How Do The Phases Of the Moon Work?

(This is hands-down the best moon phase activity I've ever done. In fact, when I first did this - after 10+ years as an astronomy educator - my mind was completely blown. This is one of my top 3 favorite astronomy activities, so I hope you enjoy it.)

If you've ever tried to replicate the phases of the moon, you probably did it the way I used to, by going into a darkened room, turning on a lamp in the middle of the room and then standing around it with a styrofoam ball in your hand. I'm here to tell you there's a better way.
Go outside! Yes, it's that simple. Take your ball on a stick and use the real sun! You see, the phases of the moon are really varying views of the shadow side and the sunny side of the moon as seen from Earth. It's so much easier to do than to explain that I'm just going to tell you how to do the activity and trust that it will all become clear to you. If not, just shoot me an email and I'll be sure to answer any questions you may have.

Here's what to do:

1. If you happen to have a small white styrofoam ball on hand, great! Prop it up on a stick, skewer, pencil or whatever you can find. If you don't, look for something similar. Ping pong balls are white, but a little on the small side. Little Dudestronomer has a small glow-in-the-dark basketball that I use for this purpose, and I just hold it with my hand because he insists I not pop it.
2. Go outside on a sunny day. This activity is most effective if you do it while the moon is out and visible, so check your times and dates and aim for a date/time when you can see the moon during the day.
3. As you hold your ball up in front of you, you can face toward or away from the sun, but the best starting place is off to the side of the sun a bit. As you look at your ball, you'll see that part of it is illuminated by the sun, and part is in shadow. You did it - you demonstrated one phase of the moon!
4. To get the whole cycle, imagine that you're Earth and your ball is the moon. Since the moon orbits Earth, make your ball orbit you - that is to say, spin in a circle with your arm outstretched. As you do, you'll see the phase of your little moon change. In order to get it to look right, you may need to tilt your orbit a bit.
5. If you have the real moon out in the sky, see if you can get your moon to look like the real moon. If it's a first quarter moon, make your moon first quarter. How long does the real moon take to get from first quarter to full? 1 week. From full to third quarter? Another week. From third quarter to new moon? Yet another week. And from new moon back to first quarter? You guessed it, one week.

Here is an actual photograph from the first time I tried this activity with a group of educators through Astronomy From the Ground Up (though I'm not in the frame):

And to see if you're doing it right, your moon and the real moon should look like this (the real moon is to the right of the foam moon):

Kaguya Crashes

I'm a little behind the times on this one, but a couple of weeks ago, the Japanese spacecraft SELENE (nicknamed Kaguya) crashed into the lunar surface. This was a controlled collision that was complete after the orbiter successfully finished its 20-month mission studying the moon.
Kaguya orbited the moon elliptically, so that its oval-shaped path brought it closer and then farther from the lunar surface. Originally at a 100 km - 800 km orbital distance from the surface, it gradually got closer, first to a 50 km circular orbit, and then to a 20 km - 100 km elliptical orbit, eventually crashing into the moon.
The following is an image taken by Kaguya moments before it hit:

Make Your Own Craters

While we're on the subject of lunar impactors, I feel the need to share a fun crater activity with you. This one is very easy and easily adaptable to just about any age audience. The supplies you will need include:

- a large pan or tub (a pie tin could work, as well as a baking pan, but don't use anything breakable)
- flour
- Nestle Nesquik, instant hot chocolate powder, cocoa powder or any other brown powder you can find
- pebbles, marbles, other spheres of varying sizes and masses

First, you'll put a layer of flour at the bottom of your pan. Make it at least half an inch thick, up to an inch if possible. Smooth out your flour. Next, put a thin layer of chocolate powder over the flour so that none of the chocolate shows. Finally, make your craters!
This is the part that you can adapt very easily. You can choose to use the same size/mass object and drop it into the powder from varying heights (or throw it at varying speeds, but dropping from different heights achieves the same result with better accuracy); or you can see what different objects dropped from the same height do. Try throwing your pebbles onto the tray at an angle.
As the objects impact the powder, the flour will come out from under, simulating the way subsurface materials are brought to the surface during an impact event. In addition, the contrast of the white flour and brown powder make it easy to see the impact sites and details.
There are a million variations on this one out there, but the Night Sky Network has a good one available online as part of a suite of activities for LCROSS; you can get the PDF here.

LCROSS (Finally) Launches

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite launched yesterday, after months of delays and with very little media attention. Originally scheduled to launch in October 2008, this mission will crash a 1,000 kg impactor into the moon at over 9,000 km/hr. Then it will fly through the debris and see what came up. (I love these missions that seem to have been conceived by ten year old boys!) The reason for doing this is to determine if there is any subsurface water on the moon, ostensibly to support any future lunar stations or settlements.
Also launching was the LRO, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. With very high resolution imagers on board, LRO will take detailed 3-D images of the surface of the moon in order to identify possible future landing sites, and will even be on the lookout for any of the leftover Apollo equipment we left on the moon.
I'll keep you updated on further developments, and of course let you know when we start seeing 3-D lunar surface images.

June = Moon

June is going to be full of moon stuff, so here are highlights from Momstronomer:

-the launch of LCROSS (the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) with its companion satellite, LRO (the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter)

-the end of Kaguya, the Japanese lunar orbiter

-Not one, but two fun moon activities you can try at home

Stay tuned!

Earthrise

You may be familiar with the famous "Earthrise" image taken by Apollo 11 astronauts, in which they see Earth rising from the moon. Well, JAXA (the Japanese version of NASA) has their Kaguya spacecraft orbiting the moon right now, and they took a time lapse of Earth rising with their camera. I did not expect to be quite as moved by the sight of it as I was. Seeing our home world from this perspective is certainly unique. Please enjoy!

Atlantis Launches

I don't always post when the shuttle launches, but in this case I will. Because I was there! That's right; Hubbystronomer, Little Dudestronomer and I headed to Cape Canaveral to see the launch. How was it, you ask? Just as amazing as you imagined. It was really bright and shot up into the sky. It took a few seconds for the deep rumbling the reach us, and then it gave me heart palpitations.

It was so neat to see so many people out for the launch. There was a real spirit of camaraderie as we all waited, and people were even polite on the road afterward. That's the real sign of community.

Now the astronauts aboard will head to the Hubble Space Telescope for some repairs and replacements. It sounds simple, but this will be anything but. I'm sure there will be plenty of news coverage, so stay tuned.

Colbert Gets His Wish

As reported by NASA, Stephen Colbert will have his name on a piece of important space equipment. While it may not be a module of the International Space Station, it will be aboard ISS. Formerly known as T2, the Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill will provide astronauts will a much-needed exercise regime that will help keep them healthy in space. Way to go, COLBERT!

National Astronomy Day

I know I've been remiss in my posts of late, but I can't let today pass without reminding you that Saturday, May 2 is International Astronomy Day. Wherever you are, find an event and celebrate this exciting day with your loved ones. If you are in the Santa Barbara area, the Museum of Natural History will be hosting their annual festivities, including live science demos, make-and-take crafts for kids, lots of planetarium shows, a speaker from JPL to talk about a next-generation Mars robot, and a free telescope raffle.
I'll be at the Miami Science Center with Hubbystronomer and Little Dudestronomer. If you're in the area, I'll hope to see you there. If you're elsewhere, make sure to celebrate Astronomy Day!

The Sculptor Galaxy

Enjoy this lovely image, and please click to enjoy it even closer up!

Photo by Emanuele Colognato (copyright 2008, all rights reserved)

M33

Enjoy this photo of the spiral galaxy M33, taken by Charles Lillo in the Everglades. Click for biggination.

Image credit: Charles Lillo (copyright 2008, all rights reserved)

M81 and M82

Two, two, two galaxies in one (image, that is)! Click image for hugification.

Photo by Emanuele Colognato (Copyright 2009, all rights reserved)

Galaxies Galore!

This month's IYA theme is galaxies, and I'm dying to talk with you more about that. However, I'm going to be out of town for the week. So I've prepared a few entries ahead of time to help you appreciate the best part of galaxies - looking at them! Special thanks to the talented photographers who let me use their images. They're all locals, in the South Florida Amateur Astronomical Association with me. See you next week!

100 Hours of Astronomy

Tomorrow marks the beginning of 100 Hours of Astronomy, a worldwide event with millions anticipated to participate in astronomy activities round the clock. You can take part by finding your local events, but if you're from my two largest demographics, I'll save you some time:
1. The greater Santa Barbara area - the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and the Santa Barbara Astronomical Unit have teamed up once again to provide loads and loads of fun for people of all ages at a variety of venues. For more info, visit the AU's events link.
2. South Florida - you can find me and other members of the South Florida Amateur Astronomers Association at Fox Observatory in Markham Park.
If there are no events in your area (but I'd be surprised - astronomers are practically taking over the world this weekend!), you can participate remotely by tuning in to live webcasts from science centers around the world or by looking through telescopes with a streaming feed.
So get on board and take part, it's never been easier to get a little more astro-loving in your life. And bring your friends - they may not be as cool as you are, what with your Momstronomer buddy giving you the heads-up.

News Round Up

At the top of this week's news is the safe return of Discovery earlier this evening. In other NASA news, it's not too late to vote for the name of the next Mars rover. After recent naming poll incidents, NASA has been clear that is a "non-binding poll." You can also send your name to Mars aboard that same spacecraft.


Universe Today announced this week its participation in "Live Telescope," which is pretty much what it sounds like. The Northern and Southern Galactic and Warren Rupp Observatory in Central Victoria, Australia, will broadcast a view through their telescope via webcast. At around 9:00 UT (which is nighttime there), they will start webcasting the view through their video eyepiece, and they won't stop until morning. Recent targets include the Jewel Box Cluster, Alpha Centauri, M11 and Alpha Crucis. You can tune in by visiting Universe Today.
And finally, to all the die hards out there (you know who you are!), I wish you a happy Messier Marathon! Too bad it's completely socked in here.

Stephen Colbert + ISS =

Here's a bit of pop culture crashing into space science. As you may recall from an earlier post, NASA encouraged the public to help select a name for the new node on the International Space Station. Well, the public heard, and maybe not in the way NASA anticipated. Stephen Colbert, of the Colbert Report, encouraged his viewers to vote not for the NASA suggested names but for the name "Colbert" as a write-in. And they did. In fact, Colbert got more votes than any other name.
Does that mean that NASA is obligated to follow the vox populi and give Colbert his/its due? Nope. The fine print indicates that the agency will take voter feedback into consideration, but may select a different name. Did you vote?

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Space Module: Colbert - Name NASA's Node 3 After Stephen
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Saturn and Its Moons

Enjoy this beautiful image, and if you want to know more, read on!


This image is a quadruple transit of four of Saturn's moons: Enceladus, Dione, Titan and Mimas. Titan is the largest one, and you can easily see the shadow of Titan on the cloudy "surface" of Saturn. For a bigger image, click on the image to go the Hubble website. I definitely recommend it, it's breathtaking in high resolution.

GLOBE At Night

This week marks the start of GLOBE At Night. (This is known to those of us in the biz as GaN.) The goal of GaN is to get a broad survey of light pollution from all around the world. How can this be done? Simple - by you! All you need to do is look at their magnitude charts (magnitude is the measure of how bright something is), and compare your view of Orion with those charts to determine how many stars you can see. Then report your results (it takes about a minute and half the first time, less on subsequent visits). Lather, rinse and repeat as many times as you like between March 16 and 28.
Why would we do this? Is there any sort of point to this exercise? Of course. I wouldn't waste my precious blogging breath to tell you about it if there weren't. Many people have never even heard about light pollution, but I'm going to assume that you are intelligent enough to realize that light pollution is the result of so many city lights pointed up instead down that the light of the stars is drowned out. By participating, you're helping collect data on local light pollution. In short, you're odoing citizen science. In addition, you can download family activity packs, school lesson plans and nifty posters and postcards. So go out tonight and do your part!

Don't Let My Technical Issues Stop You...

...from finding out more about the launch of the Kepler spacecraft! NASA says that the launch window is 10:49 to 10:52 PM, with a second window at 11:13 to 11:16 PM ET. We'll be camping in the Everglades, so we will be on the lookout. (Hopefully Little Dudestronomer will be asleep by now.)
I meant to post more, but we're having some gigantic virus issues here at home, so you'll just have to wait to hear more from me. I'll be sure to update you when we get back from our little expedition and/or our computer will start up properly.

One In a Million

Well, really it's more like one in a hundred billion. We're talking about our Earth, and estimates of how many Earth-like planets there could be in our galaxy.
If you're as old as I am (or older, or a bit younger), you'll recall being taught in school that there were only 9 planets in the universe. Not our solar system, not our galaxy, only 9 in the entire universe. That's a total of nine worlds that we knew of, in all of space, everywhere we knew of. That was a pretty lonely prospect. And if you're like me, it made you think that solar systems like ours must be extremely (almost impossibly) rare.
That all changed when I was in high school. In 1995, the first year I worked at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, I came into the Space Lab for my work shift and saw a newspaper clipping on our news board. The article itself didn't seem anymore spectacular than the others we had up at the time, but when I read it, my heart skipped a beat: scientists had found a planet orbiting a star called 51 Pegasi. The planet was a gas giant about half the mass of Jupiter that orbited at an incredible 4.23 days! To put that in perspective, Mercury takes 88 days to orbit the sun.
This was the beginning of a revolution (no pun intended) in planetary science. First of all, we knew there were other solar systems out there. Secondly, this first one was dramatically different from our own. Finally, and perhaps most incredibly, no one could see this world - its existence was extrapolated using mathematics.
51 Pegasus b (as this planet has been dubbed - "51 Peg a" would be the host star) was found using a method called spectroscopy. If you're familiar with this technique, skip to the next paragraph. If not, it's not too complicated; read on. Anything with mass has gravity, and the more mass you have, the more gravity you have. That is to say, the sun exerts its gravity on us, but we also exert a lesser gravitational force on it. In fact, although we say we orbit the sun, both the sun and Earth orbit a central point that is within the physical space of the sun, but not at the sun's center. If you watched to sun from another point in space, you would see the sun orbit around this central point; it wouldn't make a huge arcing circle, it would just seem to wobble in place. Spectroscopy measures the wobble of stars by looking for very regular (but extremely slight) changes in its distance to Earth. This method is sometimes called Doppler spectroscopy because it relies on measuring the Doppler effect of these stars, light red-shifting or blue-shifting as it comes to Earth. Here's a diagram from Wikipedia:

Now astronomers use a variety of methods for detecting planets that orbit other stars. We'll discuss later in the week, as we get closer to the launch of the Kepler mission. You'll be hearing about it in the news, and I have no less enthusiasm for the topic than the rest of the world. So stay tuned!
In the meantime, console yourself with this thought - Earth may be one in a hundred billion, but at least it's not alone.

New News This Week

In this week's space science news, NASA announced a new launch date for the shuttle, pending safety approval on hydrogen flow control valves. The tentative date is March 12. They have also named a chair of the investigation committee for the failed launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.
Anticipation is building for the March 6 launch of the Kepler spacecraft. You'll be hearing lots more about this one next week because I'm very excited about it, but in a sentence, it's a spacecraft designed to look for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has gone into safe mode after the automated safety response registered an anomalous event. Some conjectures as to the event include cosmic rays hitting the electronics panel. In the meantime, it continues to function and engineers hope to have it functioning normally again by early next week.
The Chandra X-ray Observatory has found the oldest pulsar ever observed. Despite its age (about 200 million years old), it's surprisingly active. It's also one of the nearest pulsars to us, at a mere 770 light years from Earth.
Finally, we'll end with the most controversial story of the week, the inclusion of $2 million for "the promotion of astronomy" in Hawaii at the Imiloa Science Center as part of the Omnibus spending bill. While certainly not one of the bigger ticket items, conservatives like John McCain have criticized this as pork. In fact, Sen. McCain went as far as to label it the #2 Porkiest Porkiest Project in a recent tweet. He says, "...because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy." This isn't the first time McCain has expressed displeasure at spending in astronomical arenas. Towards the end of his campaign, he made frequent disparaging remarks about then-Senator Obama's proposed $3 million for renovations at America's first planetarium, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago; unfortunately, McCain repeatedly referred the the planetarium as an "overhead projector." The astronomy community is once again abuzz with discussion of the importance (or lack thereof) of astronomy education in our country.

Sad News For NASA Mission

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory launched from Vanderberg Air Force Base at 1:55 AM local time, but as it headed its orbital path intended to study Earth's atmosphere, the shroud (a hard casing that protected the instrument during launch) failed to separate. This caused the satellite to crash into the Pacific Ocean near Antarctica. This 8 year project had an estimated cost of $278 million. NASA's press release is available at this link.
It's always interesting to me that when a spacecraft launches/lands/arrives successfully, NASA releases very exciting headlines. See this release from January 2004, when Spirit arrived on Mars. But when a mission goes badly, they come up with the most boring headline ever, as if they would prefer that you skip right over it. If you read the link I posted above for this most recent press release, you'll see that it avoids colorful terms like "crash," or "ruined;" it simply "failed to reach orbit." However, this Reuters release isn't nearly as circumspect; look for phrases like "dooming the mission" and "botched satellite launch." In the end, I guess NASA is only human.
Also, if you're the kind of person who thinks NASA is a huge waste of taxpayers' dollars and this is just one of many examples of that, now's the time to post your rant in the comments section. If you disagree, please feel free to say so as well. (Let's keep it civil, please.)

R.I.P.
Orbiting Carbon Observatory

More Questions and an Announcement

Bob in Goleta, CA asks: "What is happening with the rover today? What are the people in the space shuttle doing? What is the recent dust storm on Mars doing to the solar system?"
Great questions, Bob! I'm so glad you asked, because your timely questions bring me to my announcement: today is the official kick-off of my weekly news round up. In an effort to make sure you at least see a headline and know where to get more info on some of the top happenings of the week, I'm going to post a round up of all the cool stuff you might have accidentally missed. And I promise that this week's edition will answer your questions, Bob.
Let's start with the rovers. Spirit recently got a quick cleaning from a two recent dust storms that reduced the amount of dust on the solar panels significantly. Interestingly, when the rovers arrived, engineers from JPL were concerned that Mars' frequent and intense dust storms would cake the solar panels with dust and reduce their battery life; however, just the opposite has been true - the dust storms have repeatedly given the rovers new life as they've swept away some of the layers of dirt from the panels. Opportunity is also doing well; its right front wheel has had some issues for over three years, and recent diagnostic mobility drives have kept Opportunity and JPL engineers busy analyzing the degree of damage. Status reports for both rovers are updated weekly here.
In shuttle news, the launch of STS-119 (the next shuttle launch) has been deferred. Because of damage to a flow control valve that occurred during Endeavor's Nov. 2008 flight, NASA officials have decided that further investigation is needed before setting a launch date. STS-119 will carry a truss for the ISS as well as a new crew member to the space station. More info here. There are no current shuttle missions at this time.
In astronomical headlines, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (formerly known as GLAST) saw the largest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, and it saw it in hi-res. Gamma rays can be ejected from dying stars as they collapse and form black holes, sending huge amounts of energy into space travelling at nearly the speed of light. These bursts can be up to 5 billion times as energetic as visible light. While the processes that produce these gamma ray bursts aren't well understood, the Fermi telescope is helping scientists learn more by studying wavelengths of light not visible to the human eye. For more info, see the press release here.
And finally, NASA wants you to help name the new node on the International Space Station. Nodes 1 and 2 are named Harmony and Unity respectively, and submissions for the name of the new node will be accepted here. The winning name will be announced on April 28th. No prizes for picking the winning name, just the satisfaction of knowing you are awesome.

It's the Taxonomy, Stupid!

My recent post about sorting a purple fork is a parable about taxonomy. Taxonomy is the scientific word for sorting things. And while it sounds simple, sorting can get complicated quickly, and is sometimes subjective. Which is why scientists try to define a taxonomic system, a universal way of sorting things.
You're probably familiar with this system, at least in terms of biologic taxonomy. For example, plants and animals are part of different kingdoms. Delving deeper into taxonomy, cats and dogs are sorted into different families. If you want to break that down further, everyone can see that a chihuahua has some things in common with a Great Dane, but they definitely aren't the same thing.
In order to get a better grip on taxonomy, and taxonomic changes, I called my friend Dr. Paul Valentich-Scott, curator of malacology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. He knows more about clams than just about anyone on Earth. When I asked him about taxonomy, he said, "It changes. All the time." He doesn't mean that different species of clams are evolving into something new all the time; he simply means that scientists sort them differently as they get new information.
One example of this he gave me was the Pacific littleneck clam. He told me that in doing some research into the history of scientists who had described this clam, the name was changed at the genus level. Before this research had been done, the scientific name was given by the person thought to have described it first. However, it turns out that it had been described by someone earlier, and precedence was given to the original classifier.
Another example he cited was a type of clam he is working on in the order pandora. As malacologists have made new discoveries about this clam, they have found that it makes more sense to change what was a single species into four different species. Again, the clam didn't change; scientists are just relabeling it. Paul told me that as we are doing more and more DNA research, this type of taxonomic splintering is more and more common.
I know this seems like a lot of biology for an astronomy blog, but by now I think you've figured it out. Today marks the 79th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh. Although it was celebrated as a planet then, it has infamously been "de-classified" as a planet. I could make this long post longer by telling you all about it, but I did myself a favor three years ago and made a movie about it. So watch the clip below and please remember that the movie is 3 years old. Since then, 2003UB313 has been named Eris; Pluto has been reclassified as a dwarf planet (and even more recently as a plutoid); and two more larger-than-Pluto objects have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt (Haumea and Makemake).


Pluto: Planet or Not? from Krissie Cook on Vimeo.

Comet Lulin

In case you haven't heard yet, there is a comet heading away from the sun, but towards us, that is lighting up the early morning sky. Visible with binoculars, it will probably be bright enough that you'll see it even without if you know where to look. The peak time for viewing is February 24th, so I'm giving you due warning. Tonight it's in the constellation Virgo at rises at about 10 PM. But please don't look for it then; it will be right on the horizon and will have to battle light pollution and trees in the line of sight. Wait a few hours for best viewing.
Lulin will be rising about 20 minutes earlier every night, so it will be in a better position by the 24th. However, February 24th isn't the only time to see the comet. It will be visible before and after, so don't stress if you miss it on the peak observing night.
You can find the full story and lots of other cool stuff I've left out for brevity's sake at this link.

The Parable of the Purple Fork

[This was partly inspired by Little Dudestronomer's experiences in intermediate dining techniques.]

Let's say that you have spoons. Lots of spoons. Some are big, some are small; some are silver, some are plastic, some are wooden; some are yellow, some are purple. And you keep them all together in your spoon drawer.
One day while you are preparing to eat, you see that at your place setting there is something similar, but a little different. It's clearly used for eating food, just like your spoons; but it isn't rounded like your spoons at the end. Instead, it has four sharpish points. But the other end is almost exactly like your spoons.
What is this new thing? You're not entirely sure about what to call it. But more importantly, you don't know where to put it. You have a spoon drawer, a bowl drawer and a cup drawer; no "random pointy sorta spoon thingy" drawer. But you decide that it's more like a spoon than a bowl or a cup. So you keep it in the spoon drawer for now. After all, it's used for eating food, it has a handle, and it's purple, like some of your spoons.
Time passes. In fact, lots of time passes. So much time has passed that you're now much older and much more sophisticated. You have a lot of drawers now; you have one for your spatulas and one for your ladles. You have so many drawers that it's time to reorganize. So you're going back through your drawers and you come across that purple fork.
By now of course you realize it's a fork, and you have many more of them. In fact, you have a whole drawer of nothing but forks. You think back fondly of your early utensil days and remember your wonder at this new device and you pause to ask yourself a question: where should you keep your fork?
On the one hand, it's just like those other forks, with its pointy tines. On the other, you've kept it with the spoons all these years; what's the point in changing things now?

Now, dear readers, a question for you: where would you keep the purple fork? Post your opinion in the comments section.

And bonus points to anyone who guesses where I'm going with this. It's an astronomical direction, I promise. All will be revealed next week.

Full Moon Fun

Last night I spent some time outreaching. No, this is not a form of calisthenics. Outreach is the term people use to describe going out into the community and raising awareness about an issue or teaching people about something specific. I love astronomy outreach more than most things in life, so I was very excited to spend some time on the Hollywood Broadwalk during the Full Moon Concert talking to people about astronomy.
I was there as part of SFAAA, and most of the other members had telescopes. But since I don't own a telescope (and I prefer packing light anyway), I brought some outreach tools from the Night Sky Network toolkits. I was also packing some heat with a great activity from Astronomy From the Ground Up called "Sizing Up the Moon." I adapted it for this occasion and spent the better part of the night inviting people to take what I called the Moon Challenge. Instead of the more intensive classroom-based (or family-based) program, I did a simplified version that suits a drop-in audience quite well.
It was a hit with all ages. I'm pretty sure it's a combination of learning something interesting and enjoying the playdough used for the activity. People are always surprised to see how the moon and Earth size up to each other, and almost no one can accurately place their distance. I definitely recommend it. In fact, if you're interested in the activity, you can get it as well as a suite of others through the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Family ASTRO.
This activity works well with older kids (younger if they are interested and you are ready to be very engaged with them) and adults quite well. And younger kids will have a good time just playing the dough, making spheres and perhaps even poking craters onto the moon ball.

Everyday Astronomy

One of this month's IYA themes is the solar system. And I'll bet you think that the topic doesn't have much to do with your everyday life. Unless you're an astrogeek like me, or you're unlucky enough to have a momstronomer like Little Dudestronomer. (Fortunately, he's too young to know that he's being submitted to torturous geekery every day of his life.) But even if you are not as nerdy as I am, I'm here to tell you that you and the solar system are closer than you think every single day.
Here is just one of the ways that the solar system affects your life. What day of the week is it? No matter what you answered, your response is something in our solar system. Give it a moment; I'll even give you a hint: can you think of any days that might be associated with the sun, the moon or Saturn?


[Waiting for your moment to pass...]


OK, so you have realized that Sunday is really Sun Day. Named after the sun. Monday is really Moon Day. And Saturday is Saturn Day.
This goes back to the Greeks, who named the days of the week after the sun, moon and five known planets (each of which were named after gods). The other days get a little trickier, because we have to trace them back to other languages. The first three are almost direct translations, but from here on out, we're going on an astrolinguistic journey. (I'm pretty sure that's not a real word.)
Tuesday comes from Tui - Tui's Day, which is the Germanicized version of the Norse god of war, Tyr. That Norse god can be traced back further to the Roman god of war, Mars. In fact, if you're a Spanish speaker*, you know that Tuesday in Spanish is martes, which is an even closer link. (Days of the week are not capitalized in Spanish.) If you're Greek, you'll be angry if I leave out the fact that the Romans' Mars was originally the Greeks' Ares.
Wednesday comes from Woden, the Ango-Saxon relative of the Norse God, Odin. Odin was the the counterpart of the Roman god Mercury (Hermes to the Greeks). Again, Spanish speakers might now see the connection with miércoles.
Thursday comes from Thor (Thor's Day). Thor is the Norse version of Jupiter, which is the Roman version of the Greek Zeus. For Spanish speakers, you will want to know that Jupiter has another Roman name, Jove.
Friday comes from Freya, the Norse goddess of love and beauty. Process of elimination will lead to know that the Roman goddess of love and beauty is Venus (Aphrodite to the Greeks).
So there you have it. Whether you knew it or not, you've been proudly displaying the solar system on your calendar. You probably plan events in your life around the planets; for example, you might watch American Idol on the day of Mars and the day of Mercury, but football is king on the day of the moon. You call your mom on the day of the sun, you go to yoga on the day of Jupiter and you TGI Venus.


*This goes for French and Latin as well, but interestingly not for Portuguese.

Earth-like Planet Found Orbiting Sun-like Star

This is big news, people!
I'm planning a lengthy post on the subject of exoplanets eventually because it is one of my favorite topics in astronomy. However, with this breaking news just released, I have to fill you in a bit now.
For the last 15 years or so, we've been able to detect planets orbiting stars that are not our Sun. We call them extrasolar planets, or exoplanets for short (meaning when we're too excited to actually say the full name because what we're about to say about them is just too amazing). However, the vast majority that we have found are much larger than Earth; most are in the magnitude of Jupiter, which could fit 1,300 Earths inside it. This is not because most exoplanets are huge; instead, it's because our technology is still limited at this time and we can only detect really massive exoplanets.
That said, technology in this field has dramatically improved in the last decade plus and we are detecting smaller and smaller worlds. In fact, we have detected 336 planets orbiting 285 stars to date. This number will only increase exponentially as we continue to develop more precise and more sensitive equipment.
Today's announcement is really big news. The COROT space telescope has identified a small (less than twice the size of Earth) planet orbiting a sun-like star. We've never seen that before (outside our solar system). Early data suggests that it may well be a rocky planet like Earth, as opposed to a gas giant like most other exoplanets detected to date.
One of the biggest differences between this planet, called COROT-Exo-7b (gotta love those super-creative astronomers!), and our home world is that it is very close to its host star. In fact, its year is about 20 Earth hours. To put that in perspective, Mercury takes about 3 Earth months to orbit the sun. The close proximity to its host star makes this newly discovered world's temperature range from 1,000 to 1,500 degrees C. I'll never complain about South Florida summers again. OK, I might.
This system is 457 lights years from Earth, and COROT-Exo-7b is the first Earth-like exoplanet discovered using the transit method. If that doesn't make sense to you, good! It means you'll just have to check back for more sciency goodness.

Questions From Readers

I love questions from my readers! So far I have received two, and I will answer one in this post. The other will have to wait a bit, it was pretty complicated. (It has to do with the space time continuum, in case you're curious.) But before I go on, I would like to reiterate that I love love love questions from readers. So ask away!
Flem in Santa Barbara, CA asks: "I need to know if it is possible that I saw a comet last weekend or if it was just an amazing shooting star that lasted for a couple of seconds."
Short answer: a meteor, not a comet.
Long answer: Comets are big balls of ice and dust (imagine a dirty snowball a few miles across) that orbit the sun in elliptical (oval-shaped) paths. As they orbit the sun, sometimes they are in a location where we can view them from Earth. When we see a comet in the sky, it looks like a kind of dim star with a faint tail behind it. Comets appear in the sky for weeks or even months, in pretty much the same spot night to night. Meteors are flashes of light created when specks of dust, most around the size of a grain of sand, enter the earth's atmosphere and the friction between air and the dust causes a tunnel of flames. (Contrary to the popular misnomer, meteors are not shooting stars at all; meteors=light from a speck of dust, stars=huge burning balls of gas a million miles across.)
So if you saw something bright flash across the sky and then disappear in a matter of minutes, I'm going to say it was a meteor and not a comet. It may have even been a stray Quadrantid.

Spotting Venus

Venus is a prominent part of the night sky lately. You may have seen it in the west after sunset, shining brighter than any of the stars. Because it is the closest planet to Earth and is covered in reflective clouds, it is really bright. In fact, in my former life, I used to get voice mails from people claiming they saw a UFO, describing in perfect detail the location, brightness and appearance of the planet Venus. And I was 100% unsuccessful in my endeavors to persuade them to consider they were looking at Venus, not cosmic messengers from another dimension. Oh well.
If you want to make sure you're seeing Venus and spare your poor local astronomer some "I just got another call from a UFO kook" grief, use this chart to go out and find it tonight. Or any other night for the next month or two; it'll be around for the next couple of months. As a special bonus for being timely, if you go out in the next night or two, Venus will be near the crescent moon.

Image and credit: Roen Kelly, Astronomy.com

Where Would You Point Hubble?

I remember working in the Space Lab at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History as an exhibit interpreter when I was a teenager. We had one exhibit labeled "Where Is Hubble Now?" People would always be really surprised to see that the display was a spherical model of Earth viewed from a bit out in space with a dot labeled "HST" near it. For some reason, far too many people think that the Hubble Space Telescope has actually traveled hundreds, thousands or even billions of lightyears through space to take the images it sends back to Earth. Of course you and I both know that's not true; HST is in low Earth orbit at a distance of 559 km above the earth.
HST takes great images because it's out of Earth's atmosphere. Trying to do astrophotography on the surface of the earth is like taking a picture from the bottom of a swimming pool; our turbulent atmosphere is always moving and flowing, which wreaks havoc on all those photons we're trying to capture. HST doesn't have that problem and, as a result, it takes some of the best images ever recorded of our universe.
If you were in charge of the Hubble Space Telescope for a day, where would you point it? NASA is giving you a chance to decide! In honor of IYA (see, I'm not the only one excited about it!), the folks at HubbleSite are offering us the people the chance to decide on what Hubble will study next. You can vote online here. If you're an educator, you can also register to receive a free Hubble Education Package. I won't tell you what I voted for, but I'll give you a hint: I voted for a "peculiar" target which gravity has distorted.

What Good Is a Telescope? Part 3

As we celebrate IYA and Galileo's use of the astronomical telescope, it's time for some clarification. Galileo was not the first person to use a telescope. He wasn't even the first person to use a telescope for astronomical purposes. That honor goes to Thomas Harriot, an English astronomer who drew maps of the moon several months before Galileo. In fact, his very detailed diagrams were some of the best of the period. Unfortunately, he never published those maps or anything else related to his astronomical observations. He was well off and didn't need the income; it seems he pursued astronomy as a hobby and was content to keep his drawings to himself.
So as we honor Galileo for his discoveries and contributions, let's give a shout out to Thomas Harriot, who proved that if you don't publish, you just may perish (historically speaking). To hear more, you can check out this podcast from 365 Days of Astronomy, although it's a bit dry.

Thanks for joining me for this three part series. Check back next week for information on how and where you can see Venus!

What Good Is a Telescope? Part 2

Yesterday we left off with the geocentric view of our universe (with Earth at the center and everything else orbiting it), as propounded by The Church. Since this model could help predict the future positions of the planets, this meant power.
But of course, this couldn't last forever; absolute power and all that. The guy who changed everything forever was Galileo, and he did it with a telescope.
Galileo was an Italian scientist who became a student of Copernicanism upon reading works of Nicolaus Copernicus, an astronomer who died 21 years before Galileo was born. Copernicus maintained that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe (I'm using the term 'universe' as it would have been described at that time, not in our time). This model explained retrograde motion more clearly and simply that the geocentric model did, and thus provided more accurate predictions.
In the early 17th century, Galileo heard of a device called a spyglass and adapted a similar device to study the heavens. It was a simple device, a tube with a concave lens at one end and a convex lens at the other. It wasn't like a telescope you would use today; in fact, its power and quality were probably a bit less than a decent pair of binoculars today. To his credit, Galileo made vast improvements in the design of telescopes, eventually grinding his own mirrors and thereby drastically bettering his view of the universe.
Once he applied this new technology to the study of the stars, Galileo stumbled upon a cosmic quandry that would resolve the geocentric/heliocentric debate: the phases of Venus. If the geocentric view were to be correct, Galileo would never see Venus as more than a crescent in his telescope; if the heliocentric view were correct, Venus would grow from crescent to nearly full as viewed from the earth. Below are two animations demonstrating what each of these models would look like respectively.


Ptolemy's Model


Copernicus' Model

You guessed it; as Galileo studied Venus' phases through his telescope, he saw not just a crescent Venus but as time passed, all the way to a gibbous Venus in his field of view. And as quick as that, thousands of years worth of cosmological thinking were made obsolete.
You probably know the rest of the story. I won't go into details, but The Church wasn't particularly gracious about this new information (remember, astronomical knowledge = power); nor was Galileo gracious in his response. Nonetheless, the Scientific Revolution had begun and our understanding of the universe changed forever.
One last note: if you would like to listen to a fascinating account of all this, I highly recommend you give my fellow former planetarian Davin Flateau a listen. His podcast (part 365 Days of Astronomy podcast series) is available here. It's definitely worth nine minutes of your time. And the theme song is awesome!

Check back tomorrow for the exciting conclusion of our telescope tale.

What Good Is a Telescope?

This month's IYA theme is telescopes. In fact, the reason this year is IYA is that 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of the astronomical telescope. So what? Why should you care?
I'm going to answer that question in three parts, each of which will go live in three consecutive days. So consider this the first part, but by no means the entire story. Check back for more tomorrow and the day after.
The first part of this story centers around the power of astronomy. The power of astronomy is the power to predict the future. That is to say, we all have enough astronomical knowledge to know that the sun will rise and set each day. We can plan around this and it gives us power. If we didn't have that knowledge, we wouldn't have the power to set our own schedules or even know when the best times to sleep or work would be. In earlier times, the power to predict the future was just as important. And that future was laid out in the stars. If you could know where the planet Venus would be 5 months in the future, that meant power. And if you predicted it incorrectly, that was even worse.
To understand the importance of telescopes, let's take a journey back in time to the early 17th century. At that time, the ruling view of the universe was the geocentric model articulated by Ptolemy and Aristotle before him. From this point of view, the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars all orbited Earth in perfect spheres. This was the "onion" universe: the earth was at the center; the moon orbited in the sphere closest to the earth (like the layer of onion closest the center); Mercury and Venus orbited the earth just past the moon, each in their own layer; the sun was in the next layer out; followed by Mars; Jupiter; Saturn; and then the stars were the outside layer, all being part of one sphere that encircled all other spheres of orbit. In this model, the movement of celestial bodies was perfect and circular.
There was a bit of problem with this model; as all keen sky observers know, the planets don't follow a straight path in a single direction across the sky; occasionally, they seem to go backward in their path and then forward again, making a loop. How could this be explained in a model of spheres? The idea of epicycles sprung forth. Epicycles were orbits within orbits; that is to say, a planet like Mars would be moving in its own circular path while circling Earth.
This model of the universe was mostly accurate and allowed early astronomers to predict the positions of the planets más o menos (more or less, as we say in Spanish). Since the Catholic Church was one of the great powers of the day, The Church made sure that this perfect model was the one that people understood. God put Earth at the center of the universe (and by extension, man), and all other celestial bodies orbited in their perfect spheres. The Church could predict the future through this model of the universe and that gave The Church power.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our telescope talk!

Methane on Mars

Maybe Marvin the Martian is a cow.
NASA held a press conference today to announce that data from orbiting spacecraft picked shows plumes of methane on Mars. Not just a singular event, but various plume events over the last 5 years.
Before you go and get all ALH 84001-style excited about life on Mars, please remember that methane can be produced both biologically and geologically. For example, both bovine digestive processes and volcanic processes create methane on Earth. No one is sure where the methane on Mars is coming from. However, the fact that plumes have been seen over this extended period of time leads planetary geologists to think there is some sort of active process on Mars they had not considered before.
So the long and the short of the story is that there is no direct evidence of life on Mars, no matter what the crazies tell you. Instead, just another answer that just leads to more questions. Oh, how I love science!

Follow this link to a video from NASA about these results.

More MER Anniversary Fun

Got this in my inbox today:

The Mars Exploration Rover team invites you all to watch the rovers' fifth anniversary celebration programming that will be broadcast from JPL on January 15. You are welcome to share this information with anyone you know...

Mars Exploration Rover fans:
Tune in to the public channel on NASA TV on Thursday, January 15 at 3:00 PM PST (6:00 PM EST) for a special live broadcast from JPL celebrating the twin rovers' 5th anniversary.

JPL will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Mars Exploration Rover mission with a program scheduled to include former CNN chief technology and environment correspondent Miles O'Brien on Thursday, Jan. 15 from 3 to 4 p.m. PST.

O¹Brien will give the event¹s keynote address following remarks by JPL Director Charles Elachi, Project Manager John Callas and Principal Investigator Steve Squyres. The presentation will also include video highlights and guest commentary on the rover mission.

To watch the show online, go to http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html?param=public .

Holla For Huygens

The spacecraft and the the 17th century astronomer, but mostly to the spacecraft as we commemorate 4 years since its successful landing on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Huygens got to Saturn by hitching a ride on the Cassini spacecraft, so for the first 7+ years of the mission, the two were bound in hyphenated harmony as Cassini-Huygens. By 2005, Huygens detached from Cassini while in Saturnian orbit and eventually landed on Titan. To truly appreciate this achievement, here's a review of the timeline:

10/15/1997 - The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft launches
4/26/1998 - Gravity-assisted flyby of Venus (that's when the spacecraft saves fuel by using the gravity of Venus to slingshot its way towards Saturn)
6/24/1999 - Another gravity-assisted flyby of Venus
8/18/1999 - Gravity-assisted flyby of Earth
12/30/2000 - Gravity-assisted flyby of Jupiter
[Various correctional burns over the next three and half years ensure that Cassini-Huygens stays on course.]
5/18/2004 - Cassini-Huygens enters the Saturn system
7/1/2004 - SOI (Saturn Orbit Insertion); again, to make the magnitude of this clear, after 7 years of space flight, Cassini-Huygens managed to reduce its speed by 1,400 mph in only 96 minutes. Cassini has arrived at its final destination - Saturnian orbit, but Huygens still has one last leg of the journey.
12/25/2004 - Huygens separates from Cassini
1/14/2005 - Huygens descends into Titan's atmosphere at 13,500 mph, slows itself down by aerobraking and parachuting; sends its first image back to Earth at 19:45 UTC, confirming that it landed on Titan and is functioning!

This is a really big deal; it's the farthest we've ever sent a lander, and it worked. It sent data for 90 minutes and then signals stopped. Data included images and loads of information about Titan's atmosphere, gleaned from Huygen's descent. It continued to send data from its landing spot in the Xanadu region of Titan. Good work, job well done and all that.



By the way, it's generally pronouced "HOY-ghens" by most English-speakers, which does vary slightly from the original Dutch pronunciation; but unless you're Dutch, you're better off sticking with the American way.

Sing Along Time

Did you know that IYA has its own theme song? Yes, it's true; the renowned science-popsters AstroCapella have penned a theme song, Shoulders of Giants. Little Dudestronomer and I have been rocking out to this number all morning. It's available for free download here, and is also the subject of the Astronomy Music Video Contest. That's right, you can make your own music video and enter to win a fabulous prize. First prize is $500 and a telescope, and categories include middle school, high school, graduate and artist (artist category is for original song and video). The deadline is January 7, 2010, so get cracking!

Biggest Full Moon of the Year?

Yes, if you read the headlines, you'll already know that tonight is the biggest full moon of 2009. What does that mean? That headline would lead you to believe that the moon actually shrinks and grows in physical size throughout the year. Is the moon larger tonight than it will be next month? Is the moon closer to Earth during full moon? What is going on? Since I love to debunk (don't even get me started on 2012), let's discuss.
The moon orbits Earth every 29.5 days. However, its orbit is not perfectly circular; it's a little oval shaped, or elliptical. (Impress your friends with that sometime.) That means that it's closer to Earth at some points of its orbit than at others. Tonight is that rare occasion when full moon and the moon's closest point in orbit (called perigee - another SAT word) coincide. This will not happen again during any full moons of 2009, so that makes this the closest (and therefore largest-appearing) full moon of the year.
And no, Mars will not appear as big as the full moon, the moon isn't larger when it rises and the full moon will not categorically make you crazy (or crazier than usual).

Edible Mars Rovers

As I mentioned, this is the month when we celebrate the 5th anniversary of the landing of the Mars Exploration Rovers on the Red Planet. In honor of this occasion, I've got a fun activity you can try. This is good for kids 3 and up (younger if you are really adventurous) and has been enjoyed by many adults as well. You can read one of many lesson plans at this link, or get adventurous and Google it yourself for lots of variations.

Ingredients (per rover):

• 3 graham crackers
• 1 roll of Smarties
• 6 Nilla-style wafer cookies
• 3 big marshmallows
• 1 snack-size Kit Kat
• 2 snack-size peppermint patties
• 1 straw (preferably bendy)
• 1 knife
• 6 Rolos (wrapped individually if possible)
• Toothpicks
• 8 gumdrops
• Frosting
• Damp washcloth standing by

Directions:
Assemble the above ingredients to form something that looks like a robot. The frosting makes a good glue to hold all your constituent parts together. Remember that wrappers are just as important as the candies in them, especially the shiny ones. You can spend as much time as you like discussing what instruments you've created (maybe the bendy straw is the Rock Abrasion Tool or a Nilla wrapped in the Rolo foil is the high-gain antenna). You can keep the grahams whole or break them up. I like to keep one whole and then break one up into the little rectangles and use two of these as the solar panels. In case you aren't completely familiar with the Mars Exploration Rovers and their many parts, here's a diagram (click on it for larger image):

For healthier rovers:
Feel free to use alternate ingredients. You can use cream cheese as the glue, carrot wheels, celery sticks, banana slices, pretzel sticks, you name it. I personally prefer the candy one, but I would not intentionally allow my child to ingest that much sugar, so I won't tell you to either.

Photo credit Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

Happy Birthday!

[Insert sound of party blower here.] Today marks the 5th anniversary of the successful landing of the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on the surface of the Red Planet. The other rover, Opportunity, landed on January 24th, 2004. More on this later in the month, but for now, here's a reminder of what happened five years ago.

Quadrantids Meteor Shower

January 3rd (that's tomorrow, people!) is the peak of the annual Quadrantids meteor shower. The estimated best time for viewing is 12:50 UT (7:50 EST, 4:50 PST) but of course you'll see plenty before and after. Best viewing is after midnight, doubly this year because of the moon.
Why do we have meteor showers? Meteor showers are caused by Earth moving through the debris left behind by a comet. As comets orbit the sun, they leave bits of dust behind. Since that dust stays in a (mostly) stationary spot in our orbit, we know we'll run into that patch at the same time each year.
Most meteor showers are known by the name of the constellation nearest the center (or "radiant") of the shower. The Geminids, for example have their radiant in the constellation Gemini. Interestingly, the Quandrantids were named for a now defunct constellation name, Quadrans Muralis. That constellation was near what we call the Big Dipper, so look in the north toward the Big Dipper for the radiant.
If you're going to try to see the shower, wait at least until moonset (just past midnight here in South Florida) and then look outside. No telescope necessary; some people mistakenly think they'll see more meteors with a telescope. In fact, it's just the opposite: you want to see as much of the sky as possible in order to see all meteors in your view. If you use a telescope, you'll see only a tiny part of the sky. To see more of the sky, find a nice clear spot (no buildings, lights or tall trees), lie down on a comfy sleeping bag and enjoy!
If you can't make it out on the 3rd (or if weather doesn't permit), don't worry; meteor showers last days or sometimes weeks. Just keep your eyes open when you're outside at night for the next week or two and you'll probably see a meteor or two.
Happy meteor hunting!

By Way Of Introduction

Welcome to the Stay-At-Home Momstronomer! I'm your humble host, the aforementioned Momstronomer. You see, I spent 13 years working at a natural history museum teaching astronomy to people. Around year 12, I spawned a baby dudestronomer. A year later, my husband's schooling shuttled us away from my home-away-from-home, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and dropped us off in the foreign land of South Florida. One of the perks of this deal was that I went from full-time mom and full-time astronomy programs manager to extra-full-time mom.
It took me about 30 seconds to realize that even if no one was paying me for it, I couldn't say away from astronomy. Little Dudestronomer (as he shall henceforth be known on this blog) is a few days away from 18 months now, and he has no idea how ferociously I'm going to cram his noggin full of astrostuff. It's a tricky thing teaching these upper level concepts to little people (and to grown people as well), so I thought I'd share some of my tactics and experiences with you.
This is the right blog for you if you like astronomy, but don't know as much you'd like to about it. Also, if you know something about astronomy, but you're too lazy to follow all the headlines yourself, welcome aboard. Finally, if you find yourself in a similar situation to mine (you are charged with the education of young and fertile minds), please stay tuned.
One final word about IYA: 2009 is the official International Year of Astronomy. All over the world, people will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of the astronomical telescope with events and activities throughout the year. This blog is my contribution (as well as a lof of build-up work at my former place of employ, now taken over by my successor) to the cause. I will not be posting every day, but I will post regularly - a 2-3 times a week. My posts will not be novels; computer time is at a permium with the Little Dudestronomer in my care. So check back early and often for news, current sky events, activities and all the fun I can stuff into this blog.

Happy IYA!