Monthly Archives: June 2017

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Planets, stars, constellations and galaxies in the night sky are one of the free benefits for people who spend nights high in the Central Sierra, and for people who work and live beyond the reach of urban lighting.

The Forest Service used to offer astronomy programs at Bald Mountain Heliport. Stargazers say its a high point with no trees that offers near-perfect 360-degree panoramas of the heavens after dark.

But staffing and budget constraints have prompted Stanislaus National Forest administrators to cancel the astronomy star parties they used to host at the heliport.

Among those who are disappointed is amateur astronomer Rich Combs, 66, a resident of Strawberry and Livermore. He began coming to the Pinecrest area when he was a youngster in the late 1950s and 1960s. He remembers being inspired by a satellite passing over him in the night sky.

His affinity for the stars and astronomy stayed with him. He eventually hosted astronomy star parties for the Forest Service for more than a decade. An invoice from last year shows he got paid $120 a night for star parties at the heliport.

Combs contacted The Union Democrat and said today he doesnt care about the money.

Over the years, theyve offered me as much as $400 per presentation, Combs said Thursday. Thats what they told me some of their presenters get, and they asked me what I wanted to charge.

He charged $100, and thats what the Forest Service paid him for about 10 years. A couple years ago he started charging $120 a night.

I would be happy to do it for free if that would make any difference, Combs said. I hope the public understands heres what your money is not getting spent on.

Space race

Combs was born in 1951, and he remembers when he was about 8 years old the first time he attended Camp Gold, also known as Lair of the Golden Bear, an alumni camp for the University of California system, near Pinecrest and the Summit District Ranger Station.

Camp Gold is a family camp for alumni and their families, Combs said. Families almost always went the same week each year. We made friends that way. Combs family went from about 1959 to 1963.

Camp Gold is still there, off of Dodge Ridge Road and within walking distance of the Summit Ranger Station.

The first time Combs went to Camp Gold was for a week in August 1959, with his family. His father attended UC Berkeley, and he was a qualified alumnus. Combs remembers stargazing at dark night skies from a baseball field at the camp.

I was interested in astronomy since grade school, Combs said. I remember at Camp Gold going up and looking at a satellite, easily visible to the eye. My dad took to the family to a dark area near Camp Gold and a satellite had been predicted to be visible. We saw it go overhead. I was maybe 10 years old.

Combs said the satellite was called Echo.

This was in the midst of the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the Russians were beating the Americans.

In late 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite placed in orbit, and Sputnik II, which carried a small dog named Laika into orbit.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, created in 1958, was in its infancy. According to NASA historians, the agency launched an Echo I metalized balloon satellite Aug. 12 1960.

Echo satellites generated a lot of public interest in the early 1960s because they could be seen with the naked eye from the ground as they passed overhead.

In April 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth once and became the first human in space. Less than a month later, Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space.

Bald Mountain Heliport

Bald Mountain Heliport opened in 1962, said Dave Phillips, helibase manager. Its a Forest Service facility on Forest Service land. Phillips said helicopter crews with Cal Fire and contractor PHI Air Medical also use the base when needed.

Shawn Estes, an information assistant at the Summit District Ranger Station, said summer interpretive astronomy programs at Bald Mountain probably began in the summer of 1975.

Combs says hes been an active amateur astronomer since 1980.

He said he remembers going to Bald Mountain Heliport for the first time about 15 years ago, when he saw an ad in the Stanislaus Traveler newsletter distributed by the Forest Service. Combs said they were looking for someone to help with astronomy programs at Bald Mountain Heliport, because the person who did it for several years was retiring.

Im an observer of stars, galaxies and other objects in the heavens, Combs said. I share my enthusiasm for astronomy with others through my club and through programs at schools, including Summerville High School in Tuolumne.

In addition to leading astronomy programs at Bald Mountain Heliport until this year, Combs says he hosts star parties at Summerville High in October each fall.

We usually try to schedule it around a crescent moon, Combs said. A crescent moon is easy to view but does not overwhelm the dark night sky, so people can see the moon as well as stars.

He said he met a Summerville High science teacher, Karen Wessel, at a star party at Bald Mountain Heliport. At Summerville High star parties, Combs said he organizes star parties on the tennis court at the school. Each year, 20 to 30 people attend, including students and family members.

Its convenient, and its usually dark enough we can see a reasonable number of objects in the night sky, Combs said. Its not as good as Bald Mountain, but its close.

Combs says he is also currently president of the club Tri-Valley Stargazers, based in Livermore.

Staffing and budget

Combs said he went to Summit District Ranger Station about two weeks ago because he had not received his annual invitation to host star parties at Bald Mountain Heliport.

Basically, I was told they were not going to be having the program this year due to a lack of staffing and a lack of funding, Combs said.

Estes confirmed that interpretive astronomy programs at Bald Mountain Heliport this summer have been canceled.

A night program like that, we have to have staff up there, Estes said. Its on a locked firefighting aviation facility. There needs to be supervision up there for public safety.

Like numerous other federal agencies, the Forest Service has faced a hiring freeze and budget cuts since President Donald J. Trumps inauguration in January.

In Tuolumne County, public affairs staff with the Stanislaus National Forest announced that, beginning this week, the front desk at the Mi-Wok Ranger District will be open just one day a week, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. each Friday.

The decision to open the Mi-Wok Ranger District front desk only on Fridays stems in part from staffing challenges and budget constraints, said Diana Fredlund with Stanislaus National Forest public affairs.

Asked for more details, Fredlund responded, Regarding the staffing challenges, the hiring freeze limits our ability to fill behind departures, whether its retirements or relocations. Flat or declining budgets for the past many years eventually impact our ability to provide services and reducing Mi-Woks front desk operating hours is one of those impacts. We cant discuss anything about future budgets until they have been voted on and announced by Congress and the White House.

In 2016 the overall budget for Stanislaus National Forest was about $20 million, Fredlund said. The 2017 overall budget is about $19.5 million. These numbers do not take into account special funding sources, like recovery from the Rim Fire, which may only be spent on recovery or management efforts directly related to the Rim Fire, or other grants that are designated for a specific purpose.

Combs said, I understand, but I kind of feel our government priorities are not in order. Were losing the chance to educate the public with a free resource, the night skies.

Contact Guy McCarthy at gmccarthy@uniondemocrat.com or (209) 588-4585. Follow him on Twitter @GuyMcCarthy.

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Forest Service cancels astronomy programs at heliport - Union Democrat

The image is a stack of 12 images made over the course of three years with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Using high-precision astrometry, an Italian-led team of astronomers tracked the two components of the system as they moved both across the sky and around each other. Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Bedin et al.

This seemingly unspectacular series of dots with varying distances between them actually shows the slow waltz of two brown dwarfs. The image is a stack of 12 images made over the course of three years with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Using high-precision astrometry, an Italian-led team of astronomers tracked the two components of the system as they moved both across the sky and around each other.

The observed system, Luhman 16AB, is only about six light-years away and is the third closest stellar system to Earth after the triple star system Alpha Centauri and Barnards Star. Despite its proximity, Luhman 16AB was only discovered in 2013 by the astronomer Kevin Luhman.

The two brown dwarfs that make up the system, Luhman 16A and Luhman 16B, orbit each other at a distance of only three times the distance between the Earth and the sun, and so these observations are a showcase for Hubbles precision and high resolution.

The astronomers using Hubble to study Luhman 16AB were not only interested in the waltz of the two brown dwarfs, but were also searching for a third, invisible, dancing partner. Earlier observations with the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope indicated the presence of an exoplanet in the system. The team wanted to verify this claim by analyzing the movement of the brown dwarfs in great detail over a long period of time, but the Hubble data showed that the two dwarfs are indeed dancing alone, unperturbed by a massive planetary companion.

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Hubble applauds waltzing dwarfs - Astronomy Now Online

James Ambrister has trained his telescope since he was a seventh-grader on the night-sky, but lately learned to look up during the day at the skys brightest star the sun.

Ambrister and other local astronomy buffs are excited for one of the rarer wonders of the daytime sky: a total solar eclipse that will be visible to much of the U.S. in August.

Ambrister, a member of the Oxford Alabama Solar Astronomy Club, had solar telescopes set up Saturday at Art in the Park in Choccolocco Park in Oxford.

Ambrister said he moved from New Hampshire to Oxford in 2009. He had been a member of New Hampshire Astronomical Society, which visited schools to interest kids in astronomy. Ambrister said he missed that outreach.

When I moved down, I missed that, Ambrister said. I started taking my telescope to Oxford Lake and show people.

Laura Weinkauf, planetarium director at Jacksonville State University, said people can usually see sunspots and solar flares through telescopes.

Sunspots are regions that are cooler than the rest of the sun, Weinkauf said. Solar flares are when the sun sends heated plasma out in one direction or another.

According to Weinkauf, sunspots look like small blemishes on the surface of the sun, but she said its all relative.

The sun is about 6,000 degrees Kelvin, Weinkauf said. The sunspots are cooler at about 4,000 degrees Kelvin, but keep in mind Earth is only 300 degrees Kelvin. Sunspots also look small, but theyre about the size of the Earth.

Ambrister said he is amazed at how many people dont know how big the sun is.

You can fit 109 Earths across the diameter of the sun, Ambrister said. If you opened it up, 1.2 million Earths would fit inside the sun.

Weinkauf said solar telescopes have special lenses on them that filter out sunlight to make it safe.

Its usually a lens you can attach to your telescope that blocks ninety-nine point some large fraction of the sunlight, Weinkauf said. Its so you dont blind yourself like Galileo did.

Ambrister said he has a telescope that is made specifically for looking at the sun and the filtering lenses for another telescope. He said he brought both to the park.

Oxford resident and co-founder of Backyard Weather Kent Shaddix was also at the park. He said he connected with Ambrister through a mutual friend. Shaddix said he and Ambrister decided to do a joint solar astronomy and weather event at the park.

Shaddix said he is excited for the upcoming solar eclipse.

Its gonna be August 21, Shaddix said. Were gonna set up somewhere for that too.

Weinkauf said a solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth. She said seeing a solar eclipse is pretty rare. She said the last total solar eclipse that could be seen in North America was in 1972 in northern Alaska.

The place where you can see the eclipse, the pass width, usually ends up to be somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Weinkauf said. We wont get a total eclipse in Anniston, but well get about 95-percent coverage which is still pretty rare.

Ambrister said he wont be in town for the eclipse, but he plans to take his telescopes back to the park on June 18 from 8 a.m. to noon. He said he hopes people will come out to take a look.

Continue reading here:

Solar astronomy buffs warming up for August eclipse - Anniston Star