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Evidence for eclipse starting

Citizen Sky is now officially permanent part of the AAVSO. In the coming weeks we will be moving additional content to the AAVSO site and freezing this site as an archive of the 1st three years of the project. Please visit the new landing page for future updates.

Posted by Dr.Bob on July 20, 2009 - 10:58pm

Robin Leadbeater just provided spectroscopic evidence that the eclipse is starting - and on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 moonlanding.
Leadbeater has been following the neutral potassium absorption line at 7699A in the far red, and reports a doubling of the equivalent width (area inside the curve).   The new component has appeared about 1/3A longward of the longterm line, corresponding to a redshift of about 20 to 25 km/sec, which is consistent with radial velocity of ingress (see Lambert and Sawyer, 1986: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1986PASP...98..389L -- figure 2, attached.
Photometric confirmation is eagerly anticipated.  Congrats Robin!

new movie "Moon" by Jones/Bowie

If you are fortunate enough to have a Landmark theatre in your area, I recommend highly this new movie MOON by David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones. Poignant and well done. Summary from IMDB.com: "Sam Bell has a three year contract to work for Lunar Industries. For the contract's entire duration, he is the sole employee based at their lunar station. His primary job responsibility is to harvest and periodically rocket back to Earth supplies of helium-3, the current clean and abundant fuel used on Earth. There is no direct communication link available between the lunar station and Earth, so his only direct real-time interaction is with GERTY, the intelligent computer whose function is to attend to his day to day needs. With such little human contact and all of it indirect, he feels that three years is far too long to be so isolated; he knows he is beginning to hallucinate as the end of his three years approaches. "All he wants is to return to Earth to be with his wife Tess and their infant daughter Eve, who was born just prior to his leaving for this job. With two weeks to go, he gets into an accident at one of the mechanical harvesters and is rendered unconscious. Injured, he awakens back at the station in the infirmary, he assumes assisted by GERTY. GERTY tells him that a rescue team named Eliza will come to the station to clean up the aftermath of the accident. After his recuperation, he takes an unauthorized trip back to the broken harvester, where he makes an unexpected discovery. Because of his find, he begins to doubt his sanity, then his true identity, then the company and GERTY's willingness to do what is best for him. Because of his resulting beliefs, his sole mission becomes how to get back to Earth on his own."

Luna

Thank you for this review. Ive heard from others it was a really good movie. Also - Yay!! for the start of the ups_Aur eclipse report with spectroscopic evidence that is !! Terribly exciting !!!

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