Astronomy & Space
- The Big Bang Theory
- Seeing Mercury and Stars
- Dark-Sky Vacation
- Saying Good-bye to Orion
- Honoring Astronomy Day
- A Colorful Universe
- Horton Hears A Who
- Aurora Watch
- Sunrise, Sunset
- March Comes In Like a Lion
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
Can you make a comedy about egg-heads?
A new show on CBS this season is called The Big Bang Theory. It involves a group of young men who work in physics and other related areas. (Although please don't call Sheldon a rocket scientist.) The show is hit and miss. The main character, Leonard, is frequently outshined by his friends.
I can appreciate The Big Bang Theory for the small things, including the picture of a galaxy used as artwork on one of the walls of their apartment. It also has a small sequence at the beginning showing a computerized vision of the universe and solar system. Unfortunately, the theme song sings that "over 14 million years ago expansion started...". Not to split hairs or anything, but the Big Bang occured about 14 BILLION years ago, not million. I realize that this song, sung by one of my favorite groups, The Barenaked Ladies, has "billion" in the written version of the lyrics, but in the song it definitely sounds like "million". Oops.
On a recent episode, the subject of birthdays and astrology came up. The attractive but of average-intelligence neighbor girl is given a lecture by Sheldon on how astrology is fiction, not fact. The girl's response is, "Typical Taurus". This was funny to me, because according to the books, I, too, am a Taurus. I'm not sure if the Taurus trait she was referring to was that of a skeptic or of someone who refutes other's fancies with fact, but either way I'll admit to embodying those traits.
I can appreciate The Big Bang Theory for the small things, including the picture of a galaxy used as artwork on one of the walls of their apartment. It also has a small sequence at the beginning showing a computerized vision of the universe and solar system. Unfortunately, the theme song sings that "over 14 million years ago expansion started...". Not to split hairs or anything, but the Big Bang occured about 14 BILLION years ago, not million. I realize that this song, sung by one of my favorite groups, The Barenaked Ladies, has "billion" in the written version of the lyrics, but in the song it definitely sounds like "million". Oops.
On a recent episode, the subject of birthdays and astrology came up. The attractive but of average-intelligence neighbor girl is given a lecture by Sheldon on how astrology is fiction, not fact. The girl's response is, "Typical Taurus". This was funny to me, because according to the books, I, too, am a Taurus. I'm not sure if the Taurus trait she was referring to was that of a skeptic or of someone who refutes other's fancies with fact, but either way I'll admit to embodying those traits.
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
My son and I do a little more stargazing.
Now that the weather is not so cold at night I am more apt to spend some time outdoors stargazing. Tonight my son joined me. He just finished a unit on astronomy in school, and it has resparked his interest in the subject. I couldn't be happier!
Tonight we were able to see Mercury before it set. Because it follows the sun's track, it is low in the sky in the last place to get dark. Fortunately you can see it before it gets completely dark and disappears below the horizon. To the upper right we caught the star Capella in Mercury.
Tonight Mars, Pollux, and Castor are lined up from left to right. We saw them and Betelgeuse below in Orion plus Procyon in Canis Minor and our brightest star, Sirius, in Canis Major. Overhead and toward the south we saw yellowish-white Saturn appear next to Regulus before the rest of the stars of Leo filled in. Straight up was the Big Dipper, and then we ventured into our backyard to look east, where the handle of the Big Dipper arced to bright and reddish Arcturus in Bootes and then we sped on down to Spica in Virgo.
The last item we saw was Vega rising in the northeast before I had to hustle him up to bed. And it turned out that Vega was the most exciting thing to him. "I saw one of the stars in the Summer Triangle!" he exclaimed. Which, of course, means that summer is on its way, with more warm days to play outside, more warm nights to stargaze, and best of all for my son, no more school. He couldn't be happier.
Tonight we were able to see Mercury before it set. Because it follows the sun's track, it is low in the sky in the last place to get dark. Fortunately you can see it before it gets completely dark and disappears below the horizon. To the upper right we caught the star Capella in Mercury.
Tonight Mars, Pollux, and Castor are lined up from left to right. We saw them and Betelgeuse below in Orion plus Procyon in Canis Minor and our brightest star, Sirius, in Canis Major. Overhead and toward the south we saw yellowish-white Saturn appear next to Regulus before the rest of the stars of Leo filled in. Straight up was the Big Dipper, and then we ventured into our backyard to look east, where the handle of the Big Dipper arced to bright and reddish Arcturus in Bootes and then we sped on down to Spica in Virgo.
The last item we saw was Vega rising in the northeast before I had to hustle him up to bed. And it turned out that Vega was the most exciting thing to him. "I saw one of the stars in the Summer Triangle!" he exclaimed. Which, of course, means that summer is on its way, with more warm days to play outside, more warm nights to stargaze, and best of all for my son, no more school. He couldn't be happier.
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
If you are planning a summer vacation, will it take you to dark-sky territory?
Bright lights and big city appeal to some people on vacation, but others prefer the quiet solitude that will actually allow us to relax.
There are many places in the United States that still have extraordinarily dark skies. And they are easy to find. Just look at a map of the US to see where the artificial city lights are and are not. Maps for Europe and other parts of the world also reveal these locations.
In the US, your best bet is to head west of the Mississippi River. The northwest corner of Nevada or southeast corner of Oregon seems so dark that you wonder if you could see your hand in front of your face on a moonless night.
Another great state for darkness is Big Sky Country itself, Montana. This is where I will be headed for summer vacation. From space, it must appear as if someone forget to pay the electric bill in this part of the country.
While I will be staying in a lodge, campers and backpackers are the ones who have the best opportunity to truly get away from it all, including manmade lighting.
Are you planning a vacation into the wilderness this year? Don't forget to step outside before bedtime and check out the glittering sky above you.
There are many places in the United States that still have extraordinarily dark skies. And they are easy to find. Just look at a map of the US to see where the artificial city lights are and are not. Maps for Europe and other parts of the world also reveal these locations.
In the US, your best bet is to head west of the Mississippi River. The northwest corner of Nevada or southeast corner of Oregon seems so dark that you wonder if you could see your hand in front of your face on a moonless night.
Another great state for darkness is Big Sky Country itself, Montana. This is where I will be headed for summer vacation. From space, it must appear as if someone forget to pay the electric bill in this part of the country.
While I will be staying in a lodge, campers and backpackers are the ones who have the best opportunity to truly get away from it all, including manmade lighting.
Are you planning a vacation into the wilderness this year? Don't forget to step outside before bedtime and check out the glittering sky above you.
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
Orion is always tops on a list of people's favorite constellations. Yet its disappearance is welcome for it signals the return of spring.
There are many things that herald the beginning of spring to different people. Some people see the return of birds such as robins as a sign of spring. Others look for bulbs poking through the dirt. But amateur astronomers see Orion disappearing in the west as a sign of spring.
At the end of April, after the sun sets in the west, the sky grows dark and the constellation Orion remains above the horizon. It will follow the sun down, with the bright star Rigel leading and Betelgeuse disappearing last.
Take your last chance to view the Orion Nebula. Nearby, other winter sights are setting for the season. The Pleiades star cluster is also doing down, as is the brightest star in the sky, Sirius.
The entire Milky Way itself, along with all its thick star clusters and nebulas, is sinking toward the horizon. Looking into our galaxy from the side shows us many beautiful deep-sky objects, including those in Orion. But the deepest deep-sky objects are best seen in spring away from Orion, looking out away from our galaxy and into the depth of space, where galaxies and clusters of galaxies lie.
Good-bye winter's Orion, hello spring galaxies!
At the end of April, after the sun sets in the west, the sky grows dark and the constellation Orion remains above the horizon. It will follow the sun down, with the bright star Rigel leading and Betelgeuse disappearing last.
Take your last chance to view the Orion Nebula. Nearby, other winter sights are setting for the season. The Pleiades star cluster is also doing down, as is the brightest star in the sky, Sirius.
The entire Milky Way itself, along with all its thick star clusters and nebulas, is sinking toward the horizon. Looking into our galaxy from the side shows us many beautiful deep-sky objects, including those in Orion. But the deepest deep-sky objects are best seen in spring away from Orion, looking out away from our galaxy and into the depth of space, where galaxies and clusters of galaxies lie.
Good-bye winter's Orion, hello spring galaxies!
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
How will you celebrate Astronomy Day this year?
Find ways to honor Astronomy Day this year. The date occurs on Monday, April 21. Here are some ideas of what you can do:
- Take a tour of a local observatory. If you don't have a big observatory nearby, check with local astronomy clubs for private observatories that may be open to the public at night to allow for some advanced stargazing.
- Visit a planetarium. If it's cloudy you can still see the night's stars. Planetariums will usually walk you through what the night sky looks like in your location at that time of year so that the next clear night that comes along you will be able to go out and identify stars, constellations, and planets from what you learned at the planetarium.
- View the meteor shower. The Lyrids occur overnight on the 21st. The meteors will occur all night but after the nearly full moon rises it will be hard to catch fainter ones. Take some time to see what else you can spot in the night sky and when the moon comes out, turn a pair of binoculars on it to see the mountain ridges and valleys.
- Borrow some astronomy videos from the library. Try the Cosmos series or some of Nova's space-related shows.
- Pick up a book or magazine on astronomy and learn more about your favorite subject, whether that be starwatching, the science of exploding stars, or the creation of the universe.
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
What are the true hues of the cosmos?
Is there a space object for every color of the rainbow? One of my favorite objects of all is one that shows a rainbow of colors in one place: the Rho Ophiuchi Cluster and Nebula.
- Red - There are many space objects that are red. Mars is considered red as well as the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, however in reality both are a bit more orange in color. The vast majority of nebulae, when photographed, appear red. One example is the Red Square Nebula. There are also many red stars, including Betelgeuse.
- Orange - Mars and the Great Red Spot, as mentioned above, are described as red, but usually appear more like an orange hue in real life. The Flame Nebula is a good example of an orange-hued nebula.
- Yellow and Blue - I put yellow and blue together because so often you see the one color by benefit of it being near the other color. The double star Albireo is famous as being a blue and yellow star pair. There are a number of galaxies that also combine yellow and blue, with lighter colored cores and bluer in the arms, plus yellow and blue star forming regions. The colliding galaxies M51 illustrate the yellow/blue combination well.
- Green - Green is the most common color found close to home, in the aurora or the sun's green flash. Uranus is also a greenish blue, and the Cat's Eye Nebula has a wonderful green edging.
- Purple - Purple shows up often on the outskirts of red nebulae. The Witch Head Nebula also sometimes looks purple instead of blue depending on the processing.
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
A children's movie and book revolves around the astronomical idea of our size in the space of the universe.
I just saw the movie Horton Hears a Who with my family. I already knew the story from the Dr. Seuss book. While the movie, by necessity, adds material to the book to make it long enough to fill 88 minutes, it keeps the theme of a whole world of people that fits on a speck.
Whoville, this world on a speck that sits on a bit of flowering clover, feels normal-sized to its inhabitants, but compared to Horton the elephant's world, it is almost immeasurably small.
This is an idea that pops up in the astronomical world. Maybe our universe, while seeming incomprehensibly large to us, is actually the size of a soap bubble floating in someone else's universe.
While there may be only one universe - ours - a popular theory exists that there are multiverses, each one vastly different from the next. The trick, though, is that for the most part universes are not able to communicate with each other so there is no ability to know what other universes are like or even that they are really there.
Dr. Seuss presents this idea of two "universes" yet they are still able to communicate with each other, although with great difficulty. Scientists would love to take a page from Dr. Seuss's book and use a big bull horn to shout at our cosmic neighbors. In any case, the movie or book is a great way to introduce the idea of multiple universes to children.
Whoville, this world on a speck that sits on a bit of flowering clover, feels normal-sized to its inhabitants, but compared to Horton the elephant's world, it is almost immeasurably small.
This is an idea that pops up in the astronomical world. Maybe our universe, while seeming incomprehensibly large to us, is actually the size of a soap bubble floating in someone else's universe.
While there may be only one universe - ours - a popular theory exists that there are multiverses, each one vastly different from the next. The trick, though, is that for the most part universes are not able to communicate with each other so there is no ability to know what other universes are like or even that they are really there.
Dr. Seuss presents this idea of two "universes" yet they are still able to communicate with each other, although with great difficulty. Scientists would love to take a page from Dr. Seuss's book and use a big bull horn to shout at our cosmic neighbors. In any case, the movie or book is a great way to introduce the idea of multiple universes to children.
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
The equinoxes bring "aurora season".
Scientists have observed for some time now that around the equinoxes, in the months of March and September, Earth seems to have a greater occurrence of aurorae. While they are still not entirely sure why this is so, it gives us another reason to look forward to spring skies.
I like to check the POES web site if I want to know how active the aurora is. The NOAA POES satellite has various web pages that report the data it is receiving. I check out the location and size of the auroral oval to see if there is a chance of seeing it from where I live. I also like to check the recent data plots page. Under activity level, the bigger the number means the more active aurorae have been. For most people in the continental US to see aurora, the activity level has to be at 10. There is also a link to watch the most recent data blended into an animated movie of the auroral oval as it fluctuates.
If there is no activity near you but you still want to get a glimpse of what other people are seeing, go to spaceweather.com. Here you will find reports of where in the world the aurora is putting on its show, and observers are always happy to share their best shots with the web site.
Tonight the activity level is at a 7, so I am off to gaze at some good photos of the northern lights, and hope that I get my turn to see them firsthand very soon.
I like to check the POES web site if I want to know how active the aurora is. The NOAA POES satellite has various web pages that report the data it is receiving. I check out the location and size of the auroral oval to see if there is a chance of seeing it from where I live. I also like to check the recent data plots page. Under activity level, the bigger the number means the more active aurorae have been. For most people in the continental US to see aurora, the activity level has to be at 10. There is also a link to watch the most recent data blended into an animated movie of the auroral oval as it fluctuates.
If there is no activity near you but you still want to get a glimpse of what other people are seeing, go to spaceweather.com. Here you will find reports of where in the world the aurora is putting on its show, and observers are always happy to share their best shots with the web site.
Tonight the activity level is at a 7, so I am off to gaze at some good photos of the northern lights, and hope that I get my turn to see them firsthand very soon.
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
My waking hour depends largely on the season.
With the slow return of spring, I find myself waking earlier than I do in winter. I don't use an alarm clock and trust myself to wake up when I need to. ALthough sometimes I need a little help.
In the winter, I am often surprised by just how tired I am when my son comes in to wake me up at seven in the morning. It is still dark out and I feel the need to sleep for "just a bit longer". Unfortunately I have to get him ready for school so extra sleep is not possible.
As February turns to March, I find myself waking up earlier (and feeling rested) than I have been for many months, yet I have still been going to bed at night the same time. The difference is that the sun has been coming up earlier and lighting my room in the six o'clock hour. I feel more awake in the morning and ready to face the day on these mornings than I did in the dead of winter.
With the changing of the clocks on March 8/9, more darkness will return to the morning hours. Besides the bonus evening light, this will allow me to sleep a bit longer in the morning and, with any luck, my son too.
In the winter, I am often surprised by just how tired I am when my son comes in to wake me up at seven in the morning. It is still dark out and I feel the need to sleep for "just a bit longer". Unfortunately I have to get him ready for school so extra sleep is not possible.
As February turns to March, I find myself waking up earlier (and feeling rested) than I have been for many months, yet I have still been going to bed at night the same time. The difference is that the sun has been coming up earlier and lighting my room in the six o'clock hour. I feel more awake in the morning and ready to face the day on these mornings than I did in the dead of winter.
With the changing of the clocks on March 8/9, more darkness will return to the morning hours. Besides the bonus evening light, this will allow me to sleep a bit longer in the morning and, with any luck, my son too.
Posted by
Kelly Whitt
Kelly Whitt
Both astronomically and meteorologically, March comes in like a Lion.
In meteorology, March is said to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb. This is because spring is slowly arriving. The North Pole tilts more toward the Sun as Earth orbits in its yearly procession. In the Northern Hemisphere, more daylight hours and more direct rays of sunshine spell a warming on Earth. So while your lawn may be snow covered on March 1 and the weather may be fierce, by March 31 there is a better chance for grass appearing and the gentle warming rays to be ushering in sweet weather.
In astronomy, March begins with the constellation of Leo the Lion rising in the east as the sun sets in the west. As Leo rises, it leads up a vast stretch of galaxies behind it. For astronomical observers, spring is known as galaxy season.
While there is no real "lamb" constellation, there is Aries the Ram, which is as close as we can come to March leaving like a lamb. Aries is ahead of Leo in the sky. Therefore, by the end of March, as the sun sets in the west, Aries the Ram sets just a bit behind it.
In astronomy, March begins with the constellation of Leo the Lion rising in the east as the sun sets in the west. As Leo rises, it leads up a vast stretch of galaxies behind it. For astronomical observers, spring is known as galaxy season.
While there is no real "lamb" constellation, there is Aries the Ram, which is as close as we can come to March leaving like a lamb. Aries is ahead of Leo in the sky. Therefore, by the end of March, as the sun sets in the west, Aries the Ram sets just a bit behind it.
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