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ISS and STS-117 Pass Tonight Over KC

2007-06-19T15:16:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Scott Kranz of the ASKC for posting this info on the Yahoo! group ...

For tonight (Tuesday, June 19):

STS-117
rise in the NNW at 21:30:54
highest in the NNE at 21:33:06 at 20 degrees alt
set in the ENE at 21:35:18
ISS
rise in the NNW at 21:31:10
highest in the NNE at 21:33:23 at 20 degrees alt
set in the ENE at 21:35:36

STS-117
rise in the WNW at 23:05:27
highest in the W at 23:07:22 at 31 degrees alt
set in the W at 23:07:22
ISSrise in the WNW at 23:05:45
highest in the W at 23:07:39 at 31 degrees alt
set in the W at 23:07:39

Go get 'em!

Another Thing I Didn't Know Existed (A Continuing Series)

2007-06-03T00:01:00.000-06:00

(Previous member of series here.)

Wingsuit flying/base jumping -- looks like some kind of human flying squirrel.

This sort of thing, like ice golf, would be much easier on Titan.

Big Sunspot Coming Around

2007-06-02T08:23:00.000-06:00

Graze on over to the SOHO MDI Continuum Latest Image page, then break out your (properly-filtered) equipment for a look. After a couple of very quiet years, the Sun will actually be something other than a blank disk for a while. (Hat tip to David Young of the ASKC, who notes that our PST is "just sitting here in storage" -- members can check it out for 2 weeks at a time. Another reason for locals to join.)

Any Old Blogger Can Donate Blood

2007-05-29T16:13:00.000-06:00

UPDATE: Yikes! OK, the usual instructions are -- poke around a little while you're here; I particularly encourage reading the posts listed under "Important Stuff" in the left sidebar. Feedback is welcomed via the link above; first-time e-mailers will have to batter their way through Spam Arrest.

Like, you know, this guy. But I'm not just any old blogger; on Arcturus, you get to see the needle going in:

just a little pinprick

there is no pain, you are receding ...

the finished product, four minutes later

the rewards: colorful bandage, 10% cafeteria discount, pen, Sunny D, Oreos

For more information, locals should graze on over to the Community Blood Center website; and also note this upcoming opportunity.

How to Build a 22" Telescope

2007-05-27T08:01:00.000-06:00

-- was the topic of the main presentation at last night's ASKC meeting. Here's presenter Fiske Miles demonstrating the finished product (click on images for full-size [640 × 480] versions):

putting the secondary assembly onto the trusses

adding the finderscope

... and the shroud

pointing out the battery box

a glimpse of the mirror assembly (at bottom)

The materials weren't too expensive -- maybe $7000, of which $4500 was the mirror, which he bought ready to install -- but the tools were something else: a full wood shop of goodies on the order of $20k. Graze on over to FiskeMiles.com for the complete presentation.

Now let's have some fun. Turning to page 45 of the Observer's Handbook 2007 and exercising some of the formulas found there, we have (with D = 560 mm):

Limiting Visual Magnitude m ≈ 2.7 + 5 log D = +16.4
Smallest Resolvable Angle α ≈ 116/D = 0.21"
Useful Magnification Range ≈ 0.2D to 2D = 110x to 1,100x

These are somewhat idealized values, given the reality of atmospheric conditions even at good sites (or great ones).

Oh, yeah: shortly before the meeting, your humble blogger got arm-twisted into running for a seat on the ASKC board. Elections are at the next meeting, Sat 23 Jun. I'd like to buy about a million dollars' worth of TV ads, so feel free to contact me via the link at the top of the page and send bundles of unmarked twenty-dollar bills. My platform:

clouds/rain in daytime only and clear high-pressure domes of air overhead every night
paint near side of Moon flat black so full Moon won't interfere with observation
install master dimmer switch for all outside lighting in KC metro area
a giant Dobsonian in every garage, a comet within 0.05 AU every calendar quarter, and a supernova within 1,000 light-years every year
tunnels to Arizona and Chile for quick weekend getaways to Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo

Hey, those are at least as realistic as most campaign promises ...

"Meteorite Capital" Hit by Tornado

2007-05-05T10:08:00.000-06:00

Greensburg, KS, previously mentioned on Arcturus in Road Trip Report, Stained Glass from the Sky, and When the Stars Fall on Kansas, has been heavily damaged by a tornado.

UPDATE: Greensburg is now being described as "destroyed," and FOX 4 Meteorologist Joe Lauria in KC is reporting that the 1000-pound meteorite formerly on display in Greensburg, the world's largest Pallasite, is missing.

Relief information here.

2ND UPDATE: They're not kidding. And see photos 11 and 12 for what's left of the facility that housed the meteorite.

3RD UPDATE: Roxana Hegeman of the AP reports that the meteorite has turned up.

"Amid the rubble, one of the town's most locally famous features was recovered Monday. A museum volunteer searching the site of the town's Big Well museum found a missing 1,000-pound meteorite, one of the largest of its kind. The meteorite, a type called a pallasite, is insured for $1 million."

Genes and Culture

2007-05-03T20:46:00.000-06:00

-- is the subject of my latest offering over on Chicago Boyz. Enjoy!

Of Gliese 581 C, Politics, and Life

2007-04-30T19:51:00.000-06:00

The latest exoplanet being touted as "Earthlike" is yet another hot Jupiter - though "hot Neptune" might be a better phrase - that has spiraled close enough to its star to have a "surface" temperature in the range that could support liquid water. But Gliese 581 C is dramatically un-Earthlike.

It has five times Earth's mass; it is undoubtedly tidally locked, such that one side always faces its star; and that star is only 1.3% as luminous as the Sun, is substantially less enriched in "metals" (in astrophysicists' parlance, any element heavier than helium), is younger than the Sun, and is variable - thus the designation HO Librae.

What we have here is a planet quite unlike any in the Solar System, orbiting a star equally unlike the Sun, being promoted as a steppingstone to the discovery of extraterrestrial (actually extrasolar) life, in the service of securing funding for, among other things, the Terrestrial Planet Finder. There's nothing wrong with building something like the TPF, though to my mind the funding mechanism is subject to drastic improvement. But the most astonishing discoveries are being forced into a very limited range of narratives to further a limited range of research.

Because what Gliese 581 C lacks is a history remotely resembling Earth's. To quote Timothy Ferris quoting American physicist Thomas Gold (page 338 in the paperback edition), things are as they are because they were as they were. Earth swarms with life, including life recently capable of investigating other solar systems, because it has maintained - with considerable assistance from Jupiter, the Moon, tectonic plate movement, and other influences - a very rough homeostasis for billions of years, punctuated with just enough change, including extinction events of sufficient (but not oversufficient) severity, to drive the development of immense biological variety.

Gliese 581 C has none of this - and equally important, and entirely lost in the employment of this discovery in the "are we alone?" narrative, is that it has its own history, one certainly as astonishing as our own, irrespective of whether it has led to intelligent aliens, or even bacteria.

The most wondrous environments in our Solar System are those least like the planet we live on. It is past time to extend that appreciation to extrasolar planets, and refrain from immediately pigeonholing them as "Earthlike," and therefore worthy of our attention, or "not Earthlike," and therefore to be ignored.

(Readers wishing to find Gliese 581/HO Librae should read the SolStation.com page linked above, then graze over here; it's about magnitude +8.4, so it should be a binocular object.)

DSS Video

2007-04-19T06:16:00.001-06:00

The Dark-Sky Site, venue for the upcoming Heart of America Star Party, is seen from an unusual viewpoint in this 1-minute, 44-second video (warning: 4.4 MB) taken, somehow, by ASKCer Dave Fox, who notes "you might want to turn down your speakers for this (it's loud)" and insists that "no planes or anything at the DSS was hurt in the filming of this movie." Play spot-the-facility, and enjoy!

Fourteen Years Ago Today

2007-04-19T06:16:00.000-06:00

-- was an event whose anniversary we must never forget.

UPDATE: Heh.

2007-04-16T20:49:00.000-06:00

Carnival of Space

2007-04-13T11:26:00.000-06:00

Graze on over to Announcing the Carnival of Space for, er, the announcement of the Carnival of Space.

Exoplanetary Water

2007-04-11T06:52:00.000-06:00

Signs of water seen on planet outside solar system was the lead news headline on Yahoo! this morning. Like most exoplanets, HD 209458b is a "hot Jupiter," making it entirely unsuitable for life, which inconvenient fact doesn't keep the lede from calling this development "a tantalizing find for scientists eager to know whether life exists beyond Earth." Actually, it would have been much bigger news if it didn't have H₂O in its atmosphere, but mentioning that would really screw up the we're-about-to-find-alien-life narrative.

Roger Highfield's slightly breathless Analysis: The Holy Grail of astronomy, nonetheless usefully concludes: "What astronomers now need is a Goldilocks planet that passes behind its parent star."

How likely is this? Assuming the planes of exoplanetary orbits to be oriented randomly with respect to the Solar System, we can get a rough idea by dividing the size of the Sun (since we're looking for planets around Sunlike stars) by the radius of Earth's orbit (since we're looking for planets that are at least Earthlike enough to be at a similar distance).

That would be 1.5 × 10⁸ km / 1.4 × 10⁶ km, which suggests that for every 110 Goldilocks planets out there, we will be able to observe one by the transit method. As of now, this list has five planets in the habitable zone that are not in unduly eccentric orbits. All are Jovian. We are some years away from the first reliable observation of a terrestrial planet -- in the sense of being even as much like Earth as is Venus or Mars -- transiting its star's disk.

(For comparison, a planet the size of Jupiter orbiting a star the size of the Sun at 0.05 AU would transit, as seen from our vantage point, in nearly one-fifth of cases, and would cause the star's light output to vary by a full 1% every four days. For this and other reasons, hot Jupiters are much easier to find than even vaguely Earthlike planets.)

As with many other endeavors involving leading-edge technology combined with long project timelines, the question arises whether efforts like the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which is funded but has no target date for launch, will be outstripped by nanotechnology in another decade or two.

If you want to observe HD 209458, also known as V376 Pegasi, start here. It will be a binocular object, located west of the Square of Pegasus, and is best seen in the (Northern Hemisphere) late summer or early autumn.

Future ≠ Utopia (A Continuing Series)

2007-04-08T17:35:00.000-06:00

Read Steven A. Shaw's NYTimes op-ed, Take a Rat to Dinner, for insightful commentary on actual vs perceived risk in food safety. His final sentence ends with "... officials should be prioritizing and educating, rather than making decisions based on which YouTube videos upset people the most." I have deliberately elided it thus by way of pointing out that there's an idea with a few thousand other applications besides inspections of fast-food joints.

As noted in my much earlier installment on this topic, torrents of horrific images will be viewed unedited in the near future by vast numbers of ordinary people, thanks to ubiquitous, commoditized bandwidth. Those images will produce, for perfectly good reasons of evolutionary psychology, visceral responses; and if visceral responses are transmuted directly into political intervention, we'll have a whole different layer of risk to manage. Not only officials, but opinion leaders -- and there will still be opinion leaders, even in the decentralized polity of the blogosphere -- would serve us well by growing up a little bit.

Over to you, Dr Cline.

UPDATE: See also Jack Woodall's Disease Control by Decree for a remarkable, and deadly, mixture of official over- and underreaction taking place in various countries, most but not all of which are, whaddaya know, dictatorships. This is supposedly going to be fixed by the WHO IHR; we shall see.

Why Rosie O'Donnell is Like Henry Morris III

2007-03-31T09:14:00.000-06:00

-- is explained by me over at ChicagoBoyz. Enjoy!

Bag a Near-Earth Asteroid, and Speculate About Catastrophe

2007-03-29T18:27:00.000-06:00

Graze on over to Close Approach of Asteroid 2006 VV2 for an overview, then read the aptly titled A Big Chunk of Rock Passes Near Earth for details and charts. Go get it!

Now for the usual fun. The RASC story notes that its likely diameter is within a factor of 2 of 2.2 km (specifically, the Database of Near-Earth Asteroids gives a size range of 1.4 - 3.1 km) and that at closest approach it will be 8.8 lunar distances, about 3.4 million km. Assuming a sphere of density 2.0 g cm^-3, its mass would be 11 billion tonnes. Meanwhile, the Sky&Tel story notes: "At closest approach, 2006 VV₂ will traverse a degree of sky in a hour." This implies a velocity relative to Earth of 60,000 km hr^-1.

Plugging these values into K_E = ½mv² (after expressing them in kg and m sec^-1) yields 1.6 × 10²¹ J, and at 4.2 MJ per kg TNT equivalent, it works out to 380,000 megatons, which is roughly what we'd be in for if it hit us. Just about two orders of magnitude larger than all nuclear arsenals combined. Applying the equations referenced way back in Thinking About the Unthinkable, we find a 5-psi overpressure radius -- in general, the you're-dead radius -- of 310 km from the point of impact. That's only 1/1,700 of Earth's surface area, so it doesn't sound so bad; but 70% of Earth's surface is ocean, and the tsunami resulting from an oceanic impact would devastate coastal areas much further away -- my guess would be that every city bordering, say, the Pacific Ocean would have to be evacuated if the asteroid were found to be on a trajectory to impact anywhere in it.

In this connection, 2006 VV₂ was discovered four and a half years ago, so it would seem that we would have plenty of time to react if such a dire situation ever came about. But for every asteroid its size, there are 200 that are one-tenth its diameter, and -- all other things being equal -- a hundred times as faint, implying far less warning time, possibly only a few days (see my incessantly self-promoted A Modest Proposal for an Asteroid Warning System and Asteroid Detection, Again for an overdose of background information).

Don't forget to graze around in NEODys while you're at it.

Where I Was, and What I Was Doing

2007-03-25T13:06:00.000-06:00

I was at the secure but not undisclosed location from 9-19 March, helping adjacent property owners put in a new water system. Here's some pix (click on images for original size):

Future site of Manifold Observatory.

McDonald Observatory at sunset, from my property.

You can never have too many Moon pictures (note to purists inclined to check this against the selenographic colongitude: timestamp is CST [UT-6], not CDT [UT-5]).

On the way back, I took a picture at DIA, which I've posted over on ChicagoBoyz.

Lunar Eclipse Followup

2007-03-24T08:40:00.001-06:00

(That would be this lunar eclipse.) Various people, including Phil Bowermaster and Rand Simberg, have linked to this amazing presentation of artwork by Rob Gonsalves, who seems to be the MC Escher of our time. I found this piece particularly appropriate:

The books from which these images are taken are Imagine a Day and Imagine a Night.

Space Access '07

2007-03-24T08:40:00.000-06:00

Henry Cate III alerted me that this event is being blogged by several people who are smarter than I am and have more bandwidth besides, so graze on over to:

Transterrestrial Musings

Space Politics

RLV and Space Transport News

and Henry's own Why Homeschool

RTWT.

When More Is Not Enough

2007-03-23T11:12:00.000-06:00

-- you need a prescription for Havidol. (Via The Scientist.)

Heart of America Star Party, Tue 12 - Sun 17 Jun

2007-03-06T18:51:00.000-06:00

I still wish they called it the Marais des Cygnes Star Party, but anyway, here's the website.

You can read my report from last year's event here; pictures here.

Bit Moon Rising

2007-03-03T19:57:00.000-06:00

Click on images for full-size (2288 × 1712) versions. All taken with a hand-held Nikon Coolpix 4800 through a 127mm Maksutov reflector with focal length 1540mm and a 32mm eyepiece yielding 48x.

through the finderscope

in the trees

umbral boundary passing just ~~west~~ east (oops) of Tycho and through Mare Serenitatis

now uncovering Mare Tranquillitatis ...

... and Mare Crisium

Tonight's Lunar Eclipse

2007-03-03T08:13:00.001-06:00

(Detailed info here.)

The good news for locals is that it's going to clear off. The bad news for locals is that the wind chill is going to be 19°F. Not quite sure how I'm going to view this one -- might set my 'scope up somewhere near my house.

Reasons to Read "Homage to Catalonia"

2007-03-03T08:13:00.000-06:00

I wouldn't ordinarily reference something on Townhall.com, but Paul Greenberg has a fine column headlined In defense of Orwell. RTWT.

(You can read the entire book online here.)

OK, This Is A Month Late

2007-02-28T18:08:00.000-06:00

-- and I'm not going into competition with Dan Bush, but here's a terrific submission from occasional contributor Ric Locke (click on image for full-size version, 1024 × 768):

Ric writes:

I've noticed that stargazers in general tend also to be interested in clouds and cloud formations. Perhaps it's only that on too many occasions that's what they have to look at instead of their intended object(s). :-)

At any rate, when I took this picture I thought of you .... it was last Monday, 29th January, shortly before 0800 CST. The viewpoint is close to 33N 98W, looking almost due East. Ground temperature was almost exactly freezing, with nearly no wind; the glitter in the trees to the right is ice on the branches, accentuated by compression artifacts. I don't own an accurate barometer.

From the visible path it would seem the aircraft left DFW airport, or at any rate the control area, at the southwest departure, performed a climbing right turn, then turned left at its assigned altitude, which happened to be precisely at the level of the thin high clouds (stratocumulus?). The disturbance of the air added enough energy to vaporize the ice crystals within the vortex cones of the plane.

Atmospheric conditions were such that the path persisted through the morning until the cloud formations broke up completely. I know it was still visible, much wider and less distinct, at 1100 CST, although I didn't get any more pictures. There were several other such "inverse contrails" formed, none of the others as distinct as this one, and also a patch which I didn't figure out for a long time: the aircraft in question had climbed through the clouds to a higher altitude, leaving an oval hole instead of a long thin formation.

We get contrails here very frequently, most often from aircraft going from Denver to Houston (aircraft headed for DFW or one of the other airports in that zone have descended before they get close to me). But I hadn't seen anything like this distinct an inverse contrail before.

Ric's location brought back fond memories of my old observing site, around 32°48' N, 98°39' W, on P33 a few miles south of Possum Kingdom State Park.

The Longer I Refrain From Posting --

2007-02-21T18:45:00.001-06:00

-- the more ideas readers send in. If this happened at work, I'd get paid more the less I produced. Lots of jokes in there somewhere ... anyway, Alan Henderson tagged me with the name-six-weird-facts-about-yourself meme.

Dear God, where to start?

Career: I'm a lifer at a major corporation, having been in the direct or indirect pay of the same entity since 1989. That may not sound weird as such, but believe me, no one who knew me in the '70s, or in most of the '80s, for that matter, would have bet a plugged nickel that I'd take that route.

Politics: I'm an evangelical who is overwhelmingly pro-science and almost completely uninterested in the right's social agenda. On the other hand, I'm a Libertarian who wants the US to finish draining the swamp in the Muslim world. It's a throwaway line, but if I were young enough, I would enlist (as things are, I'll have to content myself with paying more in taxes these days than I was grossing in my 20s).

Blogging: Most of the bloggers I've made road trips to visit have been gay, atheist, or both. No one involved seemed to have a problem with the contrasts.

Hobby: I am capable of identifying celestial objects other than the Sun and the Moon on sight, which as near as I can tell puts me in about a 0.1% minority.

Talents: I won first prize for "Radio Speaking" at a metro-wide forensics tournament in my senior year, out of competitors from 18 high schools.

Bizarre Biographical Detail: Alan Henderson was my roommate from 1994-8.

That'll do to go on. Now whom shall I tag? ;^)

Another Lefty C4

2007-02-21T18:45:00.000-06:00

-- may be found in the person of Jeff Weintraub.

Long; skip straight to the "P.S." (about halfway down) for a C2-to-C4 moment. I dearly wish there were more people on the left with that degree of self-awareness.

(Those who understandably don't know what in the world I'm talking about are directed to Situational Citizenship for a primer.)

Think This Will Be A Movie-of-the-Week?

2007-02-05T21:17:00.000-06:00

Talk about your statistically improbable phrases: Astronaut tried to kidnap love rival: police.

UPDATE: OK, the info I was hoping to find turned up in Ed Pilkington's Guardian piece, Spacewoman falls to Earth on charge of trying to kill love rival:

"To say the group to which 43-year-old Mrs Nowak belongs is select is an understatement: she is one of only 97 astronauts currently trained and ready to fly, 20 of them women. Nasa has selected a total of just 321 astronauts since the US agency began preparing to go into space in 1959.

"All of which makes her behaviour in the early hours of Monday so baffling."

Actually, it makes it a lot less baffling. Grazing over here, we find something like 600,000 arrests for violent crime in the US each year, for a per capita rate of around 1 in 500 per annum. That is to say, about 300 times higher than the (new) astronaut violent crime arrest rate of 1 in 321 over the past 48 years. Astronauts are still much, much safer to be around than regular people. ;^)

Imbeciles Anonymous

2007-02-02T15:05:00.000-06:00

Are you a boneheaded celebrity who can't stop making idiotic statements in public about scientific subjects? Well, if you're in the US, you're screwed, but the UK dolt contingent now has a hot line available for improving the informational quality of the hot air spewing from their pie holes.

I am not making this up, and I dearly wish for its duplication elsewhere, especially in the States. Read all about it in Laura Buchholz's immensely heartening Reason on the red carpet. God bless Sense About Science; you can download their flyer, Science for Celebrities (236 kB PDF), which among many other excellent items includes the phone number to call. Even twits deserve to be thus engaged.

Powell Workday; Keyholder At Last!

2007-01-23T15:46:00.000-06:00

Before and after pictures of the quasi-annual cleaning (last Saturday morning) of the 30" main mirror of the Ruisinger telescope at Powell Observatory (click on pictures for full-size versions, 2288 × 1712):

(That mirror assembly, by the way, weighs a cool 253 lbs.) And I'm finally a keyholder, which means I've got the biggest telescope in 5 states to play with. Once they get it put back together, that is.

Powell is open to the public every Saturday night from May through October and can be reserved for private parties for a surprisingly (in my opinion, seriously underpriced) reasonable fee on almost any other night of the year. As noted above, since the main telescope is taken apart at the moment, visitors can look at it, but not through it. The Louisburg Community Telescope (actually two telescopes, a 16" and a 12½"), however, remains functional.

C/2006 P1 McNaught in Daylight?

2007-01-16T09:35:00.000-06:00

I'm late to this, but reports are trickling in (from Mauna Kea, anyway) of successful daylight observations of the comet -- which, for Northern Hemisphere observers, is the only alternative since it has made perihelion passage and entered the south side of the sky.

Graze on over to SpaceWeather.com for a finder chart, to the Minor Planet Center for an ephemeris, and to Shadow & Substance (which just got a permalink) for the orbit, plus a phenomenal animation from SOHO, and a daytime finder chart for us terrestrial Yankees.

Fighting Bird Flu Without Vaccine

2007-01-16T09:29:00.000-06:00

A fascinating article in The Scientist, When There Is No Vaccine, explains how; and the real-world application to malaria could save huge numbers of lives immediately, whether H5N1 becomes transmissible or not:

Virus infections each produce a specific immune response, and a subsequent infection by a virus of the same group produces not only a specific response to itself, but also a boost in immunity to the first. Therefore, because of these cross-reactions, a horse serially immunized against only two or three different viruses could produce a serum effective to treat a whole range of hemorrhagic fevers.

What's the catch? No surprises here: it's a ridiculously high regulatory barrier.

There is just one bureaucratic snag. US Food and Drug Administration rules promulgated in 2002 have stopped cold the progression to market of any new therapeutic product targeting a disease for which it is not ethically admissible to carry out human trials. What is widely known as the "two-animal rule" requires that instead, the product be tested in at least two different species, one of which should ideally be a non-human primate. As this requires Biosafety Level 4 animal containment facilities, the cost of complying with this measure outruns even the astronomical cost of human trials.

Will we experience another calamity on the scale of the Black Death due to bureaucracy? If we do, well, to quote Larry and Jerry, just think of it as evolution in action.

Give Me Tenure or Give Me Death

2007-01-10T16:26:00.000-06:00

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

Comet McNaught

2007-01-09T06:23:00.002-06:00

Graze on over to Dr Eric Flescher's E.O.A.S. for an observing report, and hit spaceweather.com for finder charts.

Locals, particularly those in the southwestern portion of the KC metro, may wish to use the following site for early evening observation, as described by David Young on the ASKC Yahoo! group:

Go west on 95th street from K-7. Continue past all of the road closed signs until you come to a tee intersection. Jog south a hundred feet or so and pull into the road. This is a housing development under construction so no traffic up that road. We had a couple of people stop by and ask what were up to but they left before we found the comet.

Go get it!

2006 Word of the Year

2007-01-09T06:23:00.001-06:00

Plutoed. Heh.

Technical Note on Israeli Proposal

2007-01-06T22:20:00.000-06:00

That would be this proposal, from which I quote:

If things go according to plan, a pilot will first launch a conventional laser-guided bomb to blow a shaft down through the layers of hardened concrete. Other pilots will then be ready to drop low-yield one kiloton nuclear weapons into the hole. The theory is that they will explode deep underground, both destroying the bunker and limiting the radioactive fallout.

Israel developed tactical nuclear weapons in the early 1970s for use on the battlefield. In an attack on Iran, its air force would be expected to use a low-yield nuclear device of 1 kiloton (equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT), loaded on a bunker-buster missile.

“If the nuclear device explodes deep underground there will be no radioactive fallout,” said Dr Ephraim Asculai of the Tel Aviv Institute for Strategic Studies, who worked for the Israel Atomic Energy Commission for more than 40 years.

Professor Peter Zimmerman, a nuclear physicist at King’s College, London, was less sure. “The definition of low-yield nuclear weapons is not easy,” he said. “I assume that it includes any device which is less than 5 kilotons. If such a bunker-buster missile is exploded at 70ft below ground” — thought to be the minimum depth of the hidden centrifuges in Natanz — “some radioactive fallout is expected.”

We can check that. Turning to The Production and Dissolution of Nuclear Explosive Melt Glasses at Underground Test Sites in the Pacific Region (756 kB PDF), we find:

R_c = 100 (Y/h)^1/3

where

R_c is the cavity radius in meters,

Y is the total yield in kilotons, and

h is depth of device burial in meters.

Setting h at 20 meters, we find that for a device yield of 1 kT, the cavity radius would be 37 m; and at 5 kT, it would be 63 meters.

So at these depths and yields, the explosions will not be even remotely contained. There would be some venting even if they were far deeper, but in this case, the bombs won't leave cavities, they'll leave craters hundreds of feet across -- and mushroom clouds.

Make no mistake: this is going to look really, really bad. Actual amounts of radiation might be modest -- extrapolating crudely from this diagram, which is for a weapon yield three orders of magnitude larger than those being contemplated, we may assume that a relatively small area (a few square kilometers) would get dosed, and the Natanz facility itself is remote from any substantial population -- but the visual images of craters and mushroom clouds will, for many people, overwhelm the reality that millions of lives would be saved by the attack.

Meteorite Metrics

2007-01-06T14:39:00.000-06:00

-- or not; regular correspondent and contributor Ric Locke, last heard from, or at any rate last acknowledged, in the Old Geeks for Truth post of September '04 -- provides me with the following non-decimalized calculations:

The story says "the size of a golf ball" and about the weight of "...a can of soup."

A golf ball is almost exactly two and a half cubic inches. A can of soup is twelve ounces, or about a sixteenth of a stone. Working out the math for the density gives three and a half tons per hogshead, or seven tons per tun.

The result falls between iron (3-3/8 t/h) and nickel (3-3/4 t/h). The AP reporter, or someone being interviewed, has nice judgement for weights and measures, assuming that the object is in fact a metallic meteorite.

(metric system? what metric system? Of course, ideally I shouldn't mix units from the foot-pound-minute and furlong-stone-fortnight systems.)

Well, actually the golf ball-can of soup-orbital period of random meteoroid system should work pretty well in this application ...

Assigned Commentary

2007-01-05T14:34:00.000-06:00

I am quoted in Horseman of the Arcturcalypse Alan Henderson's Did Gerald Ford Really Heal The Nation?

Possible Meteorite Hits House in NJ

2007-01-03T19:01:00.000-06:00

(NEWS FLASH, 20070105 1654 CST/2254 UT: Yep.)

See Metal object crashes through N.J. home; for earlier instances reported on Arcturus, see:

UPDATE: OK, here's what I should have included the first time. The picture shows a brassy, oblong chunk of pitted metal 6 cm in its longest dimension and "weighing more than 13 ounces," ie ~370 g. Supposing its volume to be equivalent to that of a small brick, 6 × 3 × 3 cm, and dividing its mass into this, we get a density approaching 7 g cm^-3. Turning to the helpful How To Identify a Meteorite, we find that iron metal is 8 g cm^-3, so this is a reasonable value. In any case, a definitive analysis is to be performed in the next few days.

“I am calling for a New Contentism”

2007-01-02T19:34:00.000-06:00

Indeed.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T12:03:00.000-06:00

Have a listen to this and graze on over to ChicagoBoyz for a typically overwrought dose of sunny optimism from yours truly. Let's all get rich and save the world. Not necessarily in that order.

IYA 2009

2006-12-30T11:20:00.000-06:00

Thanks to the ASKC's Dave Fox for the heads-up; for the quadricentennial of Galileo's first telescopic observations, the IAU "will be coordinating the International Year of Astronomy in 2009." See also this UNESCO proclamation.

Improving Amateur Astronomy, One Facility At A Time

2006-12-30T09:48:00.000-06:00

I think this pretty nearly counts as a tourist attraction. A very public thank-you to Larry Goode, Darrick Gray, Ken Ireland, Gil Machin, Randy Thompson, and anyone else who may have been involved in its construction. Behold the new 2-holer at the Dark-Sky Site (click on picture for full-size version, 800 × 598):

UPDATE: Advice for tourists from Randy ...

If you are planning a visit to the DSS, you should bring some toilet paper along. We don't have an airtight container for the TP yet. Any TP left out could get wet or carried off by mice. (Mice love TP for making nests.) So, if you are planning a visit to the DSS, for now, tuck a roll of TP in your car. Just in case.

FURTHER UPDATE: Bad jokes about "first light" are already underway on the ASKC Yahoo! Group ...

“What’s Up 2007 - 365 Days of Skywatching”

2006-12-30T09:28:00.000-06:00

Thanks to George Allen of the ASKC for pointing to Tammy Plotner's What’s Up 2007 - 365 Days of Skywatching, a free (but large; 24 MB, 410 pages) download.

Ms Plotner is President of Warren Rupp Observatory, located near Mansfield, Ohio.

(See Top Ten Astronomical Outreach Events for 2007 for my feeble effort in this direction ...)

Christmas Aurora

2006-12-25T11:11:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Jim Stephens of the ASKC for pointing to this picture and passing along the caption info below, and thanks to Tom Martinez of the ASKC for labeling the stars and constellations; "Alberio" = Albireo, at the head of Cygnus; Vega is the brightest star in Lyra; and the "Keystone" is the torso of Hercules. Click on picture for full-size (800 × 545) version.

S116-E-07308 (19 Dec. 2006) --- The Aurora Borealis, also known as "northern lights", is featured in this photograph taken by a STS-116 crew member onboard Space Shuttle Discovery during flight day 11 [Wed 20 Dec] activities. The long exposure on the digital still camera enabled the astronaut to capture stars and city lights.

Bioterrorism and the Search for Life on Mars

2006-12-19T13:57:00.000-06:00

Maybe HGWells was right, and our bugs would have killed them off. Bacterial census of Texas air reveals microbial diversity isn't exactly the kind of diversity most people like to promote:

Gary Andersen, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory .... and his team developed a novel microarray called the PhyloChip, which contains about 500,000 probes to detect the 16S ribosomal RNA signatures from 8,741 bacteria and archaea. They probed the chip with amplified 16S rRNA samples taken weekly from air filtration systems in both Austin and San Antonio, which are about 80 miles (128 km) apart, and found between 1,500 and 1,800 bacterial species above each city.

The article also quotes the inimitable J.Craig Venter, who points out that since "each 16S rRNA corresponds to hundreds or thousands of different organisms," the true species count is several orders of magnitude higher -- probably over 1 million.

The bioterrorist implications of finding a very nasty needle in a very big haystack aside, contrast our terrestrial flora with the number of positively identified native organisms -- ie, zero -- on, say, Mars. Quoting the article again:

"We humans are embedded with bacteria; we are surrounded by them," said Norman Pace, professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who was not involved with the study. "You take a deep breath, and you pull in a thousand bacteria. You take a shower and you aerosolize bacteria that you suck in. When you flush the toilet, you generate an aerosol that you then breathe in. We're surrounded by bacteria, and they are not necessarily friendly."

Sampling of Martian air should very quickly either reveal -- or rule out -- the presence of a biosphere, unless some mechanism keeps every trace of life underground at all times. As Enrico Fermi famously asked (though about intelligent aliens, not bacteria), where are they?

Phoenix will not perform such sampling, although its soil-testing MECA instrumentation will include an "optical microscope [with] a resolution of 4 microns per pixel, allowing detection of particles ranging from about 10 micrometers up to the size of the field of view (about 1 millimeter by 2 millimeters)."

Nor, as near as I can tell, will Mars Science Laboratory.

I infer that direct visual detection of microorganisms in the atmosphere of Mars has already been deemed an unproductive strategy, with all that such a decision implies about the limited extent of Martian life, if any exists.

Tomorrow Morning's Triple Conjunction

2006-12-09T10:57:00.001-06:00

UPDATE: Clouded out here; will try again tomorrow (Monday) morning, when it will be almost but not quite as good.

Three planets in an exceptionally tight group low in the east, plus the Moon and Saturn close together near the zenith -- it's going to be quite a show. Per the Observer's Handbook 2006, page 104: "This is the closest grouping of three naked-eye planets during the period 1980-2050; all three planets will (barely) fit within a 1°-circle on Dec. 10."

Grazing over to the US Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Dept, we find that civil twilight begins in KC at 6:56 AM. Proceeding on to YourSky and generating the appropriate map by selecting "Set for nearby city" and then updating the time to 2006-12-10 12:55:00 UT, it appears that the conjunction will be low in the southeast (bearing ~120°), less than 10° above the horizon, in the head of Scorpius. Since Jupiter is shining at magnitude -1.6, tens of times brighter than the nearby stars, it should be easy to find.

At the same time, Saturn will be only about a degree south of the waning gibbous Moon, very high in the western sky, in the head of Leo.

Now, just as a fun reminder that what we're seeing is a two-dimensional projection of a very three-dimensional phenomenon, here are the distances of the various bodies, expressed as multiples of the distance to the Moon.

The triple conjunction is: Mercury, 485x; Mars, 925x; and Jupiter, 2,370x lunar distance.

The Moon-Saturn conjunction is: Moon, 1x; Saturn, 3,270x lunar distance.

(See also Planetary triple play on deck Sunday.)

Bizarre Astronomical Editorial Comment of the Day

2006-12-09T10:57:00.000-06:00

Turning to To ignore the moon would be lunacy, we find: "Most of us barely notice the Moon now; indeed, due to light pollution, it is sometimes barely visible." Light pollution must be pretty bad in the UK if it's keeping people from seeing the Moon. Or does the Sun really never set on what's left of the Empire?

In the Spirit of the Usual Screwing Around

2006-12-06T20:38:00.000-06:00

-- by which I mean, things like this (and this), here's a fine contribution brought to my attention by Horseman of the Arcturcalypse Alan Henderson, namely The Call of the DMV. Heh.

Missouri Skies

2006-12-04T18:08:00.000-06:00

Previously unknown reader (the best kind) Scott Rogers, who works smack in the middle of Chicago's Loop but hails from Albany, MO, reminds me to plug ASKC member Dan Bush's phenomenal photography site, Missouri Skies (Dan has been mentioned on Arcturus in Amateur Astronomy/Moody Blues Video and Rainbowblogging/Wordsworthblogging). Graze on over and enjoy!

Upgrade

2006-12-02T19:27:00.001-06:00

I've upgraded to Blogger Beta. Note the search field at top left; try it with the word "starlight." The result is not a mere list of post titles, but a display of Arcturus with the full text of all posts containing that word.

Your Aperiodic Dose of Ahistory

2006-12-02T19:27:00.000-06:00

Alternate history, that is ... in this case, Matthew White's Alternate Histories. They're all fun, but I liked "Balkanized North America" best.

Nailed It

2006-12-01T07:41:00.000-06:00

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
The South
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

The Matter With Kansas (XVIII) - the True Significance of O mhcanismoz twn Antikuqhrwn

2006-11-30T14:16:00.000-06:00

So, OK, Galileo didn't have a camera phone, but some ancient Greeks had a pretty decent analog computer; see also Scientists Unravel Mystery of Ancient Greek Machine.

Besides shutting down some conspiracy/revisionist history theories, since it's not such an unexplained mystery after all, I think the most important lesson to be drawn is in the final two paragraphs of John Noble Wilford's fine NYTimes story:

Dr. [François] Charette [of the University of Munich museum] noted that more than 1,000 years elapsed before instruments of such complexity are known to have re-emerged. A few artifacts and some Arabic texts suggest that simpler geared calendrical devices had existed, particularly in Baghdad around A.D. 900.

It seems clear, Dr. Charette said, that “much of the mind-boggling technological sophistication available in some parts of the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman world was simply not transmitted further,” adding, “The gear-wheel, in this case, had to be reinvented.”

There's a world of difference between having a few smart guys around -- even guys as smart as Hipparchos of Rhodes, "who ... might have had a hand in designing the device" -- and having perpetuated institutions dedicated to preserving and transmitting accumulated tecne. Science has no functional existence apart from such institutions.

(As dramatic as the Antikythera Mechanism is, comparable examples exist from other cultures. Bruce Bolt's Earthquakes and Geological Discovery, part of the Scientific American Library series, notes that this passage is a strikingly modern description of the action of a strike-slip fault. But the insight of Zechariah son of Berechiah son of Iddo did not jump-start the science of geology; the requisite institutions did not exist. Similarly, Manfred Schroeder notes in Fractals, Chaos, Power Laws: Minutes from an Infinite Paradise that Pharaoh's dream describes actual events resulting from the "black noise" spectrum of the Nile (f^-b, where b > 2). No sudden advance in mathematics resulted -- there was no institution capable of capitalizing on Joseph's interpretation.)

An immediate corollary of this idea is that an attack on science is not an attack on a set of findings; it is an attack on institutions. Science as we know it did not exist in classical times (science falsely so called, indeed), because its institutions did not exist; and opposition to it now, with such shallow motivations as those we see in the ongoing conflict in Kansas, is an ironic and singularly unfortunate violation of this wise admonition.

(Previous member of series here; separately, the esteemed Bill Walker of Mayo points me to Kansas Outlaws Practice of Evolution.)

PS - Hey, there's a song about it!

For Your Listening Pleasure

2006-11-29T13:50:00.000-06:00

Pluto's Not A Planet Anymore.

Hat tip: Neta Apple, ASKC.

Texas Star Party Reservations Open

2006-11-27T21:26:00.000-06:00

Here is the text, modified so as to embed the links, of an e-mail I just received:

2007 Texas Star Party - Sign up Now!

The great tradition of dark sky observing continues with the 29th Annual TEXAS STAR PARTY, May 13 - 20, 2007! TSP WILL NOT BE MAILING A FLYER this year, so keep this e-mail or print it out!

Note: If you have already filled out the TSP form and received a reply email with your choices, then there is no need to submit another form.

You should submit a Registration/Reservation Request Form to ENTER THE TSP DRAWING before January 20, 2007. This will provide you the highest possible chance of being selected as one of the 700 people who will be able to attend TSP this year.

Or fill out the Request Form immediately, but READ THE REST OF THIS E-MAIL BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR REQUEST.

Participants at the TEXAS STAR PARTY can select from a variety of accommodations on the Prude Ranch, including bunkhouses, private cabins, trailer hookups, and campsites with convenient bathhouses. All accommodations include access to a TV lounge, a western-style dining room, and an indoor swimming pool. And of course the convenience of the observing fields!

Rates and more information on ranch and nearby accommodations.

The TSP Registration Fee (DOES NOT INCLUDE your accommodations) is $50/person if you pre-register before April 7, 2007. (Each additional family member is just $30 more.)

More information about TSP registration rates and policies.

The drawing for names is in late January, and if your name is drawn you will get a link to a TSP Registration Form (and optional Prude Ranch Reservation Form) to send in with your payments in February/March. SIGN UP NOW!

Questions? Visit our web site or e-mail for the latest and complete details!

We look forward to seeing you next May!

Sincerely,
the volunteers for Texas Star Party

Top Ten Astronomical Outreach Events for 2007

2006-11-26T16:00:00.000-06:00

In any given year, amateur astronomers have numerous excellent opportunities to present astronomy to the public, which are a combination of several factors:

Astronomical events

Space exploration activities

Urban legends

Regularly-scheduled outreach events not directly tied to any of the above

Here are some outreach opportunities for 2007, ranked by increasing distance, beginning with terrestrial events and ending with deep-sky observation. Information is derived from websites linked below and from the Observer’s Handbook 2007, Space.com, the US Naval Observatory, and YourSky; it is somewhat specific to the KC area, but can easily be modified for your location.

Astronomy Day – Saturday, April 21st.

Heart of America Star Party – Thursday, June 14th through Sunday, June 17th.

Meteor Showers – Of the sixteen major annual meteor showers, three will be especially prominent and easy to observe (weather permitting!):

Lyrids – Sunday, April 22nd, starting around 9:30 PM CDT.

Perseids – Sunday, August 12th, starting around 9:00 PM CDT.

Geminids – Thursday, December 13th, starting around 7:30 PM CST.

Space Launches – As of this writing, the following three scheduled launches, all from Cape Canaveral, should generate media attention for astronomy:

Dawn – Wednesday, June 20th; asteroid probe.

Phoenix – Friday, August 3rd; Mars polar lander.

GLAST – Sunday, October 7th; Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope.

Lunar Eclipses – We are excellently positioned to see portions of two total lunar eclipses next year. The first is particularly well-scheduled from a public-outreach standpoint and may be the single biggest event of the year at Powell Observatory (again, weather permitting):

Saturday, March 3rd – In progress at moonrise (6:11 PM CST at Louisburg); umbral phase ends at 7:11 PM CST.

Tuesday, August 28th – Umbral phase begins at 3:51 AM CDT and ends at 7:23 AM CDT, but note that civil twilight begins at 6:17 and sunrise is at 6:44 in Louisburg.

Inner Planets

Mercury – Relatively easy to find after sunset in early February and early June, and before sunrise in mid-November.

Venus – Prominent after sunset for nearly six months beginning in mid-February; it will be a large, thin crescent in telescopes in July and early August.

Mars

We may expect the usual avalanche of e-mails informing us of a spectacular – but, alas, nonexistent – apparition of Mars to occur on August 27th. Respond tactfully.

In reality, the planet’s closest approach will be in December, specifically on Wednesday the 19th. Opposition is on Christmas Eve; the planet should be a centerpiece of public viewing throughout the month and into early 2008.

Outer Planets

Jupiter – At its best from late spring through early autumn. Double shadow transits that could be visible here will occur on Saturday, June 9th (4:18 AM CDT); Sunday, October 28th (6:34 PM CDT); and Tuesday, November 13th (5:30 PM CST).

Saturn – At its best from February through July; quoting Observer’s Handbook 2007 (page 90): “Saturn is at quadrature in the second week of May. This is when the planet’s shadow on the rings is most prominent and Saturn looks most three-dimensional.”

Uranus – In early September, naked-eye visible (magnitude +5.7) in dark skies near 4th-magnitude f Aqr.

Conjunctions and Occultations

On Thursday, April 26th, at 7:45 PM CDT, Venus will occult the star SAO 76929/ZC 753 (magnitude +7.4).

On Saturday, May 19th, Venus will occult the star SAO 78893 (magnitude +8.9), with the waxing crescent Moon (only 12% of its visible disk will be illuminated) nearby.

On the evening of Monday, June 18th, the waxing crescent Moon (15%) and Saturn will be very close together.

The evening of Monday, July 16th – the 38th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 – will feature a binocular grouping of the very young crescent Moon (6%), Venus, Saturn, and Regulus.

During the first week of September, Saturn and Regulus will be only about 1° apart, low in the east just before sunrise.

In mid-October, Venus, Saturn, and Regulus will be close together in the morning sky.

On the morning of Saturday, November 3rd, the waning crescent Moon (32%) will be very close to Regulus – this will be an occultation in the southern US – with Saturn nearby.

On Monday, November 5th, at around 2:00 PM CST, Venus will be naked-eye visible in daylight due to being just 3° north of the waning crescent Moon (15%), both about 45° west of the Sun.

On Sunday, December 23rd, at 9:00 PM CST, the full Moon will be very close to Mars – this will be an occultation in the northwestern US.

Messier Marathon – Saturday/Sunday, March 17th/18th

A chronological listing might look like this:

January – no events

February

Observe Mercury after sunset early in month

March

3 (Sat) – lunar eclipse in progress at moonrise/sunset

17/18 (Sat/Sun) – Messier Marathon

24/25 (Sat/Sun) – Messier Marathon backup date

April

21 (Sat) – Astronomy Day

22 (Sun) – Lyrid meteor shower

26 (Thu) – Venus occults star

May

6-12 (2nd week) – Saturn at quadrature

19 (Sat) – Venus occults star; Moon nearby

June

Observe Mercury after sunset early in month

9 (Sat; morning) – Double shadow transit on Jupiter

14-17 (Thu-Sun) – Heart of America Star Party

18 (Mon) – Moon/Saturn conjunction

20 (Wed) – Launch of Dawn asteroid probe

July

16 (Mon) – Binocular grouping of Moon, Venus, Saturn, and Regulus

August

3 (Fri) – Launch of Phoenix Mars polar lander

12 (Sun) – Perseid meteor shower

28 (Tue; morning) – lunar eclipse

September

2-8 (1st week; morning) – Saturn/Regulus conjunction

Observe Uranus naked-eye early in month

October

7 (Sun) – Launch of GLAST gamma-ray large-area space telescope

Venus/Saturn/Regulus conjunction at mid-month

28 (Sun) – Double shadow transit on Jupiter

November

3 (Sat; morning) – Moon/Regulus conjunction; Saturn nearby

5 (Mon; afternoon) – Moon/Venus conjunction; Venus naked-eye visible in daylight

13 (Tue) – Double shadow transit on Jupiter

Observe Mercury before sunrise at mid-month

December

13 (Thu) – Geminid meteor shower

19 (Wed) – Mars at closest approach

23 (Sun) – Moon/Mars conjunction

24 (Mon) – Mars at opposition

Leonid Meteor Shower This Weekend

2006-11-14T15:06:00.000-06:00

Graze on over to the International Meteor Organization's October to December 2006 page and skip down a bit:

This year may bring a return to still higher Leonid activity, perhaps with ZHRs of 100—150. The timing above (Maximum: November 17, 20h50m UT [Fri 17 Nov, 2:50 PM CST]) is for the nodal crossing, and if recent past years are a guide, any associated activity near then may be swamped by other filaments within the stream. The prediction of higher (though not storm!) rates from the 1933 filament by Rob McNaught and David Asher is timed for November 19, 4h45m UT [Sat 18 Nov, 10:45 PM CST].

Here's where the radiant will be -- in the head of Leo, which looks like a large backwards question mark; click on image for full-size (640 × 480) map:

At my latitude (~40° N), the radiant will be rising in the east-northeast around 11 PM CST. If the prediction quoted by the IMO holds up, the first hour or two of Saturday night's portion of the shower may be spectacular for observers in the eastern half of North America.

(Previous mentions of the Leonid shower on Arcturus occur in the unimaginatively-titled posts Leonid Observing Reports?, which recounts the brief but overwhelming meteor storm of '02, and Leonid Observing Report, from 2003.)

“Look the storm in the eye”

2006-11-10T15:04:00.000-06:00

Look in, look out, look around ...

This 14-frame movie [551 kB *.mpg] shows a swirling cloud mass centered on the south pole, around which winds blow at 550 kilometers (350 miles) per hour. The frames have been aligned to make the planet appear stationary, while the sun appears to revolve about the pole in a counterclockwise direction. The clouds inside the dark, inner circle are lower than the surrounding clouds, which cast a shadow that follows the sun.

Main story here; movie and caption here.

We twist the world and ride the wind ...

Redshift Productions

2006-11-10T13:32:00.000-06:00

Via The Scientist, I found Redshift Productions, complete with Jovian dog (page down, and ponder what Simak would think). I'm adding them to the blogroll under "Info Sites."

"Our tribe gives no brownie points for communicating with the public," says Carl Djerassi. Time to start handing them out; see the book referenced in my slightly out-of control post The Matter With Kansas (VIII) - Teach the Controversy!, and also this summary of the book's key points.

But I digress. Go get 'em, Redshift.

Transit of Mercury, Photoblogged

2006-11-08T20:02:00.001-06:00

We deliver. Click on the images for full-size (2288 × 1712; ~500 kB *.jpg) versions.

shortly after ingress; Mercury is at ~1:30 position on the Sun's disk

Manifold Observatory (foreground); Powell Observatory (background)

a bit farther along; note sunspot at top

near greatest transit (blur at left center is image artifact)

just before sunset; planet visible at 1:30 position halfway from center to edge

Oh, All Right

2006-11-08T20:02:00.000-06:00

This is me during the event. Telescope is described here; solar filter is from HMS Beagle in Parkville. All photos taken with Nikon Coolpix 4800, handheld.

Also, happy 350th, Edmund Halley.

The Transit of Mercury

2006-11-05T14:28:00.000-06:00

-- is Wednesday. Diagram here; map of visibility for North American observers here. Locally, it starts at 1:12 PM CST, with the Sun 32° above the horizon; greatest transit is at 3:40 PM CST, with the sun 14° above the horizon; and transit ends at sunset (5:10 PM CST).

I am taking the day off to observe it -- weather forecast, as of 72 hours out, is highly favorable, but I want to be able to drive some distance if needed to get clear skies. I will post an update here if there is any organized event at either Powell or Warkoczewski Observatories.

Persons in the US wishing to find out about local observing should contact the nearest club. Finally, the transit will be viewable online at:

The Exploratorium in San Francisco

NASA's Sun-Earth Day web site

Hawaii's AstroDay

Hat tips: Dr Eric Flescher of the ASKC and Francis Reddy of Astronomy.

UPDATE: At least two ASKCers, one of whom is me, will be at Powell Observatory for the event.

What I Said Then

2006-11-01T17:03:00.000-06:00

For All Saints' Day, that is.

Big Surprise

2006-10-31T20:51:00.000-06:00

Not.

(Hat tip: Alan Henderson.)

The Politics and Economics of Hubble

2006-10-31T18:27:00.000-06:00

Grazing through AP science writer Seth Borenstein's NASA to send astronauts to repair Hubble, we find the repair mission is to cost $900 million and extend the HST's life by 5 years. Some reactions:

The HST is enormously popular worldwide; see Save the Hubble? -- and every conversation I have had with visitors at Powell Observatory, Warkoczewski Observatory, or with guests at star parties about it has elicited unanimous support for its upkeep.

Fairly or otherwise, therefore, this decision will reflect favorably on the Administration and will be among the final impressions voters receive before the midterm elections.

Now for some numbers. Nine hundred million dollars into five years is around six dollars a second. Sounds like a lot, but earthbound telescopes at major observatories cost about one dollar per second to operate, and typically are good for only 700 hours of observations each year. The HST is pretty much 24/7/365 except for when it's being moved to point at a new object, ie ~8,000 hrs/yr. And as the article notes, it's "... so much in demand that there are seven times the request for telescope time than can be accommodated ..."

I still think we should replace it with a bunch of smaller ones.

Dual Sun Pillar

2006-10-25T18:27:00.000-06:00

Kudos to the ASKC's Scott Kranz for this great shot. I don't have the particulars of the exposure (camera, settings, etc), nor the place and time, though it was certainly around here somewhere and within the past few days.

Click on the picture for a larger version. You can read about sun pillars here (thanks to another ASKCer, David Neuenschwander, for the link).

Fragment of 1P/Halley Hits Earth, Wrecks House, Injures Inhabitant

2006-10-22T09:03:00.000-06:00

That's one possible interpretation of German cottage destroyed by meteor: "We sought assistance from Bochum observatory and they noted that at that particular moment the earth was near a field of meteoroid splinter and it could be assumed that particles had entered the atmosphere."

Which "field of meteoroid splinter?" Grazing over to the IMO's Fall 2006 Calendar, we find that it could have been either a Draconid (peak 8-9 Oct) or, what makes an even better story, an Orionid (active 2 Oct - 7 Nov), that is, a piece of the most famous comet ever observed.

More info about the Orionids is available at Earth & Sky's Orion's meteors grace our skies tonight (by which they mean Friday night, ie 36 hours ago as I write this) and Space Daily's Orionid Meteor Shower To Peak October 20-24.

I note that the high v_∞ (66 km sec^-1) of this shower is consistent with the Reuters account: "We believe this was a bolide (meteoric fireball) with a size of no more than 10 mm." The kinetic energy of a 1-cm sphere with a density of 1 g cm^-3 at that velocity would be 1.1 MJ, equivalent to over half a pound of TNT.

For a larger historical example of this sort of thing, see Chicago Destroyed by Comet (and the fortunately much milder Great Chicago Meteor of 2003); and of course the "Asteroid Detection System" posts under "Important Stuff" in the left sidebar here on Arcturus.

The Missourian Role in Nuclear Proliferation

2006-10-19T11:44:00.000-06:00

-- is explained by Iowahawk:

The Central Defense Committee of Iowahawk, Chuck, and Julio are to be congratulated for their ingenious creation of nuclear defense technology from glow-lite sticks and high-quality Missouri fireworks. Also to be honored is Chuck's ex-wife Rhonda, who drove the Central Defense Committee to Missouri to obtain firework materials, low-price smokes and PowerBall tickets.

Link to this post now, or be dealt a thousandtime blow of fresh nuclear Missouri M-80 retaliation!

Heh.

Galactic Collision!

2006-10-19T06:27:00.000-06:00

Yow! Graze on over to New image gives insight into colliding galaxies for a Hubble image of the Antennae; lots more goodies at the HubbleSite page.

This sort of thing happens, though rather more subtly, around here too -- see Wading in the Tidal Streams of the Milky Way for discussion of the work of KU's Bruce Twarog on the surprising dynamism of our own intergalactic neighborhood.

“Perils for Pedestrians”

2006-10-17T18:08:00.000-06:00

In response to Everything's Up To Date, previously unknown reader (the best kind) John Wetmore pointed me to this program, which he produces, and which airs* on DISH Network Channel 9411 (Universityhouse Channel) on Tuesdays at 8:30 PM Central (correct for your time zone as needed). John notes:

The 34 page report never mentioned the role of pedestrians in emergency evacuations. However, walking was the primary means of evacuating Manhattan on 9-11. For perspectives on walking on 9-11 and during the 2003 blackout, see Episode 114 of "Perils For Pedestrians" on Google Video here.

Note: Pedestrians trying to leave downtown Kansas City during an emergency would have a real challenge because of the poor pedestrian access on the bridges over the Missouri River.

One of the items on my hidden agenda is struggle against homophily, so I was delighted to see John's e-mail. Now for some comments:

About 100,000 people work downtown. If the proportion who commute from north of the river is the same as that in the overall population of the KC MO-KS CMSA, around 15,000 of them, nearly all traveling by car, cross the river to get to work.

Specifically, they cross one of three bridges: the Broadway bridge; the unimaginatively named Heart of America bridge (which replaced the old ASB bridge** a couple of decades back); and the Paseo bridge (mentioned in, whaddaya know, Disruptions as Practice for Terrorist Incidents).

Of the three, the Broadway bridge leads onto a limited-access highway which, for the first several miles, has Downtown Airport on one side and rail yards on the other, ie, nowhere near residential areas or connecting streets. The Paseo bridge is itself a limited-access highway (interstates 29 and 35), though it does at least immediately enter business areas of North Kansas City. Only the Heart of America bridge is a city street.

I wouldn't want to be a Northlander needing to cross those bridges on foot. The problem with this idea is that I can't imagine needing to. But just because I can't imagine it doesn't mean it can't happen. (I might add that access straight west, into KCK, would be even worse.)

I think the lesson here is that as part of the whole disaster-preparedness thing that Glenn, among others, frequently remind us of, we should begin constructively wondering how we'd get home if we got stuck at work and couldn't use our cars. Think of it as a risk-management exercise; those are always fun.

* Should we say it "spaces" if it comes from a satellite?

** Driving across which was like driving on the surface of the Moon, but with 6x the gravity and a potential death plunge into cold, muddy water. It built character.

UPDATE: Not again?! OK, three things:

As always, graze around; the "Important Stuff" posts listed in the left sidebar are recommended.

Previously unknown reader (the best kind) Charles Gallo writes:

I was one of the lucky folks who did NOT have to walk out on 9/11, BUT I did have to walk out during "the blackout" [loyal Arcturians may wish to see Cascading Failures and Politics for commentary on that -- JDM].
One of the things that should be noted is even though the "lower east river crossings" (as we call them in NYC) (The Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges) DO have some footpath capacity (and in fact, the Brooklyn bridge has quite a bit), the Queensboro Bridge (59th St Bridge) was totally overwhelmed with pedestrian traffic. Normally, what is known as the "Northern Outer Roadway" is reserved for pedestrians - one lane. Hehehe. Traffic was basically stopped on the bridge (when it moved it moved slowly), partly because Nyers have NO problem jaywalking/dealing with cars - we walked across in EVERY lane - right with the cars - the bridge was full. When we got to the other side (Queensboro Plaza) people tended to disperse, just like the cars do - streams of people on both sides of the road on every major road.
In an evacuation - you know how Nyers would deal with a bridge like your Broadway bridge? Walk across it! Yeah, there are no walk ways - by the time WE were done, the whole bridge would be LUCKY to have one lane open in each direction for vehicles. Get to the other side and there are airports and rail lines? Look for the trains and cross - the railroad would get the hint when there are 10k people crossing the tracks. Ditto the runways at the airport. What are they going to do, arrest/shoot tens of thousands of people? (and a leatherman tool makes short work of a fence).
Pedestrians in NYC are "different", and we have a different arrangement with cars - cars will stop, and ease through a crowd of people, and the people will flow around the car. It's just the way it is, and part of what drives people nuts when they drive the first time in Manhattan - Making a turn is fun, you ease into the crosswalk, and keep going 1/2 MPH, and the people flow around you - you get a little space in front, you move, eventually the people go from walking in front of you to walking behind you.

KC's dramatically lower population density greatly changes the car/pedestrian relationship -- NYCers who move out here tend to be pleasantly stunned by, among other things, all the room -- but in a mass evacuation on foot there would be, by definition, many walkers and few drivers. I again suggest that the main value of this exercise is to begin thinking about how you'd get home, or to a reasonable facsimile thereof, if you (and a whole bunch of other people) were stuck at work and couldn't use your car(s).

Hawaii Observatory Earthquake Reports

2006-10-17T10:52:00.000-06:00

(Thanks to Rob Robinson of the ASKC for the links.)

JCMT

CFHT (serious damage; this facility previously mentioned in April [2002] ASKC Meeting Report and New Real Estate (A Continuing Series))

Gemini

Keck

The Matter With Kansas (XVII) - More Kansas Meteorite News

2006-10-16T17:46:00.000-06:00

Graze on over to Rare meteorite found in Kansas field for news on the latest find from the Brenham field; RTWT. (See When the Stars Fall on Kansas for earlier posting on this topic.) I note:

Landowner Alan Binford watched with interest as the scientists freed the meteorite, bagging clumps of his rich Kansas farmland around it.

"I didn't figure there would be that much scientific value," he said. "I never thought about them going to this extent. It is interesting history."

Got it in one. Let's all hope and pray for more Alan Binfords.

(Previous member of series here.)

Everything's Up To Date

2006-10-12T13:03:00.000-06:00

-- per Biggest U.S. cities not ready to evacuate: study: "The only city to score a top grade for evacuation capability and preparedness was Kansas City, Missouri." Not quite sure how this translates into civic-booster lingo, though ... perhaps: Relocate here! It's easy to leave!

Well, maybe something keying off this: "The cities were evaluated on internal traffic flow, highway capacity of major exit routes and residents' accessibility to automobiles." How about Sprawl = Safety? or Cars = Circumvention? But we won't be hearing about that from the politically-correct crowd anytime soon.

Physics Enabled White Board

2006-10-12T11:44:00.000-06:00

I think I want one of these for Xmas. Hat tip: Brian Slezak of the Friday lunch bunch (stalkers are directed to the Quizno's at 127th & Metcalf in Overland Park; I'm this guy).

Earthquakes and Nukes

2006-10-09T11:01:00.000-06:00

Unsurprisingly, they did it, producing a magnitude 4.2 earthquake. So how big was the bomb?

Russia: NKorea test greater than reported has Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov claiming that it was 5-15 kT, while South Korea's geological institute says it was 0.55 kT.

There are lots of potentially complicating factors here, but assuming (among other things) that the Norks didn't do anything to dampen the signature of the explosion, the rule of thumb in CU Scientists: Earthquake Mistaken as a Nuclear Test (which is about a 1997 event in the Russian Arctic) applies: "Seismologists use the Richter scale to measure the size of both explosions and earthquakes; a magnitude of 3.5 corresponds to an explosive yield of about one-twentieth of a kiloton."

The Richter scale is logarithmic, so a 4.2 is 5 times stronger than a 3.5, thereby working out to one-quarter of a kiloton.

Similarly, this page (about Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests) states:

The U.S. Geological Survey reported a teleseismic magnitude of mb 5.2 (mb is the bodywave magnitude and is roughly related to the Richter scale). Assuming simultaneous detonation of the three tests and using published magnitude-yield formulas for a stable region, the announced total yield of 55 to 60 kilotons appears to be at least three times larger than the yield indicated by the seismic data.

So if 5.2 = 20kT, 4.2 = 2 kT. The South Koreans, again with lots of simplifying assumptions, are more technically correct.

Given that the Russian claim is that the explosion was 2.5-60 times more powerful than the rule-of-thumb estimates, questions multiply: Do they know something the South Koreans don't? Do they acknowledge something the South Koreans prefer not to? Do they exaggerate for their own purposes? Do they exaggerate out of habit?

How bad would it be if used on a city? From the above, I think we can safely assume that something in the kiloton range has been detonated, for which the 5-psi overpressure radius (for an airburst) is just over a quarter of a mile (graze all the way back to Thinking About the Unthinkable for lots of background, including the formula). The area within that radius is a little over two-tenths of a square mile, and the population density of Seoul is at least 75,000 per square mile (source), suggesting that prompt casualties from a Nork nuke flung at Seoul would be at least 15,000.

UPDATE: Yikes! OK, while you're here, graze around and read through some of the posts listed under "Important Stuff" in the left sidebar.

How Astronomy Should Be Taught

2006-10-07T15:42:00.000-06:00

-- well, to readers of The Onion, anyway: I'm Going To Be A Star. The usual language warning applies.

NERDY UPDATE INDICATIVE OF MY LOW SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE: There are, in fact, only 349 Barnard objects, so "Barnard 631" is a fiction.

Buck O'Neil

2006-10-07T10:39:00.000-06:00

Requiescat in pace.

And read Don't weep for Buck:

Dressed to the nines, O'Neil strutted toward the dais, the walk of a fulfilled man, and asked everybody to hold hands and sing a song: "The greatest thing, in all my life, is loving you."

He wanted everybody to feel special, to feel like he was singing it to them as much as he was singing it with them.

Having been to a large offsite gathering sponsored by my employer that included a visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and an absolutely phenomenal speech by Buck himself, I can testify that he did indeed get audiences to sing that song, which is very much a gospel tune; see this page for lyrics and guitar chords.

(Buck was previously mentioned on Arcturus in It's A Midwestern Thing -- I Don't Understand. The difference between now and four years ago is that he's gone, but we still don't have an intelligent anti-war movement.)

Observing Opportunity

2006-10-06T16:59:00.000-06:00

The Moon's going to occult the Pleiades again on Monday night. KC-area observers will see the first disappearance, of Electra, at 10:49 PM Monday, and the final reappearance, of Alcyone, at 12:41 AM Tuesday.

(For earlier mentions of these phenomena, see: Moon-Pleiades Conjunction/Occultation Tonight; Moon vs Pleiades; and Moon vs Pleiades: Observing Report .)

Illegal Aliens

2006-10-06T07:28:00.000-06:00

We'll need more than just a fence to stop this invasion.

I Blame George Bush

2006-10-04T04:49:00.000-06:00

Americans share Nobel Prize in medicine

Americans win Nobel Prize in physics

American wins Nobel Prize in chemistry

And The Scientist agrees.

The Matter With Kansas (XVI) - American Dolchstoßlegende

2006-10-03T13:53:00.000-06:00

Via Glenn Reynolds, a link to the ever-thoughtful Anchoress, who quotes from a CBS FreeSpeech episode ... here we go again:

This country is in a moral free-fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value.

Yessir, everything was just going swimmingly around here until the Bad People™ snuck in and messed the place up. William Jennings Bryan made exactly the same argument in the 1920s; he was reacting to the trend seen in the leftmost quarter of this graph. It was silly then, not least because evolution was rarely if ever taught; and it's silly now, both because of the recent nosedive in homicides, which has us back to the levels of the 1950s, and because it's easily demonstrated that kids who get good grades -- by, y'know, paying attention in class, and thereby actually learning about (gasp!) evolution, are at the lowest risk for criminal behavior.

Thankfully, American society lacks any meme as specific as the Dolchstoßlegende -- though one wonders what might arise in the aftermath of a nuclear version of 9/11. Another argument for finding and stopping the dangerous men.

As the Anchoress points out, however, what's almost as funny as the teaching-evolution-causes-school-shootings idea is the reaction of the, well, reactionaries who think that Brian Rohrbough is merely a specimen of "ignorant, intolerant individuals" who can easily be filtered out. In reality his views are shared, to some degree, by nearly half the population. They are certainly wrong, they are somewhat selectively ignorant, they are intolerant only of what they regard as deadly risks -- and they're everywhere. As advocates of an altogether different subculture like to say, "get used to it."

(Previous member of series here.)

Pluto Hits Back

2006-10-03T06:15:00.000-06:00

Click on image for larger version. Hat tip: Doug Spalding of the ASKC.

UPDATE: Thanks to Neta Apple of the ASKC for pointing me to the source of this "billboard."

I Told You So

2006-10-01T20:25:00.000-06:00

(Ref this earlier post.) Read this first-class report from GMO Pundit a.k.a. David Tribe on the E coli outbreak (via J.F. Beck, via Tim Blair, via Glenn Reynolds).

And the more politically correct they are, the more dangerous they are: "... larger, certified operations are considerably less prone to bacterial contamination than smaller, more independent uncertified operations. E. coli contamination rates were roughly twice as high on un-certified organic farms compared to certified farms."

Luddism kills, whether it's from the Left or the Right. Haul them into court. And bring on the biotech.

Miss Universe Contest Results

2006-10-01T19:06:00.000-06:00

As documented on Avant News. Hat tip: somewhat indirectly, Notional Slurry.

Ring Around the Sun

2006-10-01T12:28:00.000-06:00

Click on image for larger version.

22° halo and parhelion (Sun dog) from Middle Creek State Fishing Lake, ~3 PM CDT Sat 30 Sep 2006. Graze on over to Atmospheric Optics for the definitive description (and excellent pictures) of these and many other related phenomena.

Neolithic Boyz

2006-09-30T22:42:00.000-06:00

-- is the title of my latest post on Chicago Boyz, which if all has gone well, should have something to offend nearly everyone. Heh.

An Overdue Link

2006-09-27T15:48:00.000-06:00

Anousheh Ansari's Space Blog is one thing, but as Dennis Wingo points out (via Rand Simberg), the comments are quite another. Perfectly astounding, in the best possible sense.

(Personal note: I knew Azi Kojoori, mentioned in Dennis Wingo's column, while working for Sprint in Dallas in the '90s.)

Question for Today

2006-09-25T15:05:00.000-06:00

Has History Taught Us Nothing? (Language warning; big thanks to regular correspondent Michael Lee for sending the link.)

Thought for Today

2006-09-23T23:33:00.000-06:00

Sign spotted at the ASKC annual picnic.

Amazing Picture of ISS and Atlantis

2006-09-22T04:49:00.000-06:00

This astonishing image of the ISS and Atlantis transiting the solar disk was the APoD for yesterday; if you've got a high-speed connection, try clicking on it to view it full-size (it's about 1.3 MB).

So how big was the instrument it was photographed through?

Guessing that the minimum resolution is 3 meters (or a bit better) at the stated distance of 550 kilometers, it works out to ~0.000005 radian. Now, grazing back to Looking for Beagle and applying the rearranged version of the equation therein, we find that (coincidentally) the aperture is just over 13 cm (as it was in the Beagle problem), or about 5¼". Indeed, it may have been photographed through something like this.

(See Spotting Shuttle Problems from the Ground for my assessment of a role for amateur astronomers in managing risks associated with the Thermal Protection System.)

Iranian Amateur Astronomy (A Continuing Series)

2006-09-21T18:37:00.000-06:00

The Reflector reports that the Iranian Astronomical Society won the Sky & Telescope Astronomy Day Award for 2006:

The Iranian Astronomical Society planned for six months and involved 47 cities at 78 sites across the country. In fact, the IAS served as a promotional headquarters for the country and sent out support material to other astronomical organizations within Iran.

Astronomy Day was held on Friday, May 5th. Friday is the official start of the weekend in Iran. Many in Iran believe that astronomy is only for scientists and were pleased to learn that they could participate in star parties. While many parts of the world battle light pollution, some of the cities in Iran have a high degree of air pollution and they used Astronomy Day to encourage citizens to think about the effects of this pollution. Not only did the IAS "Bring Astronomy to the People," they had their own theme, which was promoted across the country and in adjoining countries: "Astronomy and Peace."

And in what would be unheard of in the United States, one site (Saddat Shahr) convinced the city council to shut off the electricity for one hour so that the whole town could observe the night sky. (That's an original solution for the light pollution problem!) In addition, public transportation was half price so that citizens could travel to Astronomy Day sites. Bakeries and groceries provided free bread and ice cream to celebrate Astronomy Day. Planning for next year has already begun.

Previous posts on this or related topics:

Amateur Astronomy in Iran -- Follow-Up

ALCon 2005 - Amateur Astronomy in Iran/"Chasing the Shadow"

A Non-Miss in Iran

Gehry, Zahner, and Astronomy

2006-09-18T16:58:00.001-06:00

Grazing over to Heavy metal, we find that not only has a local KC firm fabricated some of the most striking pieces of architecture of recent years -- including, among other things, the bandshell in Millennium Park -- but the firm's owner is an amateur astronomer:

The Kansas City North house he built is a place of discovery in itself. A continual work in progress, the copper-clad house has a wide-open floor plan with windows that look out at their wood acreage from dozens of angles. It also has a roughed-in observatory, a reflection of Bill’s love of astronomy.

I'd love to see a picture -- imagine an observatory designed by Frank Gehry!

Organic Bioterror?

2006-09-18T16:58:00.000-06:00

Could organic farming serve as a vector for bioterrorism? The E. coli outbreak, in combination with bizarre Federal regulations, suggests that it could. (Ref: my comment over on Belmont Club.) One more reason to be wary of political correctness ...

Nine Twelve Twenty-Four Fifty-Three Eight Planets?! (III)

2006-08-24T10:07:00.000-06:00

Well, instead of adding a few dozen "planets," they dissed my man Clyde. Grrrr.

UPDATES: Larry Goode of the ASKC reports, via our Yahoo! group, that when Clyde Tombaugh visited in 1988, he got to look at Pluto through the 30" telescope at Powell Observatory.

Thanks to glimpsing it a few times from the Texas Star Party in the 1990s, I can now say that I saw Pluto back when it was still a planet. ;^)

Thanks to Leo Johns for the revised Arcturian graphic at left ...

Nonproblematic Embryonic Stem Cells?

2006-08-23T12:46:00.000-06:00

A particularly silly political dispute may be circumvented if the advance described in Stem cells from a single cell? holds up. RTWT.

Nine Twelve Twenty-Four Fifty-Three Planets?! (II)

2006-08-22T12:41:00.000-06:00

Graze on over to Electronic supplement to Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, Series Tertia for Comments & discussions on Resolution 5: The definition of a planet; these are internal IAU member comments. Thanks to David Hudgins of the ASKC for the tip.

Nine Twelve Twenty-Four Fifty-Three Planets?!

2006-08-17T09:49:00.000-06:00

I suppose I ought to say something about Draft Resolution 5 for GA-XXVI: Definition of a Planet (great roundup by Space.com's Robert Roy Britt here). Notwithstanding my considerable respect for the committee (Gingerich in particular), I must agree with Mike Brown that it's "a complete mess."

(To get my own position out of the way, see Why 2003 UB313 Should Not Be Called A Planet, in which I suggest that the list be frozen at the number of planets discovered "manually," as it were -- and exclude asteroids.)

This controversy goes to the heart of the distinction between two great human endeavors: the narrative art and the scientific method (see A Possibly Related Problem for how this affects science journalism; and whatever you do, read Dr Cline's Media/Political Bias, especially the entry on "narrative bias").

The narrative art is ancient, intuitive, intensely stylized, and deeply emotionally satisfying; the scientific method is much newer, often drastically counterintuitive in its findings, stylized only in its narrative expression (and then in a way nonscientists usually find unapproachable), and frequently not at all emotionally satisfying except to its most dedicated practitioners. I need hardly remind my readership, but will anyway, of the ongoing collision between ancient narrative and modern science in American society.

I submit that scientists own the science, but laypeople own the narrative. And the narrative of the nine planets of the Solar System is rich in mythology (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), serendipity (the discovery of Uranus [pronunciation]), mathematical prediction (the discovery of Neptune), and Herculean effort (the discovery of Pluto). It has been enriched that much further by the stunning imagery of every planet except Pluto returned to us by the Mariner, Pioneer, Viking, Magellan, Galileo, and Cassini probes.

The new resolution does not enrich the narrative; it merely attempts to impose upon it a definition which makes scientific (and counterintuitive) sense, and largely dissolves it from a cast of readily identifiable characters (think of Adams, Leverrier, Tombaugh; and of course the planets themselves, in a sense) into a chaos of tens, someday hundreds, of celestial bodies, only five of which can ever be seen from Earth by unaided human eyes, and all but a dozen or so of which were, or will have been, discovered by entirely automated methods with minimal human intervention. To adopt the new definition is to replace a novel that has a substantial but manageable number of intriguing dramatis personae with a huge, unwieldy roster of invisible objects and soulless robots.

Amateur astronomers are on the verge between scientists and laypeople. We must manage the narrative in such a way as to ensure that science receives the respect it must obtain from the public in order to continue operating, especially to the extent that it is paid for with public funds. And that narrative will not be that there are now 53 planets in our (by God!) Solar System, with a couple of hundred more on the way. There are nine. The canon was closed on February 18, 1930, by a Kansas farm boy who preferred a blink comparator to a pitchfork.

The Matter With Kansas (XV) - Flip-Flop #6

2006-08-02T04:46:00.000-06:00

I was wrong; the Kansas Board of Education will change hands. Board of Education’s balance is shifting is the KCStar's laconic headline for what will almost certainly become the sixth version of science education in Kansas public schools in fifteen years.

For those keeping score, Kansas will have had:

No science education standards at all prior to 1992.

NSF/National Academies standards from 1992-1999.

Standards which forbade achievement-testing questions about the Big Bang, the age of the Earth, or the descent of man from 1999-2001.

NSF/National Academies standards from 2001-2005.

Standards which encouraged teaching of "alternatives" to evolution from 2005-2007.

NSF/National Academies standards from 2007-20??.

A child entering the system in 1st grade in 1990 would have been "educated" under four different official versions of reality before graduating in 2002. A child entering the system in 1st grade in 1998 will be "educated" under at least five versions, and quite possibly six, before graduating in 2010.

This charade is a gigantic advertisement for private and home schooling. A state with a population of 2.7 million has, thanks to an elected board that can't keep its hands to itself, made fundamental changes in how science is to be taught five times in fifteen years. The latest change was determined by the pattern of just over 100,000 votes (that would be 3.7% of the population) in five primary contests.

Thank God I live in Missouri.

(Previous member of series here.)

A Current Controversy, Tangentially Predicted by Me

2006-07-28T09:33:00.000-06:00

With all the controversy about sock puppetry (language warning, but see especially the comments by "docweasel," who makes an appearance in "The Readers Speak" on the left sidebar of this very blog); this is beginning to seem downright prescient.