Solar & Planetary LtE Now in July 2019

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LtE in June 2019

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¤·····Subject: Jupiter 2019/07/25

Received: 25 July 2019 at 15:33 JST

Jupiter images on 25 July 2019.

Kimikazu OZAKI (Aichi, JAPAN)

¤·····Subject: Jupiter 2019/07/24

Received: 29 July 2019 at 15:21 JST

Jupiter images on 24 July 2019.

Kimikazu OZAKI (Aichi, JAPAN)

¤·····Subject: Jupiter images on 27 July 2019

Received: 28 July 2019 at 01:47 JST

Jupiter images on 27 July 2019.

Best regards,

Tomio AKUTSU (Ibaraki, JAPAN)

¤·····Subject: Saturn (July 16th.)

Received: 27 July 2019 at 03:28 JST

Hi all,

Average seeing on the 16th. No notable spots or storms.

The hexagon is ill defined at best though perhaps because of the below par seeing.

http://www.damianpeach.com/sat19/s2019-07-16-0223_1-RGBdp.jpg

Best wishes

Damian PEACH (Selsey, WS, the UK)

Web: http://www.damianpeach.com/

¤·····Subject: Jupiter images on 25 July 2019

Received: 26 July 2019 at 00:07 JST

Jupiter images on 25 July 2019.

Best regards,

Tomio AKUTSU (Ibaraki, JAPAN)

¤·····Subject: Jupiter & Saturn (July 15th.)

Received: 24 July 2019 at 05:34 JST

Hi all,

Two near IR images. Sadly seeing was very poor as has been the case most of this winter in Chile :-(

http://www.damianpeach.com/jup19/2019-07-15-0157_3-IR685dp.jpg

http://www.damianpeach.com/sat19/s2019-07-15-0253_2-IR685dp.jpg

Best wishes,

Damian PEACH (Selsey, WS, the UK)

Web: http://www.damianpeach.com/

¤·····Subject: Jupiter 2019/07/23

Received: 23 July 2019 at 23:15 JST

Jupiter image on 23 July 2019.

Kimikazu OZAKI (Aichi, JAPAN)

¤·····Subject: Lunar eclipse (July 16th.)

Received: 18 July 2019 at 04:16 JST

Hi all,

Here are a couple of shots taken last night from near Selsey, UK. A nice eclipse with some thin high clouds affecting the view at times. Both images are several exposures combined.

http://www.damianpeach.com/lunar19/eclipse_july16th_2019_dp.jpg

http://www.damianpeach.com/lunar19/eclipse_july16th_2019_clouds_dp.jpg

Best wishes

Damian PEACH (Selsey, WS, the UK)

Web: http://www.damianpeach.com/

¤·····Subject: Re: As for the 20cm F/8 mirror / Masami Murakami (CMO)

Received: 14 July 2019 at 01:39 JST

Dear Tomoko and friends,
   I am very pleased to get this news about the Saheki mirror and the marvelous notebooks of Dr. Minami-san (Masatsugu to those of us who called him a close friend), and we are indeed ready to receive them at the Putnam Collection Center at Lowell Observatory.  I would suggest that you send them into my care there at the Collection center, so that I can personally receive them and make sure that they are properly inventoried and protected. (The archivist, Lauren Amundsen, will be helpful but she has a lot of other projects involved.)

   I am currently, in fact, writing a new book on Mars (with Jim Bell of Arizona State University), and look forward to including some of the history of Japanese observers that Masatsugu taught me about at the 2009 Mars meeting at Meudon. 

  As for the mirror, I plan to have it mounted in a telescope as closely as possible resembling its Japanese form, and this will indeed be placed on display next to the 6-inch Clark which was last used for the 2012 transit of Venus.  I am determined that the telescope will be used, as Drs. Saheki and Minami wished, to continue the observation of Mars, and plan in fact to make this one of my own principal goals in future.

   I have corrected the mistake about the frequency of the CMO publications in my text here, in the event anyone wishes to republish it (and it will be republished in the Lowell Observatory Friends Bulletin sometime this autumn), and I would please ask that Dr. Murakami and Dr. Konnai enter the correction to the version that is currently posted at the CMO site.

With all good wishes, and hope that you can visit Lowell someday.

   Best,

   Bill
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On Jul 13, 2019, at 6:45 AM, Masami MURAKAMI <cmo@mars.dti.ne.jp> wrote:

Dear  Mr. Bill Sheehan,

Many thanks for all the help you gave us this time which made the Putnam Collection Center of Lowell Observatory receiving Masatsugu Minami’s entire observing logs.

Thanks a lot also for your making preparations to build consensus in naming a Martian crater for Dr. Minami, Mrs. Tomoko Minami was very much pleased.

As for the 20cm F/8 mirror I have notified you via Tadashi Asada the other day, we’d like to ship to you the mirror only, I mean not including the tube, nor the altazimuth mounting. Please find an attached picture of the 20cmF/8 Newtonian altazimuth telescope (made by Nishimura Optical Factory in Kyoto) installing the mirror. This Pyrex primary mirror was produced by Tsuneo Saheki by himself, which has a sign engraved on the back side as “Saheki No.10, Oct 1977” (please use a magnifier to read it). Saheki learned mirror making from Rev. Shigemaro Kibe, the Japanese counterpart of George Calver, or Jean Texereau. Kibe was a direct disciple of Kaname Nakamura in astronomical mirror making (and Mars observation also). Saheki gave this mirror to Minami in the early spring of 1982, stressing “Make sure to use this mirror for Mars observation!”. The completed telescope was delivered from Nishimura Factory on 19 May 1982 to Mimami’s house in the official quarters in Ohtsu City where he had used the Newtonian till around 1998.

On 5 December 1998 I (Murakami) obtained this 20cmF/8 reflector from Minami, who also pushing me “Be sure to use this telescope for observing Mars!”. Saheki wrote in his letter to Minami dated 19 February 1982 (Mrs. Tomoko Minami discovered lately) as?I figured this mirror under the instruction of Takao Namura to maneuver it into the ideal paraboloidal. Testing the mirror he told me that the surface was very smooth, almost flawless, as accurate as /15 lambda.  T. Namura is the successor of S. Kibe’s “Special Optical Laboratory”.

Since then I have enjoyed the pretty solid Mars images cast by the Saheki mirror under good seeing conditions. Now I am planning to donate this historical mirror to Lowell Observatory, and my telescope will be vacant (I have already started finding a replacing mirror!). Maybe I’ll miss the mirror a bit, but it’s OK, I believe it well deserves to be displayed next to the 6-inch Clark refractor once has landed in Japan with P. Lowell. You may be already aware of it, but please note the famous “The Long One” 20cm F/10 Newtonian altazimuth reflector you saw in your 2004 visit to Japan at Saheki’s house in Itami was a different telescope which installed an excellent Kibe mirror.

Now as for Minami’s observing logs: When I visited Minami’s house at Mikuni on this 29 June with Takashi Nakajima, Reiichi Konnai, Tomio Akutsu and Akinori Nishita, we identified 90 sketchbooks of Japanese B5 size (182X257mm), the observation period spanning from 1968 to 2016:the sketchbook Minami liked is made of “1000 Years Paper”, a famous brand of endurable paper. Most of the sketchbooks had nothing written on their covers. For your convenience we spent a day adding labels on the covers showing the observation periods. We also confirmed one more 1973 sketchbook existing which is now on display in a museum in Fukui City as you can see in the picture attached here, to be shipped to you later separately.

Mrs. Tomoko Minami and Tadashi Asada are waiting for your OK, to start preparation of shipping Dr. Minami’s observing logs and the 20cmF/8 Saheki Mirror. Please let them know when you are ready.

I am not good at English language, so I asked Reiichi konnai to correct my English.

Best Wishes,

Masami Murakami

13 July 2019

PS:

May I direct you a question on the publication intervals of CMO? In your biographical note on Masatsugu Minami, you wrote “….and appearing monthly during opposition years (and occasionally in in-between years),….

I checked the frequency of the publication of CMO from the very beginning, and found they have been appearing monthly in in-between opposition years, and appearing semi-monthly (twice a month) during opposition years. Could

you correct this part?

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Bill SHEEHAN (Flagstaff, AZ)

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