Journal of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York

June 2015 Volume 64 Number 6 ISSN 0146-7662

Goldilocks Planets

By Richard Brounstein

This porridge is scorch-ing hot. This porridge is frozen over. I want to find a planet where my porridge will be at a temperature that is just right for eating. “We’ve got a [bedtime] story of just the right planet,” says Natalie Batalha at the Frontiers Lecture on Goldilocks Planets at the American Natural Histo-

ry Museum in New York.

Astronomers have worked to find Earth-sized planets since we first confirmed what we always suspected: many planets exist in other solar systems. Now that we know that planets exist and we have the ability to find them, we want to find as many planets as we can that are like Earth.

Named for the classic children’s story involving a little girl and three bears, Goldilocks planets are not too big or small and not too hot or cold. In short, we want to find a planet that can have liquid surface water. All life that we understand needs liquid water as a medium for mixing, trans-porting and dissolving compounds. But we can’t find these planets with direct observation. Trying to see a planet going around a distant star directly is like trying to see a gnat next to the bright light of a lighthouse. There is a difference in brightness of about 10 billion. So scientists must use indirect methods. The two main indirect methods of observation are the wobble method and the transit method. The wobble method detects planets as their host star is pulled back and forth due to the gravitational tugging of the planet on the star. Since even large gas giant planets only create a tiny, barely detecta-ble tugging motions on their star, this method has found few exoplanets and none as small Earth. The transit method has proved much more promising.

With the transit method, a telescope watches the star and measures its brightness. If a planet’s orbit is lined up with

World Science Festival May 30-31: Observing at Brooklyn Bridge Park 30th, Solar at Washington Sq. Park 31st

AMNH FRONTIERS LECTURE

our solar system, that planet will eventually pass between its star and Earth. When it does, the star will dim very slightly, revealing its existence to us. The Kepler Space Telescope is devoted to finding planets transiting their star.

The purpose of the Kepler Mission, according to Natalie Batalha, is to do a census “with a telescope and not a tele-phone” of the stars in a tiny part of our Milky Way Galaxy to determine how many of them have planets that have the po-tential for life. Kepler scans over 170,000 stars continuously for dips in their light.

This change in brightness is so small that the Kepler tele-scope must be extremely sensitive. “Imagine an 80-story skyscraper with a light on in every room and every window shade open. Now imagine how much the light from this building would be reduced if the window shade on just one

window lowered only 1 centimeter.” The change in brightness is 1 part in a million. Kepler must be that sensitive to detect planets transiting their star.

As difficult as this is, Kepler has found over

3,000 extra solar planets and many are near Earth-sized:

One planet, Kepler 10c has an average of 7 grams per cubic CM mass and is 7x the mass of Earth. Earth is only 5g per cubic centimeter. Kepler 138d is 1.7 times the size of Earth and has a mass approximately that of Earth. It must not have as much iron and nickel in its core as we have here on our home planet but still might make a good home to complex life forms.

Kepler has found some interesting non-habitable worlds as well. Kepler 10b, for example is one hot world. Its tempera-ture is hot enough to melt iron and it has evidence of molten oceans, as it zips around an orbit closer to its host star than planet Mercury is to our own Sun.

(AMNH Frontiers Lecture, cont’d on page 4)

NASA.gov

The Kepler Space Telescope: finder of worlds

Stan Honda

Full moon at AAA Spring Starfest, 2015

NASA.gov

Kepler 10b: A world of lava

June 2015

AAA A2015 Annual Meeting By Evan Schneider

On Thursday, May 21, 57 AAA members gathered for the annual meeting at the Warren Street Community Center in Manhattan. This night was filled with a blend of board mem-bers, AAA members, heads of every observing team, and one of two special recipients of the Emeritus Board Member Award.

President Marcelo Cabrera officially opened the meeting at 7:30PM. He then in troduced th is year’s Emeritus re-cipients, Bruce Ka-miat and Richard Rosenberg. Richard was not in attend-ance, so the honor fell to Bruce to re-ceive his award and

to speak to attendees. Bruce joined AAA in 1990, served on the Board of Directors, and continues to support AAA by hosting one of the observing sites.

President Cabrera then took us through the paces of the meeting. Financial Secretary Joe Delfausse announced that we had 572 members as of the end of April and that nearly all new membership applications are done online through the AAA website. He mentioned the generosity of our members who donated $7,900 this year, with a donation of $3,000 coming from AMNH Rose Chair of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, host of the popular TV series Cosmos. Joe then invited fellow board members Evan Schneider and Peter Tagatac to the podium as he discussed AAA’s “Scopes for Schools” program. This team is working with the NYC Board of Education to distribute new telescopes to pub-lic schools and provide training, with the hope of increasing public outreach. Activity reports then followed. Eyepiece Editor in Chief Amy Wagner invited members to write for the monthly pub-lication. David Kraft updated us on this year’s lecture series. There were reports on the school outreach program.

Today’s annual meeting gave attending members the opportunity to see the observing team members who faithful-ly organize and manage the individual sites every week. Each greeted the audience and spoke about the attributes of their particular site. If you want a great personal challenge, go to our website or pick up your monthly copy of Eyepiece and find out where these dedicated amateur astronomers set up each week. Go there to experience the sky, from somewhere as familiar as Lincoln Center with Peter Tagatac or to the far away dark skies of North/South Lake with Tom Haeberle. The choice is yours – one of the many benefits of your AAA membership. Our 28th annual Starfest in Central Park will be held on October 17th. AAA will also be supporting the World Science Fair at the end of May, providing telescopes and observers. We are everywhere. The meeting was adjourned at 8:37PM with a motion by President Marcelo Cabrera. David Kraft then took over with a special presentation to all attendees. Our night was complete.

Follow veteran sky watcher Tony Faddoul each month, as he points our minds and our scopes toward the night sky.

Tony Hoffman

VP Susan Andreoli, with Bruce Kamiat, recipient of the Emeritus certificate

WHAT’S UP IN THE SKY AAA Observers’ Guide

By Tony Faddoul

June’s Evening Planets: Venus can be found in Cancer the Crab until 11 PM. Bright Jupiter will between Cancer the Crab and Leo the Lion until midnight, setting earlier every morning until 11 PM by the end of the month. Find Saturn between Scorpius the Scorpion and Libra the Scales all night. Dwarf p planet Pluto will be in Sagittarius the Archer by 11 PM, risingearlier every night through the month. June’s Evening Stars: Spot the Summer Triangle of Vega in Lyra the Harp, Deneb in Cygnus the Swan, and Altair in Aquila the Eagle all night. Spot Spica in Virgo the Virgin, Antares in Scorpius the Scorpion, Arcturus in Boötes the Herdsman. Also find the stars of constellations Cassiopeia, Draco, Virgo, Hercules, Ophiuchus, Leo, Pegasus, and the two Dippers during the month.

June’s Morning Planets: Saturn is up between Scorpius the Scorpion and Libra the Scales until sunrise and setting earlier every night at 3 AM by the end of the month. Nep-tune will be in Aquarius the Water Bearer as of 2 AM, rising earlier every morning by midnight at the end of June. Ura-nus will be in Pisces rising one hour after Neptune. Mercury is in Taurus the Bull during the second half of June for about an hour before sunrise. Dwarf planet Pluto will be in Sagitta-rius the Archer until sunrise. June’s Morning Stars: Spot the Summer Triangle of Vega in Lyra the Harp, Deneb in Cygnus the Swan, and Altair in Aquila the Eagle. Look for reddish Antares in Scorpius the Scorpion, Arcturus in Bootes the Herdsman, along with the stars of constellations Lyra, Hercules, Scorpius, Sagittarius, Aquarius, Capricornus, Aries, Ophiuchus, Pegasus, Cassio-peia, Draco, and the two Dippers.

Full Moon at 12:20 PM

June 9 Last Quarter Moon at 11:45 PM

June 10 Moon at perigee (229,725 miles from Earth)

June 11 Mercury is stationary

June 12 Neptune is stationary

June 14 Mercury is north of the moon 10:00 PM

June 16 New Moon at 10:05 AM

June 19 Jupiter is 5° north of the moon (sunset)

June 21 Summer solstice 12:40 PM

June 23 Moon at apogee (251,115 miles from Earth)

June 24 First Quarter Moon at 7:03 AM

Times given in EDT

June “Skylights”

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Explore more night sky photography at

www.stanhonda.com

Spring Starfest

By Stan Honda

On a mild evening, the annual AAA Spring Starfest was

held on Saturday, May 2 at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx

with solar observing during the day and stargazing at night. A

nearly full moon washed out some of the sky but great views

of Jupiter, Venus and other objects could be seen.

About 60-70 people attended the night portion of the

Star Fest, all receiving a NASA shopping bag with space re-

lated items, an Astronomy magazine and our traditional glow

sticks. AAA vice-president Susan Andreoli conducted the

free raffle for the Celestron NexStar 60SLT telescope won by

Heather Sutton and her sons Evan and Dylan Dublanica.

A beautiful sunset and moonrise greeted people as they

walked to the ob-

serving area. Many

telescopes were set

up on the circular

drive including

Jason Kendall with

his 15 inch Obses-

sion which drew a

crowd as he moved

it into position to

view Mercury.

Occasional clouds drifted over, never really affecting

the observing. The moon, of course, was the prominent object

in the sky and great views were seen through all the scopes. I

had bought an iOptron eyepiece adapter for a smartphone at

the recent Northeast Astronomy Forum in Rockland County

so several of us tried it out. The device holds the phone in a

clamp, the camera lens centered over a 12.5mm eyepiece.

This goes in place of the eyepiece in a telescope and you can

take photos with the phone camera.

For bright things like the moon it worked great. We

tried various phones on Marcelo Cabrera’s Televue. The iOp-

June 2015

tron held my Samsung Galaxy 4 phone, Marcelo’s giant Sam-

sung and even Sam Hahn’s iPhone 6. As long as the camera

lens was centered on the eyepiece, we could get a nice image.

Earlier in the day I tried it out with Katherine Troche

during the solar observing part of the Star Fest at Woodlawn.

Through the AAA Coronado solar scope we could get hydro-

gen alpha images of the sun with several prominences clearly

seen. Volunteers who helped graciously were Sam Hahn, Ju-

dith Levine, Alfredo and Alessandra Viegas, Sarah Gargano

and Siyu Tu.

The next AAA Starfest is our 20th Annual Autumn Ur-

ban Starfest in October in Central Park. Stay tuned to the

website for details.

AAA EVENT IN THE BRONX

Stan Honda is a professional photographer. Formerly with Agence

France-Presse, Stan covered the Space Shuttle program. In his

“Focus on the Universe” column, he shares his night sky images and

explores his passions for astronomy and photography.

Stan Honda

Starfest attendees checking out the raffle prizes while waiting for darkness to descend

Stan Honda

Solar observing at Spring Starfest

Submit your photography questions to stanhonda@gmail.com.

Stan Honda

Raffle Winner of Celestron NexStar 60SLT telescope

Stan Honda

Astrophotography with iOptron eyepiece adapter for smartphone

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June 2015

AMNH Frontiers Lecture (cont’d from Page 1)

Kepler 12557548 is actually being slowly destroyed by its host star. It is so close to its sun and so hot that the planet has formed a tail of evaporating material. Scientists can see a pat-tern in the dimming of the light during the transit that reveals

this amazing feature. And a favorite of science fiction fans is Kepler 47b that orbits the two suns (nicknamed the Tatooine planet) of a binary system.

Kepler even found a plan-et in a Globular cluster. Im-agine the nighttime sky there. They must have thousands as many stars in its sky than can be seen from Earth. Unfortu-nately, there is no dark nighttime and practicing opti-cal astronomy is extremely difficult. Thanks to Kepler,

we know that these small planets are more common than larger ones, just as scientists expected.

The nearest Earth-sized planet found is around 10 light years away. That may seem close but if the Milky Way galaxy were reduced to the size of the continental United States, this star would be the distance from the Hayden Planetarium to Turtle pond in Central Park (about 0.25 miles). That is still about 94.6 trillion kilome-ters so we won’t be going there anytime soon.

CALL FOR WRITERS

The Amateur Astronomers Association of New York’s

journal Eyepiece is looking for dedicated writers to

contribute articles covering lectures, seminars, and

observing events around town, as well as current topics

in astronomy and astrophysics.

Interested? Please submit a short writing sample to Amy Wagner at editor@aaa.org.

NASA.gov

The tiny part of our galaxy surveyed by Kepler

Eyepiece Staff June Issue

Issue Editor: Rori Baldari Copy Editor: Richard Brounstein

Editor in Chief: Amy Wagner

Contributing Writers: Richard Brounstein, Tony Faddoul, Stan Honda, Evan Schneider

Eyepiece Logo and Graphic Design: Rori Baldari

Administrative Support: Joe Delfausse Printing by McVicker & Higginbotham

Hello AAA Members!

On behalf of the club I would like to thank Ron McCullough,

outgoing member of the Board, for his many years of service

and dedication to the AAA and its activities. I would also

like to welcome new Board member, Surayah White.

This month we have plenty of nighttime and solar observ-

ing scheduled. We will also be part of the World Science

Festival and Astronomy Nights at Intrepid. Please check our

website for more information. I hope to see you there.

All of our observing sites, including directions and maps

can be found at http://www.aaa.org/observing

Please note that our calendar updates very often and the best

way to see our current full calendar is at http://www.aaa.org/

calendar

We had a fun and productive annual meeting, it was great

to see many of you there. We gave for the first time the

Board Emeritus recognition award to Bruce Kamiat and

Richard Rosenberg. Thank you Bruce and Rich for all the

years of service.

Marcelo Cabrera President, AAA president@aaa.org

A Message from the AAA President

The Amateur Astronomers’ Association of New York Info, Events, and Observing: president@aaa.org or 212-535-2922

Membership: members@aaa.org Eyepiece: editor@aaa.org

Visit us online at www.aaa.org.

TUES, June 2, 30 Solar Observing on the High Line, 6pm, P

TUES, June 2, 9,16, 23, 30

Evening Observing on the High Line, 7:30pm, P

June 5, 6, 12,13, 19,20, 26,27 Observing at Lincoln Center, 7:30pm, P

FRI, June 5

Observing at Intrepid Museum, 6:45pm, P Observing at Floyd Bennett Field, 8pm, P

SAT, June 6

Observing at Brooklyn Museum Plaza, 9pm, P

SAT, June 20 Observing at Great Kills, Staten Island, 8:30pm, P

FRI, June 26

Observing at Carl Schurz Park, 8:30pm, P

SAT, June 27 Solar Observing at Poe Park, Bronx, 11am, P

Observing at Parkchester, Bronx, 8pm

AAA Events on the Horizon

NASA.gov

Kepler 47b a.k.a. Tatooine Planet