Solar & Planetary LtE Now for CMO/ISMO #61 (CMO #435)

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 LtE#434

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¤····Subject: Re: from bill sheehan: news

Received: 31 May 2015 at 04:44 AM

 

Dear Masatsugu,
   It is always a pleasure to hear from you—though I read with concern about the continuing heart troubles. Thank you for reminding me of your article about Flamsteed vs. Newton, which I will now read again. 
   Lately I have become very interested in the careers of the hardworking observers in positional astronomy like Flamsteed, Bradley, and Airy (and let us not forget Bessel who was perhaps the most gifted of any of them). My recent visit to Greenwich has enhanced this interest. Obviously it was their ability to obtain measures of planetary positions accurate to a few seconds of arc that betrayed the discrepancy between the theoretical and observed positions of Uranus that led to the discovery of Neptune.  So perhaps I may continue the X-tracts from the X-file now to show how that story turns out.  Perhaps, however, I should write a brief essay about the coincidence in dates between Mariner 4’s flyby of Mars of July 14, 1965 and the New Horizon’s flyby of Pluto of July 14, 2015, with some reflections on just what an era we have lived in.  This may put readers in the mood of the Great Event we are expecting soon.  Perhaps I should say a few words about Clyde Tombaugh’s role as a Mars observer—something he wanted to be remembered for.  I think his interest in Mars was greater than just about anything else.
    I will come up with something for you—never fear.
    I plan to be in Flagstaff July 9-23—what better place to be to enjoy the flyby of the little world that was discovered there on Mars Hill?  I have decided that this would be far more pleasant than being crowded by the press people at Laurel, Maryland, where the scientists will gather.  I have made arrangements to be in touch by phone with Dale Cruikshank, who will be there, who can give some firsthand impressions of what we are learning from our spacecraft on the icy fringe of the Solar System.
   All the best, Bill 
  
----------------------------------
 On May 30, 2015, at 2:25 PM, Masatsugu MINAMI  wrote:
 
 Dear Bill,
 
 Thank you very much for your timely news. It’s good to hear from you after a while. It was interesting to read about the nice trip to the northern England of you and your wife. We received the email on the very morning of 25 May JST when we were editing CMO #434, and hence we put it readily in the LtE corner of #434.
 http://www.kwasan.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~cmo/cmomn4/CMO434.pdf
 
 I remember some names of towns are familiar to me. We have a CMO friend called Samuel Whitby in Virginia, whose ancestor must have come from Whitby. I once visited Chester where I enjoyed the row of sophisticatedly-decorated houses. I am keeping one colour copy of Mars drawing in 1988 which was made and sent by Richard Baum. I also remember the old Greenwich together with the tea clipper ship Cutty Sark. Inside the old Greenwich observatory, the statue of Flamsteed was very impressive to me. Have you ever happened to read my following old essay entitled “Great Comet in 1680 and Flamsteed vs Newton”?
 http://www.kwasan.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~cmo/cmomn2/Cahier07.htm
 in which I wrote “The statue of Flamsteed at the old Greenwich Observatory is filled with the atmosphere of anguish, but it is not only because of his illness but with the result of the battle with the ‘fearful, cautious and suspicious’ Newton.”
 
 Now I would like to ask you to write some opening essay for CMO #435 (June issue) as you suggested. The dead line is around 20 June.
 
 Just a notice: As we remember, before your opening essay “X-tracts from the ‘X’ files: W. H. Pickering and Percival Lowell: from collaborators to rivals (to be continued)” in CMO #430 (January 2015 issue), you wrote “A Travel Journal; ASADA, MINAMI and SHEEHAN in Japan; Entries from SHEEHAN's Travel-log, April and May 2004” in CMO #427 (October 2014 issue) where you put also “to be continued” at its end line.
 
 Thank you again for your kind correspondence, and I look forward to your opening essay for #435 on any subject.
 With best wishes,
 
 Masatsugu
 
 PS: I am going to receive a re-examination (cardiac catheterisation) in hospital on 5 June because I feel angina attacks very often recently. I have already one stent in my coronary artery.

---------------------------------------------

 

Bill SHEEHAN (Willmar, MN)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Saturn, 30th May

Received: 31 May 2015 at 14:31 JST

 

Hi all, here is an image of Saturn from last night showing the latitude +63 storm rising at upper left.

Seeing was only good enough for an IR image.

 

regards, Anthony

Link:
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/saturn/20150530-162648/s20150530-162648utc.png

 

Anthony WESLEY (NSW, AUSTRALIA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Saturn, 24th May, IR

Received: 25 May 2015 at 19:56 JST

 

Hi all, here is an IR image of Saturn from last night in reasonable seeing. The north polar hexagon is visible, and also the disrupted boundary at +64N is clear in this filter.

 

regards, Anthony

Link:
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/saturn/20150524-160710/s20150524-160710utc.png

 

Anthony WESLEY (NSW, AUSTRALIA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Saturn, 24th May

Received: 25 May 2015 at 19:36 JST

 

Here is a colour image of Saturn from last night in reasonable seeing. The polar hexagon is visible, as is the disrupted boundary at +64N (just visible here in the northern green band).

 

regards, Anthony

Link:
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/saturn/20150524-160706/s20150524-160706utc.png

 

Anthony WESLEY (NSW, AUSTRALIA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: from bill sheehan: news

Received: 25 May 2015 at 09:52 AM

 

Dear Masatsugu,
  I have not heard from you for a while, so I am writing just to reestablish contact and to make sure that all is well….
  I suppose we will be needing another article for the CMO/ISMO journal.  I can come up with something in short order if required.
  In March, Debb and I were in Scotland, observing the almost-total eclipse of the Sun, then spent some time visiting friends in the north of England  A highlight was spending time with David Sellers, who has written great books on the transits of Venus and the definitive biography of William Gascoigne, Jeremiah Horrocks’s contemporary and still renowned for his invention of the eyepiece micrometer.  David showed me a replica fabricated by an instrument-maker in the U.S., and it really is a remarkable piece. I also saw where Goodricke was living in York when he made his variable star discoveries, paid our respects to the desolate Marston Moor, where Gascoigne perished fighting for the royalists in the Civil Wars, and had a grand day—with fish and chips, of course—at Captain Cook’s hometown at Whitby, a picturesque little town.  David and his charming wife Jane drove Debb and me to Chester, where I visited Richard Baum, an old friend, and several keen selenographers, before going south through Oxford and into London. Among other things,  I gave a talk on Mars at the National Museum for the Society for the History of Astronomy, which seemed to be well received and is due to be published in The Antiquarian Astronomer.
   Back here again, I have been dealing with work, about which the less said the better.  But apart from that, I am well.  I take the dogs on walks everyday, follow a strict dietary regimen (at the moment, I am abstaining from all alcoholic beverages), and have been working diligently on the Pluto book to be co-authored with Dale Cruikshank.  Dale is describing the modern era, to which he has been a main contributor, while I remain still in the 19th century, writing about the discovery of Neptune.  Quite soon, however, I should be back to the calculations for “Planet X” that I was working on when I contributed that essay on Carrigan’s calculations.  I should have some interesting things to report in due course.
   Meanwhile, just this past week—on May 22—we noted the 121st anniversary of Percival Lowell’s talk in Boston, at which he gave his preview of what he hoped to establish at the observatory just being set up in Flagstaff, while May 31 marks the anniversary of his first observations with the 12-in. refractor. 
   July 9-23 I shall be in Flagstaff, in the new place acquired last summer; tentatively hoping to have Ewen Whitaker up for a visit.  (He lives in Tucson, but his son-in-law, a pilot, and daughter live very close to our place.)  We will have some kind of events related to Pluto—I still find the sentiments in favor of its remaining a planet very strong!—and perhaps take a look through the Clark, whose refurbishment was complete and now looks better than new!  Of course, the New Horizons flyby will occur on July 14—exactly fifty years to the day since the Mariner 4 flyby; the latter was an epoch in my childhood—I remember how disappointed I was that there were no Lowellian canals!  These two—Mariner 4 and New Horizons—are bookends of Solar System exploration.
   Grant me news of you, Reiichi, and all my Japanese friends.  I often think still of the beauty of Japan which we shared on the Lowell Road to Noto all these years ago now.
   Kind regards,
   Bill
   PS. The world of keen planetary observers feels much more lonely now that we have lost, in short order, both Don Parker and Walter Haas.  The generation that knew what it was to study planets visually at the eyepiece is passing away, and eventually will seem as remote and unrecapturable as the scenes that George Catlin painted on his visits to the Western Prairies when they belonged to the Indians and the Buffalo.

 

Bill SHEEHAN (Willmar, MN)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Saturn, 21st May

Received: 22 May 2015 at 14:55 JST

 

Some more good seeing on Saturn last night, here is an image showing the storm activity in the far north (latitude +64) close to setting at upper left. This is a composite image made using Winjupos and combining IR data between 1423UTC and 1545UTC.

cheers, Anthony

Link:
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/saturn/20150521-143712/s20150521-143712utc.png

 

Anthony WESLEY (NSW, AUSTRALIA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Jupiter 2015.05.12 with Europa, Callisto and Io

Received: 21 May 2015 at 03:16 JST

 

Dears,
A correct seeing at beginning of the night for this session. Interesting to see large perturbations following the Great Red Spot, the "STB ghost", bluish feature rising in the zone below great red spot, and the perturbed North Equatorial Band:

 

http://www.astrosurf.com/delcroix/images/planches/j20150512-20h21.7UT-MDe.jpg

In infrared, more details are visible, for example in the great red spot a small dark streak, and a very dark festoon attacking the North Equatorial band:

 

http://www.astrosurf.com/delcroix/images/planches/j20150512i-19h56.2UT-MDe.jpg

 

Animation showing the satellites loving, and the variability of the seeing  :( :
http://www.astrosurf.com/delcroix/images/planches/j20150512i-MDe.gif
 

Color layers:

http://www.astrosurf.com/delcroix/images/planches/j20150512r-20h20.9UT-MDe.jpg

 

 

http://www.astrosurf.com/delcroix/images/planches/j20150512g-20h21.7UT-MDe.jpg

 

 

http://www.astrosurf.com/delcroix/images/planches/j20150512b-20h22.5UT-MDe.jpg

 

No impact detected with DeTeCt.
 
Steady skies!

Marc DELCROIX (Tournefeuille, FRANCE)
http://astrosurf.com/delcroix

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Saturn animation, May 19

Received: 20 May 2015 at 11:37 JST

 

Here's an animation of two Saturn images about 10 minutes apart, you can see some darker features around the equator (rising at left) and a few faint lighter storms in the mid-north latitudes at centre.

cheers, Anthony

Link:
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/saturn/20150519-165307/s20150519-1645UTC-1653UTC-anim.gif

 

Anthony WESLEY (NSW, AUSTRALIA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Saturn May 19

Received: 20 May 2015 at 08:59 JST

 

Hi all, we had some good seeing on Saturn after midnight, here is an RGB image showing the polar hexagon and a lot of banded structure. No storms.

 

regards, Anthony

Link:
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/saturn/20150519-165307/s20150519-165307utc.png

 

Anthony WESLEY (NSW, AUSTRALIA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Solar Images 15-17-May-2015

Received: 19 May 2015 at 17:26 JST

 

Hi Guys More in the life of active regions ar2345 and ar2339, Bit of confusion with what was clearly shown as ar2345 and 2339 on the 13th and 14th but shown only as 2339 on Spaceweather after that.

There has been some nice prominence activity too.

 

 

 

 

best wishes

 

Dave TYLER (Bucks, the UK)

 www.david-tyler.com
Ham call G4PIE

 

 

 

¤····Subject: solar images 12-13-May-2015

Received: 15 May 2015 at 07:57 JST

 

Hi Guys here are a few images following the progress of AR2339 , that was subsequently separated into two identities i.e. AR2345 and AR2339.

 

Seeing was better on the 12th but there was much more blue sky on the 13th with time to take in Ha and “white” light.

 

The one-shot prom is double stacked and the Ha AR is single stack.

 

 

 

 

 

Best wishes

 

Dave TYLER (Bucks, the UK)

 www.david-tyler.com
Ham call G4PIE

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Massive solar prom sketched from Ireland

Received: 14 May 2015 at 20:21 JST

 

Hi everyone

Hope you don't mind me sending my solar sketch.

That afternoon  I went out to sketch the AR 2339  in h-alpha but when I saw this massive Hedgerow type prominence on the limb it had to be done.

 

PST 40 h-alpha scope  ,8mm eyepiece / 50X
Pastels and Conte on black paper.  13:33 UT May 13th 2015

 

Best regards

Deirdre

Deirdre KELLEGHAM (Bray, Co Wicklow, IRELAND)

Website http://deirdrekelleghan.net

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Saturn May 12

Received: 13 May 2015 at 12:29 JST

 

Some good seeing on Saturn this morning just after 1am.

cheers, Anthony

Link:
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/saturn/20150512-145822/s20150512-145822utc.png

 

Anthony WESLEY (NSW, AUSTRALIA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Jupiter 12 May 2015.

Received: 13 May 2015 at 03:48 JST

 

Hi, all

 

Kindly find attached RGB/IR image set from this evening.

 

 

Best regards, Clyde

 

Clyde FOSTER (Centurion, SOUTH AFRICA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: solar images 11-May-2015

Received: 12 May 2015 at 08:36 JST

 

Hi Guys Imaging was in cloud gaps and thin cloud around 10am this morning. Seeing was actually better when the thin cloud was present. A quickly processed image showed the seeing to be rather manageable by Autostakkert, resulting in the best solar resolution I have ever had, thanks also to the recently acquired AP178 , which is the largest scope I have used for solar imaging. The sky also allowed a couple of Hα shots before shutting down until late afternoon.

 

Hα were off Coro 90 DS +1.8X BARLOW

 

 

White light AP178 +2X POWERMATE

 

Best wishes

 

Dave TYLER (Bucks, the UK)

 www.david-tyler.com
Ham call G4PIE

 

 

 

¤····Subject: AR12339 - May 10th 2015

Received: 11 May 2015 at 19:40 JST

 

Hi All,

Here's a 2-pane mosaic of the AR12339 region extending back towards the eastern limb. Lots of interesting activity following in the 'wake' of the region, as it rotates towards the central meridian.

 

http://www.digitalsky.org.uk/solar/2015/20150510_ZWO_ASI174MM_114855_SF70_DS.jpg

Best regards,

Pete LAWRENCE (Selsey, WS, the UK)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: SOLAR IMAGES 7-9-May-2015

Received: 11 May 2015 at 09:19 JST

 

Hi Guys AR 2339 is a spectacular and very active spot group. These were “fortunate” captures in cloud gaps in far from ideal seeing around the meridian.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best wishes

 

Dave TYLER (Bucks, the UK)

 www.david-tyler.com
Ham call G4PIE

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Jupiter 5 May 2015.

Received: 6 May 2015 at 03:54 JST

 

Hi, all

Kindly find attached 2 RGB images from this evening.

 

 

Best regards, Clyde

 

Clyde FOSTER (Centurion, SOUTH AFRICA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Jupiter 5 May 2015.

Received: 6 May 2015 at 03:54 JST

 

Hi, all

 

Kindly find attached additional RGB/IR image set from this evening, 5 May. Seeing rather turbulent.

 

 

Best regards, Clyde

 

Clyde FOSTER (Centurion, SOUTH AFRICA)

 

 

 

¤····Subject: solar Images 4-May-2015

Received: 6 May 2015 at 01:44 JST

 

Hi Guys

Sunspot group AR2335 has broken the blankness and is quite photogenic. The “white light” shot is off an AP178T with 3x tv Barlow ( my Jupiter mag too) +Baader solar continuum filter +IR blocker +ZWO ASI120MM-S.

 

Quite a crowd of filaments in Ha Solarmax 90 DS. PRIME FOCUS AND 2X.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best wishes

 

Dave TYLER (Bucks, the UK)

 www.david-tyler.com
Ham call G4PIE

 

 

 

¤····Subject: Fliprom 27-28-April-2015

Received: 2 May 2015 at 07:44 JST

 

Hi Guys There was a nice filprom visible for most of the week, her are a few different shots of it, along with AR 2331 heading off over the limb, leaving us with a very “white light quiet” sun.

 

 

 

best wishes

 

Dave TYLER (Bucks, the UK)

 www.david-tyler.com
Ham call G4PIE

 

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