The Young Astronomers Newsletter

The Young Astronomers Newsletter Volume 26 Number 9 September 2018

By Bob Patsiga

In this month’s edition of the newsletter Bob discusses:

• Radar images of Mars indicate that there could be bodies of liquid aqueous solution under the planet’s southern cap.
• How do we measure the most massive stars?
• Mars rover Opportunity is still not responding even though the large global dust storm is subsiding. (CBS News: still no response as of August 21).
• If a companion star is near a supernova, sometimes the companion can withstand the blast.
• Astronomers from the University of Colorado report that their computer simulations indicate that there might not be a Planet X out in the Kuiper Belt. The motions of the KB bodies might be the result of an accumulative gravitational tug of war by known multiple bodies.
• Astronomers around the world are putting together various sophisticated instruments which can detect gravity waves. One proposal plans to use three spacecrafts which can communicate by lasers in an effort to detect the warping of space due to gravity waves.
• NASA’s spectrometer located on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has detected water ice located deep inside Moon’s polar craters.
• Astronomical birthdays for the month of September.
• Celestial happenings for the month.
• A constellation <-> season matching game.
• Forsyth Astronomical Society activities during September.
• And a fall season sky map is included.