Archive for January, 2010

Jan
13
2010

SDAS astronomy news (no lecture in January)

Hi everyone,

Good morning and hope the recent snow wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. I was coming back from down the country late on Saturday night and at one stage I appeared to be the ONLY car on the M50 — now that’s a rarity!!! Linking motorway designations and astronomy, the open star cluster M50 is the sole entry in Messier’s catalog (http://seds.org/messier/index.html ) that lies in the winter constellation Monoceros. The Milky Way winds a path across the stellar landscape here and many celestial showpieces mark various junctions. Even a pair of binoculars will show some lovely star groups in the Unicorn, a swathe of sky often overlooked for the brighter luminaries of nearby Orion.

Thanks to everyone who got in touch about the books, etc. I’m stepping back a bit from everything to resume my college degree course at night which I had deferred for a year. I do hope to be able to do more after the summer. To be absolutely honest though, I had also reached complete burn-out and was just not enjoying the hobby of astronomy for the last couple of years what with being involved in the committee side of not just the SDAS but other clubs too.
January meeting
 Because of the schools closure and the fact they are only resuming this week we have moved our January meeting to Thursday, February 4th in Gonzaga College in Ranelagh. I will send details out closer to the time about the evening’s programme.

ISS passes
The International Space Station is now making another set of excellent early evening passes over Ireland. It now often appears brighter than Jupiter, so you can’t miss it if it’s passing over in a clear sky. Full details for your location are on the free website www.heavens-above.com, along with other information such as Iridium flares, again specific to your own location.

Sky-guide
 I believe the IAS Sky-High 2010 annual is now on sale but I did not see it on the shelves in Eason’s last weekend. Check out www.irishastrosoc.org for more details though.

Our own Sky-Guide 2010 is available from www.irishastronomy.org

Other events
 NEXT IAA LECTURE, 13 January
The first of the Irish Astronomical Association’s public lectures of 2010 will be given by Dr Jorick Vink, of Armagh Observatory. His talk is entitled “The Most Massive Stars in The Universe”, and promises to be a fascinating subject. After all, the Sun is 328,935 times more massive than the Earth, and yet we know that there are stars maybe 50-60 times more massive than the Sun. But are there even more massive ones? And is there an upper limit? And how to these stellar heavyweights live their lives? Their lives seem to be relatively brief, but very spectacular!
It’s on WEDNESDAY 13 JANUARY, at 7.30 p.m., in the Bell Lecture Theatre, Physics Building, Queen’s University, Belfast. ADMISSION IS FREE, as always, and includes light refreshments. Everyone is welcome! Full details of the rest of the programme are on the website: www.irishastro.org

BT Young Scientist Exhibition
 The annual BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS in Dublin runs this year from January 12th to 16th. The event is a brilliant showcase of all areas of the sciences in our secondary schools. Do try and get along during the days when the exhibition is open to the public. More details at http://www.btyoungscientist.ie/

Posted in Astronomy News | 1 Comment »

Jan
06
2010

Happy New Year!

A very Happy New Year to everyone and hope you all had a lovely Christmas.
Looking out at the snow covered landscape it does look pretty much like we’ll be in winter’s icy grip for a few more days. But we do have a pretty well regulated series of seasons with little variation when compared to the extremes on other planets in the solar system. Uranus for example has seasons 21-years long with each pole experiencing decades-long periods of darkness. It is worth reading an article on the subject of planetary seasons at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/interplanetaryseasons.html … maybe winter on Earth isn’t so bad after all!
All the best,
John
* * * * *
Next meeting
Our next meeting is on Thursday, January 14th at 8pm in Gonzaga College in Ranelagh. The talk will be on the Voyager 2 mission which completed a Grand Tour of the outer solar system gas giants before continuing on its journey into interstellar space. All are welcome and admission is free.
I will bring along another selection of books for sale to the meeting but mail me if you can’t make it and I will forward the list.
* * * * *
Important info
Our next lecture will also be the last meeting I will be able to organise until after the summer due to other committments. If someone else can take over the reins it would be great but I have to step back for a period of time from any role in the SDAS. I will continue to send out an occasional e-mail with news of astronomy events, etc. but cannot make the meetings or have significant input to the club.
* * * * *
FREE
I have an unused pair of 22x100mm binoculars which is free to the first person to reply if interested. The binoculars need a little repair however as the eyepiece bridge has cracked. The lenses, etc. are in perfect condition.
* * * * *
Other events

NEXT IAA LECTURE, 13 January

The first of the Irish Astronomical Association’s public lectures of 2010 will be given by Dr Jorick Vink, of Armagh Observatory. His talk is entitled “The Most Massive Stars in The Universe”, and promises to be a fascinating subject. After all, the Sun is 328,935 times more massive than the Earth, and yet we know that there are stars maybe 50-60 times more massive than the Sun. But are there even more massive ones? And is there an upper limit? And how to these stellar heavyweights live their lives? Their lives seem to be relatively brief, but very spectacular!

It’s on WEDNESDAY 13 JANUARY, at 7.30 p.m., in the Bell Lecture Theatre, Physics Building, Queen’s University, Belfast. ADMISSION IS FREE, as always, and includes light refreshments. Everyone is welcome! Full details of the rest of the programme are on the website: www.irishastro.org

BT Young Scientist Exhibition

The annual BT Young Scientist Exhibition in the RDS in Dublin runs this year from January 12th to 16th. The event is a brilliant showcase of all areas of the sciences in our secondary schools. Do try and get along during the days when the exhibition is open to the public. More details at http://www.btyoungscientist.ie/

Posted in Astronomy News | 4 Comments »