My Expectations:

1.  To treat you with respect at all times.

1.  To treat me and your colleagues with respect at all times.

2.  To provide you with an orderly environment.

2.  To attend class and participate in an orderly manner.

3.  To provide necessary discipline. 

3.  To always cooperate and never disrupt.

4.  To provide competent instruction and  motivation.

4.  To study and do all of your work.

5.  To provide the required content.

5.  To learn and master the required content.

• Strive to attend school every day.

• ASK questions and be a part of the conversation.  Attendance and participation are different things.

• READ your text.  It would be pretty silly for me to simply repeat the text's material in class.  So I expect you to read so we can do other activities in class.

• Commit to complete all activities and assignments and turn them in on time.

• Get help early (don't wait until it's too late!).

December 2011  — The current 2012 hysteria is addressed by a series of articles at Sky and Telescope.com.  Like the supposed planetary alignment apocalyptic nonsense of the early eighties, doomsday pronouncements of Nostradamus and others, and the annual Mars as Big as the Moon Hoax started in 2003, the enduring belief by many in these hoaxes reveal our need for a scientifically and mathematically informed citizenry.  Image at right is from Sky and Telescope. See below for more.

November 17-19, 2011 — The Leonid meteor shower has a relatively weak peak of around 10-15 meteors/hour early Friday morning.  The third quarter moon will interfere with the viewing of fainter meteors.  This meteor shower is produced by debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle and is the same shower that produced a meteor storm in 2002.  Read this nice article about the shower and its importance in meteor science history.  Graphic at right is from Meteor Showers Online.

October 14-October 28, 2011 — The Great World Wide Star Count  invites you to participate in a global project to measure the effects of artificial lighting on the night sky.  No equipment is needed and no special travel is required.  Just log onto the web site, read the easy instructions, go outside and count, then report your count with your location data and weather conditions.  You may log on as many times as you like.  You will be helping us to recover one of mankind's greatest heritages:  The Night Sky.  The map at right is by Tom Patterson of the National Park Service.

September-October, 2011  — The long term variable star Mira (o Ceti) is near maximum brightness.  At magnitude 2.1, this is as bright as the star has been in a generation.  Mira is a red giant that spends most of its time near magnitude 9.  See the article at Sky and Telescope for more and for an image of Mira taken by the Galex satellite.

September 8, 2011  — A telescopically visible comet will be visible in the evening sky through mid-December.  Named Comet Gerradd, this comet is shining near magnitude 6 in Sagitta, soon to cross into Hercules.  This comet is a large comet but it gets no closer to the sun than the orbit of Mars.  Sky and Telescope has a link for a finder chart.  The image at right is also from Sky and Telescope.

Comet Gerradd passed near M71 in Sagitta on August 26.

August 24, 2011  — A supernova was discovered in the galaxy M101.  This is the second "nearby" supernova discovered in the last three months (the other was in M51).  A short article including links and more photos is available at Sky and Telescope.  The image at right is also from Sky and Telescope.

August 10-14, 2011  — The Perseid Meteor Shower occurs this year under bright moonlit skies.  From a dark site one may observe 60 meteors or more per hour, but not this year.  2012 should be much better.  The best observing time is after 11 pm.  Shower members may occur anywhere on the sky but their common trait is that when traced backward their paths will converge at a radiant point in the constellation Perseus.  Image at right and more information are available at Universe Today.  Also, timely meteor shower information can also be found at Meteorshowersonline.com.

August 5, 2011 — The brightest asteroid, 4 Vesta, is just past opposition this week, shining at magnitude 5.7 in Capricornus. It's an easy find in binoculars in late evening and can be seen with the unaided eye from a dark site once the Moon sets.  Download the finder chart for 4 Vesta and 1 Ceres from Sky and Telescope.  The Dawn spacecraft, the first to orbit an object in the main asteroid belt, is orbiting Vesta and sending back high-res pictures.  Dawn will spiral down to a much lower orbit for close up imaging by early 2012.  At right is an image of Vesta taken on July 24.  Click on the image for a higher resolution view.

December 20-21, 2010 — The last total eclipse of the moon for 2010 will occur with the west coast of North America favored for the middle of totality occurring just after midnight.  A nice article covering the eclipse can be found at Wikipedia.

Rain wiped out any chance of viewing this year's lunar eclipse.  The next chances to see a total lunar eclipse from Southern California are December 10, 2011 as the moon sets (that means around 6 am!) and April 15, 2014 after midnight.  There will be a total lunar eclipse on June 15, 2011, but you will need to travel to the other side of the world to view it.

Wondering about a solar eclipse?  A partial annular solar eclipse is visible from Southern California on the late afternoon of May 20, 2012, and another partial eclipse on August 21, 2017.

September 25, 2009 — The Cassini team released some incredible images earlier this week of the Saturn system during equinox, and followed up with this beauty of a crescent moon Rhea beneath the rings of Saturn. NASA has also put together a multimedia presentation of recent pictures of Saturn, set to music, and it is stunning. Run, don't walk and click here to watch. (Flash required)  Text and image are from Universe Today.

August 27, 2009 — The annual Mars hoax email chain letter is back with new and improved, yet false, claims that Mars will look as big and as bright as the full moon on the night of August 27.  This email is a classic case illustrating how poorly the public understands science in general and astronomy in particular.  Read the Sky and Telescope blog on this hoax for more.  The illustration at right is from that article.

Sky and Telescope editor Alan McRobert ends his blog philosophically: "'The Mars chain letter is not a bad thing, it's a good thing! It is an immunization. If you make a fool of yourself by sending it to your friends and family, you may be embarrassed enough not to send them the next e-mail chain letter you get, which may not be so harmless.'

P. S.: The first place to check for facts about any internet rumor, hoax, or urban legend is www.snopes.com.. Bookmark it."

May 24, 2008 — The sun passing through Taurus is captured by the SOHO spacecraft.  The Hyades, Pleiades, and Venus are all visible in the images at right.  Click on each image for a bigger view.  The sun's faint corona can be seen as well as the occulting disk and its bracket used to block the intense light coming from the sun's photosphere.  In the Hyades, stars as faint as magnitude 10 are visible. Image credit Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Homepage.

The Great Crossing:  check out the movie made by Cassini Mission scientists of a ring crossing by the probe orbiting Saturn. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI.

Keep an eye on Cassiopeia — it contains a naked-eye star that may brighten and dim dramatically in the coming months. Image at right and more info are available at Sky and Telescope.

Check out Delta Scorpii. Use the diagram at right to identify the star in the middle of the Scorpion's head.  For the last five years, this star has been unusually bright (normally all three stars in the head appear about the same brightness. In 2005, AAVSO reported its magnitude as bright at 1.64. See the Sky and Telescope article for more information.  Scorpius is easy to view low in the south after sunset through the early Fall.