Is there anything more lost than a star in a catalogue which can no longer be found? Such errant entries have been grist for the mills of all sorts of astronomical detective stories. The missing or mis-recorded entries span the range from the sublime to the ridiculous. For instance a whole cottage industry of speculation was introduced by Sirius being described as one of the “reddish” stars by Ptolemy in 150 AD, despite other earlier and contemporaneous records describing it as its more expected, and current, color white! The Flamsteed catalogue’s “missing in action” entries involved a record of the planet Uranus – pre-discovery. Amusingly, even Galileo recorded the planet Neptune as it passed close to the line of sight of his target-of-interest, Jupiter, on both Dec 28, 1612 and Jan 27, 1613 – more than two centuries earlier than its official discovery by Galle and d’Arrest on Sep 23, 1846.

But my story is much less impressive. It begins with the publication by Jacques Feige of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories (as they were then known) of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, California Institute of Technology. At about the time the manuscript for this paper was being completed, I was being conceived – but that is another story!

Jacques Feige’s 1958 paper was entitled “A Search for Underluminous Hot Stars” and was published in the Astrophysical Journal, volume 128, pages 267 to 271. Faint blue stars might seem to be a fairly useless sub-group of observable objects, but it turns out that the inexorable influences of astrophysics conspire to make them a cornucopia of both astrophysical and practical interest.

On the astrophysical side, these objects end up being peculiar for a variety of reasons, including binary evolution, being examples of almost naked star cores left over from a stellar evolutionary event known as the Helium flash, being white dwarfs, being distant versions of main sequence stars which have no excuse for being as far away from the galactic disk as they are, or being members of a class of star known as sub-dwarfs. In a very real sense, every find is a winner!

What about the practical side? Certainly young, distant, blue stars could be found in or near the disk of the galaxy. But such stars were unusual at large angles to the Milky Way. In fact, a color image of stars in the direction perpendicular to the Milky Way would show that the overwhelming majority are yellow, orange, or reddish. Still, the few bluish objects (like QSOs) found in directions away from the plane of our galaxy were incredibly interesting. What’s more, when their colors were measured, they would need the instrument-to-instrument variations in sensitivity calibrated out. To do so, requires the measurement of “blue” objects, and this is where Feige’s catalog became so valuable. It was a list of the few relatively bright objects in those directions which were blue and had fairly featureless spectra. Hence, they became a set of very frequently used standard stars for both measurement of brightnesses and calibration of brightness versus wavelength.

Except that one of the 115 had gone “walkabout”. Feige 85 was listed as being at position 13 hours, 34.7 minutes of right ascension and +8 degrees, 35 arcminutes of declination for the 1950.0 coordinate frame. The brightness listed was 15.0 which was at the faint end of the stars listed in this catalog. And more importantly, it wasn’t there! Fortunately for our story, Jacques Feige published one other paper called “An Atlas of Identification Charts for 113 Blue Stars” in 1959 in the Astrophysical Journal, volume 129, page 600 which included 39!) “plates” – specially reproduced photographic images in the journal containing what we now refer to as “postage stamp” finder charts for the 113 stars (down from the originally-claimed 114 due to the Feige 33 apparently being identical to Feige 34, once a +1 degree error in declination was corrected!)

As Brian Skiff described it in an e-mail of Mar 20, 2010 to the aavso-discussion list “… Feige 85 is shown with approximate coordinates because the original position is greatly in error, and it is lost for now.”

Normally, that would be the end of the story since the sky is vast. But in the last few years an amazing project has emerged called astrometry.net. It has the simple goal of being able to take an image of a star field and give you back its location in the sky, image scale, rotation, and image flip, if any – *without any additional information*. Sounds hard and it is! Why bother? The answer is simple – the rate at which images come off survey telescopes is so high that it is impossible to give each one the TLC and human attention necessary to put each image on the proper “world coordinate system”. The solution *must* be automated. Enter astrometry.net whose folks have produced the indices and code to make this happen. All you need is an image to feed to the routine.

That is where the story of Feige 85 is somewhat unusual. Normally, lost stars in catalogues just have incorrectly-typeset coordinates and no finder chart. Feige 85 *had* a published image. In fact, sitting at my home computer on a weekend, I could download the published “plate” from the Astrophysical Journal almost instantly from the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System. The Adobe Acrobat Reader plugin in my browser displayed it, and I did a screen capture and saved the image. Then I used the image processing software GIMP to crop the image to hold only the field of Feige 85 and get rid of the corners outside the circular field. The scan of the finder chart was still pretty noisy, so I smoothed the image to make the stars more centrally-peaked and to sand the background into greater uniformity. A final inversion to the image was made to make the stars white and the sky dark.

The image was fed to the solve-field routine of astrometry.net. After a few CPU seconds, the image was “solved”. Feige 85 was at the position 13:36:21.2 +08:22:34 for equinox J2000.0. It had not been found in any other “hot star” list but was catalogued as 2MASS J13362125+0822335.

Thankfully, online versions of catalogues can be updated on the fly and Brian Skiff of Lowell Observatory saw to it that this was done in Simbad. He also noted that it appears that Feige’s error was 1 arcminute in RA (right ascension).

So, at last, the Feige catalogue can sleep the sleep of the scientifically just. In truth, it was a minor mystery, but it was fun! And it opened my eyes to the possibilities of working with older (and newer!) images in a different way.

The astrometry.net folks have suggested that star field images from plates and film might be precisely dated by identifying the brightnesses of known, regular variable stars. Then, these in turn could be used to fill in the historical lightcurves of any other variable stars in those images – whether or not they were known at the time. And of course, there are lots of other possibilities. The important thing is to recognize the power of new tools and to look at problems from new perspectives!

Links:
“Astrometry.net” http://www.astrometry.net/

“Astrometry.net: Blind astrometric calibration of arbitrary astronomical images” by Lang, D. et al.
The Astronomical Journal, Volume 139, Issue 5, pp. 1782-1800 (2010)
http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.2233
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AJ….139.1782L

“A Search for Underluminous Hot Stars” by Feige, J.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1958ApJ…128..267F

“An Atlas of Indentification Charts for 113 Blue Stars” by Feige, J.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1959ApJ…129..600F

“The field horizontal-branch B-type star Feige 86″
by Bonifacio, P., Castelli, F., and Hack, M.
Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement, v.110, p.441
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995A%26AS..110..441B

–Ben

Cassini Images from this Weekend’s Enceladus, Tethys and Dione Flybys!

August 14, 2010

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Just down on the ground today … images from Cassini’s close flybys of Tethys, Dione and Enceladus this weekend.

Go to …

http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/140/Enceladus_Tethys_and_Dione_Rev_136_Raw_Preview

… and see some gorgeous raw images of these very different Saturnian moons.

Enjoy!

Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

http://ciclops.org

http://twitter.com/carolynporco

http://www.facebook.com/carolynporco

The problem is not the formation of life, it’s the unfathomable distances and spans of time between these formations. Science fiction has given us dreams of communicating and traveling over galactic distances. In reality, that is completely impossible given what we know about physics today. Utterly inconceivable. It’s a sad thought for the imaginative. If other life does exist in the Universe, we’d surely like to meet it. Dangers be damned, the thrill of finding other life is an undeniable quest and communicating with citizens of another an world would be an Earth- and life- changing event. But sadly, it will never happen. We are doomed to be alone.

While I’m not really that pessimistic it is a valid answer to the Fermi paradox. The reason we haven’t heard from any other of the vast numbers of alien civilizations out there is: it’s not possible. The laws of physics prevent it. Certainly some worlds are created within “view” of others and they enjoy (or suffer) the wonders of that interaction. But we were born alone and will die alone because we are too far away from our nearest galactic citizens. They’ll send messages and we’ll listen, and vice versa, but never at the same time or the same way.

I hope I’m wrong!

An “Island Universe” in the Coma Cluster

A long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a majestic face-on
spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which lies
320 million light-years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices.
The galaxy, known as NGC 4911, contains rich lanes of dust and gas near its
center. These are silhouetted against glowing newborn star clusters and
iridescent pink clouds of hydrogen, the existence of which indicates
ongoing star formation. Hubble has also captured the outer spiral arms of
NGC 4911, along with thousands of other galaxies of varying sizes. The high
resolution of Hubble’s cameras, paired with considerably long exposures,
made it possible to observe these faint details.

This natural-color Hubble image, which combines data obtained in 2006,
2007, and 2009 from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced
Camera for Surveys, required 28 hours of exposure time.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/24/

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Today, the Cassini Imaging Team is proud to release some outstanding new image mosaics and computer simulations of everyone’s favorite ring, Saturn’s F ring: the narrow, dynamic, and extraordinarily complex set of strands of ring material caught between the orbits of its shepherd moons, Prometheus and Pandora, a few thousand kilometers beyond the outer edge of Saturn’s main rings.

These new results, published last week in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirm what some of us veteran imaging scientists from the days of the Voyager mission long suspected: The F ring is the site of continual moonlet formation and, in most cases, eventual disruption. But what we didn’t know then was the exact mechanism by which this could happen.

Now we do, and the culprit is Prometheus and the particular sequence of steps that transpire in its repetitive disturbance of the F ring that creates clumps of ring debris.

And like so many of our most interesting results on Saturn’s rings, the tell-tale clues came in the form of shadows cast by these small, newly formed objects onto the faint, diffuse component of the F ring.

Go to …

http://www.ciclops.org/view/6367/Fan_in_the_F_Ring

… and see for yourself what Prometheus inflicts on the F ring. And be amazed at the complexity that is made possible by the simple force of gravity.

Enjoy!

Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

http://ciclops.org

http://twitter.com/carolynporco

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carolyn-Porco/116163229386

================================
from : Jim Cuca wglogowski@gmail.com

Dear astronomy enthusiast:

The Chicago Astronomical Society invites you to attend our annual star party, Astrofest, which will be held September 10-11, 2010 at Vana’s near Kankakee, Illinois. Registration forms and related information are available at

http://www.chicagoastro.org/index_files/Page345.htm

The theme for this year’s event is “The Link Between Astronomy and Particle Physics.” In addition to our usual line-up of astronomers, Astrofest 2010 will include presentations by scientists involved in research into such contemporary topics as dark matter and dark energy. Our star party will be held on Vana’s 20+ acre field, with plenty of room for camping and telescopes; each attendee will be invited to use our 14-inch observatory telescope. Other activities include: astrophotography contest; telescope contest; door prize raffle.

We hope to see you at Astrofest 2010.

If there are any questions, please contact

Jim Cuca at jamescuca@comcast.net.

WOW!

–Ben

OSTP to Co-Host “Astronomy Night on the National Mall”

OSTP, in conjunction with Hofstra University, will co-sponsor a free, open to the public star party July 15 on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

If you are near the DC area in come enjoy close-up views of the crescent Moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn, star clusters, and nebulae. You can even gaze at our own Sun early in the evening with the help of specially filtered telescopes. “Astronomy Night on the National Mall” will go from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Thursday, July 15 (with a July 16 rain date). Telescopes, posters, and video equipment will be set up just northeast of the Washington Monument, between 14th and 15th Streets NW, and Madison Drive and Constitution Ave. View a map of where Astronomy Night on the Mall will be held…

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/07/03/ostp-co-host-astronomy-night-national-mall

“…the giant propeller “Earhart” named after another aviator, Amelia Earhart….”

–Ben
——————–

July 8, 2010

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Today, a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters by members of the Cassini Imaging Team reports the discovery of dozens of kilometer-sized moonlets in Saturn’s outer A ring, eleven of which have been carefully tracked over the last few years.

Embedded in the rings, these objects might normally be difficult to find. However, their presence is betrayed by the large tell-tale `propeller’ structures they generate in the ring material on either side of them. Such features had been found in a different ring locale earlier in the mission but those were much smaller, harder to see, and so numerous that there was no hope of following any one of them. The new propellers, and the moonlets that create them, are some ten times larger and much easier to identify and follow from image to image and year to year.

What is outstanding about these new findings is the insight they ultimately will provide into the early stages of solar system formation, when growing planets become large enough to open gaps in the ring material around them and ultimately truncate their own growth.

To learn more, go to …

http://ciclops.org

http://www.ciclops.org/view_event/137/Propellers_Tracked_for_Years?js=1

… and read all about it.

You may find it amusing that these large propellers have unoffically been named after famous aviators. Those flight enthusiasts among you will recognize Bleriot, Earhart, Santos-Dumont, and others.

(A press release on the new results can be found below. For those of you who would like to read the paper, here is the link: http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.1008 )

Enjoy,

Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

http://ciclops.org

http://twitter.com/carolynporco

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carolyn-Porco/116163229386

Journey into the Sun
http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/journey-into-the-sun

Scientists at Stanford University and Lockheed Martin are playing pivotal roles in a nearly billion-dollar NASA mission to explore the sun. A spacecraft launched in early 2010 is obtaining IMAX-like images of the sun every second of the day, generating more data than any NASA mission in history. The data will allow researchers to learn about solar storms and other phenomena that can cause blackouts and harm astronauts.

We also have a Sun Quiz: Test your knowledge about this mysterious, awesome and most vital of stars.

This video and quiz are from QUEST, a science show at KQED, the PBS station in San Francisco. You can embed the video and quiz on your site. You’ll find the code to embed the video on the videos’ web site to the right of the video player under “embed this video”.

Thanks for your time.

Sevda
Sevda Eris
KQED Public Media – QUEST Science Series
2601 Mariposa Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Tel: 415-553-2835
Email:seris@kqed.org
www.kqed.org/quest

Nice astro eye-candy site.

–Ben

starrycritters.com

The ancient peo­ples saw pic­tures in the sky. From those pat­terns in the heav­ens, ancient sto­ry­tellers cre­ated sto­ries about heroes, maid­ens, drag­ons, bears, cen­taurs, dogs and myth­i­cal crea­tures. What kid doesn’t see drag­ons and angels in the clouds while lying in warm grass on a sum­mer after­noon? What grown-up doesn’t wish upon a shoot­ing star? So lie back and imag­ine the ani­mals, insects and pat­terns swirling in these Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, Spitzer Space Tele­scope and other obser­va­tory images. We believe the expla­na­tions are best suited for par­ents, edu­ca­tors and upper-grade stu­dents. Par­ents of younger chil­dren may find it help­ful to explore the uni­verse together with their child. Par­ents can use the explana­tory text as a guide. Inter­act with the images and find your own pat­terns in the stars. Con­jure your own sto­ries and set­tings and share them. Leave a com­ment on the site about what you see in the images. We love to share your stories

http://www.starrycritters.com

http://twitter.com/carolynporco

Witness one out-of-this-world vista…from Cassini at Saturn. So glad I’ve lived to see such sights! http://bit.ly/bZI0vP

http://www.ciclops.org/view/6300/Cut_by_Saturns_Shadow?js=1

NASA Science News Conference on the Solar Dynamics Observatory
12:15 PM – 1:15 PM CDT

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/docs/SDOfirstlight.pdf

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Ever since the beginning of the Cassini mission, a major goal of the Imaging Team has been the detection of Saturnian lightning. The process of electrostatic discharge and lightning production is tied to the motions of electrically charged particles and molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere, and the same is believed to be true for the atmospheres of the giant planets. Measuring the power of lightning strikes in a planetary atmosphere can tell of the energy contained in the thunderstorms that spawn them and of the vigor of the atmospheric motions.

Now, for the first time, and as a direct result of the dimming of the ringshine on the night side of the planet during last year’s Saturn equinox, the Cassini Imaging Team has detected flashes of lightning in the atmosphere of Saturn. And these flashes have been shown to be coincident in time with the emission of powerful electrostatic discharges intercepted by the Cassini Radio and Plasa Wave experiment.

For more on this fantastic result, go to …

http://ciclops.org
http://www.ciclops.org/view/6064/Lightning_Flashing_on_Saturn

… and see for yourself our images and movies of Saturnian lightning. And make sure the sound is up on your computer!

(A news release on these findings that went out a moment ago is attached below.)

Enjoy,

Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

After spending some quality time poring over the images and data Cassini collected
last month during its closest flyby yet of Saturn’s ‘Death Star’ moon, Mimas, we are
finally ready to release the goods. And they are outta sight!

After much deliberation, we have concluded: Mimas is NOT boring. Who knew?!

To see all our spectacular images, mosaics, thermal results and more, go to …

http://ciclops.org

… and check it out. You’ll see details in the moon’s craters that reminded us
imaging folks of features we’d seen on Phoebe and Hyperion. You’ll discover that
Mimas has a very peculiar thermal signature that we can’t yet explain. And best of
all … be sure you have a pair of red/green glasses handy ’cause you won’t want to
miss peering into gigantic Herschel crater in 3D!

Enjoy,

Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

http://ciclops.org

http://twitter.com/carolynporco

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carolyn-Porco/116163229386

St. Patrick's Day prominence. Image credit: Glen Ward

This is a solar image from St. Patrick’s Day sent in by one of our Slacker friends, Glen Ward. You can clearly see a solar prominence in profile here. A prominence is usually in the form of a large, bright loop extending outward from the Sun’s surface into the corona. A prominence forms in about a day, and stable prominences may persist in the corona for several months. A typical prominence extends over many thousands of kilometers; the largest ever observed by SOHO was in 1997. It was an awesome 350,000 km long.

There is a lot we don’t know about the Sun. Scientists are currently researching how and why prominences are formed. NASA recently launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to study the Sun in more detail than ever before. You can read more about the Sun and SDO in this Simostronomy blog.

The episodes will air on April 6 and 13. I recommend you watch them or set your DVR accordingly.

I especially appreciated they way the series presents the material chronologically, which shows how each successive genertion built on the discoveries of the telescopes of the previous generation. The production quality, narration and interviews were put together in a logical, seamless fashion. I particularly like when they say ‘novae’ and ‘supernovae’ instead of the dumbed down incorrect novas and supernovas that some documentaries resort to these days.

In a word it is first rate. It is mostly scientifically accurate and well presented. My only minor distraction was when they occasionally used planetary nebulae pictures to represent stellar explosions like supernovae. At least the narrator says nebulae, not nebulas, which isn’t even a word.

The synopsis from NOVA adequately describes the two episodes without my intervention, so here they are.

Hunting the Edge of Space: The Mystery of the Milky Way – April 6
Three centuries of engineering have produced telescopes far beyond Galileo’s simple spyglass. Perched on mountaintops, orbiting the Earth, and even circling other planets, these telescopes are revealing the solar system in detail Galileo could only dream of. The Milky Way brings viewers up close with today’s most powerful telescopes and embarks on a stunning journey to the planets and moons now being imaged as never before.

Hunting the Edge of Space: The Ever Expanding Universe – April 13
From the discovery that the Milky Way is just one galaxy among billions, to the stunning revelation that these galaxies are speeding away from each other faster every second, The Ever Expanding Universe investigates the universe’s distant past—and its future. Now, modern telescopes have added a mysterious new twist to the plot: The vast majority of the stuff of the universe is invisible, tied up in dark matter and dark energy. But what are these mysterious dark forces? A new generation of telescopes is embarking on a mission impossible to see the unseeable, and answer one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the cosmos.

I give it two thumbs up, even if my wife says I spoiled it all because I knew what was coming next and said it out loud before it happened. She doesn’t go to planetarium shows with me any more for the same reason. Don’t worry; I won’t be in your living room. Watch this…you’ll be glad you did.

Fill in your information below and your name will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011!

More at:
http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/

Amateur astronomers to shed light on solar storms

“…Becoming a solar storm tracker involves setting up a ‘Zooniverse account,’ logging into the Solar Stormwatch site at http://solarstormwatch.com and completing a short interactive training programme. Almost anyone can help the project says Dr Davis. “Many motivated individuals will always be able to scrutinise the data far more carefully than small dedicated science teams ever could. Contributing will enable more information to be gleaned from the data than would otherwise be possible.”

The site requires members to study video footage and photographs to identify past solar storms, described as big lightbulb-shaped explosions. Then they may be asked to look at data of real-time space-weather conditions. Dr Davis says, “the real-time data is less detailed but potentially provides a means of making true predictions about any solar storms heading towards Earth.” …

http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1003/02solar/

wonder how long till the podcast is posted?

http://www.amnh.org/podcast/index.html

–Ben

AMNHlogo

Media Inquiries: Department of Communications

212-769-5800 communications@amnh.org

www.amnh.org

_____________________________________________________________________________

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY’S

TENTH ANNUAL ISAAC ASIMOV MEMORIAL DEBATE

ASKS “Where Next for the Manned Space Program?”

WHAT Tenth Annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate Moon, Mars and Beyond: Where next for the manned space program?

What is the future direction for manned space flight? Should we proceed straight to Mars? Should we return to the Moon, or should multiple destinations be the goal?

Where to go next is one of the hottest topics for NASA’s manned program. Central to the subject are thorny issues that relate to science, launch hardware, international competition, national security, shrinking budgets, and political will. The Obama administration’s recent decision to delay indefinitely of our next voyage to Moon while simultaneously planning a new launch vehicle to take us out of low earth orbit makes this Asimov Debate particularly topical and newsworthy.

Moderator

Neil deGrasse Tyson, astronomer and Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium

Panelists

Kenneth Ford, Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, is Chairman of the

NASA Advisory Council.

Lester Lyles, United States Air Force (Ret), is a member of NASA’s Human

Space Flight Plans Committee.

Paul Spudis, Lunar and Planetary Institute, has experiments on lunar orbiting

missions to map permanently dark regions poles and search for water ice

deposits.

Steven Squyres, Cornell University, is the principal investigator for the Mars

Exploration Rover Project, among others.

Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, with a focus on exploration and

settlement of that planet, is also the President of Pioneer Astronautics, an

aerospace research and development company.

WHEN Monday March 15, 7:30 p.m.

WHERE LeFrak Theater, first floor – Enter at 77th Street

American Museum of Natural History

ADMISSION $15 adults $13.50 members, students, seniors

# # #

No. 25a

===========================================
http://www.amnh.org/programs/programs.php?src=p_h&date=2010-03-15&event_id=1633

More images from Enceladus flyby last Nov. 21 2009.

–Ben

Forest of Jets
Cassini’s close flyby of Enceladus last Nov. 21 revealed a forest of new jets spraying from the prominent fractures crossing the south polar region and yielded the most detailed temperature map to date…

http://ciclops.org/view_event/129/Forest_of_Jets

–Ben

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-130/html/iss022e062674.html

lots of other STS-130 pics here.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-130/ndxpage1.html

Geostationary Orbits are over five times the radius of the Earth, approximately 36000 km above sea level. Objects in such orbits have orbital period equal to the Earth’s rotation and would remain stationary over the same point on the Earth’s equator. Geostationary objects appear motionless in the sky, making extremely useful for communications (including TV broadcast) and weather satellites. While in 1945 Arthur C. Clark was the first to suggest the usefulness of such an orbit, there are now over 370 satellites in Geostationary orbits. But while they are motionless relative to the Earth surface, they are moving objects against the background sky as they are rotating around our planet in this space high way with speed ten times faster than an airliner. Although they are some of the furthest satellites, but surprisingly, given dark enough skies, it is possible, armed with a telescope or a pair of binocular to spot some of the them in the geostationary ring. Typically these satellites are at magnitude. +11 or fainter (over 100 times fainter than naked-eye visibility), but as recorded in this video they are brightening by several magnitudes when the geometry is favorable. Most satellites in the video are at 7th to 9th magnitudes but there are few of them at about magnitude 5, visible to the naked-eye under dark skies! The time-lapse video is made using an 85mm lens on a modified DSLR camera under an ideal dark sky. It is a sequence of 12 shots each 45s exposure on a tracking mount. Majority of GeoSats are visible at 5 degrees below the equator on the Orion Nebula declination. Mintaka , the western most star of the Orion Belt, is the closest to the equator. All of the satellites in this highway has moved about 2.5 degrees during the 10 minute shooting period, equal to 360 degrees for a complete 24 hours. Babak Tafreshi

http://twanight.org/newTWAN/case.asp

As always, be sure to zoom in to the FULL frame (2758 X 2567)
6.8MB JPEG

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2010-08-a-full_jpg.jpg

to see all the ‘tiny’ galaxies.

I like pair in the bottom left.

–Ben
==================================
Jurassic Space: Ancient Galaxies Come Together After Billions of Years

February 18, 2010: Imagine finding a living dinosaur in your backyard. Astronomers have found the astronomical equivalent of prehistoric life in our intergalactic backyard: a group of small, ancient galaxies that has waited 10 billion years to come together. These “late bloomers” are on their way to building a large elliptical galaxy. Such encounters between dwarf galaxies are normally seen billions of light-years away and therefore occurred billions of years ago. But these galaxies, members of Hickson Compact Group 31, are relatively nearby, only 166 million light-years away. New images of these galaxies by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope offer a window into what commonly happened in the universe’s formative years when large galaxies were created from smaller building blocks. The Hubble observations have added important clues to the story of this interacting foursome, allowing astronomers to determine when the encounter began and to predict a future merger. Astronomers know the system has been around for a while, because the oldest stars in a few of its ancient globular clusters are about 10 billion years old. The encounter, though, has been going on for about a few hundred million years, the blink of an eye in cosmic history. Everywhere the astronomers looked in this compact group they found batches of infant star clusters and regions brimming with star birth. Hubble reveals that the brightest clusters, hefty groups each holding at least 100,000 stars, are less than 10 million years old. The entire system is rich in hydrogen gas, the stuff of which stars are made. Astronomers used Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to resolve the youngest and brightest of those clusters, which allowed them to calculate the clusters’ ages, trace the star-formation history, and determine that the galaxies are undergoing the final stages of galaxy assembly.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/08/

19 February 1473

the first astronomer to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe

–Ben

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Copernicus

This 3-D view is a color composite picture made from two different black and white images that were taken from slightly different viewing angles. The images are combined so that the viewer’s left and right eye, respectively and separately, see a left and right image of the black and white stereo pair when viewed through red-blue glasses…

http://ciclops.org/view/6133/Prometheus_Popping_in_3-D?js=1

I’m not sure I like the gov. defining my science.

Although they do define the weights and measures.

I heard Indiana tried declaring pi = 3.0000 awhile back (1897). Well at least they tried to.

–Ben

===================
2010 Regular Session

HM 17

“PLUTO IS A PLANET IN NEW MEXICO DAY”

Sponsor: Joni Marie Gutierrez

Current Location: Passed

http://legis.state.nm.us/lcs/_session.aspx?Chamber=H&LegType=M&LegNo=17&year=10

“…WHEREAS, thanks to Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto will always
be considered a planet in New Mexico;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that February 18,
2010 be proclaimed “Pluto is a Planet in New Mexico Day” at the
house of representatives in honor of the eightieth anniversary
of the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh…”

http://legis.state.nm.us/Sessions/10%20Regular/memorials/house/HM017.pdf

Move over Dr Who scarves… There is a NEW geek scarf in town.

–Ben

from @starstryder & @Moonrangerlaura
I found a reason to go by more yarn & study emission line lamps http://bit.ly/dbvTHf aka:

http://sternlab.org/2010/02/emission-spectra-scarves/

That’s no small moon, That’s a Space Station!
oh wait, yes it is just a small moon.

–Ben
=====================================
****** Forwarded Message Follows *******
February 15, 2010
Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Latest images from Cassini’s flybys of Saturn’s `Death Star’ moon, Mimas, and one of its small moons, Calypso, are now down on the ground.

If you love surfaces covered with craters and coated with icy debris, check them out at http://ciclops.org .

http://ciclops.org/view_event/128/Mimas_and_Calypso_Rev_126_Flyby_Raw_Preview

Enjoy,
Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

http://ciclops.org

http://twitter.com/carolynporco

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carolyn-Porco/116163229386

Hearts in Space- Sixty Symbols

and a special alert to be on the lookout for northern lights tonight.

Mars Rover Spirit picture compilation in HD

Pictures compiled from Mars Rover Spirit using the front HAZCAM left side lens from martian days (sols) 1 through 1724. That’s nearly five earth years shrunk into a 7 minute video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vQQKQhX–M

===================

Mars Rover Opportunity picture compilation in HD

Pictures compiled from Mars Rover Opportunity using the front HAZCAM right side lens from martian days (sols) 1 through 1751. That is five earth years shrunk into a 8 minute video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWI2WuqhQ2A

But do not “despair”. We have several new podcasts coming up in the next few days.

Twitter.com/Exoplanetology

Hey, exoplanets.org just launched their new exoplanets data http://exoplanets.org/exotable/exoTable.html includes plots! Nice!

He’ll take you to the Moon, you’ll fly through the stars, you’ll go visit a friend on the surface of Mars.
So scroll down the page, see what there is to see, the tickets are priced just right..they’re FREE!

see it at :

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1946595_2010965,00.html

You can get the the Full size 7227 samples x 3847 lines image, or smaller sizes too,
here: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11667

or
http://ciclops.org/view/5773/The_Rite_of_Spring

It make’s a great desktop image.

Thanks Cassini and Carolyn Porco

–Ben

http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=28&month=11&year=2009

and scroll down to the ‘SPACESHIP SIGHTINGS:’

then to ‘more images:’ paragraph then in mid paragraph…

ta-da…

If you want to see an animated GIF of the event check out :

http://freemars.org/mnfan/MNSFS/2009-11-26-ISS-STS-129-Pass/ISS-STS-129-pass-2009-11-26.gif

6Mb file.

other info here:

http://freemars.org/mnfan/MNSFS/2009-11-26-ISS-STS-129-Pass/

–Ben
still trying to get my 15 min of fame.

This year, say it in stars! Send your friends and relatives best wishes for the season with our printable holiday cards. Messages of joy and peace are illuminated by the natural splendor of the universe. The cards are designed to be printed out at photo stores or online photo labs, though you can also use a home printer.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/holiday/

Poke around those and you might find some entertainment. For example, there is this little gem of an interview with David Levy!

As always, let us know what you think in the comments or email us.

too bad GRO isn’t around any more

–Ben

NASA’s Great Observatories Celebrate International Year of Astronomy

November 10, 2009: A never-before-seen view of the turbulent heart of our
Milky Way galaxy is being unveiled by NASA on Nov. 10. This event will
commemorate the 400 years since Galileo first turned his telescope to the
heavens in 1609. In celebration of this International Year of Astronomy,

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/28/

http://home.arcor.de/axel.mellinger/

======================
November 1, 2009

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Here’s a reminder that tomorrow (Mon) sees the first of two Cassini close flybys this month of the moon Enceladus. Images should start arriving here at CICLOPS around 12:30 pm Mountain Standard Time tomorrow; we’ll post the best raw images as soon as we are able at:

http://ciclops.org

The finest resolution will be approximately 60 meters/pixel of the south polar terrain.

And the next flyby, which is specifically designed for high resolution imaging, will occur on November 21, when the best resolution will be about 12 meters/pixel.

Enceladus remains a very high priority object of interest for the Cassini mission, and we look forward to these fine opportunities to learn more about its active south polar cap.

Also, for those of you in the San Francisco Bay area, I will be giving a public lecture at the Morrison Planetarium of the California Academy of Sciences on December 7, 2009 at 7:30 pm.

http://www.calacademy.org/events/?e=268&d=07&m=12&y=2009

Hope to see you there!

Enjoy,

Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

http://twitter.com/carolynporco
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carolyn-Porco/116163229386

here is a local TV story on it.

http://www.ksat.com/video/21243470/index.html

more at bad astro
http://www.bautforum.com/astronomical-observing-equipment-accessories/95619-30-telescope-stolen.html#post1608705

–Ben

find a nearby event

http://www.galileannights.org/

or make your own event!

and party like its 1609!

Four hundred years since Galileo’s telescopic observations revolutionized our view of the Universe, the public will once again be turning their attention to the heavens. People all around the world are encouraged to take part in Galilean Nights activities on 22-24 October 2009 and experience for themselves the same sense of awe and wonder that Galileo must have felt.

The aim of the IYA2009 is to stimulate worldwide interest, especially among young people, in astronomy and science under the central theme‚’The Universe, Yours to Discover’. IYA2009 events and activities will promote a greater appreciation of the inspirational aspects of astronomy that embody an invaluable shared resource for all countries.

–Ben

–Ben

13-Oct-2009: A recent NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures what
appears to be one very bright and bizarre galaxy, but is actually the
result of a pair of spiral galaxies that resemble our own Milky Way
smashing together at breakneck speeds. The product of this dramatic
collision, called NGC 2623, or Arp 243, is about 250 million light-years
away in the constellation of Cancer (the Crab)…

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0912.html

=============================================

Ever Wonder What Every Space Mission From the Last 50 Years Looks Like on One Map?

Well, here it is. National Geographic has plotted the route of every space mission carried out over the last 50 years onto a map of the solar system, giving a nice visual look at the history of space travel.

Each line represents a different space mission, highlighting notable missions, including those from different countries, those of historical significance, and those which have failed. (The map doesn’t seem to make note of the recent LCROSS mission, where a rocket plowed into the moon to probe for water.)

Did you know there have been three more missions to Venus more than Mars (43 to 40)? Check out the whole thing for yourself here.

More at:

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-10/ever-wonder-what-every-space-mission-last-50-years-looks-one-map

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2445/4002050596_0c2b6c4dd2_o.jpg

This fascinating graphic by Sean McNaughton at National Geographic shows all interplanetary missions since the dawn of ths Space age.

Charting The Solar System

Download large version

So it is freaking awesome that the 2 fellows who invented the CCD were just given the Nobel Prize in Physics!

From Cnet:

Working at Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1969, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith built the first CCD (Charge-Coupled Device). Using the photoelectric effect theorized by Albert Einstein, the sensor transforms light into electric signals. The team’s major hurdle was determining how to gather and read out those signals into a large number of pixels in a short burst of time.

Congratulations, gentlemen, and thank you!

The Trilogy is Complete — GigaGalaxy Zoom Phase 3

The third image of ESO’s GigaGalaxy Zoom project has just been released online, completing this eye-opening dive into our galactic home in outstanding fashion. The latest image follows on from views, released over the last two weeks, of the sky as seen with the unaided eye and through an amateur telescope. This third instalment provides another breathtaking vista of an astronomical object, this time a 370-million-pixel view of the Lagoon Nebula of the quality and depth needed by professional astronomers in their quest to understand our Universe.

370-million-pixel starscape
of the Lagoon Nebula

http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-36-09.html

http://www.gigagalaxyzoom.org/

I Haven’t seen them due to clouds over my house but SOHO has.

Nice one at the 8:00 position.

–Ben

The Very Latest SOHO Images

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html

VERY COOL satellite.

“…Planck the coldest object in space at just 0.1° above absolute zero (-273.15°C)…”

–Ben

First Light Survey results confirm excellent performance

The Planck space observatory, ESA’s mission to study the early Universe, has successfully completed its initial test survey of the sky, confirming that both of the scientific instruments and the sophisticated cryogenics, all of which the UK played a key role in building, are working well. Following the successful survey, Planck has now embarked on its 15 month mission to map the structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) – the relic radiation from the Big Bang…

…The Planck satellite was launched along with the Herschel satellite on 14th May 2009 from Kourou, French Guiana, on an Ariane 5 rocket. During its 6 week journey to its observation point around L2, 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from Earth, the scientific instruments were cooled to extremely low temperatures, making Planck the coldest object in space at just 0.1° above absolute zero (-273.15°C). It took around 6 weeks for Planck to cool down to these low temperatures, after which a further 6 weeks were spent calibrating the instruments…

http://planck.cf.ac.uk/node/136

==============
Smallest exoplanet is shown to be a solid, rocky world

*The confirmation of the nature of CoRoT-7b as the first rocky planet outside our Solar System marks a significant step forward in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. The detection by CoRoT and follow-up radial velocity measurements with HARPS suggest that this exoplanet, CoRoT-7b, has a density similar to that of Mercury, Venus, Mars and Earth making it only the fifth known terrestrial planet in the Universe.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=45518

–Ben

ESO unveils an amazing, interactive, 360-degree panoramic view of the entire night sky

The first of three images of ESO’s GigaGalaxy Zoom project — a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO’s observing sites in Chile — has just been released online. The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world.

This 360-degree panoramic image, covering the entire celestial sphere, reveals the cosmic landscape that surrounds our tiny blue planet. This gorgeous starscape serves as the first of three extremely high-resolution images featured in the GigaGalaxy Zoom project, launched by ESO within the framework of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). GigaGalaxy Zoom features a web tool that allows users to take a breathtaking dive into our Milky Way. With this tool users can learn more about many different and exciting objects in the image, such as multicoloured nebulae and exploding stars, just by clicking on them. In this way, the project seeks to link the sky we can all see with the deep, “hidden” cosmos that astronomers study on a daily basis. The wonderful quality of the images is a testament to the splendour of the night sky at ESO’s sites in Chile, which are the most productive astronomical observatories in the world.

http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2009/pr-32-09.html

Great NEW shots of NGC 6302 (Butterfly Nebula, Bug Nebula), Jet in Carina, Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) & Stephan’s Quintet

They are cool… as all HST images are.

–Ben
==========================
Hubble Opens New Eyes on the Universe

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/

Audiences to Accompany Spacewalking Astronauts as They Perform the Final Upgrade to the Hubble Space Telescope

IMAX Corporation (Nasdaq:IMAX) (TSX:IMX), and Warner Bros. Pictures today announced that Hubble 3D will be released exclusively in IMAX(R) and IMAX(R) 3D theatres worldwide beginning March 19, 2010, with expansion to additional IMAX locations on April 23rd, timed to the Hubble Space Telescope’s 20th Anniversary.

The IMAX 3D camera, which flew onboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, captured stunning 3D images of the intricate spacewalks required to service the telescope during the most recent mission last May. Shot by the STS-125 astronauts, this intimate look at the complexities of repairing the telescope will put IMAX audiences right there along-side the spacewalking astronauts. Hubble 3D will combine this awe-inspiring IMAX footage with breathtaking up-close imagery of distant galaxies, the birth of stars and planets, and more — revealing the cosmos as never before.

“We have waited a long time to get the IMAX camera back into space and finally the opportunity came with the amazing final repair mission of the Hubble Space Telescope,” said Toni Myers, director, producer and editor of the film. “In Hubble 3D, audiences will be able to float in space alongside the astronauts as they perform the repairs and upgrades to the telescope, and then fly to the edge of the universe, through its first new images. Hubble’s incredible legacy changes the way we see and think about the universe, and it is an honor to give people a chance to experience its breath-taking images in IMAX 3D.”

On Wednesday, September 9th, NASA will unveil the first images from the newly re-furbished Hubble Space Telescope. Visit www.nasa.gov for more information.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29129

You also may have noticed some new blog posts by Ben Huset. Ben is an avid follower of space and astronomy news and tidbits and he will be posting some of his findings on the blog. If you’ve gotten used to the fact that we don’t post much on the blog, you are in for a pleasant surprise. Make sure to subscribe to the blog’s RSS or Atom feed to get the latest from Ben.

Remember that the door is always open to you, too! Send us some audio, show ideas, questions or challenges and we will do what we can to do something entertaining with it.

New show in the works, so stay tuned! You haven’t heard the last of Aaron, Rebecca and Travis either…(queue suspenseful music)

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/09/01/satellite-images-of-california-wildfires-mt-wilson-update/

Interesting fire blog posts by /Hal McAlister, Director /CHARA Array @ /Mt Wilson /on (http://www.chara.gsu.edu/CHARA/fire.php)

fire map here
http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/

Mt Wilson is on the SE edge of the fire

*The Mount Wilson webserver has gone down, most likely due to a backfire infiltration of a pull box containing telephone lines that bring us our T1 internet service. The will be no more updates from the Towercam, the last one being upoaded at 13:49:06.

All news updates have now been moved to a different server and are posted here .

Last picture from Mt Wilson webcam posted here
http://mwcam.pna.ucla.edu/towercam.htm

–Ben

==========================

Catalina Sky Survey Spawns Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey

The Catalina Sky Survey detects potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. Now a spin-off survey is finding a windfall of “optical transients” in the same data…

…Thanks to the $890,000 NSF grant awarded this month, the CRTS team soon will construct a Web site that will make roughly 10 terabytes of data taken by the Catalina Sky Survey over the past five years –- as well all new CSS data that continues to stream in — available over the Internet to astronomers worldwide, professional and amateur.

The Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey will be the first and only fully public synoptic sky survey, team members say. It’s a bargain-rate boon to astronomers who are trying to figure out how to manage enormous data streams to be delivered by future synoptic sky survey telescopes…

…Researchers will be able to compare real-time CSS images to any image in the 5-year CSS archive…

http://uanews.org/node/26922

http://crts.caltech.edu/

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/

“…Driven by high winds, flames continued to burn out of control high in the mountains as they neared the Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory and onsite communication towers.

“It’s a serious situation,” said Bob Shindelar, operations branch director of California Incident Management Team 5. “Is the observatory going to make it? We’re doing everything in our power. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it is impacted by fire today or tomorrow.” …

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/08/huge-amounts-of-forest-lost-to-station-fire.html

But you would look even more hot if you were wearing one of our Slacker Astronomy t-shirts. The price includes shipping and 100% of the profits go directly to the production of this podcast. We don’t make any money doing this and we actually couldn’t afford to do this at all except for the generous on-going bandwidth donation from Clockwork.

So please buy a t-shirt if that’s your thing or click the Tip Jar button on the right to provide whatever support you can muster. Thank you in advance and we hope you are enjoying the podcast!

Its REALLY hard to explore beyond Mars if you have to drag a few football fields of solar panels with you.

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/08/10/nasa-may-have-to-revamp-science-without-rtgs/

Doug and I have been underwater lately. Sorry about the lack of new shows! But the gears have been turning and we will have new shows, new blog posts and new new new fun fun fun things coming around the bend in the not-so-distant-future.

So stay tuned!

Got a question or show idea? Email us!

Hi, all. Been a long time! I’m starting my fourth year in grad school and beginning dissertation work. The end is within sight, after which I hope to return to some level of activity. I’m using what few brain cells are left to think up some new, crazy stuff. But until that day eventually comes, I wanted to let you know about this other, crazy new project I’ve begun at my work: Citizen Sky.

This is not your average citizen science project. We are not asking simply for data. We also want to help YOU analyze the data and to help YOU publish YOUR results in professional journals! The idea is that citizen scientists get to experience the entire scientific process, not just one stage.

To help, we are developing tutorials, java-based analysis software with slick GUIs, building online collaborative tools, etc. We are also holding two public workshops. The first is this August at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. That one is focused on data collection and E/PO. The second will be at the California Academies of Science in San Francisco in spring, 2010. That one will be focused on analysis and paper writing. Travel grants are available for each.

Our scientific target is epsilon Aurigae, a VERY bright star that undergoes an eclipse about every 27 years. No one understands the eclipse and there are some neat theories, include one that involves swallowing planets. The system is too bright for the vast majority of professional (and even amateur) telescopes, so we are recruiting the public to monitor the 1-2 year eclipse. Hence the citizen, in citizen science.

This is a big project. We needed the National Science Foundation to fund a grant proposal so we could do it all. The proposal itself took months for me to write, with help from a small army of collaborators. Now the NSF is going to fund us to run this project for 3 years and then, hopefully, expand into other citizen science projects. But the core is this: we want your help as real scientists, more than just data collectors (although you can stick with that if you want).

If interested, register for an account at Citizen Sky. Lots of new announcements will be posted there soon, including the opening of public forums similar to the old ones we had here once upon a time.

Universe Today reports that this technique was successful in finding a planet orbiting another star. They measured the star wobbling back and forth across their images over a 12-year time period. The star is 20 light years away, which is pretty close in astronomical terms, but it is also small, cool and dim, compared to the sun.

So that’s cool. That makes for at least 2 good planet-finding techniques using only imaging, something you can do from your backyard.

I, too, have recollections of great photometrists, having spent time with Dr. Arne Henden and, more recently, Dr. Arlo Landolt. It is a strange science that has given us a great deal of insight into our universe and stars in particular.

From http://hubblesite.org/servicing_mission_4/

As you know, it is the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) as well as the 400th anniversary of the astronomical telescope. There is a very cool telescope that is part of these celebrations, the Galileoscope, and it is only $15 and takes just a few minutes to assemble.

If you are an educator, troop leader or other person in front of young people, you can order the scopes in bulk and receive a discount. Or, if you are a generous sort, you could buy some for your school, church or club. If you order > 99 they cost only $12.50 each!

This is a great project. None of us are doing this for the money. This is not a commercial. This is a great learning experience just waiting to happen and/or just a cool little toy to own.

Buy some!

(picked this up from Dick’s Rocket Dungeon)

We have a new podcast heading your way soon!

The 100 Hours of Astronomy is going on right now! Go see what is near you!

I have to say, we are in good company! On the list in positions 1 through 4 are Phil “Please Digg This” Plait, Alan Boyle of Cosmic Log, who seems like a very smart guy despite the fact that he is an actual journalist, Astronomy Blog, manned by the Brit, Stuart, who is a nice fellow who speaks the Queen’s English and NASA Watch, a web site which does not have any connection whatsoever with, endorsement by, or authorization from, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration nor does any product or service being offered or made available to the public have the authorization, support, sponsorship, or endorsement of, or the development, use, or manufacture by or on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

And then, gloriously, the heaven’s part, angels sing, John Williams conducts and Slacker Astronomy is listed as #5! By this one guy! Sah-weet!

So thank you, some guy. You are tops #5 in our book, too.

Eta Carinae is an enigma. Look it up, it totally is. And it doesn’t look like that is going to change anytime soon! The image at right shows 3 cycles of the X-ray light curve. You can see the most recent event is quite different than previous events. We are watching one of the most massive stars possible changing on ridiculously short times scales.

What is going on? We don’t know.

People familiar with Slacker Astronomy have probably heard of Dr. Roberta Humphreys from my interviews with her. She is a professional astronomer at the University of Minnesota and she is a very well-connected and influential astronomer.

When Roberta Humphreys arrived at the University in 1972, the newly hired 28-year-old assistant professor of astronomy was, as she recalls, “the fifth and youngest woman faculty member in IT.

Her accolades are seriously impressive:

INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR 2001-, ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS, INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 2002-2007; Fellow, AAAS 1980, Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, Federal Republic of Germany, 1988, George W. Taylor Research Award, Institute of Technology, 1985. AAS Tinsley Prize Committee 1994-96, Chair 1995-96; AAS Nominating Committee 1998-2000, Chair, 2000; NASA UV/Optical Review Panel 1995; NASA Senior Review (Office of Space Science) 2001; NASA Senior Review (The Universe) 2006; NSF Special Review for AURA 2000, NSF Special Review Panel for ITR/NVO 2001; NVO Science Definition Team 2001-02; University of Minnesota Member Representative to AURA 2001- 2010, AURA Nominating Committee 2006, Space Telescope Institute Council (AURA) 2004-2010. Senate/Faculty Consultative Committee 1995-96, 1998-2000, Vice-Chair University/Faculty senate 1995-96, 1999-2000;

I am writing about her for several reasons. She has been very kind and supportive of me, a lowly amateur astronomer who wanted to get involved with professional research. She is discussed in the book Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos about her time working with (and disagreeing with) Sandage on the determination the Hubble constant. The “Humphreys-Davidson Limit“, an empirical upper limit of the mass of stars which can become a red supergiant, is named after her and her husband, Dr. Kris Davidson. She is someone that everyone in the astronomical world knows is formidable and not to be trifled with. She is a consummate professional and a brilliant astronomer. Her work on massive stars is unequaled.

Further, she has worked her entire career not just on astronomy but on broadening the role of women in science in general.

She is a (short) giant and I am very grateful that I have been able to work with her and get to know her.

It was almost like looking at old love letters. I felt sad and nostalgic. These were the love letters that started my love affair with astronomy. After my girlfriend got me a telescope, I became an absolutely voracious amateur astronomer. I was part of the “every clear night club” — heading out to observe every clear night, regardless of the temperature, often observing in temperatures -15F (-26C). I eventually built an observatory, spent a fair amount of money on a great telescope, mount and CCD camera and started imaging and eventually doing photometry.

But that’s not all! I joined the Minnesota Astronomical Society, the AAVSO, the AAS (eventually) and the ASP. I started doing research in the department at the University of Minnesota. I started taking calculus and physics classes, eventually getting a BS in Astrophysics.

I got the bug big time.

When all of this started I was single. Eventually I got married and had one kid and then another. I started a new business along the way, which grew from $0 in revenue to $5M and from 4 people to 35. So my life, during my quest to learn as much as I could about astronomy, changed a lot. Suffice to say, I am no longer a member of the “every clear night club”. I’ve also satisfied a lot of my initial curiosity about astronomy. I got a BS in Astrophysics because I wanted to know how math could explain stars. I took classes on stars, galaxies, cosmology, computational physics — it was awesome. I learned (to some minor extent) about things like thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and relativity. I could read entire paragraphs of Chandrasakar and understand it!

I also got gigabytes of data at my observatory. I plotted light curves, made periodograms and Fourier spectra. I wrote code to reduce data, learned IRAF and presented posters at professional meetings. I even got involved with Slacker Astronomy!

I’m not bragging, in case that is what it seems. I still know much less than every PhD student of astronomy in the world. I’m no genius and am probably not particularly gifted at astrophysics. But I love it and I loved learning about it.

But in some small way I burned out. The pressure of going to my observatory (which is 45 minutes away by car) while taking classes and going to meetings, all the while raising a family and building a business, was too much. Eventually my observing had to go — I couldn’t keep up with my classes and be up all night. Then, after I got my degree, I found I still wasn’t observing much, and when I did, I didn’t even bother to reduce the data.

What had happened to me? Did this love affair with astronomy die…?

The answer, I know, is no. There is a time for everything and there is nothing to be gained by trying to cram things in when it doesn’t feel right. I need to take care of my family and my business. In the meantime, I am exploring hobbies that I can enjoy closer to home. Someday…a day I look forward to very much…I will live in a place where my observatory can be in my backyard. Someday my kids will grow up, my business will be sold and I will be back in my mistress’s arms again, through the long, beautiful night.

We have some new podcasts in the works…check the feed soon for some new audio.

Busy busy!

M.

You, as their constituent, have more voice than you are probably aware. If you go to your City Council or equivalent they will listen to you. They won’t necessarily act in your favor but they will, for sure, listen to you.

Light pollution is a lose-lose scenario. Said more positively, smart lighting saves money and is more safe than lights which create light pollution. You don’t have to be an astronomer to understand that light should be directed where needed and should not shine where/when it is not needed or unwelcome. To me, that is just obvious.

So the International Dark Sky Association (IDA) is doing a very, very smart thing. They are creating a model lighting ordinance that you can propose to your City Council. Just print it out, go to a meeting (or even meet with City Councilors individually) and tell them you want them to put this on the agenda, debate it and bring it to a vote. Insist that they do so. If they seem unwilling to listen to you, get a bunch of your neighbors to sign a petition saying you insist that they consider adopting an ordinance based on the model lighting ordinance.

The IDA is currently seeking feedback on the model lighting ordinance. If you are an astronomer, a developer, a corporation, lobbyist, public servant or someone who lives somewhere, take a moment to read the ordinance and let the IDA know if you think it can be improved.

I really believe that we can ultimately win the war against light pollution and bring the beauty of the night sky back to our cities. At the same time we will be safer and we’ll be saving money. I applaud the IDA for working towards this goal.

Check out some of these titles:

Armchair Astronauts Exploring the Solar System
Five Years of Spirit on Mars
Galileo Discovers Jupiter’s Moons, Going to Disneyworld
Gosh, Dim It All!
Have a Plan
How to be an Armchair Astronaut
January’s Garnet Star
Massive Stars with Dr. Roberta Humphreys
Observing Quasars with Nature’s Telescope
Pulsars
Radio Astronomy. What’s That
Space Telescope of the Future: The Space Interferometry Mission
The Link Between Beer and Space Settlement
The Man Who Beat Galileo
The North Star
The Seasons and Solar System Geometry
The Spacewriter’s Top Ten Reasons Why Stargazing is Cool
Tips For Your First Telescope
Understanding Variable Stars
Voyage Past the Sideways Planet
What is Astrobiology
Who Ordered the Dark Matter and Dark Energy

It’s all been really great stuff. Maybe I’ll link those titles when I have time.

Anyway, if you are not listening, it’s not too late. Since the podcasts are only 10 minutes or so, you can listen to a week’s worth in about an hour.

So get on it!

If Apple can’t survive without Steve Jobs Apple can’t survive. I hope Steve Jobs is at Apple for another couple of decades, but if he has to leave the leadership of the company, I am confident he has created a company and a culture that will survive him and thrive after he moves on.

So if you are within driving distance of the Rock Bottom Brewery in Long Beach, CA, USA, stop by and say hi!

You can also follow the action on Twitter.

[A] team of scientists says it has found new evidence that a comet triggered [an] extinction …13,000 years ago, when humans were around to witness the event and suffer its terrible consequences.

The researchers also think that when the comet exploded above the planet’s surface—ultimately killing off mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other large mammals that roamed North America…

The paper, published in Science magazine, is also discussed at Scientific American.

If you haven’t already, you should head over to http://365daysofastronomy.org/ and subscribe to the daily astronomy podcast. The first episode is on the feed with another scheduled to publish tomorrow, and so on, every day for the rest of the year.

There’s also a calendar of events which is growing every day. Lots to see and do!

Two Eyes, 3D

It’s about stereoscopic vision and technology, what most people associated with “3D glasses”. It’s the center of my research interest in grad school. So if you are into that sort of stuff, check it out.

I guess it will have something to do with astronomy. My first stereoscopic research was done at the Adler Planetarium (hopefully to be published soon so you can read it) and my next research will likely involve galaxy simulations. I’ll describe it all in detail at the other blog. And I hope to write more for Slacker also. I’m done with classes in grad school now!

In summary:

Maximum Altitude Definition of 150 kilometers or 492,120 feet. This is in place of old rules about the maximum burn time below.
Suborbital Requirement. You can’t go into orbit without upping the amount of papework!
Not Cross International Boundary. Related to the above, you can’t cross borders with your rockets.
Elimination of Burn Time and Ballistic Coefficient Requirements. You don’t have to compute the density of your rocket or limit it by burn time.
Revision of Amateur Rocket Classes. There are now 4 classes of rockets, “Model”, “High-Power Rockets, “Advanced High-Power Rockets” and “Other”. The model rocket category no longer requires any notification to the FAA for launches. The maximum weight of a model rocket has gone from 16 oz. to 53 oz. and the maximum propellent from 4 oz. to 4.4 oz.

Here is a screenshot of the new classes of rockets:

All in all it looks like pretty good news for amateur rocketeers, especially those flying smaller rockets.

The article at The New Scientist makes a good point for commercial rocket programs as well:

The main importance of this for the entrepreneurial space community is the removal of the burn-time limit. With that change, many small rocket vehicles qualify as amateur rockets, at least for early development testing.

Now if we could only get the ATF to lighten up on the hobby.

As listeners know, I like to critique poor astronomy press releases. Part of the problem stems from writers who base entire articles on those press releases, with doing no vetting on their own. Can you imagine if political writers did that? They do? Okay, you’re making it hard to make my point, so I’ll distract you with shiny things and dangling string and get back to the topic at hand…

I want to throw a shout out to Clara Moskowitz at Wired.com for this article. It is a very simple article about naked eye astronomy this week. I find it a practically perfect astronomy piece. It doesn’t hype it but it still puts the event in perspective. It’s clear, correct and to-the-point. This conjunction was especially beautiful and I know many non-astro friends who commented on it to me. It was so well placed that the public was interested. Look at the comments she got on that post: 81 vs. the comments she got on her most recent post before that: 10. A story like hers will be a great gateway for the general public to learn a bit more – and perhaps come back later for more.

I only took points off for the obligatory Star of Bethlehem reference that every astronomy news outlet trots out every twelve months. But I can hardly fault her for getting into the Christmas spirit.

I haven’t read her stories before, so I’ve bookmarked her column and look forward to more. I checked out a couple of her most recent and they seem similarly clear, with some light humor thrown into each piece. She seems especially handy at headline writing.

Kudos to Clara. Wired, take care of her!

This is a little video from a project I’ve been working on. It’s, um, kinda-sorta related to space and stuff?

I could go on and on about Eta Car. It’s a fascinating system and one of the likely candidates for a nearby supernova in our lifetimes. For more info, a great place to start is the HST Treasury Program on Eta Carinae.

* 1664 Isaac Barrow
* 1669 Sir Isaac Newton
* 1702 William Whiston
* 1711 Nicholas Saunderson
* 1739 John Colson
* 1760 Edward Waring
* 1798 Isaac Milner
* 1820 Robert Woodhouse
* 1822 Thomas Turton
* 1826 Sir George Biddell Airy
* 1828 Charles Babbage
* 1839 Joshua King
* 1849 Sir George Stokes
* 1903 Sir Joseph Larmor
* 1932 Paul Dirac
* 1969 Sir James Lighthill
* 1979 Stephen Hawking

I wonder who is next?

PS – there’s a new podcast on the feed. Will be posting it here soon.

If you like astronomy and you like listening to podcasts then 2009 is going to be a very, very good year for you. Slacker Astronomy is going to be a strong supporter and contributor to The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast, the Daily Podcast of the IYA.

The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is a project that will publish one podcast per day, 5 to 10 minutes in duration, for all 365 days of 2009. The podcast will be made available through an RSS feed. The podcast episodes will be written, recorded and produced by people around the world.
…
We are looking for individuals, schools, companies and clubs to provide 5 – 10 minutes of audio for our daily podcast. You can do as few as 1 episode or up to 12 episodes (one per month, subject, of course, to our editorial discretion). Our goal is to encourage people to sign up for a particular day (or days) of 2009.

So tell your mom, dad, child, grandfather, friend, school, troop, club or friend that you want to make one measly 10 minute podcast about astronomy to help out and, perhaps, be famous.

Ears around the world are counting on you.

So join in!

Hubble Space Telescope malfunctions, space shuttle repair mission uncertain, NASA says

I wanted to post the cartoon in this post but they probably don’t like that.

The 46 billion year part is only off by a factor of 4 or so.

In the meantime, I was thinking, it’s time to solicit openly what we’ve all been thinking — why is there no asteroid named “slacker” or “slackerastronomy”? We need some ambitious and slightly demented asteroid chaser to step up to the table and name an asteroid after us! Don’t you agree?

Cassini images reveal the existence of a faint arc of material orbiting with Saturn’s small moon Anthe.

The moon is moving downward and to the right in this perspective. In this image, most of the visible material in the arc lies ahead of Anthe (2 kilometers, 1 mile across) in its orbit. However, over time the moon drifts slowly back and forth with respect to the arc.

The arc extends over about 20 degrees in longitude (about 5.5 percent of Anthe’s orbit) and appears to be associated with a gravitational resonance caused by the moon Mimas. Micrometeoroid impacts on Anthe are the likely source of the arc material.

Andrew Fraknoi over at the ASP has put together a nice collection about women in astronomy. He describes it as “…a resource for those educators and students who wish to explore the challenges and triumphs of women [in astronomy] of the past and present.”

There are tons of really smart, really cool women astronomers doing outstanding work in astronomy. Often when you read about women in astronomy it’s about women of the past. It’s nice to see focus on today’s women astronomers. There are people like Wendy Freedman, pictured above, out there kicking professional astronomy ass as we speak.

Speaking of which, here is a YouTube video I found of one of my favorite astronomers, irrespective of gender, Dr. Roberta Humphreys, talking about women in astronomy.

Emily sums it up perfectly:

The longer I listened to the “great planet debate” last week, the more strongly I felt that if it were up to me, I would define “planet” to mean “everything in the universe that’s smaller than a star.” The fact of the matter is, every time I speak about any object visited by a spacecraft, I make frequent slips of the tongue. I call Titan a planet. I call Enceladus a planet. I’ve even called Tempel 1 a planet. They’re all wanderers, all places to visit. Subdivide it however you like — it makes sense to speak of giant (or Jovian) planets, ice giant planets, major planets, terrestrial planets, minor planets, dwarf planets, binary planets, whatever. But just look around at the people who call themselves “planetary scientists” and see what they study. It’s all of the above.

Then she goes on to show the relative sizes of some interesting “planets” in the solar system, using her interesting definition. Definitely worth a read.

We present the first resolved images of the eclipsing binary Beta Lyrae, obtained with the CHARA Array interferometer and the MIRC combiner in the H band. The images clearly show the mass donor and the thick disk surrounding the mass gainer at all six epochs of observation. The donor is brighter and generally appears elongated in the images, the first direct detection of photospheric tidal distortion due to Roche-lobe filling.

This is the beginning of a new era of imaging systems that have hitherto been observed (somewhat) indirectly. We understand systems like Beta Lyrae very, very well. But resolving the components is something new and quite exciting. The image on the right is Figure 2 from the paper and shows the images from both instruments as well as a model of the system.

So add this one to Google Reader and you’ll get a firehose of great astronomy blogging.

UPDATE: D’oh, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. Right now there is no RSS feed and eventually the site will be password-protected and access granted by request to editors of astro club newsletters and websites. So get it while you can!