Week in Review

The weather has not been too supportive for viewing the night sky, except I did see the moon yesterday, Sunday evening when I was goofing around with my dogs. The moon was in the South East at about 20 degrees above my horizon, it was a waxing gibbous moon. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, full moon will be on April 28th. Lots of interesting stuff in that Almanac. For example: Tonight (Monday, April 27.) the moon will rise at 6:41pm, the sun will set at 8:34pm, so the moon is chasing the sun around the sky. Well, we know better, but from my vantage point, that’s what it looked like. If we get a clear night, we might be able to find Saturn, but the light from the approaching full moon might make it difficult to spot anything in the sky. Saturn will rise at 4:33pm and will be in the South, about 40 degrees above the horizon or about half way between the horizon and the zenith at about 10pm.

Most of this week was devoted finishing our labs, making sure all documents were submitted and getting ready for our online test. Never cared much for tests, but what the heck. Got to do them. Love the math stuff; wish I had just a bit more time working with it. The gravity formula or knowing how to calculate the mass of the sun or any other planet, not sure if that is really that important for my business major, but it sure is fascinating. Let’s talk about big numbers. For example, F=gm1 m2/r^2 OK, I can memorize this, plug in then numbers in a calculator and come up with an answer. We know that Newton’s constant is really small; mass of the sun is really big, the result is the force of gravity – but I am not sure what to do with that number.  It means something, but I am not sure what.

I think our brain is not wired to handle really big ideas. The cosmos is such a thing; it is difficult to grasp the idea of size and space, especially for amateurs like me. It is not just astronomical numbers we have difficulties to grasp; we have difficulties to understand the size of our national deficit. What is a trillion dollar? One can find all kinds of description of how large a stack of a trillion dollar bill would be, and yes we understand it is big but we really don’t know until we see it. The first time I truly understood how big the universe is when I was driving from somewhere to somewhere in the middle of Idaho or Montana in the middle of the night. I had to stop for a pee break and I pulled over to the side of the road, shut down the engine, shut off the lights and went out to do my business. It was a perfect still night, cold and clear, not a sound except the occasional pinging sound from the cooling engine and exhaust from my car. The air smelled clear and fresh. As I was standing there I looked up into the sky and I saw the most amazing thing. A sky with billions and billions of stars, I don’t remember ever seeing so many stars. That sight was so overwhelming, I just about fell over. There is no computer animation, no picture, and no description that can duplicate what I saw. It was immense; I still remember that night as if it happened yesterday. In a way it was intoxicating. To this day I continue to have this urge to go to Montana, somewhere far away from any artificial light and look up at the sky… just look and wonder.

The Spitzer Space Telescope

This week we were also working on review of telescopes. My pick was the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Cool dude that is looking for hot stuff.
Follow this link to the report:

Spitzer Space Telescope

Week Review

The real cool thing about learning something new is when you listen to a presentation by a scientist and you actually understand what he is talking about. I am a real big fan of TED. "TED", according to their about page, "is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading". Rather than watching an uninteresting show on TV that is really designed to force you to watch advertisements, spend 20 minutes watching any of the TED presentations on any topic you are interested in, you'll be glad you did.
Last night I was watching a presentation by Garik Israelian, on spectroscopy. The title was: How Spectroscopy could reveal Alien Life. And yea, all the stuff he was talking about, I understood. In fact, I looked at those spectral lines produced by the different gases in our lab. I understood how those lines were created and why. I understood how one can look at those lines and deduce that this star is made of those elements. And that is real neat!
Now here are a few things I did not know. The sun has 24,000 absorption lines.

So the picture on the left is the spectrum of the sunlight with all those dark lines, the absorption lines, which indicate what elements are on the sun. I knew that. But what I did not know was that we have no idea what 15% or 3,500 of those lines are. It's the year 2010, the biggest particle collider ever built, CERN, just smashed a bunch of particles, but we still don't exactly know what some of the elements are that appear to be on the sun.
Israelian also talked about a spectrograph from a star they were looking at and the conclusion was, the atmosphere of this star was polluted by a Supernova, which has collapsed and became a black hole, and this star is now orbiting in a binary system around the black hole. All that by essentially looking at light emitted from a star!
But that's not all, according to Israelian, spectroscopy can be used to detect sound waves on stars. But wait there is more, we can detect if there is tectonic and volcanic activity on a distant planet, in fact, spectroscopy can be used to see if there is vegetation on a planet. All this by looking at a spectrum and some dark lines that occur at certain wavelength, amazing!

Weeks Reflection

Reflection:
This was a very interesting week in astronomy. What amazed me the most was how the agent Greek philosopher, Eratosthenes, used geometry to calculate the size of the Earth. Wow! That is just so amazing; especially knowing that in those days to most people the earth was flat.



I am also fascinated what techniques we are using to measure the distance to the sun. Since we can’t use modern gadgets such as radar waves or any other wave we have to use tricks. Fascinating!

Friday Night Sky Observatin

April 9. 2010, 9.00pm
Perfect night! Not a cloud in the sky! Audrey, my wife, and our two dogs went to look for a dark open field to look at the sky.

Not far from our house is an abandoned development where developers clear cut a huge area. Except for a few access roads nothing was ever built. No street lights, perfect dark… well as dark as it can get in close proximity to the city. First I situated our vehicle so we would be in line to a North – South direction, just to make it a bit easier to find our direction in the sky. After a few minutes of setting up we were sitting in the back of our pick up, looking at the sky. Big dipper was straight above us with Dubah more or less at our Zenith. Following the end of the big dipper leads straight to Polaris. I used the position of Polaris to confirm where North is. Back to the Big Dipper, looking at the handle, right where the handle makes a bend is the star Zeta Ursae Majoris. If your eyes are still good, you can see a fainter star, Alcor, right next to it. It has always been said, if you can see that little star, you still have good eye sight. Those two stars are the first known true binary stars, two stars that orbit each other. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Science those two stars are about 500 Astronomic Units (AU) apart and take about 5,000 years to complete one evolution around each other.

Next we looked for Orion, which was in the western sky and slowly setting. At the time of the observation, the belt was about 15 degrees above the horizon, and the azimuth was W. Because Orion was so low over the horizon, we really were only able to see the belt and the sword that is hanging down from the belt. We recognized Betelgeuse, the giant red star that marks the left shoulder of the hunter.  With our binoculars we were able to have a better look at the sword, a fuzzy cluster that make out the Orion Nebula. With our hand held binoculars, the best we could make out was a fuzzy kind of star cluster, interesting but that’s about it. Looking at pictures that were made by the big telescopes or by the Hubble telescope is when things start to look interesting. Knowing what we are looking at, and knowing that this Nebula is over 1,200 light years away from Earth makes sky watching so much more interesting.

From the Orion constellation we moved our field of observation a bit higher up and South to Gemini. The location of Gemini was at an Azimuth of about SW and an altitude of about 50 degrees. There is a bunch of interesting stuff in the area of the Gemini constellation, such as the Eskimo Nebula which is over 2,870 light years away. This nebula is too far away and too small to be visible to the naked eye, at least not in the light polluted area of the city. Once we found Gemini we were looking for Mars, and sure enough, there was Mars again traveling through the constellation.

Right next to Gemini, at the same altitude but a bit more South is the constellation Leo, or so did the Planisphere say. I think I did see some part of the Leo constellation, but I am not sure. It was not easy to trace out this constellation.

We were sitting out there for about one hour, but then it got cold. For our first sky observation, this was a great success. We got to recognize  some new constellations, Gemini and Leo, plus had a better understanding of what we looked at in the constellation we knew, such as the big dipper and Orion. For our next sky observation trip we made notes of a few things we need to have.  The lounge chairs on the back of the pickup was good, but we will definitely need a thermos with hot coca to keep warm. The planisphere is a very good tool to get a rough indication of where is what, but because the actual sphere is small and difficult to see and read in the dark I will try to plan out what to look for and make separate notes that are easier to read in the dark.  We need to make sure we have flashlights with red or green colored light. We found it very difficult to use the bright white flash light to read what’s on the planisphere and then to look at the sky. It always took a while for the eyes to re-adjust to the darkness.

With those few adjustments, we are looking forward to our next expedition exploring the night sky.

Looking at the Sky

Thursday, April 8, 2010, 06:00 Zulu

Finally a nice day and I forgot to go outside to make some observations for my sky blog until just now. Finally at 9:10pm local time I step outside and look at the sky, ever so briefly. Unfortunately, I live on a piece of property that is in the middle of trees, well it's more like a forest. I do not have a good view of the sky, except straight up.

What did I observe? The big dipper was straight above me, I think the star called Dubhe was right at my zenith. Dubhe is the star that defines the upper rear part of the wagon. According to my MS WorldWide Telescope, this is a circumpolar star, meaning this star never sets in our latitude.

Next I noticed an orange looking heavenly body, I think it was Mars. The position of Mars was at an altitude of about 60 degree and an azimuth of SW. According to my WorldWide Telescope, that is about where Mars was supposed to be. Using the virtual telescope I was amazed how difficult it was to have a close look at Mars. Zooming in on Mars without a tracker made it impossible to stay with it. Because of the Earth’s rotation Mars moved out of view in flash. But that’s why we have technology.

The clip on the right is where Mars was, right where the cross hair is. According to my planisphere that is in the constellation of cancer, but I did not see that upside down Y. The stars tracing out the Y are Acubens and Altarf on the top of the Y, Asellus Australis in the center, and Iota Cancri on the base. Apparently there is nothing special about those stars, just four twinkling stars between 100 and 300 light years away from us.

Then the clouds came and covered up the spectacle.

Next time I need to get out in an open field to make better observations. By the way, check out MS WorldWide Telescope. It is a free down load, and works incredibly well. It is an amazing tool. Some of the pictures and how one can explore the sky, it is just incredible. Go check it out, it is worth it!

How Much would You Pay for the Universe?

This topic may technically not qualify as a sky observation but since we really don’t have a sky to observe tonight let me share with you the following 4 minute video clip. I met Neil DeGrasse Tyson the first time on the Daily Show, hosted by John Stewart. Yes, I do get my daily dose of “fair and balanced” news from John Stewart. What fascinated me about Tyson is his energy. Tyson who has a PhD in Astrophysics, is so passionate about his field, it is absolutely contagious.

My major is business, so the question does come up is there an economic benefit in exploring the universe? It made sense to conquer the lower orbit of our planet, all kinds of useful stuff is now hanging up there. Looking for hidden ore bodies is definitely more economical when looking down at the Earth's surface from 100 miles flying at 17,000 miles per hour than crawling over it on hand and foot. Having a GPS receiver definitely means us males never have to ask for directions ever again. But does it really make sense to spend a ton of money looking for an exoplanet? Does our society really need to know what went on one tiny fraction of a second after the big bang? After all, I had the idea of what caused the moon phases wrong and still I did just fine. Tyson makes an excellent point why we need to spend money on NASA, and yes, it should be more than ½ a penny on the dollar.

Enjoy:



To visit Tyson's website, follow this link

Sky Blog, in the beginning...

This is the first post on my Sky Blog. As part of my Astronomy Course at Mt. Vernon College I am required to keep a Sky Journal. A journal of course is so passé in the age of computer mobility. Rather than keeping a journal, let's blog about my observation and discoveries and save some trees!

On Friday in class we discussed the moon phases. I know… how boring! But… I think of myself to be very observant and knowledgeable about things around me. I am good with weather prediction, I look at the sky all the time, and I can tell, within reason, what is going on in the atmosphere, what kind of changes we can expect over the next few days and so on. Same with the moon, one look and I know what phase that moon is in, waxing or waning. I use an old Swiss trick to establish the phase of the moon. If the moon looks like a small "a" an "a" as used in hand writing, the moon is waning as in the German word “abnehmend”. If the moon looks like a "z" as used in hand writing the moon is waxing, as in the German word “zunehmend”. Being in touch with the environment comes from being involved with outdoors sports that depend on knowing the weather, such as sailing, mountaineering and aviation. So when the question in class came up about the moon phases, of course I knew why we have moon phases. Earth casts a shadow onto the moon… everybody knows that! WRONG! I have no idea how I came to believe that the Earth casts a shadow onto the moon. Somehow I did, I guess someone must have told me, and it made sense in my mind and I just believed it, never ever questioning it.
After a few minutes in the dark room and a single light bulb representing the Sun and a golf ball representing the moon I got it! It makes sense, this is great! I love to clear up stuff that I thought I knew but was not sure. The moon phases, I got it.

This web page shows a good animation of how the phases work.