January 2007 HAD Meeting Abstracts

HAD IV Display

Sunday, 7 Jan 2007.

1. History of the Spitzer Mission
George Rieke, University of Arizona
The Spitzer Telescope was launched more than 20 years after the original announcement of opportunity was released. During this long gestation period, the mission took a wide variety of forms and had to survive many political and managerial environments within NASA and in the US Government generally. Finally, approval to build the telescope was won at the height of the faster-better-cheaper era, but completing it extended beyond this phase. This poster shows the key steps in preserving the mission and why decision makers viewed it positively at critical points when it might have been killed. In the end, the scope of the mission was reduced by a factor of about five while still preserving much of its science capabilities. This reduction required a new way to streamline the science objectives by adopting a limited number of key programs and requiring that all features be justified in terms of those programs. This philosophy provided decision rules to carry out necessary descopes while preserving a coherent set of capabilities. In addition, the faster-better-cheaper guidelines requires use of a small launch vehicle, which was only possible by the invention of a new “warm launch” telescope concept, in which the telescope would cool primarily by radiation into space after launch. Both of these concepts are critical to the approach to future missions such as JWST.
This work is partially supported by contract 1255094 from JPL/Caltech to the University of Arizona.

2. The Role of Eclipse Expeditions in Early French and Australian Radio Astronomy
Wayne Orchiston, James Cook University, J. Lequeux, Paris Observatory, M. Pick, Paris Observatory, B. Slee, Australia Telescope National Facility, J. Steinberg, Paris Observatory.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, France and Australia were both very actively involved in solar radio astronomy. One of the problems was to find the resolution to successfully investigate the association of coronal radio emitting regions with sunspots and other photospheric features, and solar eclipse expeditions came to play a key role in this quest. By observing an eclipse from geographically-spaced localities it was possible to accurately determine the positions of the radio-emitting regions, and the overall observations could also be used to investigate the form and size of the radio corona. Between 1948 and 1952 French and Australian radio astronomers mounted five different solar eclipse expeditions, which contributed significantly to our understanding of the solar corona and radio-optical associations. This poster paper will review these expeditions by examining the personnel involved, their equipment, the observations made and the scientific results.

3. Seth Nicholson's First Satellite Discovery: Jupiter IX and His Orbit for It
Donald E. Osterbrock, UCO/Lick Observatory.
Seth B. Nicholson was a graduate astronomy student at the University of California in Berkeley when he discovered his first satellite in 1914. He was later to discover three more, after he had joined the Mount Wilson Observatory staff following his PhD in 1915. Nicholson had begun his thesis on the problem of computing an improved orbit for J VIII, which had been discovered by Melotte in England in 1908, a distant irregular satellite like J VI and J VII. Nicholson was taking photographic plates to measure the position of J VIII in the summer of 1914 with the Crossley 36-inch reflector of Lick Observatory. He was a teaching assistant at Berkeley that summer, but would go up to Mount Hamilton to observe on weekends in the dark of the moon, traveling by rail, stage (an automobile on a regular schedule between San Jose and the observatory) and interurban trolley car, and sleeping in a shed near the Crossley dome. He first saw J IX as a much fainter object with the same motion as J VIII on a plate he took in late July 1914, and realized it must be another satellite of the giant planet. Nicholson obtained his first orbit of J IX, which had by then become his new thesis topic, in September, and published a paper on it in early 1915. Its orbit, like that of J VIII, was retrograde and irregular, but it was considerably fainter. Nicholson, a loyal student of Armin O. Leuschner, the head of the Berkeley Astronomy Division, used his teacher's "short method" (or analytic method) to calculate the orbit.

4. The Guilford-Carleton Eclipse Expedition of 1900
Thomas R. English, III Guilford Tech. Community College.
The solar eclipse of 1900 May 28 provided an opportunity for American astronomers to make observations from home soil, as the shadow tracked across the southeastern United States from New Orleans to Norfolk. Eclipse parties were scattered throughout the southern states, including large-scale scientific teams traveling to sites in Georgia and North Carolina. These major operations, staffed by groups from Yerkes, Princeton, USNO, and Lick, featured multiple observing programs and all the modern techniques they could manage.
In addition to the major astrophysical endeavors, there were many smaller parties in the field in 1900 that resembled the more casual eclipse expeditions that were characteristic of a few decades before. In these efforts, relatively small groups of observers used modest instruments and made mostly visual observations, and the expedition was as much a social event as it was a scientific venture. One such group was the party from Carleton College and Guilford College that observed from a fruit farm in Southern Pines, NC. At the turn of the century, the Goodsell Observatory at Carleton College in Minnesota was an important regional astronomical facility that had provided weather and time data for over 20 years, and was the site of publication of Popular Astronomy, a widely circulated astronomical journal. At Guilford College, on the other hand, the astronomy course was taught by the school’s Treasurer, and there were no significant astronomical facilities. The presentation will explain how these two schools came to combine efforts to study the 1900 solar eclipse, and will summarize the events of the trip and the observations made.
This research was supported in part by the Herbert C. Pollock Award of the Dudley Observatory.

5. The North American Astronomical Photographic Plate Preservation & Digitization Center — Current Status
Wayne Osborn, Central Michigan Univ., M. Castelaz, Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, J. D. Cline, Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, R.E. Griffin, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, T. Barker, Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute.
The North American Astronomical Photographic Plate Center (NAPPC) was established at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in 2004. The goal of the Center is to help preserve astronomical photographic data, first by serving as a long term repository for astronomical plate collections and eventually by digitizing the plate material of interest for research projects. In the three years of existence, the Center has received over 25,000 plates. The largest collections are CTIO 4-m plates, CTIO and Warner and Swasey direct and objective prism Schmidt plates, and U. Michigan spectra. Preliminary catalogues of the plates are being developed and placed on line (http://www.pari.edu/library/astronomical-plate-center). A small source of funding has been secured to support this work. Instructions will be available from the authors on the steps to follow for individuals or observatories wishing to archive plates at the Center.

6. Astronomy Education Review: A Five-Year Progress Report
Andrew Fraknoi, Foothill College, S. Wolff, NOAO.
The North American Astronomical Photographic Plate Center (NAPPC) was established at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in 2004. The goal of the Center is to help preserve astronomical photographic data, first by serving as a long term repository for astronomical plate collections and eventually by digitizing the plate material of interest for research projects. In the three years of existence, the Center has received over 25,000 plates. The largest collections are CTIO 4-m plates, CTIO and Warner and Swasey direct and objective prism Schmidt plates, and U. Michigan spectra. Preliminary catalogues of the plates are being developed and placed on line (http://www.pari.edu/library/astronomical-plate-center). A small source of funding has been secured to support this work. Instructions will be available from the authors on the steps to follow for individuals or observatories wishing to archive plates at the Center.