Have Faith

Have Faith

A friend recently posted that those words can annoy her.

I definitely don’t want to annoy her.  I think she is correct that we may actually distance ourselves from the other’s pain when we give advice or repeat bland platitudes like “Have Faith.”  I try to sit and be present when a friend shares the space around a wound.  And I find it most difficult to keep my mouth shut.  When I do keep quiet sometimes I feel that I’ve failed at being sympathetic.

What does it mean, to “have faith”?  I guess it depends on your definition of the word, and having different meanings to our words is one of the hallmarks of our language.  Faith.

I tend to think that faith is connected to having belief in something unseen, and there might be different levels of faith.  I’ve heard that having faith in the law of gravity to keep me grounded is one thing, but it’s a whole different kind to jump from a 20-story building with faith that God will catch me.

I think the scientific method is the best way to learn about the natural world but I guess I have faith in the science community to follow the scientific method in exploring our universe.  I don’t know from personal experience that all or even most scientists actually did a particular experiment or bit of research, but I have faith that someone in the community reproduced the results satisfactorily. I have faith that they would not stay silent if the experimenter was wrong.

To one extreme, faith beyond belief might be called knowledge.  On the other extreme, faith might be called insanity.  Which way is which?  I have faith that we humans have the capacity to figure it out.  I could be insane.

I don’t want to annoy her, so I won’t say it.  But I’m thinking it real loud.

Dennis

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Science books may have the reputation of being filled with boring facts, but I've read my share of innovative and entertaining works.  Carl Sagan and Chet Raymo have long had a special place on my bookshelf.  I also have Alice in Quantumland by Robert Gilmore and Bad Astronomy by Philip Plait.  The later actually is a collection of facts, but they are presented as answers to misconceptions about space.

A definite new addition to my collection of "weird" astronomy books is The Edge of the Sky by Roberto Trotta.  It was a gift from Barbara (she knows what I like) and I finished it this afternoon.  I must admit that it was a little difficult to understand, almost like trying to read Old English, or listening to Australian accent.  It's a short book (85 pages) which is a good thing.  The description about the universe is woven around the account of an astronomer taking a one-night shift at a mountain-top observatory.

I bet it sounds pretty conventional, right?  The wrinkle is that the author only uses words that are most common in the English language.  Trotta restricts himself to the one-thousand most-used words.  This leads to all sorts of new terms like "Big-Seer "(think telescope), "Heavier Drop" (helium), and "star-crowd" (go ahead and guess.)

I found the story of the astronomer to be very flat, although many intriguing thoughts fill her head.  Maybe those ideas coulndn't be easily described in simple words, so they got left out?

A list of the 1,000 most common words is included in the forward, and Trotta claims to have used only 707 of them in this book.  I believe him, but I didn't count them myself.  There's also a glossary of some of the awkward terms is at the end of the book.  

I will do it here.  Each word in this word-group is on his list. His book was of interest to read for a short time, but soon became a job.

(That took some editing!)

If you are into language or weird astronomy books, this might be for you.  If you want to learn some astronomy, probably not-so-much.

Third item on my New Years resolutions is to read/complete at least one book /month.  And it' a galaxy.

Which way is North?

(Tom shared this activity with me, and I've used it successfully several times.)

On the first day of class, when I'm introducing basic sky-watching concepts, I ask my students to point North.  As you might expect. I get the usual mix of fingers pointed to different horizons, but I also get about 25% pointing straight up.

These students think the zenith is North.  It's an understandable misconception.  When we were younger, many of us learned to read maps with "north" being "up" on the map.  So north must be up, correct?

Moon Phases

Moon Phases

Yesterday,  just before my 1:25 class, the skies above HPU cleared and the view was glorious!

My Lab students came in and we put styrofoam balls on sticks and went outside.  The waxing -almost first quarter Moon was low in the eastern sky.  I asked what phase the Moon would b in if the Moon were close to the Sun, and they chimed in "New!"  We held our stryrofoam balls on sticks, our models of the Moon, up near the Sun and sure enough, we were looking at the dark side of the Moon.

Then we held our Moon models next to the Moon in our sky.  Low and behold, the models exhibited the same phase as the real Moon! I heard the gasps and comments of understanding.  What they had learned in lecture, they now understood in Lab.

Then I asked "How much of the total surface of the Moon is being lit during the Full Moon phase?"  They said half.  Correct.

Next I asked, "How much of the total lunar surface is being lit during the 1st quarter phase? "  Someone said half, and I said correct.

How much in New...half,  How much in waning gibbous?  ...half   How much all the time?  half!

A great day at school!

                                           One of my archived pictures of the Moon.

Immortal Stars

Immortal Stars

The life-span of humans seems so brief compared to that of stars 

What?   Stars have a life span? 

Yes, I know, that idea can be a bit unsettling at first.  Maybe we tend to think of stars as permanent because they last such a long time.

Our star, the Sun, has been around for more than 4 billion years.   Billion!  What a number!  It's a challenge to wrap a brain cell around such a hug number.  A billion.  Have you been alive a billion seconds?  (Only of you're older than 31 years!)

Stars are born, they live, then they die.  The Orion Nebula is one of those places in the universe where stars are born.  When we look at it, it's like lokig into a crib with a bunch of babies, and the blanket has been kicked away in places. We can see the babies inside. 

This image of the Orion Nebula (M42) was taken as part of my preparation for the Astronomy Labs I'm teaching this semester.  It's a 20 second exposure with an open filter by the Prompt 1 telescope in Chile.  The baby stars are hidden in the glow.  Next, I'm going to try to manipulate the image to bring them out. 

Southern Stars

Southern Stars

I'm beginning a new chapter in my variable star work,  Since taking an astronomy course at GTCC in 1997 I've been making visual observations of variable stars for the AAVSO.  I haven't done many, but a few every year usually get added to my records.

This year I'm learning how to take images of the variable stars and calculating magnitude using computer software.  In addition, I will be looking at stars in the southern sky, stars unavailable to observers this far north of the equator.

My first target is to calibrate exposure time.  I've taken an 80 second exposure of the variable star u tuc.  It's found in the constellation Tucana (the Toucan). There are apparently many unknowns about this particular star, including it's distance from Earth and the period of variability.

Art and Astronomy

Art and Astronomy

A couple weeks ago a special group from Winston Salem came to visit Cline Observatory and look thru our telescope. They were young artists seeking inspiration.

Wednesday evening these young artists presented their work at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston Salem. It was exciting to see them excited about astronomy and present their thoughts and feelings and impressions thru their media. (I wish I understood art more.)

Located on the Jamestown campus of GTCC, Cline Observatory is open to the public, free of charge every clear Friday night. This week we are scheduled from 7 to 9 with a high probability of clouds or rain.

cloudy lunar eclipse

I was disappointed the sky was so cloudy Tuesday morning. I checked at 1:15 AM, and again at 3:00, and the Moon was not visible thru the clouds.

Tim, a buddy who lives about 45 minutes north of us, had more fortune. He snapped these images of the last lunar eclipse of the year. Our next lunar eclipse is scheduled for December 10, 2011. It will be only partially visible at moonset from the east coast.

First Snow of Winter

Today we were suppose to get a light dusting of snow that would quickly melt because of the ground temperature.

It snowed for several hours this afternoon. At times the flakes were small, at others the flakes were big and fat.

We've got more than a light dusting.

Doonesbury Astronomy

I enjoy the tension in Garry Trudeau's work Doonesbury.

I also enjoy finding astronomical errors. I shared the comic strip of November 14, 2010

(to be found at:

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2010/11/14

in its entirety)
with my students. They were able to find the mistake.

Assuming the time in the panel above is 3 AM, can you find the astronomical mistake?

Eastern Standard Time

Last weekend Barbara and I were at Myrtle Beach for the change back to Eastern Standard Time.

To remember how the change affects observing:

It gets light earlier in the morning.

It gets dark earlier in the evening.

Sharing the Moon

Greensboro has a nice new park downtown, and the site has become a magnet for folks and events. I took my 6 inch Celestron telescope to the park today for a couple of hours.

I was in the shadow of tall buildings for most of the hours I spent there. The Moon peeked above a building around 4 o'clock and other park patrons took turns looking thru the telescope. The Moon is currently just past 1st Quarter, and we could see the rugged southern area as well as the large mare on the western limb.

I got the usual questions about the size of the Moon and its distance from Earth, the relative distances to the Sun and the Stars, and so on. One guest was very knowledgeable and professed that he had done a good amount of research to support his belief that the world "as we know it" will end December 21, 2012.

I mentioned the 100% track record of such predictions being wrong, and he talked about the Federal Reserve Board and fascism. The Haitian earthquake, the increasing number of sunspots, and the Book of Revelations were all too much for him to dismiss, so he seemed firmly grounded in the "true believer" community.

Where do we learn?

Last week a tragedy happened. A young college student was recorded without his consent and the activity was broadcast on the Internet, to his embarrassment.

The young college student then committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

Where do our young people learn such outrageous behavior and why do they think it's OK to blindside and embarrass others?

Above is a still image from a current TV ad in which one person records a video of another doing something potentially embarrassing. The video gets posted to the Internet.

Galaxy

"Hurricane" by Chelsea Bredeson-Hayes was a gift from Barbara yesterday. When I first saw it, I thought of a galaxy.

Click on the image to enlarge.

The Tempest in the sky

Yesterday Barbara and I went to see a performance of the stage-play "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare. Barbara had encouraged her philosophy students to see this production of the NC Shakespeare Festival due to the connection with "Ship in a Bottle" from the Star Trek: Next Generation TV series. I just went along for the fun.

Then the names of some of the characters reminded me of astronomy:

Ariel, the air spirit and a major force in the story, is also the name of one of the smaller moons of Uranus. The solar system body is covered with impact craters and long rift valleys, Damaged not too unlike the character on stage.

Miranda is the name of Prospero's daughter in the play, a young woman easy to fall asleep and not very experienced when it comes to men. Miranda is also the name of another small moon of Uranus, the surface of which looks like a jumble of different features not carefully reconstructed.

Ceres and Juno are sprites in the Shakespeare comedy. They are also two of the four largest bodies in the main asteroid belt.

Isn't it wonderful that astronomy is almost everywhere?

Observing the Moon

Last night was International Observe the Moon night, and in celebration, I observed the Moon!

It was a grand evening with a guest list of about 50 folks, including movers and shakers of Greensboro (a former mayor was there!)

We looked at the waxing gibbous and talked about distance and American flags and a variety of other related and unrelated topics.

We took a peek at Albireo and spoke of color, temperature and mass.

Finally the giant of planets, Jupiter, rose above the trees and we spied the 4 Galilean moons.

Hope you got to look at the Moon last night. We saw 5.

If you missed it, tonight is not too late.

Three Planets plus at the Observatory

Last Friday the clouds played hide-and-seek, but the folks at Cline Observatory had some nice views of a globular cluster, the Bay of Rainbows on the Moon, and planets.

Venus was the first "star" to be found by a guest, a game we sometimes play. Venus is so bright and so high in the early evening sky, it is easily the evening star.

Mars was a rusty spot more difficult to discern. The clouds were not kind to us here.

Saturn's ring is slowly increasing it's tilt from our perspective. It was just last year that Saturn experienced "zero degrees inclination." We are now beginning to see more and more of the "northern" side of the rings as Saturn's north pole tilts toward us.

Senses

I grew up learning that we humans possessed five senses. Can you quickly name them?

touch

taste

smell

sound

sight

What is a sense? My handy dictionary says, among others,

"a specialized animal function or mechanism (as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch) basically involving a stimulus and a sense organ."

I just finished What If the Earth Had Two Moons? by Neil Comins, and he posits an interesting wrinkle to our understanding of senses. Comins writes that two other senses are usually left off the list taught to children, and they are "heat and gravity."

We can put our hand near a fire and feel the heat, but are we using the same sense organs (nerves) we use for touch? Does that make "feeling heat" a part of the sense of touch?

And what sense organs do we use for gravity? To sense when we are falling, do we use another sense organ other than our eyes (seeing the environment pass by) and nerves (feeling the wind, friction and impact)?

What do you think? Seven senses? Or five?

Lost in Space

This past Friday evening, Dr. Steve Danford (UUC-G) addressed the Greensboro Astronomy Club regarding the future of America's space program. Steve's always a good presenter, and he can even make sense out of the chaos we call NASA.

He shared a graphic from Dr. Harry Shipman (University of Deleware) that puts the major issues before us and guides us to logical conclusion.

If I read this correctly, if we find that some things are best made in space ("space industrialization") AND we find celestial resources to live independently of Earth ("Extraterrestrial Resources to Support Humans") we will see, sooner or later, full human settlement of outer space, with a thriving space station or two and some colonies on the Moon, Mars, and other locales.

If, on the extreme other hand, we find neither things to make in outer space, nor resources on which to live, we will have a future with robotic explorers and telescopes.

What do you think? Does this approach make sense?

Turtle in the Road

Coming home from shopping today we encountered a big and dirty Eastern Painted Turtle in our street.

We use to be able to walk to Hester Park from our house, but the addition of Painter Boulevard has cut off not only our path to the park, but the route for animals as well.

I've noticed that the Japanese Beetles have not been eating our Purple Leaf Plum trees like they use to. We're also seeing fewer raccoons and possums.

So where this big turtle was going, and how it was planning to get there, I am at a loss.

We loaded him in the car and drove him to the lake at Hester Park. Boy did he seem happy, although the geese seem to be a little disappointed.