North Mountain Park Visitor Center Star Party 4/26

North Mountain Park Visitor Center Star Party 4/26 5pm to 9:30pm

46 public are RSVP'd for this event thus far.

Your help, with your telescope (or in Mike's case- Meteorites) is needed!!!

RSVP your attendance and / or help is requested!!!

Thanks

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Terri, Events Coordinator
Email: Events@PASAz.org
Phoenix Astronomical Society

German schoolboy, 13, corrects NASA's asteroid figures: paper

Received this link from Matt Kohl.
Very interesting stuff.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080415/sc_afp/spaceastronomygermany_080415214429

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g6fIS_34_CxE8-vcC5GvbjD4MIOQ

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Terri, Events Coordinator
Email: Events@PASAz.org
Phoenix Astronomical Society

Link of photos of Mayer event

Check out this link
It has a cool slide show of the event we just did at Mayer 4/12
http://tinyurl.com/3hoc44
Enjoy!
Terri

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Terri, Events Coordinator
Email: Events@PASAz.org
Phoenix Astronomical Society

Seminar: Cosmic Recycling Center Apr 17th ASU

Seminar: Matter Between the Stars

There is an upcoming seminar on ASU's Tempe Campus
which may interest your organization. Feel free to forward
this to your members.

Title: Cosmic Recycling Center: Matter Between
the Stars (see below for abstract)
Speaker: Dr Helene Dickel (see below for bio)
Date: Thur April 17th
Location: PS 152
Refreshments: 5:30 pm
Seminar: 6:00 pm
Audience: General public





Seminar Abstract
The space between the stars is not a perfect vacuum but contains
a small amount of hydrogen plus various contaminating atoms and
molecules. This material is collected into giant cloud complexes.
Although typical densities are only a few particles per cubic centimeter,
the volumes are so vast that the clouds often contain several thousand
times the mass of the sun. Such regions are continually in violent activity -
material in some spots is contracting to create brand new stars, other clouds
are bursting apart at thousands of kilometers per second from the sites of
exploding stars, and many areas are being heated and disturbed by the
excitation of starlight and interstellar shock waves. We shall describe the
results of recent research which is beginning to see order in this chaos: old
stars throw off heavy elements which block energy transfer, enhancing the
process of star formation. The new stars in turn excite their surroundings
and eventually spew their material back into the interstellar medium to
complete the cycle.

Speaker Biography
Dr. Hélène R. Dickel received her A.B. in mathematics from Mount Holyoke
College in 1959 and her Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Michigan
in 1964. She is currently an Emerita Research Professor of Astronomy at the
University of Illinois and an Adjunct Professor in the Physics and Astronomy
Department of the University of New Mexico. She co-discovered the first
formaldehyde maser in 1979 and is a pioneer in radio molecular spectroscopy
using radio aperture synthesis techniques, including making some of the first
images of molecular distributions with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio
Telescope in the Netherlands, the Very Large Array of Radio Telescopes
of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and the millimeter array of the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association. She is now involved with the Long
Wavelength Array project of the University of New Mexico. Prof. Dickel is
the author of over 100 publications. Recent research includes radiative
transfer modeling of star-forming regions.

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Terri, Events Coordinator
Email: Events@PASAz.org
Phoenix Astronomical Society

Three new photo pages ready to be viewed!

Please visit these new links, also seen on the right column of
the PAS Digest Blog http://pasaz-digest.blogspot.com/ of our
three most current events. Reviews of these events will be in
the May issue of the PAStimes Newsletter due to be posted this
Sunday 4/20.

Please visit our Mayer event 4/12 at:
http://tinyurl.com/3sdte9

Please visit our PVCC Indoor event 4/10 at:
http://tinyurl.com/4u8y9c

Please visit our Sunset Ridge event 4/11 at:
http://tinyurl.com/4umf2n

Have a super Monday!!!

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Terri, Events Coordinator
Email: Events@PASAz.org
Phoenix Astronomical Society

ISS Flyover - Monday 4/14

Many thanks to Tom for this info:

On Monday, April 14, there will be an
excellent pass of the
International Space Station over Phoenix.
The ISS reaches will appear low in the
northwest at 7:33 p.m., and pass nearly
through the zenith.  It will
disappear into the earth's shadow at 7:38,
when it will be low in the
southeast.

Since the moon is in the sky, it was worth
checking the CalSky Web site
(http://www.calsky.com/) to see where the
Space Station could be seen
to pass in front of the moon.  Since the
ISS is only 300 miles away
when it's near the moon, parallax is significant;
the path width is only 3
miles.  Go outside that path, and you see only
a near miss.  It's best
to be on the centerline.

I plotted the centerline over the Valley, and
uploaded three images to
my Web site.

http://members.cox.net/tpolakis/astro/ISS_path_20080414.jpg

The first image is obviously an overview.  Scroll
down to the next two
to find better detail that will put you on the
centerline.  Note that
since the ISS travels at 1 degree per second,
it takes only a half
second to cross the moon's disc.

Provided you're willing to travel, events that
involve a silhouetted
ISS in front of the moon or sun are common. 
But this event is rare in
that the ISS will be illuminated brightly
during the transit.  Its
surface brightness will likely be quite a
bit higher than the sun.

How do I know that CalSky works?  I used it
this past Tuesday to
produce this image of the ISS transiting
the sun.

http://www.pbase.com/polakis/image/95364577

Tom

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Terri, Events Coordinator
Email: Events@PASAz.org
Phoenix Astronomical Society