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Journal of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York January 2012 Volume 60 Number 1 ISSN 0146-7662

EYEPIECE
By Tony Hoffman
ets found in SOHO's images have been first identified by amateurs scouring the images on their home computers. Comet Lovejoy was detected by the twin STEREO spacecraft and then, on December 14, it entered the field of view of SOHO's wide-field LASCO C3 telescope, appearing directly below the Sun with a narrow, straight tail. Over the next two days, the comet brightened as it arced towards the Sun, eventually entering the narrow-field (C2) telescope's field of view, then disappearing behind each scope's occulting disk as it prepared to pass 50,000 km from the Sun. Most comet experts believed it to be an estimated 200 meters across and didn't think it would survive this encounter. Clearly the comet had other ideas. When animations arrived from the extreme ultraviolet camera of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a spacecraft that takes hi-res images of the Sun, they showed a streak emerging from behind the solar limb and speeding off into space. When new images from SOHO's LASCO telescopes were posted the next day, they showed the comet shining with renewed brilliance. If comets are like cats, Lovejoy looked decidedly Manx-like as it re-emerged from its encounter with our star, having becoming detached from its tail--which lingered for a while on the other side of the Sun--in the comet's hairpin arc around our star. At its brightest, the comet must have rivaled Venus at around magnitude -4, but was so close to the Sun that very few daylight sightings have been reported. I've only come across one report by two NASA scientists who watched it telescopically the day after perihelion. Terry Lovejoy himself photographed the comet in daylight but was unable to visually observe it. Comet Lovejoy quickly developed a new tail, which within a few days became visible to Southern Hemisphere observers, pointing up out of the predawn twilight like a beacon. Obvious as the tail was, the comet lacked a discernable nucleus, bringing to mind descriptions of another Kreutz comet, the Great Southern Comet of 1887, also known as the "Headless Wonder." Some observers worried that the lack of a bright head meant that the nucleus might be disintegrating, but as the comet moved away from the Sun and became visible in a dark sky, it became all the more impressive, even as it began its slow fade. Kreutz comets travel in orbits that strongly favor SouthComet Lovejoy continues on page 3

Comet Lovejoy's December 16 Resilient Ride to Greatness
For all that astronomers now know about comets, their behavior still often defies prediction. Their enigmatic nature once prompted comet discoverer David H. Levy to say "Comets are like cats; they have tails, and they do precisely what they want." Most comet experts thought that Comet Lovejoy would be destroyed on its extremely close approach to the Sun in mid-November, but the comet emerged phoenixlike from this encounter to put on a fine showing for observers in the Southern Hemisphere, displaying a long tail in the predawn sky. Soon after Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy's November 27 discovery of the comet in an automated search program using a telescope equipped with a CCD detector, it became clear that Lovejoy would be a notable object. It belonged to the Kreutz group of sungrazing comets, so called because members of this family all travel in similar orbits pass extremely close to the Sun. The brightest Kreutz comets appeared in 1106, 1843, 1882, and 1965. They were among the most spectacular on record, each becoming visible in the daylight sky to the unaided eye when approaching the Sun. The Kreutz group is believed to be the remnants of what was once a single, larger comet that has progressively fragmented over several thousand years. Although Lovejoy's discovery--now officially known as C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy)--wasn't expected to rival the greatest comets, it was the first sungrazer to be found by a ground based observer in over 40 years. Nearly 1,500 tiny Kreutz sungrazers have been identified in images from space borne observatories monitoring the Sun, but they were all within a day or two of their closest approach (aka perihelion) at the time of discovery, and invariably vanished, vaporized by the extreme heat. Lovejoy found his comet 3 weeks before perihelion, and although it was still relatively faint (about magnitude 13), it had much more "lead time" to brighten as it approached the Sun. This is Lovejoy's third official comet discovery. In 2007 he became the first amateur astronomer to find a new comet using a digital SLR (Canon Digital Rebel with a telephoto lens), His second find was also with a DSLR. Prior to this discovery, in 1999, he became the first amateur to find a small (10 meter) Kreutz sungrazer comet in images from Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) soon after that satellite started posting its images online. Since then, most of the com-


EYEPIECE

January 2012

WHAT'S UP IN THE SKY
AAA Observer's Guide for January 2012 By Richard Rosenberg

ON THE BIG SCREEN AAA LECTURE SERIES PRESENTS ASTRONOMY VIDEOS on JAN 6

January's Evening Planets: Venus, though low, is now
easy to spot in the southwest in the early evening. Higher up is Jupiter. Watch them move toward each other during the month.

By Dan Harrison
Robert Nemiroff, professor of physics at Michigan Technological University, Houghton, Mich., will address the AAA on "Best Short Astronomy Videos" on Friday, January 6. The free public lecture will begin at 6:15p.m. at the Kaufmann Theater of the American Museum of Natural History. Nemiroff or Jerry T. Bonnell, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who co-founded and run the popular Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) website, have given a presentation to the club each year on the best astronomy pictures from the previous year. But this year, it's videos. "I decided to try something different, and there have been some really cool short videos on APOD," Nemiroff says. Last year, APOD, which was founded in 1995, hit the 1 million hits per day. The APOD archive is one of the largest collections of annotated astronomical images on the Internet. It is disseminated in 16 languages. Nemiroff's research areas include gamma-ray bursts, gravitational lensing, cosmology and sky monitoring. He's placed video lectures for his classes "Introductory Astronomy" and "Extraordinary Concepts in Physics" on iTunes and the Internet for free. Future AAA 2012 Lecture Series Dates
February 10: Glennys Farrar, NYU, "Getting Photos of Supermassive Black Holes Tearing Stars Apart" March 2: Charles Keeton, Rutgers, "A Ray of Light in a Sea of Dark (Matter)" April 6: Debra Fischer, Yale, "Searching for Earthlike Worlds" May 4: Alex Wolszczan, Penn State, "The Astronomical Future of Man." For more information, go to: www.aaa.org/lectures1112

January's Evening Stars: Orion and its retinue of constellations dominate the sky. Besides Orion, the winter constellations Taurus, Auriga, Gemini, Canis Major and Canis Minor are all easy to see (every one of the above constellations has at least one first-magnitude star). The autumn stars (Andromeda, Pegasus, Perseus) can still be seen. The best objects to spot with binoculars include the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus, the Alpha Persei cluster, and M37 in Auriga.

January's Morning Planets: Mars rises after 10 PM on
the start of January, and 8:30 PM at month's end. Watch it grow in brightness as it heads toward opposition in March. Saturn rises at 1:30 AM when the month begins, 11:30 PM at the end of January.

January's Morning Stars: Look for seventh-magnitude
Comet Garradd, still in Hercules. (A star chart is available on our website http://www.aaa.org/month1201) The spring constellations take center stage. Though they're not as bright as the winter stars they have their own attractions. Look for Spica, the bright star in Virgo, near Saturn all month. To their upper right is Mars, straddling the Leo -Virgo border. With binoculars find the Beehive Cluster in Coma Berenices.

January Day-by-Day
January 1 January 2 January 4 January 4 January 4 January January January January January January January January 9 14 16 16 19 22 24 26
First Quarter Moon at 1:15 a.m. Jupiter is 4НА below the Moon this evening The Moon is 4А below right of the Pleiades star cluster The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks at 2 a.m. Earth is at perihelion, its nearest distance to the Sun this year Full Moon at 2:30 a.m. Mars is well above the Moon this morning Last Quarter Moon at 4:08 a.m. The Moon passes only 2А to 3А below Spica this morning and 7НА below right of Saturn The Moon is 3А to 4А upper left of Antares New Moon at 2:39 a.m. Mars is stationary, begin retrograde motion At dusk a waxing crescent Moon is 7А above Venus The Moon is 9А upper right of Jupiter The Moon is 6НА upper left of Jupiter First Quarter Moon at 11:10 a.m.

FIRST HABITABLE ZONE PLANET FOUND
On December 5, NASA's Kepler mission confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Ten of Kepler's candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery i s a s t ep c lo s er to f i n d i n g E ar t h - l i k e p lan e t s . Previous research hinted at the existence of near -Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars.

January 29 January 30 January 31

For more information go to: http://www.aaa.org/month1201

2


EYEPIECE

January 2012

A Message from AAA President Richard Rosenberg
Hello Members: Sometimes it seems as if AAA goes into hibernation when winter arrives, but the reality is that we continue to plan both indoor and outdoor events to enrich membership experience. To celebrate the holiday season, on Wednesday, January 4, we will hold our annual gathering to toast the New Year. All club members are invited. I urge you to bring a friend for us to meet and talk about the benefits of joining AAA. We'll be at the Brass Monkey at 55 Little West 12 Street from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The High Line is nearby and will be open until 7 p.m.. Cash ba r and a dinner menu are available for all. The last few years we have had a January gathering at the Charles Dana Discovery Center, with a computer presentation followed by observing. This year we will meet on Jan 12 from 6:30 p.m. - 8 p.m. (we may actually stay a little later). The entrance is on Central Park North, between Fifth and Lenox Avenues. If it is cloudy we will still have the indoor presentation. The film "The City Dark", focusing on the loss of night sky and increased light pollution, will premiere at Manhattan's IFC Center on January 18. The producers have invited AAA members to bring telescopes to the event, setting up on the sidewalk at West 4th Street and Sixth Avenue. Participants will receive free tickets to the movie. Let me know if you're interested in coming. Good news for fans and observers of Mars. The Red Planet is now dramatically brightening in the evening sky. On January 24, as seen from Earth, it changes direction with respect to the stars, an indication that Earth is getting ready to pass Mar s. On March 3 Mars will be opposite the Sun at its closest and brightest to Earth. Comet Garradd is seventh-magnitude, making it visible in the morning sky with telescopes and large binoculars. It continues to move slowly through Hercules. On January 25 it will be only 8Н arc minutes from the magnitude 4.5 star Rho Herculis. A sta r chart for the comet is on our website at www.aaa.org/month1201. The seminar we hold at New York University is on hiatus this month, but will return in February. We hope to see many of you at a AAA event soon.

Sincerely,

Rich Rosenberg, AAA President Email: president@aaa.org ; Telephone: (718) 522-5014
Comet Lovejoy continued from page 1

ern Hemisphere observation. This has been particularly true of Comet Lovejoy's mid-winter apparition, with the Sun already at its southernmost position. The comet is receding into the deep southern sky, not to return for over 400 years. As the International Space Station passed over Tasmania around December 21, speeding toward the dawn, the station's commander, Dan Burbank, happened to spy the comet's tail as a "long, green, glowing arc" and later took a series of photos of it, which he turned into a movie. He described the comet as "...the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space." Australian comet discoverer David Seargent--author of The Greatest Comets in History: Broom Stars and Celestial Scimitars, saw the comet on December 23 and described it in a post to the Yahoo Comets Mailing List, as "glorious." He went on to say "There is no doubt that this comet is included amongst the great comets of history. Not the `greatest of the greats' like Ikeya-Seki, Hyakutake, Hale-Bopp and McNaught, but certainly high on the list of the runners up. ________________________ POWERFUL DETECTORS ON HAWAIIAN SCOPE The world's largest submillimeter camera -- based on superconducting technology designed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) -- is now ready to scan the universe, including faint and faraway parts never seen before. Mounted on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on

Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the NIST technology will help accelerate studies of the origins of stars, planets and galaxies. The new 4.5-ton SCUBA-2 camera, containing more than 10,000 of NIST's superconducting sensors, is far more sensitive than its predecessor SCUBA (Submillimeter CommonUse Bolometer Array), and will enable astronomers to map the sky hundreds of times faster and with a much larger field of view. SCUBA-2 will produce better images, sky maps, image new targets, and support deeper and broader surveys. "The submillimeter is the last frontier in astronomical imaging," says NIST physicist Gene Hilton, who developed the fabrication method for the NIST instrument. "It's been very difficult to develop cameras that work at this wavelength, so the submillimeter is largely unexplored. We're excited to see what SCUBA-2 will reveal." The NIST sensors precisely measure submillimeter radiated power using a superconducting metal, molybdenumcopper, that changes resistance in response to heat from radiation. Each tiny but powerful sensor functions as a single pixel in the camera. In sheer numbers of pixels, the NIST instrument is the largest superconducting camera ever made, although its physical size is only about 30 square inches divided into two areas targeting different wavelengths. SCUBA-2 is a collaboration of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland; NIST; four British and Canadian universities; and the Joint Astronomy Centre in Hawaii, which operates the telescope. 3


EYEPIECE

January 2012

AN ASTROPHOTOGRAPHER'S GRAND AND PETRIFIED EXPERIENCE
By Stan Honda
In late October and early November, I spent three weeks as an Artist-in-Residence at the Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest national parks photographing the dark sky above and the landscapes below. The National Park Service has a invites artists to work inside the parks fo of time, interpreting the natural resources location and sharing the experience with proposed photographing the night sky to source to be protected along with the land unique program that r an extended period associated with each the general public. I show that it is a rebelow. solitude much of the time, I did meet Rush Dudley, an amateur astronomer from New Mexico. He had come to the Grand Canyon hoping for a night of stargazing under the dark skies of a national park and was not disappointed. Rush would also appear at the Petrified Forest later in my journey as we shared the night sky together. At the end of the week I participated in the park's slate of evening programs, presenting a slide show of my photographic work to an appreciative audience and discussing the importance of preserving the night sky. With my first week of residency completed, I set out for the Petrified Forest in northeastern Arizona, a 3Н hour drive from the Grand Canyon. Driving through the park I experienced the incredible landscapes and multicolored hills of the Painted Desert. Although not the focus of my shoot, I could not help but to appreciate this rare and natural beauty. Throughout the forest were vast areas of petrified tree logs strewn about as if some ancient lumberjack had sawed them and left the pieces wherever they fell. Photographing these dark objects at night was going to be a challenge. During the day I looked for areas of the park that could make good compositions and then set up my camera after sunset - and waited. The rest of the night was spent with headlamp on, tripod and camera in hand, searching for interesting formations. As the moon grew towards first quarter, I had more time and light to compose better photographs. Although the Petrified Forest is closed to visitors between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. in the fall, park rangers gave me a key to the gate. Each night, after telling the rangers where I would be working, I was alone in the vast park - an odd but exhilarating feeling. My two weeks at the Petrified Forest went by quickly, and I headed back to New York to edit and process all of the images I had shot in the field. It's always great to come home, but this time I missed the solitude of being alone in those two great parks. It was a moving, personal experience. Spending three weeks observing the rising and setting of stars, planets, the Moon and the Milky Way gave me a new appreciation of how our Earth travels through the cosmos. Capturing it in photographs gave me the ability to share my experience with others. _______________________ To view breathtaking images from these two photographic shoots, visit www.stanhonda.com and click on the National Parks tab. A personal blog with more detailed information about Stan's experiences during his two residencies can be found under the News section of the site.

It is an awe-inspiring experience to sit alone under the bowl of stars in the night sky and to see the Milky Way arch directly overhead. One evening Jupiter was rising in the east while Cygnus and Cassiopeia floated high above. At that latitude the Big Dipper would slowly dip below the horizon over the course of a few hours. It's quiet at night in the parks, and working becomes extremely meditative. My goal was to use the moonlight to illuminate the landscape while not washing out the stars. Before I left for my trip, I made a chart with the times of sunset, moonrise and moonset for the three weeks I would be gone. I projected that moonrise and moonset would be the best times to photograph, conditions similar to late afternoon or early morning sunlight. I also learned that there would be a flyover of the International Space Station every day I was at the Grand Canyon. Opportunities abounded. On October 15 I headed to Arizona with my wife who joined me for my first few days at the Grand Canyon. The residency included a place to live, but artists provided their own food, equipment and transportation. We stopped for provisions in Flagstaff and then continued north to the park. Matching the correct equipment to a particular assignment is critical to the success of every shoot. I packed a Nikon D3S and D700 accompanied by specific lenses to capture the images - a 20mm, a 14-24mm zoom, and a 16mm fisheye. Two tripods and an Astro-Trac mount (for tracking stars) completed the list. . To create a clear field of view, I photographed from rocky outcrops that extended into the canyon without protective railings. These outcrops are intimidating during daylight hours. Extra caution was required when navigating the same terrain in almost total darkness. To set up a star trail picture, I would walk carefully toward the edge of the canyon with my headlamp and an extra flashlight illuminating my path. Once the camera was set and the aperture opened, any artificial light would ruin the exposures. My walk back to safe ground in the dark was therefore slow and measured. Although I worked in 4


EYEPIECE

January 2012

AAA SOLAR SYSTEM CLASS A SUCCESS
On November 2, Dr. Laird Whitehill took the podium in the new AAA lecture room at 505 Eighth Avenue. His class, "Evolution of the Solar System/Birth and Death in the Solar System" was prepared to take forty "students" on a six session detailed tour of the evolution of stars, planets and the history of the universe. Whitehill's informal teaching style immediately put the class at ease. This was to be an up close and personal experience told through the instructor's eyes. The material covered a vast database across the internet and into the well prepared documents that demonstrated how the universe evolved and our solar system was formed. Our Sun was born in a stellar nursery. As the rst object to form before a solar system can develop, it's success and size dictated the characteristics of its planets and the number of planets that ultimately populated our solar system. Thus began the journey that took us to understanding the complexities of asteroids, protoplanetary disks, galaxy classi cations, dark matter ("the glue holding galaxies together"), dwarf planets, pulsars, the Oort cloud, transiting exoplanets and the intricacies of the Kepler scope and its hunt for Earthlike planets. The nal class took us on a visual journey across the Martian landscape, giving everyone an appreciation of the depth of current technology and the integration of NASA and other space based probes' data. We look forward to future AAA classes, and thank Laird for his dedication and for sharing his broad ased knowledge. -b ________________________

Astronomical Facts of the Month

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star Stars twinkle because their scattered light passes through various levels of our atmosphere. As the air moves at di erent levels or layers, the light is bent, which looks like "twinkling" to us on Earth. If you were aboard the International Space Station, none of the stars would twinkle. The light from our planets also travel through Earth's atmosphere, but we see their light as constant. Light from the wider disks of the planets is not as disturbed and the changes between atmospheric levels cancel each other out. ________________________ If Stars Twinkle, Why is Space Black? The answer is simple. In space, starlight or any kind of light does not have anything from which to bounce o . Normally, we see color because light is selectively re ected back into our eyes. Re ect back all the colors of the spectrum at once and we see white. Light travels in a straight path so, if it does not re ect o of an object it is absorbed by space. In doing so, our eyes cannot see any color, and that leaves the blackness of space. The night sky on Earth has molecules in the atmosphere to re ect light and reveal stars. On the Moon, day or night, the sky is black due to lack of re ective matter. CALL FOR EYEPIECE WRITERS Those members who enjoy reading Eyepiece may want to learn more about astronomy by participating as a writer. For the past two years and now as current editor, I am constantly exploring leadingedge astronomical events through research for my articles and attending lectures and presentations as an Eyepiece representative. I encourage anyone focused on learning more about the science of astronomy and the exciting missions at NASA, ESA and other sources in the eld to join our team of dedicated writers. Please contact me directly to discuss working together.

"THE CITY DARK" ENLIGHTENS US ALL
On January 18, the IFC Center in New York will premiere "The City Dark," a feature documentary about light pollution and the disappearing night sky. The independent lm rst premiered in competition at the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, TX, where it won the Jury Prize for Best Score/Music. After moving to light-polluted New York City from rural Maine, lmmaker Ian Cheney asks: "Do we need the dark?" Exploring the threat of killer asteroids in Hawaii, tracking hatching turtles along the Florida coast, and rescuing injured birds on Chicago streets, Cheney unravels the myriad implications of a globe glittering with lights -- including increased breast cancer rates from exposure to light at night, and a generation of kids without a glimpse of the universe above. Featuring stunning astrophotography and a cast of eclectic scientists, philosophers, historians, and lighting designers, "The City Dark" is the de nitive story of light pollution and the disappearing stars. Join AMNH's Neil deGrasse Tyson, ISS astronaut Don Pettit, "Cosmos" co-writer Ann Druyan, astrophotographer Jack Newton, and many other esteemed professionals as they discuss this important trend and its impact on society and our environment. Visit www.ifccenter.com and www.thecitydark.comfor more information.

Evan B. Schneider, Editor
Email: editor@aaa.org Tel: 212 -986-4225 Contacting AAA: Website - www.aaa.org; General Club Matters and Observing : president@aaa.org; Membership Business : members@aaa.org; Classes : classes@aaa.org; Seminars : seminar@aaa.org; Eyepiece : editor@aaa.org Telephone (voicemail): 212 -535-2922 5


EYEPIECE

January 2012

FIRST AMATEUR ASTRONOMER TO CAPTURE SOLAR SYSTEM IN DEVELOPMENT
A New Zealand man has become the first amateur astronomer to take a direct photograph of a solar system in the first stages of development. Rolf Olsen's image shows Beta Pictoris, a bright young star in the southern hemisphere, surrounded by a circumstellar disk--a huge, flat cloud of swirling debris kicked up by a flurry of comet, asteroid and minor-body collisions near the new star. Olsen captured the image of the Beta Pictoris solar system, 63 light-years away, using a 10-inch homemade telescope. After posting the photo to his blog and the Australian Amateur Astronomy forum IceInSpace, it quickly shot around the Web and into the field of view of professional astronomers, who called the achievement "amazing," "bold," and "impressive." One said, "I'm not aware of any other amateur photograph of the disk of another solar system." Said another, "This is the first image of a planetary disk made by an amateur astronomer which I am aware of." In fact, professional astronomers only managed to capture an image of a disk--that of Beta Pictoris--for the first time in 1984. "That an amateur can achieve this with a 10 -inch telescope, even more than 25 years later, is nonetheless impressive," said a professional. Astronomers have studied the Beta Pictoris system extensively, because it appears demonstrate the first stages of planet formation. The 12-million-year-old star is undergoing the same process by which our solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago. Photographing circumstellar disks is difficult because light from the central star normally swamps the faint glow of the material around it. Powerful telescopes and new data filtering techniques have allowed astronomers to subtract the flood of distant starlight, revealing light from the objects near it, but most amateurs don't attempt such procedures. Olsen achieved the feat by carefully following steps outlined in an academic article about Beta Pictoris, he said. That paper described a method of imaging the Beta Pictoris system by taking a photo of a similar reference star under the same conditions, then subtracting an equal amount of light, pixel for pixel, from his Beta Pictoris image. "For this purpose, I used Alpha Pictoris," Olsen said. "This star is of nearly the same spectral type...and is close enough to Beta in the sky so that the slight change in telescope orientation shouldn't affect the diffraction pattern." Olsen adjusted the exposure time of his photos of the stars to equalize their brightness. He then used simple software to subtract the image of Alpha from his image of Beta, producing a clear picture of the Beta Pictoris solar system with a shadowy spot in place of its central star, and the circumstellar disk radiating out from it. "I was very excited when I saw I had a faint signal from the disk itself. I lined up my image and checked it against the professional images, and I was happy to see that the orientation of what looked like the dust disk in my image coincided perfectly with what I could see in the professional images," Olsen told space.com. 6 The techniques Olsen applied, and similar techniques astronomers have used for other sorts of work, can be applied to many other stars in the sky. There certainly could be a lot of interesting things that professional astronomers have missed, that amateur astronomers could clue them in on. In particular, amateurs can help scientists by surveying the transits of exoplanets around nearby stars. Olsen offers advice for fellow space enthusiasts: "I'd like to encourage other amateurs to go off the beaten path every now and then and try to photograph some of the more unusual things. There are so many exotic targets like quasars, gravitational lenses, distant galaxy clusters, etc., which are imaged a lot less often than the more traditional nebulae and bright Messier objects. And these often have a very interesting story to tell."

SUNNY WITH A CHANCE OF SOLAR WINDS Following an extended quiet period, the Sun is ramping up for an era of intense activity. Researchers are prepping to prevent solar storms from disrupting life on Earth. For the first time, it's possible to predict how solar storms will hit us. This allows power grids to adjust for electrical fluctuations and airlines to switch communication systems. Yet this forecasting is nascent, and still leaves many gaps to fill when it comes to space weather. The Sun varies from phases of relative peace to eras rocked by magnetic solar storms over an eleven year cycle. Lately, it's been its quietest in two centuries. But now, sunspots are back up, and the Sun is entering another period of solar maximum, set to peak in 2013. Another study says the relatively quiet stretch of the Sun in recent years doesn't necessarily herald impending low solar activity of historic proportions. The dry spell from 2005 to 2010 lasted twice as long as usual, prompting some scientists to predict a grand minimum of solar activity, which hasn't been seen in 300 years, could be on the way. But the opposite could as easily be true. After looking at data of past solar activity, scientists noted it's just as likely the Sun will go into a grand maximum as into a grand minimum. However, neither will likely happen within the next 30 years or so. Most probable is that the Sun will continue a moderate level of activity, as displayed at pr