2023 Newsletters

IDAHO FALLS ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY May Newsletter April 29 2023

     Well, May is just about upon us. Summertimes are nice. The day's are longer. Camping and picnicking are in order. However, for the amateur astronomer, it means waiting longer for the dark night sky to happen.

     One thing I really enjoyed was the star parties we used to have at Craters of The Moon National Park. We got to camp out, for free, with our scopes and go to bed when we wanted to and wake up when the Sun did. I got some of my best astrophotos around 2 and 3am. I really miss that dark, dark sky out there.

May 6: Well, first off we have the Eta Aquarid meteor shower that will peak. However, the Moon will be just past full and will all but wipe out the display.

     The next following evenings and mornings there will be some pairing of the Moon being fairly close to a bright star or one of the planets. They are nice to look at. If you are aware of them and someone asks you, the next day, if you noticed them, you can reply, "yes, that was Jupiter, or Venus, or what ever". That will impress them of your heavenly knowledge.

     I didn't note any because the distance between the two bodies was several degrees apart. The Moon is 1/2 degree wide, so when Mars and the star Pollux will be 5 degrees apart, that would be like 10 Moon diameters. That may be pretty, but no big deal if you miss it.

May 17: If you're an early riser before sunrise, which will be at 6 am, you will see a razor thin crescent phase Moon rising with Jupiter about to be covered by the Moon. Moon rise for Idaho Falls on the 17th will be at 5am.

     At 5:29 am, Jupiter will be touching the top edge of the Moon's razer thin phase as the Moon begins to cover Jupiter. At 5:40am Jupiter is 1/2 gone. 5:42am it is 3/4 gone. 5;50am Jupiter is completely hidden. Jupiter will begin to emerge, as the Moon finishes sliding over the planet, at 6:21am. With the Sun already up by then, the sky will be too bright to observe either one at that time.

     Did any of you happen to see the Northern Lights a few days ago? I didn't know about it until the next day. I went out that evening but haze and neighbors lights said "no go". I can remember back, when I was in high school, I used to listen to a channel on my shortwave radio that gave a daily report, at 15 minutes after the hour, on the Sun's activity and posibility of auroras coming up.

     I just checked online and there are a lot of sights with data, plus maps to show what areas would be effected and solar activity and by how much. Just google "today's solar activity" and see if you'd find anything to save on your PC favorites, so as to check on from time to time. With the Sun's solar activity ramping up on flares and on sunspots, we could get a heads-up on some interesting things happening on our closest star. Don't forget the sun filter.

     Many decades ago I wanted to see the sun on my first telescope and I didn't know about filters. I held a piece of paper behind the eyepiece so I could see the image and focus the scope. Wow, what a blaze. You live and learn, right?

Welcome to May with clearer skies and hopefully no forest fires. See you all at the next IFAS meeting on May 16. Ron Pugh

IDAHO FALLS ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY April News Letter March 29 2023

Here we are in Spring Time, ( I thought ). I’m looking forward to nicer telescope viewing times. Were you able to see Ceres going over the top of galaxy M-100? It was nice to be able to stream it online. I can remember about 63 years ago when I had the chance to photograph Ceres with my new homemade 6 inch scope. I didn’t know which star was the asteroid so I took one shot of the area it should have been in. The next night I did the same.

I compared the 2 photos and the star that moved was Ceres.

Well it’s April now and here’s what the sky has to offer us.

April 11 Mercury reaches it’s greatest elongation from the Sun and has it’s best apparition for 2023. It shines at -0.2 magnitude. 45 minutes after sunset it is still 10 degrees above the Western horizon. It will stay there for another 10 days, fading rapidly, though, almost 5 times fainter than on the 11th.

April 14 Mars, now shining at 1.2 magnitude is having a conjunction with Epsilon Geminorum, otherwise known as Mebsuta. That’s a mouthful. That event is in the constellation Gemini. Pollux and Castor are the 2 bright stars at their heads. Go down from Castor, on the right, to two fairly bright stars. The 2nd will be Mebsuta. They will be the closest at noon, our time, and by dark Mars will have traveled a little past but will still be quite close. You’ll have no problem seeing the pair without optical aid. If you miss it, you can see them this close again in 2055.

April 20 It’s always a beautiful site to see a razor thin phase of the moon, just after new. Face west-northwest 30 minutes after sunset and catch a new moon 23 hours old and 0.8% lit. Pretty.

April 22 and 23 Are you ready for a meteor shower? OK. Here we go. Conditions could not be better for the annual Lyrids. They will peak on the nights of April 22-23. They will radiate out in all directions from the constellation of Hercules, about 8 degrees southwest of the bright star Vega, which is in the constellation of Lyra. Vega will rise and be visible in the northeast around 10 pm. Best viewing of the Lyrids is from 2am to 4:30am. The crescent Moon will only be 9% illuminated and will set before midnight. The shower will be best viewed on the evening of the 23rd when the radiant is the highest up in the sky before dawn.

Under dark skies you can expect about 15 meteors per hour. That’s a pretty mild amount. Lyrids generally don’t have lingering trails, like the Perseids do.

An interesting point of history on the Lyrids. They come from the dust released by Comet Thatcher. It’s a long period comet that circles the Sun every 415 years. Another interesting fact is that the Lyrids have been observed for more than 2700 years. Astronomers suggest that the possibility exists that Chinese Astronomers first recorded the shower as far back as 687 BC.

Who knows? I’m not going to worry about it, Just go out and count a few meteors. Enjoy.

Don’t give up. Keep looking up. The stars up there are just as anxious to see us as we are to see them. Ron Pugh

Greetings fellow IFAS members.                                                                     Feb  27, 2023

            March is just around the corner.  I can’t wait for Spring weather so I can start some veggy plants in our greenhouse. Right now it is a “white” house and I can’t see the door for all the snow.

            I did get a so so picture of comet ZHF in February.  Nothing to bragg about and not worth staying out for 2 hours at 9 degrees and spending the last 30 minutes on my back in the snow.  But I DO love the sky when it’s clear.  As for comets, next one is for late May into June.  I’ll get you some heads-up when the time gets closer.

            March is a little lacking on night sky objects – and probably clear skies too.  But anyway, let’s start on March 1st.  If you’ve been watching Jupiter and Venus in the West after sunset lately, you have noticed they are getting closer together.  Jupiter is setting, as it will be going behind the Sun and reappearing in the morning sky.  Venus is climbing up, heading to the East.  The two planets will pass each other by ½ degree March 1st, one hour after sunset.  It will be a striking sight. Online weather predicts clear. The two planets pass each other usually once a year, but not this close very often.  A conjunction as good as this one won’t happen again until 2027.

            If you want to try an experiment, try catching them in daylight hours, like 1 or 2 PM.  Put the sun behind the edge of your house, to hide the glare, then look a little to the East on the same track that the sun is on. You can easily see Venus when your eyes get focused.  Binoculars will speed it up finding where the planet is, then look with your naked eyes and there it is.  With the binoculars, Jupiter should also show up pretty easily.  It will be more of a challenge to see it with just your naked eyes.  I couldn’t do it but my wife saw Jupiter and told me where it was.  I used the binoculars on the spot she said, and sure enough, she was right.  I have found that if there was a plane or bird, or even a cloud up there to focus your eye on first, it would be very easy.  Trying to focus on nothing but blank sky is almost impossible for me.

            The only other thing that might interest you is the largest asteroid, Ceres.  It is passing earth above Coma Berenices, a constellation which has a huge number of galaxies in it.  It is a constellation that sits in the South in the springtime.  Right now, it is just rising between the East and North East.  If you have a computerized scope it will be easier to find.  On March 12, Ceres will be almost touching the 10th magnitude galaxy M-91.  Later in the month, it will cut right through the middle of the 9.3 magnitude galaxy, M-100.

            Decades ago I took pictures of Ceres through my homemade 6” Newtonian scope.  I found out about where it was supposed to be passing.  I set up the scope and took a shot of the area.  Three days later, I took another shot of the very same place.  “Waw  La”,  one of the stars had moved.  I found my asteroid. 

            Ceres is at opposition on March 21 and will be 6.9 magnitude.  This is the brightest apparition in five years.  On opposition day Ceres will be  ONLY  148.8 million miles from earth.  It won’t  be this bright, or close again until 2032.

            It might be kind of fun that if you can locate M-100, take a shot a couple of days apart and see if you can find a “star” that moved.  Take a wide field shot.  It will be in there and plain to see because of it’s brightness.  If it isn’t there, all is not lost, because you probably now have a nice photo of  M-100 galaxy.

Have a great March.  I’ll look forward to seeing you at our next March 21st meeting.

                                                     Clouds or no clouds,  ----  I’m still looking up.           Ron

Greetings fellow IFAS members.                                                                 Jan  28, 2023

Well, here we are in a new year and January is all but gone.  And so are our clear skies.  I didn’t have any Comet ZTF poking through the clouds yet.  I guess there is still time since it will be closest to earth on February 2nd but it won’t be by any bright star, so as to know where to look for it at that time.

Did you have any luck with the Quadrantid meteor shower on January 4th?  I went out several times for 2 nights on both sides of the 4th and all I saw was goose bumps.  The moon was too bright also.

Concerning Comet ZTF: There is still a chance to see the comet.  On the evening of Feb 11, ZTF will have just had a close pass by Capella, the first magnitude star in Auriga.  It will then be getting very, very close to Mars in the North Eastern sky. They should both be in the same field of view in binoculars or a wide field telephoto.  9 pm would be a good time to start looking in the North East.  The moon doesn’t rise until 12:15am so we will have a dark sky until then.

 As for the proximity of Mars and the comet - Feb 10 comet ZTF will be below and to the right of Mars, on the 11th it is just two Moon-widths to the right of Mars and on the 12th the comet is just above and to the right of Mars.  If the weather cooperates on any of those nights I’d like to try a shot of both Mars and the comet together.

Looking ahead on this year, concerning passing comets, there are several that will be going by.  This month 96P/Machholz will be passing us too close to the sun for us to see an 8th magnitude object.  In late June and early July, Comet Lemon will be 8th magnitude for us as it passes low, in pre-dawn eastern skies.  103P/Hartley will be 10th magnitude in mid-August near Andromeda and 8th magnitude late September into Gemini.  It should be the brightest for us before dawn as it will be straight overhead at 8th or brighter magnitude.  It should stay that bright, or brighter, through early December.  October we get 2P/Encke just before dawn, low in the East.  It will be 10th magnitude brightening to 8, but so will the sunrise, with too much light. December, a new periodic comet with a return every  6.6 years, 62P/Tsuchinshan, will be in the late December morning sky at 8 magnitude.

It looks like no comets will be naked eye for the rest of the year.  To be naked eye, an object needs to be down to 6th magnitude or brighter and be out in the country with no lights near by.

You don’t have to keep track of this comet list.  I will give you a heads-up on a future newsletter during that month that it will appear, along with any new pertinent information that is available.

In closing, I’d like to alert you to Wednesday evening, February 22, one hour after sunset, a beautiful thin crescent moon will have pulled up to Jupiter, about one degree apart.  It will be a beautiful site.  You might even see Venus that is just below the pair, if it hasn’t set already. I putting that on my calendar so I won’t forget.   

We had a great group at our last meeting, January 17th.  I counted 12.  Part of them are now new club members and some of the visitors are thinking about joining.     Waaa Hue ! ! !

Remember ---- Keep looking up.  One of these times the clouds won’t be there.     Ron Pugh