Astronomy
catdynamics | June 18, 2014Day two of the New Frontiers wrap-up conference. This is a slow liveblog with more cosmology and life in the universe. Yesterday's summary is here
A couple of years ago, the Templeton Foundation funded the New Frontiers program to pose "Big Questions" in some areas of science.
This is a slow liveblog - part II will be tomorrow with more cosmology and life in the universe
Seed funding was provided to 20 investigators and small groups to start exploratory research, and, now, it is time to say what they found.
This follows up from the New Frontiers kick-off conference back in 2012.
We start the…
catdynamics | June 17, 2014A couple of years ago, the Templeton Foundation funded the New Frontiers program to pose "Big Questions" in some areas of science.
This is a slow liveblog - part II will be tomorrow with more cosmology and life in the universe
Seed funding was provided to 20 investigators and small groups to start exploratory research, and, now, it is time to say what they found.
This follows up from the New Frontiers kick-off conference back in 2012.
The New Frontiers conference to report the hint of the beginning of the draft of the answers is under way... most of the investigators and about half of the…
esiegel | June 16, 2014“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” -Neil Armstrong
When you think about the faintest object in the Messier catalogue -- which happens to be an extended, low-surface-brightness galaxy -- you probably don't think that looking for it on one of the shortest nights of the year just after a full Moon is ideal. Yet, in the case of Messier 91, that may well be the best time to look for it!
Image credit: © 2006 — 2012 by Siegfried…
esiegel | June 9, 2014“Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.” -Louisa May Alcott
On Messier Monday, we take a look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects that makes up the Messier catalogue. On night with bright Moons -- like this one -- objects like nebulae and galaxies make terrible targets, but star-and-globular clusters are still fair game. And, in particular, each one can teach us something different, and offer…
catdynamics | June 9, 2014"There is no dark side of the moon really.
Matter of fact it's all dark."
While the Moon has a nearside and a farside, it does not, actually, have a dark side or a light side, now. At least not a fixed dark side, just a slowly moving night side, and day side.
But it used to. Sorta.
"I remember the first time I saw a globe of the moon as a boy, being struck by how different the farside looks," said Jason Wright, assistant professor of astrophysics. "It was all mountains and craters. Where were the maria? It turns out it's been a mystery since the fifties."
Jason, Arpita Roy a Penn State grad…
esiegel | June 5, 2014“There is nothing more contemptible than a bald man who pretends to have hair.” -Martial
There's nothing worse in the world of science than spending your life working your heart out on a problem... and getting scooped by someone who did your work just a little bit faster and a little bit better.
Image credit: © www.astropolis.fr, via http://www.astropolis.fr/articles/Biographies-des-grands-savants-et-ast….
And -- in the world of style -- there's no worse fate for a bald man than to choose the combover as their hairstyle-of-choice. Yet despite falling victim to both of these tragedies, John…
esiegel | June 2, 2014“But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.” -John Adams
Not every swarm is a danger, however, particularly if you're talking about the densest individual swarms of stars out there in the Universe: globular clusters!
Image credit: © 2006 — 2012 by Siegfried Kohlert, via http://www.astroimages.de/en/gallery/M107.html.
For today's Messier Monday, the Moon will be out and polluting your skies, but that doesn…
esiegel | May 28, 2014“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou, R.I.P.
It isn't often that I post a time-lapse video for you to enjoy, but then again it isn't often that I find one as well-constructed and with the potential to be so educational -- to showcase so much about space as it relates to the Earth -- as Thomas O'Brien's fantastic video.
Image credit: Thomas O’Brien of http://www.tmophoto.com/.
Simply titled "Meteor," this is Thomas's first foray into creating a time-lapse video, but don't let…
esiegel | May 26, 2014“Man must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives.” -Socrates
It's hard to believe that it's been nearly two years since we started our Messier Monday series, and so with only 110 objects to go through, we're actually starting to run out of objects! The most numerous type of object in the Messier Catalogue are the galaxies, but only a handful of those remain.
Image credit: The Messier Objects by Alistair Symon, from 2005-2009, via http://www.woodlandsobservatory.com/messier_map.htm.
Still, the richest…
esiegel | May 20, 2014“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” -Jack London
Here on Earth, we think of shooting stars and meteor showers as things that happen periodically; sometimes they're spectacular, sometimes they're rare. But in all cases, they're caused by comet debris, and they should flare up each time the Earth crosses the comet's path.
Image credit: Gerald Rhemann, of Comet Lemmon, from April 21, 2012.
But as it turns out, every meteor shower had a point in its past where it happened for the very…
esiegel | May 19, 2014“Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But what would he have been without me?” -Joe Frazier
We don't normally think of deep-sky objects -- seemingly fixed structures in the sky -- as fighting for their lives, but when you're a spiral galaxy caught in a gravitational storm, that's exactly what you're up against!
Image credit: Blackwater Skies 2013-14, via http://www.blackwaterskies.co.uk/2013/09/widefield-in-virgo-cluster-of-….
With some 2,000 other galaxies, densely clustered towards the center, what are you to do if you're a very large spiral headed through that region at…
esiegel | May 12, 2014“It’s not what you have on the outside that glitters in light, it’s what you have on the inside that shines in the dark.” -Anthony Liccione
You might look out at a picture of a star cluster, globular cluster, or galaxy in space and think of this as mundane by this point in time. After all, how many of these have you seen by this point in your life, and so what's one more?
Image credit: © 1998-2004 David Haworth, via http://www.stargazing.net/david/messierD70/m10.html.
But you have to remember that for all of human history, we not only couldn't see these things at all, but when we enhanced…
esiegel | May 5, 2014“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” -John Lubbock
Each Messier Monday, we take a look at one of the 110 deep sky wonders that make up the Messier catalogue, each one providing a unique window into our nearby Universe and the history it holds. This week, however, rather than giving you a delight that's easily visible in the early part of the night from my (45° N) Latitude, let's celebrate cinco de Mayo by showing you one that …
esiegel | May 3, 2014“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” -Walt Whitman
To those of you who regularly enjoy clear, dark skies and the wondrous sights they bring, you have not only my envy, but the envy of a great many of us who long to have the wonders of the Universe directly accessible to our eyes. As the Jayhawks sing, you might be dreaming of
Stumbling Through The Dark.
But the way our modern world works, humans tend to be clustered together in heavily light-polluted cities.
Image credit: Google Maps / Blue Marble / NASA Earth Observatory, via http://www.blue-marble.de/nightlights/2012.
But…
esiegel | May 1, 2014“Most estimates of the mortality risk posed by asteroid impacts put it at about the same risk as flying in a commercial airliner. However, you have to remember that this is like the entire human race riding the plane — it is one of the few risks that really could wipe us all out.” -Nathan Myhrvold
Yes, it's easy to say that even though the risks of getting killed by an asteroid strike are low, the consequences of a major asteroid strike are simply too high for us to not address this threat.
Image credit: Don Davis.
But is that really true? This isn't pontificating; this is science! And in…
esiegel | April 30, 2014“What you do is, you have your drawing board and a pencil in hand at the telescope. You look in and you make some markings on the paper and you look in again.” -Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto
We often make a big distinction between professional and amateur today, and very rarely expect to find amateurs whose contributions to a major scientific enterprise will change the field forever. Yet back in the 19th Century, even astronomy and physics -- arguably the most developed of the sciences at the time -- had room for pioneers from all walks of life.
Image credit: Copperplate engraving…
esiegel | April 28, 2014“Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” -Dr. Seuss
With 110 objects in the Messier catalogue, and 40 galaxies (more than any other class of object), you might take a "if you've seen one, you've seen them all" attitude. But if you did, you'd be missing out on some truly amazing facts and phenomena happening right here in our own backyard!
Image credit: courtesy of Sloan Digital Sky Survey/WIKISKY, via http://www2011.mpe.mpg.de/highlights.html.…
esiegel | April 23, 2014“Don’t gain the world and lose your soul;
wisdom is better than silver or gold.” -Bob Marley
Going back to ancient times, it's hard to think of a more commonly coveted element than gold. In fact, trying to transmute other elements into it was perhaps the holy grail of the pseudoscience of alchemy, the forerunner of modern chemistry.
Image credit: National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia, of Etruscan Gold, via flickr user HEN-Magonza, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hen-magonza/4256649637/.
Yet, when was the last time you thought about where elements like gold actually came from? It's true…
esiegel | April 21, 2014“The line that describes the beautiful is elliptical. It has simplicity and constant change. It cannot be described by a compass, and it changes direction at every one of its points.” -Rudolf Arnheim
It's not every day that a nearby, well-studied galaxy turns your understanding of an entire class of common objects -- in this case, elliptical galaxies -- on its head. But Messier 105 is not your typical elliptical galaxy!
Image credit: Rick Beno of Conferring With The Sky Observatory, via http://www.conferringwiththesky.org/displayimage.php?pid=500.
At 32 million light-years distant, it's…
esiegel | April 15, 2014“When I was having that alphabet soup, I never thought that it would pay off.” -Vanna White
A couple of years ago, I had the idea to make a special entry showcasing 26 different astronomical phenomena, one for each letter of the alphabet. Today, that idea's been built upon and improved, and I'm happy to present to you, complete with rhyming couplets,
Image credit: Flickr user Image Editor / 11304375@N07.
from A for Aurora to Z for Zenith...
Image credit: The Milky Way through a Fisheye Lens, from Kitt Peak National Observatory.
the Astro Alphabet! Go and enjoy the whole, beautiful thing!