Attached, please find the Spring 2009 issue of the Custer Comment and the supplemental Heavenly Events columns by Bob Chapin (April, May and June – I include the April and May columns as they may contain certain points of interest that don’t, necessarily, expire simply because that calendar month has passed).  The Custer Comment is now published quarterly.  You are receiving the electronic edition in lieu of the hardcopy edition or the sender believes the current issue would be of interest to you.

 

Highlights in the Spring 2009 issue:

1) Custer’s modified 0.64m (25”) Dobsonian/ Newtonian; 2) Custer’s new librarian and library acquisitions; 3) Custer awards outstanding students; 4) Annual elections, slate of candidates and annual BBQ – June 13th; 5) To celebrate the IYA2009, a Special Event is sponsored by the Great South Bay Amateur Radio Club and hosted at Custer; 6) 400 Years of the Telescope by Custer Telescope Historian, Edward Furey; 7) Upcoming events

 

As announced in the last issue I produced (July-August 2008), I am no longer the sole editor and producer of the Custer Comment but a contributing editor and member of the Publications Committee; the Custer Comment is now a cooperative effort of that committee.

 

The current installments of Bob Chapin's monthly Heavenly Events are included with this distribution.  Since the Custer Comment is now published quarterly, I will send out Bob's monthly column as a special supplement to the membership.

 

Contributing editor’s comments:

1) Please make special note of Bob Chapin’s comments in the June installment of his column regarding the upcoming eclipse of å Aurigae.  If you miss this one, you’ll have to wait until 2036 to observe the next one;

2) As a supplement to Ed Furey’s brilliant lecture/ article on 400 Years of the Telescope, PBS is offering the DVD of the same name, broadcast back in April as a feature program on their flagship television station; it is offered on their marketing portal as a single DVD or as a set that includes the DVD, a companion soundtrack CD and book.  If you’re interested, the URL is here: http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=3519061 ; the official “400 Years of the Telescope” website can be found here: http://www.400years.org   

3) Concerning the caption associated with the image of Cass A, the well-known Type Ia supernova remnant: The Cass A progenitor is thought to have exploded 300 years ago; in fact, depending on what line of reasoning you use, the explosion occurred between 350 or 320 years ago and the jury is still out on the reliability of the empirical evidence supporting either of these two dates.  We know for certainty the precise age of SN1572 (Tycho's supernova) and SN1604 (Kepler's supernova), the latter of which was, up until May 2008, cited as "the last known supernova in our galaxy" because of the uncertainty surrounding Cass A.  If you adopt the 350 year date, then the corresponding year for the event would have been 1659, only 55 years after Kepler's supernova.  As of May, 2008, the last supernova to have occurred in our galaxy, discovered by the Chandra Orbiting X-Ray observatory, is designated as G1.9+0.3 (http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/08_releases/press_051408.html ).  It occurred about 140 years ago in a region of the galaxy close to the galactic center, a region ensconced in gas and dust.  Due to substantial attenuation in the optical wavebands due to its location, it had gone undetected until last May when Chandra, in conjunction with the VLA, in a study conducted by Stephen Reynolds of North Carolina State University, detected the presence of the Type Ia progenitor’s ejecta, strongly emitting in the x-ray and radio wavebands.  Another "cosmic ray" source would have been SN1987A, an event that has been widely studied using all orbiting platforms (Chandra, HST, Spitzer) and just about every ground-based telescope.  Although SN1987A occurred in the LMC, it is still relatively close where a thorough study could be conducted.

 

I will continue to maintain and enhance all the electronic resources that have been available to the membership since I was appointed editor and producer of the organization’s newsletter. Those resources would include the Custer Comment Archive, available at http://www.tommadigan.net/custer and any articles, multi-media files and links that are on the site.  At any time during any given month, the current issue is available at http://www.tommadigan.net/custer/custercomment.pdf . As well, I will still be available for lectures and other programs and will join all of you, time permitting, in all of the ongoing and upcoming programs, projects and events at Custer.

 

In order to use the electronic version, you'll need Adobe ( http://www.adobe.com) Acrobat Reader, available for free download at: http://www.adobe.com/go/EN_US-H-GET-READER .

 

Best regards,

Tom Madigan, FRAS(http://www.ras.org.uk), AAS(http://www.aas.org)

NASA/ JPL Solar System Ambassador

Contributing Editor and Distribution, The Custer Comment