The fun is streaming non-stop for enthusiasts of astronomy these days. This week the Leonid meteor shower is raging in conjunction with the new Moon. Estimates for the 2009 meteor event range upwards to 500 meteors an hour as the Earth finishes its annual pass through the tail of the Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Beginning around midnight this week look for the rising constellation of Leo and follow it across the sky into the dawn for the best chance to catch the most meteor activity.

As if 500 meteors/hour slamming into and burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere isn’t exciting enough, this week results are in from the NASA Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite or LCROSS experiment that crashed a satellite into a crater at the pole of the Moon to observe the spectroscopic results from the kicked up particulate. There is now evidence of more water on the surface of the Moon than previous direct observations have shown yet it is still relatively little.

More water on the Moon makes human habitation much more feasible. The question is: what is human habitation of the Moon good for? There are two main reasons; exploitative mining and/or establishing a launch site for deeper space exploration. More valuable to scientists than water on the Moon is Helium-3, which is super-rare on Earth, and exists on the Moon in relative abundance compared to Earth. Helium-3 is a stable element that is exceptionally valuable in nuclear technology. It allows a reaction to occur without turning components of a nuclear reactor radioactive, which is great for nuclear energy on Earth. Helium-3 is also optimal for use in nuclear fusion weaponry, hydrogen bombs, because it is stable and will not decay.

Nuclear weapons have shelf lives because they rely on radioactive elements that decay rendering them impotent over time. Helium-3 use in nuclear weaponry would mean that a nuclear weapon would have infinite shelf life (given infinite longevity of all other variables, which is improbable). Many scientists are not ignorant to the fact that every piece of technology that can be used for good can also be used for evil. Many scientists are or choose to ignore that fact for shortsighted personal gains. Habitation of the Moon and subsequent mining could potentially result in human kinds’ rapid exploration of deeper space and safer nuclear energy on Earth or it could result in more efficient weapons of destruction to wield over Earth. My observation is that for every helpful technology produced there is also produced an equal and opposite danger.

Image Courtesy Enrique Cornejo

Night after night the stars etch their way through the darkness and for what? People sky watch for a number of reasons, from the vague and aesthetic to the specific and scientific. Ultimately, all the reasons stem from an attempt at understanding, a shot at improving our personal intelligence.

The word intelligence is derived from Latin intelligere, “to understand.”  Beyond this vague notion the term intelligence is exceedingly ill defined upon scrutiny. The Creationist camp has readily adopted the pseudoscientific notion of intelligent design in opposition of Charles Darwins’ scientific theory of evolution. I don’t want to break anyone’s mind but the first theory of general intelligence was put forth by Francis Galton who was heavily influenced by his half-cousin, Charles Darwin. Even still, specific definition of intelligence remains a chimerical entity.

One deep thinker on the notion of intelligence was the great popularizer of astronomy Dr. Carl Sagan. Monday, November 9 marked what would have been his 75^th birthday had he not deceased in 1996.  Dr. Sagan was a heavily awarded pioneer in the field of exobiology and engineered the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, better known as SETI, back in the 1970’s. Carl wrote a book called the Dragons of Eden, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, wherein he attempted an outline of the evolution of human intelligence. It was a remarkable task because if you search hard enough through all of the fields of science and knowledge you will discover that there is no universal theory of mind. There are many theories of the mind of course, but none that have received scientific validation. I repeat, none. This is a gaping abyss of scientific ignorance that has been unaddressed for far too long in the world. Despite all of our glorious technical, scientific and medical advances, we do not fundamentally understand our selves.

Our individual human minds are everywhere we go every second of our lives, but apparently our understanding of it, our intelligence, is nowhere. Who is to say whose theories are right or wrong in such a world?

Is there undetected intelligence around far away stars? Is there intelligence around our own star? One has to wonder, and look to the sky.

Look to the southern night skies of Crested Butte these days to see Jupiter burning over the West Elks in the evenings, like a belated birthday candle for the pioneering astrochemist genius Dr. Carl Sagan.

Relative strength of Megatons of TNT outputs

Perhaps it is stating the overly obvious, but not all space related phenomena need be observed at night. This past October 8 observers imaged a high altitude fireball explosion over Indonesia sometime before mid day. The event had an estimated kinetic output of roughly 40,000 tons of TNT. That is roughly triple the energetic discharge of the Little Boy nuclear weapon deployed by the United States over Hiroshima, Japan.

There was no impact or catastrophic fallout from this Indonesian incident but there have been other similar events that have led to significant altering of the Earth’s environment. The most powerful recent occurrence was the Tunguska Event which occurred 3-6 miles over Siberia in 1908. The energy output of this event is estimated at 10-15 megatons of TNT or roughly 1/3 the power of the most powerful man made nuclear explosion, the 50 megaton Russian hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba. To keep things in perspective, and our egos in check, when a star goes supernova it releases something like 10 octillion or 10²⁸ megatons of TNT. These are nuclear energies we can barely comprehend, let alone engineer.

The first recorded professional expedition to the Tunguska site did not arrive until more than 10 years later due to its remote location and the war torn nature of Russia at the time. The witnesses observed no impact crater and 30 miles of scorched trees knocked down from a central location. Hypotheses for this event range from the feasible large meteoric air burst to a traveling black hole to a crash landed alien UFO. As there are no reliable eye-witness accounts we must rely on the most plausible scientific inference of a meteoric air burst event over which we have no control. These types of powerful atmospheric events occur all too frequently as we go about our insulated and self important lives. Observations like these serve to remind those of us that might marvel at humanity’s mastery over nature and other men that we are far more passive in relation to the greater cosmic energy pathways.

Image Courtesy of Barrett Web Coordinator @ Creative Commons

Telescopic astronomy is a new science. This year marks the 400^th anniversary of Galileo’s use of the telescope to resolve the moons of Jupiter. However, any surface telescope has at best half of 24 hours in a day to use a telescope for the night skies, halving the time to about 200 years. If we take into account that the Moon obscures a great portion of the night sky for 2 weeks of every month then we can split that time frame again to roughly 100 years. Plus, weather is rarely optimal for viewing the whole sky radically cutting the amount of time again. The result is that despite the +/- 400 year history of the telescope we have only had a fraction of time that a telescope from the surface of the Earth can be used practically. Our eye on the Universe is only beginning to crack open.

Despite what we have scientifically cataloged, our understandings of what we are actually looking at are rather rudimentary in many respects. One of the more striking things about astronomy is the variation in the calculated distances to the majority of astronomical objects. Referencing various astronomy sources will give any number of calculated distances. The reason is the extreme newness of the art of astronomical comprehension. It takes several years of observations of any one object to begin to complete the calculations that give us our most basic distances. And then, everything that we might observe is generally in motion. This appreciation is empowering to would-be astronomers and humbling to the professionals. The night sky has been admired by the naked eye and observed for millenia yet much of our better understandings of astronomy and cosmology haven’t strayed far from their roots of philosophy and poetry.

As we looked to the northeast skies last week to catch the Perseid meteor showers we found the constellation of Perseus rising between 11PM and 12AM over Crested Butte Mountain. Within the constellation Perseus we have a distinctively bright star known as Algol. Algol translates from Arabic to “head of the ghoul” referring to the position of the decapitated head of Medusa that Perseus is renowned for having taken in Greek mythology. This particular star is referred to as the Demon Star or the Blinking Demon in English, Satan’s Head in Hebrew, Spectre’s Head in Latin and in China it is known as the Fifth Star of the Mausoleum or more morbidly as ‘piled up corpses’. It appears that around the world and throughout time Algol is not affiliated with happiness and health.

Algol is actually a triple star system and its apparent magnitude, or relative brightness, is variable depending upon which star is eclipsing the other two at the moment. Studies of Algol have presented astronomers with the Algol Paradox of stellar evolution. The theory of stellar evolution posits that stars in the same relative astronomical area formed at approximately the same time. However, when we observe binary star systems we generally see two distinctively dynamic styles of stars moving in very near relationship to each other. The paradox is the apparent lack of resolution between the two different pieces of information. The Algol Paradox was resolved through the discovery of stellar mass transfer. As a star system begins to spin around itself in outer space it transfers energy and therefore mass between the component stars therefore changing them dynamically and often radically depending upon the particular variables in the system.

To find Algol in the constellation Perseus, look to the north east skies of Crested Butte at about midnight. It will be traveling in the general area of sky and in a parallel arc with the waning slice of the Moon on the nights of August 13^th – 15^th.

Image Courtesy of Rongem Boyo @ Creative Commons

It is the second week of August again and for astronomers and sky watchers around the world that means it is time to look to the night skies for the Perseid Meteor showers.

On July 30 the Earth began its pass through the dusty trail of the Comet Swift-Tuttle. The meteor show from Comet Swift-Tuttle has been observed for over 2000 years though the origin of the meteors was unknown for sure until 1992. In fact, Comet Swift-Tuttle has been calculated to be on a collision course with either the Earth or the Moon. Sleep tight for now kids as it has not been calculated to strike us this millennium.

Meteors can be seen throughout the month of August but the peak of intensity for the Perseid meteor showers will be sometime on August 11^th or 12^th. As the Moon will be waning from its August 5^th fullness the best bet for observing the show will be to catch them before the Moon rises. That puts the time for best viewing in the Gunnison Valley at around 11:00 PM, weather permitting.

The Perseids get their name from the constellation Perseus which is their radiant. The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky but if you were to trace the tails backward on their line of travel they would all appear to originate from the constellation Perseus. Constellation Perseus, which has been rising around midnight, can be found in our north eastern skies. This means approximately the direction of Crested Butte Mountain from the town of Crested Butte. It could be quite a show of meteors seeming to emanate from the peak of our centerpiece Gunnison Valley mountain.

Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, H. Hammel (SpaceScience Institute) and Jupiter Impact Team

Jupiter is in both the dusk and the dawn horizons as it rises over CB South at sunset and hangs over Kebler Pass at sunrise after traversing our southern mountains through the night. It is by far the most reflective object in any given night sky when it is viewable.

Jupiter, like Venus, is so exceptionally bright to us here on Earth because it has a very thick atmosphere. Atmosphere is far more reflective of sunlight than rock alone. For example, the Moon has virtually no atmosphere and is a terrible reflector of light despite its apparent brightness to our eyes when it is full. The Moon is actually the worst reflector of light in the entire Solar System reflecting about as much light as a lump of coal. The Moon appears exceptionally bright to us because it is so very near and because the surrounding darkness enhances its apparent brightness to the way our eyes receive light.

On July 17th amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley of Australia recorded a major impact event on the southern surface of Jupiter that left a large black scar in the atmosphere. It is very similar to a mark that was left 15 years ago to the day by an observed comet impact in 1994. Scientists and the rest of us are left to speculate about the nature of the impact being left by a comet, an asteroid or some other phenomenon because nobody observed any objects travelling a collision course with Jupiter. Space is so vast that there can never be enough interested eyes watching all of the items spiraling along their gravitational trajectories. If it can happen to Jupiter, it can happen to Earth.

Image Courtesy of NASA

The past decade has seen the birth of the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope, the NASA Constellation program to return us to the Moon, and lately there is emphasis on attempting a mission to Mars to keep us tantalized with humans in space as we celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing mission this week.

While Mars is a more admirable goal than a return to the Moon we now know that Mars is just about as desolate as the Moon. Mars would be the next logical manned space jump from a conservative standpoint of engineering but it would achieve little in the sense of human exploration or domination of the Solar System. We do, however, know that the moons of Jupiter contain more essential life sustaining resources like atmosphere, water and fuel. They would also be optimal as bases for deeper exploration of our Solar System and beyond. Engineering a program to put humans in the Jovian system is just as achievable as a Mars program, yet humanity would reap far more knowledge and advantage. It would require resources and focus from the entire international community combined. It would be a project akin to what John F. Kennedy wanted the Apollo program to be: world unifying and USA exemplifying. And it was.

Meanwhile the International Space Station offers our best laboratory for understanding the long term effects of space on human biology. This is practical knowledge we will need for longer space missions wherever the destination. For those interested in tracking the ISS orbit and when it will be visible in Gunnison Valley skies please refer to the website http://heavens-above.com for real time tracking.

Photo Courtesy of Stu Ferguson

Each Friday the Gunnison Valley Observatory hosts a guest speaker to compliment the open telescope viewing program. Clear skies or not we have been drawing crowds upwards of 60 visitors at a time. The GVO dome can only accommodate about 15 viewers at a time. Therefore we offer rotations amongst the classroom and the telescopic viewings. The success of the programming is gaining momentum.

Mike Zawaski entertained us with his concepts on archaeoastronomical research this past Friday. This is a scientific field that connects ancient cultural studies with inferences of their astronomical understandings. Mike has dealt extensively with the Incas in Peru however he mentioned several closer phenomena such as Chaco Canyon, New Mexico and its sun dagger petroglyph.

For those unfamiliar with the sun dagger I will illuminate you. There is a spot on a rock in New Mexico that has a spiral carved into it. It happens that this rock is covered by another rock that has a crack in it. When the summer solstice arrives in late June each year the sun shines directly through the cracked rock producing a dagger of light that perfectly bisects the spiral from top to bottom. When I was made aware of this phenomenon I inferred that the spiral represented the motion of the moon or perhaps a larger understanding of the spiraling process of the cosmos.

The more I study astronomy I realize that more often than not the motions and functions that we observe on our planets’ surface are simply reflections and manifestations of the larger motions at work in the cosmos around us. Astronomy is far more than observing the night skies alone. I’ll leave it to the archaeoastronomers to infer the deeper cultural significance.

A few weeks ago the GVO team went into the field and visited the Gunnison 4th grade classes. We offered a hands on demonstration of telescope tubes and lenses and a discussion oriented power point presentation on the Solar System by Bill Powell.

Bill Maier brought along his solar hydrogen detecting scopes and shared an opportunity to look for sun spots. The sky was mostly clear of clouds but somewhat obscured by diffusion of contrails throughout the mid morning.

The students asked really good questions and offered excellent answers. When I asked a crew of them awaiting their turn at the solar scopes, “Why bother studying astronomy?” One quick minded young lady replied, “Because it’s interesting!”

Which pretty much sums up why I bother with the art of science.