KC AstroNews Nov 2002

LEONIDS FAREWELL SPECIAL

• LEONIDS - THE LAST HURRAH
• LUNAR ECLIPSE
• PLANETS IN MULTIPLE STAR SYSTEMS
• MOST MAGNETIC EVER
• LARGEST VOLCANIC ERUPTION
• MARKETING IN ORBIT

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Up This Month
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Look up!

The last hurrah of the Leonids !!!

No, they are not going away completely, but this year will be the last chance in your lifetime to see a Leonid METEOR STORM with thousands of shooting stars per hour.

On the night of November 18 and the morning of November 19, Earth collides head-on with two Leonid dust trails. Those of you eagerly awaiting this light have two big questions on your mind:
* how many shooting stars per hour?
* when is the peak?

Learn all about the Leonids - read the article "LEONIDS - THE LAST HURRAH" below and visit AstroEvent!

LUNAR ECLIPSE

Another event this week!

This Wednesday November 20 folks in the Eastern and Central United States time zones will see the full Moon begin to pass through the penumbra of Earth's shadow around 5:32 p.m. CST.

In the Mountain and Pacific time zones, the Moon will be in eclipse as it rises. The time of greatest eclipse is 7:46 p.m. CST.

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ASTROTIP

LEONIDS - THE LAST HURRAH

This is probably the last chance in your life to see a Leonid METEOR STORM. That's not just a meteor shower with 40 or 50 meteors per hour, but a barrage of meteors that can look like a fireworks display with thousands of meteors per hour! Those of you who witnessed this last year know that this is truly an event of a lifetime!

Meteor streams are dust particles spread like enormous highways along the orbit of a comet. The Leonid meteors are castoffs from Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. We become aware of only those particles that actually strike our atmosphere when Earth plows through the stream. The geometry of this encounter makes the debris from Temple-Tuttle appear around November 18th each year, radiating from the direction of the Sickle of the constellation Leo; hence the name "Leonids."

Normally this stream produces no more than about 10 meteors per hour. But that’s just an average Leonid shower. Every third of a century, for several Novembers in a row, there's the chance that the Leonids will put on a truly prolific showing. There can be hundreds or even thousands of shooting stars per hour. In fact, we're at the END of this window of potential Leonid storms right now.

The curtain on the current Leonid saga rose in November 1998, just eight months after Comet Tempel-Tuttle passed perihelion. On the night of November 16-17 that year, practically the whole world witnessed a remarkable and unexpected 18-hour bombardment of brilliant fireballs, at times numbering up to a few hundred per hour. In 1999 fewer fireballs were seen, but they were replaced by a true storm of fainter Leonids with rates reaching one per second over Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Then in 2001, not one but two Leonid storms materialized.

And now, in 2002, we prepare for what indeed will be the grand finale. It’s one final opportunity to see Leonid displays capable of producing rates in excess of 1,000 per hour - one last chance, for probably a very long time, to see a Leonid storm.

THAT DEVIL MOON!
A HUGE drawback for all prospective Leonid observers this year is the Moon. It will be only hours from reaching full phase, making observing conditions the worst possible!

Is the last Leonid storm of this current sequence doomed to be washed out by the glare of Moonlight? Moonlight will certainly wash out the fainter meteors. Depending on how hazy your sky is, expect to lose most Leonids dimmer than about 3rd magnitude. This is unfortunate, but it is NOT a disaster because the Leonids also include many bright meteors.

WHEN TO LOOK?
The peak is on the morning of November 19. Leonid storms have narrow periods of high activity, only an hour or so long. The storm’s most spectacular part may last only 10 or 15 minutes, with meteors coming in brief bursts. For backyard sky gazers the proper course of action is simple — be outdoors and be ready.

Current predictions call for TWO storm peaks in 2002.

The first one peaks about 4:00 Universal Time (that's the same as GMT) on November 19th; observers in western Africa, western and central Europe, and on the east coast of North America will be well positioned to catch this storm. Folks in Central Europe should set their alarm for 4 AM and catch the first peak some time before 5 AM.

The second peaks is 6.5 hours later, favoring viewers throughout North America shortly before dawn. So on the West Coast of the USA the best time to be out is between 2 and 3 AM on the morning of November 19. On the East Coast the hours from 4 AM to just before dawn are best.

Eager to learn more? Try this link:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/10may_leonids-2002.htm

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SETI@home uses the largest telescope in the world, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, to continuously scan the sky for radio signals.

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DISTANT DISCOVERIES

PLANETS IN MULTIPLE STAR SYSTEMS

While our Sun wanders through the galaxy with only its retinue of planets, comets and asteroids in tow, most of its siblings are found in multiple star systems. Systems with two, three or more stars are rather common. Indeed, our closest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, is a triple system with two stars (one similar to our own Sun) orbiting rather close to one another, with a smaller red dwarf star circling a comparatively greater distance away.

While nearly a hundred extrasolar planets have been found to date, they have been found orbiting either single stars, or within multiple systems where the main stars are very far apart. As such, the stars in these multiple systems are far enough apart so as to be acting more-or-less independent from one another with respect to the objects that orbit them.

When stars get much closer to one another, the gravitational dynamics get more complex. Many astronomers had even wondered whether such star systems would even allow planets to form, much less remain in stable orbits for long periods of time. This led to some doubt that the nearest star system — Alpha Centauri — could have planets.

Astronomers with the McDonald Observatory Planet Search Project have discovered a planet 1.76 times the size of Jupiter orbiting the larger star of the binary star system Gamma Cephei once every 2.5 years. The planet orbits at a distance slightly greater than the orbit of Mars around our Sun. The Gamma Cephei star system is located 45 light-years from ours in the constellation Cepheus.

The primary star is 1.59 times as massive as our Sun while its much smaller companion orbits 25 to 30 A.U. away — a hundred times closer than has been previously observed in planet-bearing multiple stars systems. (An A.U. is an "Astronomical Unit," the distance of the Earth from the Sun — approx. 93 million miles.)

Since stable orbits — and stable environmental conditions — for billions of years are probably required for intelligent life to evolve on a planet, this question has a direct bearing on the number of inhabited worlds we can expect to find. While the planet in the Gamma Cephei system is much, much larger than our own, it does provide proof that planets can reside in close binary systems for long periods of time.

MOST MAGNETIC EVER

The most magnetic object known in the Universe was found by measuring a magnetic field around a peculiar neutron star first observed nearly 25 years ago.

By following the fate of a tiny proton whipping about at near light speed close to the neutron star with NASA's Rossi X-ray Explorer satellite, scientists calculated this star's magnetic field to be up to 10 times more powerful than previously thought -- with a force strong enough to slow a steel locomotive from as far away as the Moon.

This object, named SGR 1806-20, is one of only ten unusual neutron stars classified as magnetars, thousands of times more magnetic than ordinary neutron stars and billions of times more magnetic than the most powerful magnets built on Earth.

The strength of its magnetic field is approximately a million billion (10^15) Gauss. Other magnetars could be just as magnetic, although direct measurements have not yet been made. The Sun's average magnetic field (or dipole), in comparison, varies between 1 and 5 Gauss.

FAR OUT FACTS

LARGEST VOLCANIC ERUPTION

Astronomers detected an major eruption on Jupiter's Moon Io. It is the largest ever seen in our entire solar system.

The eruption was spotted from the Keck II telescope in Hawaii, using its adaptive optics system, which corrects for the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere.

A white region - the eruption -- was photographed in February 2001 and the data was recently analyzed.

The eruption on Io was 6,500 times larger than the 1992 eruption of Sicily's Mt. Etna.

MARKETING IN ORBIT

It's one small step for marketing! The European Space Agency (ESA) has hired a public relations firm to raise commercial demand for using the International Space Station (ISS) - even using the complex for entertainment and tourism.

ESA has appointed Ogilvy Brand Relations of Brussels, Belgium to promote using the European portions of the ISS for marketing, sponsorship, and other less conventional space activities.

In the past, human spaceflight has, wrongly, retained an exotic and elitist image. With the ISS, this is changing. Human spaceflight will become an everyday experience. The station offers companies and organizations the opportunity, for the first time, to exploit manned spaceflight for commercial purposes. By opening a unit exclusively devoted to marketing the station's facilities, ESA is leading the ISS commercialization effort.

Ogilvy Brand Relations will help ESA develop the station's brand image and design a communications strategy to put the ISS in the public eye in Europe and to raise its potential among the European business community.

Not only will the communications program focus on research and development in fields of health, biotechnology, environment, food, and new materials. It will also reach out to newer kinds of space entrepreneurs, active in marketing, entertainment and tourism.

AstroNews is an electronic newsletter by Kahl Consultants. Stay abreast of astronomy and extraterrestrial news.  Browse the AstroNews Archives.

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My god! It's full of stars!