We can READ about the Sun

With old Sol threatening to vanish from Seattle skies until July, we can take some comfort in the fact that we’ll at least be able to read about our life-giving star. Bob Berman’s new book, The Sun’s Heartbeat: And Other Stories from the Life of the Star That Powers Our Planet (Little, Brown & Co., 2011), is here in the nick of time!

Berman is my favorite columnist in Astronomy magazine because of the wry humor he injects into his essays. The book is more of the same: twenty chapters of solid science written in a highly approachable and often humorous way. Even the chapter names are funny. Chapter 11 is titled, “The Sun Brings Death.” Chapter 12 then proclaims, “The Sun Can Save Your Life.” It’s not a contradiction.

The Sun’s Heartbeat is more than just the usual account of stellar formation and life cycle, though that’s all in there, too. Berman includes much about the history of solar science, including interesting tales about how the distance to the Sun was determined and how sunspots were figured out. By coincidence, I was reading the chapter on neutrinos just as the news broke last week that scientists in Switzerland had clocked some of these particles whizzing at faster than the speed of light, much to the chagrin of Einstein’s ghost. The jury is still out on that particular discovery and whether we have to discard the Theory of Relativity.

Berman devotes a good chunk of real estate in Heartbeat to anthropogenic climate forcing, climate change or global warming to most of us, and the Sun’s part in how hot or cool it is on Earth. There’s a great discussion of our current mania for protecting ourselves from all exposure to sunlight, and whether the resultant lack of vitamin D is contributing to maladies such as autism and causing more cancer than the sunblock prevents. It’s quite a dilemma for those of us fair-skinned, freckly, burn-don’t-tan types.

The book is at its most personal and engaging when Berman waxes poetic about his favorite sun-related phenomena. “Nothing outside of a birth or an IRS audit can produce such sobbing or reverential silence like a total solar eclipse or the fabled northern lights,” he writes. He describes beautifully the profound feelings of awe he’s had with every solar eclipse he’s seen, ever since his first in March of 1970 in Virginia Beach. It’s enough to get you to circle the dates now of the next total eclipses that will cross the U.S., on Aug. 21, 2017, and April 8, 2024. The former will be the first such event in the U.S. in 38 years.

The Sun’s Heartbeat is informative and entertaining. Give it a look!

Hindsight and Popular Astronomy a good read

For those interested in the history of astronomy, Dr. Alan Whiting’s book Hindsight and Popular Astronomy is an interesting read. Whiting’s premise is simple: let’s take a close look at nine books, aimed generally at a non-scientific audience, published between 1833 and 1944, and written by some of the giants of the science. Let’s see how well they stand up today, and where there are mistakes, see how they happened and how a lay reader might have seen them coming.

While our vision is pretty acute in hindsight, the book is hardy a “gotcha” tome. Whiting is careful to point out that the authors include some of the great thinkers of astronomy, from Sir John Herschel to Sir James Jeans. In fact, he says that most of what Herschel wrote, for example, would stand up well in astronomy texts today. But there were a few whoppers.

The books Whiting examines in Hindsight are:

• A Treatise on Astronomy, Sir John Herschel, 1833
• A Popular Astronomy, Sir George Biddell Airy, 1848
• Outlines Of Astronomy, 10th edition, Herschel, 1869
• Popular Astronomy, Simon Newcomb, 1878
• In the High Heavens, Sir Robert S. Ball, 1893
• Astronomy for Everybody, Newcomb, 1902
• The Universe Around Us, first edition, Sir James Jeans, 1929
• Stars And Atoms, third impression, Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, 1928
• The Universe Around Us, fourth edition, Jeans, 1944

Each book gets its own chapter in Hindsight. Whiting sets the stage, explains the context in which the book was written, talks about what the author got right, then delves into what went wrong and why. While he leaves out the heavy math, he does sprinkle in a few chapters on basic astronomical observation and calculation, astrophysics, and quanta and relativity, just to get everyone, if not up to speed, exactly, then at least a bit conversant in the new topics the writers had to deal with.

Going back to Herschel’s Treatise on Astronomy, as noted Whiting says Sir John got most of it right, but made some major mistakes in his discussion of Saturn’s rings. Herschel noted that the rings were solid, that an eccentric ring would be stable, that the rings were observed to be eccentric, and that a periodic disturbance would stabilize an otherwise unstable ring. All of these statements are wrong. Whiting notes that the errors come variously from unexamined assumptions, relying on the work of others that contained mathematical errors, and trusting your eyes too much.

Throughout, sometimes even the greatest of the scientists fell into such bad habits of being most willing to believe that which supports his own theory.

While accessible, Hindsight and Popular Astronomy is not exactly a beach read. It’s a scholarly book that’s going make you stop often and think. It also makes me want to read some of the original works Whiting examines. Most are available, largely in reproduction format; the links above go to Amazon pages for such books. Skulking about the library or used book shops may be of some help as well.

Whiting is a professional astronomer and an Honorary Research Associate and Visiting Astronomer with the Astrophysics and Space Research Group at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. He’s also a member of the Seattle Astronomical Society, and can often be found on open house nights at the Theodor Jacobsen Observatory at the University of Washington, or sharing observing insights on Through the Clouds, the SAS Google group.

BPAA puts on a good show

The Battle Point Astronomical Association has a great facility on Bainbridge Island and a dedicated and knowledgeable corps of enthusiastic volunteers. The combination adds up to a satisfying visit for stargazers both experienced and new to the hobby. I attended the association’s planetarium show and star party Saturday evening, Aug. 27, and had a marvelous time.

Helix House is home of the Battle Point Astronomical
Association, the Edwin E. Ritchie Telescope, and John H.
Rudolph Planetarium on Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

It all happens in Helix House, an old military radio facility in the middle of Battle Point Park on Bainbridge. The House is home to the Edwin E. Ritchie telescope and observatory, the John H. Rudolph planetarium, and association offices, a meeting room, workroom, and library.

Saturday BPAA president Steve Ruhl put on an engaging presentation about killer asteroids. Using the planetarium’s computer system, Ruhl illustrated the rapid increase in the numbers of known asteroids in our solar system, and the crazy orbits some of them take, including a great many whose orbits often cross that of Earth. He noted that a really big asteroid collision with Earth, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, is about a 1-in-65,000,000 year event.

Oh-oh. As Ruhl understated, that would be a bad day. He showed a PG-13 video imagination of such an impact, which would envelop the surface of our planet in flame within a day. That would be most unpleasant. The hope is that, as methods for detecting and tracking asteroids get more sophisticated, we will be able to spot “the big one” with enough advance notice to be able to do something to prevent it.

A couple dozen people attended the presentation. Ruhl used the planetarium in his talk, though noted that it was a little inadequate for the topic. It’s software includes data on about 500 asteroids, a tiny fraction of the more than 30 million such objects now known.

After the planetarium show many visitors climbed the three-story spiral staircase to get a peek through the club’s showcase, the Ritchie telescope, a 27-inch Newtonian reflector club founders built themselves. On this night, the great instrument was pointed at M 13, the great globular cluster in Hercules, a favorite object at star parties. It was an eye-popping view on a perfect night. The weather was marvelously clear, New Moon was just hours away, and the site has good horizons and a fair amount of protection from Seattle’s city lights.

At least half a dozen BPAA members had their telescopes set up for viewing as well, and stargazers of all ages lined up for looks at what was up in the night sky.

For those interested in learning a bit about astronomy, you can’t lose with a visit to Battle Point. Congratulations to the club for running a marvelous outreach effort. Watch Seattle Astronomy for information on their monthly star parties.

Stalking planetary nebulae from Seattle

Despite a recent run of decent weather in Seattle, the night skies have often as not been cloudy, thus limiting opportunities for astronomical observations. Thus when the stars aligned last night with crystal clear skies, an evening without work, and a reasonably alert stargazer, I dragged the telescope out into the back yard for the first time in a while to hunt for some planetary nebulae.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a slightly more powerful instrument
than your correspondent's 8-inch Dob located in a light-polluted
 urban back yard. The Saturn Nebula didn't look quite like this
from West Seattle; there was a hint of the color but none
of the detail of the object in this Hubble image.
Photo: STSci, NASA.

The targets, NGC 6818, the Little Gem, and NGC 7009, the Saturn Nebula, were chosen because they’re in prime viewing spots in the southern sky these days, and because they’re among the remaining few objects left to be checked off as I work toward the Astronomical League‘s Urban Observing Club recognition. The clubs are a good way to organize one’s observing. The Urban Club list includes 100 objects, all reputedly visible from light-polluted skies, defined by the club as places where the Milky Way is not visible with the unaided eye. I say “reputedly” because several of the galaxies on the list have been extremely difficult to see from my back yard. But, if it was too easy, what would be the point? View all 100 and you get a nifty pin, and your name is added forever to the club membership rolls.

Last night’s nebulae were both easy to locate but tougher to see. NGC 7009 was easier, spotted very near the star Nu Aquarii in the constellation Aquarius. It appeared in the eyepiece of my 8-inch Dobsonian as a greenish-blue blob, with details such as the “rings” that earned it its nickname visible. Higher power definitely revealed more nebulosity, but washed out the color completely. The Little Gem was a bit tougher, just to the west of a “peace sign” asterism in Sagittarius. A couple of magnitudes dimmer than the Saturn Nebula, NCG 6818 revealed just the slightest hint of color. The moon was not helpful with these objects, as it was just a few days past full and low in the east during the pre-midnight hours during which I was observing.

I visited a few old friends during the evening, including the double cluster and the Ring Nebula, before calling it a night a little before 1 a.m.

Seattle amateur astronomer has spectroscopy article in S&T

Seattle Astronomical Society member
Tom Field, creator of RSpec software
for spectroscopy, has an article on the
topic in the August 2011 issue of Sky
 & Telescope. Photo: Greg Scheiderer. 

Local amateur astronomer Tom Field is rapidly becoming the face of spectroscopy for the backyard stargazer. An article by Field, a member of the Seattle Astronomical Society and creator of RSpec spectroscopy software, has been published in the August 2011 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine. The article, titled “Spectroscopy for Everyone”, begins on page 68 of the print edition. Subscribers can view it online as well.

Field spoke about RSpec at a Seattle Astronomical Society meeting a year ago, and I wrote about that talk in my old Seattle Astronomy Examiner column. When he got interested in spectroscopy, Field found existing software difficult to use, prone to crash, not particularly user-friendly, and often in a foreign language. So, as a professional software developer, he set out to create something that worked better for the backyard astronomer, and RSpec was the result.

“It is a big thrill,” Field said of seeing the article in print. He got involved with S&T back in April, when magazine editor Dennis di Cicco interviewed him for the video below about RSpec and spectroscopy. The piece was shot at the Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF) in Suffern, New York, and published by Sky & Telescope in May. The current issue of the magazine also features an article and many photos from NEAF, one of the biggest amateur astronomy events in the country.



The lure of spectroscopy for Field is that you can do solid science and analyze the spectral signatures of celestial objects even from light-polluted back yards, and you can do it at pretty low cost. He says that doing spectroscopy also improves his understanding of astronomy; he finds he now reads the literature much more closely.