10 posts tagged “astronomy”
I got my Astronomy textbook this week! I got mine used from an Amazon seller for cheap-cheap, so I didn't expect to get the software with it, but I did - and the EULA sticker is even still intact. The professor doesn't require it, but planetarium software is always cool to have...
Looking through the pages I found a disturbing little blurb in the sidebar, though. The book says that many people have trouble with the difference between the terms "galaxy" and "solar system." Really? Though, I guess that follows from the mindset where the U.S. is the only important part of the earth and the earth is the only important part of the galaxy. Forget heliocentric, we may never get past self-centric...
On a slightly-but-not-really related note, the family went to Kennedy Space Center again this past Monday. My beloved and I took my younger sister there for her first visit to Florida. We took the Up Close tour again, and got to see some very nifty stuff. As we approached the VAB the tour guide noticed that they were starting to move the shuttle's external fuel tank across the road from storage to the VAB. The doors of the building were open and we could see and snap pictures of the pale orange giant. It was lying horizontally and we could just see the end of it as they prepared to move it. Then, later, as we were returning from the launch pads to actually stop at the VAB we got there just in time to see them pulling the last half of the tank into the VAB itself. We got some great pictures of the nose cone and about half of it sticking out of the wide open VAB doors. Most cool! The driver parked as quickly as he could and we all dashed off of the bus and down the grass strip to get as close as the fencing would allow to watch the tank disappear into the darkness... Hopefully my beloved will transfer the vacation photos to me soon so that I may post some of those here.
At the end of the Up Close tour they drop everyone off at the Saturn V center, which I highly recommend seeing - I think that the free bus tour goes there as well. The Saturn V museum is probably one of the best things at KSC. Then, from there you can take a short bus ride to the facility where they assemble the pieces of the International Space Station for a ride up on the shuttles. (This was the first time we were able to go there... when we went at Christmas time, the place was empty and all the workers had gone for Christmas break.) Anyway, you can tour some mock-ups of the ISS modules and then go up to an overlook and watch the real peoples working on the real things. There were about 6 to 8 of the modules in view and a few people in clean suits running around some of them. It was just amazing to think that you were getting a look at something that would soon be orbiting our planet.
I finally got registered for my Intro to Astronomy and Lab classes today - woot! Classes begin at UCF and SCC on August 25th, so only three short weeks of sweet freedom left... but that's okay, because I'm very excited now to finally be able to start on my Astronomy minor for real.
I'm slightly worried about what the teacher will be like. He doesn't fare well on Rate My Professor, but I'm going to chalk that up to students who take astronomy for an "easy" science credit, but wind up with a passionate science geek for a teacher. Some of the comments made the guy sound like your basic nerd, and man do I love nerds... so hopefully it will all be fine.
Hmmm... maybe it's about time to break into the "Gravitation" chapter that we skipped in Physics I class.
I can't wait!
The Discovery Channel website has an article on a different idea for locating extrasolar planets that are more earth-like... water, atmosphere, maybe habitable. The idea is to take a look at earth the way we are trying to look at other planets - from a distance. Of course, we can't get as far away from earth as we have to be from anything else we're looking at, but hey, that's what math is for, right? At the moment it seems that scientists are making some use of Deep Impact's telescopes to peek back at earth as Deep Impact makes its lonely way out to comet Hartley 2.
The article says:
For example, at a planet-hunters conference in France last month, researchers reported that from the perspective of space, light from Earth twinkles as clouds pass in and out of view.
"A distant extraterrestrial observer would see Earth as a point source of light that varies in brightness in a repeating, predictable pattern, just like spots on a spinning ball," Science magazine reported in an article last month about the research, which was headed by Enric Palle of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands.
More about Deep Impact's new missions can also be found here.
I ran across an article full of niftiness today while surfing at work. You know, instead of working...
From Live Science and Space.com, apparently not only are people emitting waves of noise out into deep space that might some day attract the attention of some far-flung alien being, but the Earth itself is blasting out radio waves approximately 10,000 times greater than anything we measly inhabitants can manage. The radio waves are created by "charged particles from the solar wind collide with Earth's magnetic field." The sounds are not audible to Earthlings, even dogs, because they are blocked by Earth's ionosphere (the last layer of atmosphere around our planet).
Even more nift lies in the fact that any planet which produces an aurora also produces these sounds, so scientists can also add this to the arsenal of planet hunting techniques. Locally, it seems Jupiter and Saturn also produce these radio waves.
The Space.com link above has an audio clip of the sounds. Oddly, the link to listen says "Buy Now," but when you click the link it just plays, and no fee is required. The sound is eerie, but pretty cool.
I don't want to give the impression that UCF is a bad place to study Astronomy, by the way. They do not offer a major for it, only a minor, but by all indications the faculty is working hard to make a fine planetary astronomy program. The school does offer a Physics major, and those interested in Astronomy probably take the Physics major and fill that out with the Astronomy minor (and hence why the school generally doesn't bother with the AST lab mentioned in the previous post - most of their students are already taking Physics II and it's lab, so few students were signing up for the AST lab).
In fact, UCF researchers have applied for and gotten themselves rather a large share of time on the Spitzer Space Telescope as referenced here on the UCF News & Information Page. The school also has its own observatory, the Robinson Observatory, with "a 20" Ritchie Chretien Telescope" which was just installed within the last year to replace an older, smaller telescope.
They are currently running several very interesting research projects with the Space Research Initiative, JPL, the National Science Foundation, and of course NASA, as it is practically next door. I'm looking forward to getting into the more serious classes (and, admittedly, a little terrified). Hope they don't mind an English major mucking about and getting in the way. At this rate I'd be happy to sweep the floors and run for coffee if I could just be close to the research looking at or for extrasolar planets!
I'm pretty close to being able to get into the Astronomy class that I want in the Fall semester - at a different college. Maybe I've mentioned before the oddity that UCF offers Intro to Astronomy (AST 2002, at least at UCF) but they don't offer the lab... ever... or at least not anytime in the past or next couple of years. But the lab is kinda sorta required for my Astronomy minor - I could get around this requirement by taking the Physics II lab, of course, but that, you see, would mean that I was taking Physics II. (Do. Not. Want.) Yes, I understand that my whining permits were all revoked when I got that B in Physics I, but it was extremely painful and required a huge amount of help from my beloved, and is an experience that I do not wish to repeat, much less amplify.
So, I am attempting to take Intro and the lab at the other local community college (Seminole Community College) because they are the only place that offers the lab. They also have a cute little planetarium where they do shows on the weekend and for student field trips. Anyway, my transient student form has been approved by the hundred or so (by which I mean three) people through whom it had to pass by at UCF. Now I am waiting on a single approval from the registrar at SCC. Come on dude, or dudette... don't leave me hanging!
Well, from Physics, at least. One Japanese final exam to go, but that's not until next week Monday.
I think the physics final went fairly well. It consisted of 45 multiple choice and 5 written problems. I don't believe that I got the 90% required to pull off that "A" but I think I at least did well enough to keep the "B." Good enough, I say...
Now, as for the list of things I want to do for my summer off:
- relearn (again-again) website coding and design
- continue learning Japanese
- clean the house (maybe this one should be number one on the list)
- organize the house (err... number two...)
- sew new costumes for DragonCon (probably not gonna happen...)
- at least sew something!
- waste a ton of time playing The Sims (I am fairly certain that this will happen)
- get out with the telescope at least once a week and spend some time stargazing with or without the telescope
- take more photos of things other than sleeping cats
- write... something... fiction-esque
- finish a book! (Two currently on hold: American Gods and a Dorothy Parker biography.)
Well, at least I'm ambitious. Let's see what actually happens!
We are well recovered from the hospital incident now, but have been struggling to get back on top of the work and school that we missed while we were otherwise occupied. We also took a lovely weekend of our spring break from community college (UCF spring break was... well, actually, was the week I was in the hospital... fun!) to go to St. Augustine to visit with my Dad and stepmom, but also to chill and get romantical. We had a very, very good time.
Soooo.... the good news is that I may not have to repeat Physics over the summer after all. We finally got back test number two, on which I got a "D" (as expected), but The Best News Ever is that I actually managed a "B" on test number three. Cosmic balance, or something like that. This was largely due to a lovely bit of unexpected extra credit, but I actually successfully completed the problem that gave the extra credit - even though it was the type of problem that generally frustrates me to no end and makes me quit halfway through. So, now I must just survive one more test and a multiple choice final exam, which is to be drawn from a pool of the quiz questions we have been doing all of this time. Additionally I have not quite a week between my last UCF final exam and the Physics final to prepare. I just have to manage a "C" overall for it to count for my minor...whew!
Next I just have to find out if I will be allowed to take Astronomy and the lab at yet another community college instead of UCF. One of the frustrations of UCF, or at least the Astronomy minor at UCF, is that apparently no one is interested in teaching the lab part of AST 2002, even though it is one of the required choices for the minor. The other choice is to take the Physics II lab - and therefore Physics II. Not my first choice, naturally. Besides, I really want to take the Astronomy lab. At any rate, if I can, I'll take AST 2002 plus lab at Seminole Community College and have it transfer to UCF so that I can continue with the rest of the Astronomy minor. I hope.
Final note, tickets for another shuttle launch are going on sale soon... Monday, I believe. We are going to try to get tickets again, and this time it will be a daylight launch. It is very hard to get tickets for daytime launches though. They tend to sell out within a matter of seconds, probably because some scalper is buying up large blocks of tickets. We have yet to be fast enough over either internet or phone to score daytime launch tickets. Night launches are apparently much easier to acquire, probably because few people are mad enough to hang around until 3 or 4 am and then drive home in heavy traffic while exhausted. Wimps.
I've been wasting some time surfing while I should be getting ready for school, and ran across two articles of interest, both from the New York Times (ya know, one link leads to another, and so on...).
The Interesting: A new method of planet hunting proves successful.
The Depressing: America to the dumbth degree.
Looks like NASA's ready to give the Hubble one more repair before abandoning it. Personally I think that's great news. It's been an invaluable tool and with the new upgrades that this repair will bring, it should be even more so. Would it be better to spend the money to just build a state of the art 'scope and shove it up there? Maybe... maybe not. We have an existing workhorse of a machine; they know where it's reliable, they know where it's not. They intimately know how it works and how to fix it (even if 111 tiny screws were never meant to be removed by a dude in giant gloves floating in space). So, I'm glad they're giving it another makeover, and still sad that this will surely be IT - the last repair ever. I can't put it any better than Phil Plait over at the Bad Astronomy Blog (as soon as I saw a headline about Hubble I ran to BA - I knew Phil P. would have the best information).
Comments:
I’m personally torn about this mission. I’m really glad NASA is finally reservicing Hubble. I used it for a decade, working with it even before it launched. I got my PhD with Hubble data, and then worked on STIS for several years. I am really hoping they can bring my old camera back up to speed; I wrote a lot of software for STIS and I’d like to see it get more use!
But I’m sad it’s the last mission to Hubble. There just isn’t enough money to keep Hubble working forever, and even though this mission is to keep the ’scope alive for a few more years, it’s hard not to look at it with a little bit of wistfulness. Hubble changed the way the public sees the Universe, showing everyone just how beautiful and awesome astronomy is. But I’m also happy, thrilled, that we’ll get a few more years out of the lady, and I hope — and there’s plenty of experience to back this hope up — that we’ll get a lot more beauty, a lot more science, and a lot more surprises from Hubble in her remaining years.
Read the rest of the BA article here.
