From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Fri Nov 14 2003 - 10:45:32 PST
----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 1:57 AM
To: badastronomy_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: [badastronomy] Bad Astronomy Newsletter Issue #46 (Nov. 13, 2003)
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THE BAD ASTRONOMY NEWSLETTER
Issue #46
November 13, 2003
http://www.badastronomy.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/badastronomy
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Bad Astronomy Newsletter #46
Contents:
1) Quick notes about radio appearances
2) The Lion won't roar this time
3) Adverse
4) Got some spare change?
5) By Jupiter!
6) Lunar drought...
7) ... and Martian rivers
8) Our insatiable Galaxy
9) You've been a great audience, seriously folks
10) Subscribe/Unsubscribe info
* * * * * * * * * * * *
1) Quick notes about radio appearances
Yikes, what a month! I have been swamped at work and at home, like
usual, so I've been bad about sending out newsletters. To make up for it,
this one has 9 topics. :-)
I'll start off by plugging some radio spots I've done and will be doing.
First, I was interviewed by radio astronomer and alien hunter (well, he
works for SETI) Seth Shostak, who is also an old buddy of mine. We talked
about the Harmonic Concordance, or lack thereof. The interview is archived
at
http://www.seti-inst.edu/epo/seti_radio/Welcome.html
which is the page for his radio show "Are We Alone?". The actual file is
http://www.seti-inst.edu/audio/archives/11_02_03.mp3
My part starts about 8:30 into the interview.
I'll be interviewed live on the New Hampshire Public Radio show
"The Exchange" at 9:00 a.m. Friday morning. Sorry about the short notice.
If it makes you feel any better, I have to get up at 5:45 in the morning
to get ready for it. Bleah. But it should be fun. You can listen online
if you don't happen to be from NH (and chances are, that's true). Their
site is here:
http://nhpr.org/view_summary/3/
I also was just invited back to be on the Coast to Coast AM show with
George Noory for Monday, November 19. This will be the fourth time
I will have been on the show, I think, and I always approach it with
some trepidation. Why? Well, the guest that's on the next night thinks
there are alien bases on the Moon. Richard Hoagland is a frequent guest,
and his claims are, well, wacky at best. Insulting at worst. James McCanney
was on last week, and he is still beating the drum for Planet X. While they
do have actual scientists as guests every now and again, someone who
comes on and says the other guests are wrong is *really* unusual. :-)
But that's just what I plan to do on Monday.
The show is syndicated everywhere. Go to
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/
to find a radio station near you, or find one on the web which streams it.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
2) The Lion won't roar this time
The annual Leonids meteor shower has, in the past, been spectacular.
This year, however, it'll be more of a dud if predictions are correct.
Worse, the third-quarter Moon will throw a big wet blanket on seeing
meteors; the Moon is bright and up all night, making faint meteors hard to
see.
However, you never know. The shower should peak on the evening of the
18/19th. Depending on where you are, you might see quite a few shooting
stars. But how can you know? Well, the good folks at NASA Ames Research
Center has a solution. Go to
http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html
There is a java applet there that will give you best predictions for your
location. It's *very* cool. It says I will get something like 10-15
meteors per hour at peak, from 3-6 in the morning local time. YOUR TIMES
WILL VARY ACCORDING TO YOUR LONGITUDE. So make sure you tell the applet
where you live.
There is also a lot of really interesting information about the Leonids on
that site. I have some on mine as well. Go to my search page:
http://www.badastronomy.com/info/search.html
and type in Leonids. There are links to discussions on the bulletin board as
well.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
3) Adverse
Speaking of my site, you may have noticed I am running ads again. I had
some on the site a couple of years ago (I was part of an astronomy ad
network with the site admin of The Universe Today at
http://www.universetoday.com). I decided it was time to do it again,
seeing as how the guy who runs Digibattery is a fan of the site and wanted
wanted to pay me up front. :-) His ad is on the top right of every page.
I also decided that I will run Google ads for a while to see how that
works. The ads are targeted to the content of the page, so a page about
telescopes, say, may have ads for telescope companies. The ads are text
links, so they aren't very obtrusive. However, I am having some trouble
with them. I keep seeing ads for astrology, creationism, and Planet X!
If I have a page debunking astrology, the Google software doesn't really
understand I am debunking, it just sees the word "astrology" and picks
an ad for it. I can filter out ads I don't like, but the list I have is
getting pretty big.
Anyway, I have avoided flashing pictures and glaring colors, so hopefully
these won't bug anyone. And they are still more or less astronomy-related,
so they might even prove useful.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
4) Got some spare change?
SpaceDev is a startup company trying to make a profit by launching
satellites into space. They may very well do it. They are persistent,
that's for sure. So when someone sent me the following link, I had to
laugh. But hey! They have got one bid.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2572382454&category=45046&rda1=
* * * * * * * * * * * *
5) By Jupiter!
The Cassini space probe is on its way to Saturn. As I write this, it's
only 229 days from entering orbit around the Ringed Planet (yes, I know,
other planets have rings... but not like Saturn's!). To get there, it
had to get a boost using the gravity and motion of Jupiter. Not wanting to
waste a good chance, the operators took some images of the biggest planet
in our solar system, and were rewarded with a picture so amazingly cool
that I'll just simply point you to it and let you gape in awe at it:
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/PR/2003K13/PR2003K13A.html
For more about Cassini, try
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm
* * * * * * * * * * * *
6) Lunar drought...
A few years back, some astronomers announced they had detected hydrogen
in deep, dark craters near the Moon's poles. These craters were so deep
and so near the poles that sunlight never reached them. Could the hydrogen
have been locked up as water molecules? That meant ice on the Moon!
It was difficult to confirm them. The Lunar Prospector was a satellite that
orbited the Moon, making maps of the minerals there. In 1999, scientists
let the orbiting probe impact the Moon's surface in hopes that they
could detect water on the Moon. If the water existed at the impact site,
the heat of impact would vaporize it and throw it off the surface, where it
could be seen by ground based telescopes. They even used Hubble, but there
was a problem with the observations and they didn't turn out. I was pretty
disappointed by that last part; I found out the scientists were using the
camera on Hubble on which I was working at the time, so I took some
initiative and called them. They were happy to have someone with experience
with the camera willing to help out! I was thrilled! But then I saw the
data after impact, and it was a mess. Observing the Moon is very hard for
Hubble, and the images were streaked and not very useful. Given that
no one else detected water, maybe it doesn't matter.
But now it turns out there may be nothing to observe. Scientists using the
Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico (the same one which is featured
prominently in the movie "Contact") say they have looked for frozen
water in those craters, and have literally come up dry.
They used the giant dish to bounce radio waves off the Moon. Ice reflects
these waves in a characteristic way, such that the presence of water
would be seen. It wasn't. The waves penetrate the lunar surface to a
depth of more than 5 meters, so it seems unlikely that water was detected
earlier by the lunar satellites. It might still be there, but it would
be scattered around, and not in thick deposits as once hoped.
For more info, go to
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Nov03/radar.moonpoles.deb.html
* * * * * * * * * * * *
7) ... and Martian rivers
But what of Mars? There is copious evidence that Mars once had water flowing
on the surface. However, was this the result of persistent water, like lakes
and oceans, or transient events like the catastrophic melting of ice in an
asteroid impact, leading to melting and short floods?
Recent images from the Mars Global Surveyor make it seem likely that
at least some water stuck around for a while on the martian surface.
When water flows over time in a river, the river tends to meander; that
is it wiggles around the surface of the land over time. This does take time
to happen, so it's good evidence that water flowed there for a while, and
not just in a flash flood.
There's lots of other evidence, and some pretty pictures, too, at the
Malin Space Science Systems website:
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/11/13
* * * * * * * * * * * *
8) Our insatiable Galaxy
A few years ago, a small dwarf galaxy got a bit too closer to
our own much larger Milky Way. The penalty for trespassing was getting
eaten: the smaller galaxy was literally torn apart by the gravity of the
Milky Way and the remnants of it are still orbiting our Galaxy (see
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/galaxy_gobble_030924.html for more
about the fate of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy).
Now, astronomers have found out it was at least a two-course meal. A second
galaxy has been found, or at least the carcass of one. Dubbed the Canis
Major dwarf galaxy (it lies in the direction of the constellation of
the Big Dog) it consists of about a billion stars. The galaxy itself
has been stretched and pulled into a series of streamers that are
orbiting the center of our Milky Way.
It was found in the data of the 2MASS survey, an infrared survey of the
sky. The survey is sensitive to cool, giant stars, which are also the
easiest to find in a dwarf galaxy because they're bright, and easy
to see over great distances. The survey also gets distance information
to the stars, so astronomers can create a 3D map of the stars. When
that is done, the streamers pop right out. It's pretty neat.
One of these streamers is a mere 25,000 light years away, a mere stone's
throw from the Sun on Galactic scales (the Milky Way is 100,000 light
years across). Don't worry about getting smacked by it though. On
an Earthly scale that's still a long way off.
More info, cool pictures, etc.:
http://astro.u-strasbg.fr/images_ri/canm-e.html
* * * * * * * * * * * *
9) You've been a great audience, seriously folks
Phew! That's enough for this time, I think. Hey, one last thing: if you
haven't yet registered for James Randi's "The Amaz!ng Meeting II", then
you should go here:
http://www.randi.org/jref/tamii.html
I'll be there, as will Penn and Teller, and lots of other cool people.
It'll be great fun!
* * * * * * * * * * * *
10) Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information
If, for some weird reason, you want to unsubscribe to this
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**************************
Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
badastro_at_badastronomy.com
http://www.badastronomy.com
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