European Association for Astronomy Education

Get Comfy the Perseids are Coming By Deirdre Kelleghan

Skellig Rocks image Bernard Kelleghan

About 24 years ago we had a holiday in a remote location in the west of Ireland. The house was high on a grassy ridge on Bolus Head looking over St Finian’s Bay in Co Kerry.  From this vantage point the 350 million year old Skellig Rocks rose like stegosaurus plates from the Atlantic Ocean. They were 16 kilometres out to sea but their jagged presence dominated the view to the South. It was early August and when darkness fell the predicable blinking of a distant lighthouse was the only manmade object discernable at sea level in the blackness.

One moonless evening, the sky was crystal clear, the summer triangle was dramatically intersected by our galaxies river of stars, so much more touchable than the suburban view.  I lay on the sun -dried grass looking for Perseids, one, two, three, four, five, six, plus several in the corner of my eye within a few minutes.

Time to take action, I went into the house and dragged out several mattresses, and encouraged (made) my family and our guests come outside, lie down and look up. I have a vague memory of sofa cushions being shoved through windows at one point to help the nest building.

As usual they thought I was mad, but soon they were seeing one of the year’s wonders in perhaps the darkest place on our island. We watched for satellites and my mattress guests (two families, four adults, four children) had never seen them either, so in between meteors we looked at these metal objects orbiting about 200 miles up.

A perfect viewing spot, we watched on a slight incline toward Perseus in North East, but the meteors came from what seemed like every direction. We watched many many meteors sizzling into our atmosphere in dots and dashes with long gaps and differing lengths.   The Perseids are the result of   tiny cast – off particles from Comet Swift Tuttle, shed as it passed through our solar system on its 130 year orbit of our sun.  Once a  year the Earth’s journey round our sun brings our atmosphere and these remnants into contact with each other .These particles hit the  atmosphere at huge speeds and burn up thereby offering the observer natural fireworks. Ancient elements revealed by their colours as they vaporise in front of our eyes.

I will never forget the perfection of the viewing, the WOW’s, the laughter, the joy of my family seeing this beautiful meteor shower for the first time ever.

Over the years since I have watched the Perseids from a deck chair in my garden, some escape the eye under hazy lights in suburbia. It is always the most exciting shower of the year and rarely disappoints. If you are lucky to have clear skies between now and mid August, no equipment is needed, just you and your eyeballs. If you want to fill out an observing sheet to record, the colour, length, duration, direction, location, hourly rate of your Perseids then they are easy to find and fill.

Post midnight is the best time to view.  The Earth has left the Belt of Venus long behind and has rolled toward the night were other suns populate the soft deep cloak of space.  The Perseids bring nano seconds, and multi seconds of wispy joy to all who take the time to look up from mattresses or other comfy viewing places.  My apologies, to holiday homes everywhere.

Introducing Meteorwatch 2010 Check this out , contribute your observations , images, learn a little and most of all have fun.

The Perseids in association with ,The British Astronomical Association lots of good informaton on observing, imaging , and you can contribute your own observations and enjoy The Perseids even more . You can follow Meteorwatch on Twitter via @VirtualAstro
Hope it is clear and you all have a lovely time lookng up.

What\’s Up for August 2010 – The Perseids from Jane Houston Jones

Source: ESA

ESA’s comet-chaser Rosetta is heading for a blind date with asteroid Lutetia. Rosetta does not yet know what Lutetia looks like but beautiful or otherwise the two will meet on 10 July. (read more)

The Summer School is not aimed at experts.

The preliminary theme of this Summer School is ” Teaching Astronomy at the beginning of the 21st century”.

The aim of the organisers is to promote very active participation and the exchange of ideas.

General Lectures will be presented by EAAE and IAU members.

Workshops will be held in two groups (each 30 participants).

The objective of WS is to offer teachers very practical and didactic presentations presented by EAAE and IAU members.

Observation sessions can be held during the Summer School depending on the weather.

The goal is to introduce the participants to all types of astronomical observations.

The course will offer participants special visit to the Royal Astronomy Observatory of San Fernando – Cadiz.

The language of the Summer School is Spanish.

Summer School chair: Amalia Williart (member of UNED and EAAE) and chair Rosa M. Ros (Member EAAE and IAU)

e-mail: awilliart@ccia.uned.es

Registration:

This Summer School is a COMENIUS course. The title is “Basic astronomy for everybody” and the code is ES 2010-260-001.

Pre-registration form.

Organisers: European Association for Astronomy Education (EAAE) International Astronomical Union (IAU) Astronomical Observatory and Planetarium-Varna, Regional Inspectorate of Ministry of education and science-Varna, Bulgarian Astronomical Society, Society of Innovative Teachers in Bulgaria, National Astronomical Observatory-Rozhen and Shumen University.

The Summer School is for school teachers interested in astronomy.

The Summer School is not aimed at experts.

The preliminary theme of this Summer School is ” Teaching Astronomy at the beginning of the 21st century”.

The aim of the organisers is to promote very active participation and the exchange of ideas.

General Lectures will be presented by EAAE and IAU members.

Workshops will be held in two groups (each 30 participants).

The objective of WS is to offer teachers very practical and didactic presentations presented by EAAE and IAU members.

Observation sessions can be held during the Summer School depending on the weather.

The goal is to introduce the participants to all types of astronomical observations.

The course will offer participants special observations using the Astronomical observatory and planetarium – Varna.

A poster session will be organised, to which participants are invited to contribute by presenting posters of particular astronomical activities.

The posters will be presented during the Summer School.

The language of the Summer School is Bulgarian.

On Saturday, April 24, the Global Star Party gives you an opportunity to bring your community’s attention into sharp focus on the sky, in concert with your brother and sister astronomers all over the world. All are invited, all will be excited. It is amazing that when we turn our gaze upward, all religious, national, geographical, cultural and political barriers fade into the darkness.

For more information, see here: www.astronomerswithoutborders.org

The EAAE has launched “Project Moonwalkers” and the first of the activities of this project is the Moonwalkers Contest. Here is the first challenge.

A photograph of a certain region of the Moon can be seen bellow.

Lunar region to be considered on the Moonwalkers Contest – April 2010. (Click on the image to see a bigger image)

Your task is to understand what type of objects are seen on the photograph, and how some of them are called. Find these objects on the Moon, observe them and calculate the sizes of some of them. Write an essay about the objects in this region of the Moon by including interesting scientific and historical information; describe the observations of some of the objects, and determine their sizes.

Send the essays to the following e-mail address: eaae.mmon@gmail.com until May 30th 2010. A jury of teachers-members of EAAE will read and judge your essays. The team of students and teacher who send the best essay will receive a special certificate from EAAE as the best Moonwalkers of the month.

Links:

Moonwalkers Project Website

If you are looking for something interesting today this coming weekend why not try a Messier Marathon. A Messier marathon is an attempt, usually organized by amateur astronomers, to find as many Messier objects as possible during one night. The Messier catalogue was compiled by French astronomer Charles Messier during the late 18th century and consists of 110 relatively bright deep sky objects (galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters). For more information take a look here www.richardbell.net/marathon.html or here http://deepskymap.org/ or even here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_marathon.

Happy hunting!

Image credit: SEDS, the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space,

If you are looking for something interesting today this coming weekend why not try a Messier Marathon. A Messier marathon is an attempt, usually organized by amateur astronomers, to find as many Messier objects as possible during one night. The Messier catalogue was compiled by French astronomer Charles Messier during the late 18th century and consists of 110 relatively bright deep sky objects (galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters). For more information take a look here www.richardbell.net/marathon.html or here http://deepskymap.org/ or even here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_marathon.

Happy hunting!

Image credit: SEDS, the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space,

Source: Nature

Simulation of a particle collision at ATLAS (CERN).Credit: Royal Institute of Technology (KTH).

Physicists have rooted through a morass of collisions to find the heaviest antimatter nucleus yet inside one of their particle accelerators.

Collisions between gold nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island, New York, have yielded heavy isotopes of antihydrogen that include a subatomic particle known as an antistrange quark, which is heavier than less unusual up or down quarks.(read more)

Now that the moon is out of the way in the evening sky, take the opportunity to find some of the late winter, early spring constellations. If you have been looking at the sky regularly and at the same time each night (21h00 is a good time), you will have noticed that Orion has slowly “drifted” to the right (west) and its position has been replaced by other stars. The constellations that will dominate this part of the sky for the next month or so are Gemini (The Twins), Cancer (The Crab) and Leo (The Lion), all three being constellations of the Zodiac.

All three are interesting, but not all are easy to find; Gemini is very easy to find, just look for the two bright stars called Castor and Pollux. They represent the heads of the twins, while fainter stars sketch out two bodies; although Cancer the Crab is one of the more famous constellations, it is mostly made of dim stars; Leo’s head and mane are formed by an asterism known as the Sickle which looks like a backward question mark, one of the brightest spring stars, Regulus being at the base of the question mark.

Try to find these constellations in the sky and over the next few postings will take a look at some of the interesting objects that can be seen with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope – double stars, star clusters, galaxies ……….

Following the deliberations approved at the EAAE GA held in Madrid in December 2009, Working Group 1 "Collaborative Projects" has began to work
in a new project related to the Eratosthenes Experiment.

A workshop about the Moon during the Summer School.

The President of the EAAE Rosa Maria Ros contacted directly with the Director of the Library of
Alexandria and made an agreement for a “videoconference” envolving institutions from EAAE member states and the Library of Alexandria. This idea was accepted and contact with Alexandria and
Syene will be guaranteed in order to see the Eratosthenes Experiment done on its original places.

WG1 Coordinator Charles-Henri will coordinate the mentioned videoconference and a marathon videoconference with institutions of all EAAE countries (more or less 20 schools, one for
each country).

The EAAE webmaster has created a special website for this new project and a database to gather the information sent from schools or other institutions that want to promote this event with young people all around the world.

The project intends to allow schools to reproduce the Eartothenes Experiment locally.

Materials that will help the schools to reproduce the Eratosthenes Experiment locally where created and are available on the website. Calculators to help schools confirm their calculations based on their measurements were created.These calculators can also be used by small children school to make the calculations that the children cannot do because the don’t have the mathematical skills to do them.

The Eratosthenes website also has links to several complementary Didactical Materials that can be used by teachers when preparing this project or for many other purposes.

A new EAAE member Antonio Perez Verde
will now be the webmaster of this project.

Another EAAE new member, Anna Artigas, will coordinate the project.

Links:
The EAAE Eratosthenes Project

Source: Universe Today

Itokawa, a dusty asteroid. Credit: JAXA.

Images sent back from space missions suggest that smaller asteroids are not pristine chunks of rock, but are instead covered in rubble that ranges in size from meter-sized boulders to flour-like dust. Indeed some asteroids appear to be up to 50% empty space, suggesting that they could be collections of rubble with no solid core.

But how do these asteroids form and evolve? And if we ever have to deflect one, to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs, how to do so without breaking it up, and making the danger far greater?

Johannes Diderik van der Waals (1837-1923), with a little help from Daniel Scheeres, Michael Swift, and colleagues, to the rescue. (Read more)

If you enjoy worldwide astronomy events, watch out for Global Astronomy Month (GAM), running throughout April of this year. The GAM motto is “One People, One Sky” and it’s an opportunity to connect with people around the world.

For more information take a look here: www.astronomerswithoutborders.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=99&layout=blog&Itemid=149
Image credit: Astronomer’s Without Borders

If you enjoy worldwide astronomy events, watch out for Global Astronomy Month (GAM), running throughout April of this year. The GAM motto is “One People, One Sky” and it’s an opportunity to connect with people around the world.

For more information take a look here: www.astronomerswithoutborders.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=99&layout=blog&Itemid=149
Image credit: Astronomer’s Without Borders

If you have a pair of binoculars or even a small telescope, you could try and follow an asteroid, Vesta, as it slowly move across the sky. The asteroid can be found in the constellation of Leo, not too far from Gamma Leo.

Happy Hunting

Image credit: Sky & Telescope

If you have a pair of binoculars or even a small telescope, you could try and follow an asteroid, Vesta, as it slowly move across the sky. The asteroid can be found in the constellation of Leo, not too far from Gamma Leo.

Happy Hunting

Image credit: Sky & Telescope

Note: this post is adapted from Weekend SkyWatcher’s Forecast by Tammy Plotner on Universe Today, http://www.universetoday.com/

If you are ready for a challenge why not try spotting 11.8 magnitude Comet Tritton! Now cruising through the constellation of Aries (RA 1h 53.5m Dec 17° 39′), this faint fuzzy won’t be the easiest of targets to spot – but then it wouldn’t be a challenge, would it? Comet 157P Tritton was discovered by Keith Tritton (U. K. Schmidt Telescope Unit, Coonabarabran) on February 11, 1978. Now, almost 32 years later to the date, it’s back again on its every 6.33 year journey around our Sun. Although it won’t reach perihelion (closest position to the sun) until February 20, its original estimated return brightness was only expected to reach magnitude 16 and now it is far exceeding expectations. Don’t expect to see a flaming ball exhibiting a tail because that’s not going to happen… but congratulate yourself if you can find this faint fuzzy in the sky.

Image credit: Universe Today