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Help GLOBE at Night 2013 Count the Stars

What is your life without the stars? Think about it? What if you couldn’t see the stars? Can you step outside at night and see the Milky Way? Is your view hindered by light pollution? Can you see any stars from your home? For many people, particularly in large cities, the answers to those last two questions are abysmal: “Yes, light pollution affects my view of the sky” and “I can see only a few stars in the sky at night.” It’s a worldwide problem, and with the astronauts’ abilities to send back pictures of Earth almost real-time, we can really see what our planet looks like as we light up outer space.

The good folks at the GLOBE at Night campaign want to know what your skies look like. GLOBE at Night is a worldwide, hands-on science and education program that encourages citizen-scientists worldwide to record the brightness of their night sky. During five select sets of dates in 2013, you can help the project by matching the appearance of a constellation (Orion or Leo in the northern hemisphere, and Orion and Crux in the southern hemisphere) with seven star charts of progressively fainter stars (www.globeatnight.org/observe_magnitude_orion.html).Then, you submit your findings to the www.globeatnight.org/webapp/ , providing the date, time and location of your observations. You can submit from your iphone or computer, and your data will help make an interactive map of all worldwide observations (www.globeatnight.org/map/). Over the past 7 years of 10-day campaigns, people in 115 countries have contributed more than 83,000 measurements, making GLOBE at Night the most popular, light pollution citizen-science campaign to date (www.globeatnight.org/analyze.html). The GLOBE at Night website is easy to use, comprehensive, and holds an abundance of background information (www.globeatnight.org/learn.html and www.globeatnight.org/observe.html). Guides, activities, one-page flyers and postcards advertising the campaign are available at www.globeatnight.org/pdf/. Through GLOBE at Night, students, teachers, parents and community members are amassing a data set from which they can explore the nature of light pollution locally and across the globe. The remaining GLOBE at Night campaigns in 2013 are: March 3 – 12, March 31 – April 9, and April 29 – May 8. Make a difference and join the GLOBE at Night campaign!

In other night sky light-pollution news, last week we (a team comprising Loch Ness Productions and the International Dark-SkyAssociation) released a video called Losing the Dark. It presents the issues related to light pollution and some easy-to-implement solutions to the problem. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out below. If you’re a planetarium person, you can get this video for your dome free of charge at the Loch Ness Productions Losing the Dark Web page. If you’re an educator, public speaker, outreach specialist, or dark-sky advocate, you can get a flat-screen HD version of the video at the International Dark-Sky Association’s Losing the Dark page. It’s been a major hit so far, and we’d like to see it get out to as many folks as possible. Help spread the word about mitigating light pollution!

Coming Soon to a Sky Near You

Comet PANSTARRS (C/2011 L4), which has been dazzling southern hemisphere skygazers for a couple of weeks now, is making its way around the Sun. It will make its closest approach (perihelion) to the Sun on March 10th, and a couple of days later it should be visible in the post-sunset skies for those of us in the northern hemisphere to enjoy. Here’s a little gazing chart (courtesy of Astronomy Magazine and Gary A. Becker) to help you find it. The view could be quite lovely on March 12th and 13th, when it will appear not too far from a crescent Moon low in the western sky. The comet should be visible through most of the month, although later on it will be competing with the Full Moon, which could wash out the sky a bit. It may likely have two tails — a whitish dust tail and a bluish plasma tail, so it’s worth making the effort to take a look at PANSTARRS.

Where Comet PANSTARRS will appear in the western sky for northern hemisphere observers starting around March 10th, 2013. Check it out! Map courtesy Astronomy Magazine and Gary A. Becker.

Astronomer Fred Espenak also has some extraordinarily gorgeous finder charts on his Website AstroPixels.com. Check ’em out! And, while you’re there, check out some of his other work, too.

Back in the day, when I was in graduate school, I spent a lot of time studying images of Comet Halley. We were interested in its plasma tail (also known as the ion tail). This is a stream of gas molecules that form as the Sun heats the icy nucleus of the comet. The ices start to “sublimate” (similar to how dry ice “melts”) and creates a cloud of gas and dust. The material flows off the comet, forming a dust tail and the plasma tail. The materials in the plasma tail interact with the solar wind, which causes the plasma tail to glow in a process called ionization. It also creates structures in the plasma tail, and in the right conditions, can cause what is called a “disconnection event”. This occurs when the existing plasma tail encounters changes in the solar wind that are different from the conditions in which it was originally formed. Think of it as forming in one electrical polarity and when it encounters a different polarity, it can’t exist anymore. So, the plasma tail breaks off and a new one forms. This happens over and over again as the comet rounds the Sun. We studied this occurring in Comet Halley as it passed through in 1985 and 1986, and that allowed our team to analyze conditions in the solar wind by looking at the tail, as well as letting us chart what was once thought of as a “pathological” condition in comets. Turns out it happens to comets with active plasma tails during the inner parts of their orbits around the Sun. Comet PANSTARRS was showing a pretty active plasma tail as it went to perihelion. I’ll be watching it later this week to see how it fared. So, if your skies are clear later this week and early next, step outside after sunset and check out the comet. It could be quite lovely!

The Spacewriter's Ramblings

What if We Couldn’t See the Stars?

Help GLOBE at Night 2013 Count the Stars

A Comet!

Coming Soon to a Sky Near You

Exploring Science and the Cosmos