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For Universe Today readers who know me only as a journalist, there’s something I’ve never revealed until today. But I tell all on today’s 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. The truth is, I’m a closet musician and songwriter. But while most musicians write songs about love, or love gone wrong, or that kinda stuff, being the space geek that I am, I write songs about things like, well, satellites, spacecraft and space missions. Today’s podcast is about the International Space Station, and I share a song I wrote after I saw the ISS for the first time in the night sky.
The first time I saw the ISS was back in December of 2000, just after the first set of large solar arrays were brought to the station. At that point, the ISS was then big enough and bright enough that I could finally see it in the light polluted skies over Minneapolis, where I lived at the time. But of course we had a couple of weeks of typical Minnesota winter cloudy weather, so I had to wait what seemed like an eternity until I could finally see it. But I’ll never forget how awe-inspiring it was to see that bright light moving quickly across the sky, knowing the Expedition 1 crew was on board that point of light.
So anyway, check out today’s 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. A friend of mine, Mike Spainhour, and I threw this recording together in about an hour, but I hope you enjoy it.
Wednesday is Earth Day, but all week — Monday, April 20 through Saturday, April 26 — is National Dark Sky Week in America, when people are asked to dim the lights to see more stars.
If enough people participate, backyard and professional astronomers might be treated with a week of darker, starrier skies. The bigger idea is to raise awareness about sensible lighting practices, so skies might get a little bit darker all the time. And not just for astronomy buffs. Besides aesthetics, evidence is mounting that light pollution could have far-reaching effects for the environment and even public health.
360-degree panoramic picture of the Milky Way as seen from Death Valley. Credit: Dan Duriscoe, National Park Service.
Jennifer Barlow, founder of the event, said the only way National Dark Sky Week can succeed is if more people participate every year. “No reduction in light pollution can be made unless a significant number of people turn off their lights,” she said.
Besides turning out the lights, the participating groups are encouraging people to attend star parties, visit local observatories, or “dust off the old telescope from the attic,” Barlow said.
Year-round, the International Dark Sky Association encourages people to shield lights, or use fixtures that focus light downward instead of up into the sky. Reducing extraneous light, especially at ball fields, is a major step in the right direction. And certain types of lighting — like low-pressure sodium — are better than others.
Flagstaff, Arizona became the world’s first International Dark-Sky City in 2001, owing to the presence of several important observatories — it’s the home of Lowell Observatory and the U.S. Naval Observatory — along with the dedicated efforts of a handful of astronomers. The city government and the vast majority of businesses have readily complied with responsible lighting codes to protect views of the night sky for residents and astronomers alike.
The skies are noticeably dark over Flagstaff; the stars are rich at night. The Grand Canyon is even more impressive, especially on the north side. The views after dark are as stunning and magical as those during the day.
But even those skies aren’t as good as they could be, because light pollution from cities up to 200 miles away — including Las Vegas and Phoenix — is gradually creeping in. Chad Moore, a dark skies advocate who works for the National Park Service in Denver, has spent nearly a decade documenting the skies over 55 of the nation’s parks, which are usually the best places to see stars.
Parts of rare parks — Capitol Reef, Great Basin and Big Bend among them — boast truly dark skies, he said.
Moore pointed out there are reasons besides beauty to rein in light pollution: “In the last 10 years there has been a revolution in our understanding of animal habitat and what animals require,” he said. “There are links between artificial light and cancer in humans. There’s a lot we didn’t know about.”
Second photo caption: 360-degree panoramic picture of the Milky Way as seen from Death Valley. Credit: Dan Duriscoe, National Park Service.
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We just received some great information from Kris Koenig, the producer/director of the PBS documentary that is now airing “400 Years of the Telescope,” and we wanted to help get the word out to both astronomers and teachers about this new educational program called Astronomer in the Classroom. The project is being facilitated by the University of Hawaii Institution for Astronomy along with Koenig’s Interstellar Studios as an educational program for the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). The program will be done via webcasts and is beginning today! They are looking for astronomers that are interested in volunteering 3 hours to this worthy activity, and want to let teachers know about the availability of this program for their classroom.
The Astronomer in the Classroom Program will provide astronomers with the opportunity to interface with school children across North America during the IYA2009. Using Abode® Connect, a web conferencing solution, Interstellar Studios will host three 20-minute webcasts every school day in 2009 starting in mid-April.
The webcasts will be conducted at the same time each day, to accommodate national time zone differences and grade levels (3-5, 7-8, 9-12) allowing educators to drop-in when their curriculum and testing schedules allow it. This flexible scheduling will afford convenience to the teachers while avoiding bandwidth congestion.
A schedule of participating astronomers will be posted at www.astronomerintheclassroom.org with brief descriptions of the lectures allowing both the student and teacher a chance to plan for webcasts that they would like to participate in.
The Adobe® Connect web-based interface will allow the astronomer to be viewed and heard over the web, as well as run a PowerPoint® presentation live. Students can interact by typing questions to the conference. A Moderator will be provided to help facilitate the follow-up Q & A period.
Graduate students, post docs and active researchers who can give three hours to this worthy cause are invited to volunteer. The program should only require one hour of prep to create the presentation, ½-hour to upload and test the provided webcam and 1 ½-hours to do the three webcasts.
IfA has donated the cost of the Adobe® licensing and Interstellar Studios is managing this free program. Volunteers need only provide a PC/Mac with a webcam and microphone. An Internet connection rated DSL or better is required
No special training is needed. Astronomers who are passionate about their research, and enjoy sharing their discoveries and news of their institution, have already met the most important criteria for participation. Participating astronomers are simply asked to keep in mind the grade levels’ attention capacity, and to describe the subject matter with grade appropriate vocabulary.
For astronomers whose institutions are expected to perform outreach, and /or participate in the IYA2009, the Astronomer in the Classroom Program offers a convenient, high-impact means to meet those objectives.
Make a difference during the IYA 2009! Inspire a child to look up and ask why!
Contact Information:
Interstellar Studios
11 Ilahee Lane
Chico, CA 95973
Telephone – (530) 343-5635
The IYA Live Telescope broadcasting on “Galactic TV” has been busy fillling your requests and we hope UT reader Didi had a chance to follow the Small Magellanic Cloud for several hours in the remote telescope on April 12! (I was still down and out, but it was still there despite the moonlight!) Come on inside… Your request has been fulfilled and your images are waiting!
The following is a cut and paste from Wikipedia:
Object: Small Magellanic Cloud – Constellation: TUCANA
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a dwarf galaxy. It contains several hundred million stars. Some speculate that the SMC was once a barred spiral galaxy that was disrupted by the Milky Way to become somewhat irregular. It still contains a central bar structure. At a distance of about 200,000 light-years, it is one of the Milky Way’s nearest neighbors. It is also one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye.
With a mean declination of approximately -73 degrees, it can only be viewed from the Southern Hemisphere and the lower latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. It is located in the constellation of Tucana and appears as a hazy, light patch in the night sky about 3 degrees across. It looks like a detached piece of the Milky Way. Since it has a very low surface brightness, it is best viewed from a dark site away from city lights. It forms a pair with the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which lies a further 20 degrees to the east. The Small Magellanic Cloud is a member of the Local Group.
In the southern hemisphere, the Magellanic clouds have long been included in the lore of native inhabitants, including south sea islanders and indigenous Australians. Persian astronomer Al Sufi labelled the larger of the two clouds as Al Bakr, the White Ox. European sailors may have first noticed the clouds during the Middle Ages when they were used for navigation. Portuguese and Dutch sailors called them the Cape Clouds, a name that was retained for several centuries. During the circumnavigation of the Earth by Ferdinand Magellan in 1519–22, they were described by Antonio Pigafetta as dim clusters of stars.[6] In Johann Bayer’s celestial atlas Uranometria, published in 1603, he named the smaller cloud, Nubecula Minor. In Latin, Nubecula means a little cloud.
Between 1834 and 1838, John Frederick William Herschel made observations of the southern skies with his 20-foot (6.1 m) reflector from the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. While observing the Nubecula Minor, he described it as a cloudy mass of light with an oval shape and a bright center. Within the area of this cloud he catalogued a concentration of 37 nebulae and clusters.
In 1891, Harvard College Observatory opened an observing station at Arequipa, Peru. From 1893 and 1906, under the direction of Solon Bailey, the 24-inch (610 mm) telescope at this site was used to survey photographically both the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Henrietta Swan Leavitt, an astronomer at the Harvard College Observatory, used the plates from Arequipa to study the variations in relative luminosity of stars in the SMC. In 1908, the results of her study were published, which showed that a type of variable star called a “cluster variable”, later called a Cepheid variable after the prototype star Delta Cephei, showed a definite relationship between the variability period and the star’s luminosity. This important period-luminosity relation allowed the distance to any other cepheid variable to be estimated in terms of the distance to the SMC. Hence, once the distance to the SMC was known with greater accuracy, Cepheid variables could be used as a standard candle for measuring the distances to other galaxies.
Using this period-luminosity relation, in 1913 the distance to the SMC was first estimated by Ejnar Hertzsprung. First he measured thirteen nearby cepheid variables to find the absolute magnitude of a variable with a period of one day. By comparing this to the periodicity of the variables as measured by Leavitt, he was able to estimate a distance of 10,000 parsecs (30,000 light years) between the Sun and the SMC. This later proved to be a gross underestimate of the true distance, but it did demonstrate the potential usefulness of this technique.
Small Magellanic Cloud for Didi
We would like to once again thank Didi for the request and remind you that you can always watch our IYA telescope “live” whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria by simply clicking on the logo “Live Remote Cam” to your right. Enjoy!
The IYA Live Telescope broadcasting on “Galactic TV” has been busy fillling your requests and we hope Johnathan Kade had a chance to follow 47 Tucana (NGC 104) for several hours in the remote telescope on April 11! (I was down and out – but the scope wasn’t.) Come on inside… Your request has been fulfilled and your images are waiting!
47 Tucanae (NGC 104) or just 47 Tuc is a globular cluster located in the constellation Tucana. It is about 16,700 light years away from Earth, and 120 light years across. It can be seen with the naked eye, and it is bright enough to earn a Flamsteed designation with a visual magnitude of 4.0.
It is one of only a small number of features in the southern sky with such a designation. 47 Tucanae was discovered by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1751, its southern location having hidden it from European observers until then. The cluster appears roughly the size of the full moon in the sky under ideal conditions.
It is the second brightest globular cluster in the sky (after Omega Centauri), and is noted for having a very bright and dense core. It has 22 known millisecond pulsars, and at least 21 blue stragglers near the core. 47 Tucanae is included in Sir Patrick Moore’s Caldwell catalogue as C106.
NGC 104 competes with NGC 5139 for the title: Most splendid Globular Cluster in the sky. NGC 104 has two features in its favour. It is rounder and has a more compact core. However due to location more observers go for NGC 5139.
47 Tucana for Johnathan Kade
We would like to once again thank Johnathan Kade for his request and remind you that you can always watch our IYA telescope “live” whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria by simply clicking on the logo “Live Remote Cam” to your right. Enjoy!
A new 60-minute documentary created especially for the International Year of Astronomy is now airing on PBS stations in the US. “400 Years of the Telescope: a journey of science, technology and thought” is a remarkable voyage through space and time, filled with stunning, high-definition footage showing not only images from space taken by observatories around the world, but also the remote and beautiful locations where our eyes on the Universe – our magnificent telescopes – sit. It also provides a tour through the evolution of telescopes since Galileo’s first astronomical observations, and how the telescope has changed our perceptions of the cosmos and ourselves. The documentary also includes interviews with scientists who helped develop the observatories, and those who have made incredible discoveries with them. Narration by astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson and a beautiful original score of music complete this wonderful documentary that you won’t want to miss. Check here for airing times on your local station. This video is also available for purchase.
But the documentary doesn’t end with airing on television. This is a multi-faceted production including extensive web content and planetarium shows. Universe Today had the chance to talk with the writer/director/producer of the project, Kris Koenig of Interstellar Studios. To find out more about this entire project, enjoy our interview, below, and make sure you watch the trailer for the show, above.
Universe Today: This sounds like a wonderful project. Can you tell us more about everything that is involved with “400 Years of the Telescope?”
Kris Koenig: This is a multi-faceted production, beginning with a high-definition documentary for PBS. We’re also creating a full dome planetarium show (Two Small Pieces of Glass) that will also be stepped down to all the different formats for different planetarium domes. We’ve been filming with a 4K camera, which means the production will be able to transition to an IMAX. So there’s an IMAX program, a public television documentary, and a planetarium program. In addition to that, we are partnering with PBS affiliates around the country through a grant through the National Science Foundation that will allow us to coordinate with the Astronomical Society of the Pacific to do events throughout the year based on the initial and subsequent broadcasts of the show. We’ll be encouraging people to go to the science centers and planetariums to watch the planetarium show, and then when they step outside, there to meet them will be local astronomers with telescopes.
What we’re doing is exactly the goals of IYA, which is to educate, and encourage people to go out and have a telescopic experience. That’s what we hope to achieve with that production.
Also, we knew from the beginning that we wanted a lot of web content. We conducted over 70 hours of interviews, which of course, we couldn’t include them all in the documentary. So of those 70 hours of interviews will be available on the internet, and totally downloadable and searchable by key terms. The transcript can be downloaded; there will be footage people can watch. The footage can also be downloaded and students can create their own documentaries. So this whole project can spawn a bunch of documentaries that can be used for school projects or shown locally. So we’re trying to outreach to the arts as well as into science.
(Teachers and students –Check out this link for additional educational activities.)
UT: How long have you been working on this project?
Kris Koenig. Credit: 400 Years of the Telescope Koenig: In 2005, we had just finished production of a ten-hour telecourse for PBS, for which we received two Emmy’s (Astronomy Observations and Theories, distributed by Coast Learning). I was visiting with Debbie Goodwin from Keck Observatory and she asked me, “What are you doing for IYA?” I said, “IY what?” We had actually started work on another production, which we hope we can get back to. But by the end of that week we had formed our advisory board, and initially coordinated things with a PBS station. By March we had our first launch meeting where all the advisers came together and discussed what the program should be like, what should we focus on and what should we avoid. We drafted a treatment to PBS and got a letter of encouragement back and we started the production. We brought together our planetarium partners because Peter Michaud at the Gemini telescope called me after he heard about the project and proposed joining forces to develop the content for a planetarium show. We started shooting in August of 2007.
UT: Traveling around the world to capture this must have been incredible! What stands out in your mind in creating this documentary?
Koenig: I think the thing that capped the whole project happened very early on. We were in the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, and had just finished taping Galileo’s telescope. The people there, Georgio Strano and Paolo Galluzzi who came in as partners in the project agreed to pull out the telescope — which never happens; this telescope always stays in the case. They dusted it off and we shot it with every angle we could. As Georgio was going to put it back in the case, he turned to me and asked, “Would you like to look through it?” So we all got to look through it. That was a very emotional moment. I still tear up, just talking about it.
Then we shot our reenactments of Galileo in his home, and one of scenes you see is in his cellar where he recanted. Stefano Lecci, who is our actor, is the staff actor for the museum. Even though we held a city wide Galileo search, he walked in early in the morning and said, “Why are you doing a contest? I’m the guy.” And I thought, well, we’ll see. At the end of the day, I said, “You’re right. Why did we hold a contest?” He’s a great guy, and he knows the recantation by heart, and he did it in Italian. That was another very moving moment. He’s both the old and young Galileo. We had a great makeup artist. We shot old Galileo first, then middle aged Galileo, then the younger. Each time, the transition was remarkable.
We did a reenactment at Middleburg, with Copernicus, reenactments with Hans Lipperhey in Holland, and Christina Huygens. Old castles that date back the 1300’s are a very cool environment to shoot in! We had a lot of fun in Cambridge, shooting reenactments of Isaac Newton on campus, and we have him in the river, too. We have expert on Newton speaking and we pan the camera and there’s Newton rowing a punt.
Another memorable moment was being up at Mauna Kea shooting time lapse video. The laser at the Keck Telescope came on and we captured that, and we now have in our footage for our production. It was totally unplanned. It must have been 15 degrees below zero, but I just stood there. Normally I start the camera and leave, but I just stood there and watched it because it was just an amazing sight. There are always great things like that. You go out and you plan, and you know the shots you want of dome openings and telescopes turning and you want to shoot every telescope you can, but sometimes the unplanned things end up the best. The WM Keck Telescope. Credit: APOD
We ran 6 hours of tape through a camera a day. Just as astronomy is weather dependent, so too is shooting, and the light has to be there. We had some exceptional days for lighting, which created some very pretty shots.
Once, we were in a meeting with our senior reviewer at PBS, we were talking about timetables and technical issues, but they said, “We have to stop and tell you that the footage is exceptionally pretty.” I think that’s only because of the crew. Our Associate Producer Anita Ingrao and the Director of Photographer Scott Stender were phenomenal. I’ve been around observatories my whole life; I love them, and I can look at something and say, ‘that’s the shot,’ but putting someone else in there and having them see what I was seeing isn’t always the easiest thing to do. But they put faith in what I was seeing.
UT: How many people worked on the project?
Koenig: It depends on what day it is! We had a phenomenal crew. We have animators at the University of California at Chico, animators at Mirage 3 D, New Edge Studios in Atlanta, and more animators to create the planetarium shows. Anita and Scott and I mentioned did the production team in the field, Krista Shelby is an intern, and excellent audio operator. We have an excellent board of advisers that are all leaders and experts in their fields, as well as great individuals and supporters. Neil de Grasse Tyson is the narrator and we were very happy when joined the team. I think we’ve got everyone we could possibly have on the team. It’s a great project.
Everyone in the company is an astronomer or have a passion for astronomy. That’s one thing that makes us unique in this production. Everybody is into it, they understand the importance of it and have the spirit to go behind that. I think that’s what’s going to make our production stand out. We know that there are other folks doing productions for the International Year of Astronomy, but I think what will be the point of difference is that we look at the subject as astronomers and want to communicate it properly.
Click here for a list of credits for 400 Years of the Telescope.
The IYA Live Telescope broadcasting on “Galactic TV” has been busy fillling your requests and we’re ready to bring your first photos up on-line for you. We hope you had a chance to follow your object for several hours in the remote telescope today! For Universe Today readers Astrochick and Vino? Come on inside… Your requests have been fulfilled and your images are waiting!
Alpha Centauri for Astrochick
Eta Carinae for Vino
There’s still plenty of time to place more requests, so just add them on at our IYA Remote Telescope Request Page and we’ll get ‘er done! Enjoy!
ESA’s space-borne X-ray observatory, XMM-Newton, has carried out an exclusive, 50-plus-hour observation of the starburst galaxy Messier 82, for the ‘100 Hours of Astronomy’ cornerstone project for the International Year of Astronomy 2009.
This first image shows bright knots in the plane of the galaxy, indicating a region of intense star formation, and emerging plumes of supergalactic winds glowing in X-rays.
XMM-Newton has been studying the sky in X-ray, optical and ultraviolet wavelengths simultaneously, since its launch in December 1999.
Messier 82 has several names including: M82, the Cigar Galaxy and NGC 3034. Located in the constellation Ursa Major at a distance of about 12 million light-years, it is the nearest and one of the most active starburst galaxies, meaning it shows an exceptionally high rate of star formation.
M82 is interacting gravitationally with its neighbour, the spiral galaxy Messier 81, which is probably the cause for the violent starburst activity in the region around its center.
This second image of Messier 82, compiled from observations in the optical and infrared, shows the very bright starry disc of the galaxy with striking dust lanes.
Source: ESA. More images, including a downloadable poster, are here. 100 Hours of Astronomy ended on Sunday, but the website still has loads of fun information. The International Year of Astronomy 2009 celebration is, of course, ongoing!
Irregular Galaxy NGC 55. Credit: ESO. Click for larger version.
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As part of the International Year of Astronomy project, 100 Hours of Astronomy, the ambitious “Around the World in 80 Telescopes” event had a live webcast, going around the globe to some of the most advanced observatories on and off the planet. In celebration of this world tour of observatories, many of the telescopes are releasing wonderful, and previously unseen, astronomical images. Here are two observed by telescopes at the La Silla and Paranal observatories. Above is the irregular galaxy NGC 55, a galaxy that is about 70,000 light-years across, just a tad smaller than our own Milky Way, and below is NGC 7793, about half that size.
NGC 55 is a member of the prominent Sculptor group of galaxies in the southern constellation of Sculptor. By studying about 20 planetary nebulae in this image, a team of astronomers found that NGC 55 is located about 7.5 million light-years away. Planetary nebulae are the final blooming of Sun-like stars before their retirement as white dwarfs.
This striking image of NGC 55, obtained with the Wide Field Imager on the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla, is dusted with a flurry of reddish nebulae, created by young, hot massive stars. A large number of individual stars that can be counted within NGC 55. Spiral Galaxy NGC 7793. Credit: ESO. Click for larger version.
The second image shows another galaxy belonging to the Sculptor group. This is NGC 7793, which has a chaotic spiral structure, unlike the class of grand-design spiral galaxies to which our Milky Way belongs. The image shows how difficult it is to identify any particular spiral arm in these chaotic structures, although it is possible to guess at a general rotating pattern. NGC 7793 is located slightly further away than NGC 55, about 12.5 million light-years from us.
NGC 7793 was observed with one of the workhorses of the ESO Paranal Observatory, the FORS instrument, attached to the Very Large Telescope.
On April 6, 2009 the IYA Live Telescope was busy broadcasting from the Southern Galactic Telescope Hosting facility and fulfilling your “100 Hours of Astronomy” requests. Are you ready to take a look at the video that came from the adventure and to add it to our library? Then tell Jamie in Edinburgh that Aunty Ren said to wake up as we view Ana Tomsa of Croatia’s suggestion of NGC 2516…
The following factual information is a cut and paste from Wikipedia:
NGC 2516: Constellation – CARINA
Southern open cluster NGC 2516 – The Diamond Cluster – was discovered by Abbe Lacaille in 1751-1752.
Called The Diamond Cluster because of its stellar clarity. The cluster itself is easily visible with the naked eye from dark skies but binoculars will yield a much better view. The Diamond Cluster contains two beautiful 5th magnitude red giants and three double stars. A small telescope would be required to split the double stars. It contains about 100 stars that appear about the same size as a full moon.
NGC 2516 and the recently discovered nearby star cluster Mamajek 2 in Ophiuchus have similar age and metallicity. Recently, kinematic evidence was presented by E. Jilinksi and coauthors that suggests that these two stellar groups may have formed in the same star-forming complex some 135 million years ago
We would very much like to thank Ana M. Tomsa of Croatia (for Jamie in Edinburgh, from Aunty Ren) for her suggestion of NGC 2516 and we hope you like the view! As always, you can visit the remote telescope by clicking on the IYA “LIVE Remote Cam” Logo to your right. We’ll be broadcasting whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria! Enjoy…
