The Sky is Waiting.
An indispensable piece of astronomical gear!
We always find astronomy in unexpected places. Recently, a new review product came to our attention while reading No Easy Day, an account of the Navy SEAL/DEVGRU raid that took out Osama bin Laden. The May 2nd, 2011 raid was timed to coincide with the darkness afforded by a New Moon (another astronomical tie-in), but it was a piece of SEAL gear and its cross-over potential for astronomy that caught our attention.
A very slender Moon…
(All photos by Author).
The mountains always beckon. In the end, all astronomers must heed the call of dark, pristine skies and head into the foothills beyond the suburban lowlands in search of the universe only hinted at from our backyards. This past week we did just that in our week four installment of the great American Road Trip as we explored the U.S. Southeast and beyond. And, hey, we arrived under pristine skies just in time for this year’s Geminid meteor shower!
One Geminid of MANY seen!
Sunday saw a breakfast that couldn’t be beat at the Nosedive Bar and our departure from Greenville, South Carolina. As reported in week three of our 4-state spanning sojourn, we thoroughly enjoyed this town, a hip Portlandia-esque oasis in the South.
An armillary sphere-spotting at the Red Horse Inn!
A short drive saw us posed to hop across the North Carolina border in Landrum, South Carolina. Actually, we crisscrossed the border twice into “The North,” hitting the two outstanding wineries of Green Creek & the remarkable Overmountain Vineyards. We stayed at the charming Red Horse Inn in Landrum, where we consumed our days’ booty (a bottle of wine) under the stars in the hot tub adjoining our cabin. The Red Horse Inn would make an excellent star-gazing destination, as a short trip down the road finds you in total darkness away from the cottage lights… this would also make a fine group astronomy expedition area, especially as a good jumping off point for the graze line of the August 2017 total solar eclipse passing over the Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area just to the west.
Mmmm… beer… line ‘em up!
For our next adventure we headed northward into Asheville, North Carolina. If Greenville is the Portland (Oregon) of the South, Asheville is its Seattle, set long before Grunge became a name brand. We stayed at the enormous Grove Park Inn, a massive hotel complex perched just outside the city. Asheville itself is a wonderful, rambling city sprawling over dozens of foothills that put us in mind of Amman, Jordan, repleate with art spaces and breweries instead of mosques and sheesha bars. The Arts District alone was fascinating, as was the encaustic work of Constance Williams. Hey, we’d never even heard of encaustic in our High School Art I & II days! The Moog factory was also a fascinating stop. Based in Asheville, Moog has been the proud manufacturer of keyboards and synthesizers since 1978. And hey, who knew that they still make the theremin? Sheldon would be glad know… check out the action on Moog’s YouTube and Twitter feeds!
At Moog, where the theremin still reigns!
After hitting the local Asheville Brewing Company and a fine Tapas meal at Cúrate, it was off to Mars Hill, North Carolina and the Scenic Wolf Resort for a night of dark sky observing. Located at about 4,000 feet elevation in the shadow of Mount Mitchell (the highest peak in the Appalachians) our cabin afforded a fine view of the 2012 Geminid meteors. And this was none too soon, as BBC 5 Live called us up that very night for a Skype interview! With a limiting magnitude of +5.5, I’d say that the Geminids put on one of the best displays in recent memory, with dozen several meteors seen gracing the sky before midnite!
The skies over Mars Hill, North Carolina.
But alas, we had to depart the beloved darkness for light-polluted climes all too soon. Having reached the northernmost apex of our journey, our ingress into society saw a brief stop in exotic Lincolnton, North Carolina… more to come next week!
A Earth-sized star. (Credit: NASA/RXTE).
It’s sobering to ponder the ultimate fate of our Sun. We orbit a middle-aged main sequence star, one that will continue to happily fuse hydrogen into helium for our energy consuming convenience for the next few billion years. We see the ultimate fate of our Sun, however, when we look out at planetary nebulae and burned out cinders known as white dwarfs. [Read more...]
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By now, we should have given you, the curious reader, a firm grounding in the sub-Sci-Fi genre of all that is Steampunk. From The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack to Mike Resnick’s The Buntline Special to the Society of Steam series of books, there are copious alternate history timelines to explore with a snifter of brandy by the e-reader cyber-light…
A Florida Gulf Coast sunset!
(All photos by author).
Sometimes, you have to go just beyond your own backyard to catch what you’ve traveled the world for and never seen. Earlier this week saw the start of our triumphant “return to the road,” and our grand tour of the U.S. southeast. We’ll be reporting on our adventures from the road weekly, and of course, you can always follow our daily escapades, musings, and ramblings on Twitter @Astroguyz, 3G willing. [Read more...]
Venus versus Regulus: the view on October 3rd.
(All simulations created by the Author in Starry Night).
It’s a question we have posed before, worthy of a sequel to Arthur Upgreen’s alternate astronomy book Many Skies; what would Venus look like if it had a moon? As a kid, I remember a science book on the solar system looking back at the Earth-Moon system from Venus, assuming that you could get above the cloud tops. At greatest elongation, Earth’s Moon would be 9’ arc minutes from the planet’s -3.6 magnitude disk this month and would itself shine at +0.5 magnitude… what a view that would be! [Read more...]
An uber-thin crescent from September 2011.
Take heart, residents of the northern hemisphere; Fall and hopefully cooler climes and darker nights are almost upon us. Growing up in northern Maine, autumn was always our favorite season of the year. It’s the season without the aggravations of all the others; lacking the chill of winter, the mud of spring and the bugs of summer, Fall is the best. If we ever find an exoplanet with a climate that resembles a perpetual New England Fall, I propose that a multi-generational ark be constructed immediately… [Read more...]
Clowning around at the Ringling Museum… (All photos by Author).
Science is where you find it. This past weekend we set off for a weekend of adventure in Sarasota, Florida. Just a leisurely drive south of the Tampa Bay area (and Astroguyz HQ), Sarasota offers quick passport to “Old Florida”. [Read more...]
A controversial classic!
It is perhaps one of the greatest scientific questions of our time. How common are we? Is our existence here in time and space a widespread occurrence in the cosmos, or are we so unique that we are effectively alone? The topic of this week’s review represents a landmark paradigm shift and is an often quoted book that I’ve always wanted to get around to reading and reviewing. Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe by David Ward & Peter Brownlee posits that animal life in general and intelligence such as our own in particular is a rare, perhaps a singular event in our corner of the galaxy. Published in 2000, its interesting to see how the science of the day stacks up to current thinking. For example, in 2000 a handful of exoplanets were known; almost all were “hot Jupiters,” and the prospects for terrestrial planets looked slim. To date, 779 extra-solar planets have been discovered using a variety of methods, providing researchers with enough data to classify and characterize various types of planetary systems.
It should be noted that the authors do point out that while animal life may be a tough hurdle, simple bacterial life may be common in the cosmos. Our own story lends some credence to this supposition; once conditions in the early history of life on Earth stabilized about 3.5 billion years ago, simple life arose readily. For almost 90% of the span of life on Earth, however, life remained at the simple one-celled stage. It seems that at least in our own case, going to complex multi-celled life was the hard part; but yet in less than a billion years, the explosion of plant and animal life led to dogs, cats, humans, Ipads, etc. How common this tale is remains to be seen. Certainly, the discovery of bacterial life past or present within our own solar system may lend weight to the first half of the Rare Earth hypothesis.
Among the factors that the authors site as conducive to life as we know it;
-An orbit around a single relatively stable star that maintains a steady output for many billions of years, long enough for life to develop;
-A stable orbit within the habitable zone of said star, a place where water can exist in liquid state;
-Condensation from a proto-solar nebula with a high “metallicity” (remember, to an astronomer, the universe is hydrogen, helium, & metal!) full of lots of great but scarce raw materials such as carbon, silicon, nitrogen, etc.
-A single large Moon that acts to stabilize the tilt of the Earth;
-A large “goal tending” planet like Jupiter that deflects a good portion of the life extinguishing comets that come our way.
-A stable position in the galactic habitable zone, not too close to the radiation-riddled core and not in the outer metal poor ‘burbs. A good distance from any life extinguishing supernovae or gamma-ray bursters helps too, a sort of “may you live in mediocre times” curse/blessing.
-Active tectonic plates allowing for subduction and sequestration via a rock and carbon cycle.
To this end, the authors add some interesting twists to the famous Drake Equation, allowing for the events that brought us here in the mix. Certainly, if some of the scenarios such as the formation of our Moon are mandatory, chances for life are slim. One only has to look at the caveats offered by our neighboring worlds of Venus and Mars to see how different the Earth could be.
Still, a nagging hunch pulls at the back of our brain as we read Rare Earth… just how viable is a statistic of one? Are all of these happy accidents mandatory, or can life, once it’s started, make due even under drastically different conditions? One could also point out that these conditions aren’t exactly stable or permanent; the tilt of the Earth’s axis does vary, the output of the Sun is increasing and fluctuates with time, etc. It would be great to have a better understanding of the minimum and maximum criterion for life as it relates to these events. Carbon is probably crucial; no other element forms such long complex chains, although silicon is sometimes also cited as a possible alternative. Water also makes a great ‘universal solvent…” but might oxygen be poisonous to some forms of life? Would we recognize life drastically different from us if we saw it? I’m reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s Report on Planet Three, where a Martian scientist gives a long and convincing discussion on why life on a hostile planet such as Earth couldn’t be possible.
Read Rare Earth as a very timely and still largely pertinent discussion on one of the biggest questions of our time. I would also recommend James Kasting’s How to Build a Habitable Planet as a great look at how the Earth came to be. Either conclusion has stunning implications; of course, most of us root for sentience and a cosmos teeming with diverse life with Klingons and Vulcans bickering about treaties in a Galactic Federation… but if we are truly ”it” in our tiny niche of time and space, doesn’t that make us and the Earth all that much more precious and unique, a jewel worth safeguarding and preserving?
The waxing gibbous Moon with the Mare Nubium/Rupes Recta region circled. (Photo by Author)
An interesting lunar feature comes into view this week, right around 1st Quarter phase. Located in the Mare Nubium just before the start of the Lunar Highlands sits a feature known as the Lunar Straight Wall. 120 kilometers long and about 400 meters high, this scarp is hard to miss as a long shadow slice along the surface of the Moon. Visible in even small telescopes at moderate magnification, the Lunar Straight Wall is generally visible within 24 hours of 1st Quarter, which occurs this week at 04:56 AM EDT/ 08:56 AM GMT. [Read more...]
The partial phase of the December, 2010 total lunar eclipse. (Photo by Author).
(Note: I know, we promised a post on Xi Ursae Majoris this week; upcoming events prompted a last minute scheduling change. Trust me, it’s in the pipeline for July!)
A little over 24 hours prior to the big ticket transit of the planet Venus on June 5th-6th is another interesting astronomical event, perhaps less sexy, but worth noting. [Read more...]
Apollo 1 & the mission patch that never flew. (Credit: NASA).
What’s in a name? When it comes to stars in astronomy, a curious and often confusing system has arisen over the years; many stars are known by multiple designations from numerous surveys and catalogs done over the centuries, while many of the brighter stars have familiar designations handed down from Arab astronomers that remain fixed in our cultural lexicon. Say the name “Alpha Virginis” and you many get quizzical stares at the next star party, but everyone knows good ‘ole Spica as the brightest star in the constellation Virgo, even if few of us recall its obscure translation as the “ear of wheat”. Interestingly, even murkier stellar names seem to be making a comeback as various GOTO telescopes know exhort us to slew to “Cursa” or center “Thuban”…
This week, I’d like to draw your attention to three stellar names honoring a crew of brave pioneers that have made their way into the modern lexicon and even publication on some star maps. 45 years ago this week on January 27th, 1967, astronauts Roger Chaffee, Edward White, and Virgil “Gus” Grissom perished in a fire that engulfed the cabin of their Apollo 1 spacecraft during a training simulation. The tragedy was the worst that NASA had experienced up until that time. In fact, the argument has been made that the resolve and safety overhaul that resulted from the fire was what allowed NASA to step back, reassess, and make that ultimate drive towards the Moon. The final week of January into early February has also marks two other tragedies in the history of NASA, with the loss of Space Shuttle Challenger and her crew during launch on January 28th, 1986 and the destruction of Columbia and her gallant crew upon re-entry on February 1st, 2003. Space travel is a hazardous business, and the very fact that we as a nation and a species were able to pick up and press on marks the resolve embodied by these brave men and women.
Over the years, these astronauts have been memorialized by the naming of schools, landmarks, and more. In the case of the Apollo 1 astronauts, craters on the Moon and hills on Mars are named in their honor, as well as a plaque entitled the “Fallen Astronaut” containing their names along with those of Russian cosmonauts that perished in Soyuz 1, 11, and training accidents that was placed at Hadley Rille by Apollo 15 astronauts. But another quiet tribute rests in the springtime sky, one with a fascinating tale…
The Fallen Astronaut Memorial on the Moon (Credit: NASA/Apollo 15).
Astronauts used stellar targets to find their way during their missions to the Moon, much like ancient seafaring mariners. This enabled them to get an accurate fix on their position in time and space. This method also gave astronauts the autonomy to navigate without the help of ground control and would have been crucial in an emergency situation if communications had been damaged. Much of this celestial training was conducted at the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1966. The story goes that Command Pilot Gus Grissom conspired to have the crew of Apollo 1′s names inserted for 3 of the more obscure 36 target stars in the flight navigation manual. A November 1966 checklist later surfaced depicting the ‘revisions’ and backing up the story!
A common mis-conception is that these three stars were named in honor of the Apollo astronauts, but in fact, they themselves placed their reversed monikers among the stars, which then came into common use after the Apollo 1 fire. Astronauts can even be heard on later mission tapes referring to the Apollo 1 “stars” by their names, and they have also found their way into various star charts. The good news is that late northern hemisphere winter into early spring is a fine time to find these three modern wonders of astronomical lore; all three shine at easy naked eye visiblibility threshold in the evening skies;
Navi, a finder chart. (Graphics created by the Author using Starry Night).
Right Ascension: 00 Hours 56’ 43”
Declination: +60° 43’ 00”
The northernmost Apollo star is “Navi,” backwards for “Ivan” as in Virgil “Ivan” Grissom. Located in the central “pivot” of the “W” asterism in the constellation Cassiopeia, this star is also referred to as Gamma Cassiopeia or “Tish” in Chinese, meaning “The Whip”. Navi is an eruptive variable star with a close spectroscopic white dwarf or neutron star companion. Earlier in the 20th century Navi attained a peak brightness of magnitude +1.6 in 1936, outshining the other stars of Cassiopeia. Navi rides high in February skies immediately after sunset.
Dnoces rising!
Right Ascension: 08 Hours 59’ 12”
Declination: +48° 02’ 30”
“Dnoces” as in “Second” backwards for Edward White “The Second,” is located in the constellation Ursa Major and is also referred to as Iota Ursa Majoris or Talitha, meaning “The third leap” in Arabic. Dnoces is an interesting close multiple star system first noticed by John Herschel in 1820. The magnitude +3.12 A component has a 9th magnitude B component that was at 10” arc seconds of separation on discovery that closed down to 4.4” and closing as of 1969. The B component in turn has a faint 10 magnitude companion on a 39.7 year orbit that will reach a maximum separation from the primary of 0.9” (tiny but perhaps just spilt-able with a large scope under excellent seeing!) in 2020. The entire system is about 48 light years distant. Dnoces rises around 10 PM for middle northern latitudes in February and earlier during the following months.
Suhail… or do you say Regor?
Right Ascension: 08 Hours 09’ 32”
Declination: -47° 20’ 12”
“Regor” The southernmost of the three Apollo 1 stars, is also known as Gamma Velorum in the constellation Vela. This star also has the obscure name of Suhail and is one of the brighter stars in the southern sky shining at +1.7th magnitude. Regor is a Wolf-Rayet variable star and one of the most massive known at 10 times the mass of our own Sun. The system is also a complex one comprising no less than 6 stars, tying Castor for the title of most stars in one system. Gamma Velorum is a binocular double, with a blue-white +4.2 magnitude sub-giant companion about 41” arc seconds distant. A telescope will tease out further companions C (+8 magnitude, sep 62”) and D and E (magnitudes +9 & +13 respectively) 2” apart and 94” from the primary. The entire complex system is about 800 light years distant along the galactic plane. From our 28° degree north latitude vantage point here at Astroguyz HQ in Hudson, Florida, Regor has a maximum elevation of about 16° degrees on the meridian at midnite local on February 1st, then progressively earlier in the evening as spring arrives.
Apollo 1 astronauts during a test checkout of the spacecraft. (Credit: NASA).
What I really love about the Apollo 1 stars is the wry thought put into naming them that the astronauts obviously gave; “Regor, Dnoces, and Navi” all sound suitably cryptic and simply sound “stellar”… one could image a pedantic astronomy professor utilizing them, or a sci-fi flick entitled “Invaders from Regor!!!” As we mark the anniversary of the fire that marred the Apollo program and shaped NASA, make a point to get out and spot these stars that pay tribute to these fine brave men and the legacy that they gave us!
Delray Beach sunrise. (All photos in post by Author).
Stargazing and traveling are literally a “match made in heaven”; as long as there’s a sky to be seen overhead, your observatory can be said to be where ever you make it. Such was the case this past weekend, when we bundled up the ‘scopes and made the pilgrimage to the Atlantic side of the Florida peninsula to Delray Beach for three days of sun, fun and a little surreptitious stargazing while based out of the Marriott Spa and Resort. [Read more...]
Finding Struve 3053. (Created by Author Using Starry Night).
Didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas? Neither did we, at least in terms of an automated backyard observatory and a private mountain top to perch it on… but such is the game of astronomy. [Read more...]
The Emerald Crusader finally makes it big.
(Credit/Copyright: Warner Bros/DC Comics).
The tumultuous year that was 2011 is about to come to a close… perhaps you’re rightfully wondering why you’re not commuting by jet pack by now, or glad that the post-apocalyptic vision of Road Warriors has yet to occur. [Read more...]
Looking west from Astroguyz HQ Oct 27th at sunset. (Created by the Author using Starry Night & Paint).
This week marks the return of the King of the Planets to evening skies, as well as a close lunar-planetary grouping for well placed observers and a chance to spy an unusual asteroid. [Read more...]
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Pictured is a Delta IV rocket launch from Cape Canaveral on November 21st, 2010. The image is a 20 second exposure taken at dusk, shot from about 100 miles west of the launch site. The launch placed a classified payload in orbit for the United States Air Force.
Difficult but not impossible to catch against the dawn or dusk sky, spotting an extreme crescent moon can be a challenge. The slender crescent pictured was shot 30 minutes before sunrise when the Moon was less than 20 hours away from New. A true feat of visual athletics to catch, a good pair of binoculars or a well aimed wide field telescopic view can help with the hunt.
The Sun is our nearest star, and goes through an 11-year cycle of activity. This image was taken via a properly filtered telescope, and shows the Sun as it appeared during its last maximum peak in 2003. This was during solar cycle #23, a period during which the Sun hurled several large flares Earthward. The next solar cycle is due to peak around 2013-14.
Located in the belt of the constellation Orion, Messier 42, also known as the Orion Nebula is one of the finest deep sky objects in the northern hemisphere sky. Just visible as a faint smudge to the naked eye on a clear dark night, the Orion Nebula is a sure star party favorite, as it shows tendrils of gas contrasted with bright stars. M42 is a large stellar nursery, a star forming region about 1,000 light years distant.
Orbiting the planet in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) every 90 minutes, many people fail to realize that you can see the International Space Station (ISS) from most of the planet on a near-weekly basis. In fact, the ISS has been known to make up to four visible passes over the same location in one night. The image pictured is from the Fourth of July, 2011 and is a 20 second exposure of a bright ISS pass.
Next to the Sun, the two brightest objects in the sky are the Moon and the planet Venus. In fact, when Venus is favorably placed next to the Moon, it might just be possible to spot the two in the daytime. Another intriguing effect known as earthshine or ashen light is also seen in the image on the night side of the Moon; this is caused by sunlight reflected back off of the Earth towards our only satellite.
A mosaic of three images taken during the total lunar eclipse of December 21st, 2010. The eclipse occurred the same day as the winter solstice. The curve and size of the Earth’s shadow is apparent in the image.
The Algonquin Indians had names for each of the seasonal Full Moons, many of which survive today. The Full Snow Moon pictured occurs in the month of December, when the first large winter storms coat the ground with snow. This Full Moon also tends to fall near the Winter Solstice, and thus rides high in the nightly sky opposite to the Sun on long winter nights.
Every rocket launch is unique, but twilight shuttle launches where by far the most impressive. The image pictured was of the April 5th, 2010 launch of Space Shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center at dawn. The exhaust plume caught the rising Sun overhead just right, and numerous noctilucent clouds persisted right up until sunrise. Unfortunately, space shuttle launches are now relegated to the pages of history.
Review Rising Sun by Robert Conroy.
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History is filled with “What Ifs”. What if Einstein had never immigrated to the US? What if Lincoln had never gone to Ford’s Theatre? While many decisions in history might have been inconsequential, others may have radically altered the course of history and our role in it today.
[Read more...]