The Reflector: January 2010€¦ · Vol 16 • Issue no. 2 • February 2017 • 3 The Reflector...

Newsletter of the Peterborough Astronomical AssociationThe ReflectorVolume 16 • Issue 2

February 2017ISSN 1712-4425peterboroughastronomy.comtwitter.com/PtbAstronomical

In a cosmic coincidence, three comets will soon be approaching Earth — and

astronomers want you to help study them. This global campaign, which will begin at the end of January when the first comet is bright enough, will enlist amateur astronomers to help researchers continuously monitor how the comets change over time and, ul-timately, learn what these ancient ice chunks reveal about the origins of the solar system.

Over the last few years, space-craft like nasa’s Deep Impact/epoxi or esa’s Rosetta (of which nasa played a part) discovered that comets are more dynamic than anyone realized. The missions found that dust and gas burst from a comet’s nucleus every few days or weeks — fleeting phenomena that would have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for the constant and nearby observations. But space missions are expensive, so for three upcoming cometary visits, researchers are instead recruiting the combined efforts of telescopes from around the world.

“This is a way that we hope can get the same sorts of observations: by harnessing the power of the masses from various amateurs,”

Marcus Woo

An orbit diagram of comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak on February 8, 2017—a day that falls during the comet’s prime visibility window. The planets orbits are white curves and the comet’s orbit is a blue curve. The brighter lines indicate the portion of the orbit that is above the ecliptic plane defined by Earth’s orbital plane and the darker portions are below the ecliptic plane. This image was created with the Orbit Viewer applet, provided by the Osamu Ajiki (AstroArts) and modified by Ron Baalke (Solar System Dynamics group, JPL). http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?orb=1;sstr=41P

Big Science in Small Packages

See “Comets” on page 16

says Matthew Knight, an astrono-mer at the University of Maryland.

By observing the gas and dust in the coma (the comet’s atmosphere of gas and dust), and tracking outbursts, amateurs will help pro-fessional researchers measure the properties of the comet’s nucleus, such as its composition, rota-tion speed, and how well it holds together.

The observations may also help nasa scout out future destina-tions. The three targets are so-

called Jupiter family comets, with relatively short periods just over five years — and orbits that are ac-cessible to spacecraft. “The better understood a comet is,” Knight says, “the better nasa can plan for a mission and figure out what the environment is going to be like, and what specifications the space-craft will need to ensure that it will be successful.”

The first comet to arrive is 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak, whose

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President’s Message

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 • [email protected] Phone: 705.748.2038Club Mailing AddressJaime Morales, PresidentPeterborough Astronomical Association1587 Redwood DrivePeterborough, ON K9K 1N9

Juno – Jupiter

F ebruary can be cold and as I write this it will be cold still when you read this month’s newsletter.

So take cheer, sit by a warm fire and enjoy this issue. John Crossen previews the night sky for the month with a riff on Orion. He also contributes some words on Ceres, one of the solar system’s dwarf plan-ets. His last article wishes for more water on Mars.

Speaking of the solar system, Ken Sun-derland recounts his tale of taking his grandson to see Terence Dickson’s annual summer talk at Charleston Lake Provincial Park. It’s Dickinson’s scale model analogy of the solar system in terms that inspires him to create his own scale in Peterbor-ough. Very insightful.

A ccording to Wikipedia, Jupiter “is the god of sky, thunder and king of gods in the Ancient Roman religion

and mythology”. On the other hand, Juno “is a daughter of Saturn and sister (but also wife) of Jupiter”.

The Jupiter-Juno relationship is also fascinating to amateur astronomers. The Juno spacecraft is visiting the mighty planet Jupiter to discover some of its mysteries: How did Jupiter form? Does it have a solid core? How is its vast magnetic field gener-

Finally, Rick Stankiewicz returns from his Air Miles-inspired trip to New Mexico with some fascinating details and photos to illustrate.

Till next month.

Phillip Chee Editor, The Reflector

Freezing February

ated? Juno had already sent the most amaz-ing pictures from Jupiter since November 2016, but we do not know how long the Juno spacecraft will be able to resist Jupiter’s radiation.

Fot the upcoming talks, for this 2017, the paa has invited two astrophysicists to share their research experience with us: Dr Julie Banfield (Australian National University) and Dr. Alexander MacKinnon (University of Glasgow, Scotland). I hope you enjoy it.

Jaime Morales

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Orion Strides the Night Sky in February

Orion is winter’s sky master. He is visible from sunset to pre-dawn high in the southern sky. Photo courtesy of Phillip Chee.

See “February” on page 15

John crossen

O rion the Hunter is arguably the most familiar constellation after the Big Dipper to us Northern

Hemisphere natives. And in February he is in his glory in the southern sky.

You can spot him just after sunset. Most obvious is the straight line of three stars that represent his belt. Orion’s belt is also a signpost pointing upwards to a large na-ked eye star cluster called the Pleiades. It appears as a misty cloud about the size of your thumbnail at arm’s length. In a pair of binoculars the stars become obvious and are absolutely gorgeous.

While you have your binoculars in hand, move back to Orion’s belt. Hanging down from it is his sword. Again you’ll spot another fuzzy patch in the handle of the sword. While it is visible to the naked eye

from a dark rural location, that blur is the Orion Nebula, also known as Messier Object 42. In your binoculars it really comes to life, and it a telescope it is stunning.

Going back to Orion’s belt, if you follow it down you will come to the constellation Ca-nis Major also known as the big dog. Canis Major is one of Orion’s hunting dogs and is also home to the brightest star in the night sky — Sirius.

Moonies will greet a First Quarter Moon on February 3. Experienced “Moonatics” know that this is the best phase to observe the Moon either with binoculars or a small telescope. That’s because at this phase the Sun creates long shadows on the lunar sur-face making craters and mountains stand out more readily.


Ken sunderlan

Terence Dickinson’s Scale Model

There is a park in Eastern Ontario called Charleston Lake Provincial Park sitting on the Frontenac Arch.

The park is located in a sparsely populated, wooded, region. At lake level, the surround-ing hills shield it from line-of-sight light pollution. As a result, it boasts dark skies where one can measure SQM-L 22 on occa-sion. As part of its summer programming, it has, for many years, hosted a talk by Ter-ence Dickinson followed by stargazing. This past summer marked the 30th anniversary of this long tradition. Having attended sev-eral times over the years I thought it time to introduce my six year-old grandson to the event.

Terence begins his talk. “I’m looking for some volunteers.” My grandson almost dislocates his arm. He’s enthusiastic. His effort pays off. He is among the chosen and, like that, on stage with Terence. Now I must really pay attention.

The talk is to be about astronomical distances and the volunteers (a.k.a. stage props) are to be Solar System objects. My grandson lands the Mercury role. He is instructed to hold a ball point pen and the ball represents Mercury. He is puzzled. Mr. Dickinson is old and knows about these things — my grandson is six and writes not with ball point pens. He and Terence have a little aside while Terence explains the purpose of the ball in a ball point pen. The audience (sizeable) waits patiently for this vignette to play out. That mercifully behind us, Mercury stands a couple of paces from — the Sun a basketball, as I recall. Ter-ence aligns other planets across the wide stage. He has nice things to say about them too, but even in this outdoor amphitheatre he’s running out of room. The time for the

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punch lines approaches. Let’s pick up the action …

“Well, ok, it’s been demoted to dwarf planet, but where should Pluto be?”

The usual conservative guesses follow from the audience.

“No, no, it would be over in the parking lot” says Terence.

Whaaaaat?“And the nearest star … where would it

be?”Again, ridiculously low guesses. Such idi-

ots. I cooly offer an estimate of at least a few kilometers away in the middle of the lake. There, that should do it. I turn to my grand-son and smile. The answer comes ...

“It would be in Winnipeg!!!” (Yours truly does not think !!! is too many.)

Anyway ... gasps of disbelief, and on with the show.

Well, it was all good fun.

Fig. 1 :Galaxy Theatres entrance from Water StreetPhoto Credit: K J Sunderland


Fig.2 :Silhouette star party. Photo Credit: K J Sunderland.

Fast forward a few months. I’m in the entrance hallway to the Galaxy Theatres in Peterborough. There you will find an attrac-tive silhouette of what appears to be a star party. (It’s really too bad they didn’t create a more realistic night sky.) For whatever reason, the memory of Terence’s scale model comes to mind, and all that closest star business. So, I decided to make my own scale model as I walked past the star party toward Water Street. (Had that silly guess been working on my subconscious all that time?)

My first step down the entrance hall gets me from the Sun to the Earth, which is about a meter and sets the scale. (Most people have a walking stride of about 1 meter.) By definition, the Sun-Earth dis-tance is 1 Astronomical Unit (AU), so 1 AU will equal 1 meter in my scale model. Obvi-ously Mercury and Venus fall within that

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first step and Mars is just another half step further along. Now the distances open up to the gas giants. Another 4 strides reaches Jupiter, 5 past that to Saturn, and then Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are each an-other 10 strides apiece. It’s been 40 strides (about 40 metres) all together and I’m just beyond the curb standing on Water Street. And now … the moment of truth. What about that nearest star? Proxima Centauri is about 270,000 AU distant, or another 270,000 strides away. That’s 270 kilometers. I SAID, 270 km!!! That’s Ottawa distance. It’s really quite unbelievable, but there you have it. So, allowing for the larger scale of his model, Mr. Dickinson was not exagger-ating — Winnipeg it was. Perhaps you can understand how grateful I am that my little grandson has no clue where Winnipeg is, and especially how far away.


Meet Ceres, the Dwarf Planet with Big Mysteries

See “Ceres” on page 15

Amid all the excitement of the fly-by of our outermost dwarf planet, Pluto last year, another nasa

mission visited the solar system’s inner-most dwarf planet, Ceres. Named the Dawn Mission, it went virtually unnoticed by all but the most devoted of space geeks. The mission is still underway and it’s turned up some interesting questions.

Most immediate of the visual features to strike the eye was a bright white crater-like area. At first it was presumed to be water ice. But after a few orbits of Ceres, Dawn’s data indicated that it was most likely a huge salt deposit. By huge, we’re talking about 97 km wide and 4 km deep.

The bright area is currently thought to be evidence of geological activity. What hap-pened was briny water from inside Ceres burst through the surface, froze and then turned straight from ice into vapour. The process is called sublimation. It happens on Mars, too. The leave-behind on Ceres was

salt — enough to keep McDonald’s fries go-ing strong for centuries.

Named Occator Crater, the white area was caused by an asteroid impact. That’s probably what made the brine break through the surface of Ceres 80 million years ago.

The Dawn Mission was first inserted into orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015.

Since then it has orbited Ceres numer-ous times at altitudes closer than the In-ternational Space Station (ISS) is to Earth. Dawn’s closest approach to Ceres was just 385 km. It not only took thousands of imag-es, but gathered copious amounts of scien-tific data on our diminutive neighbour.

In November Dawn moved into a much higher orbit. From an altitude of 7,200 kilometers it refined all of the previously collected data. The spacecraft’s gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, which has been investigating the composition of Ceres’

John crossen

Ceres White Spot. Scientists originally thought the bright spot was ice. Then the presence of salt was discov-ered. More recent study indicates that both concepts may be true. And where there’s ice, there must be water. Does dwarf planet Ceres have an ocean beneath its surface? More mysteries.


From its location in the Southern Hemisphere, a group led by astrophysicist Renee Kraan-Kortewerg used The South African Large Telescope to spot a distant galaxy cluster.

Let’s Drink a Toast to More Water on Mars

John crossen

I f, like me, you were captivated by last November’s National Geo-graphic series about how a colony on

Mars might flourish, here’s good news for you aquaholics. According to data from na-sa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), things are looking utopian when it comes to water on Mars. And appropriately Mars’ new water wonderland is known as Utopia Planitia or The Plains of Paradise.

In a study led by Cassie Stuurman of the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas, data from MRO’s Shallow Radar In-strument reveals an underground water-ice deposit larger than the state of New Mexico. The deposit ranges in thickness from nearly 170 metres to 80 metres with up to 85% of its composition being water-ice. The find-ings also showed that beneath a region that stretches from the Martian equator north is nearly as much water as Lake Superior.

That’s the largest of the Great Lakes bordered by the US and Canada. This data was distilled by Stuurman with a number of co-authors from 600 fly-overs by MRO. At the latitude of this deposit which is about halfway from the equator to the pole, water ice sublimes into water vapour in the planet’s thin, dry atmosphere.

Fortunately the Utopia deposit is shield-ed by a soil covering estimated to be from 1 to 10 metres thick. According to Stuurman,

“This deposit probably formed as snowfall accumulated into an ice sheet mixed with dust during a period in Mars history when the planet’s axis was more tilted than it is today.”

Mars today has an axial tilt of 24.6 de-grees so water-ice now accumulates at its poles. However, over a 120,000 year cycle, the tilt varies to nearly twice that much, heating the poles and driving ice to middle latitudes.

This discovery not only brings to light new potential water resources, it also sheds new light on Mars’ geological history. So once again a single stone bags two birds.

Now let’s jump from two to thousands. That’s the number of galaxies astronomers from the University of Cape Town in South Africa have discovered. They are in the Southern Hemisphere’s constellation Vela. Vela in Latin means sails, and the constella-tion was once part of the Argonaut’s ship.

Now known as the Vela Supercluster, each galaxy cluster may contain upwards of a thousand galaxies. With a total star count in the trillions, the Vela Supercluster is the heaviest object currently known in the uni-verse. So go ahead, choose a star if you can and make a wish.


Photo Gallery

Horsehead Nebula

Here is another shot of the Horsehead Nebula Complex in the constellation of Orion, the brightest star in this image is Zeta Orionis (Alnitak), the eastern most star in Orion’s Belt.

I took this image on September 9, 2016 at the Okie-Tex Star Party (Western Oklahoma), the image is only 45 minutes’ worth of data and it was sitting pretty low in the East, but came out okay. The Horsehead Nebula Region IC434 and B33 with bright Zeta Orionis and The Maple Leaf NGC 2024 and 2023 along with several small blue reflection nebulae visible too. I used my smaller telescope, a modified 5.5” diameter Newtonian reflector scope and Baader modified Canon Rebel Xsi DSLR, a coma corrector, no filters.

It’s a beautiful area of the sky, but the Horsehead is often not seen with the eye through the telescope, because both the dark nebula Horsehead (B33) and the Red Gas IC434 is very faint, and you need a very dark sky like Okie-Tex but from semi-light pol-luted areas a nebula filter really helps to see it visually. But luckily DSLR’s and CMOS/CCD digitalastronomy cameras are sensitive enough that it photographs very well. The attached image is the wide field view of the nebula with a small telescope, but you can see my close-up photo with my larger homemade 16” diameter scope at the NASA link below.

Here is a link to my close-up of the Horsehead that NASA’s APOD published a few years ago: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131231.html

The close-up shot is also going to be the cover of my new 72-page coffee table book of my work containing 80 of my best im-ages over the last 30 years! It should be back from the printer’s in the spring.

Best Regards,John Chumack www.galacticimages.com

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131231.html

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131231.html


NGC 7000

Attached is part of the North American Nebula (NGC 7000). This is the upper left hand corner of the huge nebula (sort of the Alaska position in the big picture). I am taking 3 more of the other parts and putting them in a mosaic later. Notice when blend-ing properly the Ha wavelengths how deep the reds become.

This image is an Ha+ (a synthetic Luminance “L”) and the RGB. Ha +LRGB.

Brian McGaffney


A Spacey Trip to New MexicoricK stanKieWicz

T hanks to Air Miles, my wife, Val-erie and I were treated to a short trip to New Mexico last month. Last fall

we faced losing thousands of hard won Air Miles or book a trip before the end of 2016. So, we decided to book a short ten day trip to New Mexico in mid-January 2017.

As is usually the case, I roughly plan our travel itinerary when not on an “organized tour” through a tour company. This was to be one of those trips, where we would fly to Albuquerque, rent a car and drive around for 10 days. This is a typical trip for us and we enjoy the maximum freedom and flexibility. But where to go with such little time? We decided to pick up where we left off a couple years ago. As part of a longer trip in 2013 when we toured the U.S. Southwest, we spent a bit of time in New Mexico and were able to take in the World Hot Air Balloon Festival in Albuquerque and we dropped into the Very Large Array (VLA), of the movie Contact fame, but it was just at this point that all federal/national institutions were closed down due to fund-ing issues in Washington. The result for us was that we could not see some bucket list places like Carlsbad Caverns N.P., White Sands N. M. or Chaco Canyon N.H.P., so we had to save them for some other day. Well, this was to be our “other day”.

It took the better part of the day to get to Albuquerque. With the flight delays and a two hour time change from Eastern to Mountain, we left Toronto at 5:30 p.m. on the 13th and arrived 12:45 a.m. on the 14th in New Mexico (via Salt Lake City). What can I say, they were cheap tickets.

With our trusty rental car we headed to the southeast part of the State. Albuquerque is pretty central so it made for a nice loop route. We were initially headed for Roswell. There are no direct routes, so as the locals say, “We went straight as a snake.” Our first stop was in a little town called Capitan, in the Lincoln National Forest. Little did we

know, but this is home of and burial site of the original Smokey Bear. Yes, the same bear that you see on the road signs and posters telling you about forest fires and safety in the woods. Who knew?


The next day we headed east through Lincoln, where the town has changed little since the days of its most famous inmate Billy the Kid made his last successful jail break in 1881.

Then on to Roswell. I know this will be hard for some of you to believe, but there is an International UFO Museum and Research Center in the downtown and the entrance looks a lot like a movie theatre. I learned more about UFO’s than I ever thought possible and I have the pictures (of alien autopsies) to prove it. Then we got serious, and located the Roswell Museum and Art Center, complete with the Robert H. Goddard Planetarium. Unfortunately for us, the winter hours only do two shows a day on Wednesday’s and one on Saturday’s, we were there on a Sunday. Thankfully, the art gallery and museum were open and aside from a wonderful display of artifacts from the history of this part of the country, the highlight for me was the Goddard Gal-

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lery and Goddard Workshop. Goddard was a rocket “dreamer, tinkerer and pioneer”. Much of his research was done right here in New Mexico and this museum gives you a glimpse of where and how he worked, including the shells of spent rockets that ultimately lead to the success of the Apollo Program. It is always cool to be this close to such pieces of history.

The next day was off to explore the world famous Carlsbad Caverns. When I was a little gaffer my grandparents visited here and filled me with stories about this Eighth Wonder of the World and I have longed to see them for myself ever since. It was our


lucky day because January 16th is Martin Luther King’s birthday and all national parks are free on this day. You can take an elevator down to and up from the main cav-ern labyrinths. Valerie and I decided to walk down and take the elevator up. Smart move. It took over an hour just to walk down to the main galleries’ 800 ft. below ground and this was with gravity on our side. The variety and quality of the formations were astounding and beyond my expectations. With names like Fairyland, Temple of the Sun, Crystal Spring Dome and Bottomless Pit you can just start to imagine what you are in for.

There are so few roads in part of the state that to get to the west we had to go south into Texas by way of the Guadalupe Moun-tains National Park, then nothing but des-ert and salt flats for hundreds of miles. We never saw a gas station until we hit El Paso.

The next day we headed straight north and back into New Mexico, up through the middle of the state toward Alamogordo. It also happens to be the Fort Bliss Military Reserve, so everything is “Restricted” “Off Limits” “No Go”. Alamogordo is home to

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the Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands National Monument. Our first stop however, was to the New Mexico Museum of Space History nestled into the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains on the edge of town. This museum is worth the trip itself. Complete with the New Horizons Dome Theatre and Planetarium, an Air & Space Park and even the burial site of Ham, the first “Astrochimp”. Maybe this will have to wait for a monthly club talk and slide show.

This same day we had time to check out the White Sands N.M. just south of the city and what a sight. Dunes of white sand as far as the eye can see. On the valley floor between the Sacramento Mountains on the east and the San Andreas Mountains on the west, the windblown pure white gypsum based sand is mind-blowing. You can walk anywhere you want and they encourage you to slide down the drifts like they were snow. All the while, there are fighter jets flying overhead on training runs. It is pretty sur-real.

The next day was a highlight. Several weeks prior to leaving on our trip, I had started to arrange for a private tour of one of several research facilities you may have heard of, the Apache Point Observatory (apo), an astrophysical research consortium (arc) that includes eight American Univer-sities and is home to the Sloan Digital Sky

Survey (sdss). Yes, we got an inside tour and this is definitely a talk worthy of the paa some month. There are four telescopes currently in operation including the arc 3.5m, the sdss 2.5m, the New Mexico S.U. 1.0m and the arc 0.5m telescope. This site is also home to the apo Lunar-ranging Laser Operations (apollo) instrument project. Very cool, but the details of this will have to wait for another time.

We were doubly fortunate with our tim-ing because as you will see from the pictures accompanying this article, it snows at 9,200 ft. (2,800 m) this time of year and most of what you see covering everything in sight is just from the day before we were to arrive for our tour of the apo. Not much research going on, but lots of neat things to see and experience.

The other research facility located in this tiny community at the end of the road called, Sunspot, is the National Solar Ob-servatory (nso). This is not opened to the public but they do promote free self guided walking tours. Of course we took full ad-vantage of the opportunity to snoop around outside on a wonderful sunny afternoon on Sacramento Peak. The visitor center and gift shop were closed (only opened week-ends in the winter), but there were still the Evans Solar Facility, Dunn Solar Telescope,



Vo l 16 • I s sue no. 2 • Feb rua r y 20 1 7 • 1 3 The Reflectorcontinued from previous pageHilltop Dome and Grain Bin Dome to see. The Dunn Solar Telescope was most unique and reminiscent of the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope at Kitt Peak, AZ. By the time we left these facilities it was getting dark and the wind was blowing in another storm front, so it was time get off the mountain!

We had to start working our way north so we spent a day traveling up the east side of the White Sands Missile Range. We had make a quick stop at the world’s largest Pis-tachio. I know it sounds nuts, but I had to do it. Another side trip was to the Three Riv-ers Petroglyph Site. This site of valleys and hills contain over 21,000 petroglyphs! I have seen a lot of aboriginal art and this was in-credible. Of course not all the symbols and images portrayed are fully understood, but I could definitely see colliding galaxies and alien like forms.

Before our day was done we found our-selves driving by a place called Bingham, just north of the “Trinity Site”, where the world’s first atomic bomb exploded on July 16, 1945. It is only opened to the public two days a year (1st of April and October), so this is as close as we could get to ground zero. I took the opportunity to stop into a local rock shop though and purchased a piece of “Trinitite” or “Trinity Glass”, collected years ago at the original blast site, before it was buried by the government. It is a greenish, glassy-like substance and very light. It is

superheated, fused sand and a unique piece of the atomic age.

We spent the night in Socorro, home of the vla (50 miles west) and with only a couple days left to get home, our options for touring were limited. With our last full day we decided to drive north toward Santa Fe and see if we could find some good exam-ples of cliff-dwellings at Bandelier Natitonal Monument. After driving an hour west of Santa Fe, into the San Miguel Mountains, it was closed due to snow. It turns out this area is right next to Los Alamos and the National Laboratory. The laboratory is one of the largest science and technology insti-tutions in the world. It conducts a variety of research in fields such as national secu-rity, space exploration, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercom-puting. A bonus find while in the area was that I located another installation for the Very Long Baseline Array (vlba). This is one of ten 25 m radio telescope dishes located around the United States and Territories. I have now seen three of them. It was a good day of touring.

The next day it was the long trip home and no regrets. In eight days of driving we racked up about 1,200 miles (1,920 km) and adventures every day. The biggest surprise in our whole trip was the weather. It was much cooler than I would have expected. It’s a good thing we are Canadian!


The Sky this MonthMercury well placed in the morning sky most of the month.Venus is well placed in the evening sky. Reaches brightest illumination on the 17th.Mars in Pisces in February. In quasi-conjunction at the beginning of the month with Venus closing within 5°.Jupiter reaches a stationary point 3.5° north of Spica. Moon passes 3° north of it on the 15th.Saturn is low in the dawn sky moving from Ophiuchus to Sagittarius by the end of the month. Crescent Moon north of it on the 20th and 21st.Penumbral Lunar Eclipse 10th into the 11th.Zodiacal Light in northern latitude in the west after evening twilight for the next two weeks from the 13th.

Moon PhasesFirst Quarter 11:19 PM February 3Full Moon 7:33 AM February 10Last Quarter 2:33 PM February 18New Moon 9:58 AM February 26

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February 10 is the Full Moon. For you Farmer’s Almanac fans February’s Full Moon is known as the Snow Moon, which makes a lot of sense for Canadians. The Full Moon is the least popular for observing because the surface looks perfectly flat with just a scant number of craters visible along its limb.

On February 18 we have the Third Quar-ter Phase so the Moon rises very early in the morning and is frequently visible during the morning hours when the Sun is up.

Deep Sky observers will relish February 26 as that will bring a New Moon so the night sky will be at its darkest. That’s great for observing galaxies and distant star clus-ters that are dim and difficult to see when the “lunar lights” are blazing.

As far as planets go, most of the popular orbs are relegated to the dawn sky. In fact the only night time planets are Uranus and distant Neptune. Look for them in the constellations Pisces the Fish and Aquarius respectively. Neither is visible to the naked eye, so binoculars or a small telescope are required, preferably a small telescope.

That’s what’s up, so bundle up and keep looking up.

Ceressurface, characterized the radiation from cosmic rays unrelated to Ceres. This allowed scientists to subtract “noise” from measure-ments of Ceres, making the information more precise.

In early December of 2016 Dawn slipped into a lower orbit of Ceres. The mission is now in an extended stage. Dawn has al-ready fulfilled it was original mission goals, including a fly-by of the asteroid Vesta. At the moment the craft is healthy and ready to take on the challenges of its extended mission.

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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:[email protected]

Next submission deadline:February 25 2017

Meetings The Peterborough Astronomical Association meets every first Friday of each month, except July and August, at the Peter-borough Zoo Guest Services and Rotary Educa-tion Centre (inside the main entrance at the north end of the Zoo) at 7 p.m. P.A.A. general annoucements will begin each meeting with the guest speaker starting at 7:30 p.m.

Cometsprime window runs from the end of Janu-ary to the end of July. Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova will be most visible between mid-February and mid-March. The third target, comet 46P/Wirtanen won’t ar-rive until 2018.

Still, the opportunity to observe three relatively bright comets within roughly 18 months is rare. “We’re talking 20 or more years since we’ve had anything remotely resembling this,” Knight says. “Telescope technology and our knowledge of comets are just totally different now than the last time any of these were good for observing.”For more information about how to partici-pate in the campaign, visit http://www.psi.edu/41P45P46P.

Want to teach kids about the anatomy of a comet? Go to the NASA Space Place and use Comet on a Stick activity! http://space-place.nasa.gov/comet-stick/

This article is provided by NASA Space Place. With articles, activities, crafts, games, and lesson

plans, NASA Space Place encourages everyone to get excited about science and technology.

Visit spaceplace.nasa.gov to explore space and Earth science!

continued from page 1

http://www.psi.edu/41P45P46P

http://www.psi.edu/41P45P46P

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/comet-stick/

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/comet-stick/

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov

The Reflector: January 2010€¦ · Vol 16 • Issue no. 2 • February 2017 • 3 The Reflector...

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