Blogs / Dr.Bob's blog / The ongoing eclipse...
The ongoing eclipse...
Greetings. Winter is nigh, and epsilon Aurigae is fast becoming part of the evening sky, making observing easy - except for the cold conditions.
While the photometric eclipse ended this summer, there remain spectroscopic traces of material from the disk still between us and the F star. These remnants can be seen in the H-alpha and sodium D lines, as well as in the neutral potassium line far in the red.
Large telescope observations are continuing, and so should your visual and photometric reports. Remote and robotic observations during November include:
CHARA+MIRC interferometric imaging (Nov.2nd);
MIRAC4 mid-IR spectroscopy (Nov.5th)
Spitzer IRAC near-IR photometry (Nov.17th)
IRTF/SpeX near-IR spectroscopy (Nov.27th)
and more in December.
In the coming weeks, I'll detail some of the recent findings, but you can read results of SpeX data newly published in the Astronomical Journal, at weblink:
https://portfolio.du.edu/pc/port.detail?id=194959 .
Also, the Herschel Space Telescope results are here - observations between 70 and 500 microns show that the disk has an energy distribution that closely follows the 550K disk model proposed by Hoard, Howell and Stencel in their 2010 paper, available at webpage: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1003.3694
Once again, we are grateful to all the observers that have made this eclipse one of the very best in terms of coverage. Watch this space for updates!
If you seek an audio version of the eclipse event, find and listen to the track "Seven" from Michael Stearn's CD "Within the 9 dimensions" - in program 566 at Hearts of Space for instance. Also, if you scan YouTube with keywords Epsilon Aurigae, you can find several videos giving updates.
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