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Calendar of Events FRIDAY April 15 Royall Hall, UMKC

8:00 PM RingWorld: Cassini

Huygens Encounters Saturn & Titan Dr. Tom Cravens, KU

Tentative Date for Open

House: Memorial Stadium Sunday, April 17—8:30 PM

President: Hannah Swift hkswift@ku.edu Treasurer: Dr. Steve Shawl Shawl@ku.edu University Advisor: Dr. Bruce Twarog btwarog@ku.edu Webmaster: Gary Webber gwebber@ku.edu Events Coordinator Rick Heschmeyer RCJBM@aol.com

Report From the Officers on the March Meeting:

The March meeting featured Graham Bell of the Topeka Club, NEKAAL, who provided a history of the 27-inch telescope and its resurrection for re-search. The Pitt telescope was originally used by Clyde Tombaugh to do his Master’s Thesis, when he came to KU after finding Pluto, an anniversary cele-brated in February. The Pitt telescope survived on the KU campus for almost 60 years until its recent demise on the roof of Lindley Hall. While the super-

structure was trashed, the mirrors were save and donated to the Topeka club. After a number of years of fundraising and, with the support of a NASA grant, the mirror has been placed back into action within a new telescope optical tube assembly and mount. The new research telescope has already seen first light and recorded obser-vations of asteroids for the international program: see http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/mpec/K05/K05F03.html for an example of the data. The telescope will be officially dedicated on April 2 and everyone is invited—see the press release on pg. 8. For April, our monthly meeting will technically be cancelled, in part because April 15/16 will be the two days scheduled for the regional astrophysics conference in Kansas City, but also because there is a public lecture on Friday, April 15, associ-ated with this conference at Royall Hall at UMKC. The public talk will be by Dr. Tom Cravens of KU on the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and the latest results from this extraordinarily successful mission. Tom is an INMS Cassini team member and has extensive experience in planetary magnetic fields and atmospheric composi-tions. All members who can are encouraged to attend this talk at 8PM on the 15th. A map of the area around Royall Hall, UMKC is provided below. Returning to the issue of observing, the Memorial Stadium site is still under construc-

(Continued on page 2)

Volume 31 Number 04 APRIL 2005

F r o m t h e O f f i c e r s

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

From the Officers (continued) 2

Mini Big Bang Created 3

The Most Massive Stars 4

POSTER FOR UMKC TALK 5

Review of Faster Than Light 6

Utterly Alien (continued) 6

Mini Big Bang (continued) 7

Tombaugh Telescope 8

Utterly Alien 9

MID-AMERICAN REGIONAL

ASTROPHYS-ICS CONFER-

ENCE April 15, 2005

RING-WORLD—

Public Lecture

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tion and, though it was hoped that they would be finished by now, the weather has not cooperated. As of March 20, construction was expected to finish by April 1. We had considered a possible open house on April. 3, but this is cutting things close if the construction is delayed again. As a tentative date, we will schedule the first open house for Sunday, April 17. If this date solidifies, we will forward the info via the web site and via email as soon as we are sure. As noted in past newsletters, we are members of the Astronomical League. Among their many activities to encourage amateur astronomy are the Observing Clubs. The Observing Clubs offer encouragement and certificates of accomplish-ment for demonstrating observing skills with a variety of instruments and objects. These include the Messier Club, Bin-ocular Messier Club and the Herschel 400 Club, the Deep Sky Binocular Club, the Southern Skies Binocular Club, the Meteor Club, the Double Star Club, Lunar Club and the newly formed Globular Cluster, Constellation Hunter and South-ern Sky Telescopic Clubs. Other clubs are the: Arp Peculiar Galaxy Club, Asteroid Observing Club, Caldwell Club, Comet Club, Double Star Club, Earth Orbiting Satellite Club, Galaxy Groups & Clusters Club, Herschel II Club, The Master Observer Club, Meteor Club, Planetary Observers Club, Sky Puppy Club, Sunspotters Club, Universe Sampler Club and Urban Observing Club. Each Club offers a certificate based upon achieving certain observing goals. These are usually in the form of a specific number of objects of a specific group with a given type of instrument. Occasionally there are multiple levels of accom-plishment within the club. There is no time limit for completing the required observing, but good record keeping is re-quired. When you have reached the requisite number of objects, your observing logs are examined by the appropriate authority and you will receive a certificate and pin to proclaim to all that you have reached your goal. Many local astro-nomical societies even post lists of those who have obtained their certificates. This month we feature the details on one of the clubs for younger members, the Sky Puppy Club. While the vast majority of the observing programs are geared to beginning and advanced adult observers, the Sky Puppies Club is designed just for the younger observer. The Astro-nomical League encourages young observers to hone their skills early since most hobbies and vocational interests be-gin at an early age. The purpose of the Sky Puppies Club is to familiarize young observers with the night sky and whet their appetite to eventually graduate from a Sky Puppy to a Sky Hound. This process is usually begun when a parent takes their child along on observing trips. Unfortunately, many of the observing programs are somewhat to abstract, even esoteric, to hold the attention of the younger observer. In addition many observing parents can't justify the expense of a second telescope necessary for the child to use when both parent and child are observing together. The Sky Puppies Club was created to fill just that gap. To fulfill the goals of this club and receive the Sky Puppies pin and certificate, the young ob-server must use only their eyes, a pair of inexpensive binoculars, pencil & paper, and charts or a planisphere. A Sky Puppy will learn the rudiments of observing, how to read a chart or planisphere, how to find and identify constellations, stars, and deep-sky objects. In addition, a Sky Puppy will learn that the night sky is not just about dots and fuzzy blobs, but about history, culture, and stories. Their goal will be to draw, identify, and describe 15 IAU constellations. Know the difference between an asterism and a constellation. Be able to tell atleast two traditional stories implied by the constellations (stories may originate from any documented cultural tradition.) And, be able to use a pair of binoculars to locate 5 deep-space ob-jects and identify what they are. For more info, visit the web site http://www.astroleague.com.

If you have any suggestions for talks, speakers, or public events, please feel free to contact us, particularly Rick Hesch-meyer, the events coordinator for the club. ALL for now. Hope to see you over the next three weeks, either at the talks

or the next (first!) open house . Next meeting in Lawrence is Friday, May 13.

About the Astronomy Associates of Lawrence The club is open to all people interested in sharing their love for astronomy. Monthly meetings are typically on

the second Friday of each month and often feature guest speakers, presentations by club members, and a chance to exchange amateur astronomy tips. Approximately the last Sunday of each month we have an open house on Memorial Stadium. Periodic star parties are scheduled as well. For more information, please contact the club officers: Hannah Swift at hkswift@ku.edu, Gary Webber at gwebber@ku.edu, our faculty advisor,

Prof. Bruce Twarog at btwarog@ku.edu. or our events coordinator, Rick Heschmeyer at RCJBM@aol.com. Be-cause of the flexibility of the schedule due to holidays and alternate events, it is always best to check the Web site for the exact Fridays and Sundays when events are scheduled. The information about AAL can be found at

http://www.ku.edu/~aal. Copies of the Celestial Mechanic can also be found on the web at

http://www.ku.edu/~aal/celestialmechanic

F r o m t h e O f f i c e r s , c o n t i n u e d

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What do you get when you turn the temperature up to a tril-lion degrees?

Quite a heating bill.

Actually physicists claim that at this temperature nuclear material melts into an exotic form of matter called a quark-gluon plasma – thought to have been the state of the uni-verse a microsecond after the Big Bang.

Recreating this primordial soup is the primary purpose of the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. After five years of data, it appears as if RHIC may have succeeded. But a big mystery looms over the detection: the putative plasma explodes more violently than predicted.

"We expected to bring the nuclear liquid to a boil and produce a steam of quark-gluon plasma," said John Cramer from the University of Washington. "Instead, the boiler seems to be blowing up in our faces."

The explosive result, which goes by the name of the HBT puzzle, may call into question what RHIC is making in its high-speed collisions, or it might mean the theory needs retuning. Cramer and his colleagues have another alternative explanation, too: perhaps the explosion is not as explosive as the data suggests. The scientists use 50-year old physics to reinterpret the measurements at RHIC.

"We have taken a quantum mechanics technique, called the nuclear optical model, from an old and dusty shelf and applied it to puzzling new physics results," said Gerald Miller, a coauthor also at the University of Washington. "It's really a scientific detective story."

Collecting clues

The main suspect in this detective story is the quark-gluon plasma. But how do you know when you’ve seen it? The plasma cannot be observed directly – it disappears in less than a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a second. All that researchers can hope to do is detect the particles that fly out when the plasma freezes back into normal matter.

"You can’t go in there and directly measure the quarks and gluons," Miller told SPACE.com. "You have to work back from what you measure to what you believe was there."

Scott Platt from Michigan State University, who didn't participate in the new research, compares detecting the quark-gluon plasma to what astronomers have to do when studying an exploding star.

"They only see the light coming from the star’s surface and then try to infer what happened inside. We [physicists] have the same problem," he said.

Instead of light, RHIC researchers see thousands of particles – mostly pions, which are tiny things weighing about one-seventh as much as a proton, itself subatomic. The pions show up in detectors

(Continued on page 7)

Mini Big Bang Created, Puzzling Results Too Explosive By Michael Schirber, Space.com

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The Most Massive Stars

By Robert Naeye, Skypub.com Astronomers have long wondered what is the upper mass limit for stars. In recent decades, many astrono-mers believed that limit was somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 to 150 solar masses for stars forming in the modern-day universe. Stars above this mass limit should generate so much light that the sheer pressure of their own radiation blows off enor-mous amounts of mass, quickly whittling them down to 100 to 150 solar masses. Now, astronomers have ob-servational evidence that this thinking is largely cor-rect.

In a paper published this week in the British journal Nature, Donald F. Figer (Space Telescope Science In-stitute) presents Hubble Space Telescope observations of the richest young star cluster in the Milky Way Gal-axy. The most luminous (and hence most massive) stars in the cluster show a sharp cutoff in initial mass at about 130 solar masses. The cluster, known as the Arches Cluster, resides near the galactic center and contains thousands of stars, some of which shine with millions of times the intensity of the Sun. Adopting a conservative approach, Figer concludes that this 2-million-year-old cluster produced no stars greater than 150 solar masses. His result is consistent with studies of nine other young star clusters by a group led by Sally Oey (University of Michigan).

"The 100- to 150-solar-mass range has indeed been talked about as a limit for a long time, but theory does

not derive it with any precision," says University of California, Santa Cruz astrophysicist Stan Woosley. "The existence of a sharp cutoff has not been demonstrated observationally with such sig-nificance before."

"My concern is the firmness which Figer attaches to his 150-solar-mass upper limit," says Univer-sity of Florida astronomer Steve Eikenberry. "He basically takes an observed luminosity-based, and thus already soft, mass estimate of 130 solar masses for a single star, and then applies some fudge factor to get 150 solar masses. I think he did a perfectly reasonable job in deriving the best-guess fudge factor for this. However, it is still only a fudge factor, and such things are inherently uncer-tain."

Indeed, Figer's earlier research allows some wiggle room for much heavier stars. His own Hubble observations of the Pistol Star, an extraordinarily luminous star near the galactic center, indicate a possible mass of up to 250 Suns. But Figer cautions that this star might be a binary system, or an unstable, short-lived product from the merger of two heavy stars. "There is no star in the galaxy that credibly violates the 150-solar-mass upper limit," says Figer. "Wherever it does, something funny is going on."

Even if stars today don't form with masses above 150 Suns, things were very different in the early universe, when stars formed from clouds of pure hydrogen and helium. Models show that stars forming in the absence of heavier elements can attain masses as high as 500 Suns. But these stellar behemoths lived short, furious lives, and exploded billions of years ago, never to form again.

The Arches Cluster is the most spectacular young star cluster in the Milky Way Galaxy. Located about 25,000 light-years away near the galactic center, it is home to about a dozen stars with more than 100 solar masses. The high resolution of this Hubble Space Telescope image, taken by the now-defunct near-infrared camera, allows astronomers to study individual stars in this far-flung object. Courtesy NASA, ESA, and Donald F. Figer.

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T h e C e l e s t i a l M e c h a n i c

For most readers, “faster than the speed of light” conjures up ideas on how to travel in time and or beyond the nearest planets. But Joao Mageuijo is a cosmologist, a student of the origin and

future of everything. In particular he is studying the possible physical effects if the speed of light, c, was not constant in the early universe

(VSL), and searching for the reality of quantum gravitation and modifica-tions to special and general relativity. The book is a readable nonmathematical discussion that gives one a very wide view of cosmology, covering theory of early universe inflation, VSL, relativity, and related quantum physics. Because this is in part an autobiography, Mageuijo shows us how cosmology is studied. He freely discusses his views on the scientific and academic enterprise. These views are unnecessarily frank, but in-structive for students planning careers in science. Older readers well-read on semi-popular discussions of relativity will save time by beginning with Chapter 4 of Part 1. It details Einstein’s struggle with the need for a cosmological constant to force his models to be static universes, widely accepted as fact before Hubble’s spectroscopy of galaxies with the 100-inch in the 1920s.. Einstein later regarded his insistence on statics his greatest blun-der, but the need and nature of a cosmological constant now haunts much of cosmological research. Magueijo’s discussion of vacuum energy is excellent. In Part 2 of the book we learn how Alan Guth’s concept of a temporary very rapid expansion in the early universe came to dominate cosmology as inflation. But then we see, as the basic unsolved problems of cosmology (e.g., horizon, homogeneity, near flatness), are examined, other concepts are needed. In numerous recent papers the author and his colleagues argue that VSL theories hold much promise, both for understanding how our universe came to be and in the long search for unifi-cation of the large scale of relativity with the tiny scale of quantum physics and unification of the four fundamental forces of nature (if gravity is indeed a force). Consider the discovery that the expanding universe is accelerating. The physics behind the main ideas and the lives and personalities of the scientists who develop them are well explored. This book was an eye-opener for me. It links well to many of the books previously reviewed in this column.

A Review of the Book FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT

By Joao Magueijo Perseus Books PRIME FOCUS

William Winkler

(Continued from page 9) Yet there are some curious differences: Pluto is bright; Charon is darker. Pluto is covered with frozen nitrogen; Charon by frozen water. Pluto has an atmosphere; Charon might not. "These are things we plan to investigate," says Stern. Two worlds. So alike, yet so different. So utterly alien. Stay tuned for New Horizons. Find out more about the New Horizons mission at pluto.jhuapl.edu/. Kids can learn amazing facts about Pluto at spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/pluto. This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Labo-ratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Ad-ministration.

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set up around collision points, where gold nuclei traveling at 99.995 percent of the speed of light hit each other head-on.

"We can’t stick a barometer or thermometer into the collision center," Platt explained, but by a careful reconstruction of the flight paths of all the debris coming out, scientists can extract information about the brief, but intense, furnace created when gold nuclei smash into each other. From the RHIC data, research teams have identified three smoking guns for the quark-gluon plasma:

• the collision center is under high pressure

• the collision center behaves a lot like a fluid

• very high energy particles do not escape

Although this evidence appears solid, physicists are hesitant to say they have created the melted nu-clear goop. "That debate is going on as we speak," Platt said.

One of the reasons for this conservative approach has to do with how fast the supposed plasma ap-pears to freeze back into ordinary matter. Theory assumed this phase transition would take almost twice as long as was measured.

"In science, if you have a bunch of things that are right, it won’t matter if one thing goes wrong," Miller said.

The apparent explosion of pions and other particles coming from the phase transition is the so-called HBT puzzle.

"It is the one RHIC observation that deserves the word puzzle or surprise," Platt said.

To measure the duration of the plasma’s phase transition, physicists use an astronomy tool, called Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) interferometry, which can find the diameter of stars using the radio sig-nals from two separate telescopes. Instead of comparing radio waves, physicists compare two pions flying out from the collision center. But these measurements require a lot of modeling and approxi-mations, Platt explained.

Cramer and Miller and their collaborators have redone the calculations, incorporating something called the nuclear optical model. This dates back to 1950’s, when scientists were beginning to under-stand the strong interactions inside the nucleus.

Effectively, this old-school physics accounts for the fact that, as pions form out of the cooling plasma, they will have to climb their way out of an attractive field – similar to the gravitational field that a rocket has to overcome to escape a planet’s clutches.

"This is not surprising, since it has already been shown that the medium is very dense," Miller said. "It is as if the pions are trying to leave a crowded room."

According to Cramer, this crowded room "distorts" the data, making the transition look more explo-sive than it really is. In a sense, the HBT puzzle could be a simple misinterpretation of what the data shows. Platt is unsure that Cramer and Miller’s work, published this month in Physical Review Let-ters, indeed clears up the HBT puzzle entirely.

"They pointed out one of the ways that the calculations can be improved," he said. "But the analysis is ongoing."

If the puzzle does end up being solved, will physicists be ready to claim victory?

"It is not for me to say that we have found the quark-gluon plasma," Cramer said. "But we have made an important step."

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NASA Funded Research Telescope Being Dedicated The Northeast Kansas Amateur As-tronomer’s League Inc. (NEKAAL) an-nounces the dedication ceremony for the Clyde Tombaugh telescope at NE-KAAL's Farpoint Observatory. The telescope dedication will be held Sat-urday, April 2, at Mission Valley High School near Eskridge, Kansas. The ceremony begins at 2:00 PM. The 27-inch research grade telescope will be used primarily to assist NASA with their Near Earth Object (NEO) tracking program. The telescope was funded, in part, by a grant from NASA through their NEO Observation Program. Far-point's Asteroid Search Team (FAST) has an international reputation for the quality and quantity of NEO follow up work, a factor that contributed im-mensely to the NASA decision to fund the telescope construction project. NASA has been charged by Congress with finding, by the year 2008, 90% of all near-earth asteroids larger than 1km (0.63 miles) in diameter. Several professional survey teams are finding these asteroids at a prodigious rate. However, to rule out a possible collision path with the earth, precise measure-ments are required over the course of several weeks to a month. Due to time restrictions of the sur-veys’ telescopes, these necessary follow-up measurements are left to experienced amateur astrono-mers and a few professional astronomers. The Tombaugh Telescope utilizes the 27-inch mirror and other optical components from the Pitt tele-scope, which for years was the centerpiece of the telescope collection at the University of Kansas. In 1939, after having discovered Pluto while in Arizona, Clyde Tombaugh refurbished this telescope as part of his Master's thesis. In light of Tombaugh's Kansas roots and his work on this telescope, the new telescope was named after him. The Tombaugh Telescope was designed and built by ScopeCraft, a well-known Utah manufacturer of quality telescopes. The telescope, which weighs about 1600 pounds, was delivered to Farpoint in March, and soon thereafter was used for the first time to measure asteroid positions. The Northeast Kansas Amateur Astronomer's League is committed to encouraging the study of the sci-ences. In addition to our research, we work with school systems in the area and with the general public to offer insights into science in general and astronomy in particular. Free viewing sessions are offered monthly to the public, and special sessions and presentations can be scheduled. Information can be found at the NEKAAL web site, www.nekaal.org . DIRECTIONS TO FARPOINT OBSERVATORY: Driving just west of Topeka on I-70, watch for the Auburn Road Exit. Go south on Auburn to the town of Auburn. In Auburn, turn west on Eighth St. Continue west about 8 miles. The road will curve south. About one mile after the curve, you’ll see a road leading west, with a sign saying this is the road to Mis-sion Valley High School and NEKAAL’s Farpoint Observatory. About 1.5 miles later, you’ll be at Mis-sion Valley School. On the west side of the school grounds, next to a large stone “Farpoint Observa-tory” sign is a gravel road (BODARK). This runs north, past the football field, to the observatory.

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Utterly Alien

by Dr. Tony Phillips

There's a planet in our solar system so cold that in winter its nitrogen atmosphere freezes and falls to the ground. The empty sky becomes perfectly clear, jet-black even at noontime. You can see thousands of stars. Not one twinkles. The brightest star in the sky is the Sun, so distant and tiny you could eclipse it with the head of a pin. There's a moon, too, so big you couldn't blot it out with your entire hand. Together, moonlight and sunshine cast a twilight glow across the icy landscape revealing . . . what? twisted spires, craggy mountains, frozen volcanoes? No one knows, because no one has ever been to Pluto.

"Pluto is an alien world," says Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Insti-tute in Colorado. "It's the only planet never visited or photographed by NASA space probes." That's about to change. A robot-ship called New Ho-rizons is scheduled to blast off for Pluto in Janu-ary 2006. It's a long jour-ney: More than 6 billion kilometers (about 3.7 bil-lion miles). New Horizons won't arrive until 2015. "I hope we get there be-fore the atmosphere col-lapses," says Stern, the mission's principal investi-gator. Winter is coming,

and while it's warm enough now for Pluto's air to float, it won't be for long. Imagine seeing a planet's at-mosphere collapse. New Horizons might! "This is a flyby mission," notes Stern. “Slowing the spacecraft down to orbit Pluto would burn more fuel than we can carry." New Horizons will glide past the planet furiously snapping pictures. "Our best im-ages will resolve features the size of a house," Stern says. The cameras will also target Pluto's moon, Charon. Charon is more than half the size of Pluto, and the two circle one another only 19,200 kilometers (12,000 miles) apart. (For comparison, the Moon is 382,400 kilometers [239,000 miles] from Earth.) No wonder some astronomers call the pair a "double planet." Researchers believe that Pluto and Charon were created billions of years ago by some terrific impact, which split a bigger planet into two smaller ones. This idea is supported by the fact that Pluto and Charon spin on their sides like sibling worlds knocked askew.

(Continued on page 6)

New Horizons spacecraft will get a gravity assist from Jupiter on its long journey to Pluto-Charon. Credit: Southwest Research Institute (Dan Durda)/Johns Hop-kins University Applied Physics Laboratory (Ken Moscati).

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AAL Astronomy Associates of

Lawrence

University of Kansas Malott Hall 1251 Wescoe Hall Dr, Room 1082 Lawrence, KS 66045-7582

Celestial Mechanic April 2005