Hi everyone,

Hope you have all been well and enjoying the mild weather.

Before highlighting some events over the next week or so, I just want to let you know that due to some other commitments I have to take a step back from the SDAS for a few months. It means little or no newsletters/e-mails from me for a while but the Irish Astronomical Society has kindly agreed to keep everyone up-to-date about meetings or observing sessions. We hold joint meetings at the moment with the IAS and combining with their mailing list is a natural development of the current collaboration. Do drop me an occasional line though and I will endeavour answer it. Hope to be back doing astronomy again at some stage early in the New Year!

Details of tomorrow night’s meeting are below while the latter part of this mail has a round-up of sky guides for 2012 along with the best web sites to look for information about astronomical phenomena during 2012. I use many of these sites in preparing monthly sky notes as well as previous editions of various astronomy almanacs. 

Talk to you all soon,

John

November IAS/SDAS meeting

We are delighted to welcome Carl O’Beirnes of Balbriggan Observatory to give our talk on November 24^th at 8pm in Gonzaga College, Ranelagh. Carl takes superb photographs of the night sky from his home observatory and has produced very detailed images of Jupiter in recent months. Hope to see you along on the night! Check out www.webtreatz.com  and Carl’s gallery at http://www.webtreatz.com/gallery/profile.php?uid=64

Boyle medallist to speak in the RDS

Margaret Murnane, Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, United States, has been awarded the prestigious RDS Irish Times Boyle Medal for Scientific Excellence for her pioneering work which has transformed the field of ultrafast laser and x-ray science.

Professor Murnane will give a public lecture on her groundbreaking discoveries and her passion for science on Tuesday, November 29^th at 7pm in the RDS Concert Hall. Admission is free and more details of how to book can be found at http://www.rds.ie/cat_event_detail.jsp?itemID=1099436

Mars missions

Contact has been made with the ill-fated Fobos-Grunt mission currently stuck in Earth orbit. A tracking station in Australia managed to receive signals from the probe and engineers are now trying to establish why the spacecraft’s main rocket failed to fire to set it on course for Mars. More details at http://spaceflightnow.com/

Meanwhile, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) mission is now scheduled to lift-off this Saturday. See the above web site or www.nasa.gov/msl/ or http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ for more details.

Looking up

With just over a month to go before January 1^st, 2012, it is worth looking at the various guides available that highlight what’s happening in the sky for the year ahead.

Sky-High 2012 is produced by the Irish Astronomical Society and describes celestial phenomena visible from Ireland for the year ahead. Priced €5, Easons will have it in their O’Connell Street Dublin branch when published next month or you will be able to order it direct from www.irishastrosoc.org

Paul Money produces an A5-sized annual called Nightscenes 2012 which is specifically geared towards observers in the UK and Ireland. The publication has a set of monthly notes and a star chart for that month along with more detailed information on other pages. At a bargain £5 it’s a valuable guide sprinkled with lovely photos taken by Paul. Order from http://www.astrospace.co.uk/nightscenes/nightscenes.htm

Philips publishes the colourful Stargazing 2012 written by well known astronomy popularisers Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest. The guide retails for £6.99 (about €8.50) and is pitched at observers in the UK and Ireland. You will find it available in many bookstores or through online sellers.

The Astronomical Calendar produced by Guy Ottewell since 1974 is a large format soft-cover publication that is packed with an incredible amount of detail. The size also allows for each page to contain Ottewell’s unique and informative diagrams. The 2012 edition of the calendar can be ordered through Universal Workshops web site http://www.universalworkshop.com/AC12.htm or Amazon.com (not Amazon UK). It’s priced at €26 including shipping from Amazon — see http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0934546614/ref=oh_o00_s00_i00_details  

Many, many other sky guides appear annually including calendars and books such as Sir Patrick Moore’s venerable Yearbook of Astronomy. This year’s is the 50^th anniversary edition and contains a lot of information about celestial events over the next year along with articles by professional and amateur astronomers.

The two magazines Astronomy (US) and The Sky at Night (UK) usually have their yearly almanacs as inserts towards the end of the preceding year (or the January editions) while Sky and Telescope (US) and Astronomy Now (UK) produce separate publications in the late-Autumn. Check your local newsagents for details or the respective web sites for each magazine.

Organisations such as the British Astronomical Association (BAA) and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) publish handbooks for members annually but these can be purchased by non-members too. See http://www.britastro.org/baa/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=501:baa-handbook&catid=81  or  www.rasc.ca/handbook/

I haven’t even touched on the non-English publications, some examples of which I’ve accumulated over the years.

Finally, the Astronomical Almanac is the doyen of professional and amateur astronomers worldwide. Co-produced by H.M.’s Nautical Almanac Office and the US Naval Observatory, the detailed tables in the Almanac cover a whole range of astronomical phenomena. The accurate ephemerides are calculated with the latest adopted numerical theories. Amazon will stock the Almanac but you can generate many of the tables of data for your location with the MICA software published by Willmann-Bell — see http://www.willbell.com/almanacs/almanac_mica.htm

All in all this is just a quick flavour of the extensive selection of sky guides available for the amateur astronomer or casual sky-watcher curious about what’s up for the year ahead.

hi everyone,

hope all is well.

There has been some terrific views of the day- and nighttime sky recently. Jupiter is a magnificent object high in the southeast early evening while the Sun is perking up with a large spot group visible to the unaided eye using a suitable solar filter (see www.spaceweather.com for pictures of the sunspot.) Carl O’Beirnes took some magnificent images of Jupiter recently and you can see the results at http://www.webtreatz.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-115

Joe O’Dwyer and I were recently talking about the proper names for the seven bright stars in the Plough. We were at Dunsink Observatory and the Plough carved it’s way across the north Dublin skyline over the course of our two hour visit. Yet I most associate the group with a particularly beautiful Native North American Indian myth rather than seeing it as an agricultural implement.

The stars of the “Bowl” are a bear being chased by three hunters (the stars of the “Tail”) over the course of the year. By autumn, the hunters manage to mortally wound the bear and its blood flows profusely over the earth to dye the leaves of trees the lovely reds we see this time of year. A similar legend tells of the bear being chased by seven birds. A robin manages to strike the fatal blow and the bear’s blood runs over the robin’s breast. The bird then rests amongst the trees and shakes himself, covering the leaves with the bears blood.

Astronomy is rich with this seam of lore and as we move into the longer evenings then do look skyward to imagine those tales that married Earth and Sky. A good jumping off point for Western constellation lore is http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/contents.htm while the Google search http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=sky+folklore&meta= will bring you to more general sky lore links.

clear skies!

john

P.S. many thanks to everyone who responded to my appeal for help ferrying people to Dunsink Observatory recently. The members of Rathgar Active Aged asked me pass on their appreciation and thanks to all who helped.

Arcturus magazine

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The November issue of the club newsletter is now available for download. Click on the link here to view the 8-page issue online or right-click and select “Save As” to download it to your PC/Mac. See http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25805353/Arcturus/arc_2011_November.pdf

The magazine has details of what’s on view in November’s sky, the latest news notes, articles, and much more. It also highlights talks and events happening countrywide.

Next meeting

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The next IAS/SDAS meeting will be on Thursday, November 17th at 8pm in Gonzaga College, Ranelagh. Our speaker will be well-known astrophotographer Carl O’Beirnes, who will talk about his robotic observatory and imaging the sky. All are welcome and admission is free.

Astronaut visits

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NASA astronaut Greg Johnson and ESA astronaut Dr Christer Fuglesang are giving talks during Science Week Ireland (running from November 13th to 20th). See the Arcturus newsletter for more details of where the talks are and how to book.

Spacebrains iPhone app

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Congratulations to everyone involved in developing Spacebrains, an iPhone quiz launched for Science Week 2010, which won Best Gaming App 2011 at “The Appys”. More details about the award are at http://www.theappys.ie/blog/the-winners-of-the-appys-2011/ — I was delighted to be part of the group which included astronomers at Armagh Observatory and Blackrock Castle Observatory (Cork), Discover Science and Engineering, and Redwind Software, who created the actual app. You can read about Spacebrains at http://www.science.ie/science-news/space-brains-app.html where there is a link to download it free from the iTunes store.

75th anniversary of Met Éireann

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To mark the 75th anniversary of Met Éireann the Irish Met Society has created an exhibition which will run from Nov 10th to 18th in the National Botanic Gardens’ gallery. Admittance is free. The exhibition will contain a series of posters on Met Éireann’s history, including an historical timeline a poster on Met Éireann trivia and old instruments. The IMS are dedicating their upcoming lecture evening and weather exhibition to Dr Aodhagán Roddy who sadly passed away recently. More details at http://www.irishmetsociety.org/

Science Week Ireland 2011

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A brilliant programme is lined up for Science Week Ireland which runs from November 13th to 20th. Almost 500 events are taking place countrywide so check out www.scienceweek.ie to see what’s on near you.

The theme for Science Week this year is “The Chemistry of Life”. I mentioned to some people recently that there is a neat mnemonic to remember the main elements making up the human body (many thanks to Michael Grehan for telling me the mnemonic originally.)

“See Hopkin’s Cafe, its mighty good, but take it with a grain of salt”. You write it this way: C HOPKINS CaFe Mg NaCl — granted, you have to remember the Mg (mighty good) and that NaCl is the grain of salt!

C = carbon

H = hydrogen

O = oxygen

P = phosphorus

K = potassium

I = iodine

N = nitrogen

S = sulphur

Ca = calcium

Fe = iron

Mg = magnesium

Na = sodium

Cl = chlorine

Most of the human body is made up of water, H2O, with cells consisting of 65-90% water by weight. Therefore, it isn’t surprising that most of a human body’s mass is oxygen. Carbon, the basic unit for organic molecules, comes in second. 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus.

1. Oxygen (65%)

2. Carbon (18%)

3. Hydrogen (10%)

4. Nitrogen (3%)

5. Calcium (1.5%)

6. Phosphorus (1.0%)

7. Potassium (0.35%)

8. Sulfur (0.25%)

9. Sodium (0.15%)

10. Magnesium (0.05%)

11. Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Molybdenum, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Manganese, Cobalt, Iron (0.70%)

12. Lithium, Strontium, Aluminum, Silicon, Lead, Vanadium, Arsenic, Bromine (trace amounts)

So, C (18%), H (10%), O (65%), P (1%), K (0.35%), I (trace), N (3%), S (0.25%), Ca (1.5%), Fe (trace), Mg (0.05%), Na (0.15%), Cl (trace)

See also, http://www.lenntech.com/periodic-chart-elements/human-body.htm and http://www.livescience.com/3505-chemistry-life-human-body.html

Images at …

http://itl.chem.ufl.edu/2041_u00/lectures/lec_1.html (a little bit down the page there’s a nice pie chart showing the elemental composition of the Earth’s crust and the human body)

http://bio1151b.nicerweb.com/Locked/media/ch02/elements.html (table of the elements in the human body)

Starts with a Bang is just one of the great pages on scienceblogs.com and the article http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/09/how_stable_is_the_stuff_were_m.php has another neat graphic showing the chemical make-up of the human body