Eastside Astronomical Society: promoting interest in astronomy to Seattle's eastside community

Eastside Astronomical Society

Astronomy Day - Oct. 2, 5-9pm Museum of Flight: Local astronomers and aerospace and astronomy groups converge on the Museum for our annual Astronomy Day. Learn about the wonders of the night sky as local astronomy buffs and Museum educators introduce you to the stars, the planets and much more. Learn about the constellations in our Starlab portable planetarium, view amazing astronomical photographs, try out a variety of telescopes and hear about the latest developments from the Cassini spacecraft, Deep Impact mission and Mars rovers.

EAS will be at the event with a table and display. Any members who would like to show up and answer questions, please come! We have good exposure now that they set us up under the Blackbird - in the center of the museum.
More info.

Rating the summer star parties: 2008 continues the trend of being a very non-astronomy friendly year. Here is a rating of the two major star parties of the summer.

Table Mountain - Coldest year ever. Of the three nights up there, we had clouds, more clouds, some rain, and gusty winds at 4am with fog. There was some clear skies, but those expecting the usual warm summer evening up there were suffering without their mittens. Vendors were sparse thanks to increased gas prices and fees. Dew was even a problem on the last night, but that ended when the moisture froze into ice! When the sun came out, we scurried out of the shade like a kitten seeking a warm sunbeam to curl up under. Rating - 2 out of 5 stars.
Deception pass - Worked out better than Table Mountain. We did get some stars between drifting clouds. Fortunately, the usual dew at Bowman Bay was minimal - all the moisture was up in the clouds this year! Tom's astro talk went well with 73 in the audience the first night and about 20 the second night. We did have a small group come down to the telescopes both nights and were able to show them a few things before clouds moved through. Sunday morning we had rain around 4am, then drying until about 11am - just in time to go home with wet tents. Rained all day long after that on the way home. Rating - 3/5 stars.

Cassini - 4 years at Saturn: The Cassini spacecraft continues it's mission at Saturn after 4 years. Still going strong with the recent 30 mile flyby of Enceladus at 40,000 mph. Here is a nice little summary video of the last four years.

Click here to view the video.

The Mars Weather Rock: We have all seen and heard of the "weather rock". They are often seen in National Monument gift shops next to the Death Valley snow globes, and under the Jackalope shot glasses. You know the thing...."If the rock is wet, it's raining....if the rock is white, it snowed...if the rock is swinging, it's windy". Silly as it seems, this is the technology that measures wind on the Mars Phoenix lander. The little jiggly swinging thing on the mast along with a mirror and a camera is all that is needed!
This simple but brilliant instrument was developed at the University of Aarhus in Denmark for the lander.

Read more about it here.

The shuttle test that never happened: The dreaded RTLS abort. In 1999 on Eileen Collin's first flight as commander, she nearly had to attempt the first RTLS (return to landing site) abort when Columbia's computer back-up prevented a disaster with the main engines during launch. The computers shut down the engines a little early resulting in a slightly lower orbit when a hydrogen leak was detected. The RTLS abort is basically a back-flip of the entire shuttle stack at mach 7 after the SRBs burn out and are jettisoned. There was talk of making the first shuttle flight a RTLS test, but maybe they could have lost Columbia on the first flight if that was attempted. Scary stuff!

Not new, but interesting article from Popular Mechanics a while back.