Astronomy

Are you ready to geek out on two levels? Have you celebrated Global Astronomy Month yet? Did you even know that this *is* Global Astronomy Month?

Either way, you should join Dr. Kristine Larsen, Professor of Astronomy and published member of the Tolkien Society, for her free online talk on The Astronomy of Tolkien's Middle Earth.

The talk is today at 7:00pm Eastern (23:00 UT). Follow this link to register:

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/719114822

You could even win a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate "door" prize!

The talk is sponsored by Citizen Sky.

Does anyone know if 2CA is compatible with Linux? I have Stellarium, but it doesn't seem to work in the same way...maybe I'm just not use to it...? Any insights?! Thank you!

Can´t believe no one posted THIS yet!

Also, I´m particulary interested in this part of the article, but I´m not following what it´s saying about how the method of detecting planets works:

Confirmation of a planet, however, requires additional observations, usually of its star’s wobbles as it gets tugged by the planet going around. The gravitational pull of planets as small as the Earth on their parent star is too small to measure with the current spectrographs. And so the astronomers resorted to a statistical method called Blender, developed by Dr. Fressin and Guillermo Torres of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, in which millions of computer simulations of background stars try to mimic the Kepler signal. They concluded that Kepler 20e was 3,400 times more likely to be a planet than background noise, while the odds in favor Kepler 20f being real were 1,370 to 1.

Someone can clarify this for me? Please and thank you!

January Skywatching Events

Kind of an odd question/request here...but I'm interested in adding some friends who are either students or teachers of astronomy or who work in the field of astronomy (cosmology and astrophysics will work too), and write about your experiences involved with astronomy (cosmology or astrophysics) in your journal. I've been working on my second novel over the past year, and several of my characters are either students or teachers of astronomy or work in the field of astronomy. I'm not looking to use your likeness in any way, shape, or form! I'd just like to get into the head of someone who works closely in the field or academic setting so I can fine tune some details :) Anyone involved with SETI would be ideal as well! Thank You!

Here are links to my profile and journal intro so you get an idea of who I am before you decide to let me read your journal (and, of course, I will add you back as a friend so you can have full access to my entries as well :)
Profile and Journal

Sometimes you photograph such a pretty scene, you want to share it with the world!



Photo of the eastern autumn sky (Northern Hemisphere). Taken from Stonelick State Park in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Contains several constellations, but the best known are the Pleiades (upper right), Perseus (center top), Auriga (center bottom) and Taurus (lower right).

The light at the bottom isn't coming dawn but light pollution from a nearby town hitting far off clouds. Makes for a neat effect though!

Imaging by 7-Zark-7..

After weeks of crappy to poor seeing, clouds and just plain bad luck, I *finally* got some superior images on par with the best imagers. The new camera - Flea II is very small, yet packs a considerable imaging punch. It took several attempts to master the not-all-that-intuitive software, but the results are impressive.

First, Here's an image of Mars, my first of the new imaging season:



Right now its a mere 4.8 arc seconds across - not much bigger than a decent view of the far more distant Uranus. Even at this diminutive scale, lots of detail is already visible including the (northern) polar cap.

Fun with Jove!

First an image of mighty Jupiter showing the Great Red Spot (GRS), and a transit of Io (shadow + disk).




Now check this out..

(enlarged to 110%)

Jupiter, the GRS and Io - 50 minutes later..



Can you spot Io? Its a yellowish disk about 1/4th of the way from the right limb. Check out the dark brown polar caps on Io. The moon is only 1.2 arc-seconds across - yet I'm clearly resolving detail with my 12-inch scope.

This image totally blows away *anything* done by the largest telescopes on Earth (using film) a mere 30 years ago (including the 200-inch at Palomar).

Got to love the incredible progress of the new imaging technology.

Awesome..

:-)

For those who did not already know (having spent days reading about it like a fiend), there have been avian embryo astronauts and even feathered cosmonauts.


While hatching in space proved possible, the mortality and deformity rates were high. Furthermore, quail hatchlings were unable to adapt to microgravity, and being unable to mechanically stabilize their position with respect to a feeder, they had to be handfed by the crew.

Horizon tonight. BBC2, 9pm.

Seeing Stars

This is one of those Horizon films that stirs a sense of pure wonder. It's partly wonder at the weirdness of the universe out there - neutrinos, supermassive black holes and so on. But mostly the film is about the new wave of telescopes that are driving 21st-century astronomy - the eyes with which we peer into the heavens. Don't be thinking of a telescope as a tube with a lens at either end, by the way. The instruments here are on a different scale. There's Alma, an observatory of 66 giant antennas arranged in an array ten miles across, high in the Chilean desert. Or there's Sofia, a flying telescope housed in a converted jumbo jet, which conducts infrared astronomy eight miles up in the stratosphere. Or there's the 500 detectors scattered across Utah that look like rusty beds but in fact pick up cosmic rays. In all this you have to marvel at the engineering feats that go into exploring the unknown. And the money involved: Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope, designed to orbit a million miles from Earth, will have 100 times the power of Hubble, and a staggering price tag of $6.8 billion. After watching this film, you may think it's worth it.