Beautiful sketch of M45 today at ASOD (Astronomy Sketch of the Day).
ASOD: Mist and Diamonds
Tag: astronomy
Article: Comet Ison Oct 6, 2013
Comet Ison Oct 6, 2013
http://tomjmartinez.blogspot.com/2013/10/comet-ison-oct-6-2013.html
I’ve been searching the pre-dawn skies the past week with my binoculars but have not found Comet ISON yet. In the meantime, astrophotographer Tom Martinez captured it and shared it with us via his blog.
Article: How Do We Know When Voyager Reaches Interstellar Space?
How Do We Know When Voyager Reaches Interstellar Space?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-278
The debate is over. Voyager has gone where no one has gone before and beyond.
Article: Green Spiraling Meteor
Green Spiraling Meteor
http://tomjmartinez.blogspot.com/2013/08/green-spiraling-meteor.html
From fellow ASKC member and astrophotograper extraordinaire Tom Martinez’s blog.
Article: The Weakest Solar Cycle in 100 Years
The Weakest Solar Cycle in 100 Years
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/The-Weakest-Solar-Cycle-in-100-Years-216752671.html
Article: NASA’s Voyager 1 Explores Final Frontier of Our ‘Solar Bubble’ – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA’s Voyager 1 Explores Final Frontier of Our ‘Solar Bubble’ – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-209
To go where no one has gone before.
Space Weather with Dr. Patterson
My father and I drove to UMKC Saturday evening to attend the first club meeting of 2013 for the Astronomical Society of Kansas City. We went an hour early to take in Astro 101 (topic: telescope mounts).
After sifting through club business, including some great observing awards and a new observing program for asterisms, our Education director, Jay Manifold, flashed through the observing highlights for the upcoming months. He paused at the end long enough to introduce our special guest speaker, Dr. Doug Patterson, Professor of Astronomy and Physics at JCCC, and his topic “Space Weather: Understanding the Sun-Earth Connection.”
Dr. Patterson’s first slide, at first glance, did not appear to be related directly to space or weather. He explained that besides astronomy and physics, his other abiding passion happened to be photographing race cars. For the past twenty years, despite appearing quite youthful and brimming with energy, he’s been teaching astronomy and physics at the Johnson County Community College.
Astronomy in academia really only requires a research computer and spreadsheet program. Incredible amounts of data (terabytes upon terabytes) are freely available for astronomical researchers.
Dr. Patterson joked that he frequently tells his students that “Space is not empty!”
Highlights from his “Space Weather” talk:
- Super Flare 1859 observed by Carrington (on 9/1/1859 around noon). The flare took seventeen (17) hours to read Earth.
- Birkeland and his aurora machine
-
Solar Wind discovery and proof
- comet tails
- Super-Sonic Model by Eugene Parker confirmed by Mariner 2 on way to Venus.
- Voyager 1 is beyond solar wind and actually in interstellar space (first man-made ‘spaceship’ to be truly interstellar).
Dr. Patterson showed a video of the corona and sun from NASA’s solar satellites. He also displayed an animation of a coronal mass ejection (CME).
Fluctuations in the solar wind compress our magnetic field. Some of the effects on Earth include:
- compression and fluctuations
- electrical conductors embedded in Earth’s mag field
- radiation & navigation airline flights over arctic
- interference with GPS (and Google Maps)
- In Mar 1989, we (the Earth) learned the hard way (Quebec w/o power for three (3) days).
As a result, NASA launched the Advanced Composition Explorer (real time plots available here of solar wind data), which gives us one (1) hour advanced warning. This satellite is parked in a halo orbit at L1. Real time space weather data is available at spaceweather.com.
Van Allen Belts
- Discovered by Explorer 1, the first satellite we launched into orbit
- We just sent our second probe last year, a gap of over fifty years
- Trapped radiation and particles
- Why study the belts?
- Low Earth Orbit (LEO) very cluttered
- GPS already in the belts
The Van Allen Probes (fka Radiation Belt Storm Probes) were launched last year and Dr. Patterson had the privilege of witnessing the launch first hand, despite hurricane Isaac. Note to self: Rocket ion trails make great lightning rods.
Dr. Patterson concluded with a Q&A opportunity where several ASKC members asked cogent questions and received animated responses.
Due to the warmth of the evening (upper 40s or lower 50s), the club opened up the Warko Observatory on the roof of Royall Hall for a brief time. A haze obscured nearly everything except the full moon and Jupiter. Dad and I skipped the climb to the roof and headed home to Leavenworth.
Saturn Squeezing Venus
I went to bed Sunday night lamenting the end of my longest vacation in over a decade. I double-checked and triple-checked my return-to-work checklist (security badge, laptop, cell phone, sunglasses, lunch bag, work clothes and shoes, etc.) before nodding off. I woke up fifteen minutes before my alarm went off at five o’clock. I jumped out of bed and had myself dressed and ready to go before half past five. I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss this morning’s Saturn-Venus photo opportunity.
I got everything, including the camera and tripod, packed into the back of the van and drove up the hill, squinting through the frosty windshield, to the library parking lot. I left the van running with the defroster on half-blast, but turned off the headlights. I setup the tripod and camera on the sidewalk, but quickly became concerned by the slight breeze from the north, which could (and did) jiggle the camera during the longer exposures necessitated by the pre-dawn darkness.
I changed lenses on the camera back to my normal lens and took a couple of wide angle shots to begin with:
I adjusted the brightness (something I rarely do since I don’t own Photoshop and need to learn how to use Gimp) to make the horizon a bit more visible.
Shortly after six o’clock, I observed Mercury and took a photo in portrait orientation (vertical) to include all three planets and the star Spica:
Because I needed to begin the commute to work at a quarter past six, I had to stop taking photos early. A good thing, too, since my batteries, which I had just put in before yesterday morning’s photo session, had already depleted due to the cold temperatures and long exposure times. I did take the time to switch back to my telephoto lens to zoom in on several of the prime targets.
I managed to snatch a closeup of Venus and Saturn and of Mercury and Alpha Librae before I packed up the equipment and left for work:
Tomorrow morning, weather permitting clear skies, I will attempt to capture Saturn as it slips past and above Venus.
Blast from the Past: A Glimpse Into Rare Science Book Collection
My dad and I attended the general meeting of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City yesterday evening. We arrived earlier enough to also attend the Astro 101 class. The topic happened to be on binoculars, although I vaguely remembered it advertised as astrophotography. Next month, perhaps, provided the speaker doesn’t postpone for the third time this year. Nevertheless, we learned quite a bit about binoculars and the handout included a dozen or so winter observing targets.
With just five minutes to spare, Dad and I changed lecture halls in Royall Hall, walking across to the larger one where the general meetings are held. Jay Manifold and Rick Henderson made several announcements. Another club member, Bob Sandy, gave a brief ten to fifteen minutes demonstration of his equipment used to videotape the Transit of Venus, including the video from that event and also a separate one of the re-appearance of the asteroid Ceres from behind the Moon.
Jay introduced our guest speaker, Bruce Bradley Librarian for History of Science at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology, who spoke about the library’s rare books on astronomy. The Linda Hall Library, located just two hundred yards west of Royall Hall, is the world’s foremost independent research library devoted to science, engineering and technology.
The collection Mr. Bradley oversees is kept in the Helen Foresman Spencer Rare Book Room in the History of Science Center at the library which is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. An appointment is not necessary for individual readers and visitors, but groups are advised to make an appointment in advance of a proposed visit.
In February of 2004, several ASKC members visited and marveled at these well preserved treasures:
- The oldest book in the place printed by Nicolas Jenson in Venice in 1472, Pliny the Elder’s (23-79 AD) Naturalis Historiae Liber open to a section entitled”CAII PLYNII SECVNDI NATURALIS HISTORIAE LIBER X,” subtitled”De Natura auium Cap. i.” Beginning with a beautifully illuminated capital S in blue, red, green and gold, the colors appeared to have barely faded in 532 years.
- Tycho Brahe’s Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata from 1602 open to a star map showing the location of the supernova
of 1572 in Cassiopeia. - Galileo’s Dialogo, printed in Florence,”Per Gio: Batista Landini,” 1632., displaying a Copernican diagram of the Solar System showing orbits of the planets, the Moon and the four large moons of Jupiter that Galileo discovered.
- A handwritten observational journal of William Herschel open to a section containing observations of Saturn with drawings, formulas and figures.
- A very large format book with a full-color, two-page drawing of Tycho’s observatory, labeled Stellaeburgum (also called Uraniborg) as it appeared in 1558.
At the October general meeting, Mr. Bradley started with a history of the founding of the library. He then showed us many images taken of the rare books in the collection. He also related interesting and intriguing stories about the men who wrote these early science books. We even got a crash course in the Gutenberg printing process, right down to the materials used for the bindings, the paper and the ink. Mr. Bradley spent quite a bit of time paging through a couple of Galileo‘s books (see excerpt at right) and explaining the challenges Galileo and his printer faced in publishing his ground-breaking astronomical observations and conclusions confirming Copernicus‘ theory of a sun-centered universe (solar system).
He concluded his talk with a question and answer session and an invitation to the Library to see these treasures first hand. I plan to make a trip during lunch to the Linda Hall library’s current exhibit, called ‘On Time: The Question for Precision‘ featuring revolutions in time keeping within the next week or so.
M3 Menu Maintenance
M3 (or my blog cubed) menu update: I decided to include a couple of cool links on my Astronomy menu.
I added the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), which I follow via NASA‘s RSS feed, as well as the Astronomy Sketch of the Day (ASOD) (also available via RSS). I especially liked today’s offering:
I started following ASOD a couple of weeks ago to inspire my own nascent sketching abilities. Many of the observing awards I want to complete require that astronomical sketches be submitted as part of the log entries to support the required observations.
To help expand my artistic horizons, I ordered a highly recommend book, aptly titled Astronomical Sketching: A Step-By-Step Introduction from BookDepository.com (free shipping worldwide). I received two books in the mail yesterday, one of which was the sketching book shown at right. I skimmed through a couple of the chapters over breakfast this morning. I will need to assemble a supply list before I take a lunch hour trip to the closest art supply store (just north of me on Main Street in Kansas City, Missouri). And per advice from my artist son, I should just start sketching daily to hone my observation skills and to get familiar with the media (pencils, papers, erasers, smudgers, etc.). I would like to start sketching double stars initially, but will have to experiment and practice quite a lot before I will feel confident in sharing any of my sketches here at my blog.