We had a great time with the microscope, finding all kinds of critters from the Escondido Creek, which flows through the preserve. We’ll be having regular monthly club meetings.

www.flickr.com munnecket’s Elfin Forest Science Center Apr 2010 photoset

And here is my film from the 2009 festival at Balboa Park.

Path of Asteroid Anastasia eclipsing the star Zeta Ophiuchi

We will be out looking for the eclipse of the asteroid Anastasia, as it passes in front of the star Zeta Ophiuchi on the morning of April 6, 2010 at 3:34 AM PDT.  From the web site: Asteroid Occulations:

The eclipse, or "occultation" as astronomers call it, will occur at
3:34 am PDT Tuesday morning, April 6th, in the Los Angeles area.
The star will abrupty disappear for less than 10 seconds, and since
the time uncertainty is less than half a minute, you don't need to
watch very long.  So you can set your alarm to wake up 15 to 20 min.
before the occultation, and be back in bed within half an hour, thus
not loosing too much sleep for this weekday event.

The 25-mile-wide path is expected to pass over Orange County and
extend north from there, over West Covina and Ontario, Calif.
However, the location of the path is quite uncertain; the path could
instead pass over downtown Los Angeles or the San Fernando Valley
(with a small chance that it could pass over even Ventura and
Bakersfield), or it could shift east, possibly passing over San
Bernardino or, rather less likely, over San Diego and Palm Springs.
Even an observer on the predicted central line has only a 26% chance
to have an occultation.

Although seeing the eclipse from the Cosmos Research Center is not very likely, if we could see it, we could
provide some valuable information to astronomers about the exact shape and location of the asteroid.
Its a mind-boggling to think that we can predict a rock passing in front of a star millions of miles away.

One activity will be to look at water from the creek through the microscope.  Here is scientist Abby looking at pond water:

The moon will be up for the early evening, giving us a chance to see it close up for a while.  Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Saturn will be clustered near each other just at sunset.  When the moon sets, we’ll have a dark sky and a chance to see the Milky Way, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune.  With a little luck, we’ll be able to see all the planets in one night!

I’ll be watching the LCROSS impact on the moon this Friday morning from a 22″ telescope in Anza, California.  I thought it would be nice to have some music to listen to while watching it, so I asked my favorite composer Kevin MacLeod if he would be interested in composing something special.

We tossed around some ideas, and he came up with this amazing piece: called Impact.  You can download the smaller MP3 version, or the larger WAV version.  This is meant to start exactly 11 minutes before impact, and has a voiceover counting down the time to impact.  This is royalty-free music, so feel free to pass it freely according to Kevin’s license agreement.

Enjoy!