Monthly Archives: September 2009

'Casts, astrocast.tv, exoplanets, extrasolar planets

Finding Worlds

1 Comment

Exoplanet Searches

There are countless worlds in our galaxy, all formed in the same process that created this planet you’re sitting/standing on and reading these words from. Pretty awesome thought. I’m a science fiction reader, so of course my thoughts always center on how many of those worlds might have life — in particular, the life we might be able to communicate or even visit (if that were even possible).  Finding those worlds isn’t just a matter of pointing a telescope up at stars and looking for little planets circling around them. Stars are bright and big; planets not so much. Most of the time, they’re hidden in the glare of their star — just as Earth would be lost in the Sun’s glare as seen from light-years away.

Most of the planets that HAVE been discovered around other stars are of the Jupiter-class and larger variety. They’re often called “Hot Jupiters” because their temps are so high — but not hot enough to be stars. They’re easier to spot that smaller, Earth-sized worlds. That’s changing now, due to missions like Kepler and COROT, which are designed to find the kinds of planets where life might be hanging out. And, they’re doing it in a variety of ways.

Planet searches are a hot topic right now in astronomy and space science — so much so that my latest episode of The Astronomer’s Universe over at Astrocast.tv focuses on exoplanets and the methods astronomers are using to ferret them out from the glare of their stars.  You can watch it below — and by all means, head over to the main site and watch all the segments in this month’s episode!

atmosphere, atmospheric science, climate change, Earth science, NASA, terra satellite

The Ash from a Distant Mountain

2 Comments

Watching the Fires from Space

The Southern California Fires as seen by NASA's Earth Observing System Terra satellite. Courtesy NASA. Click to embiggen.

Up here in the Rockies we’re seeing the effects of the Station Fire near Pasadena in a most dramatic way — ash in the air, blood-red sunsets and a red Moon. There’s so much ash floating around that our mountains in the distance look like one of those Japanese watercolor paintings with mist-shrouded hills.

But, far from being mist, this stuff is the particulate matter distributed from the fires consuming more than 100,000 acres (and growing) of brush, trees, and homes.  Overnight the historic (and very busy) Mt. Wilson Observatory was threatened by the fire, but thanks to the efforts of fire crews, the observatory is (so far) spared from the flames. (Note: the link goes to Mt. Wilson’s webcam which may or may not be operating.  For more info about Mt. Wilson itself, go here.)

I find it fascinating to look at the satellite images of this fire — or any fire in any region on our planet.  As time goes by, you’ll see more of these images, with the smoke plumes heading out and affecting other areas.  What happens in one place on our planet inevitably affects other places.  This is why NASA and other space agencies are launching mission after mission to study our home world — to understand the processes it experiences and how all the various systems of our planet are linked together.  Often, as with the fires in SoCal, understanding and studying these topics is a matter of life and death.