WEEKLY WHINE

Headliner news

As you are probably aware, I am the webmeister for Caltech SEDS, the one student organisation at Tech that is willing to do whatever it takes to look at stuff through telescopes. A few recent SEDS events, though, have been stifled by clouds. There was to be a Telescope Morning on Campus last week, but it was cloudy. There was to be a Telescope Night on Campus this week, but it was cloudy. It disappointed me because it was a really good occultation that we were missing. The Moon passed in front of Regulus, also classified α Leonis. In the Los Angeles basin, it would have occurred from 21:11 PDT to 21:50 PDT, a good time for an occultation to occur.

Regulus, at a magnitude of 1.35, is the 21st brightest star as seen from Earth [excluding the Sun, as usual]. It's located at the base of the "sickle" that makes up the western side of Leo the Lion and is recognised as the lion's heart. It's actually a double star; the companion is much fainter but can be resolved through binoculars. This occultation was visible across most of North America; viewers from LA would have seen the star slice behind the first quarter Moon's southwestern limb. If you were farther to the east, you would have seen Regulus more to the north.

Occultations like this are uncommon, although those in New England and the Atlantic provinces of Canada would have had the opportunity to see two within the same week. Last Sunday morning, the Moon occulted Aldebaran, α Tauri. Aldebaran is a multiple system as well, and it also happens to be a variable, peaking at a magnitude of .9. It has a neighbour that can be visually resolved, as well as one that has been detected only through its spectrum. This occultation actually occurred in the early morning in New England and midmorning in the Atlantic time zone, so it was not quite as much fun.

In fact, another occultation is due for this Friday evening. This one is of dim stars, but in this case, the double is much easier to resolve, since the two are of almost equal brightnesses. γ Librae will disappear behind the Moon: it's a double star system in which one component has a magnitude of 4.6 and the other of 4.8. The separation of the two is merely .1", so they'll disappear within .2 seconds of one another. Most of North America will be able to see this one; for us, the two stars will wink out on the southeastern limb of the Moon at about 19:00 PDT, before it even gets dark. Thus, we'll be unable to see much from these dim stars. Those on the East Coast, though, should be treated to a very good sight.

Elsewhere in space, an eighteenth moon of Uranus was just discovered. This one is in approximately the same orbit as Belinda, the ninth moon out. The two pass one another over the course of a month. The new moon is given the systematic name Satellite 1986U10 because it was the tenth moon discovered with 1986 images, in this case from Voyager 2. The other nine inner moons of Uranus were given names based upon Shakespearian women: Juliet, Rosalind, Ophelia, Belinda, and the like. This moon brings Uranus's total to eighteen known moons; it's now tied for the solar system lead with Saturn. The only other objects in the solar system to have known satellites are the Sun itself, Jupiter and Neptune, Mars, Pluto, Earth, and two asteroids, Ida and Eugenia.

This story and others will be present as Caltech SEDS unveils its completely new Space News site, available from our main site at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~seds/. I know I've been kind of lax about the SEDS site recently, almost as much as I have about this site, but this is a way to start being different about that. I have this new update to the SEDS site, soon to be followed by a revamping of this very site, GoobNet. I will move it to the ITS server here at Tech so it's easier for me to update and so it's faster for you. It will also have a set maximum screen width so that those of you who use wide browser windows [like me] don't have ridiculously long lines to read. Eventually, it will also include SnakeBall for Java, but I think that's a long way off at this point. Still, please keep playing SnakeBall, so that you can enjoy the fun of an exciting game that's the best kept secret anywhere. Even the NSA knows nothing about this.