Cold and Then Some

Cold, and then Some

Up until a couple of days ago we were shivering under some pretty cold temps up here in New England. The other night we took the trash out and it was about 10 below zero (F)—cold enough to literally take your breath away. The sky was quite clear that night, and the stars were stunningly beautiful. Mars was like a red beacon…The next day I walked out to get the mail and noticed the ice in the driveway. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of ice fields on the worlds of the outer solar system. Out there ice doesn’t so much melt off the surfaces of those worlds, but it sublimates—it turns from ice crystals into a gas without going through that pesky liquid phase we see here on Earth.

Oh, there is liquid water out there at the outer worlds. At least, that’s the working hypothesis deduced from various observations. And, how else do you explain what looks like deposits of fresh ice that have somehow oozed up through cracks on the surfaces of places like Enceladus, Europa and Pluto’s moon Charon? It’s only a matter of time before the existence of all those cold oceans are confirmed. And, when I read about them, I can certainly sympathize with the idea of cold—especially after the bitterly cold weather we had last week. However, I am reminded that 10 below zero here on Earth would be a pretty warm day on Mars or Enceladus or Tethys or Pluto or Charon— so we have it pretty good here at home.

Speaking of cold and ice and outer solar system, here’s the latest installment of my ongoing vodcast series. It features an observation made at Gemini Observatory that I wrote about a few months ago, and an image I worked on with the PR folks at Gemini. Come on—let’s go visit some ice worlds!


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Happy New Year 2008!


Happy New Year: 2008

It’s the start of a new year and, as with many years past, I’m getting ready to go to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. I’ve been a member since the mid 1990s and have been going to their meetings nearly every year since then.Most years I try to post here about some of the latest and greatest and hottest news in astronomy and astrophysics that we find out about at the meeting. I’ll do that again this year, and I’m going to try and put up a vodcast or two from the meeting as well. So, keep your eyes peeled for astronomy news and maybe a little video program with an “insider look” at the AAS meeting!Also in the new year, I’ll be working on more vodcasting for Haystack Observatory. We have a contract to do a series called Space Weather FX for them, and the first episode is up! You can watch it here as a flash animation, but by all means, go over to their site for downloadable versions and read the background info on the series and who’s working on it. Eventually it will be syndicated to iTunes and other places on the web.Finally, I’ve been working on updating my web site so, if you haven’t checked out my other pages, head over to TheSpacewriter.com and see what I’ve done.

Space Weather FX Vodcast

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