Astral Projections Online March 2023
Check our Website for updated content at www.astra-nj.com
Club Presentations Wanted:
Does anyone have any astronomy items of interest to share with the membership?
Please let us know at Club Contacts.
Time to update your membership for 2023
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Time to update your membership for 2023 〰️
Club dues and membership. Please update your membership now for 2023. If you renew after March 31 you will be renewed as a new member.
ASTRAL PROJECTIONS ONLINE (APO for short) is an email-linked publication for members only. If you exit APO to the club website or other resources you will need to use the emailed link again to get back to it. If you wish to retain a copy please bookmark or refer back to the email. We will make all efforts to post by the first week of the month.
Submissions Welcome: Members are invited to submit articles, photos, news, or stories for inclusion with Astral Projections Online. Please contact the ASTRA Webmaster.
Event Calendar
ASTRA’s next meeting will be Friday, March 10, 2023, at 7 PM EST. This will be an in-person meeting at Novins Planetarium - Building 13.
EVENT Cancellations: Members will receive email notifications of an event cancellation.
March ASTRA Meeting
We will have a two-part meeting in March. First, will there be a discussion on our upcoming Messier Marathon at Island Beach State Park on March 18.
The Messier Maraton was first introduced in the 1970s as an attempt to find all 110 Messier objects in a single night. We will discuss the best possible ways of getting through the list.
Those ASTRA members that are planning to participate must let the board members know by the March meeting. You will also need to make sure you have your ASTRA ID updated for 2023 for IBSP access.
Next up, in the tradition of our March meetings, will be an Irish Astronomy event. ASTRA member Bob Salvatore's presentation on Irish Astronomers. I’ve always found these March events quite interesting and looking forward to it.
Private - ASTRA Messier Marathon - IBSP March 18 - 6 PM, Must RSVP.
Public - Jakes Branch Star Party - March 25 - 7:30 PM
EXPO - NEAF 2023 - Rockland Community College - 145 College Rd, Suffern, NY - April 15 - 8:30 AM (All Day)
Public - Island Beach State Park, Solar Astronomy for a park event. More info to follow.
Public - Jakes Branch Star Party - April 22 - 8:30 PM
Upcoming County Park Presentations 2023
Public Outreach Presentations, if any member wishes to support ASTRA outreach efforts with the public, please let Vinny, Ro, or Jim know of any interest.
County Park presentations require a registration fee, call the hosting park to reserve.
Cattus Island Nature Festival - April 29 - 8 AM (All Day Event)
Website Updates …
Please visit our club website. We continue to have additional updates, if there is some content that would be useful to members please let us know.
"Astronomers, like burglars and jazz musicians, operate best at night.”
- Miles Kington - Journalist
Event Reports
Nothing to report for February 2023
February ASTRA Meeting Summary
Good Night OPPY
Our February presentation was a presentation from our guest presenter, Doctor Eileen Meyer, an observational astrophysicist and associate professor of physics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Doctor
Dr. Meyer's presentation for the members was on black holes and super-massive black holes and the plasma jets they sometimes produce.
We also had some members from South Jersey Astronomy Club and STAR join us for this meeting. They were invited for some inter-club relationship building.
Next up ASTRA member Vic Palmieri provided a surprise presentation for us. Revealing the secrets of the Marinara Trench and why Mount Everest isn’t the highest peak. Along with other facts.
We moved on to a discussion of the Mobius Strip and its impact on both earth and space sciences and yes the relationship to time travel.
By definition, it is a surface with one continuous side formed by joining the ends of a rectangular strip after twisting one end through 180°. We had some members come up to assist with a demonstration of the Mobius strip.
A reporter from Jersey Shore Online also joined us to do an article on ASTRA. An article was posted in the online and paper additions of the Toms River Times. Unfortunately, an editor made an error in referring to us as an astrology group in the title of the article and made it into the printed version. The rest of it was okay, so I guess it “was in the stars.” The reporter did apologize for the error. The article is linked here. Toms River Times
Our Nearest Neighbor
Let’s explore some interesting features, facts, or myths about our nearest neighbor, the Moon. Without it, life on Earth would be totally different, if not at all.
H.G. Wells Crater
Did you know author H.G. Wells has a crater named after him?
H.G. Wells (1866-1946) writer of many stories including two of APO's editor favorites. War of the Worlds published in 1898 and immortalized by Orson Welles's radio program terrorized American listens on Halloween evening in 1938. The other story was First Man in the Moon published in 1901.
H. G. Wells is a lunar impact crater that is located on the far side of the Moon, behind the northeastern limb.
This large formation is most notable for the extremely battered state of its outer rim. Little or nothing remains of the original rim, so completely has it been eroded and incised by smaller craters. As a result, the crater floor is now surrounded by a ring of irregular peaks and worn crater valleys. These rugged surroundings intrude only part way into the interior, while the remaining floor is relatively level and in some places gently rolling. The interior is marked only by a multitude of tiny craterlets.
Upcoming Cattus Island Nature Festival - Getting Closer
As many are aware the Cattus Island Nature Festival is going to be on April 29 this year. We had a great turnout and support for our ASTRA and IDA table and the weather was great for our Solar Telescopes. Cattus Island staff was extremely happy with us and asked us to return this year.
Hoping we can repeat the support this year and maybe other members come to join us for this day. All of it is not just manning our display, everyone gets time to participate in other events if they wish.
Having member participation in these kinds of events that we only do a few of, helps get the word out about ASTRA and maybe increase the membership. Over the past two years we’ve been getting more exposure with the parks and hopefully this helps.
We’ve helped support the IDA and now Scistarter a citizen science hub of over 3,000 programs was interested in joining us with a table of their own, that will have a Scistarter representative and some Verizon employees working the event.
Please reach out to Jim Webster if interested. We’ll also have a repeat of the pre-event get-together a week or two before, so we can review what we’ll be doing and have a good time doing so.
UPDATE: We have a few members that have already volunteered and we could use some more.
Outreach material below is distributed free for public outreach.
Around The Web
Exoplanet Watch
It’s been making its rounds the last week, a recent Night Sky Network presentation in February was on the search for Exoplanets. If you missed this presentation click on the image and it will take you to a replay.
PowerPoint Slide from Jim Webster's new presentation “SciStarter Space Science.” One of several citizen science projects featured in this presentation was made for the county parks.
On the lighter side of astronomy …
Members Submitted Articles & Items
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
ASTRA Member Vic Palmieri shared an article on Understanding the Bortle Scale.
You may have noticed that amateur astronomers and astrophotographers will often describe their sky quality reading when posting pictures or discussing observations. One of the easiest ways to identify the brightness of your night sky is to use the Bortle scale. … for more go to the Astrobackyard Article.
What’s Up:
Sky Watching Tips from NASA
Provided by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Is usually updated anywhere from the first day of the month to the fifth day of the month. Check back to this linked image if it hasn’t been updated yet.
For more go to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory webpage: What’s Up: Skywatching Tips From NASA
This article and images are distributed by NASA Night Sky Network
The Night Sky Network program supports astronomy clubs across the USA dedicated to astronomy outreach.
Visit nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov to find local clubs, events, and more!
Spot the Morning and Evening Star: Observe Venus
By David Prosper
The top layers of Venus’s cloud pop in this contrast-enhanced image,
reprocessed with modern techniques from Mariner 10 data.
Credit & Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Venus is usually the brightest planet in our skies, and is called “Earth's Twin” due to its similar size to Earth and its rocky composition. However, Venus is a nightmare version of our planet, featuring a thick, crushing atmosphere of acidic clouds, greenhouse gasses, howling winds, and intense heat at its surface.
This rocky inner world’s orbit brings it closer to Earth than any of the other planets, and is the second closest to the Sun after Mercury. Like Mercury, Venus orbits between our planet and the Sun, so Earth-based observers can observe Venus in the morning before sunrise, or in the evening after sunset – but never high in the sky in the middle of the evening, unlike the outer planets. Since Venus is so striking in its twilight appearances, the planet features heavily in sky mythologies worldwide. Venus’s bright morning and evening appearances are the origin for its dual nicknames: the Morning Star, and the Evening Star. Some ancient astronomers never made the connection, and assumed the Evening Star and Morning Star were two unrelated objects! Observers can even spot Venus during the daytime, if the sky is very clear and the planet is bright enough. Venus also has phases, similar to the Moon and Mercury. Galileo’s observations of Venus’s phases helped turn the astronomy world upside down in the early 1600s, and you can see them yourself using a telescope or even a surprisingly low-power pair of binoculars. Warning: Please be very careful when observing Venus with a telescope in the early morning or daytime. Never allow the Sun to enter your instrument’s field of view, as you could be permanently blinded.
Venus and Jupiter continue to move closer together in the evening sky this month. Jupiter will continue its descent towards the horizon while Venus will continue to climb and will be visible in the evenings through mid-summer of 2023. It’s a great year for Venus fans! … Image created with assistance from Stellarium
Venus’s other moniker of “Earth’s Twin” is a bit misleading. In terms of their surface temperatures and atmospheres, Venus and Earth are extremely different! The surface of Venus is warmer than that of Mercury, despite Mercury being many millions of miles closer to the Sun. While Mercury is still a scorching 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius), Venus is even hotter: 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 degrees Celsius). The vast amount of carbon dioxide in the thick Venusian atmosphere acts as an insulating blanket that retains much of the Sun’s heat, creating the runaway greenhouse effect that dominates its present-day climate. The Venusian surface is a crushing 90 Earth atmospheres on top of its absurd temperatures. These extreme conditions mean that the mission life of any past Venusian robotic landers were measured in hours at best – and usually minutes! However, conditions in Venus’s upper atmosphere may be much more hospitable, with temperatures and pressures at 30 miles (50 km) above the surface that are much more Earth-like in temperature and pressure. Studies of the Venusian atmosphere, including seasonal appearances of dark streaks and faint signals of suggestive chemistry, intrigue researchers with the possibility that some sort of life may persist in its clouds. But far more evidence is needed to confirm such a claim, since non-biological factors like volcanism and other processes could also be the source for these signals.
Venus’s thick sulfuric acid clouds block direct visual observations of its surface from optical telescopes on Earth. Multiwavelength observations from space probes show evidence of active volcanoes and possibly some sort of plate tectonics, but followup missions will be needed to confirm the presence of active volcanism, plate tectonics, and any possible signs of life. In order to do so, NASA is sending two new missions to Venus by the end of this decade: the orbiter VERITAS, which will map the surface in high detail and study the chemistry of its rocks and volcanoes, and DAVINCI+, which will study its atmosphere and possible tectonic surface features via a “descent sphere” that will plunge into Venus’s clouds. Follow their development and discover more about Venus at NASA's dedicated Venus site, and of course, continue your exploration of the universe at nasa.gov.
Let’s Explore Space - What’s in the Sky March 2023.
With the above NSN Article, let’s give some article space to the planets as well.
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus appears in Earth's sky never far from the Sun, either as a morning star or an evening star. Wikipedia
Orbital period: 225 days
Distance from Sun: 67.24 million mi
Length of day: 243d 0h 0m
Radius: 3,760.4 mi
Mass: 4.867 × 10^24 kg (0.815 M⊕)
Surface area: 177.7 million mi²
Black Eyed Galaxy - M64
The Black Eye Galaxy is a relatively isolated spiral galaxy 17 million light-years away in the mildly northern constellation of Coma Berenices. It was discovered by Edward Pigott in March 1779, and independently by Johann Elert Bode in April of the same year, as well as by Charles Messier the next year. Wikipedia
Age: 13.28 billion years
Radius: 26,481 lightyears
Apparent mass: ~0.4 billion
Distance to Earth: 24.01 million lightyears
Stars: 100 billion
Coordinates: RA 12h 56m 44s | Dec +21° 40′ 58″
Constellation: Coma Berenices
The Black Eye Galaxy is an extremely rewarding telescope object that's one of the brightest and most easily observed spirals in the sky. When viewed through a 100mm (4-inch) telescope, it appears irregular in shape with a general uneven brightness and a large bright core. On nights of excellent seeing, the characteristic standout dark dust lane can be glimpsed with a telescope of this size but is much easier to spot with larger scopes. When viewed through 150mm (6-inch) instruments, the oval-shaped is accentuated with the dark dust lane quite apparent. A 250mm (10-inch) scope reveals the dark patch, a sharp condensed bright core surrounded by a large outer envelope of wispy nebulosity. It's a superb object.
Tonight’s Sky: March
In March, the stars of spring lie eastward: Look for the constellations Gemini and Cancer to spot interesting celestial features like star clusters M35 and the Beehive Cluster, and NGC 3923, an oblong elliptical galaxy with an interesting ripple pattern. Keep watching for space-based views of the galaxies.
Visit the STScI which produces Hubblesite.org video overviews for Tonight’s Sky.
They can be found both on Facebook and stsci.edu.
Submissions Welcome
Members are invited to submit articles, photos, news, or stories for inclusion with Astral Projections Online. Please contact the ASTRA Webmaster.