Make sure you hit the show notes for plenty of information about Saturn and a first look at our Moon...including the Woman in the Moon.

Carpe Marmota monax - Seize the Groundhog!

Welcome to Astronomy a Go Go! for Thursday February 2, 2006!

Happy Groundhog day and more importantly happy cross quarter day.

Spring is here! Okay, most people think you have to wait until the Vernal Equinox but that really doesn't make any sense...so I demand a recount, today is the first day of Spring in the N.Hemisphere or Fall in the S.Hemisphere. What do you think?

Welcome!

I have had some wonderful conversations lately with two new listeners, Russell from Australia and Sri Sankar from India, who found me from my connection with the Saturn Observation Campaign

Saturn

The most useful to you right now will be the link for finding Saturn in your own night sky. It was fun working with Sri Sankar trying to figure out where he was and then trying to describe where to look, it seemed to work but instead of getting a hundred email for custom directions I am going to have you go to the Saturn Observation Campaign website and to their link for the Saturn finder!

Find Saturn here!
Galileo Project
Cassini Homepage
Wikipedia - Saturn

Saturn reached opposition on Jan. 27, 2006 just after the last podcast. An object is at opposition when the Sun is on one side of the Earth and an object is directly on the opposite side. January through June 2006 are the best months to view Saturn this year. In June, Saturn will dip lower in the sky, and by early August it is lost in the glare of the setting sun.

"I discovered another very strange wonder, which I should like to make known to their Highnesses . . . , keeping it secret, however, until the time when my work is published . . . . the star of Saturn is not a single star, but is a compsite of three, which almost touch each other, never change or move relative to each other, and are arranged in a row along the zodiac, the middle one being three times larger than the lateral ones, and they are situated in this form: oOo." - Galileo

Galileo's Saturn

Huygens's Saturn

Saturn Reference

Saturn Fast Facts

• Saturn is the 6th planet from the sun second largest planet in our solar system.
• Named after the Roman god of agriculture Saturn is the least dense planet in our solar system, it would float if you could find a bathtub full of water that it would fit in...but who would want to clean the rings.
• Like Jupiter, Saturn is about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium with traces of water, methane, ammonia and "rock", similar to the composition of the primordial Solar Nebula from which the solar system was formed.
• Saturn's interior is similar to Jupiter's consisting of a rocky core, a liquid metallic hydrogen layer and a molecular hydrogen layer. Traces of various ices are also present.
• Saturn's rings primarily made of rock and ice are extraordinarily thin. About 250,000 km or more in diameter they're less than one kilometer thick. Despite their impressive appearance, there's really very little material in the rings -- if the rings were compressed into a single body it would be no more than 100 km across.
• Like the other jovian planets, Saturn has a significant magnetic field and they have photographed auroroas on Saturn as well as lightning.
• Saturn has been visited by Pioneer II, Voyager 1 & 2 and now Cassini has taken up a research position around Saturn and has already given us an amazing amount of data and will
• Orbital Period: 29.46 Earth years
• Rotation Period: 0.436 Earth day (10.67 Earth hours)
• Distance from Sun: 1,426.94 million km =9.5 AU
• Mass= 95 Earth masses
• Rings=in order D, C, B, A, F, G, E
• Moons= (47) 34 named and growing. Titan is the largest and home to the Huygens Probe
  Mimas is the coolest because it looks like the death star from Star Wars
  Iapetus (eye-ap-eh-tes) is the strangest with its two-tone red/black and white high contrast surface and it's strange equitorial ridge.
  And Prometheus and Pandora are the most controlling, shaping the F ring

Tips and Tricks

Naked eye viewing Start watching early in the week for the first time you can see the new waxing crescent moon. Also, if you are where it is dark look for Saturn, in Cancer, it will be in an open star cluster called M44 or the Beehive
Moon

By Monday you will be able to see the Woman on the Moon. I tell my Girl Scouts that Juliette Low is on the moon, Juliette Low is to Girl Scouts as Lady Baden Powell is to Girl Guides for those of you who have guides or Scouts in their countries. Anyway...

Her hair is formed by:

1. Sea of Serenity (Mare Serenitatis)
2. Sea of Tranquillity (Mare Tranquillitatis) This "sea" was the location of the first human visit to the Moon. In 1969, Apollo 11 landed just in front of the lady's ear.
3. Sea of Fertility (Mare Fecunditatis)
4. Sea of Nectar (Mare Nectaris)
Other features are:
5. Sea of Vapor (Mare Vaporum) her eye.
6. Seething Bay (Sinus Aestuum) her nose.
7. Central Bay (Sinus Medii) her mouth.
8. Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) is under her chin.
9. Tycho is a crater that is sometimes a gem on a chain of pearls/craters around the neck of The Woman in the Moon.

Picture Credit

Terminology

• Terminator - The line separating the illuminated and dark areas of a planetary body; the dividing line between day and night as observed from a distance
• Limb - The outer edge of a Lunar or other planetary disk
• Highlands, The densely cratered portions of the Moon that are typically at higher elevations than the mare plains
• Mare (pronounced "mahr-ay") "Sea"; a large circular plain on the Moon; specifically plains covering the floors of several large basins and spreading over adjacent areas comprised primarily of basaltic lava flows.
• Dorsum pl. dorsa, Ridge

Binocular viewing-Our first binocular look at the moon we are looking at a crater inside a crater, Posidonius A inside Posidonius. First find the Sea of Serinity, the top of the lady's hair to lunar north and lunar east you will see a large crater on the edge of the sea. Now image those two are the wide open mouth of a frog, the frog's eyes Posidonius P and J sit on the north side of the primary crater.
Telescopic viewing- with a telescope look at the same area and take a look at the floor of Mare Serenitatis do you see the winding ridge? This is the Dorsa Schmirnov, the Schmirnov ridge

For those of you in the S. Hemisphere I would recommend listening to James Barclay's podcast on his website. He is in a luck spot on the planet, no light pollution and a great observatory. You can find all of his show in his podcast section.

Planets

The Evening Set
Mars in Aries is still easy to pick out as the rusty red point SW of the Pleiades above the tale of Cetus the whale.
Saturn sits in Cancer and outshines all the stars in that constellation. It makes a nice triangle with Castor and Procyon
The Morning Set
Venus is low in the sky rising just before the sun. She is technically in Sagittarius but those stars will be too washed out to see.
Jupiter is in Libra and higher and west of Venus look between the red star Antaras and the bright white star Spica in the pre-dawn sky.

News

On Feb 3, 1966 the first soft landing on the moon the Soviet probe Luna 9 touched down and sent back the very first picture of the surface of the moon

Astronaut Bill McArthur was un-officially the 17,780th participant in the Houston marathon he ran a half marathon on a treadmill from the International Space Station. Coming in at 1:54:32, McArthur said he �felt wonderful� � even if he wasn�t a threat to the elite runners.

Exiled Stars Two stars have been spotted streaking out of the Milky Way, never to return. These stars are part of a new class of objects which astronomers have dubbed "exiles". These are stars which were once part of a binary system that strayed too close to the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. The pair is torn apart, and the exiled star is fired off on a trajectory that will take it out of our galaxy. These events occur about once every 100,000 years.

SuitSat! Check it out and fire up the ham radio, we sure will.

Where is New Horizons now? Its fast!

More on 2003 UB313 Larger or Smaller

Stardust is asleep. The Stardust spacecraft, minus its aerogel-equipped sample return capsule, is now in a state of hibernation. On January 30 at 00:00 UTC, nearly all of its systems were deactivated, leaving only a few critical ones like its solar arrays and radio receive antenna online. Stardust is not the only spacecraft in such a state -- Deep Impact is too. Both are fully functional spacecraft that could be sent to explore other asteroids or comets if the opportunity arises for a close enough approach.

Trivia

Answer's for Show# 7 Trivia

1. The constellation Eridanus is considered the SECOND longest constellation in the night sky, what is the longest? Answer: Hydra

This week's trivia

1. Who gets all the credit for 'inventing' the telescope and who's patent application is the closest documentation to proving who really did invent the telescope?

Well that is it for Astronomy a Go Go! Show #8, I'm glad you tuned in as always you can email us at astronomyagogo@gmail.com or leave a note in our show notes at www.astronomy.libsyn.com. We would love to hear from you!

Music

Intermission: Amy Sawyer, Patience (fat hippy records)
End song: Jenny Beck Morning Rain (as if we need any more)