#44 -Terrestrial Planets Rule the Evening - Lunar Water Beads - & 7 More Stories
TGT 4/1/23: This Just In--Jupiter Storms + Probe, Neptune's Trojans, Moon's Water Beads; Sky Planning--Terrestrials Rule The Evening; Astro in Everyday Life--Sweet and Tasty! TGT Going on Hold+Survey
Cover Photo - Jovian Storms
In This Issue:
Cover Photo — Jovian Storms
Welcome to Issue 44!
Personal Note and TGT Going on Hold
This Just In —
* The Red Trojans of Neptune
* Jupiter’s Crazy Clouds, and JUICE (Cover Story)
* Thirsty? Have a Glass of Sea of Tranquility Glass Beads!Sky Planning Calendar —
* Moon-Gazing - Luna Glides Uncontested Through the Skies
* Observing—Plan-et - Mars Makes Like a Newt With Castor and Pollux; Venus Shines by the Pleiades; Mercury Glows in the Evening Dark
* For the Future—April’s Hybrid Eclipse; April Lyrid Meteor Shower Details
* Border Crossings - Cooking Fish, or Ram?Astronomy in Everyday Life - Astronomy is a Sweet Science
Welcome to The Galactic Times Newsletter-Inbox Magazine #44 !
This will be the last Galactic Times newsletter for a while. Yours truly is taking a medical leave starting shortly after publication and will be convalescing for at least a couple of months. See the Personal Note below about that, and about a survey I’d really love you, my Readers, to take about some books I’d like to start/finish while on leave, and about some likely changes to this and my other newsletters.
Meanwhile, evening skies will be fun to watch! No Moon to interfere, Venus a shining beacon hanging out with the Seven Sisters (an interesting contest, which are more photogenic, the goddess of beauty or the Sisters? Don’t want to get in between THOSE contestants!), and Mercury below them both and still up when twilight ends! Mars not only leaves Taurus the Bull to the ladies but goes to hang out with the guys, Castor and Pollux. Not only that, but he gives you a night-by-night challenge—can you eyeball its brightness and figure out when its (fading) brightness matches both Twins stars??
Right after issue end-date, a nice meteor shower, the Lyrids, adds to the evenings. It might even be warm enough in some places to watch them, again, with no interfering Moon. Readers in Guam, enjoy the partial eclipse coming up three days earlier….
In This Just In, more news that makes a better chance for successful living on the Moon. Jupiter’s getting stormy and a new mission to there launches this month. Neptune gets some more Trojans under its control, and they come from two different ‘troops’.
Finally, I leave…you…with proof that astronomy is a tasty sweet subject, in Astronomy in Everyday Life.
Enjoy!
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Publisher — Dr. Larry Krumenaker Email: newsletter@thegalactictimes.com
Personal Note and TGT Going on Hold
Getting right to the point, I am looking at a few months of surgical convalescence, beginning in ~1.5 weeks and lasting into June or possibly longer, and I am thinking of working on some books while I am mostly horizontal and immobile. Some of these are books already-in-progress; others are books I could start assembling from the mass of materials that have accumulated from two years of writing The Galactic Times and The Classroom Astronomer newsletters and five years of the TCA Magazines, many years of teaching, and even more articles written for others since the early 1990's.
To be most effective, I’d like to hear from you on what books (of the titles I’m thinking of) you think would be of interest to YOU, and which you think would be of interest to a larger audience of astronomy teachers or astronomy enthusiasts or mass audiences. Of course I have my own ideas but it is good to have outside input.
The link below will send you to a completely anonymous survey, unless you’d like to leave your email address to be alerted when a book title becomes available for advance purchase at a discount. For a financial incentive, for completing the survey, even anonymously, you will earn a discount e-coupon worth 30% off purchases at the Hermograph Press Online Store, between now and April 30th! Books, educational materials, T-shirts, etc, on astronomy education and historical tourism! [April, the first full month of spring, is a really good time for a Sundial T-shirt, yes?]
This survey of 7 titles, plus one series of titles and one title with two formats, should take about ten minutes. Some of the books are designed for teachers and if you think teachers might like them, mark them so. As for the rest, use your judgement to consider them for yourself, enthusiasts, and “mass markets.”
Mostly, you only have to read the book descriptions and then click boxes if you think you or others would find the book worth buying/reading, and in what format(s), ebook and/or print book. Click any or all answers on each book; don't click any answers (i..e. skip them) if you don't find them of interest to you or think they won't be to others. There will be some tail-end other tasks—ranking some choices, a free comment box if you choose to make some on the books, newsletters, etc., and a choice to be notified if any of the books you like are finally available.
If you are interested in doing the Book Survey, click the link below. The survey will close on April 7th!
Thank you all again for being subscribers to The Galactic Times and (hopefully) for taking the Survey. It is likely that TGT will come back with a paid option that will include some of The Classroom Astronomer and Galactic Times InDepth features there, and a few TCA columns of a general nature will become part of the free TGT issues.
Dr. Larry Krumenaker
This Just In —
* The Red Trojans of Neptune
While the title may sound like this is a legend from Greek mythology, we are really talking about asteroids trapped into servitude by the last planet, Neptune.
Each planet in our solar system has two zones in its orbital path that are 60-degrees in front of it and behind it where solar system debris—asteroids—can be permanently held enthralled by solar and planetary gravities. Not all planets are so minded; Mercury and Venus don’t have any such attendants but the gas giant worlds have many. Far away Neptune has 18 under its control.
An international team of scientists observed these Neptunian Trojans, between 50 and 100 km in size, six more than previously known, using cameras on the Palomar Observatory telescope in California, the Gemini North and South telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, and the Keck Telescope in Hawaii. It turned out that several Trojans were much redder than most asteroids, and also redder when compared with other asteroids in this group looked at previously. Redder asteroids are expected to have formed much further from the Sun; one population of these is known as the Cold Classical trans-Neptunian objects found beyond the orbit of Pluto, at around 6 billion kilometers from the Sun. The newly observed Neptunian Trojans are also unlike Jupiter’s Trojans, which are typically more neutral in color.
“The redness of the asteroids implies that they contain a higher proportion of more volatile ices such as ammonia and methanol. These are extremely sensitive to heat, and can rapidly transform into gas if the temperature rises, so are more stable at large distances from the Sun,” says the report. Lead author Dr. Bryce Bolin suggests the existence of a transition zone between more neutral colored and redder objects. The redder Neptunian asteroids may have formed beyond this transition boundary before being captured into the orbit of Neptune. The Neptunian Trojans would have been captured into the same orbit as the planet Neptune as the ice giant planet migrated from the inner solar system to where it is now, some 4.5 billion kilometers from the Sun.
The location of the asteroids at the same orbital distance as Neptune also implies that they are stable on timescales comparable to the age of the Solar System. They effectively act as a time-capsule, recording the initial conditions of the Solar System.
The research is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.
* Jupiter’s Crazy Clouds, and JUICE
Don’t drag out your telescopes right now, the giant planet is behind the Sun. Which is too bad because its atmosphere has decided to go stir-crazy.
It is not uncommon on Earth during the height of the Northern Hemisphere hurricane season to see an array of spiral-armed storms lined up from Africa to the Gulf of Mexico, or even from the Americas across the Date Line to the Asian shores. It is rather unusual to see a line of ‘storms’ in Jupiter’s Northern Hemisphere, being an array of cyclones and anticyclones (see the left photo in this issue’s Cover Photo, a quarter of the way from the top of Jupiter). In the Hubble photograph these storms are marching around the planet, at least for a time. Like matter and antimatter, if they merge they don’t quietly cancel out, they could form into a larger more dynamic spot, like the Great Red Spot. Speaking of which, in the right side photo, notice the splash of clouds heading towards the upper left of the GRS. Nobody is quite sure what is going on there….
Meanwhile, on April 13th, just two days after solar conjunction as seen from Earth, the latest probe to the planet, JUICE, will be launched. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) JUpiter Icy Moons Explorer will study the giant gaseous planet and the complex environment of Jupiter in depth. It will explore the wider Jovian system as a model for gas giants throughout the Universe. JUICE will also spend a lot of time exploring its three large oceanic moons - Callisto, Europa and most notably Ganymede - with a suite of ten unique scientific instruments, a radio interferometry experiment and a radiation monitor. The mission will analyze these moons both as planetary objects and as possible habitats. In addition, it will be the first spacecraft to ever orbit a moon other than our own - namely Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede.
* Thirsty? Have a Glass of Sea of Tranquility Glass Beads!
Okay, we’ve been going with the idea that lunar bases needed to be at the lunar poles in order to tap (literally) into what little lunar water may be frozen there. But what if you want to explore the equatorial areas? The past two decades of lunar exploration have seen the detection of substantial quantities of water on the Moon’s surface. Oh? Where? It has been proposed that a hydrated layer exists at depth in lunar soils, buffering a water cycle on the Moon globally. However, a reservoir has yet to be identified for this hydrated layer.
The Chinese Chang-e mission might have just solved that problem. There are numerous impact glass beads all over lunar soils and those extracted from lunar soils returned by the Chang’e-5 mission seem to have preserved hydration signatures and they display water abundance profiles consistent with getting their hydrogen from the inward solar wind-derived water. With timescales of less than 15 years at a temperature of 360 K, such short diffusion timescales suggest an efficient water recharge mechanism that could sustain a lunar surface water cycle, and provide a Moon-wide source of water.
You can read the more detailed article in Nature Geoscience, by H. He et al, March 27th issue, entitled “A solar wind-derived water reservoir on the Moon hosted by impact glass beads.”
Sky Planning Calendar
Moon-Gazing
Moon passages by a star, planet or deep sky object are a good way to find a planet or other object if you’ve never located it before.
April 5 Full Moon…IF you are in US Central Daylight Time and points West. It is April 4th for the East Coast and further into the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe.
April 10 Find the summer red giant Antares, 1.8-degrees south of the waning Gibbous Moon.
April 13 Last Quarter Moon.
April 15 The Moon is nearest to us, at Perigee, making this a Super-Thick-Waning-Crescent Moon.
April 16 If you could see through the Earth, the Moon would be about 3-degrees south of Saturn. Alas, you’ll have to wait until just before morning twilight or afterwards for the two to appear, a little farther from each other. Find the Moon to the lower left of Saturn in the dawn.
Observing---Plan-et
==Terrestrial Planets Rule the Evening Skies==
Mercury is making its best Northern Hemisphere evening appearance of the year. Oddly, it starts April close to the Sun as a brilliant, magnitude -1, yet fades even as it gets farther from the Sun’s glare, maxing its elongation on the 11th. It actually is visible for a brief time low in the WNW sky **in the dark after twilight ends** from the 5th to the 16th.
Venus, on the other hand, is hard to miss in the evening sky, starting these two weeks in the sky as much as 1.5 hours after twilight ends, and two hours by midmonth.
PHOTO NIGHTS!! From the 7th to the 14th Venus is to the south side of the Pleiades star cluster, making a beautiful image to photograph.
On the other side of Earth’s orbit, the last terrestrial planet, Mars is giving us an easy observing project anyone can do, for fun or education.
Mars leaves Taurus the Bull behind and enters the constellation of Gemini the Twins. While bright, Mars has lost a lot of its winter months’ luster. It has faded to start April as magnitude 1.0, will end it as 1.3. When it leaves Gemini for Cancer in May, it will be mag 1.5.
Meanwhile, just above it in altitude (as in the celestial coordinate altitude, distance above the horizon, not height above the ground) are THE Twin stars, Pollux and Castor. Pollux is mag 1.1. Castor is mag 1.6.
The task is to compare Mars’ magnitude to the two stars and determine what dates Mars matches first Pollux, and then Castor. A graph of the magnitudes would be extra credit for students or scouts! Do this nightly and see how Mars fades right before your eyes!
==Giant Planets Dawning on Us. ==
Jupiter is on sabbatical and can’t be reached. It is in conjunction with the Sun on the 11th.
You’ll find Saturn in the dawn, three degrees from the Moon on the 16th. It will return to dark skies, rising before morning twilight every morning after the 6th.
For the Future
April Eclipse
A few days from the end of this issue, April 20th, the first eclipse of any kind for 2023 occurs, a hybrid solar, i.e. a combination of total and annular, where part of the track of the Moon’s shadow completely covers the Sun, and part of it….doesn’t.
This eclipse is mostly total, only the first and last few minutes of shadow track are annular, and these are over Indian and Pacific Oceans. In fact, most of the eclipse is over water. It touches land primarily in just three places, two in the East Indies and one tiny bit in far northwest Australia. For the latter, you’d have to go to Cape Range National Park, or the port city of Exmoor. That’s pretty much it. But go for it, GT Australian subscribers!
US territories? Pretty much the only place I could find where Americans can go and watch it without a passport or visa (other than for getting on the plane) was Guam, for a partial eclipse, 73%. We have our next North American eclipse show in October.
April Meteors
The peak of the April Lyrids, the first major shower since the first week of January, may actually be worth a peek. The shower max actually occurs at 8 PM Central Daylight Time on April 23rd. That’s about 1-2 hours before Vega, the brightest star in Lyra, and for that matter, the whole constellation of Lyra the Lyre (harp), even crawls over the northeast horizon. The shower lasts for 1.3 days, so the .65 days after the peak means basically all of the night of the 23-24th. It is a moderate shower, 20 per hour if Lyra were overhead, so it will start slow and remain slow but steady most of the night. There will be no Moon to do any damage to your ability to see meteors at all so this is a pretty good opportunity to see some good long meteor streaks across the sky coming out of the Northeast, so look anywhere BUT in that direction. Near overhead is the best.
Border Crossings
A total mismatch. The Sun is in Pisces these two weeks cooking the Fishes. The newspapers thinks it is cooking Ram meat in Aries. No crossings this time frame.
Astronomy in Everyday Life
==Proof astronomy is a sweet science. Tasty treats seen in the local grocery store.==
For kids, maybe turn this into a lesson. Name the celestial object, collect the cupcake?
And these below came in two varieties. One, the regular old red not-so-giants…..second, different colored ones…reds, yellows, greens, oranges, etc. At least you could make some, um, constellations of ‘stars’ and show spectral types, to a degree? But as the label says, not too low a degree…..
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