A Curious Celestial Configuration - By Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

Welcoming Back Professor Dan 

With some timely information regarding the night sky TOMORROW NIGHT!  

Read on:

If at 10:30 p.m.your southeastern sky is clear the night of Saturday, May 21^st you can see a curious meeting of four objects forming a square close to the horizon.  Figure 01 illustrates the view. 

ENLARGED THE PICTURE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, STILL A LITTLE TRICKY TO SEE THE NAMES.
THEY ARE (LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP 2): THE MOON AND MARS AND (LEFT TO RIGHT, BOTTOM 2):  SATURN & ANTARES

The four objects are the Moon, Mars, Saturn and the bright star Antares. The field of view in Fig. 01 is sufficiently large to include the South and East cardinal point designations, this to signify the scale of the quadrangle.

The moon is the brightest object of the four; the brightest because it is near. The moon reflects only 7% of the sunlight that strikes its surface.  It is really a poor reflector.  The Earth reflects 30%, Mars 29%, and Saturn 47%. The Moon, a quarter the size of the Earth, is but a quarter million miles from the Earth.  That is, a beam of sunlight reflected off the moon’s surface will take but 1.3 seconds to reach your eye.

One month out of 24, Mars, half the size of the Earth, is opposite the sun in our sky and is said to be “in opposition.”  In the present cycle, Mars will be in exact opposition May 22nd, just one day after this night’s observation. As you view Mars, the light that strikes your eye left Mars 4.25 minutes ago.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun.  Nine and a half earths would have to be lined up to equal the diameter of Saturn. The light from the planet Saturn takes 1.25 hours to reach the Earth.  

Note where Saturn is on May 21^st.  Come back 29.6 years later. During that time Saturn would have appeared in front of each 12 zodiacal constellations. In 29.6 years it will be back in the same position you see it on May 21^st. Where will you be 30 years from now?

Mars looks like a red star, Antares is a red star. It is one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye. If Antares were the size of a baseball, our nearly one million mile diameter Sun would be scaled to smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.  Antares “surface” temperature is about 5,700 degrees.  The Sun’s surface temperature is 10,000 degrees.  How can Antares be so bright at a distance of 600 light years and so cool? Place Antares where the Sun is and the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars would orbit inside the star.  There are many square miles of surface area on Antares pumping out the red light. Antares is in fact 11,000 times brighter than the sun.

The word “Antares,” comes from the Greek.  It translates as: “the enemy of Mars.” Ares was the Greek word for Mars, while the prefix “An” can loosely be translated as “Anti.”  The idea was every two years Mars and Antares ride the sky together. The tension was… “which of the two will be the brighter red?”  You can judge for yourself who wins this time.  Or, to be honest, you can wait a few nights when the bright Moon’s light is no longer part of the picture. 

Thanks Dan!  I, for one, will be sure to check all of this out tomorrow night and I'm sure all of our Kabrini Message astronomy buffs (and there are many!) will, too.

Extra­-Terrestrial Life? Part 2 - By Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

To continue Mark Twain's suggestion of a debate between a telescope and microscope (which has the greater view?), I want to continue with the microscope side - without billion dollar instruments.

A common question from grade school students who visited the planetarium at Arizona State University was: "If you could live on any planet, which planet would you choose?"

My answer always was "Earth."

A low audible rumble of disappointment was heard.

I continued...

"In the tens of thousands of photographs I've seen of the surfaces of Mercury, Mars and Venus, nothing - I mean absolutely nothing - comes even remotely close to the spectacular view one has while standing on the beach of Point Pleasant, New Jersey (or any ocean front beach). Before you is the magnificent spectacle of the Atlantic Ocean.  Trying to take all of this in is both a mental and physical challenge. No Martians, Venusians or Mercurians can present anything as spectacular.

Dead silence.

Cue the crickets!

When you eat something, the chemistry set in your body tries to break down the food into sugar.  The primary sugar is glucose. The glucose donates electrons to the oxygen you breath. This exchange of electrons from a higher glucose to a lower oxygen state is what provides you with energy to, for example, read this submission, empty the trash and check the mail.

The year was 1982. A problem existed at Lake Oneida upper New York State.  The lake,  fed by slopes that contained magnesium, was expected to have magnesium oxide deposited in the ooze at the bottom of the lake. When the ooze was analyzed there was very little magnesium oxide - less than one thousand times the anticipated amount.

Kenneth Nealson had the answer.  He thought there must be some kind of bacteria capable of making the magnesium oxide disappear. He discovered the agent responsible was a bacterium known as Shewanella. Shewanella was the first, but far from the last bacterium of this type. We are now aware of  an estimated thousand strains of bacteria popularly called "electric bacteria" they don't give a rap about sugar, oxygen or sunlight to produce their energy.  Instead they eat and breath electricity.

Shewanella

You probably are already aware of metal eating bacteria if you have been following the story of the Titanic. 

The rusticles decorating the sunken wreck are the result of 20 or so different bacteria eating away at the ship's steel.  They are part of the same strain of electric eating, metal eating bacteria.

You want to determine the bacteria in the soil of your backyard - possibly for your son or daughter's 6th grade science fair project. 

It is simple. Get a teaspoon of soil, place it in a Petri dish, add a nutrient such as sugar water and cover the dish.  Return to the dish in a few days and there you have it, the dish teeming with microbe life. A drop of the water from the dish examined under a microscope reveals plenty of life forms for your science project.

As they are metal seeking, electron seeking microbes won't be caught up in the experiment because they do not seek oxygen, sugar, or sunlight for energy production, unless you caught a few by accident.

There are aquarium tanks in some biology labs that have only water, a charged electrode and electric bacteria in the tank.  The tank is kept in darkness.  The only energy source for these electric bacteria are in consuming the electrons from the electrode.  The bacteria are swimming around in the tank without incident.

I can imagine the headlines, however, had these bacteria been found on Mars... "Extra Terrestrial Life Found on Mars." And "...this life unlike anything found on earth.  They eat electricity and discharge electrons!"

         "No way"                        "Way!"

It is not that these bacteria are extraterrestrials, rather it is additional evidence of how little we know of life on earth...life in your own backyard.

  

   

Venus and Jupiter, PART 4, by Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

Venus and Jupiter - June 30, 2015

The evening of June 30 is our fourth and last conjunction of the planets in the evening sky. 

January 10th the planet Venus was associated with Mars and Mercury, January 20 our observations centered on Mars, the Moon and Mercury and February 20 with the Moon and Mars. 

Tuesday evening, June 30^th, Venus is in conjunction with the planet Jupiter. Look for two brilliant star-like objects in the western sky at about 8:00p.m. Venus will be the brighter of the two.

The pairing of these two planets in the evening sky will be so close, with only 1/3 of a degree separating them. As we discussed previously, the full moon appears about half a degree in diameter to our unaided eyes, so these two planets will be closer than the distance of the full moon. Without difficulty, you should be able to stretch out your arm and cover both planets with your thumb!

This paring, as with all of our observations on this topic, is an optical illusion.  Venus and Jupiter appear close to one another from our backyards due to line of sight perspective. Venus is 49 million miles away this evening while Jupiter is 563 million miles away.  Another way of illustrating the distances is to use the speed of light instead of miles. Light can travel around the earth eight times in one second. The light that strikes your eye from the planet Venus this evening takes 4.4 minutes to travel to your eye and the light from Jupiter takes 50 minutes to reach your eye.

There is one difference with the June 30 apparition from the three others reported on. With the exception of the moon, when Venus was paired with another planet, Venus would pass the planet then move higher in the sky each evening.  This evening is different.  Watch what happens evenings after Tuesday evening.  Venus and Jupiter simply separate from each other in an east-west direction, not above and below.  This is due to the fact Venus attained it's greatest apparent distance from the Sun June 6th.  Now the planet does not appear to move further from the sun, but closer.  

The result is the two planets will ride the skies together for a few nights.  August 14-15 Venus will move just south of the Sun and will be lost in the solar glare.

Venus, Mars and the Moon - February 20, 2015 - PART 3 - by Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

              

FIGURE 1

If you were watching the western early evening skies this past week you would have seen the decreasing separation between the planets Venus and Mars (Figure 1). Minimum separation occurs Friday evening with the addition of the thin crescent moon.

FIGURE 2

The view of the western early evening sky of February 20 is illustrated in Figure 2.  Venus outshines both the moon and Mars.  Although the moon is represented in Figure 2, it does not register at the resolution of the figure, though the moon will be easily visible to the casual observer facing west.

FIGURE 3

A pair of binoculars might enhance the naked eye view.  Figure 3 is the view through a pair of 7X35 binoculars.  This is a popular size of binocular.  The first number "7" designates the magnification of the binocular. The size of the large lenses furthest from your eye while using the binocular provides the diameter of the lenses in millimeters, in this case "35" millimeters or roughly 1.5 inches.

 Note the image of the moon.  It consists of a bright crescent.  That bright crescent is the part of the moon illuminated directly by the sun, light from the sun reflected off the moon to earth.  The rest of the moon has an ashen look.  The ashen light is the result of light from the sun striking the earth, reflecting off the earth to the moon, then reflecting off the moon to the earth and into your eyes.  Not bad for the moon which reflects on average only 12% of sunlight, and is therefore a very dark object. This view of the moon has been described as: "The old moon wi' the new moon in her arms."

The scene before your eyes the evening of the 20th is somewhat of an illusion. Venus, Mars and the Moon are not that close in space.  We can illustrate this using the speed of light. A beam of light can travel 8 times around the earth in one second, yet that same beam of light takes about 8.3 minutes to travel from the sun to the earth. We say then the sun is 8.3 light minutes away from the earth. On the 20th of February the sunlight reflected off the moon takes but 1.2 seconds to reach the earth, Venus nearly 12 minutes and the reflected sunlight from Mars takes 18 minutes.

This is the third of four submissions concerning the planet Venus in the western evening sky. As you observe the Moon, Venus and Mars this evening, you might take a second to look directly east.  The brilliant star like object hovering directly above east is the planet Jupiter.  

The very close appearance of Venus and Jupiter above the western horizon the evening of June 30th will be the 4th of 4 postings.  

The separation between Jupiter and Venus is decreasing already. Look tonight to the west at Venus, then to the east at Jupiter... the June 30th event has begun! 

"Close Approach " of Venus and Mercury PART 2, by Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

                                    January 20-22, 2015

 

FIGURE 01

Let's examine Figure 01, depicting the southwest backyard sky at about 6:15 p.m. on January 20, 2015. This is a time when a half-dozen stars are visible in your evening sky. Features include the positions of the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars.

A line drawn from the "S" which stands for South and to the "W" which stands for West would be the horizon if you were standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean. 

The Moon in our setting is just above the South-West horizon.  It is an eleven hour moon.  At 7 a.m. this morning the moon and sun were on the same north south line. The moon travels around the earth such it moves its own diameter each hour, or as viewed in the sky, half-degree each hour. At the time of our diagram, the moon has separated from the sun by 5.5 degrees.

Technically above the horizon, practically it would be very difficult to observe the 11-hour moon this close to the horizon, even though you were trying to observe it atop a large sand dune in the middle of the Sahara.  Only 0.4 percent of the moon is illuminated.  Figure 02 illustrates how little this is.

FIGURE 2

The illuminated crescent part of the moon does not present a continued light line, but is broken up in places due to the moon's crater walls seen edge on.

The brightest image in our sky is the planet Venus. It is the anchor in this our second posting of four; since our last posting of January 10th, when Venus and Mercury were very close in the sky.  Now, just ten days later, Mercury has peeled off to the west and below Venus. 

Mars is above Venus.  It will be interesting to watch from one evening to the next as their separation decreases.

                                    January 21, 2015

Just 24 hours later, we note from comparisons of last evening sky to this, the increasing separation between Venus and Mercury. (Fig. 03)

FIGURE 3

Last evening the Moon was 11 hours old. This evening it is 11 hours old plus 24, or 35 hours old.  It has increased from 0.4 percent illumination last evening to 1.3 percent this evening. (Fig.04)

FIGURE 4

This evening marks the first evening when the crescent moon is an easy target for the backyard observer.  Finding the moon's position is aided by its close proximity to the planet Venus. Two nights and three days ago the moon was an equally visible object in the morning sky immediately before sunrise.  Two nights and three days equal 72 hours. It took the moon 72 hours to pass from the morning sky to the evening sky. Half of 72 is 36.  We have a 35 hour moon this evening in good agreement of a standard two nights and three days traditional description of the dark of the moon, when the moon is not visible to the unaided eye.  

The Greek goddess of the Moon was Artemis. As the goddess of transitions she was a goddess of birth and death.  The crescent moon mythically died two nights and three days ago but now reborn as a crescent in this evening sky. A Greek word to describe a thin crescent moon is the word "Cynthia," abbreviated as "Cindy." Parents in search of a name for their newborn find Cynthia listed as another name for the Moon goddess Artemis.  This is a translation I would expect from a high school guidance counselor or worse yet, from a gym coach. An appropriate sense of the name Cynthia is: "She who hunts among the clouds."

The separation of Venus and Mars continues to decline.

                               January 22, 2015

This is the evening sky at about 6:20. (Fig. 05)

FIGURE 5

Note the position of Mercury. It is getting very low and by month's end will rise and set at the same time as the sun.

In just 24 hours the moon has changed its position from the west of Venus to the west of Mars. If we could pace the apparent distance the moon traveled from last evening to this evening, multiply it by 29.5 times, we would have marked a great circle around the sky. We would find the moon back to the same phase as tonight. This number is near the 30 day cycle of the month.  The month does indeed get its length from this, the Synodic cycle of the moon.

The moon is 9 percent sunlit. (Fig. 06)

FIGURE 6

I refer to this phase of the moon as the Romantic Moon, because it will take the moon 2.5 hours to set; more than enough time to accomplish the tasks at hand.

"Close Approach " of Venus and Mercury by Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

The illustration shows the "close approach" of  the Planets Venus and Mercury at 6p.m. January 10th and 11th.  The apparent close planetary images is an illusion.  The planet Venus, on the far side of the Solar System is emerging from behind the Sun while Mercury is on the same side of the solar system as the Earth and will pass between the Sun and Earth on the 29th of January.

 It is the pairing of the fainter Mercury with the brighter Venus that makes the planet Mercury an easier target for backyard observing. This is the first of Venus paring with four celestial objects worth noting.  It was these apparent motions of the Sun, Moon and five visible planets that had a profound effect on human culture. 

Watch this space!

TONIGHT: A Good Evening, Monday September 29, 2014 - By Contributing Astronomy Editor, Dan Matlaga

Go outside at 7:00p.m. and face the southwest.  The crescent moon is easy to spot. Look just below the crescent moon for a bright slightly reddish star like object.  This is the planet Mars.  Below the Moon and Mars is the bright red star Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius. Further to the West, or further to the right, almost out of view is the planet Saturn.

This is a multi dimensional view. The apparent close positions of the Moon, Mars, Antares and Saturn is an illusion.

A beam of light takes only one second to travel eight times around the earth.  That same beam of light traverses the distance from the sun to the earth in just 8 minutes. The light from the moon takes 1.26 seconds, Mars 12.7 minutes, Saturn 1.4 light hours.  These four objects are members of the family of objects that belong to the solar system.

The star Antares however, is so far away the light that strikes your eye this evening left the star 553 years ago.  That is to say it was produced when Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

was but a boy of ten years old.  The world had yet to hear of the artist known as Michelangelo.

Michelangelo

What will the world be like in the year 2567 when the beams of light now leaving the star reach the earth? Just about everyone inhabiting the earth now would have been long forgotten including those whose names are regularly displayed in the headlines of today's morning news.

The name Antaries means the "rival of Mars."  Easier to understand when we use the Greek word for Mars which is "Aries," That is, "Anti-Aries." Every two years the planet Mars and Aries can be seen riding the sky together.  Since Aries is a red star and Mars is a red planet the question will arise as to which of them will outshine the other.  The keen observer might note Mars wins the battle this time because it does appear slightly brighter than Antares.

If you wait until the next evening the moon would have moved some 12 degrees to the East of its current location, Mars seems to stand still with Antares and Saturn.  It will take a few evenings to establish Mars eastward movement with respect to Antares but Saturn appears stationary

Our second scene takes place two years later.  Mars has completed one circuit around the sun, in front of each of the twelve Zodiacal constellations and once again appears close to Antares.  But now we see in two years the Moon is replaced by the planet Saturn. It took Saturn two years to appear to move from the right hand side of our first image to this, the second image. It will take Saturn nearly thirty years before it makes it's circuit around the Zodiacal constellations to once again appear with Antares.  Where will you be thirty years from now? Will this approach of Saturn in 2016 be your first and last view of the event?

We have to wait until September 8, 2016 for the appearance of the moon.  We observe Mars has moved to the East, and Saturn has taken the place of the Moon, Mars and Antares from the first view Monday evening.

With just these simple illustrations it is easy to understand how the Greeks interpreted the motions in the sky as clockwork.  The Antikythera mechanism mentioned in previous posts lend verification to the concept that far off beyond the Eastern horizon lies a mechanism capable of moving the real sky and all its individual elements at their correct speeds and headings. The mechanism was cranked by three goddesses known as the Fates.

Observers of the skies 10,000 years ago or more noted the set of five wandering "stars."  Today we call these planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Attempts were made to try to predict the position of these five with respect to the background stars.  Always their predictions had a measurable error. 

"Build better measuring devices... change the mathematical and physical models to fit the observations..." was the solution.  The same holds true today.  The positions of the planets are known to great accuracies... but there is still today an observational error.

We can determine the distance from the center of Earth to the center of the Moon to an accuracy whose error is equal to about the distance across a paper clip. Why do we need to improve on this? Because there is a measurable error.  It may take a more accurate set of gravitational laws than what Einstein provides, or perhaps there are influences we have not yet taken into account. But there is an error.

An excellent description on how we can measure Earth - Moon distance to such great accuracy can be found on Google: "Einstein the Moon and the Long - Lost Soviet Reflector."