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September 2009 Newsletter

Welcome to the September 2009 Newsletter!

Cosmic Journey has had an exciting year since it became a company last September. We have visited schools across central Alberta, particpated and numerous public events and hosted one of the most comprehensive 100 Hour Astronomy Marathon events that occured April 2-5, 2009 out at the Strathcona Wilderness Centre. We would like to thanks our sponsors and all of you who attended the event.

We also had a another marathon within the 100 Hour event. Our Dusk to Dawn marathon involved artists from the Elk Island Art Club and students from Archbishop Jordan High School producing art in the theme of earth, water and sky. With the Wilderness Centre being a part of the Beaver Hills Dark Sky Preserve, much of the art showcased that special sky.

The art was later showcased at the Josephburg Chicken Supper and art enthusiasts purchased some of those works. We would like to thank both the Elk Island Art Club for hosting the show and Archbishop Jordan artists for showing their work at the show.

We also participated in the Canada Day Festival at Broadmoor Lake Park. We held an indoor show during the day and a evening observing session at Broadmoor Lake in Sherwood Park.

As we reflect on our last year we see our second year in operation look even more exciting! We have now developed both a school and business program. Our school program has been developed to continue our outreach and our new business program assists business in developing a responsible lighting plan and promoting that to the public. Check out the Cosmic Journey website for more details on both programs.

We hope you have enjoyed our service in our first year and we hope to provide even more services in our upcoming year! Stay tuned!

New Cosmic Journey website

We have just launched our new redesigned website and are showcasing new programs like our educational and business programs.

The light pollution section has been reworked and we now refer to it as responsible lighting. We are becoming more active in our second year of messaging the advantages of looking at lighting more responsibly and working with organizations on developing strategies addressing lighting.

The 100 Hour Marathon event calendar is now being used to detail all of our activites and we also have links to our blogs so you can become involved in our discussions on anything Cosmic Journey.

The Observer’s Corner (August - September Viewing Highlights)

Moon Phases for September:

One of the biggest challenges for the amateur astronomer is finding objects in the night sky. There is an exception: the Moon. Our satellite is big and bright and anybody can find it. So how about using the Moon as a guide to find some of the planets? Keep in mind the following dates:

September 1st, 2009

The waxing gibbous Moon (almost Full!) will be few degrees to the West of planet Jupiter in the constellation of Capricornus. Look South after 9pm.

Jupiter will appear as a very bright white star. However, if you look carefully you will see that it does not twinkle. That’s telling you that you are looking at a planet and not at a bright star. The next day you will see the Moon and Jupiter getting closer (the closest in September). As days go by, the Moon will appear further away from Jupiter.

September 13th, 2009

At dawn on Sep 13th, the Moon and Mars will be less than 4 degrees away in the constellation of Gemini:

Mars is still quite far from Earth these days. It’s getting closer, though and will be the closest on Jan 27th, 2010. You can recognize Mars from its reddish colour.

September 20th, 2009

Sometimes the Moon gets really close to a bright star. In some cases the Moon moves right in between Earth and the star. When that happens the star disappears behind the Moon for several minutes. An hour before sunrise on Sep 20th, the Moon will not hide (“occult” is the right term) the bright star Regulus in the constellation of the Leo, but it will be very close to it: about ½ of a degree away. To give you an idea how big is half a degree, extend your arm and look at your little finger. The portion of sky hidden behind your little finger is about half a degree. If the Moon is around, I would encourage you to try to hide the Moon behind your little finger (remember to keep your arm fully extended). You will find out that your pinky can hide the entire Moon!

Impact on Jupiter!

These days, if you have the chance look at the sky around midnight, turn your attention to what is visible in the South Eastern sky. If you are located in the Northern hemisphere, depending on the latitude of your location, you will notice a very bright white object 20 to 50 degrees high: that is planet Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System. Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley captured an image of Jupiter on July 19 through his telescope showing a possible new impact site. Anthony's image shows a new dark spot in the South Polar Region of Jupiter (South is up because images appear upside-down in telescopes). The dark scar left by the impacting body looks very similar to the marks left by comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 when it crashed into the gas giant in 1994. Anthony was observing Jupiter using a 14.5" Newtonian telescope when he “…noticed a dark spot rotating into view in Jupiter's south polar region and was starting to get curious". "When first seen close to the limb (and in poor conditions) it was only a vaguely dark spot, I thought likely to be just a normal dark polar storm. However as it rotated further into view, and the conditions also improved, I suddenly realized that it was truly a black spot." First he thought it might be the shadow of one of the Jupiter’s moons transiting on the disk of the planet, but it was in the wrong place and the wrong size. It was also moving too slow to be a moon’s shadow.
Later on the Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, imaged the south polar region of Jupiter, confirming the impact: Anthony said imaging Jupiter has been his main passion since 2004. "It's such a dynamic system that every image I take shows something new and different," he said, "It keeps me coming back year after year, with bigger and better equipment each time. I never expected to see anything like this of course, but even the routine imaging of Jupiter's storm systems can reveal a tremendous wealth of detail." Anthony said this is one of the areas where amateurs can make a significant contribution to science. "The study of planetary atmospherics is a very hot topic at the moment and nowhere are the dynamics more evident than on Jupiter," he said. "Researchers are coming to rely on amateur images of Jupiter for much of their data, augmented by professional images whenever something truly significant occurs that justifies the cost of using the larger instruments." Eventually astronomers turned to the Hubble Space Telescope to get a super-detailed image of the impact location. This image, taken on July 23 shows that the black spot on the giant planet — created a small comet or asteroid — is expanding:

Labour Day Weekend...it's time to celebrate the DSP

Three years ago the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Parks Canada Agency, Alberta Tourism -Parks and Recreation and Culture developed the Beaver Hills Dark Sky Preserve. Last year Strathcona County added the Strathcona Wilderness Centre and this year the Ukrainian Village east of Elk Island National Park will also be joining the partnership.

What is a dark-sky preserve (DSP)?
A DSP is an area in which no artificial lighting is visible and active measures are in place to educate and promote the reduction of light pollution to the public and nearby municipalities. Sky glow from beyond the borders of the Preserve will be of comparable intensity, or less, to that of natural sky glow.

The celebration will be at Astotin Lake – Astotin Theatre and beach area
Sunday, Sept 6, 3:00 p.m. to Midnight

Well be there to celebrate with the group. For more information visit the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's Edmonton Centre's website.

Something big is coming…the mystery of Epsilon Aurigae

1 *How to find Capella and the constellation of the Auriga*
After leaving Jupiter in the South-Eastern sky, let’s turn our attention to the Northern part of the celestial sphere. Looking in the direction of due North we find the Big Dipper and the constellation of the Ursa Major low on the horizon. Extending the imaginary line that connects the two stars marking the top of the bowl, we find a very bright star shining of yellow light. That is Capella, the brightest star of the constellation of the Auriga. The most prominent part of this constellation outlines an asterism shaped like a pentagon: Just to the right of Capella, outside of the pentagon, there is a fairly bright star known to the Astronomers as Epsilon Aurigae. At first sight (even through a telescope) this star seems quite ordinary. In reality Epsilon Aurigae is one of the unsolved mysteries that puzzle Astronomers. What is so special about this star? Epsilon Aurigae is a variable star, which means that its brightness varies over time. The variability itself is not a surprise: thousands of stars populating the night sky are variable. The reason why Epsilon Aurigae is so intriguing is because we don’t know why it varies its brightness. Over time Astronomers have discovered several types of variable stars. One type of variable stars is known as eclipsing binaries. Many stars, unlike our Sun, have companions. Star systems made of two stars are called binary stars. Some of these star systems have orbital planes that lie in line with the Earth:		To locate Epsilon Auriga look at the right of Capella Algol is an example of binary star. When Algol B transits in front of Algol A the overall brightness of the star diminishes
These systems allow us to make some unique and interesting observations. Because closely spaced binary stars cannot be resolved from Earth, even with largest telescopes, measuring the brightness of the star system as one star passes in front of another provides important information about the star system. When one star passes in front of another star, the combined light from the system is decreased as one star is blocking some or all of the light from the other star. Making precise measurements using filters can yield information about the two star's spectral characteristics which ultimately provides information about temperature and chemical composition of the two stars. The orbital period of the stars of a binary system can be as short as few hours to several years. Some binary systems have stars very close to each other (sometimes they are in contact!) and these are called Short Period binary systems (Algol in the constellation of Perseus is one famous example, see Figure 3). Others have stars that are quite far apart which take a long time to pass in front of each other. These are called Long Period binary systems. Epsilon Aurigae is one example of Long Period binary system: it undergoes an eclipse every 27.1 years dimming to by almost a full magnitude and making it the longest known eclipsing binary system. The distance to the star system is not known very accurately, but Astronomers have reasons to believe that it is located at about 2000 light years from Earth. For comparison, if we could place the Sun 2000 light years away, it would be completely invisible to the naked eye. That implies that Epsilon Aurigae is a very large, luminous star. Today we know that the main component of the Epsilon Auriga binary system is a monster star, 100 times bigger than the Sun and about 1500 degrees hotter: if placed where the Sun is, it would engulf Mercury and probably Venus. The amazing fact about the Epsilon Aurigae system is that the eclipse lasts 670 days, almost 2 years! This is truly remarkable because Long Period binary system have very short duration eclipses. This makes sense because a the long period implies a large distance between the two components which implies that as seen from the eclipsing companion the main star looks quite small (hence the short duration of the eclipses as seen from Earth).		Epsilon Aurigae Star System Model On the other hand the eclipses of Epsilon Aurigae last 2 years which leads to one interesting conclusion: the eclipsing body must be huge. One would think that a very large body would be easy to spot, but as of today Astronomers have not been able to image directly what’s occulting the main star of the Epsilon Aurigae binary system. This is the amazing fact: we don’t know what is orbiting the main star, but we know it is huge. Astronomers however, do know that the diameter of the orbit of the eclipsing object is estimated at over 27 astronomical units, which is somewhere in between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. The eclipsing object has an estimated mass of nearly 14 Suns and a radius of around 2,000 solar radii or some 2,000,000,000 miles in diameter making it the largest known single object in the universe. To further deepen the mystery in the middle of the eclipse the star system's brightness increases significantly for a short time. Many theories have been put forth as to what the eclipsing body is and today Astronomers believe that it is a large disk of dust or gas. However, if that is true then something massive must be embedded in the disk to hold it together otherwise the disk would have dissipated long time ago. Try as they might, astronomers have not been able to detect any stars in the disk. The last eclipse of Epsilon Aurigae was in 1982 -1984. During that eclipse professional astronomers decided to try to crack the mystery. A world-wide campaign was set up to observe the system during the eclipse. Observations were made at major observatories around the world, amateur observatories and with space-based telescopes. A wealth of information was collected. At the end of the campaign in 1985 a workshop was held at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Tucson, Arizona. Several dozen astronomers presented papers. Despite all the information presented, the mystery still remains. The next eclipse will begin in the late spring of 2009 and another campaign is planned.