Big Coronal Mass Ejection Due today

The Sun burped day before yesterday and emitted a coronal mass ejection towards Earth when the magnetic field around a sunspot collapsed. The CME and the solar wind should combine today and cause a lot of aurorae at both poles and possibly into the northern tier of the lower 48. If your are going to be in the North country look for green skies tonight. A video of the ejection can be seen on nasa.sdo.gov or at spaceweather.com.

iPhone and iPad Apps (Dave Sorgen)(Some run on other platforms)

Dave uses the following Astronomy apps on his iPhone and iPad. He has included some comments about the apps.

1.  SkyWeek - Events going on in the sky described with an option to view what each item would look like from your location. Provided by Sky & Telescope.

2. 360 Science - News/videos from the National Science Foundation. Wide range of topics including astronomy. 

3. Startracker(HD) - Planetarium app with LOTS of options. Nice music too…

4. Star Rover - Similar to #3, but without the music.

Both 3 & 4 use the iPad’s camera to locate objects in the sky at night to provide an enhanced experience. That is, it’ll find stuff for you, so basically you don’t have to know anything.

5. Earthviewer - Not exactly astronomy. Runs through the last half billion years of tectonic activity interactively. Want to see what California looked like 200 million years ago? This app is for you. Since tectonic activity has a great deal to do with life on our planet this is particularly appropriate especially for the Feb and Mar 2018 sessions.

6. Satellites - Uses tracking data to show the current location of all the space junk/satellites/spent boosters, etc. To keep from overwhelming the user, the user is allowed to select among the following categories for display: Favorites (you pick), Space Stations, Brightest, Weather satellites; Miscellaneous, Communications, Navigation, Scientific, Military and lastly, Rocket Bodies and Debris. Presents a globe with green dots. Tap the dot, get the info on that item. Pretty neat. Lotsa junk up there. Similar to Heavens-Above.com satellite tracker for PCs.

7. Stellarium - Runs on iMac as well as other common operating systems. It’s a FREE, open source planetarium app. Comes with a 350 page manual (.pdf file, 28Mb). The whole package has been under development since 2000. Has the capability of running the sky backwards and forwards in time. Provides a few “canned” events, e.g., historical supernovae.

We will eventually consolidate a list of apps using everyone's input.

References for Feb 2018 Meeting

Below is the reference list for the presentations: “Are We Alone,” 2018-02-13 and 2018-03-13

1. Drake, Frank, “The Drake Equation: Conference on Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life,” @ 1961 Nov
2. Dvorsky, George, “Is It Time to Accept That We Are Alone in the Universe,” iO9.Gizmodo.com @20141105 (a review and expansion of Ward and Brownlee)
3. Grinspoon, David, “Lonely Planets – The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life,” Harper Collins @2003
4. Sagan, Carl E. & Shklovskii, I. S., “Intelligent life in the Universe,” Holden-Day, Inc. @1966 (Currently an e-book – available as a free pdf)
5. Sagan, Carl E., “The Cosmic Connection,” Doubleday @1973
6. Ward, Peter D. and Brownlee, Donald, “Rare Earth – Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe,” Copernicus Books @2000
7. Weisman, Alan. “The World Without Us,” Thomas Dunne Books @2007

 The primary references are: 2, 3 and 6.