Because its out there
I admit it. For a long time during my enthusiasm for astronomy, I had a hard time wrapping my head around terms such as the ecliptic. The September issue of Sky & Telescope magazine re-boots a column originally named Beginners Page. It
I’m sure you have at least heard about the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) incredible initial images. At first, I was a little underwhelmed. The images just didn’t move me the way Hubble’s Ultra Deep Field did. Then I found out JWST’s
Last week I made it into Messier of astronomy terminology and hopefully much of it made sense. Unfortunately, some terms or concepts do not lend themselves to descriptions that themselves are clear to everyone. Ecliptic: I forgot this one last week.
Well, I’ve been blathering on about astronomy for a while now and using terminology familiar to astronomy buffs. If you’re not into astronomy maybe the jargon I use just confuses, and that’s not unusual. I’m mystified by the terminology used in the
Don’t know what Gaia is? In Greek mythology Gaia is a goddess and the mother of all Earthly life. Gaia is also Earth, the planet we live on. There’s way more to it but not for this article. The Gaia I’m talking
This is the time of year when Sagittarius reigns supreme. It’s a little low now but getting better each day. Sagittarius is busting with things to look at. Our Milky Way galaxy verily pours out of Sagittarius’s teacup spout as its steam
Last week I started our summer sky tour with two easy sights: Polaris and the Summer Triangle (Vega, Deneb, and Altair). Then two more challenging objects – a couple of globular clusters – M92 & M13. I noticed when looking at the
It’s officially summer on Tuesday, June 21st, at 4:14 AM CDT for those wanting to know. Summer solstice and its counterpart winter solstice in December are seasonal indicators of change. Change in the length of daylight hours/nighttime hours. They and their intermediaries
No, we don’t. But we think it needs to be out there, or the behavior of several distant objects becomes difficult to explain. So, come on, show your planetary disk. Astronomers have been looking for it since 2014, after astronomers Scott Sheppard
It began with little fanfare in December 2019, just before COVID-19 became the never-ending story. A new solar cycle. Just so you know, it’s number 25 since we started paying attention to them, with cycle # 1 documented in 1755. The Sun
Until the late 1980’s the thought of other stars having planets, much less entire planetary systems, was the stuff of science fiction, not science. Then bang, the first one was found, and a paper published in 1988 by Canadian astronomers Bruce Campbell,
NASA announced recently that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is aligned with all four of its science instruments. Remember, the telescope is a 21-foot diameter mirror composed of 18 separate hexagonal mirrors in three sections, that had to be folded for
Full Moons are the same worldwide, well, not exactly. Like everything else in the celestial sphere, the Moon looks different depending on the hemisphere you’re in. The north and south hemispheres show seemingly inverted Moons versus each other. Trust me, it’s not
No, space didn’t do anything wrong and there isn’t (as far as I know) anything catastrophic coming our way. After centuries of study, space, like gravity, still defies genuine understanding. Oh, wait, gravity is a puzzle piece, a critical part of the
Transition from the light and certainty, into the dark and uncertainty. This is the story of mass’s endpoint, at least within the context of relativity. Still, it’s beyond explanation, a mystery. Once mass goes beyond 20 solar masses it can happen but
From the past two weeks: Sun-like stars up to around 8 times the Sun’s mass will evolve into a white dwarf surrounded by multiple shells of glowing nebulae, and called planetary nebulae. Stars more massive than 8 solar masses and up to
Last week I accounted for the evolution of stars like our Sun, and up to 8 times its mass. The end game is a white dwarf, most likely with spherical shells of gas and debris flowing away. Intense radiation from the white
It’s “very dim but perfectly outlined; it is as large as Jupiter and resembles a fading planet”. This notation was penned in January 1779 by French Astronomer Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix. He was describing an object he thought he discovered, finding later
Radioing his final report, Professor Chang described his crew’s harrowing experience. He is the only surviving member, their spacecraft is destroyed, his space suit is nearly out of air. This radio transmission was from the surface of Europa, in the book 2010:
January 9, 1643. A Jesuit priest and astronomer named Giovanni Battista Riccioli is observing Venus with his little refractor telescope. He notes the night side of Venus seems to be lighter than usual and names it “The Ashen Light of Venus”. Over
In ancient cultures, those who studied the natural world and used their knowledge to practice their craft, were revered, sometimes feared. They wielded power with their knowledge and abilities. To most if not all the “commoners” their craft seemed magical. But it
In 1990, while I was still a productive citizen, I luckily got to see plans for Space Station Freedom. This was at the Johnson Space Center, always a great client to visit. Back then my contractor ID gave me access to many
James Webb Space Telescope Update: As of 5 days ago the JWST is continuing to complete set up functions that will make it the b_ _ a_ _ telescope it is designed to be. It is orbiting within L2 (Lagrange point 2),
February 26 is Astronomy Night at Tye Preston Memorial Library in Canyon Lake. We start at 7:30 INSIDE with a night sky and safety orientation. Last month we enjoyed the company of 60 guests, so come on out and see what’s in
This seems unlikely, but a new dawn is breaking in the big city. Or should I say a new night is breaking? Can you believe, the city of Pittsburgh is going night sky friendly, no, really, they are committing to it! Our
During my working life I worked in a company born during the original space race. Really, our company was hatched in NASA’s Skylab space station, from the MLM (Microbial Load Monitor) module. That piece of equipment led to McDonnell Douglas forming a
Well, it’s not like “We’re going to the Catskills!”, that exclamation by Miriam Maisel in the Prime show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”. Her family spent 2 months each summer enjoying the amenities of a southeastern New York state resort. Back in the
It’s winter, and that means lots of binocular ready sights up in the night sky! Most families have binoculars of one type or another, for hunting, sporting events, even the ballet. Dig’em out of the closet, clean them if needed, and wait
My fingers might be stuck. They have been crossed since Christmas day, the day the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) took a ride. That ride, inside an Ariane 5 rocket went smoothly and JWST was on its way to a point nearly
From a distance it all looks pretty smooth, the same in every direction. The Cosmic Microwave Background is a barrier, beyond which we are unable to peer. It is also nearly as old as our universe and appears smooth -from a distance.
When I was in high school, I worked for a while in a local restaurant, washing dishes. Sometimes the restaurant got so busy I was given the pleasure of making tossed salad. I suppose being the dishwasher my hands were expected to
The James Webb Space Telescope finally made it into space! Whoo-Hoo! It was launched on Christmas day, at 06:20 am CST from the European Space Agency’s French Guiana site. Nestled in an Ariane 5 rocket until it reached an altitude of 870
The first comet I saw was Halley in 1982, though I tried in 1973 to spot Kohoutek but couldn’t see it. Kohoutek was a bust, literally, it broke up. Halley was a disappointment, so dim. In 1996 comet Hyakutake arrived and made
Saturday, December 4th is Astronomy Night at Tye Preston Memorial Library, Canyon Lake. If we have a clear enough sky, we’ll start at 6:30 in the library with a brief orientation before going to the observatory. If the sky is not cooperating,
We humans have made it to Mars, well, vicariously with machines. One day humans will set foot on Mars and witness Martian existence, feel its wind, the regolith beneath their boots. But until then we depend on the machines in place on,
You might have noticed the discrepancy; my title says 50 years but the race to Mars started nine years earlier with the Soviet Mars 1 in 1962. NASA’s Mariner 4 Mars flyby was the first spacecraft to reach and study Mars, and
First, an announcement. The 2021 kickoff of Astronomy Night at Tye Preston Memorial Library was a big hit with 63 in attendance! A donated (Gibbs family) circa 2002 Meade ETX-90EC telescope package was given as a door prize to a very excited
One of the bedrock tenants of cosmology is our universe being smooth. In other words, it pretty much is the same in terms of matter distribution and density everywhere when observed on a large scale (billions of light years). Of course, on
First, an announcement: Tye Preston Memorial Library in Canyon Lake has received the very first Night Sky Friendly Business certificate from Comal County Friends of the Night Sky and partner Canyon Lake Rotary Club. Their outdoor lighting is a model for all
No, it’s not some 60s bubblegum group, not a comic book adventure, Lucy is a mission of scientific exploration. Starting her journey on October 16, 2021, Lucy perched atop an Atlas V as it roared away from Earth. Lucy’s mission, chase and
Neutron stars are the last remotely normal matter objects that exist before we get to black holes. Black holes, those things you cannot check out of once you go past the event horizon. Black holes, those things that can gobble up stars
OK, it won’t actually fly, it will float in a pool of gravity. More on that later. Hubble has needed a sibling, a bigger, badder, swashbuckling, and more sensitive sibling. The James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has been designed to supplement, not
It’s progress. The Hill Country Alliance, along with many hill country counties and cities, have designated October as Hill Country Night Sky Month. The State of Colorado has designated June as their Night Sky Month. Utah has April. I’m sure it took
Before I begin, I must correct a mistake from my article of two weeks past. I mentioned gravity as part of the standard model of physics. It is not. The standard model omits gravity because of contradictions arising when gravity (general relativity)
The father of Jupiter, God of agriculture and wealth in Roman mythology, Saturn is probably #1 on most everyone’s list of favorite celestial objects to view. It is one of those “oh gosh!” things that stand out for anyone who has see
I better say yes or risk the wrath of standard model physicists. According to the standard model gravity is one of the four fundamental forces – Strong, Electromagnetic, Weak, and Gravity. It’s in there with the other forces but something’s amiss. The
My philosophic view of our universe is everything, really, everything that exists is on the spectrum of existence. I see existence as a smeared continuum vs. absolutes. An example is visible light. It’s part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Red light is part
Change. It’s relentless. In our lives, our families, neighbors, towns, cities, on and on. Time is the culprit, time is change. If we could stop time, we could stop change. Well, good luck with that. The constellations have seemed constant in our
So, in 1950 Enrico Fermi is having lunch with a few of his colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory. They had engaged in a lively conversation about extraterrestrial civilizations, UFOs, travel at or faster than the speed of light, you know, the
This short, suggestive, and excited plea from the Eagle’s Life in the Fast Lane is also an apt description of how space and everything in it acts. The farther out we look, the faster things are speeding away from us, red-shifted. In
Last year I wrote a Binocular Highlights article in April. Springtime nights are wonderful, and the sky is in transition from winter sights to summer sights. Well, it’s over a year later, a challenging year for many, and it’s SUMMERTIME, SUMMERTIME! The
Our universe was different in ancient times. There we were, living on Earth, and there was everything beyond and no one knew where beyond really started. It was beyond the atmosphere but at that time no one had ventured beyond the atmosphere.