be published at a later date. Please submit any ar-ticles, thoughts, or ideas to:phillip.chee@gmail.com

Next submission deadline:January 28, 2014

Meetings The Peterborough Astronomical Association meets every first Friday of each month, except July and August, at the Peter-borough Zoo Orientation Centre (Next to the PUC Water Treatment Plant) at 7 p.m. P.A.A. general annoucements will begin each meeting with the guest speaker starting at 7:30 p.m.

continued from page 1Suomitwice a day. viirs, the imager that will be aboard all the jpss satellites, images 3,000 km-wide swaths on each orbit, with each swath overlapping the next by 200 km to ensure uninterrupted global coverage. This high-resolution, rapidly updating coverage allows researchers to see weather patterns change in near real-time.

Instruments on Suomi NPP allow sci-entists to study such long-term changes too — things like, “the patterns of sea surface temperature, or coral bleaching,” says Goldberg. They are even used by the World Bank to determine how much energy is burned off and wasted from natural gas flares on oil drilling platforms.

While scientists are excited by the jpss series’ wide range of capabilities, the ability to address pressing immediate concerns is, for many, the most tangible value. That was certainly the case in July 2013, when thanks to Suomi npp, authorities had ample time to close ports and facilities, open shelters, activate emergency procedures, and issue flash flood warnings. Despite heavy rains, high surf, and widespread power outages, accidents and injuries were few. By the time the storm passed, Hawaii was soaked.

But it was largely unharmed.Learn more about jpss here: http://www.

jpss.noaa.gov. Kids can learn all about how hurricanes

form at nasa’s Space Place: http://space-place.nasa.gov/hurricanes.