Category Archives: astronomy

astronomy, friends of the observatory, gift ideas, griffith observatory, Mars, mars exploration rovers

Space for the Holidays

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Giving the Gift of Astronomy

We went shopping the other day. This is the season for prolongued bouts of buying stuff for our loved ones, friends, bosses, whoevers, and of course, you can find all kinds of gew-gaws out there to give.  Mr. Spacewriter and I were looking for specific objects,  and we did find a few things, but not quite what we were looking for.  Still, it was interesting to browse the aisles of some stores and see what the marketing types thought we should be giving to others: electronic book readers, the latest phones, computers, perfumes, clothes, and even household things like vacuum cleaners. Not knocking those things — I’m sure that somebody’s baby out there wants one of those objects and whoever gets it for them will be a hero, at least for the holidays.

If you’ve been out there bulling your way through the maddening crowds and haven’t found something that quite matches for someone you want to impress/love/woo/etc., why not consider giving an astronomy- or space-related gift?  I’ve got a few suggestions here that might help you out of what could be a tough gift bind. (Or, maybe you want to treat yourself to something spacey…)

First, I am a member of Friends of the Observatory, the support group for Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California. You can be, too, and you don’t even have to live there.  I don’t live in SoCal, but I do find myself working/visiting/doing business out there throughout the year, and a trip to Griffith is always one of my stops.  FOTO, as it’s lovingly called, does a lot of good things for the observatory — which is one of the most popular public observatories in the world. Among other things, FOTO gathers the funds to bring students from the Los Angeles Unified School District on fifth-grade school field trips. This is a trip that, without funding, many school kids would never get to experience, and I support anything that brings the science of astronomy to kids in a meaningful way.  You can join for as little as $45.00, which gets you a number of great benefits, including a one-year subscription to the world-famous Griffith Observer. I’ve been supporting Griffith for a number of years now through FOTO, and even though I don’t live there, I find it to be a wonderfully rewarding investment.  So might you. Check out FOTO at the link above. (For the record, I also wrote all of Griffith Observatory’s exhibits — so, if you go there, check out the words on the walls… I guarantee, you’ll learn some astronomy!)

I’m also a member of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, an astronomical organization that works to increase the understanding and appreciation of astronomy by everyone, using scientists, educators, enthusiasts, and the public to advance science and science literacy. I have been working with this group for a couple of years now on a project called “Astronomy Behind the Headlines” — a series of podcasts that’ll bring you in contact with scientists at the cutting edge of astronomy. ASP is a godsend for teachers and outreach specialists, as well as folks who are just plain curious about the universe.  GO check out their Web page and see if a membership or donation to ASP is a fit with your gifting goals.

As many of my long-time readers know, I love books. I’ve written a couple about astronomy and space science, and I like to read astro books, too.  Just in time for the holidays a couple of really neat ones have landed on my desk and you might like them, too.

The first is called “Postcards from Mars” — written by Dr. Jim Bell, astronomer and planetary scientist at Cornell University in New York, and published  by Plume  Books. Jim was in charge of the photography teams on the Spirit and Opportunity missions that are still sending back images from Mars. For this book, which is gorgeous, he spent hundreds of hours selecting images from the rovers, cropping and processing them, and aseembling them into a book that tells the tale of the rovers from launch to the continuous stream of image deliveries they’ve made during their mission lifetimes.  I really enjoyed this book — twice. First, I simply leafed through it, admiring all the wonderful images. Then, I read through it, appreciating the story of two missions as told by one of the mission scientists who put these images in front of us.  It’s really a great find and if you have a Mars lover on your gift list (or if you are one), then this is a great find. I know I loved looking through it — but then again, I’m an old Mars fanatic from way back.  You can’t beat postcards from another planet as a way to impress your giftee!

The other book that found its way onto my reading list is called Sizing up the Universe: a New View of the Cosmos and published by National Geographic.  Anyone who studies astronomy is instantly engulfed by the scales of objects we explore.  From the sizes of planets to the limits of the observable universe, the scale of the cosmos can sometimes be more than we can easily comprehend. That’s where this book comes in — it seeks to help you understand just how big things are and how far away they are — in terms that won’t completely boggle your mind. It uses scaled maps and comparisons of objects at different scales, by way of gorgeous illustrations, to help readers understand size comparisons in the universe. It presents the vast distances of the cosmos in a very beautiful and graphical way — including an instantly understandable Gott-Juric Map of the Universe in Chapter 4 that has been reprinted as a foldout map.  The authors, Princeton professors J. Richard Gott and Robert J. Vanderbei, write in a very clear and approachable way and their explanations of distances and sizes by analogy are very good.  For example, there’s a set of beautiful images in a section called “Exoplanets Compared” that shows some of the known exoplanets overlying their parent stars, and with solar system planets overlaid in comparison. You instantly “get” the size of these worlds and their stars.  The book is a treasury of these kinds of comparisons.  There’s a  lot more, which makes this book a great gift for that person in your life who is curious about what’s “out there,” how big it is, and how far away it is.

In closing, I have to admit that I do really enjoy reading actual books.  I’ve been pondering getting a Kindle or a  Sony reader or something, and I actually played with one the other day. But, you know… it just doesn’t hold a candle (or Kindle) to turning the pages and basking in the loveliness of a book on a lazy afternoon… and, I wonder just how well an astronomy book like these two would work out on the readers.  And, of course, NO reader is going to give you the same experience as visiting a place like Griffith or belonging to a group like ASP… they’re all worthy experiences, requiring different applications of your personal attention.

Happy Space Gifting!

astronomy

How far is Up?

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And other Interesting Questions

I just returned from a trip where I gave five astronomy presentations, followed by Q&A sessions.  It’s always a revelation to hear people’s questions about space and astronomy.  I thought I’d share them with you, plus some answers.

How far is up?

Mucho laughter ensued when that one was asked, because it really sounds like a silly question. But, it’s not. And it’s a question that’s not substantially different (in meaning) from “How far is out?”

In one sense, “up” and “out” end at the observable limits of the universe.  At this point, that’s the time right after the Big Bang when the “cosmic dark ages” ended and the first stars began to shine, maybe 13.3 or so billion years ago.

Perhaps the questioner was wondering how far it was to the edge of space from Earth’s surface?  Well, do you mean the limit of the observable universe? Or, perhaps the place in space where Earth’s atmosphere ends and “space” begins?  If so, then some calculations suggest that it begins at about 100 kilometers above the surface, although the atmosphere really still exists out to just under 1,000 kilometers. That’s where I’d consider the “edge of space” to be.

According to my friend Phil Erickson, at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, the atmosphere itself ends at the level of something called the “geocorona”. This is a region where all that is left is of our atmosphere is a collection of neutral/ionized hydrogen atoms. Here, the  “mean free path” of a particle — that is, the average distance covered by a moving particle, atom, photon, etc. between successive impacts with other particles — is so long that collisions don’t happen very frequently and the particles are on ballistic trajectories through space.  Depending on the season, the part of the solar cycle we’re in, the temperature, and other factors, the geocorona can begin anywhere from 500 to 800 kilometers.

How do supermassive black holes in galaxy cores get started?

That’s a good one. One theory is that perhaps a stellar black hole begins to swallow up more and more material — getting more massive as it does. Eventually, after millions and millions of years, a supermassive black hole results.  Another idea is that perhaps a cluster of stellar black holes merge to become one big supermassive one.  Astronomers don’t have a single formation scenario worked out yet, but they will, especially as they study galaxy evolution at different epochs in cosmic history. Galaxy evolution and supermassive black holes seem to be connected in many ways.

Can comets suck water away from Mars and

could that explain where all the water on Mars went?

Wow. That’s ingenious.  But, as much as we’d like to know exactly WHERE Mars’s water went and how the planet lost its atmosphere, the idea that a comet could suck out tons and tons of water from a planet isn’t correct.  Look at the physics of the situation: comets are chunks of ices, not very large and certainly don’t have the gravitational pull to suck water from a planet.  It’s more likely that Mars’s gravitational pull could have caused a comet or several to swerve into the surface in the past. But, not the other way around.

How much does it cost to be an astronomer?

A lot.  College costs a lot, graduate school costs more.  But, the price depends on the schools one attends.  Mentally and physically, it’s stimulating work, and if you go at it with the right attitude, the intangible costs are far outweighed by the rewards of discovery and knowledge.

To the folks who attended my talks in the past couple of weeks — it was a pleasure to meet you and share astronomy!  Keep looking up!