Feb 24 2023 - Astronomy News

 

There is continuing news from scientific astronomers because of the James Webb Space Telescope.  And it is good news always.  The headlines usually start with "James Webb Telescope's latest marvels" or  "James Webb is about to take us to the 'edge of time'"with massive galaxies discovered near cosmic dawn.  They call this "universe breakers".   Can you imagine the excitement - they could be rewriting astronomy textbooks soon.   "An international team of astrophysicists has found six candidate galaxies hiding in data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that are so old and massive they can’t be explained by current cosmological models. The galaxies are thought to date back to around 500 million years after the Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago. According to current cosmological models, galaxies at this point in time should be in their infancy and be made up of only a few stars. However, all six of the newly discovered candidate galaxies are gigantic and contain a similar number of stars to the modern-day Milky Way, which is much older." "...the team were able to date the candidate galaxies back to just over 13 billion years ago and determine that they contained tens to hundreds of billions of Sun-sized stars worth of mass. This means that they would’ve had to have formed stars at an astonishing rate due to their short lives." Read about it HERE. It brings to our attention the astonishing discovers that are happening in the world today. At the bottom of the article are more tantalizing headlines and their links.   I think it would be worth doing the work to be an amateur astronomer.  I expect it would take a lot of education - astronomy and physics. But then it would exciting every day to read the science news. The Bing political headlines  are doom and gloom stories and they never finish scrolling. We are astonishing in our coverage of all things negative.  On with science! Let's admire a Gerbera daisy today.  I think they are a close second to Dahlias in being photogenic.       Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Aug 14 2020 - Deciding between the Moon and Florida

 

It used to be that humans gazed toward the heavens, searching to put meaning and order to the universe around them. The movement of constellations were tracked, charted and predicted. That was astrometry - the measure of the sun, moon and planets.  Now it is the field of astronomy, full of fields of study - planetary, stellar, solar, galactic, and cosmology. The hobbyist can be an astronomer.  One can go to space.com and find out that "commencing a few minutes after midnight on Friday, and continuing during the wee hours of Saturday, Aug. 15, observers in the Americas can witness the rare event of a double shadow transit — accompanied by the Great Red Spot! At 12:06 a.m. EDT (or 04:06 GMT) Io's small shadow will join Ganymede's larger shadow and the Great Red Spot already progressing across Jupiter's northern and southern hemispheres, respectively. The trio will remain visible until Ganymede's shadow and the GRS move off Jupiter at about 1:53 a.m. EDT (or 05:53 GMT). Io's shadow will complete its transit at approximately 2:25 a.m. EDT (or 06:25 GMT)." One can immerse oneself in the headlines of space-related events:  The Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico suffered serious damage on August 10th 2020 when a support cable broke. Scientists probe the weird, alien water inside of Uranus and Neptune Falling fireballs crashed in chile last week.  They weren't meteorites, experts say One can become expert on the space business news: Pentagon picks SpaceX and ULA to remain its primary launch providers SpaceX launches Starlink and BlackSky satellites It seems to me that there are many space jokes  - hundreds of them. Mostly they are puns for 10 - 12 year olds.  This one appealed to me: Q. Which is closer, Florida or the moon?  A. The moon. You can’t see Florida from here.

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Apr 3 2020 - That Moon Magic

The moon this morning was pink.  And it was big.  It is a Super Pink Moon event on April 7th.  The preview I saw this morning tells me it is worth going out to see when it is fully out.  The name comes from pink wildflowers - creeping phlox - that bloom in early spring.  Other names for an April full moon include Sprouting Grass, Egg, and Fish moon, all names that supposedly evoke thoughts of early spring - fish?. This year’s super pink moon is also a paschal moon because of its closeness to Easter, which is April 12. The supermoon we had in March is called a Worm Moon. I thought you might enjoy this from the article, written March 30th.  The author seems to have missed the current situation's scope: 'staying at home' isn't 'for those' but is 'for all': "For those staying at home, April will bring a number of other moon- and stargazing events to see outside at night. This Friday, Venus will be visible near a cluster of stars called the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, according to Alan MacRobert at Sky & Telescope. And as Brian Lada writes for AccuWeather, the Lyrids meteor shower peaks on April 22 and 23." What a time  to buy a telescope online and get started.  There are 13 full moons, 2 supermoons, and a Halloween blue moon.  In no time, you will be referring to the supermoon by its astronomical name: “perigee-syzygy.” Here are some Supermoon jokes: Supermoon cancelled as moon distances itself from earth The Supermoon was ok.  But according to Rotten Tomatoes, still is better than Supermoon vs Batmoon.  What do you call it when Clark Kent shows someone his butt? Supermoon Don't forget, tonight the moon will be visible from earth.  The last time this happened was last night. These popped up on Pinterest.  I wonder how they are related to the supermoon.     Another train day, this one in the tropics.

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What is your horoscope today?

When I do date searches on iGoogle, how is it that horoscopes show in the top three searches>? They seem to have passed into disrepute compared to a few decades ago when there was more interest in them.   However, centuries ago, there was significant attention to astrology.  Astrology was closely related to astronomy in 1600.  It was a scholarly tradition until the 17th century, and it helped drive the development of astronomy. An article by Ryan J. Stark  says that: "Except for the Bible, no body of documents had a larger circulation in seventeenth-century England than astrological almanacs. "  It was in the 1700's that astrology declined. Here we are today with newspapers and magazines in our time including the daily horoscope, and somehow persisting. I found the answers in an article in the Smithsonian "How are Horoscopes Still a Thing?"  The newspaper horoscope is accredited to R.H. Naylor, a prominent British astrologer of the first half of the 20th century.  He did the horoscope for the recently born Princess Margaret in 1930, and it somehow was a tipping point for the popular consumption of horoscopes. Naylor did some predicting that seemed to come true, so he started a weekly column. And why do horoscopes continue to run so many decades later?  Readers like them.  There seems to be little scientific proof that astrology is an accurate predictor of personality traits, future destinies, love lives, or anything else. And for many people they go online to find out what their horoscope says for today.  Is it your birthday?