timesPhoenix Astronomical Society

www.pasaz.orgSummer 2017

Volume 68 Issue 10P H O E N I X A S T R O N O M I C A L S O C I E T Y — E S T A B L I S H E D 1 9 4 8

Earl DeLong, a member of PAS for thelast several years, passed away April 19th.He was born in East Chicago, Indiana, andworked as a chemist in both the coal andnuclear industries for 31 years. He marriedAnita Levenda in 1982, and had two daugh-ters Katherine Anne and Kari Marie. Earlloved teaching his two grandsons about thefascinating world of science and over thelast few years volunteered as a tutor forPhoenix elementary students in math andscience. He apparently was very good atplaying the piano, and we regret never hav-ing had the opportunity to hear him at PAS.

Earl was an active member of thePhoenix Astronomical Society for severalyears. He attended star parties with his 10inch Dobsonian telescope which he contin-ued to upgrade with tracking, goto andother features. Earl lectured PAS audienceson the New Horizons Pluto Mission, opticsand filters, and other astronomy subjects.He attended our PAS field trips to observa-tories and also our socials and potlucks.Earl was kind, thoughtful, and willing tohelp out anyone who needed guidance, es-pecially children with their thirst for newideas. He was the kind of person who madepeople feel good. Earl's widow, Anita, hasgraciously donated his telescope to PAS.We all thank her for her generosity and weknow Earl would have approved of the gift.

Anita had a celebration of life for Earlwhere PAS members Paul Facuna, PeteTurner, Howard Moneta and his Mom,Daniella, Alex Vrenios, and Sam Insanaattended and shared memories and photoswith his family and friends. PAS also had acelebration of life at the May 11th generalmeeting where dozens of photos wereshown and several PAS members said kind

words about Earl.I personally loved going to dark sky

locations with him, where we spent manyhours gazing at deep sky objects. Amongmany other things, Earl helped me find theNorth American Nebula with binocularsand showed me the benefits of an OxygenIII filter for observing the Veil Nebulawhile at a dark sky location north of theGrand Canyon. Although I and others leftafter a while because of the cold, Earlstayed all night because he knew it was arare opportunity to see some of the darkestskies in America.

Earl, we will all miss you - you madeour lives better for having been such awonderful part of PAS.

Anita writes: Earl had Brain surgery inlate February. He went back into the hospi-tal on April 8th due to complications. Hewas placed in hospice care on April 18th.Earl lost his battle and passed away onApril 19th.

EARL DELONG (1956-2017)By Sam Insana President of the Phoenix Astronomical Society

Photo taken by Terri Finch.

Photo taken by Terri Finch.

Photo taken by Terri Finch.Taken by Sam Insana.

PAStimes 2 Summer 2017Phoenix Astronomical Society Contact InfoPresident Sam Insana 602-315-4750 President@pasaz.org

Vice President Alex Vrenios 602 789-6556 VicePresident@pasaz.orgSecretary Kevin Witts Secretary@pasaz.org

Event Manager Terri Finch 602-561-5398 Events@pasaz.orgTreasurer Eric Steinberg Treasurer@pasaz.org

Newsletter Editor Don K. Boyd Editor@pasaz.orgPAS Host Rodney FongLibrarian Rod Sutter Librarian@pasaz.org

Member at Large Jenny Weitz 602-787-6818 jennifer.weitz@paradisevalley.eduMember at Large/Equipment Manager Bruce Wurst 602-971-3555 PastPresident@pasaz.org

Webmaster Chris Johnson Webmaster@pasaz.orgPhoenix Astronomical Society 3039 W Peoria Ave #102-188 Phoenix AZ 85029

Check out these and other fun eventson the PAS Calendar:http://www.pasaz.org/forums/calendar.php. RSVP where requested toEvents@pasaz.org. On the PAS Calendar,“Private” means it is for PAS membersonly. This list is accurate as of the postingof this newsletter to the website. Moreevents may be added to the PAS Calendar.

July 1, 2: PAS will be at Leprecon,held this year at the Tempe Mission Palmsfrom 10am to 10pm Saturday and Sunday.PAS will be indoors Saturday and Sundayand will do star parties Saturday and Sun-day nights. More details can be found onthe PAS website.http://www.pasaz.org/forums/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=2321&day=2017-71&c=1

July 6: PAS will be indoors at Book-mans for a Star Wars event from 12pm to3pm with demos, telescopes on display,info about the club, and Q&A for the kids.Come answer a question, win a prize. Ev-eryone welcome! Bring the whole family.More info:http://www.pasaz.org/forums/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=2341&day=2017-7

6&c=1July 8: Public star party at Bookmans

for a sidewalk astronomy event. Event isfrom 8pm to 10pm and RSVP is requested.Come view through our telescopes to seethe Moon, Jupiter and more. More details:http://www.pasaz.org/forums/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=2241&day=2017-78&c=1

July 9: Free telescope workshop atBookmans, 19th Ave and Northern inPhoenix - 3:30pm to 5:30pm. RSVP isrequired with Terri - events@pasaz.org.When you RSVP, email the make and mod-el number of the telescope you need assis-tance with. We also assist with suggestionsand advice on what telescope to purchase tomatch your needs. We have no telescopesfor sale at this event. More details:http://www.pasaz.org/forums/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=2023&day=2017-79&c=1

Aug 5: Public star party at Bookmansfor a sidewalk astronomy event. Event isfrom 7:30pm to 10pm and RSVP is request-ed. Come view through our telescopes tosee the Moon, Jupiter and more. More de-tails:

http://www.pasaz.org/forums/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=2242&day=2017-85&c=1

Aug 6: Free telescope workshop atBookmans, 19th Ave and Northern inPhoenix - 3:30pm to 5:30pm. RSVP isrequired with Terri - events@pasaz.org.When you RSVP, email the make and mod-el number of the telescope you need assis-tance with. We also assist with suggestionsand advice on what telescope to purchase tomatch your needs. We have no telescopesfor sale at this event. More details:http://www.pasaz.org/forums/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=2024&day=2017-86&c=1

Aug 21: Total Solar Eclipse, totality isnot visible from Phoenix, but a number ofPAS Members are making a field trip toOregon, Washington and other states northof Arizona to see it.

Aug 21: Public Viewing of Partial So-lar Eclipse at Arizona Science Center inPhoenix 9am to 12pm. More details:http://www.pasaz.org/forums/calendar.php?do=getinfo&e=2361&day=2017-821&c=1

Upcoming PAS Events of July & AugustBy Terri Finch, Event Manager

I received this letter dated May 31,2017 along with a donation to the club ofthe Sky & Telescope’s Pocket Sky Atlas asa thank you from the ASP. Here is whatthey wrote:

“To the Members of the Phoenix As-tronomical Society: We wanted to thankyour club for all of your hard work holding

and logging events in Q1 2017. Our recordsshow that your club has received all of thetoolkits available for NSN member clubs atthis time. We still wanted to show ourappreciation and so are sending your clubthis copy of the Sky & Telescope's PocketSky Atlas, a donation from the Astronomi-cal Society of the Pacific’s AstroShop.

We hope you enjoy this pocket sizedguide to the night sky! …. May you enjoyclear skies this summer stargazing season,Dave Prosper and Vivian White, Night SkyNetwork Admins, Astronomical Society ofthe Pacific.”

We really appreciate this donation.Thank you NSN!

Thank you fromAstronomical Society of the Pacific

Edited by Terri, Event Manager

Summer 2017 PAStimes 3

I am very proud to announce thatAlex Vrenios, our PAS Vice Presi-dent, has had a very well written arti-cle entitled "The Radio Sky"published by Reflector Magazine onpages 20-22 of the June 2017 edition.It is very professional, and includesdiagrams and photos. He includesanalyses of solar radiation disturbanc-es, sudden ionospheric disturbances,radio meteor scatter, Jupiter radiostreams, and galactic hydrogen radiodetection. I encourage everyone in ourclub to enjoy his article. Alex is our defacto liaison with the AstronomicalLeague, and he has earned many cer-tificates and pins for his astronomicalwork. Congrats Alex!!!

Alex adds: I’ve never written forthe AL before. It was a nice touch,however, to receive a postcard fromthe President of the AstronomicalLeague.

Alex Vrenios in Reflector MagazineBy President Sam Insana

Dr. Alex Vrenios is a Lifetime Member and a very ac-tive part of PAS.

Sam Insana, Terri Finch and Don Boydtook a Field Trip to Arcosanti to see thelocation where the telescope team would besetting up for the Arcosanti Star Party ofMay 12, 13 and 14. Our tour guide was JeffStein who was very informative and eagerto have PAS at their 2017 FORM Eventhttp://experienceform.com/. While there, Itook 150+ photos, the goal being to usethem to describe how and where we will besetting up the telescopes. Here are a fewphotos for your enjoyment. The tour, in-cluding lunch was about 1.5 hours long; thedrive to Arcosanti was about 1 hour, eachway. Many thanks to Jeff for the tour and toSam for driving the three of us up there forthis scouting trip.

Arcosanti Walk Thru Jan 30By Terri, Event Manager

From above, we can look down into the Ar-costanti Cafe. Photo by Terri.

Jeff shows us the next phase of construction atArcosanti. Photo by Terri.

Sam, Jeff and Don look out over the horizon atthe view. Behind them is the location the tele-scopes will be set up, on this roof, for this

event. Photo by Terri.

Sam & Don having lunch before returninghome. The food was very good and decently

priced. Photo by Terri.Using my camera, Sam took this photo of mehaving lunch. We had a great Walk Thru. I'mlooking forward to doing this event in May.

Here's the postcard Alex received from thePresident of the Astronomical League (AL) forsubmitting his article “The Radio Sky” to theAL's quarterly publication the Reflector. Thispublication is provided to PAS Members by

being a an affiliate AL Member through PAS.Photo provided by Alex.

PAStimes 4 Summer 2017

PAS President Sam Insana. Photo by Terri

PRESIDENT’S CORNERAug 21 Solar Eclipse Experiences

By President Sam Insana

Many of our members will be attend-ing the August 21st Solar eclipse in Ma-dras, OR, Casper, WY, Scottsbluff, NE andGrand Island, NE.

PAS Members who experience this

eclipse are invited to give a short presenta-tion about their experience at the Sept 7thgeneral PAS meeting. Your talk can be upto 10 minutes long and will be enhanced ifyou can include photos or videos of thesurrounding area, the eclipse, the peoplearound you or other relevant items. If youstay in Arizona, you can also give a similarpresentation on the partial eclipse.

Even if you do not have photos orvideos, please say a few words about howit felt to you personally: any change insounds or temperature, any stars visible,whether you saw the shadow racing acrossthe landscape, solar images on leaves, Bai-ly's Beads, the Diamond Ring effect, the

corona or solar flares.You can also tell us how you did with

traffic, lodging, weather, escape routes andwhether you were on your own or with agroup of people or an organized tour.

Other ideas: Did you use solar glasses,filtered scopes, filtered binos? Cameras(and what type)?

We can also talk about other upcomingtotal, partial and annular eclipses if timepermits. Sign up with me via email, andinclude an estimate of how long your briefpresentation will take so we can best man-age the time available at this meeting. Myemail is insanas@aol.com. Best wishes.

Members of PAS are always invitedand welcome to submit articles, photos,reviews or ads to our newsletter, “PAS-times”. We sincerely want to thank thosewho have done so over the past PAS year -they make it all that much more fun to readand enjoy. Readers benefit from the manyreviews our members write about astrono-my events they have attended (not just PAS

events) and the newsletter staff is happy tohelp in the sale of astronomical equipmentby including ads about anything astronomy-related. We hope for another successfulyear of quality reading material and photosin our club publication. Currently, Don K.Boyd is the Managing and Layout Editor,tirelessly assisted by Terri Finch, who inaddition is a major article contributor. Eric

Steinberg is copy-editor with Ora Kurlandand Matt Kohl doing the proofreading.Keep sending us those submissions andwe’ll do our best to include them in PAS-times. Thank you!

The deadline for the each month’s is-sue is the 10th of the previous month. Sendyour submissions to Events@pasaz.org.

Submissions to the PAStimes NewsletterBy PAStimes Staff

This year’s Messier Marathon, held atMike’s home in Carefree on March 25, wasnot good weather-wise. The party wassmall and only 2 PAS members competed.I wish to commend the two members fortheir efforts and give an “Honorable Men-tion” for having tried to do the Messier

Marathon through clouds. Don Boyd took2nd place in this year’s Marathon with 2objects seen through his 8” telescope, whileAlex Vrenios took 1st place with 5 objectsviewed through his 7X50 binoculars. Inspite of the clouds, the group that attendedat Mike’s enjoyed the night. To read more

about this year’s event, please see the May2017 Issue of PAStimes. The article is onthe bottom of page 7. We hope for clearskies for the 2018 Messier Marathon. Seeyou there!

Messier Marathon PAS Results of 2017By Terri, Event Manager

$3200 Meade 10" LX200 AdvancedComa-Free Cassegrain Telescope with GPSand accessories. Come see telescope inBullhead City, AZ - local pickup only,package deal. Contact: Mike at Email Ad-dress: joseph.ascarate@Gmail.com

Specifications: Meade LX200 withbuilt-in GPS drive tracking system, Navi-gate and precisely track over 145,000 ob-jects in the night sky. Primary mirror lockand patented Smart Drive technology. Fo-

cal length: 2540 mm. F-Ratio: f10.0, Tri-pod: Full sized heavy duty stainless steeltripod. Mount: rigid cast aluminum forkstyle. Drive: Meade Smart Drive, slewspeeds from 1 to 8 degrees per second.Included eyepieces: 1.25 in. 26 mm Super-Plossl eyepiece. Finder Scope: 8x50 View-finder. Meade DSI (Deep Sky Imager). As-tronomy Viewing Chair: Designed for skyobserving and adjustable from 9" to 32".Meade Telescope Tube Balance System.Eyepiece tray. Hand controller: AutoStar II

Controller - 145,000 object database. Con-tains the following: New General Catalog(NGC) - 7840. Index Catalog (IC) - 5386.Messier Catalog (M) -110. Caldwell Cata-log - 109. Named Objects - 227. HerschelCatalog - 400. Abell Catalog of GalaxyClusters - 2712. ARP Atlas of PeculiarGalaxies -645. Uppsala Galaxy Catalog -12,940. Morphological Catalog of Galaxies- 12,939. General Catalog of Variable Stars28,484. SAO and Hipparcos Star Catalog -31,090.

FOR SALE:

Summer 2017 PAStimes 5

We had a solid turnout and some funpeople at this telescope workshop! FromPAS we had William and Terri Finch, AlexVrenios, Don Boyd, Leah Sapir, Sam Insa-na, Rodney Fong and PVCC’s Jenny Weitz.

We had 7 RSVP’s for the evening, 5 ofwhom attended. There were also two PASMembers looking for assistance. Vivek at-tended to find out what telescope to pur-chase, spending some time with Williamand me to begin. Leah then took over, giv-ing him some pointers on what astronomyfield books would be a good resource. RaulMassand brought his Celestron 2103570mm Travel Scope and also stayed withWilliam, Leah and me. Jennifer Keybrought her Celestron Nexstar 102SLT andwas helped by Alex, William, Rodney andme through the night. George Sabo attend-ed to have his telescope looked at afterhaving recently dropped it at BMC. Severalmembers worked with him on collimationand answered questions. Because he had setup outside, he was able to show guests andPAS members views of Venus and Mars.George Zukauckas attended and spent mostof the evening getting mentoring (see be-low) from Sam. One other attendee wasEric Haselman who brought his Orion8945 SkyQuest XT8 Classic DobsonianTelescope. William assisted him along witha few other members.

The night was mostly clear, with pleas-ant temperatures in the 80’s. Several at-tendees stuck around until 9:50pm. I wishto thank my telescope team for all theirhelp. And I’d like to thank the attendingclass members who were absolutely won-

derful to get to know and assist on this verysuccessful night.

Leah writes: I gave general advice onskywatching and "how to get started inastronomy" to Eric, Raul and Vivek for themajority of the evening.

President Sam writes: I was asked bymember George Zukauckas if I would men-tor him in the methods of telescope observ-ing and doing star party presentations.George is a relative novice and wants tobecome proficient in as short a time aspossible. I spent 2 hours with George atthis event showing him how to pick outcelestial objects on any given night, how todetermine their magnitude and size, whatkinds of filters to use, what kind of magni-fication to use, how to find the objects, howto learn and communicate interesting factsabout each object, among dozens of otherpointers. I also answered many questionsfrom George on how to do public presenta-tions. The next step will be at the Feb 23rdpublic star party at BMC. George will see

how I do presentations and then I will ob-serve George doing them. If all goes well,George should be able to become a startours member within months rather thanhave to wait for years of experience. Hope-fully other veteran PAS members will takenovice members under their wings.......

PVCC Telescope Workshop Feb 9By Terri, Event Manager

We had a great turnout at this Telescope Work-shop. (L to R) Don and William assisting Jen atthe back of this photo, George Sabo's back tous behind Alex in the front who was talking toLeah, and George Zukauckas chatting withSam at the back right of this photo. Photo by

Terri.

Jenny took & posted this photo to Facebookand I saw it & felt it was a great photo for the

newsletter. Thank you Jenny, for letting meinclude it in with this review of the event.

Leah was super helpful to eveyrone but spentthe most time talking with Eric about starcharts and astronomy books. Photo by Terri

Three Star Tours team members at-tended Candeo School on March 11th toshow the school community objects in thenight sky and some meteorites. Attendingthis event was Sam Insana who provided agreat view (see photo) of his meteoritecollection. We also had Roger Anzini withhis 16” telescope and Bruce Wurst attend-ing with his large telescope. The night wasclear and the event was a success - we gotsome great feedback from Gabby Gmyrek,the Teacher with whom I set up the event.

Gabby writes: “We LOVE everything.Thank You! -Gabby We hope to do thisevent again next year.”

Sam writes: Roger and Bruce broughtlarge telescopes and showed Venus, Orionnebula and other gems to about 100 stu-dents, parents and teachers at Candeoschool in Peoria. I showed 14 meteoritesand 2 tektites and the 50 students and adultswho dropped by seemed to love looking atthem and learning about them. It was abeautiful night.

Candeo School Mar 11By Terri, Event Manager

Sam brought his meteorites to this school toshare with the attendees of the star party. Itwas a great success! Photo provided by Sam

Insana.

PAStimes 6 Summer 2017

A unique annular solar eclipse oc-curred over southern Chile on February 26.I flew down there to observe it near thesouthern edge as part of a continuing effortby the International Occultation TimingAssociation to observe Baily’s Beads atboth the northern and southern limits of theeclipse path. The purpose of this is to per-form this activity at as many eclipses aspossible to gather data that might be used toassess changes in the solar radius.

This eclipse was interesting in that itwas a nearly total solar eclipse. In fact, theMoon covered 98.6% of the Sun’s disc atcentral eclipse time.

I plan for eclipses long in advance.Although I had planned to travel to Angola,I was convinced the weather andcosts/logistics were going to beuncertain/high; I had set up a second planto go to Argentina but the ground operatorwe used became unreliable.  Instead I optedfor Chile. This was my 22nd annulareclipse. My wife Lynn Palmer and I ob-served the ASE from 2.7 north of the south-ern edge along a well-travelled road evenduring annularity. It would seem that manylocals paid no attention to the eclipse.  Alignment of my Meade 2045D was ac-complished using only a map and inclinom-eter with the three tripod legs set on thehood of our rented SUV.  This was difficultbut with care, all was stable and, amazing-ly, tracking was very good prior to andduring annularity.

From our roadside site were able to seesheep and chickens retreating back to alocal farm house well after second contact;roosting magpies appeared in a field justbefore annularity. Three flocks of geeseflew off between second and third contactand flying insects became more active aswe approached maximum eclipse time. The

approaching lunar shadow could not bedetected visually as we looked up into thesky, though there was a notable lowering ofambient air temperature by what appearedto be several degrees during the march fromC1 to C2. My colleague Paul Stewart fromAustralia measured a 1.6 deg C temperaturedrop in Coyhaique town.

One thick cloud which appeared toapproach the Moon/Sun vanished quickly.Other clouds lingered to the east but wellbelow the Sun which was 33 degrees abovethe horizon at maximum eclipse.

Baily's Beads were rapid to appear andvanish (always being tiny in their structuralappearance at the south limit of an annulareclipse as they mirror the profile at theMoon's north edge);  the horns of the Sunrapidly swung to make an annulus thatlasted about 21 seconds.   All eclipse ob-servers that we encountered prior to Feb 26remained in Coyhaique proper or traveledup to the centerline.   There was the briefsensation of "totality" though that was notthe actual case as the sky around us dark-

ened and the video screen used to assess theBaily's Beads appearance became very easyto use for focusing. Prior to that, eventhough shielded, the sky was so bright as tomake the screen very difficult to make out.

My goal was to get video of the ap-pearance of Baily’s Beads—tiny points oflight appearing at the edge of the Sun. Atthe eclipse edges, these points of light lin-ger longest and are much easier to capture.At the south edge, the Beads originate fromthe north pole of the Moon which has a flattopography. Light passing through moun-tains at the north lunar pole are generallysmall due to the lunar topography.

However, due to anomalies with mysolar filter and telescope there was overex-posure and smearing in the video whichwas not expected. Next time I will have tomodify my hardware configuration to miti-gate this issue. Astronomy in the field isnot always an exact science!

I had been worried due to the abun-dance of both predicted and observed cloudand the high humidity in the prior hoursfollowing sunrise. But remarkably, theeclipse weather forecast model was accu-rate beginning 72 hours prior to the event.Because of the geography and absence ofgood roads, there were only two possiblelocations to observe the eclipse at the southedge where we were and both were poorlylocated with no safe sites at which to set up. Prior day's scouting rejected all locationsexcept for a gate to a farm which becameour default site.   In addition there are noservices along the 56km long road betweenthe Balmaceda airport and the town of Coy-haique. The only gas stations were in thetown and none at the airport with the onlyalternative being across the border in Ar-gentina.   We were not cleared to travel

Annular solar eclipse observed from chileBy Paul D. Maley

Final location of our eclipse observation nearValle Simpson, Chile.

Setup at a gate by the side of Route 7. Videogear is inside the briefcase; Texas flag (similarto the Chilean flag) was set up on the gate as

this is the trademark of RING OF FIRE EXPE-DITIONS. L. Palmer photo.

Temperature log measured by P.Stewart.

Screenshot from my video system showing Bai-ly’s Beads at the tips of the arrows.

Summer 2017 PAStimes 7across the border with Argentina by therental car company so had to contend witha very limited driving radius. All thingsconsidered, this plan worked very well.

As is common at the eclipse edgesthere were no observers or crowds swarm-ing nearby even after we quickly repackedand returned to Coyhaique, Chile. We re-turned along the same highway, passed thesite again and made a flight out of Balmace-da airport 4 hours after annularity.   Allflights out of the area were completely fullthat day.

More about this trip can be seen at:http://www.eclipsetours.com/2017-chileeclipse-results/

Onward to my 47th solar eclipse expe-dition coming in August 2017!

Figure 4. Central eclipse as photographed byP.Stewart from closer to the centerline. The

color is defined by the filter being used in frontof the camera.

This was a night event at Bookmans onMarch 11th. Attending from PAS were:William and Terri Finch, Mike Marron,Don Boyd, Rick Cunningham, Bill andJean Manney and Rodney Fong. We alsohad a guest attendee Robert Parrish. Laterin the evening, friends Nyla Murphy andJonna also came. We also had two otherPAS members come to us seeking informa-tion about the PASaz.org site.

The night was clear and warm and wehad fun showing Mars, the moon, Orionnebula, and Jupiter as it was rising. We hada number of RSVP’s from MeetUp, thoughnot many of them checked in with me.William helped me with the PAS table,while alongside, Mike and his meteoritesstole the show, keeping the people wellentertained. Across the parking lot we hadJean and Bill hanging out with Rick and his8” scope, Don who brought his 8” scopeand new attendee, (not yet a member) fromMeetUp, Robert Parrish. It was a very suc-cessful event.

I’m looking forward to the next eventlike this on April 8th and then May 6th.Prior to the event, several PAS Members(Rick, Don, William, Mike and Terri) metfor dinner at Joe’s Philly in the same shop-ping center as Bookmans.

Bookmans Sidewalk Astronomy Event Mar 11By Terri, Event Manager

Don Boyd looking through his telescope to-wards Saturn to find it for an attendee of the

Sidewalk Astronomy Event of Mar 11. Photo byTerri Finch.

The PAS Table with William Finch and thenMike's Table with Mike Marron behind it, areset up out front of Bookmans for this SidewalkAstronomy Event. We had a lot of attendees

look through our telescopes on this night. Pho-to by Terri.

Rick Cunningham was setting up his telescopeto focus on the Moon on this evening. It was aclear night and the temperature was pleasant.

Photo by Terri.

This photo says it all, taken by Terri. At theback of the photo, up on the sidewalk, in frontof Bookmans we see Mike's table and the PASTable set up. Then, as the public crosses thedriveway, they come over to the telescope set

up location.

Meade LX200GPS 12” SchmidtCassegrain Telescope Package Deal. Itemsare all in new or like new condition. Thisscope has been under the stars only twice.Asking $2,950.00. Contact PAS MemberBill Powell by email:wrpowell2002@yahoo.com For the com-plete list of what this scope comes with asa package deal, visit this link:http://www.pasaz.org/forums/showthread.php?p=3026#post3026

Scope forSale:

Our free telescope workshop at Book-mans was staffed by PAS members SamInsana, Bruce Wurst, William and TerriFinch, Alex Vrenios, Ed and Bette Wurstand Rodney Fong. We had 2 RSVP’s, onlyone of whom attended. Thomas Snuggs

from Queek Creek came with his CelestronAstromaster 130EQ. Sam assisted himwhile the rest of the telescope team chattedabout various club-related matters aroundthe PAS Table. After the workshop, tenPAS Members and friends attended an en-

joyable dinner at Carlos O’Briens. Lookingforward to the next few telescope work-shops at Bookmans on May 7, June 11, andJuly 9.

Bookmans FREE Telescope Workshop Apr 9By Terri, Event Manager

PAStimes 8 Summer 2017

STEAM = A celebration of Science,Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathemat-ics, & Music

Terri, Event Manager writes: TheSTEAM event at Black Mountain Campushad two parts to it. From 4:00pm to 7:00pmthere was a series of indoor hands-on proj-ects run by the BMC science class for theattending school kids. Some of these activ-ities were: potato printing, straw rockets,microwave brownies, exploding chocolate,laser waterfall and more. There were 6rooms in the Aquila building being used forthese experiments and a detailed color mapto direct everyone to the fun activities.

Mike Marron and Ofelia Waters set upa table of meteorites, while Terri set up nextto them with PAS Handouts. We also hadquite a few experiments going on such asthe paper airplanes with lights and “mag-netic slime”. We stayed until 6pm and thenmoved outdoors to the top of the walkwayleading down to the astronomy observingdeck. At my table, I demoed how to read aplanisphere and explained why we do notlook at the full Moon through a telescope.

There were many outdoor activities aswell during the afternoon including a potatolauncher, fossil dig, giant jenga and more.See photo of map for complete list of activ-ities at this event. It was a well designed,interactive and fun event for kids of allages.

Sam, PAS President writes: I showeda beautiful solar flare with my PST from 4to 6 pm with Mark, Paul, and Williamgiving me 15 minute breaks so I couldenjoy some of the STEAM events.

Terri adds: The 2nd half of this day’sevents included a star party down on theastronomy observing deck from 7pm to9:45pm. The telescope providers were:Sam, Don, Bill, Mark and Leah. Helperswere William, Ron Walker and Nyla Mur-phy. The evening portion of this event wasvery busy with people gathered aroundMike’s table all night long. I would esti-mate I talked to over 150 people as theypassed by my table to get to the observing

deck; most of the RSVP’s checked in withme to say they were there.

Leah writes: I showed Venus (as acrescent) and then the Orion nebula. Iexplained how seeing the phases of Venusenabled Galileo to determine that Venusorbits the sun, instead of everything orbit-ing the Earth. And of course for Orion, Ipointed out the Trapezium and explainedhow these are young stars that were formedinside the nebula (Today we know that theyare around 300,000 years old.) I also men-tioned that astronomers have found withinfrared observations that there are moreyoung stars hidden inside the nebula.

At the very end, after Sam pointed outthat Jupiter was rising, I was able to pointmy scope at Jupiter, but not much could beseen because it was so low - only a yellowcircle. The two stripes were faintly visibleabout 15 min later, just before we packedup. The 4 moons were clearly visible:Ganymede very close to Jupiter on the left,and then Io, Europa and Callisto in astraight line on the right.

Sam adds: That night I showed Tychocrater with its mountain peak and debrisrays on the Moon, M42 Orion Nebula, M45Pleiades open cluster, and Venus with my 8inch newtonian reflector. I estimate hun-dreds in attendance at the STEAM in theafternoon and about 70 at night for our starparty.

STEAMtastic at Black Mountain Campus Mar 9Reviews by Leah Sapir, Terri Finch, and Sam Insana

Outside, that evening, while waiting for somefolk to come to the event, Nyla, Mike, Ron, Wil-liam and I played around with Mike's toys. Oneof the toys is Mike's Defraction Grating Glass-es of which I took a photo through of the dis-tant lights in the parking lot. Photo by Terri.

At the STEAM event of Mar 9 at Black Moun-tain Campus Sam provides this photo of Solar

Viewing.

Mike was set up at a table next to my PAS Ta-ble and of all the tables set up in this room,Mike had the crowd the whole time we were

there. Photo by Terri.

This flier was provided to attendees at the Mar9 STEAMtastic event and it is very impressivewith the number of activiites planned for this

day. PAS was in room 143 and on the Astrono-my Deck.

SpaceCamp (1986) - The footage ofthe Space Shuttle Orbiter landing is fromChallenger touching down at the conclu-sion of STS-8. This was the first nightlanding of the Space Shuttle program.

The Black Hole (1979) - Dr. Rein-hardt's ship was originally called the Cen-taurus. It was renamed Cygnus after theconstellation where the first known blackhole was discovered in 1964.

Marooned (1969) - Was the impetusbehind the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Projectwhere American astronauts and Soviet cos-monauts docked in space.

Sci-Fi Movie Trivia

Summer 2017 PAStimes 9

The weather forecast looked marginalfor this event, following a storm the daybefore, though forecasts showed that rainand clouds might clear by 8pm. We decidedto go ahead on that basis.

Six PAS Members met for dinner priorto the event at 4:30 at Sesame Inn in Care-free to meet up with Bob Ewing who was intown for about a week visiting: Bob, SamInsana, Paul Facuna, William and TerriFinch, and Mike Marron. At the site, cloudswere still heavy especially toward theWestern sky, but by dark the sky was clearand the event proceeded.

We had about 50 public RSVP’s witha total of about 80 attendees for the night.PAS members telescopes were Ray Adams,Sam, Don Boyd, Mark Johnston, Bill Pow-ell and Mike Cawley. Also helping butwithout a scope were William and Terriwith the PAS Table of handouts, Mike withhis meteorites, Paul directing traffic and

Bob visiting from out of town. Also attend-ing this event was Jenny Weitz and a won-derful volunteer, Nyla Murphy.

We want to welcome 2 new membersto PAS who joined on this evening: DougEllmann and Peter Jones!

Many thanks to the PAS TelescopeTeam who drove in the rain to get to theevent, stayed for a successful clear night ofviewing and later, braved the cold. Between8:30 and 8:45, the temperature which wasalready chilly with a slight breeze, becamesharply colder with a wind that cut throughthe thin jackets of those who didn’t comeprepared for colder temperatures… theseconditions chased away the public by9:15pm. The PAS Team packed up about9:30pm. I look forward to the next BMCStar Party (with hopefully warmer temper-atures) on April 20 and May 4th (Star WarsDay - May the 4th be with you).

Black Mountain Campus Star Party Mar 23By Terri, Event Manager

Paul, Sam, Bob, Mike, William & Terri gatherfor dinner prior to the BMC Mar 23 event atSesame Inn in Carefree to have dinner with

Bob Ewing who was visiting from out of town.Photo with Terri's phone, but taken by waitress.

President Sam Insana presents Bob Ewing witha PAS Night Sky Network Certificate and Pinfor his Public Outreach in 2016. Photo taken

by Terri.

Attending the event, this year, wasonly Mike Marron with his meteorite dis-play, assisted by Ofelia. Our contact at theschool, Jon Hutman, had requested addi-tional scopes, but due to multiple bookingsand an illness, we were unable to providethem.

Jon writes: Hi Terri, The event wasanother success, and Mike and his wifewere wonderful. What is her name again?The skies opened up by sunset and we hada great star party outside. Here are a coupleof photos that were taken through a scope.Our students and parents had nothing butpositive feedback to share with me. Thanksagain for your continued support!

Jon writes to Mike: Hi Mike, you didan amazing job once again at Space Night.Thank you for continuing to support our

event and for bringing your wealth ofknowledge to our students.

Basis Mesa School Star Party Mar 31By Terri, Event Manager

This image was provided by Jon Hutman at Ba-sis Mesa School. Some of his students caughtsome great images of the Moon and Jon sent

one over to be included in the newsletter.

Mike and Ofelia are seen with Mike's Meteor-ites at Basis Mesa School. This photo was tak-

en by Jon Hutman.

Mike hosted the NSTS with 9 PASmembers in attendance. It was a nightwhere many stars could be seen but therewere some high thin clouds which mayhave washed out the comet Charles came tosee. Sam provide the RA and Dec coordi-nates but no one could spot it with binos ortelescopes. It should brighten in the next 2weeks. Michelle came with her husbandMark to learn about solar filters. Sam gave

her his opinions on glass filters and hydro-gen alpha filters. Eric showed great viewswith his giant 22 inch scope. Paul spenthours learning how to operate the club gototelescope being housed at Mike's place.Peter tried his new coma corrector and heseemed satisfied with its performance.Rodney helped out and enjoyed viewingseveral telescopic objects like Jupiter, Ori-on nebula, M81 and M82 galaxies, and

many open clusters. Mike took out some ofhis more unusual meteorites for Sam andPaul near the end of the night and answeredvery technical questions.

Unfortunately 4 PAS members can-celled their attendance at the last minuteand missed out on a fun and informativeand relaxing evening. Many thanks to Mikefor hosting another successful NSTS at hishome in Carefree.

Spring Night Sky Training Session Mar 18Review provided by President Sam Insana

PAStimes 10 Summer 2017

On Mar 31, Kevin Witts and SuzanneMorrison presented meteorites and skyviews to a great group of 8 year old GirlScouts. Angela Kevin brought his scope,seen in the photo, and Suzanne presentedher meteorites. Many thanks to our contact,Angela Kalia for having PAS at her event.Thanks also to the telescope team for teach-ing these girls and perhaps inspiring themto become scientists!

Angela writes: “The girls loved it! Weall loved it actually! The meteorites wereperfect for their age group & a couple of thegirls showed so much excitement that Ithink we may have a few meteorologistsborn! Thank you all so much!!”

Kevin adds: Great event for a troop ofGirl Scouts in Scottsdale on Friday eve-ning. PAS provided a telescope and a pre-sentation on the Solar System complete

with an amazing selection of meteorites.The event took place on the organizersroof! After a challenging climb up a spiralstaircase to the roof with a heavy telescope,the event kicked off with clouds alreadyrolling in, we were able to give a dozengirls and their parents views of Mercuryand Mars, as well as the Orion Nebula anda few star clusters. It then became com-pletely clouded out. The girls and parentswere then provided with an informativepresentation on the inner planets and a di-verse discussion of meteorites, completewith a chance to hold a piece of the Moonand of Mars. The parents complimented thepresenters and offered that they would liketo have a similar event for an adult party atsome point. The girls loved it and the pre-senters were given an honorary merit badgefor Astronomy.

Girl Scouts in North Scottsdale Mar 31By Terri, Event Manager

Kevin's scope was set up on the roof of Ange-la's home for an exciting Girl Scout star party!

Photo provided by Kevin Witts.

On behalf of PAS, I wish to thankJenny Weitz and her honor astronomy stu-dents for hosting a great star party last nightat PVCC BMC. Her students provided PASmembers with food and drink and showedenthusiasm looking at the night sky. Theweather was delightful and there wereabout 100 people who looked through ourtelescopes. Thanks also to all our PASmembers for showing up with their 8scopes and providing interesting informa-tion to the public. Ted Blank, HowardMoneta, Pete Turner, Ray Adams, TomBoharsik, Mike Cawley, Mark Johnston,George Zukauckas, Paul Facuna, RonWalker, and Mike Marron did a great job,arriving early and staying late which wasmuch appreciated by the public whocouldn't get enough of the heavenly show.We showed Jupiter, Orion nebula, M81 andM82 galaxies, M44 Beehive cluster, CancerIota double star, Perseus double cluster,Eskimo nebula, and several other objectsthroughout the evening.There was also avery bright iridium flare at 8:45 pm thatdrew some ooo's and aaah's.

Shafeek from Meetup writes: Had anamazing time here. Saw Jupiter and itsmoons, star clusters, Orion nebulae - all forthe first time. Terri, couldn't meet you tosay 'Hi'. But thanks for organizing this greatevent.

Jenny writes: Thanks for the fantasticStar Party at Black Mountain! The HonorsStudents loved it :)

Black Mountain Campus Star Party Apr 20By President Sam Insana

Jenny was at the Apr 20 BMC Star Party in-structing her honor astronomy students abouthow to operate a telescope. Photo taken by

Sam Insana.

Ron Walker looking through Sam's telescope.Photo by Sam.

Ted did a Sky Tour with his green laser, shar-ing the lore of the constellations with the family

in this photo. Photo taken by Sam.

SpaceCamp (1986) - What was sup-posed to be a somewhat light heartedaction/adventure movie turned into a mar-keting nightmare. SpaceCamp was sched-uled to be released in early 1986 but on

January 28th the real-life shuttle Challeng-er exploded 74 seconds after liftoff, claim-ing the lives of seven American astronauts.After the Challenger disaster, the releasewas pushed back months. When it was

finally sent to theaters, it grossed less than$10 million in the U.S. Eerily, the malfunc-tion simulated in the film involved the solidrocket booster and was similar to the actualcause of the Challenger accident.

Sci-Fi Movie Trivia

Summer 2017 PAStimes 11

With clouds, rain, seas, lakes and anitrogen-filled atmosphere, Saturn's moonTitan appears to be one of the worlds mostsimilar to Earth in the solar system. But it'sstill alien; its seas and lakes are full not ofwater but liquid methane and ethane.

At the temperatures and pressuresfound on Titan’s surface, methane canevaporate and fall back down as rain, justlike water on Earth. The methane rain flowsinto rivers and channels, filling lakes andseas.

Nitrogen makes up a larger portion ofthe atmosphere on Titan than on Earth. Thegas also dissolves in methane, just likecarbon dioxide in soda. And similar towhen you shake an open soda bottle, dis-turbing a Titan lake can make the nitrogenbubble out.

But now it turns out the seas and lakesmight be fizzier than previously thought.Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab-oratory recently experimented with dis-solved nitrogen in mixtures of liquidmethane and ethane under a variety of tem-peratures and pressures that would exist onTitan. They measured how different condi-tions would trigger nitrogen bubbles. Afizzy lake, they found, would be a commonsight.

On Titan, the liquid methane alwayscontains dissolved nitrogen. So when itrains, a methane-nitrogen solution poursinto the seas and lakes, either directly fromrain or via stream runoff. But if the lakealso contains some ethane—which doesn'tdissolve nitrogen as well as methanedoes—mixing the liquids will force someof the nitrogen out of solution, and the lakewill effervesce.

"It will be a big frothy mess," saysMichael Malaska of JPL. "It's neat becauseit makes Earth look really boring by com-parison."

Bubbles could also arise from a lakethat contains more ethane than methane.The two will normally mix, but a less-denselayer of methane with dissolved nitrogen—from a gentle rain, for example--could set-tle on top of an ethane layer.

In this case, any disturbance—even abreeze—could mix the methane with dis-solved nitrogen and the ethane below. Thenitrogen would become less soluble andbubbles of gas would fizz out.

Heat, the researchers found, can alsocause nitrogen to bubble out of solutionwhile cold will coax more nitrogen to dis-solve. As the seasons and climate change

on Titan, the seas and lakes will inhale andexhale nitrogen.

But such warmth-induced bubblescould pose a challenge for future sea-faringspacecraft, which will have an energysource, and thus heat. "You may have thisspacecraft sitting there, and it's just going tobe fizzing the whole time," Malaska says."That may actually be a problem for stabil-ity control or sampling."

Bubbles might also explain the so-called magic islands discovered by NASA'sCassini spacecraft in the last few years.Radar images revealed island-like featuresthat appear and disappear over time. Scien-tists still aren't sure what the islands are, butnitrogen bubbles seem increasingly likely.

To know for sure, though, there willhave to be a new mission. Cassini is enter-ing its final phase, having finished its lastflyby of Titan on April 21. Scientists arealready sketching out potential space-craft—maybe a buoy or even a subma-rine—to explore Titan's seas, bubbles andall.

visit the NASA Space Place:https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/planetweathe-r/

The Fizzy Seas of TitanBy Marcus Woo

Radar images from Cassini showed astrange island-like feature in one of Ti-tan's hydrocarbon seas that appeared tochange over time. One possible explana-tion for this "magic island" is bubbles.

Image credits: NASA/JPLCaltech/ASI/Cornell

PAStimes 12 Summer 2017

When Stamatios (Tom) Krimigis wasselected for the Voyager mission in 1971,he became the team's youngest principalinvestigator of an instrument, responsiblefor the Low Energy Charged Particles(LECP) instrument. It would measure theions coursing around and between the plan-ets, as well as those beyond. Little did heknow, though, that more than 40 years later,both Voyager 1 and 2 still would be speed-ing through space, continuing to literallyreshape our view of the solar system.

The solar system is enclosed in a vastbubble, carved out by the solar wind blow-ing against the gas of the interstellar medi-um. For more than half a century, scientiststhought that as the sun moved through thegalaxy, the interstellar medium would pushback on the heliosphere, elongating thebubble and giving it a pointy, comet-liketail similar to the magnetospheres—bub-bles formed by magnetic fields—surround-ing Earth and most of the other planets

"We in the heliophysics communityhave lived with this picture for 55 years,"said Krimigis, of The Johns Hopkins Uni-versity Applied Physics Laboratory in Lau-rel, Maryland. "And we did that because wedidn't have any data. It was all theory."

But now, he and his colleagues havethe data. New measurements from Voyagerand the Cassini spacecraft suggest that thebubble isn't pointy after all. It's spherical.

Their analysis relies on measuringhigh-speed particles from the heliosphereboundary. There, the heated ions from thesolar wind can strike neutral atoms comingfrom the interstellar medium and snatchaway an electron. Those ions become neu-tral atoms, and ricochet back toward the sunand the planets, uninhibited by the inter-planetary magnetic field.

Voyager is now at the edge of theheliosphere, where its LECP instrumentcan detect those solar-wind ions. The re-searchers found that the number of mea-sured ions rise and fall with increased anddecreased solar activity, matching the 11-year solar cycle, showing that the particlesare indeed originating from the sun.

Meanwhile, Cassini, which launched20 years after Voyager in 1997, has beenmeasuring those neutral atoms bouncingback, using another instrument led byKrimigis, the Magnetosphere Imaging In-strument (MIMI). Between 2003 and 2014,the number of measured atoms soared anddropped in the same way as the ions, re-

vealing that the latter begat the former. Theneutral atoms must therefore come from theedge of the heliosphere.

If the heliosphere were comet-shaped,atoms from the tail would take longer toarrive at MIMI than those from the head.But the measurements from MIMI, whichcan detect incoming atoms from all direc-tions, were the same everywhere. This sug-gests the distance to the heliosphere is thesame every which way. The heliosphere,then, must be round, upending most scien-tists' prior assumptions.

It's a discovery more than four decadesin the making. As Cassini ends its missionthis year, the Voyager spacecraft will con-tinue blazing through interstellar space,their remarkable longevity having been es-sential for revealing the heliosphere's shape.

"Without them," Krimigis says, "wewouldn't be able to do any of this."

To teach kids about the Voyager mis-sion, visit the NASA Space Place:https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/voyager-toplanets

The Shape of the Solar SystemBy Marcus Woo

New data from NASA’s Cassini and Voyager show that the heliosphere — the bubble of the sun’s magnetic influence that surrounds the solar system —may be much more compact and rounded than previously thought. The image on the left shows a compact model of the heliosphere, supported by this

latest data, while the image on the right shows an alternate model with an extended tail. The main difference is the new model’s lack of a trailing, comet-like tail on one side of the heliosphere. This tail is shown in the old model in light blue.

Image credits: Dialynas, et al. (left); NASA (right)PAS is Incorporated in the state of Arizona as a 501( c)3 organization. Our newsletter PAStimes is published monthly from September to May, and is distributed via theInternet. All issues are available on our Website www.pasaz.org . Ads for astronomy equipment are provided as a courtesy to buyers and sellers and do not constitute anyendorsement by PAS or PAStimes. All photos by Don Boyd unless otherwise noted. All articles and photos are copyright their respective authors or PAStimes.

Summer 2017 PAStimes 13

Sam writes: On April 22nd, Two PASmembers made their Hollywood screen de-but. Mike Marron and Don Boyd playedAstronomers who commented on the Phoe-nix Lights of 1997. Their 59 seconds ofscreen time in "Phoenix Forgotten" wasgreat. We had 8 PAS members view thescreening: Mike, Don, Terri, William, Al-ex, Diane, Paul, and Sam. Other people inthe audience came up to Mike and Donafterwards and asked if they were the onesin the movie they just saw. The credits onscreen at the end mentioned the PhoenixAstronomical Society and Don Boyd and"Mark" Marron!!!

Terri adds: We met at the Harkins at34th Street and Bell Rd in Phoenix. Samtreated the 8 attendees (including himself)to refillable popcorn - thank you Sam! Weenjoyed the movie and really enjoyed see-ing Mike and Don “in” the movie. On

screen as the interviewers drove away fromMike’s house, they called PAS the “Beard-ed Galileo” Society. We all had a goodlaugh at that. The style of the movie wasthat of a “mockumentory”, but it was enter-taining.

Paul writes: Thank you for organizingthis event. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it.And thanks to Don and "Mark" for being inthe movie.

“Phoenix Forgotten” Movie Apr 22By Sam Insana & Terri Finch

This photo was taken by William Finch insidethe Harkins Theater at 34th Street & Bell Rd.

We weren't sure the indoor photo would comeout good, so we also took a photo outside the

theater after the movie. Photo by William.

Our very own STARS! Mike Marron and DonBoyd pose in front of the poster for their movie“Phoenix Forgotten.” Photo by Sam Insana.

PAS held the first ever spring bino starparty. Alex started out with a presentationon how to use binos and their differentfeatures after which Alex, Howard and Ieach showed several objects to the group.In the fall we had seen about 36 bino ob-jects, but this time we only saw about halfas many due to thin clouds, dimmer andfewer objects available. The Lyrid meteorshower did not have big numbers but wedid see a few bright ones and one fireball.

Using my son Frank's 20 x 80 binos, Iwas able to see M57, the Ring Nebula andM4, a globular in Scorpio around midnightafter most of the people had left.

Paul and I were the last ones to leave,around 1:15 am. We saw 4 meteors eachduring the night and it was a beautiful time

to kick back in the gravity chairs. Therewere plenty of coyotes to serenade us, agreat horned owl a few feet away from usin a saguaro and some fireworks going offin the nearby town. For the potluck, Alexand Diane brought a delicious cake, madeby Diane, shaped like a pair of binoculars.

Terri adds: Attendees at this eventwere: Howard Moneta, Sam Insana, Alexand Diane Vrenios, William and TerriFinch, Paul Facuna, Mike Marron (ourhost), Don Boyd, Pete Turner, Richard Pip-kin, Mike and Linda Cawley, George Saboand Rodney Fong. The clouds were annoy-ing but the three teachers, Howard, Samand Alex took turns showing and talkingabout objects we were seeing. Thanks toour teachers, to everyone who provided thegood food and to Mike for hosting this

event. We had a great turnout in spite of theclouds. Everyone had a pair of binocs ormonoculars or borrowed one to be able todo this event together. We look forward tothe next event like this, the Fall BinocularStar Party which is scheduled for Oct 21,2017. We will see you there!!!

Spring Binocular Star Party Apr 22By President Sam Insana and Attendees of this event

This beautifully decorated cake was made byDiane Vrenios for this event. It was deliciousand wonderfully created. Thank you Diane!

Marooned (1969) - The space stationusing a spent Saturn S-IVB stage was basedon early proposals during the Apollo Appli-cations Program; at the time of filming,what came to fruition as Skylab was stillunder development. The only differencesbetween the orbital workshop depicted inthe film (which has a rocket motor at-tached) and the real Skylab was the incor-poration of the Apollo Telescope Mountand two docking ports on the docking mod-

ule, not to mention the absence of a rocketmotor. The real Skylab was launched as a'dry' workshop using a surplus Saturn V#SA-513 (originally earmarked for the can-celed Apollo 18 mission). The three-mancrew in the film spend 5 months living inspace; the longest duration in the real Sky-lab was 84 days during the final mission,Skylab 4.

Contact (1997) - Author and producer

Carl Sagan died during production of thefilm. He was reportedly taking great care toensure that "science" was accurately depict-ed in the film.

Contact (1997) - The movie establishesthat the signal was launched from planetEarth in 1936, during the Berlin OlympicGames' opening. Since Vega is 26 light-years from planet Earth, the signal wouldhave returned in 1988, not 1997.

Sci-Fi Movie Trivia:

PAStimes 14 Summer 2017

The “May the 4th be with you” starwars star party at PVCC BMC was a fineevent. Loretta Mondragon, our BMC con-tact had people making mini light sabers inhonor of the night’s theme. Mike Marron,Mike Cawley, Paul Facuna, Sam Insana,George Zukauckas, Howard Moneta, PeteTurner, Mark Johnston and Ray Adamsattended from PAS. With eight telescopesand our meteorite man, Mike Marron, wehad plenty of heavenly things to make theover 50 attendees happy. We showed themoon, Jupiter, M44 (Beehive) open cluster,M13 globular cluster and other fine objects.Tristan Byers, a guest, brought his wife,their 3 inch scope and a giant dog. Theweather was great, with no clouds or wind,mild temperatures and good transparencyand seeing.

Howard spent the night showing in-credible images with his new toy, the Rev-olution Imager R2 which he used with his 8inch scope. It showed M51 whirlpool betterthan I have ever seen it, even in a 24 inchscope. I think that toy will be a hot item andspread like wildfire in our club once otherssee it in action.

One lady had a fun tee shirt saying"The force is large in this one". The writingwas covering her almost due baby bump. Iwas too embarrassed to ask her to photo-graph her belly, so I took a picture of How-ard and his new toy instead.

Loretta writes: I added a theme to this

Star Party- since it's May 4th we are doingthe May the Force Star Wars theme. Mycostumed characters fell through this morn-ing, was hoping to have some Star Warscharacters out there. But I'll have a coupleactivities to make mini light sabers.

Tristan adds: The event was reallygreat. I was impressed by assortment oftelescopes and the way the public was ableto access the various scopes. I think theevent was really well done. I am grateful tohave been able to participate in the event.All of the PAS members were very profes-sional and helpful as well.

Thomas writes: Hi Terri, I thought thattonight’s star party at Black MountainCampus went very well. We had approxi-mately nine or ten astronomy membersattend the event who were willing to dis-play all manner of telescopes and answerquestions. If I had to guess on the public’sattendance it would be about thirty people.Even though I, personally do not possessthe extensive knowledge that some mem-bers exhibit about astronomy, collectivelywe promoted the Phoenix AstronomicalSociety and shared our common interest inthe stars, planets and moons. The peoplethat I met were very genuine and excitedabout astronomy and they seemed eager togain knowledge and insight about our hob-by. The evening was “embellished” with ahalf-moon so there was a little light pollu-tion but we were still able to view Jupiter,

the moon and a few other bright objects thatappeared to “wow” the public. All-in-all, itwas another grand opportunity to minglewith people, answer questions and shareour enthusiasm for astronomy. Yours truly,Tommy B

Star Wars Day Star Party at BMC May 4By President Sam Insana

Howard was seen at this event with his new toy.Howard writes: “It is a fun little camera that

goes into the eyepiece holder on the telescope.”Photo taken by Sam Insana.

Loretta Mondragon, our contact at PVCCBlack Mountain Campus, provided this photoof the project she set up for Star Wars Day atBMC on this night “May the 4th be with you.”

Attending this school event wereBruce Wurst with his 12” scope, TerriFinch with her 8” scope and Storm Sallaswith her 8” scope. Helping out were Wil-liam Finch and Jake Von Ruhr. Kara Har-ris, our contact at the school, providedpizza and generally took very good care ofthe telescope team. Skies were clear with aslight breeze from setup at 6:30 until theevent ended at 9:30. Unfortunately, theactivities for these 8th graders also includeda dance in a brightly-lit building directly

adjacent to our viewing area. That madeobserving a challenge, but the three tele-scope operators did a great job which Karaand the 8th graders seemed to really appre-ciate. We viewed M3 through Bruce’sscope, Jupiter through all 3 scopes, M13through Storm’s scope along withAlcor/Mizar. We tried for a few other ob-jects but the lights to the north were just toobright.

There were a number of boys whowent back and forth from the scopes to the

dance, but one 8th grader, Ben, stayed withus the whole time we were there. He washighly inquisitive and fun to chat with. Ishowed him around the night sky with a skytour, and the three of us kept him busy withfacts about the objects we were showing.I’d like to thank North Valley Prep Acade-my for having PAS at their 8th Gradedance, and especially Kara for her assis-tance. The night was pleasant and success-ful. We look forward to doing future eventsthere.

North Phoenix Prep Academy May 19By Terri, Event Manager

Ads in PAStimes run for a month andmay be renewed on a month-by-month ba-sis, if submitted by deadline, space permit-

ting. Ads in PAStimes are FREE tomembers. All others are asked to make asmall donation. Donations are to be sent to

Terri, the Newsletter Assistant, who willforward them to the Treasurer. Email Terriat Events@pasaz.org to place an ad.

Sell Your Astronomical Equipment through This NewsletterBy Terri, Event Manager & Format Editor

Summer 2017 PAStimes 15

This event was scheduled each nightfor 8pm to midnight, on the rooftop. Wehad 6 scopes on Friday, 6 scopes on Satur-day and 5 scopes scheduled for Sunday.Expected attendance was 2400 patrons,though there may have been that numbereach night.

Friday, May 12:Setup for this event proved a compli-

cated and extended process. We had tobring cars in one at a time, unload, carry theequipment to the roof and then move thecar to make way for the next one, all whilenegotiating our way through the crowds ofpatrons. Thankfully we had volunteers tohelp, particularly with getting gear to theroof. Initially, evening temperatures werequite comfortable, though around 9:00 pmit seemed to get significantly colder leavingsome wishing they had brought warmerclothing. Our patrons, many of whom werefrom Phoenix and Los Angeles were quitepatient with lines for the telescopes andseemed to really appreciate the views, oftenstaying to chat and ask questions. We wereall kept busy all evening. Some objects weshowed were the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn,M57 (Ring Nebula), M13 (Hercules Clus-ter) and Alcor/Mizar. Team memberswere: Rick Cunningham, Kevin Witts,Roger Anzini, Terri Finch, Bruce Wurstand Storm Sallas. Runners were WilliamFinch and Jake Von Ruhr.

Saturday May 13:This night was breezier, colder and

cloudier than Friday, with clouds at thehorizon reflecting quite a bit of light. Teammembers for Saturday Sam Insana with his8” scope, Bruce his 12”, Kevin with his11”, Roger with his 16”, Terri Finch (8”)and Pete Turner with his 12”. Runners wereStorm, William and Jake.

By Roger: I must tell you that I amhumbled by the politeness and gratitude bythose guests who stepped up to view at mytelescope. One gentleman, after viewingM13 said: "Astronomy is a most noblepursuit. The more you understand about theheavens the more you understand respectfor everything in nature and your fellowhuman beings. Astronomy engenderspeace and kindness in your mind, body andsoul. It changes your life of the better andthe lives of those around you. Understand-ing the Cosmos allows understanding of allthings in the heavens and theearth.........thank you so much for being

here and for what you do."Friday night, using 16" f5 DOB with

10mm ethos eyepiece, we viewed Jupiterincluding the 4 large moons. Then, myguests were stunned and puzzled when weswitched to the M104 galaxy some 29 mil-lion light years distant. 29 million lightyears does kind of bend the mind a bit !!!

Finally we dazzled our viewers withthe great globular cluster M13. Ooh’s,aah’s and wows were commonly heardalong with... come on.....no way. Severalsaid it looked like a great flower hanging inspace, one man, after tweaking the finefocus described M13 as a snowflake ofcrushed diamonds.

Sam writes: Last night we showed themoon, jupiter and saturn but we also hadgood views of M13, M81, M82, M3, M44,M104, and a few other objects.

Roger adds: Saturday we viewed thesame lineup but this time Jupiter treated usto it's Great Red Storm, swirling away, justbelow and left of planet center in our eye-piece. I must say, the viewers that steppedup to the DOB on these two evenings wereoverall, one of the most sky smart andappreciative groups that I have had thepleasure to meet. Thank you all for a greatevent.

Sunday, May 14:Terri writes: The sky was clear and

quite dark this night, in spite of earlierforecasts for clouds and high winds. It waschilly, but the viewing was excellent. Weshowed Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon!

I wish to thank the telescope team foran event well done! It was a long drive - 70miles each way to Arcosanti and back thatwe all did each night of the event. Teammembers were: Terri, Storm, Sam, DonBoyd and Bruce. Roger was our runner andJake showed up later in the evening to helpout.

Arcosanti Star Party May 12th, 13th and 14thBy Terri Finch, Event Manager and the telescope team for this event

As the Sun set on May 14 at Arcosanti, we seethe 2400 patrons at this event start coming out

to greet the evening.

Sam provided this photo of a gal in FancyDress on the rooftop with the Telescope Team,viewing through Sam's scope at this event on

May 14.

Bruce captured this image on May 12, of theparking lot of Arcosanti

Up on the 3rd story roof, we see the set up oftelescopes and Patrons getting ready for the

band below to being. This photo was taken byBruce on May 12.

On May 12, we have Don setting up his scope.This photo provided by Bruce. The patrons arelooking over the wall at the band that is below

in the amphetheater.

On May 12 Sam was waiting for it to get darkso he can show these patrons the night sky.

This photo was provided by Sam.

PAStimes 16 Summer 2017

The Arizona Science Center had theirfirst Teen Science Social on June 9th from6 to 10 pm. The entire science center wasopen with free admission to visitors 13 to18 years of age. They invited PAS to pro-vide telescopes, so Don Boyd and SamInsana used their 8 inch reflectors to showthe Sun, Moon, Jupiter and Saturn. It was awarm night, but the ASC provided coldwater to us throughout the event. We werealso treated to pizza, salads, and lemonade.Throughout the night Mikaila, our teencontact, made announcements through theirDJ to the crowd of over 500, every time wehad a new object to show with our tele-scopes so the visitors would know when togo outside. Although there was a 10 to 14mph wind, we were protected by the build-ings. It was a fun night and Don and I were

thanked many times for showing up byASC personnel and many teenagers.

Don adds: It was a great event, but myback was killing me most of the night, so Ihad to sit down most of the time. But thekids more than made up for it. They werereally excited to see what we were showing.

Teen Science Social atArizona Science Center June 9

By President Sam Insana

At the Teen Science Social at the Arizona Sci-ence Center, Sam and Don provided Solar

viewing until the Sun went down that evening,and then night time viewing of Jupiter, Saturn

and the Moon on June 9th. Photo by Sam.

Here's some teenagers being spun around atthis event. Photo by Sam.

Terri writes: At this event from PASwere: William and Terri Finch, Rick Cun-ningham, Sam and Frank Insana, Ron andJulie Walker, Paul Facuna, Charles Be-audrot, Terry Dancer Jr and Terry DancerSr, Don Boyd, Alex Vrenios, Howard Mon-eta and Eric Steinberg. The telescopes wereprovided by Rick who brought his Dob,Sam and Frank with Frank’s 16”, Paul withthe club scope housed at Mike’s, Howardwith his 8”, and Terry Jr with his 5” refrac-tor. The potluck dinner began after thescopes were set up; at dinner two movieswere announced possibilities for the eve-ning but because the skies were so beauti-fully clear and dark, we all stayed outside.We were able to observe a lot of really greatobjects and Sam took us on a tour of Sagit-tarius once it rose above the horizon. Theparty broke up about 11:30pm, but some ofus stayed for a while, leaving around 12:30am. There was a nice celebration of Mike’s63rd birthday with cupcakes and ice creamafter dinner, followed by ice cream floats atthe end of the star party. Thanks to every-one who joined in providing food for thegreat dinner and to Mike for hosting thisevent. It was a perfect evening for a fantas-tic private PAS members only star party!!!Looking forward to the next dark sky event

at Mike’s!!!Sam adds: About 15 PAS members

attended Mike's birthday party. After thepotluck we sang happy birthday and had Icecream and cupcakes. We then had a starparty with Howard, Sam, Frank, Paul F,Rick, Charles, and Terry Dancer providingscopes. Rick and Sam and Frank kept ob-serving until 1:30 am. During the night wesaw M8, M20, M81, M82, M44, M13, M51M57, M22, Jupiter, Saturn, the Veil Nebu-la, and several other objects including theMilky Way and at least 7 meteors. It was afun and pleasant night with temps in the70s, and no clouds, winds or rain.

Dark Sky Star Party in Carefree May 20By Terri, Event Manager and President Sam Insana

Mike Marron, Birthday Boy, getting ready toopen his gifts and cards and blow out the can-dle on his birthday cupcake. Photo was takenby Terri Finch. The candle is a question mark,not because we don't know Mike's age, but be-cause we couldn't find enough candles and fit

them on one cupcake.Behind Mike is a gift in the box. Mike had sev-eral cards given to him and a few gifts. We allenjoyed cake, ice cream and a great party at

Mike's on May 20. Thank you Mike for hostingthis event. Photo by Terri.