NYC Events 2/2 May 6/ 8

Continued from previous message.

Less pure astronomy exchanged than at NEAF, but lots of popular
interest in celestial affairs was effused by the visitors.
One of the nonastro places with science shows is Ensemble Studio
Theatre. It has one full-length play, 'Luminescence dating', about an
archaeologist who seeks out a statue of Aphrodite and true love. Not
'astronomy' as such but a laudable method of including science as a
motif in the performing arts. The theatre has several readings from
science plays, for free! I include three in the listings: about Albert
Einstein, Milton Humason & Edwin Hubble, and the mythical characters
of the constellations.
The NYSkies Astronomy Seminar is doing quite well after a full
month of running. It attracts the mainline home astronomers from
around the city and several space advocates. The interaction between
the members reaches to, erm, outer space! We took a break at the April
21st meeting to step outside and admire the Jupiter-Moon conjunction.
And also to watch TWO flares as two Iridium satellites passed into the
high east sky a couple minutes apart.
The Graduate Center at City University continues its series of
shows about Albert Einstein. 2005 is the 100th anniversary of the
first publication of his relativity theory. NYSkiers flocked to the
April ones to learn about the 'Man of the century' of Time magazine.
The Albert Einstein celebrations now are joined by many events in
honor of Richard Feynman. Two of the more intriguing ones are the
series of talks and exhibits at Rockefeller University on May 10th and
the unveiling of the Feynman postage stamp on May 11th in Far
Rockaway. That's his home town, you know?
The March of Dimes continues its subway excursions on May 1st,
28th, and 29th. Over the past yearish, these have bloomed into hugely
popular rides for the ordinary folk. The May 1st ride is on the 'train
of many colors' -- Yeah, I make this junk up, as some of my readers
allege! -- tooling around the IRT lines.
The end of May trips are on the 'Lo-V' train, a World War I (not
II) train that was THE Interborough coach for over fifty years. It
roams all over the BMT and IND to visit parts of the City not ever
seen in normal service.

Sky News
------
gamma Virginis has been totally out of range of City scopes for
well over a year by now. Sometime very soon it'll round its periastron
at perhaps only 1/4 arcsecond separation. We're following the news as
reported by the large observatories and a few home astronomers with
sizeable scopes and stable air. For most of us, it's still a wonder to
see gamma by eye (as a single star, of course) sitting right next to
Jupiter in the southeastern sky after nightfall.
A new huge sunspot group rose on 25 April and quickly grew to five
and six times the Earth's diameter. Thru proper filters it was spotted
by several NYSkiers by bare eye. With the likelihood of aurora
produced by this group. we were on the watch for the rest of April, as
weather allowed. Alas, no aurora were reported from the NYSkies land.
April was blessed a run of clear skies from the 6th thru 21th. The
air was generally cloud-free, but usually sliced with haze. Good
casual stargazing was feasible from everywhere, except on the nights
when the haze was a bit too thick. So far this spring we have no Milky
Way sightings from the City.
Weak parhelia, both of them!, erupted on April 10th in the last
hour before sunset. They were bright, nicely tinted, waxed and waned,
then faded into thicker haze right at sunset. This sighting may be the
start of a return of solar halos to the City after many years with
almost no activity at all.
We do watch for the glints of sunlight from the antenna panels of
the Iridium satellites. We get the predictions from the Heavens-Above
website for our peculiar location in our region, being that the
flares are quite sensitive to the viewer's exact station. On April
21st, during our Seminar, we took a break to watch not one, but TWO,
flares! Two different Iridium birds crossed within a couple minutes at
about 21:10 EDST in the same high east part of the sky.
By end of April, we're starting to look for Venus as she edges
into the evening sky. She's probably not discernible until late May,
but maybe some lucky NYSkier under favorable skies will spot her?

City news
-------
Our hamlet-on-Hudson is the shangri-la of home astronomy. You know
that, yes, but now there are two more reasons to add to your pride.
First is the lowered unemployment rate, 4-1/2%, due to an upswell of
jobs on Manhattan. Additional growth came from the surrounding
counties, too.
The other factor is the plummetting crime rate. Every year,
pundits claim we reached bottom in crime suppression. Each year, the
statistics come in: new record lows in crime all over the City. The
biggest declines were in the historicly hideous hoods like Harlem,
South Bronx, South Jamaica, East New York, Port Richmond. Police
praecincts there used to log in a homicide PER DAY. In recent years,
and particularly in 2004, they are 'lucky' to get one PER MONTH. This
decimation of criminal agitation, the fodder for doomsday treatises of
the 1960s and 1970s, puts New York completely off of the radar of
dangerous places to live. I mean not just among 'large towns' in the
United States, but also among the smaller mid America towns that used

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