32 inch Cassegrain Project

Barbara Whitehead (Treasurer)

● BS & BA in Accounting University of Alabama, CPA (licensed in Virginia),
● CRFAC (Certified Forensic Accountant).
●Bank CFO, Banking Regulator, Banking Consultant.
● Financial Managers Society, Inst Management Accountants, CPA Society,
Technology Club.
● Treasurer, Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (1,000+ members), various
positions including President, VP and Treasurer in the non-profits listed above.
● Experience includes Quickbooks, PayPal, Club Express and GroupWorks.
● Disaster Responder for American Red Cross, teaching classes for Technology Club where I am also the Treasurer.
● Other interests include MahJongg, Book Club, travel and my puppy, Pippa.

32 inch Cassegrain Project

Planets of the Month: May 2022

by Erich Karkoschka

Mercury is the only evening planet, but only visible during the first week of May. It sets around the end of astronomical twilight. It shows as a crescent in a telescope.

Saturn rises soon after Midnight and is 30 degrees up at dawn.

Mars follows Saturn an hour later. It is as bright as Saturn. Mars approaches Jupiter and passes it half a degree south on May 29th.

Venus and Jupiter are only half a degree apart from each other at the beginning of the month. Venus moves so fast that their separation increases to 30 degrees by months end.

Venus shows a small disk getting fuller while Jupiter gets high enough so that its bands and other features show up in telescopes.

On the 17th and `18th, Neptune is relatively easy to find in binoculars since it is less than a degree north of Mars.

The Moon is very hard to see on May 1st since it is such a thin crescent, one of the thinnest ones you have seen in your life. The following evening, it sits just above Mercury. By the 6th, the Moon is next to Pollux. The Full Moon the day after the Lunar Eclipse rises only 2 degrees from Aldebaran. On the 26th and 27th, it is in the vicinity of Venus.
The important event this month is the Total Lunar Eclipse on the evening of May 15th. The moon rises at 7:06 pm (Tucson Time/UTC-7). Sunset is at 7:15 pm. The partial phase starts at 7:28. Totality lasts from 8:29-9:54 pm. The partial phase ends at 10:56 pm. This is a deep total eclipse since the northern part of the Moon is at the center of the Umbra, right at 9:12 pm. In Tucson, TAAA will have a viewing party with telescopes on the University of Arizona Mall near Flandrau from 7:30-10 pm.
32 inch Cassegrain Project

Planets of the Month: April 2022

By Erich Karkoschka
Mercury is the only planet in the evening sky after April 10.
It is easily visible after mid-month as dusk fades.  It sets
shortly after the end of twilight.  On the 29th, Mercury is on the edge of the Pleiades, a nice sight in binoculars.
Venus and Mars have been close together in the morning sky for many weeks.  Now, Venus is getting faster so that Mars cannot keep up.  By the end of the month, they are 15 degrees apart. Venus is five magnitudes brighter than Mars and slightly losing
altitude at the beginning of twilight while Mars is slowly
gaining altitude.  
At the beginning of April, Venus is still almost half illuminated, but gets more round as the month progresses.

The moon is a thin crescent on the 2nd at dusk and on the 28th
at dawn with Full Moon mid month (16th).  On the 4th it is close to the Pleiades.  The most beautiful sight will be the moon, Venus, and Jupiter close together on the morning of the 27th.  Remembering this triangle during dawn, one can try to see how long one can watch it naked eye.  Jupiter becomes invisible at sunrise, 6:00 am while Venus can be seen at least another half hour, possible even past noon if the sky is very clear.

Jupiter rises during dawn at the beginning of the month, well
to the lower left of the three other planets.  Jupiter passes Neptune on the 12th in less than 0.1 degree distance.  This happens once every 13 years, but this time the distance is
closer than most other times.  Neptune is faintly visible in a
telescope since both planets only rise after the start of dawn.
Venus is approaching Jupiter and reaches it on the 30th. The two brightest planets will be less than half a degree apart, a sight one should not miss.  Around the 18th, the four bright planets of the morning sky are almost perfectly equally spaced. April is a good time to watch the planets move among the stars and between each other, each with its own speed.
Saturn starts the month between Venus and Mars.  On the 5th, Mars passes Saturn less than half a degree south, a nice sight of two planets with equal magnitude but different colors. For the next months, Saturn will be the first of the morning planets to rise, by 2 am at the end of the month.
Uranus is the only planet in the evening sky until April 10.
Afterwards it will be too low to find it during late dusk.
32 inch Cassegrain Project

Planets of the Month: March 2022

By Erich Karkoschka
Mercury finishes its morning apparition during the first week of March.  On the 2nd it passes the fainter Saturn less than 1 degree south of it.
Venus and Mars stay within 5 degrees of each other.  Their minimum distance is 4 degrees on the 15th.  They rise well before dawn starts.
On the 29th, Venus passes Saturn 2 degrees north of it. Venus is at greatest western elongation on the 20th as spring starts.  In a telescope it appears as half a disk.  
Slower Mars will pass Saturn on the 4th of April 0.3 degrees south.  The last week of March is a good time to watch the triangle of Venus, Mars,
and Saturn changing shape from day to day.  
March has two New Moons, on the 2nd and 31st.  It is visible on the 3rd as a very slim crescent at bright dusk.  The almost Full Moon is close to Regulus on the evening of the 15th and close to the trio of planets in the morning sky on the 28th.  It is still
visible on the 29th and possibly on the 30th to the lower right of
Jupiter.
Jupiter joins the other morning planets on the 26th, but only poorly visible near the horizon.
Saturn may not be visible naked eye on the 2nd, but will rise earlier and earlier.  By the end of the month, it will rise together with Venus and Mars.
Uranus is the only planet in the evening sky.  You can find it with binoculars in Aries.

ONLINE – Astronomy Fundamentals Meeting – May 2022

Constellations of the Month:  

Pavo and Octans

Presenter:  ???

This month we will be going over the last two of the 88 constellations, Pavo and Octans.

Main Presentation:  

Lunar Evolution

Presenter:  Doug Smith

Afterwards Doug Smith will be giving the main topic presentation on Lunar Evolution.

ONLINE – General Meeting – May 2022

TAAA’s next general member meeting will be held on Friday, May 6, 2022. The Main Presentation will start at 6:30 P.M. and is open to the PUBLIC via https://www.facebook.com/TucsonAstronomy/. 
A Members Only meeting will follow, therefore MEMBERS should attend the meeting via Zoom.

6:30 pm – Main Presentation

TITLE:  Information About TAAA Leaders & Committees 

PRESENTATION:  This is a great time to learn what has been going on with the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association from “The Inside”. Several key TAAA leaders will present what they or their committees have been working on over the past year.

Sometimes the TAAA’s size and scope can be overwhelming. Please take this opportunity to digest all that we do in our community. Come with questions and comments for our leaders!

7:15 pm – Members Only Meeting

TITLE:  Election Results

PRESENTATION:  The NVRC will announce the results of our Leadership Election 2022.

ONLINE – Astronomy Fundamentals Meeting – April 2022

Constellations of the Month:  

Volans and Horologium

Presenter:   Peter Hermes

With only 4 remaining until we’ve gone through all 88 constellations , Peter Hermes will be overviewing the southern constellations Volans and Horologium.

Main Presentation:  

White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars

Presenter:  ???

We will be finishing up the last of the Star classification talk from previous meeting with White Dwarfs and Neutron stars.

ONLINE – General Meeting – April 2022

The Main Presentation will start at 6:30 P.M, followed by Mary Turner’s popular Seasonal Night Sky Presentation. Both are open to the public via https://www.facebook.com/TucsonAstronomy/.  

TITLE:  Resolving Black Holes with the Event Horizon Telescope 

PRESENTATION:  Black holes, predicted almost a century ago by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, were believed to power some of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe. However, their compact sizes make them extremely difficult to resolve. In 2017, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration brought together many radio telescopes around the world to form an Earth-size virtual telescope, and successfully captured the first ever images of a black hole—in the center of galaxy M87. This result enables astrophysicist to study the detailed astrophysics around black holes and test General Relativity itself. In this talk, presenter Chi-wan Chan will cover the theoretical background of black holes, the observation technique used to resolve them, and some of the open questions in black hole astrophysics.

BIO:  Chi-kwan “CK” Chan is a computational astrophysicist working with cutting edge technologies to advance both theoretical and observational research. He has developed new algorithms to study magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, used graphics processing units (GPUs) to accelerate general relativistic ray tracing, designed cloud computing infrastructures to handle big observational data, and applied machine learning algorithms to speed up and automate data processing. Some of his active projects include simulating and understanding accretion disks, capturing images of black holes, and visualizing astrophysical simulations in virtual reality. He’s also a true wildcat, having received his bachelors and doctoral degrees from the University of Arizona. He is a Data Science Fellow at the UA Data Science Institute and an affiliate member of UA’s Applied Math GIDP.

32 inch Cassegrain Project

Planets of the Month: February 2022

Mercury is visible at dawn all month, about 15 degrees to the lower left of Venus.
Venus is at it best during this morning visibility. It rises before 5 am and is well up by the tie dawn starts. It starts the month as a beautiful, large crescent that is easily visible in binoculars. It ends the month as a thick, smaller crescent. It is visible during the daytime if the sky is very clear and you know where to look, for example at 10 am 40 degrees high straight south.
This month has NO New Moon. The Moon can be seen every day of the month, although on the 1st one needs binoculars to see the slim crescent at dusk. The next evening it will be close to Jupiter.
Mars is not far from Venus all month, 9 degrees at the beginning of February and 5 degrees at the end. Even in March it will remain within 6 degrees of Venus. During both months, the planetary pair will move by about 50 degrees next to each other through Sagittarius and Capricornus.
Jupiter leaves the evening sky on the 19th.
Saturn is not visible all month.
Uranus is transiting 70 degrees high around sunset and thus well visible in Aries, perhaps even with naked eyes.

Neptune leaves the evening sky just like Jupiter. Jupiter will pass it on April 12 very narrowly but difficult to observe. This happens once every 13 years.

ONLINE – Astronomy Fundamentals Meeting – March 2022

Constellation of the Month:  

None

Presenter:

We do not have a constellation of the month for this meeting.

Main Presentation:  

Uncommon Star Types Like Pulsars

Presenter:  ???

Due to a lack of attendees, our main topic from last month has been reschedule to this month. Our discussion will be a continuation of our recent topic on Star classification, and cover uncommon star types like pulsars.