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SkiesIdaho
Skies
January 2007
Vol. 4 No. 1
Idaho Skies is a column for beginning amateur astronomers and those interested in astronomy. Suggestions about the column are gladly accepted by the columnist, at paul.verhage@boiseschools.org
This month look for the star Betelgeuse in Orion. Betelgeuse is the second brightest star in the constellation Orion, one of the most recognizable constellations in the sky. Its upper left corner star, Betelgeuse or Alpha Orionis, is orange and stands out in a constellation that already stands out in the winter sky. Betelgeuse is the corrupted Arabic word for “hand of the central one”. The central one is a female Arabic character. Feminine names in Orion the hunter are not unusual. One of the constellation’s other bright stars is named Bellatrix, which also a feminine reference. The light you see from Betelgeuse left the star in the year 1581.
Betelgeuse (the name sounds like beetle juice) is one of the largest stars in our galaxy. If it replaced our sun its vaporous surface would reach over half way to Jupiter, engulfing the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. That’s 600 times larger than our sun! Today Betelgeuse is a giant cool red star, but long ago it was a smaller white hot star. Deep in its core, the nuclei of helium atoms are fusing into carbon and oxygen. Outside its core is a shell where hydrogen is fusing into more helium. Betelgeuse can fuse helium because it is so massive. It weighs as much as 12 suns (and possibly a few more). Its great weigh squeezes its core hard enough to fuse helium. The increased heat generated by its core has puffed up its atmosphere. When the atmosphere expanded, it cooled to a red-orange color. Its great size makes Betelgeuse over 40,000 times brighter than our sun.
Betelgeuse is massive enough that it may eventually fuse the atoms in its core all the way to iron. When it does, it will reach an energy crisis that pales to anything we’ll every see. That’s because iron is a dead end element. The fusion of iron requires an input of energy; it does not create new energy. Since it is energy generated in its core that holds up a star, a star will collapse when its core contains too much iron. The collapse forces protons and electrons into neutrons and emits an immense blast of neutrino radiation. Betelgeuse’s blast of neutrino radiation will reach the earth some 400 years after the core collapses, signally to us that the star is exploding as a supernova. When it goes, Betelgeuse will shine as bright at the crescent moon and be visible in broad daylight.
Betelgeuse is located high on January nights in the southeast after it gets dark.
● The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks early on the morning of the 4th.
● The moon is your guide to Saturn on the morning of the 6th.
● The moon is between Antares and Jupiter on the morning of the 15th.
● Venus begins its evening appearance on the last half of the month.
● The moon is between two large star clusters on the evening of the 27th.
The moon is full on the 3rd at 7:00 AM (6:00 for Oregon and 8:00 for the Midwest). The first full moon of the year is often called the Moon after Yule. I hope you weren’t planning to observe faint nebula tonight.
Also on the 3rd, the earth reaches perihelion, or its closest distance from the sun. We’re only 91,399,551 miles away from the sun today. Because of the finite speed of light, you see the sun as it existed eight minutes and ten seconds ago.
Tonight a nice meteor shower (the Quadrantids) reaches it peak. Quadrantids appear to radiate from a point low in the northeast just below the bowl of the Big Dipper. The shower is best observed after midnight, so you’ll actually be watching it on the morning of the 4th. Expect to see 45 meteors per hour from this shower in dark skies. But don’t expect to see bright meteors, most Quadrantids are faint. At its peak the number of meteors per hour may spike up to 200 per hour. The best way to watch this shower is to lie back on a lawn chair, inside a warm sleeping bag, and look straight up.
Do you want to see Saturn through your new Christmas telescope? The moon points you in the right direction on the morning of the 6th. Saturn is the pale yellow star to the moon’s left. The distance between them is three degrees, or six lunar diameters. Use a magnification of at least 50 power to see Saturn and its rings. A magnification over 100 power is not necessary nor is it recommended unless your telescope has good optics and alignment. While you’ve got Saturn in view, look for its largest moon, Titan. In your telescope Titan will appear to be the star to the upper left of Saturn, as illustrated below. Titan is about five ring diameters from Saturn.
The alpha star of Leo the Lion, Regulus, is one degree from the moon’s upper right on the evening of the 6th. That puts Regulus two lunar diameters from the moon. The light you see from Regulus left 77-1/2 years ago while the light from the moon left only 1-1/4 seconds ago.
Happy birthday Stephen Hawking! He celebrates his 65th birthday on the 8th. Did you know Hawking was born 300 years to the day after Galileo died? Hawking is best known for his work in Cosmology. His focus has been on uniting the Theory of Relativity with Quantum Mechanics. Doing so would explain how gravity behaves on the scale of subatomic particles and the behavior of the early universe.
One of Hawking’s discoveries is that black holes may not be black after all. They may actually emit a small amount of radiation. Black holes might emit radiation because of the Uncertainty Principle. In the space around us, virtual particles are constantly being created out of nothing but the energy borrowed through the Uncertainty Principle. Because both time and energy cannot be known to an arbitrary level of certainty at the same time, energy can be borrowed to create virtual particles (the pair has to be a particle and its anti-particle in order to keep the books balanced). But the energy can be borrowed only for as long as the Uncertainty Principle allows. That means the smaller the amount of energy borrowed, the longer the time it can be borrowed. Borrowed energy goes into creating virtual particles because as Einstein has shown, mass and energy are equivalent to one another. Usually virtual particles annihilate each other within their allowed lifetimes. However, when a pair of virtual particles is created near a black hole, one may get pulled into the black hole before it can annihilate its partner. When that happens, the black hole is obligated to convert some of its mass into energy to pay back the debt to space-time. In this way a black hole may slowly evaporate away.
The moon is at apogee on the 10th at 11 AM (10:00 for Oregon and noon for the Midwest). The moon’s greatest distance will be 251,242 miles this month.
On the next day, the 11th, the moon is at last quarter. That means you won’t see the moon unless you look after midnight. If you received a new telescope for Christmas, then you ought to find some time tonight (actually, that’s the morning of the 12th) to look at the last quarter moon. The greater amount of maria on the moon’s third quarter half makes it starkly different than the first quarter half.
Wait; what’s that star to the moon’s upper right? It’s Spica, the lucida of Virgo. Spica will be 2-1/2 degrees from the moon, or five lunar diameters on the morning of the 12th. You can’t miss it.
Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was born 100 years ago on the 12th. You may not be familiar with the name of Korolev, but you are familiar with his work. Because of him, we raced the Soviet Union to the moon (and won). Korolev designed the world’s first inter-continental ballistic missile. After showing that it worked, he converted it into the first rocket capable of putting a satellite into space. His rocket eventually launched Sputnik 1 and Yuri Gagarin into orbit. It’s still being used today in Russia, making it the most successful rocket in history.
Shortly before the beginning of World War II, Korolev was arrested in one of Stalin’s paranoid purges. After his arrest, Korolev was sent to the Kolyma goldmine, one of Russia’s worst gulags. Since Russia was unprepared to fight the Nazi’s, it began using its political prisoners as slave labor. Korolev was rescued from Kolyma and sent to work in an aeronautical lab. It’s amazing to think that a man so brutalized by the Soviet system would go on to create their space program. During a routine operation Korolev was discovered to have cancer. His doctor was unable to treat it and Korolev died on the operating table in 1966.
At 7:00 AM on the 15th, Antares is less than 2 degrees above the very thin crescent moon. And Jupiter is the bright star to the moon’s upper left. The distance between the moon and Jupiter is 6-1/2 degrees, so all three objects will fit in the field of view of your binoculars.
The moon is new on the 18th at 9:00 PM (8:00 for Oregon and 10:00 for the Midwest). Now’s the time to begin looking for faint galaxies and nebulae. That is if you can stand the cold night.
Venus is the Evening Star again. At 6:30 PM on the 20th Venus is four degrees above the horizon. The 45 hour old moon is located three degrees to its upper left. You’ll need a flat west-southwest horizon and binoculars to see the moon and Venus. Venus is easier to find than the moon, so let Venus guide you to the thin crescent moon.
Mathematician John Couch Adams was born 215 years ago on the 21st. Astronomers know Adams for his prediction of the first planet X, Neptune. After the discovery of Uranus by William Hershel, astronomers began noticing the planet wasn’t exactly where it was suppose to be. So either Newton’s Laws failed at large distances from the sun or there was an unseen planet was tugging on Uranus. Adams assumed it was an undiscovered planet. Supposing that planet X was twice as far from the sun as Uranus, Adams began calculating its position. Before he could convince English astronomers to look for his planet, French mathematicians and astronomers did the same thing. Their calculated position was almost identical to Adam’s and they discovered Neptune after less than an hour of searching.
The moon is at perigee at 6:00 PM on the 22nd (5:00 for Oregon and 7:00 for the Midwest). The moon’s distance, the closest for the month, is 227,997 miles, or 23,245 miles closer to earth than it was on the 10th.
The moon reaches first quarter phase on the 25th at 4:00 PM (3:00 for Oregon and 5:00 for the Midwest). This is the best phase to go moon watching. So if you received a telescope for Christmas, tonight’s the night to get it out and look at the moon.
On January 26th, 1962, the United States tried to hit the moon with Ranger 3. The Ranger series of space probes were designed to transmit television images of the moon as they flew into it. Ranger 3 carried a seismograph inside a balsa sphere that was hoped would survive its crash landing on the moon. Due to course correction errors, Ranger 3 missed its suicidal moon dive by a whooping 24,000 miles (six lunar diameters) and is now stranded in solar orbit.
On a sad note, the astronauts of Apollo 1 died 40 years ago on the 27th. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee where killed during a ground test of the new Apollo spacecraft. The design and construction of Apollo was rushed in order to meet John F. Kennedy’s moon landing deadline. Poor design left wire bundles exposed where their insulation was abraded. During a ground test on January 27th, 1967, Apollo was on internal power and filled with an atmosphere of 100% oxygen. Inside, the spacecraft was filled with materials flammable in pure oxygen (but not in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere) and its hatch was designed to open inward. There were numerous problems with the Apollo that day and the tests were endlessly delayed. At 6:31 PM the astronauts called out that there was a fire inside the spacecraft. Its oxygen atmosphere turned the interior of the capsule into an inferno. The gases generated by the combustion of the flammable materials pressurized the interior of the spacecraft to the point that no one could open the hatch. Plastics inside the spacecraft generated poisonous gases that killed the astronauts before the fire did. The accident investigation afterwards brought to light the many design flaws of the Apollo. Modifications made after the accident created a much safer spacecraft. Apollo 1 was American’s first and greatest space tragedy until Space Shuttle Challenger 19 years later.
At the remains of Launch Complex 34 (LC34) is a plaque that reads,
LAUNCH COMPLEX 34
Friday, 27 January 1967
1831 Hours
Dedicated to the living memory of the crew of the Apollo 1:
U.S.A.F. Lt. Colonel Virgil I. Grissom
U.S.A.F. Lt. Colonel Edward H. White, II
U.S.N. Lt. Commander Roger B. Chaffee
They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind's final frontier. Remember them not for how they died but for those ideals for which they lived.
On the night of the 27th, the moon is between two of earth’s closest star clusters, the Pleiades and the Hyades. The Pleiades are at the moon’s lower right and the larger (and sparser) Hyades are at the moon’s lower left. The moon and Pleiades will barely fit within the field of view of your binoculars, while the Hyades are too far away. So sweep your binoculars to see all three objects.
This Month’s Topic
By
H. G. Wells
The War of the Worlds is one of the classic science fiction stories. H. G. Wells published the War of the Worlds in 1898, a time when the term science fiction had yet been invented. But the story is not just science fiction; it’s also a criticism of colonialism, a practice of England (and other countries) at the time.
The War of the Worlds was written at a time when some 19th century astronomers were announcing that they could see fine lines across the disk of Mars. The lines were named channels, a term which in Italian does not imply intelligence (it means they were just lines or grooves). But this didn’t matter to many of the people who translated the Italian term into canals, a term that does imply intelligence. The American astronomer Percival Lowell made more observations of Mars and wrote several books popularizing the Martian canals and their builders.
The War of the Worlds opens with astronomers detecting bright flashes of light on Mars. At the time, no astronomer knows what the flashes mean. Nineteenth century humans were unaware that a cold intellect had been studying their earth with envious eyes. With their world dying, the Martians were planning a conquest of a younger world covered in a thick atmosphere and oceans of water. The flashes were the muzzle blasts of great cannons. Unbeknownst to us, the cannons were launching hundreds of large metal cylinders earthward. Inside were Martians and their war machines.
The first cylinder landed near London and when Victorian Englanders went to investigate the crater, they found a metal cylinder inside the crater with its top slowly rotating open. Out of the opened cylinder tumbled the octopus-like Martians. The Martians began setting up their war machines and frying any humans who dared to approach. Their weapon was a heat ray, a device that generated intense temperatures and projected it at targets, instantly incinerating them.
More cylinders landed and the Martians began their attack. The Martians had not invented the wheel, so instead of attacking with tanks, they attacked human civilization with walking tripods. The tentacled arms of the Martian fighting machines operate their heat ray weapon and a poison gas called the Black Smoke. Humanity was defenseless against the superior Martian technology. Artillery and battleships were destroyed and civilization began to crumble.
The middle of the War of the Worlds tells the author’s story as he watches the end of his world. At one point he runs into another human, a human who plans to survive by becoming basically a Martian pet. He hopes that the remaining humans will eventually arise and conquer the Martians. But he’s a dreamer who is traumatized by his experiences in the war. In his carelessness he is discovered by the Martians and captured. But why are the Martians capturing humans?
Wells’ Martians were very unhuman. They didn’t have a digestive system since one would give them moods and emotions. His Martians are unemotional and ruthless. Instead of eating and digesting solid food, his Martians are essentially a brain that drinks blood, a liquid that carries the digested food of its victim. To the Martians, humans are livestock.
The story’s narrator eventually makes it back to London to discover the city devastated. But to his surprise, the Martian war machines have stopped their attack. The Martians are dying. They have no immunity to the bacteria of earth. So by landing on earth the Martians had sealed their fate. The only words of Martian humans ever heard were those of a dying Martian, “Ulla, ulla”.
A neat sequel to the War of the Worlds was written in America as a newspaper serial. Garrett P. Serviss, the science writer for the New York Evening Journal, wrote about an American counterattack on the Martians, lead by the great American inventor, Thomas Edison. The story, Edison Conquers Mars can be read online at, http://durendal.org:8080/ecom/ecom.html
Observer’s Handbook 2007, The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
Space Calendar, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/
Night Sky Explorer (software)
Stars, http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/
Gary W. Kronk’s Comets & Meteor Showers,
http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/quadobs.html
Hawking Radiation, http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/hawk.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/adams.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1962-001A
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1
Dark Skies and Bright Stars,
Your Interstellar Guide