WHAC Monthly Meeting

The West Hawai’i Astronomy Club Meeting is nearly upon us. As a reminder we will be at CFHT Headquarters this month. We have a guest speaker this month, so it should be a good evening…

Decoding starlight with infrared spectroscopy: Finding water in places where planets might form around new stars
Greg Doppmann, Keck Observatory
7:00pm, Feb 14th

Greg Doppmann is recent transplant to the Big Island, now working at the Keck Observatory as a Support Astronomer. He received his professional training in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to research, Greg was also active in infrared instrumentation for the McDonald Observatory while at Texas. After graduating in 2002, he took a postdoc position at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

In 2004, Greg moved down to La Serena Chile and became an instrument scientist at the Gemini Observatory. More recently, he was a member of the scientific staff at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson for 5 years before moving to Hawaii.

His current research interests are focused on star formation, where he uses large telescopes with infrared spectrometers to measure physical properties of young stars that are embedded within nearby star forming clouds. In his spare time he enjoys hiking, cycling, gardening, and flying.

Venus and Uranus

This evening Venus and Uranus are very close, with the pair separated by a mere 19 arc-minutes, about 1/5th of a degree and well within the same medium power telescopic field. This a is chance to find the ice-giant with relatively little effort, there will be no nearby bright stars to confuse with the 5.9 magnitude Uranus. At high magnification both planets will be seen as disks, Venus 16 arc-seconds across, and Uranus a bit over 3 arc-seconds across. Venus is now far enough between the Earth and the Sun to become somewhat gibbous, being about 70% illuminated.

The Moon and Mars

Tonight a nearly full Moon will rise together with the planet Mars. The pair will rise about 20:28 and will be about 9° apart.

Mars is approaching opposition, as the Earth draws closer to the red planet it is getting larger and brighter in our sky. It is now over 12 arc-seconds in diameter and shining at -0.8 magnitude. Opposition will occur March 3rd.

Live Webcast for Keck Lecture

On Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012, Keck Observatory will be hosting a live webcast of an astronomy talk by Dr. Tom Soifer of Caltech. The title of the talk is “Seeing the Invisible Universe.” Dr. Soifer also serves as the Director of the Spitzer Science Center and is a member of the Keck Observatory Board of Directors.

The webcast begins at 7 pm Hawaiian Time, 9 pm Pacific Time (5 am GMT, Feb 10) and will be streamed from the Kahilu Theatre in Waimea-Kamuela, on the Big Island of Hawaii. Watch in the window below, or click on the UStream link.

The live webcast will play in the box below beginning at 7 pm HST / 9 pm U.S. PST, or can be found via the Keck Observatory Facebook page.



Live broadcasting by Ustream

A Premiere

Tomorrow night will see the premiere of my latest work. Over the last few months I have been assembling a video on Keck titled Keck in Motion. The nice part is that the first public screening will see the video on a big screen indeed… The showing will be at the Kahilu Theater. It will be run as a introduction piece before the Keck lecture

The video has seen the usual creative cycles during production… Enthusiasm followed by disillusionment, in alternating phases. Despite some doubts along the way, I have to admit the final version is not all that bad. Everyone who has seen it uniformly gives great reviews, but as the author, I see all the flaws and things I could improve. Whatever reservations I might have, the time has come to simply say… It is done. I have turned over copies to Larry and Mariko, ready for projection on a big screen tomorrow night.

The video has been seen a couple private showings to a selected audience. In particular it has been seen by the guys on the summit crew, many of whom appear in the video. Some bits of the video have been seen here before, particularly the three lasers sequence. Some of the material was stuff I had accumulated across the years, many pieces were custom shot to complete the project. Somehow it works into a very nice narrative and a complete story in three minutes, thirty-six seconds.

Look to see the video posted here after the premiere. Peeking at my Vimeo account will not help, I have not uploaded it yet. I suspect it will get spread around a little, used for Keck PR. It does show what a special place Keck is. Better yet, it highlights the hard work it takes to keep Keck on-sky every night. Because of that, this video is dedicated to the guys of the summit crew.

Lasers 3 over Mauna Kea from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo.

Reminder – Keck Lecture Tomorrow

Tom Soifer
Seeing the Invisible Universe

Kahilu Theater
Thursday, February 9
7:00pm

Astronomy is enjoying a golden age and the W M Keck Observatory is a world leader in cosmic exploration. With generous support from Rob and Terry Ryan, Keck Observatory invites you to take a journey beyond this world to the frontiers of discovery. Your guides are Keck’s astronomers. They will bring you a rich and varied Universe and an evening filled with beauty, drama, mystery and surprise.

Tom Soifer is professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology and the Director of the Spitzer Science Center. He is also the Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at Caltech and a member of the Board of Directors of the W. M. Keck Observatory. The Spitzer Space Telescope is NASA’s latest Great Observatory, designed to explore the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Spitzer was launched in August of 2003. In his talk, Soifer will describe some of the most exciting results from the Spitzer mission, among its many discoveries have been measuring the thermal emission and spectra from hot Jupiters orbiting other stars, finding “Fullerene (buckyball)” molecules in space, observing prebiotic molecules in galaxies seen less than 3 billion years after the big bang, and measuring the masses of the most distant and youngest galaxies known.

There is no charge for admission to any events in the Makana series.

Presented by W.M. Keck Observatory.

Venus and Uranus

Over the next few night Venus will pass very close to Uranus. The pair will be close for about five days, around 2° or less from the 7th to the 11th. It is on the 9th that the closest approach will occur with the pair separated by a mere 19 arc-minutes, about 1/5th of a degree and well within the same medium power telescopic field. This a is chance to find the ice-giant with relatively little effort, there will be no nearby bright stars to confuse with the 5.9 magnitude Uranus. At high magnification both planets will be seen as disks, Venus 16 arc-seconds across, and Uranus a bit over 3 arc-seconds across. Venus is now far enough between the Earth and the Sun to become somewhat gibbous, being about 70% illuminated.