Presidents Report

by Bob Stephens
Hi everyone,
 
The highlight of the month has been the weekend visit to Trevor and Jackie’s place at Woodford. Good company, clear skies, great food and overall a fantastic night away for those who could make it. Fantastic views of a small arc of the moon, Jupiter, Orion, Andromeda etc, were enjoyed by those who made it.

We missed last month’s viewing night. The skies were fantastic on the Wednesday night but not so good on the Tuesday and Thursday.
 
We are coming to the end of the year and have a society Christmas get together early next month. Normally it would be on the Tuesday night that we have the meeting however we have moved it forward a week to avoid clashes for a couple of members and hopefully get it a little bit further from other commitments.
 
Looking forward to seeing you at this months meeting.

rgstephens1@bigpond.com.au
07 32072892 (Home) 07 30033135

NOTICES

The RAS Christmas dinner

The RAS Christmas dinner will now be held on the 6 December 2011 at Ross' place. RAS will provide the meat. Please bring along a plate of salad, dips or sweets etc and drinks. Please RSVSP to Marina.

Astronomy 2012 will be on sale at the next meeting. We have only a small number available, so come and get your copy early for $20.00.

Change to Viewing Night: has started and is now the 3rd Tuesday of the month until further notice

Membership fees are due, Please catch-up with the Marina if you’re not paid up.

Take a look at the new website, Lots of new info and a new look. Video and news feeds, Quizzes, Crossword and more!  Website: www.ras.org.au If you have any articles or suggestions that would help make the website better, please email the committee.

Membership

Do you know anyone who may be interested in joining in?  Grab some new RAS brochures and spread them around.

Next General Meeting

• Andromeda – Chris Tacke
• Seyfert galaxies - Marina
• Astro-Snippets
• Viewing Highlights – what can we expect to see

Viewing Night

As mentioned in the notices the viewing night has been moved to the third Tuesday of the month. That’s to get us back to darker skies and away from the moon washing out most other objects.

The highlights at the moment are in my view the return of Jupiter to the evening sky and Andromeda high in the sky. There are a lot of Messier objects around at the moment for those interested in tracking them down and we should start to get a view of M45 (the Pleiades) as the evening progresses.
The evenings are getting warmer and this part of the year is often clearer than we get in the new year so please join us on the 18th.

Lunar Eclipse 10th Dec 2011

Society members will be gathering to view the eclipse. We'll let you know where and when soon by email  More info on the the eclipse here

Glengarry Viewing Weekends

18-20th May and 14-16th September 2012. For more details or to book in please contact the Treasurer.

Bob's Spot?

At our recent Astro night at Woodford, Bob was viewing and photographing Jupiter and insisting that he could see a dark spot on the planet. We (I) humoured him for a while, saying it was a blemish on his new optics and said he would be famous, and named it 'Bob's Spot' (Later known as 'Bob's Freckle'). It may have had something to do with the extra glass of wine, but after sorting out my vision issues, the spot finally came in to focus. Still yet to see Bob's images as proof though! Two new dobs with one Go-To graced the field that night and we were very impressed with their performance including Bob's (even with the blemish). Jeremy

NEWS

A Star with Spiral Arms

by Dr. Tony Phillips for NASA Science News
Huntsville AL (SPX) Nov 03, 2011

Two spiral arms emerge from the gas-rich disk around SAO 206462, a young star in the constellation Lupus. This image, acquired by the Subaru Telescope and its HiCIAO instrument, is the first to show spiral arms in a circumstellar disk. The disk itself is some 14 billion miles across, or about twice the size of Pluto's orbit in our own solar system. (Credit: NAOJ/Subaru).Two spiral arms emerge from the gas-rich disk around SAO 206462, a young star in the constellation Lupus. This image, acquired by the Subaru Telescope and its HiCIAO instrument, is the first to show spiral arms in a circumstellar disk. The disk itself is some 14 billion miles across, or about twice the size of Pluto's orbit in our own solar system. (Credit: NAOJ/Subaru). For more than four hundred years, astronomers have used telescopes to study the great variety of stars in our galaxy. Millions of distant suns have been catalogued.
There are dwarf stars, giant stars, dead stars, exploding stars, binary stars; by now, you might suppose that every kind of star in the Milky Way had been seen.

That's why a recent discovery is so surprising. Researchers using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii have found a star with spiral arms. The name of the star is SAO 206462. It's a young star more than four hundred light years from Earth in the constellation Lupus, the wolf.
SAO 206462 attracted attention because it has a circumstellar disk--that is, a broad disk of dust and gas surrounding the star. Researchers strongly suspected that new planets might be coalescing inside the disk, which is about twice as wide as the orbit of Pluto.
When they took a closer look at SAO 206462 they found not planets, but arms. Astronomers have seen spiral arms before: they're commonly found in pinwheel galaxies where hundreds of millions of stars spiral together around a common core. Finding a clear case of spiral arms around an individual star, however, is unprecedented.

The arms might be a sign that planets are forming within the disk.
"Detailed computer simulations have shown us that the gravitational pull of a planet inside a circumstellar disk can perturb gas and dust, creating spiral arms," says Carol Grady, an astronomer with Eureka Scientific, Inc., who is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Now, for the first time, we're seeing these dynamical features."
Grady revealed the image to colleagues on Oct. 19th at a meeting at Goddard entitled Signposts of Planets.
Theoretical models show that a single embedded planet may produce a spiral arm on each side of a disk. The structures around SAO 206462, however, do not form a matched pair, suggesting the presence of two unseen worlds, one for each arm. Grady's research is part of a five-year international study of newborn stars and planets using the giant 8.2 meter Subaru Telescope.
Operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Subaru scans the heavens from a perch almost 14,000 feet above sea level at the summit of the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Kea. From there it has a crystal-clear view of innumerable young stars and their planet-forming disks throughout the Milky Way.
"What we're finding is that once these systems reach ages of a few million years-that's young for a star--their disks begin to show all kinds of interesting shapes," says John Wisniewski, a collaborator at the University of Washington in Seattle.
"We've seen rings, divots, gaps--and now spiral features. Many of these structures could be caused by planets moving within the disks."
However, it is not an open and shut case. The research team cautions that processes unrelated to planets might give rise to these structures. Until more evidence is collected--or until the planets themselves are detected--they can't be certain. Whatever the cause of the arms, their reality is undeniable and the great catalogue of stars has one more type.

Australian Business Helps Astronomers Discover the Universe

by Staff Writers
Perth, Australia (SPX) Nov 03, 2011

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, WA. Credit: Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker (ICRAR). A quest to study the earliest stars and galaxies in the Universe is underway, with local industry building the first major pieces of a revolutionary new radio telescope in Western Australia, as part of the Murchison Wide-field Array.
A quest to study the earliest stars and galaxies in the Universe is underway, with local industry building the first major pieces of a revolutionary new radio telescope in Western Australia, as part of the Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA).
MWA industry partner and Fremantle-based high-technology company, Poseidon Scientific Instruments (PSI), has been awarded a id="mce_marker".3m contract by Curtin University to build 16 packages of sensitive electronics, using a smart design suited to the environmental and radio-quiet conditions of outback WA.
The MWA is being built by an Australian consortium led by The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia, in close collaboration with US, Indian and New Zealand partners.
ICRAR Deputy Director, Professor Steven Tingay, said PSI was a world-class technology company and working with its local expertise to design and develop components for the international project was an enormous advantage.
"PSI will build 16 electronics packages for the MWA, the culmination of more than two years of collaboration in which PSI have been deeply involved in the design cycle. They are a valued collaborator, not just another cog in the supply chain," Professor Tingay said.
Professor Tingay said the innovative package would also prevent the electronics from interfering with other equipment on the site, preserving the uniquely radio-quiet environment of the Murchison.
"The combination of the MWA and the radio-quiet environment of the Murchison will allow us to search for the incredibly weak signals that come from the early stages in the evolution of the Universe, some 13 billion years ago," he said.
The MWA is located at the Murchison Radio-Astronomy Observatory, a site operated by CSIRO and a proposed core site for the multi-billion dollar Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
The MWA will be the first of three official SKA precursor telescopes to be completed, proving the technology and science on the path to the SKA. Australia and New Zealand are bidding to host the SKA, with the site location to be decided in February 2012.
One of ICRAR's goals is to partner with Australian industries to help position them to participate in future radio astronomy opportunities, such as the SKA. The MWA partnership with PSI is one such success story.

Moon Phases Nov 2011 (Click to view online)

Astronomical Calendar Events

• Mercury and Venus in Scorpius
• Saturn in Dawn Sky
• Jupiter now past opposition but in good postion for viewing this month
• Alpha-Monocerotids Meteor Shower. Peak 15-25th. Best after midnight. Normal rate around 5 per hour, but could reach 400+
• Nov 08  -Asteroid 2005 YU55 Near-Earth Flyby (0.002 AU)
• Nov 09 - Comet 163P/NEAT Closest Approach To Earth (1.461 AU)
• Nov 09 - Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak Closest Approach To Earth (1.981 AU)
• Dec 10 - Total Lunar Eclipse

Refer to the JPL Calendar for more events and event details. http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/

For all other information

including:

• Society Meetings
• Finding RAS
• RAS Night Sky Viewing
• Membership
• Library & Equipment (Members Only)
• Telescope Hire
• Contacts

please vist our website http://www.ras.org.au/