The Last of the Space Shuttles

Dr. Karen Vanlandingham
West Chester University

Members Present

A wide variety of topics were enjoyed by our members, guest and the public which included:

 Sky Tonight, and near future  -Alan Daroff-
New Electricity Exhibit -Mike Mountjoy-

Assistant Professor
Arcadia University
Dr. Julia Plummer
Coordinator of Science Education

Students Development of Astronomy Concepts Across Time

Early Elementary Students' Development of Astronomy
Concepts in the Planetarium
Dr. Julia Plummer

Terry Underkoffler did an amazing job of showing of some valuable resources.  Many requested we post the sites and uses on our website for further exploration.  (Thanks Terry !)  Here are the highlights below:

TED.com
http://www.ted.com/search?q=astronomy

Microsoft Telescope 
www.worldwidetelescope.org

Google: IGoogle
http://www.google.com/ig

Diigo: Online Bookmarking Tool
http://digitalresearchtools.pbworks.com/f/Diigo+Description.pdf

International Spokesperson for
International Year of Astronomy 2009
Derrick Pitts
Chief Astronomer at The Franklin Institute

Derrick Pitts Chief Astronomer of The Franklin Institute
speaks at the press conference for 'Galileo, the Medici, and the Age of Astronomy'

"A Look Back, A Look Forward"
Celebrating the Highlights of the International Year of Astronomy

NASA Astronaut Christopher Ferguson
US Navy Captain
Spoke with Rittenhouse Members,
Franklin Members and guests this past
December 2, 2009 
Franklin Institute

Ruth List Treasurer, Ken Kremer NASA JPL Ambassador, Milt Friedman President, Chris Ferguson NASA Astronaut, Ted Williams Secretary

Members Night: Members are invited to present a short topic of Astronomical or scientific interest.  You could share information about a star party you attended, courses you would recommend, or a topic you feel would be of interest to fellow society members.  The meeting agenda is now forming.  If you want to be included on the agenda contact us with your topic.

Members Presentations Included:

Mike Mountjoy - SETI at Home
Dr. Ken Kremer -LRO and LCROSS Post Impact Update
Ruth List - Educational Outreach
Dr. Milton Friedman - Presidents Message
Alan Daroff - Sky Tonight
Ted Williams - Operating a Planisphere

NASA’s final human spaceflight mission to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope was dramatically accomplished by Shuttle astronauts in May 2009.   Dr Ken Kremer will present an up close eyewitness account of the thrilling launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis from the Kennedy Space Center on its historic mission to restore and upgrade Hubble to the apex of its scientific capabilities.  Ken will speak on the highlights, purpose and success of the daring shuttle flight STS -125 to save ‘The Peoples Telescope’. He will present a behind the scenes perspective with top NASA and Hubble scientists while reporting in real time for The Planetary Society and Spaceflight magazine. 

Atlantis Launch  Credit: Ken Kremer

Joe Stieber

We want to thank Dan McCormick, Alan Daroff, Dr. Ken Kremer, Ted Williams and Mike Mountjoy for an enjoyable evening out at the Franklin.

Dan gave us a great introduction to signing onto our Network site and a short review of RSS feeds. Alan kept us up on what is happening above, and Ken focused us in on all the activity we are conducting on Mars.   Ted helped us to find our proper location in the visible Universe with a self address stamped "Intergalactic Mailing" commemorative for International Year of Astronomy 2009. 

Mike topped off the evening with an awesome presentation about the Franklin memorial renovation.  The presentation utilized 4 high end video projectors coordinated to an amazing DMX computer controlled lighting system complete with LED color washes and automated "smart" lighting similar to concert lighting systems utilized today with some of the larger events. What attracted many questions was the tablet PC control board allowing the operator amazing control over the system at the touch of a portable hand held screen.  Ben Franklin looked truly amazed and gratified sitting amidst the effects of modern technology.

Joe Stieber was busy with his camera. We are featuring more pictures from the Franklin Memorial  Renovation and newly installed light show on our Networking site.  

Thanks to all who put forth the effort to present and provide an amazing evening at the Franklin.

Meeting Night 1/14/09 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

David J. Thompson ~ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Deputy Project Scientist

"Fermi / GLAST: Viewing the Extreme Universe"

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, formerly called GLAST, is a mission to study the most energetic form of light: gamma rays. In addition to breakthrough capabilities in energy coverage and localization, the very large field of view enables observations of 20% of the sky at any instant and the entire sky on a timescale of a few hours. Following its launch on 11 June 2008, Fermi now opens a new and important window on a wide variety of phenomena, including pulsars, black holes and active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursts, the origin of cosmic rays and supernova remnants, and searches for hypothetical new phenomena such as supersymmetric dark matter annihilation.

Dr. Thompson presented ground breaking and brand new discoveries just announced this week at the annual AAS meeting: The discovery of 12 new gamma-ray-only pulsars and detection of gamma-ray pulses from 18 others. The finds are transforming our understanding of how these stellar cinders work.  MORE INFORMATION AND WEB LINKS HERE  K. Kremer
 

Meeting Night 12/10/08 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Phoenix and the Holy Cow

NASA Solar System Ambassador Dr. Ken Kremer will be our guest speaker for our December 10 meeting.  He will interpret the pictures and discoveries made during the daring Phoenix space mission to the Martian Arctic tundra. The lecture, “Daring Flight of the Phoenix: Icy Jackpot Hit on Mars (in 3-D)” is open to the public students are invited to attend.

Meeting Night 11/12/08 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Navigating Across the Solar System
Andrew K. Johnston
Geographer- Smithsonian Institute National Air and Space Museum

 

Thousands of spacecraft have been launched since the beginning of the space age, from Earth-orbiting satellites to missions exploring the solar system and outer planets. Complex techniques are used to navigate spacecraft into the orbits and trajectories required to reach mission objectives. In this talk, we learned how spacecraft are accurately navigated as they orbit the Earth, land on other planets, and travel across the solar system. The talk included the results of historical research and visualization techniques that will appear in the Smithsonian Historical Atlas of Spaceflight, to be published in 2009. 

Following the main lecture,  Dr. Ken Kremer presented an overview of highlights from the rovers in 3-D.

Members night is a special occasion. Listening to fellow members, and learning a bit about our organization and who we are is special in itself. We started off the evening with proposals for our membership to consider as we line up our agenda for the International Year of Astronomy-2009. Ted Williams outlined the ideas in our September newsletter. We reviewed the goals and objectives of IYA, and explained our 3 proposals which include the Heritage Project, the Ritten Ledger, and our focus on native mythology and related cosmology. We showed the Ledger and shared some ideas of how we might use it to track and get feedback from members and visitors throughout IYA 2009.

Alan Daroff reviewed what’s up in the night sky for us including the two stars (Epsilon Aurigae and Delta Cephei) that Ivin Williams has written on in the past two newsletters. Members were able to locate them amidst the Fels planetarium sky along with finding Jupiter.

Ruth List informed us about the Heritage project and her progress in the electronic publishing of the original Rittenhouse book coving our history from 1888-1960. It has some great articles including the History of Astronomy in America, along with the history of local observatories that used to send representatives to RAS meetings to share their findings. We were amazed at how RAS helped to save the Naval Academy Observatory at a time when it was relied on for accurate timing for trains, including those passing through Penn Station in Philadelphia.

Clouds were obscuring the view at this point in our  evening so we closed out the meeting with some holiday gift ideas. A few recommendations of why binoculars are better for young observers and a few home planetarium models were reviewed. I think we were all amazed with the Homestar Planetarium and its projection on the front of the Fels dome. We could pick out constellations along the Milky Way.

Don Knapp (Planetarium Director of the Centennial School District) opened our minds and our eyes to the energy of light.  What is light?  What properties does light have? A discussion with demonstrations of Reflection, Opaque, Transparent, Lenses, Focal length, along with a demonstration of the combination of various frequencies of light (color) were presented as an opening to our new academic year.   Don's talk was an excellent student lesson to lead into Tim Kent's presentation on astrophotography. 

Tim Kent helped us developed an understanding of what it is like starting out in Astrophotography.   His frank discussion of what to enjoy and what to avoid along with the many examples of what one can achieve with some simple equipment were the focus of his presentation.  Mr. Kent's recent  book, "StarQuest, A Beginner's Guide to Digital Astrophotography "  will be a valuable money saving guide to what you can expect to achieve when starting out at home.  

The examples of  his work on display were quite motivational, in effect showing what a beginner can accomplish.  His work shows much professional quality, and we even found the Friedman spot on one of Tim's moon photos.  Quite a nice evening for all who attended.

John Parejko from the Lynch Observatory  at Drexel University was our guest presenter.  John gave us an overview of the Observatory program at Drexel and his research on galaxies and  black holes.

English Astronomer William Herschel is well known for his discovery of the planet Uranus and his advances in the construction of large telescopes.  His life as a musician and composer is often forgotten. The Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, conductor Martin Knoblauch and the Chestnut Hill Orchestra intend to remind us of his contributions in both fields when they presented a program entitled   "The Harmonious Life of William Herschel "

 Postcards From Saturn
Dr. Anne Schmiedekamp
NASA Solar System Ambassador

NASA Solar
    System Ambassador/
Penn State University
     Abington

Meeting Night 2/20/08 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Lunar, Solar, and Martian Eclipses
Presentation: Dr. Ken Kremer
NASA / Solar system Ambassador Program

Lunar Eclipse Night review! Missed the event at the Franklin?    View a  Power Point presentation of eclipse night.  (Note: To advance slides, scroll down with menu bar.)  Much thanks to Dave Walker!  A few more pictures for your review..

Meeting Night 1/9/08 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Family night!
January 9th 2008--
The Planets
Gustav Holst

The Science
 The Mythology,
The Music

PowerPoint Preview
By Ed McCaffrey: Methcton School District

Gustav Holst was a British composer who was born in Cheltenham England in 1874 and died in London in 1934. One of the last great pieces of music he composed “The Planets” is an overture to the Planetary Celestial Spheres of our Solar System. Before the time of Space probes, Holst composed 7 musical suites each founded in the mythical characteristics and physical appearances provided by telescopes of the visible planets of his age. Now that Pluto has been re-classified and is no longer considered a planet, the music of Holst can once again represent the solar system of today.

Student Presentation
An overview of the Planets visible in our sky.  Learn the basic structure of the solar system, and what you can expect to see of it in a telescope.

Guest Speakers
Ed McCafferty (Methacton School District) and Lori Weidner (Neshaminy School District), explore with us the musical characteristics and technique that was used to convey the mythology in the suite by Holst: The Planets.
 

Meeting Night 12/12/07 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dr. Karen Vanlandingham
Planets, Planets Everywhere...But only Eight for Us

  
NASA artist imagines a Neptune-sized extrasolar (left) planet circling the red dwarf star Gliese 436. Here, the planet appears gaseous like Jupiter, with a cloudy atmosphere. However, astronomers don't know yet if the newly discovered smaller planets are gaseous like Jupiter, or rocky like Earth and Mars. 
Right: NASA artists imagines other planetary ring systems.

     Dr. Vanlandingham is the current planetarium director at West Chester University Planetarium.  The planetarium is used daily for all astronomy classes and labs and is a central component of the department's outreach activities.  Dr. Vanlandingham has an extensive background in binary star systems.  For her presentation tonight, she will focus on Exoplanets.  We welcome Dr. Vanlandingham and encourage members to check out the West Chester University Planetarium web site.

Meeting Night 11/15/07  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A special thanks to all our members who stepped forward last night to share a little of their interests, hobbies and passion with our society.  Visitors can definitely see the enthusiasm with which society members embrace astronomy.  Whether it is astronomy computer software, locating dark-sky observing sights, viewing comets, news breaking images from the moons of Saturn, our society members had it covered.  We should consider doing it again during this academic year!   (11/15/07)

Meeting Night 10/10/07 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

Dr. Kremer's last presentation guided us across the 3-D surface of Mars.  Now he returns from behind the scenes at Kennedy Space Center to report on the Dawn Mission (and Phoenix) .  Join us as we welcome all at the Franklin Institute Celebrating World Space Week 2007 for our open public meeting OCTOBER 10, 2007.

Meeting Night 9/26/07 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robert Nemiroff
(creator, lead writer and editor)
of   Astronomy Picture of the Day

Sitting in the grandeur of the Fels planetarium and being guided by the creator of a website that daily communicates grandeur to it's audience is an amazing experience for astronomy buffs and amateurs alike.  Thank you Dr. Nemiroff  for sharing your 'choice' selections, your insight and your dream with the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society Members and guests. Your interest in astronomy was felt by any who attended tonight's presentation.  The journey you created through our solar system, around the Universe and back again through your unique selection of the most fascinating images developed by our species is a testament to human creativity, our technology and the artistry it can reveal.