This month's meeting be on the SRSU campus in the Warnock Science Bldg.. Room 101 on Wednesday, 9 May at 7:30 p.m. Chuck Dobbins will be presenting an update on program he  previously did on Exo Planets.
           At this writing, only a few members have paid there 2007 dues. Since our membership has dwindled it is very important to the club's survival that each member pay their dues in a timely fashion. So, if you've yet to pay your dues and are unable to attend this months meeting, please mail a check made payable to the BBAS for $20 to the Treasurer at the following address:

           No meeting minutes or treasurer's report are contained in this issue. However, at the March meeting it was passed unanimously to discontinuing the insurance on the Murray Newman telescope - $118 annually, and the liability insurance coverage - $327 annually. Also, a web site has been established under the domain name bigbendclubs.org and cost is currently being shared by three area organizations (BB Astronomy Society; BB Archeological Society: and BB Birders) thus greatly reducing the cost of keeping our web site up under the URL http://www.bigbendastronomy.org/ to $18.47 + $7.99 per year.
           As many of you are aware, Big Bend Astronomical Society founder Jim Walker passed away on 20 March 2007. Born James T. Walker on Oct. 24, 1929, near Pinknoyville, Ken., in a farmhouse built by his grandfather. He grew up in Evansville, Ind., and served in the Army Air Corps in the occupation of Japan. He received a B.S. in geology in 1950 from the University of Oklahoma, where he met and married his wife, Barbara. In 1962, he returned to college and received a Ph.D. in psychology from Colorado University. He taught at the University of Missouri in St. Louis for 23 years before retiring and moving to Alpine in 1989. Jim and Barbara have two children, Mary Carol and Robert William, and two grandchildren, Franklin Gifford and Sarah Ruth Matthys. He is survived by his wife, children, grandchildren and three half-sisters. Memorials may be made to the Sunshine House, 205 E. Sul Ross, Alpine, TX 79831. We wish to express our deepest condolences to his dedicated partner and longtime wife Barbara and the rest of the Walker family. Jim will continue to be in our thoughts and prayers.

        3 May 2007:  It's been a week of planetary discoveries. Here's another. This latest find announced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is the most massive planet ever discovered. This gas giant, named HAT-P-2b, weighs in at 8 times the mass of Jupiter.
 HAT-P-2b was discovered using the transit method. In other words, it was discovered because it dims the light from its parent star as it passes in front. Astronomers have calculated that it has a very unusual elliptical orbit, getting as close as 5 million km (3.1 million miles) and then swinging out to 15 million km (9.6 million miles). But this journey only takes 5.63 days.
 As planets go, this is a strange one. It has 8.2 times the mass of Jupiter, but it's only 1.18 times the size of Jupiter. It has roughly the density of the Earth, but it's made up almost entirely of hydrogen. In fact, it's right at the boundary between planet and star. With only another 50% more mass, it would have begun nuclear fusion.
 The discovery was made using a network of small, automated telescopes called HATNet. There are a total of six telescopes; four at the Whipple Observatory in Arizona, and two more in Hawaii. These robotic telescopes make 26,000 observations every night, searching for stars that dip in brightness on a regular basis.
 The original press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/press/2007/pr200711.html reads:

           Cambridge, MA - Today, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) announced that they have found the most massive known transiting extrasolar planet. The gas giant planet, called HAT-P-2b, contains more than eight times the mass of Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system. Its powerful gravity squashes it into a ball only slightly larger than Jupiter.
 HAT-P-2b shows other unusual characteristics. It has an extremely oval orbit that brings it as close as 3.1 million miles from its star before swinging three times farther out, to a distance of 9.6 million miles. If Earth's orbit were as elliptical, we would loop from almost reaching Mercury out to almost reaching Mars. Because of its orbit, HAT-P-2b gets enormously heated up when it passes close to the star, then cools off as it loops out again. Although it has a very short orbital period of only 5.63 days, this is the longest period planet known that transits, or crosses in front of, its host star.
            "This planet is so unusual that at first we thought it was a false alarm - something that appeared to be a planet but wasn't," said CfA astronomer Gaspar Bakos. "But we eliminated every other possibility, so we knew we had a really weird planet."
            Bakos is lead author of a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal describing the discovery. That paper is available online at http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.0126.
            HAT-P-2b orbits an F-type star, which is almost twice as big and somewhat hotter than the Sun, located about 440 light-years away in the constellation Hercules. Once every 5 days and 15 hours, it crosses directly in front of the star as viewed from Earth-a sort of mini-eclipse. Such a transit offers astronomers a unique opportunity to measure a planet's physical size from the amount of dimming.
            Brightness measurements during the transit show that HAT-P-2b is about 1.18 times the size of Jupiter. By measuring how the star wobbles as the planet's gravity tugs it, astronomers deduced that the planet contains about 8.2 times Jupiter's mass. A person who weighs 150 pounds on Earth would tip the scale at 2100 pounds, and experience 14 times Earth's gravity, by standing on the visible surface (cloud tops) of HAT-P-2b.
            CfA astronomer and co-author Robert Noyes said, "All the other known transiting planets are like ‘hot Jupiters.' HAT-P-2b is hot, but it's not a Jupiter. It's much denser than a Jupiter-like planet; in fact, it is as dense as Earth even though it's mostly made of hydrogen."
            "This object is close to the boundary between a star and a planet," said Harvard co-author Dimitar Sasselov. "With 50 percent more mass, it could have begun nuclear fusion for a short time."
 An intriguing feature of HAT-P-2b is its highly eccentric (e=0.5) orbit. Gravitational forces between star and planet tend to circularize the orbit of a close-in planet. There is no other planet known with such an eccentric, close-in orbit. In addition, all other known transiting planets have circular orbits.
 The most likely explanation is the presence of a second, outer world whose gravity pulls on HAT-P-2b and perturbs its orbit. Although existing data cannot confirm a second planet, they cannot rule it out either.
            HAT-P-2b orbits the star HD 147506. With visual magnitude 8.7, HD 147506 is the fourth brightest star known to harbor a transiting planet, making the star (but not the planet) visible in a small, 3-inch telescope.
            HAT-P-2b was discovered using a network of small, automated telescopes known as HATNet, which was designed and built by Bakos. The HAT network consists of six telescopes, four at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Whipple Observatory in Arizona and two at its Submillimeter Array facility in Hawaii. As part of an international campaign, the Wise HAT telescope, located in the Negev desert (Israel) also took part in the discovery. The HAT telescopes conduct robotic observations every clear night, each covering an area of the sky 300 times the size of the full moon with every exposure. About 26,000 individual observations were made to detect the periodic dips of intensity due to the transit.
            Major funding for HATnet was provided by NASA. More information about HAT is available online at http://www.hatnet.hu/.

For more information, contact:

David A. Aguilar
Director of Public Affairs
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7462
daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu

Christine Pulliam
Public Affairs Specialist
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7463
cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu