King's Lynn and District Astronomy Society

Promoting astronomy for all ages across West Norfolk

Stargazing Live

by

Following on from the very successful Junior Star Gazing Live in January. We held a Star Gazing Live event to coincide with the BBC programmes.

The event was opened by our patron Henry Bellingham MP and Councillor John W Doyle, Mayor of Downham Market.

Henry Bellingham MP, John Craythorne, John W Doyle, Mayor of Downham Market

Henry Bellingham MP, John Craythorne, John W Doyle, Mayor of Downham Market

There were static displays of telescopes and Astronomical equipment, a scale model of the solar system, information on the sun and some excellent pictures of the partial solar eclipse from 20th March 2015.

There was great advice available about what sort of telescope to choose for a beginner and how to take photographs of the moon and stars.

Mars hills hide Icy past

by

Phlegra Montes southern tip

A complex network of isolated hills, ridges and small basins spanning 1400 km on Mars is thought to hide large quantities of water-ice.Phlegra Montes southern tip

A complex network of isolated hills, ridges and small basins spanning 1400 km on Mars is thought to hide large quantities of water-ice.

Phlegra Montes stretches from the Elysium volcanic region at about 30ºN and deep into the northern lowlands at about 50°N, and is a product of ancient tectonic forces. Its age is estimated to be 3.65–3.91 billion years.

Phlegra Montes in context

ESA’s Mars Express imaged the portion of Phlegra Montes seen here on 8 October 2014. It captures the southernmost tip of the range centred on 31ºN / 160ºE.

Based on radar data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter combined with studies of the region’s geology from other orbiters, scientists believe that extensive glaciers covered this region several hundred million years ago.

And it is thought that ice is still there today, perhaps only 20 m below the surface.

Phlegra Montes southern tip topography

 

 

The tilt of the planet’s polar axis is believed to have varied considerably over time, leading to significantly changing climatic conditions. This allowed the development of glaciers at what are today the mid-latitudes of Mars.
Features visible in the Phlegra Montes mountain range  providing strong evidence for glacial activity include aprons of rocky debris surrounding many of the hills. Similar features are seen in glacial regions on Earth, where material has gradually slumped downhill through the presence of subsurface ice.

You can read more of this article at: ESA

Mysterious Bright Spots Shine on Dwarf Planet Ceres (Photos)

by

ceres-photos-nasa-dawn

Two photos of the dwarf planet Ceres taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers). The images have been magnified from their original size. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

 

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will have plenty of mysteries to investigate when it begins orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres next month, as the probe’s latest photos attest.

Dawn’s most recent images of Ceres, taken Feb. 12 at a distance of 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) away, show an abundance of craters on the dwarf planet, as well as numerous bright spots that have scientists baffled.

“As we slowly approach the stage, our eyes transfixed on Ceres and her planetary dance, we find she has beguiled us but left us none the wiser,” Dawn principal investigator Chris Russell of UCLA said in a statement. “We expected to be surprised; we did not expect to be this puzzled.”

The new photos, which have a resolution of 4.9 miles (7.8 km) per pixel, are the sharpest ever taken of Ceres, NASA officials said.

A large, flickering white spot was also visible in photos Dawn took of Ceres last month.

“We can confirm that it is something on Ceres that reflects more sunlight, but what that is remains a mystery,” Dawn mission director and chief engineer Marc Rayman, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told Space.com via email at the time

Dawn could clear up the mystery soon. The probe is scheduled to enter orbit around the 590-mile-wide (950 km) Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, on the night of March 5. Dawn will start studying Ceres in earnest six weeks after that; the probe is scheduled to work its way down to its first science orbit on April 23.

The $466 million Dawn mission launched in September 2007 to study the asteroid belt’s two biggest denizens — the protoplanet Vesta, which is 330 miles (530 km) wide, and Ceres. Dawn orbited Vesta from July 2011 through September 2012, when it departed for Ceres.

Dawn’s observations of these two planetary building blocks should help scientists better understand the solar system’s early days, NASA officials said.

Dawn is scheduled to study Ceres from a variety of orbits through June 2016, when the probe’s mission will come to an end.

Read more and watch a timelapse video at Space.com

Crowds descend upon Junior Stargazing Live!

by

The King’s Lynn & District Astronomy Society held a Junior Star Gazing Live event at Tottenhill Village Hall on Saturday 17th January which was aimed at introducing children to the pleasures of astronomy. The age group we aimed to attract was from 5 to 16 years of age. The scheduled time for the event was 2.00pm to 6.oopm and as this was the first “Junior” event we unsure of how well it would be attended, we were therefore very pleased when by 2.10pm we had 30 people through the gates. The final tally of visitors was 253 with the final visitors leaving at 6.20pm so we can safely say that it was a very successful event albeit a tiring one for the KLADAS members who set up the exhibits, telescopes and made the teas and coffees.

We had visitors from schools, scouts as well as the general public and everyone seemed to enjoy the day and we had a lot of enquiries from people asking how much it costs to join and how often we have talks and observations so we are quietly confident that we will see an increase in the future membership. We had a couple of people who had brought their telescopes which they had either been given or recently purchased and we managed to set them up for them and invite them to come to one of the observation nights to have further instruction in how to get the best from their telescopes.

We had set up models of the planets in the solar system along the length of the village hall, books on astronomy, competitions, computers running free astronomy software that anyone can download onto their computers at home & will show them what they can see in the night skies. We had astrophotographs taken by members of the Society on display. Telescopes were set up outside, two of which had solar filters so the visitors could look at the sun and see sunspots whilst the sun was out. We had set up a photograph of Pluto some 300 yards away so that telescopes without solar filters could be used to show the magnification of our telescopes and binoculars. When the sun went down we used the telescopes to look at objects in the night sky e.g. M42 the Pleiades, the constellation of Orion etc. The adults as well as the children were fascinated by just how many stars are visible through a telescope compared with those visible with the naked eye.

The next Open day will be March 21st 2pm-8pm to co-incide with BBC’s Stargazing Live 3 day programme. The theme will be the Sun and the Moon.

Astronomers Discover Ancient System with Five Small Planets

by

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler mission have discovered a planetary system of five small planets dating back to when the Milky Way galaxy was a youthful two billion years old.

The tightly packed system, named Kepler-444, is home to five planets that range in size, the smallest comparable to the size of Mercury and the largest to Venus. All five planets orbit their sun-like star in less than ten days, which makes their orbits much closer than Mercury’s sweltering 88-day orbit around the sun.

“While this star formed a long time ago, in fact before most of the stars in the Milky Way, we have no indication that any of these planets have now or ever had life on them,” said Steve Howell, Kepler/K2 project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “At their current orbital distances, life as we know it could not exist on these ancient worlds.”

Kepler-444 formed 11.2 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 20 percent its current age. This makes Kepler-444 the oldest known system of terrestrial-size planets, two and a half times older than the Earth.

To determine the age of the star and thus its planets, scientists measured the very small change in brightness of the host star caused by pressure waves within the star. The boiling motion beneath the surface of the star generates these pressure waves, affecting the star’s temperature and luminosity. These fluctuations lead to miniscule changes or variations in a star’s brightness. This study of the interior of stars is called asteroseismology and allows the researchers to measure the diameter, mass and age of a star.

The Kepler-444 system is approximately 117 light-years away toward the constellation Lyra. A paper reporting this discovery is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit NASA

Trans-Neptunian study suggests Solar System contains more planets

by

Astronomers have spent decades debating whether some dark trans-Plutonian planet remains to be discovered within the Solar System. According to the calculations of scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) not only one, but at least two planets must exist to explain the orbital behaviour of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO).

For the whole story read Astronomy Now

Comet Lovejoy puts on a show in the winter sky

by

Comet Lovejoy, glowing at 4th magnitude, is now in its best two weeks. It’s nicely placed high in the early-evening sky for your binoculars or low-power, wide-field telescope. It may be dimly visible to the unaided eye under excellent dark-sky conditions — if you know exactly where to look!

Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, is now having its best two weeks for skywatchers. It’s 4th magnitude, about as bright as it’s predicted to get. Use the finder charts at the bottom of this page to find its location among the stars. Although 4th magnitude would technically make it a naked-eye object, its diffuse fuzziness means that most viewers, who live under light pollution, will probably still need binoculars.

Sky & Telescope

Study of Andromeda’s stellar disk indicates more violent history than Milky Way

by

The study presents the velocity dispersion of young, intermediate-age, and old stars in the disk of Andromeda, the first such measurement in another galaxy.

A detailed study of the motions of different stellar populations in the disk of the Andromeda Galaxy has found striking differences from our Milky Way, suggesting a more violent history of mergers with smaller galaxies in Andromeda’s recent past.

For more information you can read the whole story at:
Astronomy magazine

Dawn spacecraft begins approach to dwarf planet Ceres

by

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has entered an approach phase in which it will continue to close in on Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet never before visited by a spacecraft. Dawn launched in 2007 and is scheduled to enter Ceres orbit in March 2015.

Dawn recently emerged from solar conjunction, in which the spacecraft is on the opposite side of the sun, limiting communication with antennas on Earth. Now that Dawn can reliably communicate with Earth again, mission controllers have programmed the maneuvers necessary for the next stage of the rendezvous, which they label the Ceres approach phase. Dawn is currently 400,000 miles (640,000 kilometers) from Ceres, approaching it at around 450 miles per hour (725 kilometers per hour).

The spacecraft’s arrival at Ceres will mark the first time that a spacecraft has ever orbited two solar system targets. Dawn previously explored the protoplanet Vesta for 14 months, from 2011 to 2012, capturing detailed images and data about that body.

This is an excerpt from the full NASA article which you can read more at the following link.

The quest for organic molecules on the surface of Comet 67P/C-G

by

For scientists engaged with large complex projects like Rosetta, there is always a delightful period early on when, unbound by practical realities, it is possible to dream. And so it was that at one time the scientists were thinking about having a lander with the capability to hop around a comet’s surface. In this way it would be possible to make measurements from different parts of the comet.

Interestingly, this unplanned opportunity presented itself on 12 No-vember 2014, when Philae landed not once but three times on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The Ptolemy instrument on Philae is a compact mass spectrometer designed to measure the composition of the materials making up 67P/C-G, with a particular focus on organic molecules and mineral compo-nents. Earlier in 2014, Ptolemy had collected data at distances of 15,000, 13,000, 30, 20, and 10 km from the comet, while Philae was still attached to Rosetta.

This short excerpt is from an ESA blog from the Ptolemy team, you can read more at the following link.