Category Archives: astronomy

Twin Peaks

By | | ,
9 Comments

Yes, in other words, tonight and tomorrow night are the maximum event rates for the Geminids, the meteor shower that originates from the direction of the constellation Gemini. From Gary Kronk’s site, I borrowed this diagram that shows roughly where to look:

[image]

So as you can see, you’re popping out to look in a Easterly direction, more or less, and after about 9:00pm you should get some results. There’s some more information here at this site.

You’ll recall from a number of earlier posts on meteor showers that I’ve mentioned that they are caused by the Earth passing through the debris field of a comet. The Geminids are somewhat different. Well, yes and no. They are actually passing through […] Click to continue reading this post →

Fatal Attraction

By | | ,
11 Comments

galex graphic black holeThere’s a new paper coming out telling of the observations (over two years) of the swallowing of a star by a black hole, from beginning to end. There’s no nice picture showing this, I’m afraid – the picture to the right (click for larger) is an artist’s impression (see description below). The team, led by Caltech’s Dr. Suvi Gezari, used the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and data from Chandra and some ground based telescopes, to track the ultraviolet radiation emitted from the star as it was consumed by the hole.

From the NASA/JPL press release: […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Antikythera Mechanism

By | | ,
34 Comments

So, I have questions.

About what? Well, by now you’ve heard about this wonderful machine that was found 100 years or so ago, which after a lot of research, has been found to be a remarkably sophisticated mechanical computer designed and built in ancient Greece about 2,100 years ago. There’s a nice LA Times story on it by Thomas H. Maugh II here, and a New York Times story* by John Noble Wilford here and a Reuters article by Patricia Reaney here. (The image to the right (click for larger) is from the University of Cardiff.)

From the articles you can learn that the machine was able to perform computational tasks 1400 years or so before the time when machines of this sort (but less sophisticated) were thought to have appeared. What sort of tasks? Well, using 37 gears or so it can do subtractions, multiplications and divisions to show the cycles of […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Lion’s Share

By | | , ,
6 Comments

Remember the Orionids? Well, it is the turn of the Leonids. These comets are the result of us passing through the debris left by comet Tempel-Tuttle. The peak will be on the 19th November…. Viewing and other information here (Armagh Observatory), here (a NASA site), and here, from Gary W. Kronk’s site (as is the diagram below). Here’s a nice Space.com article by Joe Rao.

There is expected to be quite a spike in the viewing rate this year… enhanced by a factor of ten to maybe as many as 100 or 200 per hour. This is for the lucky viewers in Western Europe (and the British Isles 🙂 ), North Wester Africa, North Eastern USA and Eastern Canada, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Further Information on Dark Energy

By | | , , , ,
61 Comments

So the press conference is over. I did not listen to it, but the gist of it, from the press release, seems to be that they’ve observed several more supernovae to pin down even more accurately what the universe’s expansion rate was at very early times (up to nine or ten billion years ago). Image below from their site:

[image]

From the site we learn (for background): Click to continue reading this post →

Less In The Dark Than Before?

By | | , ,
2 Comments

From NASA, tomorrow, at 1:00pm EST: An announcement about Dark Energy. If the pattern of last time is to be followed, there must be new evidence from the space telescope team (represented by Riess and Livio at the press conference) in favour of one interpretation or another. Since they are saying that they will “announce the discovery that dark energy has been an ever-present constituent of space for most of the universe’s history”, I imagine that means that there is stronger evidence than before for Dark Energy being a cosmological constant. […] Click to continue reading this post →

Better To Burn Out, Or To Fade Away?

By | | , ,
12 Comments

On the site Space.com, I found a nice article by David Powell about the Cassini spacecraft’s future. (Cassini has done some wonderful work recently, including bringing us wonderful images such as the one below of Titan and Epimetheus, and Saturn’s rings.)

[image]

Cassini’s NASA handlers are wondering about what they will do with it when its mission is over. Here are some of the options they are considering:

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Mercury Passing

By | | , ,
4 Comments

transit of mercury

So did you see yesterday’s event? (Above is a snapshot of a movie of the event from a SOHO image capture sequence. Mercury is a tiny dot just below the structure on the right that is not far from one of the remarkably few sunspots on the sun at present (it is low season for them). Go there for more images to see Mercury in action.)

Joe Vandiver (centre, below) here at USC had a telescope set up for all on campus to view: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Copernican Reality

By | | , , ,
Comments Off on Copernican Reality

Well, you’re sitting there at the desk, so might as well put on the radio to keep yourself company. Do in on the web, and I suggest that you listen to:

Radio Lab episode #205

This one was about Space. It has a lot of good stuff in it, and excellent speakers, very good clips, and playful (rather successfully, surprisingly often) presenters. My favourite bit? Neil DeGrasse Tyson being interviewed about our place in the universe. If you’re not an expert on the anatomy of the idea, please have a listen, since this is one of the best (and quite funny) layperson’s quick descriptions I’ve heard on the subject.

Tim Ferris (on the unlikelihood or likelihood of travelling vast distances for expeditions in space) and Brian Greene (on the geometry of our universe – another good layperson’s level chat) are also in this segment, just before. Direct mp3 file link to that particular piece here.

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Some Observations at Griffith Observatory

By | | , , , , , , , , ,
22 Comments

So I must apologize. I went to the preview of the Griffith Observatory so long ago now and did promise to blog about it with more than just one nice picture, but it did not happen. Partly because I had to go back across the Atlantic to do some work, and then got ill over the weekend I was planning to do it, and then…

Griffith Observatory

Anyway, here are some of my thoughts. First note that my two week delay means that this is no longer a scoop, since even the LA Times had a spread on the whole thing on Thursday. A rather nice one as well. I urge you to consult it for a lovely pull-out graphic of the whole site. There is also a special website with picture tours, nifty 360 degree interactive shots of the spaces, and other information. The Griffith opened yesterday.

What they’ve done over the last four or five years is simply shut down the entire building and rethink and redo a great deal of it. How to preserve the lovely 70 year old landmark, while making it even better? Simple question – simple answer: Get $93 million for your project (I find this number, the earth-sun distance in miles, suspicious), and then go underneath the existing building and hollow out about the same amount of space that is has, but underground. Fill it with lots of goodies. And I mean lots and lots. What goodies? We’ll see. […] Click to continue reading this post →