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Summer2003 2013 Spring Aye LADEE Volume XVI Number 32 Volume VI Number By Robert Davis I’m not sure if me learning how to play cause out gassing, mostly neon, helium, the bagpipes had anything to do with hydrogen and argon, but nobody is sure deciding to write about a space explo- how much of each process contributes ration mission with the name LADEE to the whole. It’s one of the questions or the fact I’m a bit of lunatic and this they hope to answer with this mission. mission will be studying one of my Because the Moon’s gravity is small favorite objects in the sky: the Moon. and it doesn’t have a magnetic field LADEE is, of course, an acronym and it to protect it from the solar winds the stands for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Moon has a difficult time holding on Environment Explorer. This mission to what little atmosphere it can create. was originally slated for launch back If the entire atmosphere of the Moon in 2011. It was then rescheduled for were condensed to Earth temperature January of 2013. Now it seems they and density, it would fit within 210 are in their final testing stages and cubic feet. NASA really wants to get are shooting for a launch sometime a good picture of the Moon’s atmobetween August 10 and October 13 sphere before future human activity of this year. potentially changes it. Now if you are thinking to yourself, Moving on the second half of the “Wait a minute, the Moon doesn’t acronym we get to the dust part. If have an atmosphere” then you need NASA wants to study dust they could to sign up for next year’s Night Sky probably save a few million dollars Moon class (or you could just continue and just come over to my place. But reading). The Moon doesn’t have an then again, Moon dust is special. It atmosphere in the usual sense one seems that dust was a real nuisance thinks about an atmosphere. In fact, for the Apollo astronauts. It stuck to it has a particular kind of atmosphere everything – spacesuits, equipment and called an exosphere. An “exosphere” instruments. The dust is basically the is an atmosphere that is so thin and lunar surface that has been smashed to tenuous that the molecules don’t a fine powder by billions of years of even collide with each other. The space rocks slamming into it. The reexosphere is generated by ultraviolet sulting material can be abrasive, made rays from the Sun reacting with the of sharp, glassy grains, be electrostatilunar surface, radioactivity from the cally charged, and may even pose a real (turn to LADEE on Page 7) moon’s interior, and material released from lunar impacts. Each of these can http://www.rfo.org Public Events at Robert Ferguson Observatory July 13, Saturday Public Solar Observing noon – 4 pm Public Observing Night 9 pm August 10, Saturday Public Solar Observing noon – 4 pm Public Observing Night 9 pm August 11, Sunday Public Observing Night 9 pm Perseid Meteor Shower September 7, Saturday Public Solar Observing noon – 4 pm Public Observing Night 9 pm October 5, Saturday Public Solar Observing 11 am – 3 pm Public Observing Night 8 pm Evening public viewing is $3 per adult, 18 years or older, plus $8 per car parking fee. Donations accepted. Dress for cold nights! For current observatory information call (707) 833-6979. RFO Classes (see Page 3) Night Sky Summer Series July 8 & 29 August 5 Night Sky Fall Series September 30 October 7 & 28 Be sure to check out our new website at http://www.rfo.org for more interesting astronomical events and information. Page 2 Focused A quarterly newsletter published by: The Valley of the Moon Observatory Association P.O. Box 898 Glen Ellen, CA 95442 707.833.6979 www.rfo.org Editor: Derek Braud Publisher: Colleen Ferguson Contributors: Robert Davis Colleen Ferguson Loren Stokes Ella M. Talfax Jack Welch Subscriptions Fill out & mail form on back page Advertising Contact the editor, Derek Braud: [email protected] Submission Guidelines Unsolicited submissions are welcome and will be published at the discretion of the editorial staff. Send submissions to the acting editor, Derek Braud: [email protected] VMOA Mission Statement The VMOA is a group of volunteer amateur and professional astronomers organized as a non-profit association to provide educational programs about science and astronomy for students and the public. To that end, the VMOA operates the Robert Ferguson Observatory in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in association with California State Parks. VMOA Board of Directors President: Colleen Ferguson Vice President: Rob Davis Treasurer: Steve Peterson Secretary: George Loyer Members: Mark Hillestad Larry McCune Bill Russell Steve Smith Gordon Spear President’s Message by Colleen Ferguson It’s time for a first anniversary celebration! On June 1, Sugarloaf Ridge State Park completed one full year of operation by the nonprofit partners in Team Sugarloaf. Instead of an observatory operating in a closed State Park (a very sad scene…), for the past year hikers stopped by RFO for amazing views of the sun, campers walked up to RFO for nighttime star parties, and groups reserved the campground at RFO for their own private observatory events. This beautiful park full of hikers and campers is the perfect complement to the dazzling sky views above RFO. You can find news and information about events in the park at SugarloafPark.org. One of our Team Sugarloaf partners, the Valley of the Moon Natural History Association (VMNHA), is a long-time supporter of Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and of RFO. In fact, the Valley of Moon Observatory Association originally formed under the umbrella of the VMNHA. Their strong support continues with volunteers that work with RFO docents on public star party nights. These busy nights require many hands away from the observatory to greet people as they arrive, collect funds for the park and the observatory, show people where to park vehicles, cover flashlights with red filters, and otherwise provide a pleasant experience before RFO visitors get to the first telescope. A gold star to our friends at VMNHA! There is so much more to celebrate! *Spring and Summer Night Sky classes are going strong - thanks to Jack Welch and all the docents who come to help and soak up the knowledge poured out in these classes *The Project 40 team is making progress, using interferometry to fine-tune Summer 2013 the big mirror. Go to http://project40. wordpress.com/ for details. *The new solar telescope is getting lots of use - for public solar observing, of course, but also for lots of private events. Thanks to the solar astronomers. Here comes the sun! *New subscribers to VMOA sent contributions to fund RFO’s programs – thank you! *An awesome new docent class graduated on May 15th. Thanks to Steve Smith for recruiting, coordinating and organizing the new docent class, to the crew who shared their skills during docent training, and to the new docents for volunteering their time and energy to bring astronomy and science education to the community. *A very successful yard sale on June 1 brought in $2,700 for RFO! Big thanks to Greg Reynolds who did an amazing job organizing the yard sale and to everyone who helped, donated, and shopped. *Docents brought RFO on the road to several events: - April 20th, Astronomy Day at the California Academy of Sciences - May 5th, Day Under the Oaks at Santa Rosa Junior College - June 12th, Santa Rosa Downtown Market Thanks to all who made these events successful and promoted RFO. Looking ahead to the summer months, the RFO calendar has an (turn to PRESIDENT on Page 7) Summer 2013 2013 RFO Summer Class Schedule Page 3 Night Sky Series Each class includes a lecture on the constellations of the season, their history and mythology, and how to find objects within them. Learn the bright stars, deep-sky objects, and visiting planets of the night skies. After each presentation (sky conditions permitting), you will enjoy a review of the constellations in the actual night sky and learn how to find them for yourself. The constellations, and the objects within them, will be viewed through binoculars and telescopes, including the Observatory ’s 24-inch reflecting telescope, until or beyond 10:30 pm (depending upon interest and enthusiasm). The continuing Summer Series classes will be held on Mondays Classes start at 8:00 pm on July 8 & 29 August 5 The upcoming Fall Series classes will begin on Monday, September 30 at 7:00 pm Fee: $75 for 6-class series or $23 for a single class E-mail: [email protected] to reserve a space in this popular class Look for more information about RFO’s Night Sky Classes online at http://www.rfo.org Observing Labs An intensive telescope observing session after a brief presentation on the night’s theme. Handouts/Observing lists provided. Attendance limited to 6. Fee: $30. For reservations, email: [email protected] The next scheduled Observing Lab, ‘Star Death: The End of Stellar Fusion’, is Saturday, September 28 at 7:00 pm Look for more information about RFO’s Observing labs online at http://www.rfo.org It’s Elemental: A Series of Discussions on the Chemical Elements by Ella M. Talfax This discussion is on element 46: Palladium. It is also about for cars. an ancient burglary and a contest between an olive and a Pd alloys (combinations of Pd with other elements) are horse. How can that be? Read on and see. used in making hairsprings for mechanical watches because Palladium has an atomic number of 46, which is the they are very elastic, nonmagnetic, and do not expand or quantity of protons in a palladium atom’s nucleus, and is contract much with changes in temperature. also the reason it is called element 46. Palladium’s symbol Pd is used in miniature multi-layer ceramic capacitors, is Pd, and that is what I will use from here on to save ink with the alternating layers of Pd and ceramic forming the and paper. If you look on the periodic table of the ele- plates and dielectric. Over 400 billion of the capacitors ments, which is a very informative and entertaining thing are made and used each year in devices like cell phones, to do, you will see that Pd is in column #10 under Nickel computers, etc. and above Platinum. This means we can expect Pd to have Pd was discovered (isolated) by William H. Wollaston similar properties to those elements, which it does. All in 1802. Pd was named for the asteroid Pallas which was three of these elements resist corrosion and are often used discovered in March 1802, about the time that Pd was first as coatings to protect other materials from chemical attack. isolated. The asteroid Pallas, in turn, is named for the godPd also absorbs the element hydrogen to the extent of dess Pallas Athena (more about her later). more than 900 times its own volume of the gas at room Wollaston was doing research into the refinement and temperature. This property can be used to purify hydrogen. properties of the element platinum. He had dissolved some The hydrogen enters the Pd on one surface of a sheet of the platinum into aqua regia, a mixture of acids. Wollaston metal, diffuses through the Pd, and then emerges as pure precipitated the platinum out of the aqua regia with sodium hydrogen on the other surface of the sheet of the metal. hydroxide and ammonium chloride. But he knew that the The impurities are blocked by the Pd and left behind in remaining solution contained other metals, and by adding this process. mercury cyanide he caused the precipitation of palladium Pd is used as a catalyst for chemical reactions. The major cyanide. Heating this compound produced pure Pd. use of Pd (60% of production) is for catalytic converters (turn to ELEMENTAL on Page 5) Page 4 Watching the 2013 Summer Sky Summer 2013 by Jack Welch 2013 is an unusually good year for lovely planetary Venus is to Earth! Both Venus and Mars have orbits near conjunctions in the dawn and dusk skies. This happy that of Earth and long synodic periods for this reason.) circumstance allows us to get a first-hand observer’s sense Now… recall that Mars joined Mercury in the evening of the relative motions of the various planets. Thus, I will sky this past February as Mars, left far behind by Earth, mostly discuss the solar system in this article. headed toward conjunction on the far side of the sun while The two planets that orbit closer to the sun than Earth, Mercury was approaching Earth and inferior conjunction. Mercury and Venus, are known as the inferior planets for (I wrote at the time that I’d have more to say about this that reason. Nearer the sun, they experience a stronger later in the year!) gravitational pull and thus travel faster along their shorter That same month, Venus ended its reign as “Morning orbits than does Earth. Periodically they pass us on their Star” disappearing into the sunrise and approaching superior “inside track” orbits, between Earth and the sun. This is conjunction. (Next, around the end of March/early April, known as inferior conjunction. (Conjunction refers to two Mercury had a very poor morning apparition.) Venus objects passing near each other in the sky. In this case it is emerged into the evening sky in late April and was joined by understood that we mean conjunction with the sun, as seen speedy Mercury in late May, forming the famous “triangle” from Earth. And in the case of both planets and conjunctions, conjunction on 5/26 with Jupiter, which then vanished into “inferior” means “near” and “superior” means “far.”) the setting sun as it neared conjunction. Mercury and Venus At dawn we are on the leading side of Earth as it orbits danced together for much of June then Mercury sank into around the sun. So after these planets pass us they appear the sun and inferior conjunction. in the pre-dawn sky, growing higher as they move away Pokey Mars has been hiding behind the sun since March from Earth. Eventually they move so far ahead of us that but emerges into the morning sky by July … as does Jupiter, they travel around toward the far side of the sun, sinking which has only been hiding with Mars since late May. lower each day in the sky toward the rising sun. When This striking difference in times between the subsequent they are on the opposite side of the sun we say they are at pairings with Mercury for these two planets should now superior conjunction. make sense if you followed the discussion above! Mars Next, they start catching up with us from behind and we and Jupiter will be very close together around 5am on the see them rise into the dusk sky after sunset from our vantage morning of 7/22. Then Mercury joins Mars and Jupiter point looking backward in our orbit. After again reaching from about 7/24 to 8/10 for a good morning apparition. a maximum altitude, they sink back into the setting sun as The crescent moon joins the three planets and the stars they once again come between Earth and the sun, completing of Gemini in early August (see figure) for another lovely what we call one synodic period. Mercury, closest to the planetary conjunction. sun, travels fastest and completes slightly more than 3 such You will then note that Jupiter climbs higher into the periods each year. It also remains rather low to the horizon, predawn sky faster than does Mars as summer continues into though now and then we can see it easily at a good altitude fall. That is because Earth easily catches up with Jupiter when conditions are right. Much more leisurely Venus takes but has to “work hard” to slowly catch up with Mars. about 19 months to complete each such period. Speaking of Earth’s “leading edge” view in the morning The superior planets, Mars, Jupiter and so on, mostly skies, the famous Perseid Meteor Shower has favorable move eastward across the sky with respect to the stars. viewing free of moonlight this year. Meteors are most Starting with such a planet at conjunction on the far side of viewable when the Earth is “plowing into” the debris stream the sun, faster moving Earth starts to catch up with them so with its leading edge, i.e. in morning skies. The peak is they rise in the pre-dawn sky and keep rising until they are predicted for 1pm on 8/12, give or take a few hours… high overhead and up all night at opposition, when Earth daylight for us. This means that the best viewing should passes them on our faster inside track. As we leave them be the mornings of 8/12 and 8/13, though Perseids occur behind, they set earlier each night until eventually they sink for 2 or 3 weeks around the maximum. Note that Perseids into the glare of sunset as they again approach conjunction. do not appear until after about 10:30 or 11:00pm when the Because the outer planets orbit so slowly, their synodic radiant rises above the horizon. RFO is open on the evenings periods (time between conjunctions) are just slightly more of 8/10 and 8/11 for night viewing and meteor watching. than one year. But Mars, orbiting near Earth, takes somewhat Saturn lingers in the evening sky during the first half of more than 2 years to complete this cycle because it does a summer but gradually drops lower in the western twilight better job of keeping up with Earth! (Earth is to Mars as as it approaches conjunction this fall. Meanwhile, Uranus, Summer 2013 in Pisces, will be approaching opposition in early fall so becomes a good telescope target by late August or so. And Neptune, in Aquarius, is at opposition on 8/26. The asteroid Juno is at opposition in Aquarius on 8/3 (consult references). Venus will be very near the large and bright star cluster Praesepe (M44) around 9pm on 7/3 in the west. Then, Mars will pass in front of M44 on the mornings of 9/8 and 9/9 in the east, visible around 4:30am. Use binoculars in both cases, and shutterbugs get those cameras ready! The crescent moon is near Venus around 9pm on 7/10 and 8/9 and very near Venus around 8pm on 9/8. The crescent moon is near Jupiter around 5:30am on 8/3, 4am on 8/31 and 2am on 9/28. The moon is at perigee (closest to Earth) 22 hours before July’s full moon on 7/22, causing large tides from about 7/21 to 7/24. This is the last of a sequence of months with large tides around the full moon. From 9/3 to 9/16 we have the opportunity to view the Zodiacal Light in the eastern sky before morning twilight. This somewhat faint band of light rises from the eastern horizon along the path of the Ecliptic as a tapering tall triangle. The glow is caused by sunlight reflecting off fine debris in the plane of our solar system. Look for it around 4:30 to 5am. You need a location with a dark eastern horizon free of light pollution. For instance, it is easy to spot from RFO. For additional sky events and details, use the “What’s Up in the Night Sky” link on our website. Or join our email list (link on website) and receive monthly emails with skywatching details and more. The summer officially ends with the autumnal equinox at 1:44pm on 9/22. Page 5 (ELEMENTAL from Page 3) An interesting fact about Pd is that it occurs naturally as an alloy of gold. In the 1700’s gold miners in Brazil encountered this alloy, which they discarded, calling it ouro podre “worthless gold”. Most Pd is now produced as a by-product of the refinement of nickel in Canada and Russia. World production is approximately 300 tons per year. All very interesting you say but what about the ancient burglary and the contest between an olive and a horse? Well, Palladium is also the name of a statue of the goddess Pallas Athena. The Greek myths say it was sent from heaven by Zeus to Ilus, founder of Troy. As long as Troy kept the Palladium, the city was safe. During the Trojan War, the Greeks decided that the only way they were going to conquer Troy was to get the Palladium out of Troy first. The hero Ulysses and his friend Diomedes disguised themselves, snuck into Troy, snuck into the temple, purloined the Palladium, and absconded with it. This was a sort of ancient grand-theft-statue, and probably one of the first burglaries on record. This bit of larceny was such a morale booster to the Greeks, that they were encouraged to build and deploy the ‘Trojan Horse’, and the rest is history. The Palladium legend lives on in the form of the modern usage of the word; a palladium is anything that affords protection or guarantees security. For example, trial by jury is considered to be a palladium of the civil rights of the people. So there is one (Trojan) horse story, but what about the horse and the olive? The Greek myths say that the people of the region of Attica wanted to name their chief city after the god or goddess who gave mankind the most useful object. So the gods had a contest. Poseidon created the horse and Pallas Athena created the olive tree. The judges of the contest decided that the olive tree was more valuable to mankind. The olive won the contest, and the chief city of Attica was named Athens for Pallas Athena. This was very fortunate for the Greeks since if the horse had won the contest their chief city would have been named Poseidonopollus, which is a heck of a lot harder to say than Athens. So the next time you have an olive, remember the element Palladium, Wollaston the chemist, the asteroid Pallas, the goddess Pallas-Athena, the stolen statue Palladium, your civil rights, the Trojan horse, the olive and horse contest, and the city of Athens. Think about it, there must be higher love, down in the heart or hidden in the stars above, Without it, life is wasted time, look inside your heart, I’ll look inside mine. Things look so bad everywhere, in this whole world, what is fair? We walk blind, and we try to see, falling behind in what could be - Steve Winwood Page 6 Black Holes, Einstein, and BEVs Summer 2013 By Loren Stokes The June 2013 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine has an article about the first direct evidence of a supermassive black hole. The article, written by Suvi Gezari, a young astrophysics professor at the University of Maryland, describes how she and her team observed a supermassive black hole tidally shred a star and eat it. Also in the same issue is an article about a telescope built for Albert Einstein in 1954. Gezari’s remarkable connection to that article is that the telescope was made by her grandfather, Zvi Gezari. The article contains several photographs of her grandfather and 11-year-old father Daniel, with Einstein in his garden in Princeton, New Jersey, the day Einstein received the telescope. Her father is also an astrophysicist. I highly recommend both articles. Black holes were one of the first solutions to Einstein’s equations of General Relatively. Most thought black holes to be only a mathematical curiosity. But now there is direct evidence of supermassive black holes. If a star ventures too close, tidal forces from the black hole’s gravity can shred a star. Tidal forces, such as that of the Moon on Earth’s oceans, occur because the gravitational pull of the Moon on the near side of Earth is stronger than on the far side. For the star near a black hole, the star bulges toward the black hole. When it gets too close, the tidal forces become stronger than the gravitational force holding the star together. The star is shredded in a matter of minutes. Half the star is pulled into the black hole, while the other half forms a one-million-degree debris disk that takes several months to also be eaten by the black hole. During that time, the hot debris disk is emitting X-rays that can be seen with space-based telescopes. The event horizon for a black hole, that is, the distance from the black hole for which nothing can escape, including light, grows proportional to the black hole’s mass. However, the distance from the black hole where a star will be shredded, called the tidal reach, grows more slowly, proportional to the cube root of the black hole’s mass. For the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, with a mass of four million suns, the event horizon is several times closer to the black hole than is the tidal reach. So we can see a star shredded by the X-ray energy from the debris disk, until the debris disk is pulled beyond the event horizon. However, for a super massive black hole with a mass of more than 100 million suns, the event horizon is further from the black hole than the tidal reach. A star venturing too close will simply disappear from sight before being shredded. There would be nothing to see as none of the action could leave the black hole. We think that some galaxies have central supermassive black holes of at least this mass, maybe into the billions of suns. So stars could disappear from sight, leaving no hint of what happened. Now on to another topic related to Einstein. Energy and mass are equated by Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2. We can apply this to a new type of automobile, the battery electric vehicle (BEV). Lately I have seen many a Nissan Leaf (Leaves?) around town. My neighbor has one, as does an RFO docent. The lithium-ion battery capacity is 24 kilowatt-hours of energy, an energy unit we are familiar with through our electric utility bills. This battery pack energy is equivalent to 86.4 megajoules (a watt-second is a joule). Dividing this by the speed of light (300,000,000 meters/second) squared gives the mass equivalent, which is about 1 microgram. So a charged Nissan Leaf battery pack has a mass of 1 microgram more than a discharged one. As the battery pack is discharged, it losses mass continuously, albeit at a rate that would be very hard to measure. Every time one charges a Leaf, one is turning energy to mass. Driving turns that mass back to energy. The challenge of BEVs is competing with the immense energy stored in each gallon of gasoline. The thermal energy released in burning one gallon of gasoline is 121 megajoules, which is equal to 33.7 kilowatt-hours. The internal combustion engine in an automobile has a thermodynamic efficiency of at most 30%, meaning that only about 30% of the heat energy is transformed into useful work propelling the automobile. So let’s say 1 gallon of gasoline is like having a 10 kilowatt-hour battery. We see the problem – the Nissan Leaf can store the energy of only 2.4 gallons of gasoline in its battery pack. Hence the 80ish mile driving range on a fully charged battery. By the way, electric motors are very efficient; better that 90%, as almost all of the electric energy goes into propelling the car (plus a little wasted heat in the electric motor). There is another way of looking at batteries versus gasoline – energy density. A gallon of gasoline weighs about 6 pounds. A 10 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery weighs about 250 pounds, 40 times as much. The Nissan Leaf battery pack weighs 600 pounds, containing the equivalent of 2.4 gallons of gasoline. The weight (and cost) of having a BEV with the stored energy of, say, 10 gallons of gasoline is prohibitive. The Tesla Model S does come close, with an 85 kilowatt-hour battery pack. But the car weighs over 4,600 pounds, not counting the extra several micrograms with a fully charged battery. Summer 2013 (LADEE from Page 1) danger to astronauts if too much is inhaled. Again, NASA is looking to the future and thinking that the dust really needs to be fully understood if future lunar colonies are going to be developed. Ironically, some vials of moon dust were recently discovered gathering Earth dust for over 40 years in a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory warehouse. The instrument payload for the mission is fairly small: a couple of spectrometers to measure the atmosphere and the Lunar Dust Experiment to directly measure dust particles. LADEE will also be demonstrating a new method of sending and receiving data called the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration. As the name suggests, the ‘lasercom’ will be using a laser to transfer data instead of radio waves. The system uses an infrared laser beam, and the real trick is keeping the beam aimed at the receivers on Earth while the spacecraft is moving in its orbit around the Moon. It is described as being equivalent to a golfer hitting a hole-inone from five miles away. If they can pull it off, they will achieve a data transfer rate almost 6 times higher than the state-of-the-art radio systems of today. The system weighs less and requires less energy than radio as well, so NASA is looking at laser as the future of space communications. The LADEE mission is scheduled to last 100 days after which time it will crash into the lunar surface. Makes one wonder how much it will disturb the tenuous atmosphere it spent all that time studying and if it will be able to measure the dust it will raise. Page 7 Off Campus Observatory News RFO Docents will once again matriculate to the upcoming 2013 Tolay Fall Festival. Last years festival was so successful that the RFO couldn’t pass up the opportunity to promote the observatory and its programs at such a well attended event. The festival will run October 10-13 and October 16-20. (PRESIDENT from Page 2) abundance of events scheduled to show the wonders of the night sky, and the sun, to the people who come to Sugarloaf Ridge State Park. Some come specifically to go to RFO; others come to hike and camp and then discover RFO Docent Dickson Yeager, introducing a new astronomer RFO is open and have their park visit enriched with an to the nearest star, at the 2012 Tolaya Festival observatory experience. RFO docents know the scene well: The tentative approach to the telescope, the gentle lean towards the eyepiece, the moments for the image to register, then the exclamation “Wow, that’s awesome!” followed by another peek in the eyepiece, a step back and enthusiastic urging to others to take a look. Then come the questions, discussions, looking up – learning about the natural world above us and around us. Here’s to another year of successful park and observatory operations! Man must rise above the Earth, to the top of the clouds and beyond, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives. - Socrates The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure. - William Blake RFO Docent Rob Davis with a customer at a recent Santa Rosa Downtown Market. RFO Docents regularly promote the RFO at such events. Valley of the Moon Observatory Association support science education in your community NAME: _________________________________________________________________________________________ ADDRESS: ____________________________________________________________________________________ CITY/STATE/ZIP CODE:______________________________________________________________________ PHONE: ______________________________EMAIL: __________________________________________________ o $______ PROJECT 40 DONATION o $______ GENERAL DONATION ANNUAL SUBSCRIBER LEVELS: o o o o $20 $35 $50 $75 STAR Children under 16 NOVAIndividual BINARY Couple CONSTELLATIONFamily SUBSCRIBER STATUS: o GIFT o NEW o RENEWING PREFERRED COMMUNICATION: o EMAIL o POSTAL SERVICE GIFT FROM : ____________________________________________________________________ Subscribe or donate at www.rfo.org or make checks payable to VMOA, PO Box 898, Glen Ellen, CA 95442 VMOA P.O. Box 898 Glen Ellen, CA 95442 Address Service requested