Astronomy.com blog : Jeremy McGovern

Big Orange helps astronomy

Jeremy McGovern — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:47:00 GMT

I’ve never been a fan of Home Depot. My typical experience involves trying to locate an employee for assistance, only to find an apathetic teenager who doesn’t know a coupling from a chicken coop. I do my best to avoid Big Orange in favor for my local mom-and-pop hardware store.

Despite my disdain for Home Depot, I have to tip my hat to Big Orange. The chain recently agreed to provide a new roof for the Custer Institute in Southold, New York. The Long Island astronomy center hosts several outreach programs there. Donna McCormick, Custer’s president, recently sent an e-mail describing the ordeal:

We operate on a shoestring and have no endowment so we were unable to fund the repair ourselves. We've been trying to raise the money through donations or grants for several years but didn't have any luck. Then, this past spring, a windstorm blew off a batch of shingles and within days a dinner plate-sized hole appeared that went through the roof to the ceiling of the lecture hall below …

[Home Depot] will arrive on the morning of August 5, remove the old roof, replace whatever damaged wood they find in the underlayer, put on a new layer of shingles and, if there’s still time, install the gutters. They’ll even cart away the debris.

Thanks to its generosity, I’ll go to Home Depot next time I need a box of 100 zinc-plated washers.

Back to the saddle

Jeremy McGovern — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Scott Roberts with the apochromatic refractor telescope presented to National Young Astronomer Award winner John Hodge. Explore Scientific, LLC

Most amateur astronomers are familiar with Scott Roberts. During his days with Meade Instruments, he was a common visitor to dozens of annual star parties and would often talk with observers on the phone to answer questions regarding telescopes and accessories.

Roberts left Meade earlier this year, but promised he would stay committed to amateur astronomy. Last weekend at the ALCON meeting, Roberts announced his return to the telescope manufacturing industry with the launch of Explore Scientific. The company designs and builds telescopes, spotting scopes, binoculars, and microscopes and will engage its customers and the interested public with recognition programs, awards, workshops, and expeditions. Explore Scientific will have products ready for the market this fall.

Listen to my recent interview with Scott Roberts here.

The Astronomical League acknowledges webmasters

Jeremy McGovern — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:52:00 GMT

Bob Schneider, the administrator of the Astronomical League Webmaster Award, announced the winners of the group’s annual contest.

First place goes to Del Gordon of the Huachuca Astronomy Club. Besides providing information about the club and its events, he uses the site to promote the people in the club. “I believe that the people are what make the club,” Gordon told Astronomy.

In the future, he wants to improve the site’s interactivity and encourage members to participate in the message board and write news stories.

The runners-up include Chas Rimpo of the Howard Astronomical League and Richard Richins of the Astronomical Society of Las Cruces.

If you are a member of an organization that belongs to the Astronomical League and have a worthy web site, keep this award in mind. You can enter for the 2009 award between January 1 and April 30, 2009, with Bob Schneider.

Extreme observing

Jeremy McGovern — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Several astronomy clubs send us their newsletters covering group activities and upcoming sky events. I recently received “Desert Skies” from the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association. While perusing it, I came across the story concerning rattlesnake alerts for observers. Holy cow! Now that is an observing site danger.

Here in Wisconsin, I think the only wildlife danger at an observing site would be blood loss from mosquito attacks. I suppose it is a fair trade for those dark skies.

Although not in the same ratio, you can find rattlesnakes in Wisconsin. Throw in a whitetail buck in rut, an angry black bear, or a distrubed wasp nest. So you do have some real — albeit rare — in rural observing in our state.

Have you come across any dangerous situations with wildlife? Post it below? Or you can always post it in on our message board under the “Extreme astronomy” board.

Prolific SOHO reaches benchmark

Jeremy McGovern — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:10:00 GMT

On June 25, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) discovered its 1,500th comet. This tally tops all other comet discoverers throughout history combined.

From ESA:
When it comes to comet catching, the SOHO has one big advantage over everybody else: its location. Situated between the Sun and Earth, it has a privileged view of a region of space that can rarely be seen from Earth. From the surface, we can see regions close to the Sun clearly only during an eclipse.

Roughly 85% of SOHO discoveries are fragments from a once-great comet that split apart in a death plunge around the Sun, probably many centuries ago. The fragments are known as the Kreutz group and now pass within 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) of the Sun’s surface when they return from deep space.

At this proximity, which is a near miss in celestial terms, most of the fragments are finally destroyed, evaporated by the Sun's fearsome radiation ― within sight of SOHO’s electronic eyes.

“This is allowing us to see how comets die,” says Battams. When a comet constantly circles the Sun, it loses a little more ice each time, until it eventually falls to pieces, leaving a long trail of fragments. Thanks to SOHO, astronomers now have a plethora of images showing this process. “It's a unique data set and could not have been achieved in any other way,” says Battams.

All this is on top of the extraordinary revelations that SOHO has provided over the 13 years it has been in space, observing the Sun and the near-Sun environment. “Catching the enormous total of comets has been an unplanned bonus,” says Bernhard Fleck, ESA SOHO Project Scientist.

We are in the golden age of solar system research. Phoenix is digging away at Mars, Cassini is at Saturn, New Horizons is on its way to Pluto, two rovers are still operating on the Red Planet, Stardust brought back comet particles, and Venus Express orbits our sister planet. And now, SOHO has more comets than baseball pitchers Cy Young, Warren Spahn, and Roger Clemens have wins, combined.

How to make a bad first impression

Jeremy McGovern — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:22:00 GMT

The EISCAT European space station in the Arctic Circle will pepper an unfortunate solar system in Ursa Major with a Doritos ad. EISCAT

How little do we think of potential extraterrestrial life? Not much, it seems.

The University of Leicester helped Doritos — yes, THAT Doritos — send a message to a solar system 42 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. What was the communication? A peaceful salutation? A threat? Nope, it’s a Doritos ad. From a University of Leicester press release:

Today Doritos makes history, taking the UK’s first step in communicating with aliens as they broadcast the first ever advert directed toward potential extraterrestrial life.

The transmission is being undertaken as part of the Doritos Broadcast Project, which invited the UK public to create a 30-second video clip that could be beamed out to the universe offering a snap shot of life on Earth to anyone "out there." Sixty-one percent of the UK public believes this is just the start of communication with ET life and that we will enter into regular communication with an alien species at some stage in the future.

Let’s see, of all the messages we could send to life out there, do we want it to concern synthetic-tasting chips bursting with enough chemicals to preserve a corpse for the next 50 years?

Not necessarily putting our best foot forward. Sending a junk food ad to extraterrestrials is like showing up for a job interview dressed like the Dude or taking out a person you are courting on a dinner date to KFC.

Anyway, I suppose kudos should go to Matt Bowron, the winning video director. His creation shows a tribe of Doritos sacrificing a chip to a salsa god. You can see his ad here.

I guess it could be worse. At least our target audience out there won’t receive a commercial featuring Matthew Lesko and his suit that would make Frank Gorshin turn in his grave.

Long time listener, first time caller

Jeremy McGovern — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:00:00 GMT

Gus Grissom snuck dimes aboard the Liberty 7 capsule. Alan Shepard trumped that by taking a modified 6 iron and a golf ball on Apollo 14. Today, NASA permits astronauts to take a few items along on shuttle flights, as long as they aren’t potato chips.

STS-124 Pilot Ken Ham appeared on “Mike and Mike in the Morning,” a sports talk show syndicated by ESPN radio. He talked about the upcoming Discovery flight and the trinkets he’ll take aboard — sports jerseys and CDs of the double Mike show. Wait, the pilot is in charge of entertainment? I thought whoever called “Shotgun!” chose the station?

Astronauts are a brainy lot. You can’t tell me the beautiful mindsthat took them from childhood to a shuttle mission are the same ones that can tolerate the mush-making emptiness of sports talk radio. I hope ESPN won’t torture the STS-124 astronauts with irresolvable discussions of “Manny being Manny.”

I blame Big Mouse for this. NASA entered into a partnership with Disney, the parent company of ABC and ESPN. The space agency explained this curious arrangement in a press release:

Disney’s Youth Educational Series and NASA have developed an online program known as the Space Ranger Education Series. It includes fun educational games for students, as well as materials for educators to download and integrate into their classroom curriculum.

Ok fine, if it is for education, let it slide. Just keep Ham, Kelly Nyberg, Mike Fossum, or any of the other astronauts from ESPN dead ends like Woody Paige or Stuart Scott during the mission.

Wet blanket alert: Still, I believe promotions aside, ESPN’s presentation of pro sports has its place, just not aboard the space shuttle. How about an agreement? Keep the jockery out of the shuttle and the brainiacs out of the Budweiser Hot Seat. Well, other than the accountants behind salary cap formulas and rotisserie league number-crunching geeks.

John Hodgman commented on sports integration in society perfectly in the beginning of his book, The Areas of My Expertise. He apologized for not providing any significant information on sports in the book by writing, “May I direct you to everything else in our culture?”

Now with that said, Fischer totally hacked Berry and the Spurs were ripped off!

Off Orbit

Jeremy McGovern — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:46:00 GMT

Back in March, I wrote about Astrocast, a non-profit web channel that produces videos on astronomy. The show is designed to reach anybody with an interest in the sky, who may have seen astronomy information on television or the web and wants to learn more.

This is an exciting time for the hobby. Before, interested people had to rely on magazines, books, newsletters, or group meetings as their resources. Now, we also can tap into video and audio files from web sites.

Because of technology and expertise, some productions are better than others. For one of the slicker examples, check out OffOrbit.tv. It launched its first video on solar observing with Greg Piepol (coincidently one of the experts behind Astrocast). Talk about a polished product! The content is on point and the camera work is more professional and artistic than anything else I’ve seen in astronomy-related web videos.

You can watch Off Orbit through its blog, iTunes feed, and YouTube. I’d advise watching it directly from the blog to avoid You Tube’s video compression.

WorldWide Telescope

Jeremy McGovern — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:48:00 GMT

Have you downloaded Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope (WWT)? If not, you can find it here, free of charge.

Once you kick the tires, be sure to join our community. WWT communities provide tours, images, and other information relating to the night (and day) sky to members. So far, our community features tours covering galaxies, orbiting observatories, our impending (meaning long after you're gone) merger with Andromeda, and naked-eye open star clusters. We've also published a few of our most popular booklets as PDFs on WWT.

After you download WWT, you can join our community here.

Post any comments you have about your experiences with WWT below. Did it blow you away? Did it disappoint you? What do you think is the potential of this tool?

The Lake County Astronomical Society recognizes Shutan

Jeremy McGovern — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:11:00 GMT

Marlon Cowart (right) presents Bob Shutan with the the LakeSky Star Award. LCAS

The Lake County Astronomical Society (LCAS) is based in northeastern Illinois, just across the border from Astronomy’s home state of Wisconsin. The group’s outreach efforts have helped reveal the mysteries of the universe to the general public in both states.

Through its LakeSky Star Award, the LCAS recognizes “individuals and/or organizations that make a distinctive contribution to the promotion of astronomy.” Recently, the group honored Bob Shutan and his company, Shutan Camera. The LCAS provided this release describing Bob’s contributions.

Shutan Camera has been the gateway for many astronomers in the area, including many LCAS members. Bob and his staff have patiently educated newcomers on the aspects of astronomy. They present information on the benefits, costs and choices for high quality optics that provide the best views of celestial objects. Shutan Camera also has an unparalleled reputation for service after the sale to help members find the tools they need to find their niche in astronomy. Bob's showroom of astronomy equipment is the only consumer-friendly retail location in the area where people can get hands-on access to telescopes and accessories.

Aside from his retail services, Bob has been a strong, reliable promoter and sponsor of LCAS events. He has donated telescopes as door prizes for LCAS Astronomy Days, he has provided gift certificates for meeting awards and for astrophotography contests, and he has presented programs about astronomy equipment to LCAS meetings.

Congratulations to Bob, and to the LCAS for its work.