Is the Universe about to Crash?

I just read something about the "WWT" or "World Wide Telescope." Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? But evil might possibly be lurking behind the name. And it might cause the destruction of the known (and unknown) Universe.

Why? Because the "World Wide Telescope" is a product of Microsoft!!

Yes, that Microsoft. The company of bugs, errors, and hacker/virus attacks. The monopolistic company who has a (near) stranglehold on PC OS's.

(Yeah, unfortunately I have PC's. But only until I get some money, then I'm all about the Mac's)

Are we going to be the citizens of a buggy universe? Will hackers and virus writers attack the Bug Nebula? And will Microsoft themselves charge "upgrade prices" for new eyepieces? Or larger telescopes to see farther?

"Yes, you can see the detail in QSO 3c273. You just need the upgrade. That will be (insert large number of monetary units) for your license key."

"I'm sorry, but 'Windows to the Universe Genuine Advantage Validation Tool' has determined your Universe to be a pirated version. To receive a key to a genuine Universe, please click here."

And what happens if you are observing something important, and the stars disappear and the sky turns blue? That brings the phrase "Blue Screen of Death" to proportions no one wants to think about. And just how would we go about rebooting the Universe? Would there actually BE a ctrl-alt-del?

Yes, be afraid people. Your existence could end at any time. When Microsoft gets involved, the Window to the Universe will be unstable.

(this article © Kevin. All rights reserved)

The Great Frozen Lunar Eclipse Adventure

The Great Frozen Lunar Eclipse Adventure
(or, how to lose feeling in your extremities while taking photos in the winter night)

It was a dark and snowy night. Well, it was semi-dark and while not actually snowing, there was a lot of snow on the ground. But it works for this story.

I had been looking forward to the February 20, 2008 total lunar eclipse for quite a while (last year, in fact). This was to be the last eclipse visible from my area until December of 2010, and while that’s only a couple of years away, it’s too long between eclipses. I had just gone through a longer drought than that, and it wasn’t pleasant. The lunar eclipse we had in March of 2007 was clouded out, and the one in August was nearly as bad; we had hazy, scummy skies at the lakeshore. So this was the last best shot for a while.

I spent the day trying to find a remote switch for my camera, among other things. But all events during the day lead up to the night.

Because it has been nearly permanently cloudy for over a month, I was sure no one had been up to the observatory (James C. Veen Observatory in Lowell, Michigan), so that meant the road probably hadn’t been plowed. In the past, this would not have been a problem, as a friend of mine cleared it off with his plow truck. However, the truck - a 1964 Toyota - finally died a horrible, lingering death last fall, so now there’s no free plow service. And we don’t even want to think how much a real plow service would charge for a .33 mile road and lot. No way.

The Clear Sky Clock for the observatory was indicating that it might be at least partly cloudy for the event, so I made plans to go up and shoot the eclipse through one of the telescopes. And that meant getting the road cleared off. After some phone calls, we got someone to go up and take care of it. I was getting all my stuff ready to go out there in the evening, when Ron called and said "I hope people appreciate this." It was a major pain (actually he said something not appropriate for kids) to clear the road. It was ice/snow/ice/snow - about two feet deep. They had to plow five feet, back up, then five feet more, etc. And then they couldn’t get the whole upper lot cleared, but there was enough for six or seven cars. Yeah, I guess we’d better appreciate it.

So I pack everything in the car: cameras (digital and film) and laptop, snow shovel (you never know), and road salt (again, because you never know) and headed out to the observatory. The skies as I left the house were crystal clear, and it looked to be a great, albeit cold, night.

As I’m driving towards the observatory, I notice something I don’t want to see: clouds. Sure, the moon was shining through breaks in the clouds, but there were clouds nonetheless. As I got closer and closer, the clouds got thicker and thicker. When I finally got to the bottom of the observatory drive, the whole sky was covered. This did not bode well for our hero. But the Clear Sky Clock had it “sort of cloudy” for the 8pm block, so I was hoping that it would clear out. I had a backup plan: I would wait around at the observatory until 9.30, and if it didn’t’ clear out I would race back to Grand Rapids to a church I know, as I’ve used their lit steeple for moon shots before. So on up the road I go. It is now 7.30pm.

I made it up fine, but was then glad for the shovel, because I had to then shovel my way to the door of the building. Remember, no one had been there since January. So I struggled to shovel a path through the previously mentioned two feet of ice/snow/ice/snow and cleared the steps. I then opened the door and went inside ten minutes later. And because it was still cloudy, I didn’t bother to bring in any of my equipment. Why haul it all inside if I can’t use it there, right?

I immediately turn the furnace up, so the library will get warm, and where I can go to warm up. I then ascend the stairs of the west dome to get everything uncovered and opened. Because of previous problems with the dome slit opening (the bottom shutter sticks to the top sometimes in the winter), I immediately tried to open the dome: yep, the shutters were stuck. And with the moon being high on the ecliptic, I needed the lower shutter to stay down. So I lowered the shutter to just above the rim, and went downstairs to the utility room to find tools. I found a hammer with a head falling off, and an old screwdriver, which I took up into the dome and proceeded to knock apart the shutters. After some straining, sweating, and cursing, the two pieces came apart! Hurrah!! I then opened the shutter, and as it was opening, I beheld a clear sky!! Yes, while I was working on the dome, the skies cleared out. I just hope they were clear all over (since I was looking northwest).

I then went over and flipped the switch to turn the dome, and guess what? The dome didn’t turn!! All the freezing and thawing had frozen the dome in place. I now had to - while working the motor switch - manhandle the dome back and forth. After a while I got it to go most of the way around, but it stuck just short of the position I needed it to be to get the moon in the telescope view. (the good news is, while turning the dome, I saw that it was indeed clear from horizon to horizon, and the full moon shone brightly into the dome.) I backed the dome around half way, climbed up on the desk, and as it came back around pulled as hard as I could until the dome moved past the position where I had to have it for the event. And even then, it wouldn’t go any farther north in that direction. There was much snow out on the roof leaning against the dome. I was lucky to get it to move that far.

All of this took about one half hour. It was now 8.15pm.

I then turned on the power to the telescopes, uncovered them, and went back down to my car to haul in my gear. I then received a call from one of the other observers who was watching the eclipse from the warm comfort of his living room window. He asked if I saw any shadowing yet, which I told him I did. The partial umbral phase wasn’t supposed to begin (first contact) until 8.43, but as the moon got closer to the umbra, there was definite darkening of its leading edge.

I attached my digital camera to the telescope I was going to use for the evening, a four-inch Takahashi refractor. It is perfect size to allow the entire disc of the moon to fill the frame. Our other telescope in the dome, a sixteen inch, is too powerful for this situation. I then rotated the camera to the correct position, centered the image, and attempted to focus.

Focusing a digital SLR is extremely different than focusing a film camera, primarily because the focusing screen isn’t really designed for manual work. It’s rare for a photographer with a digital camera to manually focus his images all the time. While it takes just seconds to focus using my film camera, this new digital took a bit of doing. And still, to be sure, I took a few shots of the moon, removed the card from the camera, and loaded the images into my computer to check the focus. After three attempts, I got acceptable focus. Now to wait for the main event.

I wasn’t going to take a lot of photos of the partial phases of the eclipse, because I have seen many eclipses over the years, and have many photos of the non-totality phases. I just wanted totality and near totality. Heck, I have a whole series of images from the August 1989 eclipse where I shot every five to ten minutes for the whole eclipse. Believe me; I’ve got partial phase images!

During this time, I’ve been receiving a few phone calls from other people about the event, and then one of the other club members came up to check it out with me. He went up in the dome while I warmed up a bit. I then got a call from my friend Sharon and her sister Sally, who missed the turn to the road and needed a bit of direction clarification. I soon had them pointed up the observatory drive. They arrived and brought their cameras in, and I showed them up to the dome. The girls hadn’t been here before, so they were taking it all in. I showed them the moon through the scope (albeit through the viewfinder of my camera, but still…) and they got their stuff ready to shoot.

To fast forward a bit, there was swapping of cameras for a while as all three of us took turns shooting photos as the moon got closer and closer to totality.

When totality arrived, I took a couple of images, and then let them have a go, and then told them we needed to go outside. When we walked out the door, it was a different sky than when they arrived, as the formerly bright full moon was replaced by a dim, reddish full moon. The surrounding stars, once dim or invisible because of moonlight, now blazed forth in their glory. I took a few minutes to point out some constellations for them with the laser, and then got to work on my next task: a wider-angle shot of the eclipse.

Just a note on the eclipse itself. We saw a hint of turquoise at times, and during mid-totality it seemed to be darker then the previous eclipses. Must have been stuff in the atmosphere causing it. Definitely darker than the January 2000 eclipse, when I previously froze taking photos.

I put my lens back on my camera, took it downstairs, put it on the tripod, and went back outside. I had been thinking of how I could get an “artsy” image of the eclipse (my idea from the summer one was to get the eclipsed moon right next to the lighthouse on the lake, but it didn’t turn out), so I went around to the back side of the observatory where I could see the moon hovering above the dome. Perfect spot. I then proceeded to take a few photos, bracketing the exposures and painting the dome with a flashlight to get it to show up in the images. I did this for a few minutes, and when I really couldn’t feel my fingers and toes, trudged through the deep snow back to the building, and told the girls they could go back up and shoot through the scope more, as I was going to warm up in the library. I did that until I could feel things again, and then went up to the dome, joining the girls as they were having fun taking shot after shot. I took a few more as we got halfway out of the eclipse, and then left them to shoot what they wanted.

We took a break for a while to warm up again, and I showed them the AV presentation, and we chatted a while about astronomy, photography, etc. We then went back up to the dome, where the un-eclipsing moon was getting brighter and brighter, and they decided to pack it up and go home. As we packed up, I moved the scope over and showed them Saturn through the main scope, and the Mars, and then the Orion Nebula. Geeked was about the right word to describe how they felt, and they promised themselves they were going to come back again and again and see more things, and photograph more things.

I closed the dome, covered the instruments, and we took our equipment out to our respective vehicles. I closed up the observatory, followed them down the drive, and went home. It was just after midnight.

Arriving home, I lugged my stuff in the house, transferred the images from the camera to the laptop, and then took it downstairs and worked on the images while I warmed up. After about a half-hour I could feel all my toes and fingers, so I finished with the photos for the night, uploaded a couple to some websites, emailed to people, and finally went to bed (a nice, warm, toasty bed) just before 3.00am. A full, rich (and cold) day.

Now I can't wait for December 2010, and the next eclipse.

Comets and more comets

Tonight was a milestone for me. I saw another comet. Now, that might not be big news for some, but it is for me.

Tonight I observed the comet 17P/Holmes, a small comet located in the constellation Perseus. This was an unplanned observation, but one I couldn't turn down. See, normally this comet is way below "normal" visibility. It takes a large telescope to see it. However, yesterday the comet brightened unexpectedly by a factor of 500,000 times! It went from "need a big scope" to "naked eye" visibility in a super outburst rarely seen. Sure, comets have outbursts, but nothing like this.

So I went out and was able to see it easily in the northeastern sky. It looked starlike, and to the uninformed they wouldn't notice anything different, but I had a sky chart for the comet, and it was easy to see that the constellation Perseus had an "extra" star.

So I got to see it, and I took a few photos. And the big news for me - it was the fiftieth (50th) comet I've seen in my years as an astronomer.

Cool, eh?

Feelings About Space

(Note: Over on Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site, some people responded to Phil's blog post about NASA mission and the shuttle. On the whole I tend to agree with Phil, but this time I have to take my own stand on the feelings about NASA, the shuttle, ISS, etc. So I posted this over there, and - since I wrote it - I am putting it here on my blog as well)...

Say what you will, but from a standpoint of “showing off” the wonders of the space program (and astronomy), there’s nothing like pointing out ISS (and the shuttle at times) going overhead to the public, especially at star parties. They are just amazed that you can see things like that.

And truthfully, no matter now many times I’ve seen ISS and the shuttles pass overhead in the night sky, I go out and look every time (unless it’s cloudy).

Some might think it’s “fluff,” but it’s also a teaching experience for the public. And any way that we can educate the public as to the wonders of science (instead of that other crap) — well, it’s a benefit.

I can tell you, in all the times we (in our astronomy club) talk about the shuttle and the station, not one individual is bored. They hang on our every word. The public is fascinated, no matter what the media says.

And personally, I feel just like a little kid again every time I see a launch, landing, docking, or even the shuttle and/or ISS going over my head. And if, after all these years, I don’t lose the excitement and wonderment, why should be be anything if not proactive in sharing it with the public?

Last week I saw the film In the Shadow of the Moon, and saw images of kids lying on the floor in front of the television watching Neil Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface. It brought to my mind that I was doing the exact same thing at the same time as those kids on the screen - I was lying on the floor of my uncle’s house with my cousins watching the drama unfold from 240,000 miles away.

And even though it’s been nearly forty years, I haven’t lost the interest, wonderment, and amazement of space and astronomy.

So remember, no matter what you think about a certain part of the space program personally, don’t forget the underlying love you have for it in general.

Eclipse Observing

I know this is a few days late, but what the heck.

Tuesday morning's eclipse is now a few days past. It was a really great show, especially out over Lake Michigan.

My brother and I left around 4.30am to get to Grand Haven pier, in order to have a nice, flat horizon in which to see the eclipse. Plus, I had a thought about some great photo opportunities.

We had to walk about a half-mile from where we parked to the pier (because there are closed gates all over the place at night - you would think they were trying to keep people out), and just as we got to the beach the moon because fully immersed in the umbra of the Earth's shadow. It was a darker eclipse than I had seen in previous years, and the cameras came out. While we were shooting, there were some interesting side notes.

We weren't the only ones there. There were other people on the pier to see the eclipse, and some of them had cameras. We talked with one woman for quite a while, and she was hoping to get some nice images. She was from the Grand Rapids area, and had been to the observatory years ago, and promised she would be going out there again.

I also ran into Steve, who has been a frequent visitor to the observatory in the past few months. He had thought the pier would be an excellent place to see the eclipse, so he came out to hang out on the beach. I spent a little time explaining eclipse physics to him, and hopefully he came away with some good information.

As it got lighter I wanted an image of the moon next to the lighthouse, so I left my brother and walked out past the one lighthouse to the end of the pier. There, I was able to get a shot of the fully-eclipsed moon - which was dimming in the rising light of morning twilight - next to the lighthouse. I then turned around and shot the bigger lighthouse bathed in the glow of said twilight. I could even see Venus low in the eastern sky through the thin clouds.

We ended up leaving around 7.15, since the sun was up and the moon was down. As we walked back to our car, the woman we had been talking to drove by and waved. Hours later, my brother actually ran into her at Meijer, as she was shopping with her kids.

All in all it was a good morning, except I was dog tired all day, and even on Wednesday. Now to hope that the next eclipse, in February, will be clear. But it's Michigan, so...

New Big Exoplanet Discovered

Here's the news from Lowell Observatory...

Largest Transiting Extrasolar Planet Found Around A Distant Star

Read and enjoy.

A Phoenix Has Risen

At 5.26am EDT, the Phoenix spacecraft sat atop a fiery tail as it ascended into the early morning skies over Cape Canaveral, beginning its journey to the Red Planet.

Next stop - Mars in May of 2008. Phoenix will land near the North Pole region of Mars, and will study water in the Martian soil, as well as take other measurements.

Follow the mission from the websites at NASA and Arizona University.

Happy Cross Quarter Day!!

Isn't it wonderful?

Plus, last night the harvest began, as I was able to pick the first tomato of the year. Ah, such sweet, bountiful goodness.

Ini other news, we still have idiots - er, people - who think that Mars is going to be something really great to look at this month. Silly people. There have been many hits on the page I put up on the astronomy club's blog, and I have no idea how many hits have been on sites like Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy. But there's probably more than a few.

The one thing that sucks about August (there's more than one, and friends of mine know that big "suckage one") is that this is the month where we lose daylight like it's running down a drain. Now, as an astronomer, I like the darkness as much (if not more) than the next person (as long as they're an astronomer), but I love the long days of summer.

Case in point. Today, the sun will set here at 9.04pm EDT. On August 31st, the sun will set at 8.19pm! We'll lose 45 minutes of sunlight in the evening. Sunrise today was 6.33am, sunrise on the 31st? 7.05am. Another 1/2 hour lost. So in the month of August, we lost 1.25 hours of sunlight. Bleagghh.

But the good side to that is more darkness in which to observe. Which is always good.

As long as there are clear skies.

Finally, a shout out to AstroGeek, who I found added this site and my astronomy club's blog to his blogroll. I have since reciprocated.

Mars is NOT Good This August

Sheesh, that stupid Mars email is going around again. Just late the past few years. I dont' want to write about it, so I will direct you to a page on my astronomy club's site...

Mars Viewing? Not this Summer

So go over there, read it.

One Small Step Years Ago

Mankind first set foot on the moon. I remember seeing it live when I was a kid.

I'm glad we are going back, but we never should have left. It was a big mistake on the part of the politicians back then.

I have written about it on a blog I write for my local astronomy club, so head on over and check that one out.

Carnival of Space #12

The newest version of the "famed in song and story" Carnival of Space is up and available for viewing and adoration, hosted this week by Bruce at his Music of the Spheres site.

Carnival of Space #12

So head on over, and revel in the space news by the best the blogging world has to offer.

Planetary Sunsets

Look at the image below....

Is it...

1. The view from a planet around the star Gliese 581?
   
   
2. The star of the doomed planet Krypton? See the stellar material being blown off the upper left? Soon it will explode, but not before a young Kal-El is sent to Earth, to his destiny?

Or is it just an ordinary summer sunset here on earth; the haze and humidity and rayleigh scattering turning the sun red.

Nevertheless, it was a great evening to photograph sunsets. No matter what planet you were on.

Carnival of Space #9

The ninth edition of Carnival of Space is ready for your reading enjoyment. This week it is being hosted by The Planetary Society's weblog.

Carnival of Space - 9th Edition

Tip of the hat to Pamela Gay. If I hadn't been reading her blog (which you can access in the menu at right) I would have forgotten all about it. I've been working on some photographs I shot a few days ago, and another post to the SpaceWatch astronomy blog.

So head on over and read this weeks' CoS (I should remember to submit stuff to it each week), and also check out Pamela's site along with SpaceWatch.

Someday I might get my act together. :)

More Space on the Interweb

Well, as if I didn't have enough to do, I've started a blog for my local astronomy club. It won't go live until tomorrow (I'm rolling it out at the Summer Solstice), but you can go and take a look if you wish.

I'm trying the free version of Wordpress, just because I don't want to clutter up the club's domain at this time. If, in the future, it would be better to host it ourselves, I'll get the full version.

Meanwhile, check out Spacewatch

Public Perception and the Night Sky

It's interesting to note that with today's hectic world where most of the people don't bother do go out and "hang out" in nature, that sometimes - being unfamiliar with the surroundings - they "see things." Something that might be "ordinary" to astronomers might lead to an "oh wow, what's that?" moment to someone who is not knowledgeable of the night sky.

Case in point: it's been beautifully clear here for a week now, and with the warm evenings people have actually ventured outside, casting aside the computers and the television. Perhaps its to work in the yard; perhaps to take a stroll around the neighborhood. And as the daylight dims through twilight into darkness, the stars come out. Now, if you live in, or close to, a city, you don't get to see many stars, so if something in the sky catches your eye, especially something bright, it piques the interest.

So I receive an forwarded email from a local meteorologist, asking me if I had any clue to what this guy saw. Apparently the person was outside and saw a "real bright light in the southeast sky, and a 'much larger' one in the west. If you are an astronomy geek, you already know what this person had seen.

Yes, someone had stepped outside and saw Jupiter hanging low in the southeast, and when they turned around, there was Venus glowing like a beacon in the western sky. And since these two objects are the brightest things out at night currently (since the moon is nearly new) they "pop out" of the twilight sky much earlier than the stars. And they get the attention of the public.

But why did this person see Venus has "much larger?" It's all in the eyes and the brain. In the same vein as the "moon illusion" but with a twist.

Especially in the night sky, a person's eyes and brain work together to fool each other into thinking that "brighter is bigger." This phenomenon is not type-specific to the general public, but also includes members of the astronomical (and other scientific) community.

All you have to do is go out and look at the night sky some evening. You will see a smattering of stars across the canopy of the sky, and you will notice one thing right away: some stars are brighter than others. And even though they are all point light sources, your brain is fooled into thinking that the brighter ones are larger (and sometimes closer). But that is not always the case, especially with stars.

Basically all the stars we see in the night sky are so far away from Earth, they appear as points of light. But stars are not equal: some are brighter than others, and some are closer to earth than others. But they are all far enough away to present a pinpoint of light to the human eye. But a combination of distance and brightness lead our brains to think that if a star is brighter, it's bigger.

So what does that have to do with Jupiter and Venus? Everything. Although Jupiter is much larger than Venus (142,984 km vs. 12,103.6 km), it is much further away from the sun (778,000 km vs. 108,200 km). This also means two other things - Venus is closer to the Earth, and - because it's closer to the sun - receives a greater intensity of the sunlight. This, combined with the makeup of the Venusian atmosphere, means that more light is reflected from the planet than from Jupiter.

Visually, the apparent diameter of both planets at the current time gives the size advantage (almost double) to Jupiter. So in this case, "size doesn't matter." It all has to do wither perception. Because Venus is the brightest object in the night sky - apart from the moon - our brain sees it as being larger than anything else up there. Eyes+brain -- brighter=larger. We have been fooled.

Hopefully my explanation to this person (via the meteorologist) will cause them to look up and the night sky more, and even perhaps begin a wondrous astronomical journey through the universe.

Or the next time they will think it's a UFO.

{Shudder}

Is "Romantic" Astronomy Dead?

On CNN's site today is a link which says "Technology is taking romance out of astronomy." It's about Geoff Marcy and his search for planets outside of our solar system. In the article, Marcy is quoted as saying...

"There are no eyepieces anywhere. In fact, we don't have an eyepiece for the Keck telescope... Some of the romance of astronomy is gone."

He's absolutely correct, in my opinion.

Now, I'm not a Luddite. I know that the advances in technology are allowing us to peer farther into space than we have ever done before, opening up new vistas of wonder to the scientific community. But it is impersonal.

I remember having a conversation with a colleague a few years ago as we were sitting in one of the domes of our observatory doing some imaging. We were using a Paramount system, with the latest and greatest CCD cameras and filters. Sure, we were getting tremendous results, but it was antiseptic; there was no real work involved.

The telescope guided itself, the dome moved by itself, the filters changed automatically for each of the exposures. We just sat there in the dark and talked, looking out of the dome opening. Heck, we didn't even really need to be in the dome.

Our conversation was about the so-called progression of the art of astrophotography over the years. As we sat there letting the computers do all the work, I complained that the image would be good, but there's just something about putting a film camera to a telescope, meticulously focusing the image, and then being extra-extremely meticulous is keeping a star in the crosshairs of a guiding eyepiece for up to an hour at a time (in all kinds of temperatures) that gives a person more of a sense of accomplishment than just letting the scope and computer do all the work.

To take a photo with a film camera takes time, patience, and experience. The person earns the resulting photograph. With electronic imaging, you get a pretty picture by sitting around doing nothing. It takes no expertise at all to make a couple of mouse clicks and sit back in a lounge chair for a while.

(I'm not going to talk about the time it takes to manipulate the image in Photoshop or something like that. This has nothing to do with processing of images).

Technology is wonderful, but we are losing something in the transition. Wonderment is being supplanted by instant discoveries. The search is what is important to learning, in my opinion.

And it's not just the high-tech imaging that is ruining astronomy: it's other technology as well. Just try to get someone to go out and look up at the night sky; to put an eye to an eyepiece. Especially today's youth. Why would they want to, when they can sit in their homes and look at "pretty pictures" on the internet? Why take the time to learn the beauty of the night sky and take your own photographs when you can download a great Hubble shot? In this "age of the internet" people "want it now" without any exertion. Click and download, don't do it yourself. Sure, I think the work by Hubble and other instruments are glorious, and they serve a purpose. But photographs that I have taken personally mean more to me than anything I can download. They are personal; it was my knowledge and expertise that brought the image to life.

And this extends to astronomy and science in general. I said above that it's hard to get people to look up. Just try to get those same people to name constellations, or to point out a specific star or planet? Well, I can. I can go out and travel throughout the cosmos because I am familiar with the night sky. (Sometimes I think the people who swear they see "UFOs" wouldn't see them if they knew the night sky).

Some people say "I don't have time for stuff like that" but they can spend their time on frivolous things without thinking twice about it. I say if you have an interest in something, you make the time for it. You don't make excuses.

For me, my relationship with the cosmos is a personal one. It allows me a deeper understanding of the Universe because I take the time to learn. I don't "want it now." And so I pity those who don't spend time out under the stars.

Take the time. Gaze upwards. Experience the wonder of the Universe above you.

And bring a friend.

Saving the Night Sky!

I have been an astronomer for most of my life, and even after all these years I love "looking up." It never gets old. I can observe the moon, the planets, nebulae, galaxies, and everything else in the cosmos time and time again without losing my sense of awe, amazement, and interest. I want to know more.

But one of the things that screws up the view of the night sky is light pollution. It gets worse every year, and not much is done about it. The public is misinformed by the companies that make lighting fixtures, and even the power companies. But there have been studies and studies that show that many lights to not a secure place make.

Soon it will be impossible to see the night sky from even the suburbs. Forget about the cities already. But things are being done, thankfully.

I just ran across this link, and it piqued my interest. It's a "Declaration in Defence of the Night Sky."

From the site.... This initiative is designed as an international campaign in defence of the quality of the night skies and the general right to observe the stars, open to the participation of all scientific, cultural and citizens' associations and institutions related to the defence of the firmament.

Declaration in Defence of the Night Sky

We definitely need to save the night skies for the generations to come.

Please do your part.

Channeling the New Astronomers

Last night was the inaugural edition of International Sidewalk Astronomy Night where amateur astronomers the world over set up and bring the wonders of the night sky to the public.

Dr. Pamela Gay has written a great article about this on Sky & Telescope's website, so go check it out.

Unfortunately for my area we were cloudy, so nothing could be celebrated. But it's sure to go against next year.

And also unfortunately, since it was cloudy I missed out on taking some photos of the Moon/Venus apparition. It' snot that I don't have dozens of images like that already; it's just a chance to taken more. And as a photographer and an astronomer, who can pass up the chance if it's available.

Faint, Fuzzy Comets

Earlier this evening I managed to observe two of the comets that happen to be zooming around the solar system - C/2007 E1 Garradd and C/2007 E2 Lovejoy. We had a visitors' night at our observatory, and after the public left we got down to the business of looking at faint fuzzies.

I had the charts for the comets, and they were pretty easy to spot, as long as one was dark adapted. Garradd was low in the southwestern sky, but was visible as a smudge in the eyepiece of the 16-inch SCT. Lovejoy, hanging around in Draco, was a might easier, and stood out among the background stars.

All I need to do is observe two more comets, and I'll have reached the big 5-0. Yep, I have seen forty-eight comets as of tonight.

A Really Big Bang

About the largest thing in the Universe is a supernova. There are a couple of different types, and they all have different levels of energy, but the Chandra Observatory may have discovered a brand new classification.

This supernova was over one hundred times more powerful than any witnessed before and, according to the press release...

"That means the star that exploded might have been as massive as a star can get, about 150 times that of our sun. We've never seen that before."
-- Nathan Smith, UC Berkeley

They believe that what happened with this star is the same thing that could happen to the massive star Eta Carina, which is light years closer to us here on earth. This supernovas, cataloged as SN2006gy, was 240 million light years away in the galaxy NGC 1260. Eta Carina is only ~7500 light years away, and if - well, when - it blows, it could conceivably effect life here on earth.

You can read more about this in the Chandra Press Release.