tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33148442008-10-25T14:53:08.115-04:00The SpaceWriter's Ramblings<p><b>Anything and everything about science, especially astronomy and the cosmos.</b>CCPnoreply@blogger.comBlogger489125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-35990695773224112032008-10-25T14:51:00.002-04:002008-10-25T14:53:08.130-04:00Just a reminderThis site migrated early in 2008. New entries are <a href="http://www.thespacewriter.com/wp" target="_blank" source="external">here.</a>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-11492813504198544422008-08-06T21:16:00.001-04:002008-08-06T21:16:41.297-04:00This BLog is NOT SpamBut, I HAVE moved... see previous post.CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-72568074652455974362008-05-19T19:28:00.001-04:002008-05-19T19:28:40.762-04:00I've movedJust a reminder to folks, this blog has migrated; see the entry below this one for particulars.CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-25074083831336049572008-02-24T18:27:00.004-05:002008-02-26T14:54:09.058-05:00This Blog is Migrating<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Moving Day</h2><br /></center><br /><p>I've moved this blog to a new WordPress platform and invite you to visit in my flashy new digs at: <a href="http://www.thespacewriter.com/wp">TheSpacewriter.</a> For those of you who subscribe using a feed, I've changed the feed, too, so please adjust your reader to using the link below.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSpacewriter" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32x32.png" alt="" style="border:0"/></a><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSpacewriter" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to the new feed in a reader</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><p>Come along and let's go explore some more astronomy!<br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-54870634731504924082008-02-21T19:52:00.002-05:002008-02-21T19:57:15.707-05:00The Old Alma Mater Does It Again<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Dear Ol' CU</h2><br /></center><br /><p>It's always nice to get good news from one's alma mater (instead of the usual begging letters from the development foundation). Where I went to school (University of Colorado), astronomy, planetary science, and space sciences research have always been Big Things. I did my graduate studies while serving on a team that worked with an HST instrument (the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph), and also did some work on comet images under a Halley Watch grant. One of the folks who I overlapped with at CU is Alan Stern, now Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, and an old friend. At CU he worked with the Center for Space and Geoscience Policy, before leaving to work at Southwest Research Institute. A number of other missions had CU relationships, including some involving other members of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (where I worked), Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (I worked there as an undergraduate), and a variety of other research institutes at CU.<br /><center><br /><img src="http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/2506ae93a5e8c8e87c5ab5bb9f45c5a9/DALI.jpg"><br /><h6>Artist concepts of a Naval Observatory Proposal involving CU-Boulder to place a carpet-like radio telescope on the moon to probe the earliest structures in the universe. Image courtesy CU-Boulder, NRL</h6><br /></center><br /><p>Suffice to say, I was pleased to see a press release today outlining a pair of projects that NASA and the Naval Research Laboratory has selected for further funding and development that both involve people and institutions at CU. The first is for a space observatory to find Earth-like planets in distant solar systems. The other is for a unique type of low-frequency radio telescope on the far side of the Moon. Astronomers would use it to look for some of the earliest structures in the universe. Both are very worthy projects and I'm pleased to see my home university continue its winning streak in astronomy and space science. (Read more details <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/2506ae93a5e8c8e87c5ab5bb9f45c5a9.html" target="_blank">here.</a>) <br /><p>Both projects should give undergraduate and graduate students first-hand experience in designing instruments AND doing science, something that attracted me back to graduate school in the first place (lo these many years ago). While CU isn't the only university that gets these grants and makes opportunities available, it has been a leader for many years in this area. I can't think of Duane Physics tower or the LASP building or the JILA towers without remembering all the really smart, really great scientists who came out of those labs and who are making solid scientific contributions today. There are whole new generations of instruments and projects waiting for new generations of student scientists. And that's good news for science and for old alums like me.<br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-318322783486742072008-02-20T23:16:00.003-05:002008-02-20T23:18:09.612-05:00Shooting My Own Private Eclipse<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>So Easy Even a Writer with a <br>5 Megapixel Camera Could Do It</h2><br /></center><br /><p>Okay, so it's freezing cold here, but the sky has been remarkably clear tonight. So we went out to look at the eclipse. It's beautiful, and as I write this, the Moon is moving out of totality. It's still a pretty brick-red color and as it moves out of the shadow, that color will fade over the next hour. Now, I'm sure that there are lots of really decent astrophotographers out there who will be posting their stunning images of the event. <br /><br />I am <i>not</i> one of those astrophotographers, but I was still bitten by the camera bug and decided to see what my little HP Photosmart could do. So, I attached it to a little $9.00 hiker's tripod I bought on ThinkGeek.com a while back, and set the camera for no flash, biggest zoom, and high resolution. This is the result. <br /><center><br /><img src="http://www.thespacewriter.com/feb20eclipse.jpg"><br /></center><br />Not stunning, but hey, it does show that if <i>I</i> can come up with an image of the Moon that isn't TOO blurry (given the long exposure, etc.), then anybody with a little camera and a little tripod can do it, too. Just the same, be sure and do some searching on the Web over the next few days for "lunar eclipse photos" to see what the folks with the big cameras can do!<br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-65411301615776955032008-02-20T12:39:00.002-05:002008-02-20T12:42:20.377-05:00Time for a Lunar Eclipse<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Moon-gazing</h2><br /></center><br /><p>In case you haven't been near a computer or newspaper for a while, there's a total lunar eclipse occurring tonight in the Western Hemisphere (early morning for Europe and Africa). This "moon darkening" event occurs because the Moon temporarily moves through Earth's shadow. The Moon won't go completely dark, but turn smoky grey to reddish in color; it's still lit up by indirect sunlight, which is why we can see it.<br /><p>This is one of those celestial events that you can watch from your house (or backyard), but if you're craving a social experience, call your local planetarium and/or public observatory and see if they're planning an eclipse-watching party. There's more information about the eclipse at <a href="http://www.skyandtelescope.com" target="_blank">Sky and Telescope's page.</a> You can also check out <a href="http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx" target="_blank">Astronomy Magazine's page</a> and for the ultimate in eclipse-o-phile info, go visit <a href="http://www.mreclipse.com/" target="_blank">MrEclipse.com.</a><br /><p>Now, chances are that some parts of North America (at least) will have cloudy conditions for all or part of the eclipse. But, check it out anyway. Your local weather may clear just in time!<br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-11856996859940990852008-02-18T11:17:00.003-05:002008-02-18T12:09:34.573-05:00Alien Life, Distant Worlds, and Us<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Worldly Thoughts</h2><br /><img src="http://www.thespacewriter.com/ssc2008-05a_small.jpg"><br /></center><br /><p>I woke up this morning thinking about the latest discoveries of planets around other stars. Astronomers are using a variety of techniques to find them, and totals are racking up quickly. Most of the planets that have been found are "Jupiter-like," meaning they are gas giants with huge atmospheres. They're relatively easy to find because of their size. Worlds like Earth (the terrestrial worlds) are smaller, and tougher to spot. But because astronomers have been able to spot the environments in which planets form around stars (that is,in clouds of gas and dust), it's pretty likely that there are many terrestrial planets out there, too. We just have to dig into those clouds and come up with the planets. Which will take time and some sophisticated astronomy search methods.<br /><p>Yesterday, the <a href="http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu" target="_blank">Spitzer Space Telescope</a> folks released news that Earth-like planets might form around many of the closest Sun-like stars.This orbiting telescope, which is sensitive to infrared light (think "warmth") was used to study dust envelopes around nearby stars. These are warm places. Dust closer to the star is hotter than dust farther away from the star, the warm dust is a fair indicator of the types of materials that form rocky planets—that is, Earth-like worlds. <br /><p>Such discoveries always lead to the old question, "Is there life out there?" It's a fair one to ask. For now, the definitive answer is "No." But, that's because we haven't seen the evidence for any other life out there. Yet. We don't have communications from that life, or pictures of it, or any other manifestations of it that we recognize as a definite "signal." But, if it's out there, there's some chance that we'll detect it. Some day. <br /><p>So, what I woke up thinking about was what life on OUR planet will be like once we discover life somewhere else. Will it change us in some non-physical way? Will our thinking change about life? About politics? Religion? Education? Science? The way we treat our own planet?<br /><center><br /><h4>Life from "Out There"—Threat or Learning Experience?</h4><br /><img src="http://www.thespacewriter.com/Aliens.jpg"><br /><h6>Courtesy <a href="http://www.swapmeetdave.com" target="_blank">SwapmeetDave.</a></h6><br /></center><br /><p>The concept of life elsewhere is a major staple of science fiction stories. Depending on the story being told, the life from "out there" can be threatening, friendly, super-intelligent, simple, primitive, or depicted as being far beyond what we can comprehend. In reality, the life we find beyond Earth will likely be some combination of these factors, and perhaps look nothing at all like what we expect. How that life will act? Well... like we do with our deities, humans have painted aliens with a palette of characteristics that we most admire and/or fear in ourselves. When we DO get to meet other forms of life, the experience may teach us a bit more about respecting the life forms we share Earth with. <br /><p>Wonder about why I say that? Consider for a moment what humans and human activity (such as <a href="http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,23172726-5006301,00.html" target="_blank">whaling</a>) looks like to the cetaceans that inhabit our planet. Or, think about what our planet might look like to alien visitors who come in search of <i>us</i> and they find how we've treated our <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/strip-mining?cat=technology" target_"blank">environment.</a> <br /><p>These may be extreme examples, but the point I'm trying to make here is that the search for intelligent life (and other planets) isn't one-sided. If there's somebody out there looking for life elsewhere, and they find US, will we inhabit their worst nightmare or exemplify their fondest wishes? Either way, the possibilities are thought-provoking.<br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-49713856965155302362008-02-14T12:39:00.002-05:002008-02-14T12:42:19.801-05:00Defunding Astronomy in the UK<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>The Role of Money in Astronomy</h2><br /></center><br /><p>So, all this astronomy I write about costs money to do. That isn't a surprise to anybody, I hope. Everything in life has some cost to it, whether in money, karma, time, personal involvement, or ethical reward. While it is true that you can walk outside, look up, and do astronomy at the very basic level, to do anything beyond that requires equipment and person-hours. And those cost money.<br /><p>Amateur astronomy equipment can cost as little as the price of a book of star maps and a pair of 10x50 binoculars or run to many thousands of dollars or Euros or whatever units of money you use for a top-of-the-line home observatory. I always tell people to start small and let the love of astronomy guide them to whatever seems appropriate to spend. <br /><p>Professional astronomy is a whole different ball game. No one person "owns" a big observatory like Yerkes or Anglo-Australian or Mt. Wilson or Gemini or Hubble Space Telescope or the Very Large Array. They're operated by consortiums of institutions based in a number of countries. It's about the only way that the enormous costs of running state-of-the-art astrophysical research facilities can be afforded. And the costs can be ... well... astronomical, running into multiple millions of dollars/Euros/etc. each year. The consortiums (and their countries) help pay the bills, and in return, each member of the consortium gets time on the instrument(s).<br /><p>Recently the Gemini partnership was shaken when the United Kingdom announced it was pulling out to save money. I don't know all the politics that led to this decision, but it took UK astronomers by surprise. The result of that pullout would have denied UK astronomers access to a major Northern Hemisphere observatory, starting nearly immediately. <br /><p>It made little sense, but in times of tightening budgets, I suppose that the science and technology committee in the UK that made this decision didn't see astronomy as being as important as other physics expenditures it wanted to make, or perhaps much less important than life sciences, for example. Nonetheless, it was a surprise to the partnership and a shock to the world's astronomy community.<br /><p>Today the Royal Astronomical Society announced that the UK is in "constructive discussions" to continue UK involvement in the Gemini Partnership. President of the RAS, Dr. Michael Rowan-Robinson commented, "The UK has invested about 35 million pounds in the capital phase of the Gemini Observatories, in which we have a 23% stake. To pull out precipitately, as seemed to be happening, would have written this off to make a saving of 4 million pounds a year, at the expense of inflicting great damage to the UK's international reputation." <br /><p>That is a lot of money to invest, and UK astronomers had every right to feel betrayed by their government's actions in the attempted pullout. Astronomy IS worth the money and the effort, and I suspect that UK scientists will need to make sure their collective voice is heard the next time somebody suggests "cost-saving" measures such as this one.<br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-66630589230158724692008-02-13T22:18:00.003-05:002008-02-13T22:25:09.996-05:00Cosmic Mother's Milk<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>The Big Bang and Hydrogen</h2><br /><img src="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/96118main_Mysteriesm.jpg"><br /><h6>The progress of evolution from the Big Bang to the present... </h6><br /><br /><br /><img src="http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/teachers/lessons/xray_spectra/images/H10.jpg"><br /><h6>A hydrogen atom with probable locations of its electron.</h6><br /></center><br /><p>I've got a project coming up in a few weeks that involves learning more about the conditions under which life might form throughout the universe. So, I'm busily studying various papers and articles so that when I get to one of the meetings involved with the project, I'll be able to ask some intelligent questions.<br /><p>There are so many factors that can play a role in the formation of life that I could spend dozens of blog entries talking about them. One of the most important sciences we can study to suss out the role elements play in the cycle of life is chemistry. Which is, of course, the study of the elements that make everything the universe, and how they work together to do so. <br /><p>The typical study of chemistry starts with a student learning the chemical elements, starting with hydrogen. Why hydrogen? Because it was the first element created in the Big Bang, the creation event that started the universe on its evolutionary journey some 13.7 billion years ago. The second element was helium, followed by lithium. All the rest of the elements depend on some sort of action that takes place inside stars, or at the end of a star's life. And, those elements, along with hydrogen— a star's first "food"— play a huge role in shaping how new generations of stars—and planets (and us) — are formed.<br /><p>Hydrogen, however, is ubiquitous, which is a fancy word meaning that it's everywhere. And, it was all there was in the early universe to feed the first rounds of starbirth, and thereafter nourish the formation of more stars. Those stars consumed hydrogen in their nuclear furnaces for much of their lives, but also created new elements as they went along, using their fuel to do so. When they died, they spit back into space all the elements they've made, along whatever hydrogen they have left. All that stuff becomes the seed material for MORE stars, and whatever planets those stars form. It's going on today, this chain of starbirth and stardeath, using hydrogen as the formative "star food" and then churning out heavier elements at the other end of the stellar life cycle. So, like babies that survive on mother's milk early in life, but turn to other foods later to grow and thrive, the universe continues its reliance on hydrogen for the early phases of star life, creating the heavy elements needed for later phases where more metal-enriched stars, planets... and life... are formed. <br /><p>So, hydrogen is everywhere, even in you! How so? To paraphrase a life form that once spoke in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, we are "bags of mostly water." Water molecules are made of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen.<br /><p>So, think about THAT the next time you're out under the stars. You have hydrogen to thank for your existence... the mother's milk of the cosmos. <br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-61000146782399870822008-02-12T21:33:00.000-05:002008-02-12T21:36:51.022-05:00Earth Hour 2008: Do Your Part!<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Darkness Falls Softly</h2><br /><object width="465" height="323" ><param name="movie" value="http://www.earthhour.org/flash/earth_hour.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#011c2d" /><PARAM NAME="FlashVars" VALUE="path=http://www.earthhour.org/flash/earth_hour_flv.flv&playerSkin=http://www.earthhour.org/flash/EHAll.swf&img=http://www.earthhour.org/flash/earth_hour_flv.jpg"><embed src="http://www.earthhour.org/flash/earth_hour.swf" FlashVars="path=http://www.earthhour.org/flash/earth_hour_flv.flv&playerSkin=http://www.earthhour.org/flash/EHAll.swf&img=http://www.earthhour.org/flash/earth_hour_flv.jpg" quality="high" bgcolor="#011c2d" width="465" height="323" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" /> </embed></object><br /></center><br /><p>On March 31, 2008, Global Earth Hour is going to happen. It's a time when people in major cities around the world can turn off the lights to demonstrate their concern for the environment. <br /><p>So far, Chicago, Copenhagen, Sydney, Tel Aviv, and Toronto are among the cities that have adopted resolutions to switch off the lights for Earth Hour. Thousands of individuals are signing up, as are businesses. The whole thing is to promote awareness of how our behavior can affect the environment. <br /><p>As a stargazer, I also like to think that Earth Hour will have the great consequence of bringing people out to see the night sky (weather permitting, of course) free of light pollution. That's a great reason to participate, no matter what your position is on global warming. So, go check out the <a href="http://www.earthhour.org" target="_blank">EarthHour</a> website for the history of this great idea and ways you can get involved.<br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-75508305965593920772008-02-11T19:33:00.000-05:002008-02-11T19:37:57.083-05:00What DO Candidates Know About Science??<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Let the Candidates Debate</h2><br /></center><br /><p>In case you weren't aware of it, the U.S. is in the middle of an election year. That means that those of us who live here (and those who are U.S. citizens but living elsewhere) get to choose our Fearless Leader for the next 4+ years.<br /><p>For those of us who are scientifically literate, interested in science, or are just plain down with the coolness of science, the past 8 years have seen a major assault on science and reason, particularly from the more fundamentalist religious folk. This has been aided and abetted by the politicians (mostly on the Republican, conservative side of the aisle) who see more money and power in suppressing reason and science and catering to fundamentalist viewpoints. This is, of course, counterproductive to a technological society that depends on science ...and technology... for much of its jobs, power, product. <br /><p>Well, it's about time to change that paradigm. It's about time to start asking our future leaders just what their views on and support of science are. So, with that in mind, a huge cross-section of Americans who are concerned about the scientific literacy of the U.S. is sponsoring a Science Debate for the presidential candidates. It's about time that sane scientific though is given respect in this country and the place to start is by having people who want to be president show us what they've got when it comes to REALLY understanding science and making policy about it (and not just quoting scripture or mouthing pre-digested tidbits from cre*tionist thinktanks).<br /><p>So, if you'd like to know what the candidates thinkor know about science, head over to <a href="http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php" target="_blank">ScienceDebate2008</a> and help ring the clarion call for a sane and honest debate about science in the presidential campaigns. <br /><p>Thanks to Phil Plait over at BadAstronomy.com for bringing this to our attention.<br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-7457424448783767552008-02-09T18:32:00.001-05:002008-02-09T18:33:27.019-05:00Who Will Be the First Martians?<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>You? Me? Martians??</h2><br /></center><br /><p>Could you live on Mars? Would you want to? Would anybody want to? Why?<br /><p>Forget about the political issues that always get raised when somebody brings up Mars exploration for now; they're a subject of another discussion. I want to focus people's thoughts on what it would be like if one could get to Mars and visit or live there. Would you want to?<br /><p>It's not, as I've written in one of my planetarium shows, a quick jaunt. Anybody going to Mars has to be prepared for a lengthy Earth-Mars trajectory. You'd spend about 18 months getting there; that's a year and a half of low gravity conditions, living in close quarters with a bunch of other people and no chance to get outside for a stroll along the way. There's no way to stretch your legs, visit a waystation, check out some interesting side-trails. It's a straight shot.<br /><p>And, when you get there, it's a whole new ecology to get used to. Probably you'd live underground or in heavily shielded quarters. You, along with everybody else, will have had extensive training in order to survive Mars; that training would include learning how to live in surface suits that feed you breathable air and protect you from the extreme ultraviolet radiation that cuts through Mars's thin atmosphere. You'd have a job to do; what it is will depend on what your skills are. Mars colonies (if that's what we intended to build) will need everything that any frontier "town" would need: people to build things, people to study things, people to suss out the dangerous conditions and help everybody else avoid them (or learn to live with them). <br /><p>Even if you were part of a solely scientific expedition, everybody would have multiple jobs that span the science studies and survival goals. You can't send an infinite number of people to Mars, so the ones who DO go will have to be cross-trained.<br /><p>So, could YOU do it? Would you want to?<br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-17352358165632892362008-02-07T20:47:00.000-05:002008-02-07T20:48:23.923-05:00Walkin' on the Moon<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>How Important is It?</h2><br /><img src="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/206634main_jsc2007e113280.jpg"><br /><h5>The Altair Lunar Lander, proposed by NASA</h5><br /></center><br /><p>I've been swapping a lot of email with a colleague lately about the future of space exploration. He and his minions are working on a project that explores humanity's future, not just in space, but in science research in general. One of the core "nubs" of our conversations have been about what it takes today to get people excited about the ideas and technologies needed for space exploration. <br /><p>The political environment today is very mixed and muddled about space exploration. For example, at least one candidate for U.S. president, Barack Obama, has called for a postponement of some NASA programs (notably the Constellation program) and the money saved to be put into education. Of course, the obvious fact is that we (as a country) are pouring a lot of money into education already. So, I have to ask, how will the little dab (comparatively) of money that is taken from NASA benefit the behemoth that is U.S. education, especially if ALL that other money didn't do the job? If we really want to pour some money into education, well, there's a whole big military budget that could use a little trimming...<br /><p>Now, I'm NOT anti-education, so don't go there. But, if we're going to go to space in the future (and this is something that the U.S. as a country HAS pursued for these many years, then we need to have educated workers. No doubt about it. But, it's not smart to take away the projects that will provide the jobs that we're educating the kids for... I think that is pretty obvious. <br /><p>Well, we CAN do what Senator Obama wants to do, although I doubt we will. Reality will set in for the senator, pretty fast. But, the bigger issue here is, how do we excite people about the future in space? Particularly when things here on the ground are SO unsettled?<br /><p>Is it going to take another space race? The U.S. isn't the only player in town when it comes to off-Earth research and development (and future plans for such). Plenty of other countries are interested in and working toward some sort of space-based presence for humans. Is this the future? Will seeing a group of Chinese/Japanese/Russian/French/you name the country entrepreneurs building a hotel on the Moon be enough to spark the planet's will to put differences aside and go to space?? What is it about space that will excite the next generation to want to live there, travel there, study the other planets? <br /><p>These are questions we continue to mull... <br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-8074848040229285432008-02-05T20:32:00.000-05:002008-02-05T20:34:40.003-05:00Football, Stars, and Spaceweather<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Blogging About Stars</h2><br /></center><br /><p>Well, so the Patriots didn't win the Super Bowl. I didn't have a dog in the hunt, although since I live in New England, the game was on everybody's radar screens. Maybe I should have taken them all hot-tubbing and stargazing. <br /><p>So, back to astronomy blogging. I was surprised to see a story about a <a href="http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/000764.shtml" target="_blank">timeline of astronomy blogs,</a> with this humble blog you're reading listed among the earliest ones the author could find. That started a (predictable) discussion over at <a href="http://www.badastronomy.com" target="_blank">Bad Astronomy</a> about who was really first and how you define "blog" and so forth. Frankly, I think it's an interesting dip back in history, and a bit jarring to see how quickly things have changed in the few years since I started blogging.<br /><p>Of course, my blog is relatively new, compared to my web page, which began in the early 1990s as a way for me to blow off steam writing during graduate school. It was first hosted at the University of Colorado. Then, when I graduated and got a job, bought my official domain name (http://www.thespacewriter.com) and moved it to a server at Voicenet. A couple of years, I migrated the whole thing over to Hostgator. Recently I started revamping my site design (in the background), and I'm rethinking my whole approach to talking and writing about astronomy. So, things change. Which is good, since that's what the universe is about: change.<br /><p>Speaking of changing, I've been working with Haystack Observatory on a vodcast series about spaceweather. The first episode went up a few weeks ago <a href="http://www.haystack.mit.edu/swfx" target="_blank">here</a> and we posted it on Youtube as well. As it turns out, we had to update the video, so it's been <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ-L-pS0syc" target="_blank">reposted</a> on Youtube; please go over and check it out and help us build up our visitor count again! And please feel free to write to me with your comments about it, particularly if you are a teacher and use it in your classroom! <br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-42983545328582742852008-02-03T12:20:00.000-05:002008-02-03T12:25:31.583-05:00Super Bowl Stars and Astronomy<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Stars and Jocks</h2><br /><img src="http://www.thespacewriter.com/football_star.jpg"><br /></center><br /><p>For U.S. football fans, today is the holy of holies; the biggest day of the year; the day when all the football hopes and dreams come together in a giant explosion of talent, energy, ritualized violence, and cheerleaders. And food. And drink. And television. It's Super Bowl Sunday. <br /><p>I like football. As a long-suffering Denver Broncos fan, I've watched my share of Super Bowls, and shared the agony of defeat followed AT LONG LAST by a victory or two or three. And, I'll be on the sofa tonight, watching the Patriots and the Giants knock each other around the field. <br /><p>I'm sure that there must be at least a few other sports fans among astronomers, just as I'm willing to wager that there must be at least one football player somewhere who took an astronomy class. (I know there has to be one, because I've heard tell of "E-Z" astronomy classes for folks who didn't want to major in science, but wanted to learn a little about astronomy ("Stars for Poets") or geology ("Rocks for Jocks"), etc.) <br /><p>But, one time I did hang out with some football players in a most unexpected place, and we managed to connect over the stars—teaching a much-younger me that jocks can love the stars and teaching jocks that a bunch of astronomers can help them realize starry dreams.<br /><p>So, how did this happen?<br /><p>Okay, there we were, a group of astronomy folk: two researchers, a teacher and a writer, hanging out at the hot tub at the San Diego Marriott in Mission Valley. We were there for an Astronomical Society of the Pacific meeting being held at San Diego State University. We'd spent the day attending talks, giving talks, meeting astronauts, watching astronomy education demonstrations, and, of course, buying stuff in the exhibit room. After a jam-packed day, it was time for dinner at a local seafood joint, and then... off to the hotel pool and some after-hours chat in the hot tub. <br /><p>As luck would have it, the skies were pretty clear that night, so we got to do a little stargazing from the tub. About halfway through our first tour of the sky, four huge (but well-muscled) guys came lumbering up to the tub and eased themselves in. The water level rose appreciably as we all greeted each other politely. We'd seen them around, usually working out near the pool area, along with some other athletes. <br /><p>We continued our stargazing, pointing things we could see in the sky. The big guys listened for a while and finally one of them asked, "So, are you guys into astronomy?" Well, that started up a whole conversation about stargazing, which rambled into astrophysics and astronomy education. One of the guys told us he never had been able to find the Big Dipper. So, we showed it to him, and then took him on a little tour of some of the other constellations. The discussion then got into planet-gazing and the history of space exploration. Before we knew it, we'd spent an hour or so talking "shop" with these guys before finally climbing out and heading off to sleep. We all said our goodbyes and they thanked us for showing them the constellations. <br /><p>I never did find out their names, but when I was checking out the next morning on my way to catch my flight home, I asked at the front desk about the athletes who seemed to be hanging around a lot, the woman laughed a little and pointed over at the stadium (Jack Murphy). "They're the San Diego Chargers." The hotel was hosting their training table and giving them a place to lift weights, etc. <br /><p>Later that night, when Mark picked me up at the airport, he asked me if anything exciting had happened at the meeting. "Well, yeah. I got to hot-tub with the front four of the San Diego Chargers," I said. And, not for the first time (I'm sure) did he wonder how it was that I could go off to an astronomy meeting and end up doing something as fascinating as that. The stars will do that to you, jock or not. <br /><p>Sad to say, the San Diego Chargers didn't go on to win the Super Bowl, but I'd like to think that at least four of them back in 1993 learned a little about the stars on their way to the training table. <br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-66201587579500674472008-02-02T11:12:00.000-05:002008-02-02T11:15:30.624-05:00Rockin' Stars<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>The 21-centimeter Band</h2><br /></center><br /><p>No, it's not the name of a punk-rock band, although I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising and musically inclined astrophysics grad students didn't form a band in their "spare time" and name themselves that. There's a great tradition of geeky names for scientist-led bands, such as the Eigenfunctions, the Algo-Rhythms, and one of my favorites, the Titan Equatorial Band, <a href="http://se02.xif.com/pages/jonathan.asp" target="_blank">an impromptu group</a> that featured such folks as one of my former colleagues Kelly Beatty (Sky & Telescope Magazine), Cassini Mission scientist Carolyn Porco,the late great science journalist Jonathan Eberhart, and many others. They gathered and played during Voyager spacecraft flybys.<br /><p>But, that's not the kind of band I'm talking about in this entry. The 21-centimeter Band is a wavelength of light that is more attuned to a single note: the radio frequency (1420 MHz) emitted by changes in atoms of neutral hydrogen. It's right smack in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and so radio astronomers have been using it for years to probe a variety of conditions in the universe.<br /><p>Yesterday, I went over to Haystack Observatory to hear a talk about using 21-cm band emissions to study clouds of material being emitted from Asymptotic Giant Branch stars. These may sound like weird, far-out, geeky stars. And they are. But they're also part of the final act in the lives of stars that are less than eight times the mass of the Sun... including the Sun. As they slip into old age, these stars cool down, they expand, they get brighter, and through all this, they spend their nuclear fuel (which is running low) faster and faster. As they cool, their atmospheres get just chilly enough that dust grains can "freeze out" and create a dusty shell around the star. Think of this phase as a last burst of lively activity before settling into very old age (not unlike the antics of some elderly rockers doing successive world tours (not that there's anything wrong with that)).<br /><p>Well, some of the larger AGB stars also start to pulsate, and these heavings send a stellar wind blowing away from the star, shoving the dusty shell out away from the star, along with a cloud of neutral hydrogen. Now, we can study the dust by looking for its signature in the infrared (where astronomers commonly detect warm (but not too hot) glowing things. And, voila, we can study the progression of the mass loss (that is, how quickly the stellar wind is shoving mass away from the star) by examining the 21-centimeter emissions from the neutral hydrogen in the shell. <br /><center><br /><img src="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/185587main_v-516.jpg"><br /><h5>Four scenes from an animation showing Mira and its 13 light-year-long tail.<br> Courtesy Galex Mission.</h5><br /></center><br /><p>It's still a work in progress, but we did see some fine examples of 21-centimeter emissions from the stellar tail trailing out along the line of travel of the star <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/15aug_mira.htm" target="_blank">Mira A</a> which looks like it's got a comet tail. That tail is glowing in ultraviolet light, but 21-centimeter band studies show more detail in the neutral hydrogen that is also being carried along. If the work (which is still in progress) plays out as the astronomers expect, they should be able to figure out a pretty accurate timetable for when this material started streaming off the star (and hence, how old the tail is), and give us some new insights into the rockin' activity in these geriatric stars. <br /></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-21975987617771644622008-01-31T00:23:00.000-05:002008-01-31T00:24:44.053-05:00You Can Count on the Craters on Mars...<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Craters!</h2>\<br /><img src="http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/graphics/task-previews/crater-marking.gif"><br /></center><br /><p>I just spent about an hour analyzing craters on Mars. You can, too. Don't believe me? Check out the <a href="http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/top" target="_blank">Clickworkers Site</a> and learn how to recognize craters and their shapes and ages. While the work for this site was originally done in 2000-2001, and the study for which it was created is over, the pages are a great way to learn how to analyze Martian surface features in much the same way planetary scientists (and their grad students) do. It's a lesson in terrain recognition that anybody can do—and in my ever-lasting chase to convince folks that science is for everybody, this is one of those tasks that really brings it home! So, go give it a try, you future Martians, you!</table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-90567409280547095652008-01-29T20:32:00.000-05:002008-01-29T21:00:17.790-05:00Doing Astronomy Through Chemistry<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>It's Elemental, Dear Watson</h2><br /></center><br /><p>In the last entry, I referred to a star that astronomers studied to understand its chemical makeup in an effort to figure out where it came from. That raised a question about how astronomers figure out the chemical makeup of a star. <br /><p>They use a technique called spectroscopy. That's really a $25.00 word that means "breaking the light up into its wavelengths" and then comparing the data to the spectral fingerprints of known chemical elements. This is something that chemistry folks (who study the elements in the universe) do all the time, and a technique that let astronomers look at the radiation emitted from an object in space in new ways. It's fair to say that when astronomers began using spectroscopy to study stars and galaxies, the science of astrophysics took a huge leap forward. <br /><p>Astronomers use specialized instruments called spectrographs, which were first used by chemistry researchers to study the spectral fingerprints of elements in the lab. (Read more about them <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrometer" target="_blank">here</a>). Astronomers employ spectrographs to break up the light from stars, galaxies, planets, nebulae, etc. into its component wavelengths. The data from these instruments is then plotted, which lets the researchers analyze the chemical signatures in the light and compare them to the signatures of known elements. <br /><p>The "prism" view of a spectrum of a star with hydrogen in its atmosphere might look something like the images below. The top image shows what it looks like when hydrogen absorbs light as it is emitted from an object. This means that hydrogen exists in or near the object. The bottom image shows what it looks like if hydrogen is emitting radiation (while it is heated). Each chemical element has a unique absorption fingerprint. <br /><center><br /><img src="http://www.solarobserving.com/pics/hydrogen-spectra.jpg"><br /><h6>Hydrogen absorption spectrum, courtesy <a href="http://www.solarobserving.com" target="_blank">www.solarobserving.com.</a></h6><br /></center><br /><p>Each element has a typical "absorption" pattern that shows up in the spectrum of a star where the element exists. An object in space can also have an emission spectrum, which tells us that some element is being heated and glowing brightly. There's a rather nice tutorial about spectra <a href="http://casswww.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/Stars.html" target="_blank">here</a> if you're interested in learning more about them.<br /><p>So, the short answer to the query about how the astronomers figured out the chemical makeup of the star HE 0437-5439 is, they studied the light it radiates and compared what they found to the known chemical signatures of elements, particularly metals. They then compared THAT information to spectral studies of regions in the LMC. From that, they can draw a pretty good assumption that the star came from that region.<br /><p>One other thing about spectra: you can also tell an object's velocity through space and the direction it's traveling, all using spectra. There's a gold mine of information locked away in the light and other wavelengths of radiation being emitted from objects in space. It's an amazing treasury that astronomers tap into every time they study an object through a spectroscope.)</table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-88305895692354602332008-01-28T12:42:00.000-05:002008-01-28T12:44:56.484-05:00Stellar Alien Speeds Away<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Aliens from Other Galaxies</h2><br /></center><br /><p>You know that town in Texas where the residents think they're seeing alien UFOs (which turned out to be Air Force jets)? Well, they haven't seen anything as alien as what the folks at the Carnegie Institution of Washington found when they did observations and analysis of a star called HE 0437-5439, a so-called "hypervelocity" star. It's speeding away from the Milky Way, but it wasn't born IN the Milky Way. So, astronomers studied its mass, age, and speed of the star, which is about nine times the mass of the Sun. It's moving into intergalactic space at about 2.6 million kilometers per hour. That's much too fast for it to have come from the Milky Way, but where DID it come from?<br /><br />As it turns out, HE 0437-5439 was born in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbor galaxy to the Milky Way. The Carnegie astronomers figured this out by looking at amounts of certain elements in the star. The "elemental abundances" they found point to a particular area in the Large Magellanic Cloud where similar amounts of the same elements exist. Hence the star more than likely formed in that region. So, what's it doing speeding away from the LMC and the Milky Way? Stars don't get up and flash out of their home galaxies just for the heck of it. They have to be kicked out by something. <br /><p>The most likely scenario goes something like this: HE 0437-5439 formed as part of a binary system (a pair of stars orbiting a common center of gravity). As that pair of stars moved through space, they passed by a black hole that was about a thousand times the mass of the Sun. As we all know, black holes suck; that is, they have strong gravitational pulls. One star of the pair got pulled into the black hole, while the other got a gravitational kick that flung it out of the LMC. Now the surviving star (HE 0437-5439) is on its way to intergalatic space, leaving astronomers with an important clue that there's at least one black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Now they just have to find it. (Note: for more information, read this <a href="http://www.ciw.edu/news/hyperfast_star_proven_be_alien" target="_blank">press release.</a>)</table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-44178411839380616342008-01-25T11:37:00.000-05:002008-01-25T11:51:01.665-05:00Asteroid 2007 TU24<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>It's Not the Impact You Think It Is</h2><br /></center><br /><p>You may have heard (or seen in the news) about an asteroid that's due to pass close to Earth on January 29 (next Tuesday). It's called 2007 TU24, it's about the size of the Sears Tower in Chicago, and it will flash past at a distance of about 537,000 kilometers. To put it in perspective, the Moon lies 383,180 kilometers away, so this thing isn't getting as close to us as the Moon is.<br /><p>This is a rare chance for astronomers to image a near-Earth asteroid and use instruments such as the Arecibo radio telescope to accurately measure its size, spin rate, and orbital speed. <br /><p>Stuff like this passes near our planet rather frequently; after all, space is full of debris left over from the formation of the solar system, and not all of it has been swept up by planets, moons, and ring systems. That's the beauty of having an evolving planetary system. Now that we have good instrumentation, we can study these pieces of debris and learn a variety of things: what they're made of; and from their orbital measurements, we can figure out the larger picture of orbital dynamics. And, of course, we can learn more about how to spot these things and determine if (and very, very rarely when) they might pose a threat to the planet. <br /><p>Now, there are a few whack jobs out there who are using this upcoming event to draw attention to themselves by making outrageous claims. It's the usual huffing and puffing and uninformed bloviating about how NASA is hiding evidence that the rock is actually going to HIT Earth, yadda, yadda, yadda. And I have to wonder just how much physics these folks ever studied, or passed? And what part of "it's farther away from us than the Moon is" didn't they get? <br /><p>I've calculated a few orbits in my time (and by the way, doing a general orbit calculation isn't rocket science—kids in high-school math and physics probably cut their teeth on these things in middle school these days) and I'm here to tell you it's not difficult. And what you learn tells you pretty quickly just how much chance there is an impact vs. a flyby. <br /><p>Here's how it works. You observe an object and plot its position. Then you do it again. And again. Pretty soon you have a line that, after you've got enough positions, allows you to plot the entire orbit pretty quickly. Once you do that, you can see where the object is going to be as it moves along in its orbit. <br /><p>You can understand roughly how this works by watching cars on a road. After a while, assuming that the cars are going the same direction, not turning off on other roads, and they're not whacking into each other, you will be able to "predict" that a car going a given speed down the road will be at Point B at a certain time, then Point C, and so on.<br /><p>Now, the people at JPL whose job it is to calculate orbits have done a very refined job of plotting the orbit of 2007 TU24. And guess what? It's not going to hit us. Physics and orbital mechanics tell us this. <br /><p>There's no hidden agenda. NASA isn't hiding anything. It's all in the physics and orbital mechanics. Even if NASA tried to suppress knowledge, the amateur astronomy community can often see these things and those folks can calculate orbits, too. It takes no esoteric knowledge, just the ability to apply the laws of orbital motion. And actually, if you can get hold of orbital elements (and they ARE freely available) YOU can plot an orbit. And you'll see that the thing is going to miss Earth by a long shot.<br /><p>So, let's apply a little common sense here and use some science to understand these things. If somebody wants to believe hyperbole and self-serving claims of cover-ups and other malarkey, let's be clear that it's really about delusions of grandeur among those who are too lazy to do the math. And that's fine (although silly). People can think or believe what they wish. But, wishing doesn't make it so. <br /><p>Uninformed ravings about coverups and plots and so on simply prove that the only impact we'll see on Tuesday is that of lazy thinking. Perhaps we can use that kind of impact as a lever for more effective science education in our schools and less foolishness.<br /><p>For more information on this event and the orbital calculations, check out <a href="http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news157.html" target="_blank">the Near-Earth Object Program</a> page at NASA.</p></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-87546071944681675812008-01-22T13:15:00.000-05:002008-01-23T09:03:40.609-05:00The Case of the Lobate Scarps<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>The Case of the Lobate Scarps<br>A Noir Look at Mercury's <br>Mysterious Surface Evolution</h2><br /></center><br /><center><br /><img src="http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/picsMed/EN0108821596M.png?1200606032"><br /><h6>Mercury's horizon, as seen by the MESSENGER mission.</h6><br /></center><br /><p>The name's Basin, Caloris Basin, and I'm a planetary science detective. Perhaps you've heard of me. Of all the planets in all the solar systems in the cosmos, I'm interested in Mercury. It's a classy place, with a great surface to boot. <br /><p>So, until just a couple of days ago, things weren't going too well for me. I'd been stonewalled with a lack of knowledge about ALL of Mercury's surface. It was tough, and I was down to my last... well, let me tell you the whole story.<br /><p>It was late on a Friday afternoon in mid-January. Business was slow. It had been for years, ever since the Cassini mission had launched, followed by New Horizons. Everybody's attention was turned toward the outer solar system, or near-Earth asteroids, or dwarf planets beyond Neptune. <br /><p>And, it seems that ever since I'd cracked the case of the sulfuric plumes in the Venusian atmosphere, inner-solar-system detective work had just dried up. Pancake eruptions on Venus were so last-century. Even Martian dust storms weren't getting as much press as they used to. Oh, sure, the occasional asteroid-impact threat on Earth raised a little stir now and again, but in the main, it seemed like nobody cared about the inner planets any more. A pity.<br /><p>I mean, there was Mercury, waiting to be explored again. Even though Mariner had given it a quick look back in the 1970s, its glory days weren't over. Not by a long shot! Sure, its surface would be at home on a black-and-white scene from a 1940s detective movie set (without the rain and fog, though). And sure, it's a bear to observe from Earth. But, Mercury's got as many mysteries as those outer planets, and it's a darned sight more rocky!<br /><p>Still, all the hot researchers and their grants (and grad students) were out there at Saturn, and using Hubble and ground-based telescopes to poke around Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. They were flush with success, invoking cryovolcanism right and left to explain what <i>they</i> were finding! Yet, for my NSF grant money, there was a lot of good science to be done in the inner solar system. So, I resigned myself to having to wait for a while. I knew that soon I'd eventually have my day in (or actually near) the Sun.<br /><p>Well, there wasn't much work waiting for me that day, so after feeding the boa constrictor that had been with me since my grad school days, I settled in with a six-pack of Red Bull and a stack of back issues of <i>Icarus</i> to wade through. I had just put my feet up on the desk and was reading "Fugitives from the Vesta Family" (Nesvorny, et al., <b><span style="font-style:italic;">193</span></b>, January 2008, p. 85-95) when I heard a knock on the door. It was the sound I'd programmed on my computer to let me know when a potential planetary science discovery was waiting to be investigated. <br /><p>There it was: a GoogleNews alert about the MESSENGER spacecraft. It seems that it had finally gotten a look at a place that had intrigued me for years, ever since I first observed the planet Mercury at greatest eastern elongation back in grad school. I was so taken with the place that I'd gone on to study what little we know about this planet closest to the Sun. <br /><p>And that's when I learned about the mysterious lobate scarps. For my money (at the time, low grad-student slave wages), those scarps (cliffs to you regular joes) were evidence. Of what, I wasn't sure. But was going to find out. Once I saw them in old Mariner Mercury images, they haunted me. I had to know more about how they turned Mercury into a wrinkly prune of a planet in the prime of its life. I asked the standard detective questions. How did they form? When? And how many were covered up by impact-event melt rock? These were key questions, not to a crime, but to the mystery of Mercury's surface evolution.<br /><p>The knocking on the door sounded again, jerking me out of my former-grad-student reverie and back to the present. As the images scrolled up on the monitor, I knew that my waiting had finally ended. The Mercury MESSENGER mission was sending back a flood of images, and not just of regions I'd already studied. These were scenes of the "far side" of Mercury that we never see from Earth because of Mercury's complicated spin-orbit resonance with the Sun. And what scenes they were! I leapt out of the chair, scattering magazines and empty cans across the desk. My time had finally come—and from a planet that had kept my investigative instincts alive for years!<br /><br /><center><br /><img src="http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/picsMed/EN0108826105M.png?1200606344"> <img src="http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/picsMed/EN0108825904M.png?1201021384"><br /></center><br /><p>Sure, there were the usual craters (new AND old), but what caught my attention were the scarps. MORE scarps, including one huge wrinkle that appears to be one of the largest ever found on Mercury. In another scene, old lobate scarps seem to be cutting across craters. Classic evidence you'd see at any surface evolution scene. I could hardly contain myself. And it was ONLY the beginning of MESSENGER's data dump.<br /><p>I quickly set to work making notes, studying each picture for evidence of the story of Mercury that had only begun to be told when I was first in grad school. I remembered those old lectures as if it was yesterday, and yet, even today, parts of the story are still a classic detective tale. <br /><p>Mercury began like all the rocky planets, hot and molten. While the others basked in relative coolness out away from the Sun, Mercury stayed hot for quite a while. As it cooled, its surface was blasted with impacts, digging out those craters we see all over the place. The craters weren't the mystery though. We know how they happen, and that they continue to happen. No, the case of the lobate scarps were what piqued my attention. <br /><P>These cliffs are huge and jagged. What could have caused them? For a long time, that was the central mystery. But, eventually, we figured out the answer: Mercury cooled. Then it shrank. The shrinkage compressed and wrinkled the rocky surface. Early Mercury might have been all wrinkles. We'll never know for sure, since those impacts came in and covered up some of the evidence. But, there's enough left to give us a pretty good general picture of Mercurian surface evolution.<br /><p>Now, I don't pretend to know the whole cooling and bombardment history of Mercury. That's a mystery I'm still working on. And, to be fair, all the MESSENGER scientists are working on it, too. <s>I'll</s> We'll have to examine each picture and each region on Mercury to figure out which came first: the cracks or the craters. It's standard planetary science detective work. But, I'm up to it; as long as MESSENGER sends pictures, I'll be on the case, cracking the case of the mysterious lobate scarps of Mercury. And, now that we have pictures of Mercury's polar region, maybe I'll tackle a new challenge: the mystery of Mercury's purported polar ices.<br /><center><br /><img src="http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/picsMed/EN0108830711M.png?1201024131"><br /><h6>Is there ice hidden on shadowed crater walls at Mercury's poles? Visit the <a href="http://messenger.jhuapl.edu" target="_blank">MESSENGER web site</a> for the latest details and images from the mission.</h6><br /></center><br /></p></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-57762812072961031612008-01-21T19:56:00.000-05:002008-01-21T20:04:14.642-05:00The Quest for Mars<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Mars Again... and Again</h2><br /><img src="http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20080103a/1198865273_31824-3_Sol1369A_WestValley_L257atc_th371x246.jpg"><br /><h5>Mars Rover Spirit Looks Out Over a Low Plateau</h5><br /></center><br /><p>Mark and I just announced the fulldome incarnation of our long-popular show <a href="http://www.lochnessproductions.com/index2.html" target="_blank">MarsQuest</a>—something that's been a long time coming. The show itself has had several incarnations, beginning in 1988 when we created a show about Mars called "The Mars Show" and it was basically a slide show with a soundtrack. (Why that title? We could never think of a better one, so it kept that name for quite a while.) <br /><p>In 1996, we got together with a group of people at the <a href="http://www.spacescience.org/index.php" target="_blank">Space Science Institute</a> in Boulder, Colorado, to talk with them about a traveling exhibition they were creating called <i>MarsQuest.</i> They wanted a planetarium show, and by golly, here we were with a planetarium show that we wanted to update. After a few meetings, we had a deal, and the rest, as they say, is history. The <i>MarsQuest</i> exhibition has finished its run around the country and is retired to a museum in Florida. But, <i>MarsQuest</i> the planetarium fulldome show is still very much alive and kicking, bringing info about the Red Planet to all and sundry. <br /><p>It seems that I write about Mars every few years, and people often ask why. It's simple: I've always been taken with the Red Planet. It all goes back to a game we used to play when I was a kid, about exploring Mars. And that's part of it. As I got older, I read more about the planet, especially when in 1976 we actually landed a spacecraft there. <br /><p>So, it was only natural that I'd eventually end up writing a documentary script about it. And revisiting it as more spacecraft send back more images and data about this planet. Not only did the game from my childhood spurred <i>MarsQuest,</i> and a scene in <i>SkyQuest</i>, a show we did for the National Air and Space Museum's planetarium. So the game I played keeps coming back in one form or another.<br /><p>And it continues. As more Mars images and data come in, I continue to work on other Mars-related presentations. For me, this dry and dusty desert planet is also one of the most tantalizing places in the solar system, and if I were of the right generation, a place I could have once considered exploring in first person.</p></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-65712643674681315202008-01-18T22:16:00.000-05:002008-01-18T22:21:15.781-05:00What Are You Doing In 2009? Try Astronomy<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>A Year of Astronomy</h2><br /></center><br /><center><br /><img src="http://www.thespacewriter.com/iya_small.jpg"><br /></center><br /><p>A hundred countries (and counting) have signed on to participate in the International Year of Astronomy, which runs throughout calendar year 2009. The IYA planners envision the year as a time when people take renewed interest in astronomy and science, from school children to members of the general public and the astronomy community (both professional and amateur).<br /><p>On their <a href="http://www.astronomy2009.org/" target="_blank">web page</a> the International Astronomical Union, which is spearheading the organization of IYA 2009, states: <br /><blockquote>The vision of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) is to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery. All humans should realize the impact of astronomy and basic sciences on our daily lives, and understand better how scientific knowledge can contribute to a more equitable and peaceful society.</blockquote><br /><p>Now, we're a planet full of people, all with different languages, philosophies, levels of income, education, science interest, and political backgrounds. How can astronomy be something we can all appreciate? It's pretty simple really: we all have access to the sky. There isn't anywhere on Earth where you can't look up and see the sky, day or night. Granted some places have hazy, light-polluted skies. But, even in the worst places, you can see a few stars at night or the Sun, or the Moon. Astronomy is universal. <br /><p>And that's the beauty of International Year of Astronomy. Anybody can do something with it, as long as it's related to the "Cornerstone Projects" that the IAU and IYA planners have developed. What are those projects?<br /><ul><br /><li>100 Hours of Astronomy<br /><li>The Galileoscope <br /><li>The Cosmic Diary<br /><li>The Portal to the Universe<br /><li>She is an Astronomer<br /><li>Dark Skies Awareness<br /><li>Astro&World Heritage<br /><li>Galileo Teacher Training Program<br /><li>Universe Awareness<br /><li>From Earth to the Universe<br /><li>Developing Astronomy Globally<br /></ul><br /><p>You can read more about these projects the IYA home page linked above. I'm particularly interested in the <i>Galileo scope</i>, the <i>Portal to the Universe,</i> and the <i>She is an Astronomer</i> projects. Check out the pages and see if there isn't a project that excites <i><b>you</b></i> to participate, in whatever way you can. </p></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3314844.post-77804556214028108872008-01-17T12:34:00.001-05:002008-01-17T12:36:28.913-05:00Touching the Sky<span style="font-family:arial;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="70%"><br /><center><br /><h2>Astronomy for Everybody</h2><br /></center><br /><center><br /><img src="http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2008/05/images/a/formats/web.jpg"><br /></center><br /><p>Noreen Grice is one of the most amazing individuals I know. She works at the Boston Museum of Science and has single-handedly brought astronomy to people who can't see the stars. Noreen took the unheard-of idea of teaching visual astronomy to the blind by using Braille books. Her first one was <i>Touch the Stars.</i> That one has been followed by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=978-0309083324&tag=thespacewrite-20&index=blended&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"><i>Touch the Universe</i></a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thespacewrite-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&keywords=978-0309095600&tag=thespacewrite-20&index=blended&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325"><i>Touch the Sun.</i></a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thespacewrite-20&l=ur2&o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br /><p>Now, her latest book, <i>Touch the Invisible Universe</i> is coming out, according to a <a href="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/15jan_touch.htm" target="_blank">press release</a> that is showing up at various NASA-funded sites. It is being distributed by NASA to schools for the blind, and various libraries where it will be a resource for visually impaired people. <br /><p>When it comes to ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma-ray, radio, and infrared radiation, we're all blind to the universe in those wavelengths. So, I think it's pretty cool that Noreen has taken a subject within astronomy that gives ALL of us an insight to things we can't otherwise see (wavelengths beyond visible (optical) light), and explains it all in a book that uses Braille, large print, and tactile "graphics" of astronomical objects, for those who cannot see at all. Astronomy is for everybody, and Noreen's new book brings that lesson home in an unforgettable way.<br /></p></table></span>CCPnoreply@blogger.com