Sky News - CA (2019-11 & 2019-12)

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 Magazine of The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada ✦anybody out there? Seeking new earthS ✦cluSterS gal ...

2 SKYNEWS •NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 •SKYNEWS ...

departmentS 04 preSident’S meSSage chriS gainor Season’s Greetings Welcome to the 2019 year-end issue of Skynews 05 editor’S rep ...

I T’S BEEN nearly five years since The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) acquired SkyNews. Over the inter - ven ing ti ...

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 •SKYNEWS 5 A s AN AvId amateur astronomer, I found last May’s launch of the first batch of spaceX starlin ...

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE O THER THAN THE OCCASIONAL COLLISION between a planet and a comet or an asteroid, our solar system is a plac ...

A LTHOUGH MARS tends to get most of the media attention, two spacecraft continue to methodically explore a pair of small, dark a ...

S ARA SEAGER points to a notch in the graph on her computer screen. Like an icicle clinging to the edge of a rooftop, it hangs d ...

EXOPLANET RESEARCH FOUR EYESNASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is an Earth-orbiting spacecraft with a great vie ...

10 SKYNEWS •NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 is blocked by a planet. The amount of dim- ming reveals the diameter of the planet. The lengt ...

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 •SKYNEWS 11 WATER WORLD?The first exoplanet discovered by TESS is Pi Mensae c, depicted here, which orbit ...

12 SKYNEWS •NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 located near enough to us to permit the detection of an atmosphere. “It’s going to be just a ...

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 •SKYNEWS 13 could hold onto an atmo sphere. She and her colleagues used the Spitzer Space Telescope to ob ...

14 SKYNEWS •NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 OUR HOLIDAY WISH LIST SkyNewseditors and columnists dream big (and small) with this selection ...

ALAN DYER’S PICKS INTERSTELLARUM DEEP SKY ATLAS (CDN$127 ); http://www.deep-sky-atlas.com When Ronald Stoyan showed me an early ...

16 SKYNEWS •NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 PAUL DEANS’ PICKS CANON 18×50 IMAGE- STABILIZED BINOCULARS (CDN$1,500); http://www.canon.ca I ...

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 •SKYNEWS 17 WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS? THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE: OUR EYE ON THE UNIVERSE (CDN$13); http://www ...

DOUBLES, ANYONE? open cluster m34 is one big, bright puddle of pairs. the dozen duos aren’t all officially recognized—indeed, mo ...

And there’s more. Applying 72×on the cluster’s easternmost bright star, HD 16782, yields a close attendant (set 9). At 97×, the ...

NOV. 1 Waxing crescent Moon 5° west of Saturn in evening sky NOV. 3Standard time begins (set clocks back 1 hour) NOV. 4 First-qu ...