Category Archives: musings

musings, stargazing

Astronomy and Taxes

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This time of year many Americans race to beat the deadline of filing their taxes. There are at least two kinds of folks who are sweating it today: those who have filed and have to pay taxes, and those who haven’t filed and will be racing to the post office before midnight to get them filed. This year, and for several years now, thanks to Al Gore and the Internet, I’ve managed to file my taxes via computer — thus omitting some of the stress from April 15th (although not the pain of paying).

Heres a star chart to help you figure out what youre seeing.
Here's a star chart to help you figure out what you're seeing.

If you are filing your taxes today and you’re making the midnight run to the post office, make sure you take some time after it’s all over to glance up in the sky. If it’s clear, look nearly overhead for the Tax Time Constellations of Bootes (with the bright star Arcturus at its tip) and Corona Borealis, with the star Gemma (also known as alpha Corona Borealis, or Alphekka) gleaming from the arc of stars that make it up.

Once you get back home, you’ll probably be all keyed up from the mad dash and can’t get to sleep. And, you’re probably tired of watching CNN or Skynews all night. So get back outside, and grab a pair of binoculars to take along. See if you can use them to find a little globular cluster of stars in the Keystone of Hercules, just to the east of Corona Borealis. On the chart, I’ve marked it for you — it’s called M13 and its about 2/3 of the way up the left side of the Keystone.

Now, once you’ve spotted that, give a look over at the Big Dipper in the northwest. Find the handle and then look at the star in the bend of the handle. It’s called Mizar. But, actually there are two stars there — if your eyesight is really good, you might be able to spot them both without help. Through binoculars you can clearly see two stars. Actually there are six stars there, but you’d need a good sized telescope to see them.

Now, wasn’t that a nice way to end Tax Day?

Note: I forgot to mention that the Moon would be fairly bright around midnight. It’s a waxing gibbous Moon and will be a full Moon on the 16th. Its brightness makes it a bit tougher to spot M13, although not impossible. Don’t worry too much about it if you don’t find the cluster right away — in a few days the Moon will not be as much of a problem!

Also, the chart up there was created using Cartes du Ciel, a desktop planetarium available for download at: Astro-PC

musings, space flight, space shuttle

Danger, Will Robinson!

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It has been a month and a half since the space shuttle Columbia plunged to Earth in a fireball. It was a painful reminder that we can’t control everything about human spaceflight. It may turn out that no company or person is to blame for this terrible accident, but that hasn’t stopped the fingerpointing among contractors and posturing among members of Congress and the Senate. I hope that we figure out what happened and I hope that we retain our understanding that these things happen and that space is not a benign environment.

In 1986 we watched as the second big tragedy of American spaceflight occurred — the loss of the Challenger. I was at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, watching the launch in Von Karman auditorium along with dozens of Voyager mission scientists and science writers who had gathered for the final press conference of the Voyager 2/Uranus encounter.

It was a searing tragedy, perhaps all the more spectacular because our space program hadn’t been touched by death since the Apollo 1 disaster in 1967.

There have been other losses throughout the decades of our exploration of space. Of course the Russians have lost cosmonauts — learning along with us the price we pay to rise above our planet and look to the stars. What comforts me is that we continue to strive outward from our planet. Indeed, sometimes I think that space exploration is our best and brightest hope for the future of the human race. The tragedies of the past set the bar higher for us in the future — but there’s no doubt we learn from them and keep on going.

So, with that, I salute the space heroes who have fallen during our first tentative steps outward. Sure there’s danger out there. But it’s inherent in any new endeavor. I believe that every one of our lost astronauts and cosmonauts would want us to keep the faith in space exploration as a lasting monument to the price they paid to give humanity a chance to leap for the stars.