Explore Your Universe 2012 will take place on Saturday, November 10, 2012 from 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm at UCLA’s campus. This event is FREE of charge to the public and family-friendly! We will feature many activities and demonstrations open to the general public (including students), and we plan to have more than last year! Activities for all ages include workshops, faculty and graduate student talks, planetarium shows, solar telescope viewing, comet making, weather tours, dinosaur fossils, physics demos and much more!
This event includes participation from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Earth and Space Sciences, Atmospheric Sciences, the CNSI High School NanoScience Program, and the Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology. It is sponsored by the Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA Center for Student Programming, and each of the departments listed above. This event was developed by graduate students, faculty, and staff in each of the these departments.
For more information on this year’s event including a full schedule, click here. For more general information on EYU click here. Click on the flyer for a printable PDF version.
Group photo from Day 1 of the IPLEX Ices & Organics in the Inner Solar System Conference
The first IPLEX-hosted conference, titled Ices and Organics in the Inner Solar System, was held in the historic Royce Hall on the UCLA campus on June 12-13, 2012.The conference was a great success, with more than fifty attendees and twenty half-hour featured presentations that covered a diverse array of topics concerning organics found in the inner solar system. Highlights included several talks on recent work involving water-ice distribution and stability on the Moon, Mars and Mercury and recent results from the Mars Phoenix lander indicating the presence of unexpected salts on the surface of Mars.Additionally, asteroidal and cometary ice and volatile transport were discussed in detail.For a complete list of abstracts, click here.
Roughly 1,500 people formed long lines Tuesday on Janss Terrace to get a glimpse of an astronomical phenomenon that won’t happen again until 2117.
For them, the wait to get a good look at the second and last transit of Venus of the 21st century was well worth it, thanks to telescopes and other solar sight devices manned by knowledgeable members of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences and graduate students with the campus organization, Astronomy Live!
Professor Dave Jewitt of the Earth & Space Sciences department has been named as the recipient of two prestigious prizes this week.
Along with Jane Luu (MIT), he was awarded the 2012 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, for the discovery and characterization of trans-Neptunian bodies. The Shaw Prize honors individuals, regardless of race, nationality and religious belief, who have achieved significant breakthrough in academic and scientific research or application and whose work has resulted in a positive and profound impact on mankind.
Dave Jewitt was also named a winner of the 2012 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. The Kavli Prize in Astrophysics awarded for outstanding achievement in advancing our knowledge and understanding of the origin, evolution and properties of the universe, including the felds of cosmology, astrophysics, astronomy, planetary science, solar physics, space science, astrobiology, astronomical and astrophysical instrumentation, and particle astrophysics.
The excitement in the Earth and Space Sciences geochemistry seminar on April 24 was palpable as UCLA Professor John Wasson announced to students that a fireball had streaked across much of North America and exploded near Reno.
The April 22 explosion of a meteor caused an early-morning sonic boom that rattled many in Northern California and Nevada. Scientists estimated it released energy equivalent to 3.5 kilotons of TNT, the size of a small atomic bomb.
Four UCLA graduate students from the departments of Earth & Space Sciences and Physics & Astronomy have been awarded fellowships which provide funding for up to 3 years of PhD research.
Recipients of the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship include Carolyn Crow for her proposal “U-Xe degassing ages of lunar zircons: a probe of lunar bombardment history”, Hao Cao for his proposal “Does Saturn have a solid core? Evidence from its magnetic field” and Julia Fang for her proposal “Main Belt and Trans-Neptunian Triples (NESSF12-Astro to Planet)”.
Jessica Watkins was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for her proposal “ Spatial and Temporal Relationships of Landslides in Valles Marineris, Mars: Constraints on their Triggering Mechanisms”.
Watch Carolyn, Hao and Julia describing their award-winning research in the videos below:
A transit of Venus occurs when the planet passes directly between the Earth and the Sun. Then, Venus can be seen crossing the disk of the sun as a circular black spot.
When will it occur?
From Los Angeles, the transit will be visible on Tuesday, June 5, starting at 3:06 pm and continuing until sunset at 7:08 pm.
From where can I see it?
In the US, the further west the better the view. California is one of the best places to see the 2012 transit on the US mainland. At UCLA, we will have several filter-equipped telescopes set up for the event, at the top of Janss Steps. We will also provide filters for viewing by eye. Please feel free to stop by anytime between the above times to join us for this once in a lifetime event!
Can it be seen without a telescope?
Yes, but only with adequate protection for your eyes.
Can I view it through a telescope?
Yes, it will look better this way, but only with a telescope properly equipped to reject most of the sun’s light and heat.
[box type=”info”]UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN WITH OR WITHOUT A TELESCOPE. ALTHOUGH 93 MILLION MILES AWAY, THE SUN IS SO POWERFUL THAT IT WILL CAUSE PERMANENT EYE DAMAGE AND BLINDNESS IN A FRACTION OF A SECOND. YOU WILL NEVER RECOVER. DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN UNLESS YOU ARE SURE THAT YOUR EYES ARE PROTECTED FROM ITS LIGHT AND HEAT BY A PROPER SOLAR FILTER. SEE VIDEO BELOW.[/box]
What is the best way for me to see the 2012 transit?
If you are located in the Los Angeles area, the UCLA campus should be a good spot! (see “From where can I see it?”)
While looking by eye through a protected telescope is the most authentic way, the transit will also be webcast from various observatories around the world.
What if I miss this one?
You can catch the next one in 2117. Transits occur in pairs with a long gap between: the last one was in 2004, the next two are in 2117 and 2125. These long gaps occur because the orbit planes of Venus and Earth are not parallel, so Venus usually passes above or below the Sun as seen from Earth.
Can other planets transit the Sun?
Yes, Mercury shows transits but, being smaller and further away from Earth, these are harder to view. Only Mercury and Venus have orbits smaller than Earth’s and so can pass between us and the Sun.
Are transits useful?
Yes. Transits were used centuries ago to test calculations of planetary motion, and to determine the Astronomical Unit – the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Now, we use transits across the disks of other stars to discover extrasolar planets. Nearly 1000 exoplanets have been discovered in this way.
Lists of other Venus Transits
Date
Time
Separation
Dec 7, 1631
5:19
939 “
Dec 4, 1639
18:26
524 “
June 6, 1761
5:19
570 “
June 3, 1769
22:25
609 “
Dec 9, 1874
4:07
830 “
Dec 6, 1882
17:06
637 “
June 8, 2004
8:20
627 “
June 6, 2012
1:28
553 “
Dec 11, 2117
2:48
724 “
Dec 8, 2125
16:01
733 “
More Information
Earth and Space Sciences graduate student, Christopher Snead, talks about UCLA plans for the Transit of Venus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28JYIpZEcqs
CREDIT: 3D animation that shows an extrasolar planet orbiting a star ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)
Watch this short documentary about the Transit of Venus, by science filmmaker Maarten Roos.
http://vimeo.com/30313769
Composer and musician William Zeitler performs his original Our Last Transit of Venus for Glass Armonica and Orchestra. William composed the piece especially for the occasion of the Transit of Venus 2012.
UCLA Postdoctoral researcher Michael Busch has been honored with the naming of an asteroid by the International Astronomical Union. The naming was announced 2012 May 18 at the Asteroids, Comets, Meteoroids meeting in Niigata, Japan. Asteroid 8129 Michaelbusch is about 6 km in diameter, slightly eccentric, with an orbit in the inner part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The formal citation reads:
[quote type=”center”]8129 Michaelbusch: Discovered 1975 Sept. 30 by S. J. Bus at Palomar.
Named in honor of Michael W. Busch (b. 1987), a Jansky Fellow at the Department of Earth and Space Sciences of the University of California, Los Angeles. Busch is a radar astronomer who studies near Earth asteroids, with a particular interest in contact binary asteroids. [/quote]
An annular solar eclipse is to take place this Sunday, visible from the west coast of the United States and parts of Eastern Asia.
An annular solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes directly in between the Sun and the Earth, but its apparent diameter is smaller than that of the Sun, resulting in a very bright ring or “annulus” surrounding the dark silhouette of the Moon. In Los Angeles, the eclipse will appear as a partial eclipse with 79% of the Sun’s diameter obscured by the Moon at maximum. The eclipse will take place from 5:24pm – 7:42pm, peaking at 6:38pm. It will be the most extensive solar eclipse in Los Angeles since 1992.
Starting at 5.30pm on Sunday, the UCLA Undergraduate Astronomical Society will be at the top of Janss Steps, viewing the eclipse with solar telescopes and projectors. The viewing will be free and open to the public.
Explore Your Universe 2012 will take place on Saturday, November 10, 2012 from 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm at UCLA’s campus. This event is FREE of charge to the public and family-friendly! We will feature many activities and demonstrations open to the general public (including students), and we plan to have more than last year! Activities for all ages include workshops, faculty and graduate student talks, planetarium shows, solar telescope viewing, comet making, weather tours, dinosaur fossils, physics demos and much more!
