Astronomy.com blog : Matt Quandt

Enjoy a free tour of Astronomy.com this weekend!

Matt Quandt — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:00:00 GMT

From noon, Friday, November 13, through 8 a.m. CST, Monday, November 16, all the great features that are available only to registered users or Astronomy magazine subscribers will be available to everyone. For free!

Find out what you've been missing! Check out these exclusive benefits:

StarDome Plus — Locate specific objects like planets, comets, galaxies, nebulae, and more in your night sky with the expanded version of Astronomy.com’s interactive star chart.
Equipment review archive — Astronomy.com's equipment review database includes every review, roundup, and buyers guide that has appeared in Astronomy magazine in the last few years — more than 200 products overall and growing!
Columnist archive — Read the complete collections of Bob Berman’s Strange Universe, Glenn Chaple’s Observing Basics, David Levy’s Evening Stars, Stephen James O’Meara’s Secret Sky, and Phil Harrington’s Binocular Universe.
Weekly observing podcast — Senior Editor Michael E. Bakich’s weekly series helps you find three notable objects or sky events you can see. 
Desktop Wallpaper — Bring the beauty of astronomy to your computer desktop. 
And more!

Then, if you like what you see, come back on Monday, November 16* and register on Astronomy.com for free or subscribe to Astronomy magazine right now.

*During the times mentioned above, you will not be able to register for a new account or log in to Astronomy.com with an existing account. Reader forum users will be able to post as long as they've logged in and have a cookie set prior to the times mentioned above. The site will be back to normal and open for new registrations at 8 a.m. CST Monday, November 16.

Stephen James O'Meara blogs from PATS 2009

Matt Quandt — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:06:00 GMT

Astronomy magazine columnist Stephen James O’Meara’s sent us two blogs from the 2009 Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show.

Many thanks to Steve for sending these reports!

Day One
Arrived in Pasadena Saturday morning and immediately immersed myself in the telescope fever at the Pacific Astronomy Telescope Show (PATS), organized by the Riverside Telescope Makers Conference. This is not a telescope-making convention. It's a telescope expo with more than 60 vendors catering to an expected crowd of 1,000 or more over the weekend.

Before I entered the Pasadena Convention Center's doors, I found myself standing in line behind a 90mm Coronado solar telescope looking in hydrogen-alpha light at a fantastic prominence lifting off the Sun's limb like a fiery fountain with a spray of "molten flames" arcing back to the Sun's surface. Several other hedgerow prominences lifted off the surface in other places. Then, Andy Lundt displayed the H-alpha Sun through his 60mm solar systems scope with doppler shifting: With the turn of a knob, I could investigate different layers of the Sun's chromosphere, which had the effect of looking through a kaleidoscope.

I then took in a few talks.

Al Nagler, founder of Tele Vue Optics, described, among other things, how to choose the lowest high-power eyepiece that reveals the detail you're looking for, so that you have a sharper, better image in your scope. For deep-sky viewing, he says to use the highest power that frames the subject so long as the sky is not black and the atmosphere does not degrade resolution. He also said not to be afraid on the best nights to use 60x per inch of aperture.

Wally Pachoka gave an inspirational showing of his night-sky landscapes over famous monuments and attractions in our national parks. What's amazing is that he used, in most cases, a combination of natural and artificial lighting — such as nearby sodium vapor lamps, the crescent Moon, city lights, and a flashlight — to illuminate foreground objects while using a simple digital SLR camera and 35mm to 50mm lens to capture the Milky Way in color rising above these national treasures. The photography was beautiful and his passion inspirational. His work and others from around the globe have been made into a traveling exhibition that proves astronomy has no borders.

Sean Walker treated guests to an equally stunning display of his planetary photography.

But the highlight of Day One for me was meeting Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who gave a revealing talk about his quest to educate the public and world leaders about the very real threat posed by near-Earth asteroids. Schweickart, who heads the Association of Space Exploration and the B612 Foundation — B612 is the asteroid that the Little Prince, from Antoine de Saint-Exupery's children’s story The Little Prince, lived on — has dedicated the last 7-8 years of his life to this project, which deals with the technology of deflecting a threatening object in its orbit as well as the geopolitical issues facing all nations on Earth in case of a pending threat.

The mission requires an early warning system, proven deflection capability, and international decision-making protocol. The task itself requires brute force and precision, but the technology exists to make it happen. The fact is we know of only 0.1 percent of the objects that could be a threat. B612's goal is to be able to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid, in a controlled manner, by 2015. The probability of a near-Earth asteroid collision in this century is about 2 percent, and not being prepared to avert disaster is “unacceptable.”

Well. That's it for Day One!

Related: "Day 1 at PATS 2009 is a success," by Michael E. Bakich, senior editor

Day Two
Day Two at PATS was equally exciting as Day One. I spent most of the day trying to take in as many vendor displays as possible. I also spent a lot of time talking to amateur astronomers who wanted to share the wonderful things they're doing, or observing.

I was able to catch Mike Reynolds’ wonderful talk on identifying meteorites, in which he passed around numerous samples (iron, stony, and mixed) — including one now worth $25,000! I bet most of us at some point in our careers believed we have encountered a piece of outer space in our perusals of our yards or neighborhoods, but Mike made it clear how to identify "meteorWRONGS" — humor intended. At the end we were even given a chance to touch a piece of the Moon and Mars. A great experience.

Also interesting was Will Marchant's talk on the StarDust comet mission. What I didn't know is that if amateur astronomers want to help in professional science, they can volunteer on-line to become a "duster" — that is, help astronomers working on the Stardust mission find micron-sized dust particles on the craft's returned collector plate.

To find out how you can join this international community of fellow enthusiasts, go to stardust@home. Once you sign up, you are quickly training via the Web, which allows you to scan one of the 1.6 million selected areas on the collector.

Whoever finds a particle gets to name it (and get an official certificate from the Planetary Society)! As it stands, the 25,000 dusters worldwide have scanned about one-third of the collector plate. So there's a lot more to explore and discover.

Introducing Caltech’s new home for astronomy and astrophysics

Matt Quandt — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:34:00 GMT

A guest blog from Lynne Hillenbrand, Caltech’s executive officer of astronomy

The Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics on the campus of the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California, is home to many of the world's pioneers in astronomical discovery, experiment, and theory. Our new building, opened in January, was designed to incorporate groups from across the campus into a single space and to foster their interactions, collaborations, and new discoveries.

This new crown jewel of Caltech is a hub of education and technology. Cahill's residents operate space- and ground-based observatories; develop next-generation technology and instruments; and simulate, predict, and interpret key astronomical theories. It all takes place at 1216 California Boulevard, not coincidentally the wavelength of the astrophysically important Lyman-alpha line of hydrogen.

A lap around any one of the four approximately 25,000 square-foot floors (three above ground and one underground) is likely to witness conversations on topics ranging from new planets around nearby young stars to high-redshift galaxies to signatures emanating from the early universe.

The building features a modern lecture hall and reading room; offices for more than 220 astronomers and astrophysicists, including graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and faculty; plus another 100 associated research, technical, and administrative staff members. Cahill features laboratory space for constructing and testing state-of-the art space- and ground-based astronomical instrumentation.

The architectural showcase piece is an impressive "stairway to the heavens" that is meant to evoke a telescopic view from just inside the main entry upward through the building and skyward. It is actually an elaborate beam structure that forms the core support framework of the building.

Caltech's new Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics has enabled a co-location and cohesion of personnel that will have a major positive impact on astrophysical research worldwide.
Let the discoveries begin!

Thanks, Lynne. We look forward to future updates from Lynne and her colleagues at the Cahill Center.

Follow Astronomy on Twitter

Matt Quandt — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:54:00 GMT

Throughout the week, Astronomy.com posts news stories, observing alerts, blogs, images, podcasts, videos, the latest issue information, and more. It’s not easy to keep up with it all. Our e-mail newsletter collects the week’s stories, blogs, images, podcasts, and videos, and it goes out every Friday. But what if you want to know what’s new on Astronomy.com right now? Starting today, you can “follow” Astronomy magazine and Astronomy.com on Twitter.

By now, many of you have heard of Twitter — the social media program that lets you communicate, in 140 characters or less, what you are doing right now to anyone who signs up to “follow” you. Many people use Twitter to send concise personal updates to friends and family members. The Astronomy magazine staff is going to use it to spread the word about anything new added to Astronomy.com. Each of our Twitter updates (referred to as “tweets”) will include a link to a new or cool item on the site.

To follow Astronomy magazine on Twitter, visit our page at Twitter.com/AstronomyMag. Twitter’s sign-up is quick and painless. After you sign up, click the “Follow” button that appears on the upper left of our page under the magazine cover.

The look of the page is a work in progress, so please pardon our dust.

Pluto on my mind

Matt Quandt — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:33:00 GMT

Senior Editor Michael Bakich’s last blog post, “Party in Pluto Park,” details his experiences at an event in New Mexico to commemorate Clyde Tombaugh’s 16-inch telescope. To be clear, Tombaugh discovered Pluto while he worked in Arizona, but he spent most of his life in New Mexico.

Bakich’s post from Wednesday, “Working on a classic,” received a passionate comment from a reader requesting that Michael not refer to Pluto as an “ex-planet.” It’s clear Pluto’s classification is a hot-button topic for many of you. Well, the planets must be aligning, because Pluto is showing up all over my pop-culture radar.

I came across a charming music video of a song by Jonathan Coulton called, “I’m your moon” from a few years ago. Perhaps some of you have already seen the video or heard the song. Coulton wrote it from the perspective of Charon serenading Pluto. In the song, Charon tries to remind Pluto that despite the International Astronomical Union’s 2006 decision to revoke its planetary status, “because you don’t have pretty rings,” Pluto should take heart in the fact that the two bodies “go round and round together.”

After I watched Coulton’s video, I remembered that Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, appeared on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Wednesday night to promote his new book The Pluto Files. So I headed over to The Daily Show web site to see what Tyson had to say about Pluto.

During the conversation with Stewart, Tyson — referring to the planet’s reclassification as a plutoid — suggested that “Pluto had it coming. ... He was an oddball from the beginning.” Shortly thereafter, Stewart shouted, “What did Pluto ever do to you?!!” Entertaining stuff.

We plan to post a review of Tyson’s book soon.

Drowning in astronomy headlines

Matt Quandt — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Whew! Talk about kicking the year off with a bang ... The American Astronomical Society’s annual meeting is underway in Long Beach, California, and we are awash in astronomy bulletins. We’re doing our best here at Astronomy.com to keep you informed of each major announcement.

Here’s a recap of some of the headlines to make it out of the AAS meeting so far:

Fermi Telescope unveils a dozen new pulsars
Brown dwarfs don't hang out with stars
NASA satellite reveals active galaxies are different near and far
Gamma-ray burst offers first peek at a young galaxy's star factory
Cassiopeia A comes alive across time and space
Milky Way a swifter spinner and more massive, new measurements show

Astronomy magazine Associate Editor Liz Kruesi is at the conference and sitting in on as many of the press conferences as she can. Liz already sent us her first report, “AAS meeting, day one.”

Stay tuned to Astronomy.com/News for all the major stories from AAS, and keep up with Liz’s insights at Astronomy.com/Blogs.

And, as always, we’ll package all the latest astronomy headlines in our free weekly e-mail newsletter.

An art exhibition on Mars

Matt Quandt — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:50:00 GMT

Michael Carroll, renowned illustrator and a frequent art contributor to Astronomy magazine, sent us his musings on the Phoenix Lander’s fate. Because his father worked at the Martin Marietta (now Lockheed/Martin) facility in Littleton, Colorado, Michael enjoyed unique access to the early stages of the Viking missions. His two latest books are Space Art: drawing and painting planets, moons and landscapes of alien worlds and Alien Volcanoes (Johns Hopkins University Press). Both are available through Amazon.com.

We lost an old friend a few months ago. In November, the Phoenix Lander finally succumbed to the onslaught of martian winter. Before it gave up the ghost, the intrepid outpost sent us intriguing views of arctic Mars as it scraped, sniffed, and cooked martian dirt, unlocking the chemical mysteries of the world next door. Its little brain may be frozen solid, but that's okay with me: Perched upon its deck lies one of my paintings. That little piece of art had a long journey, beginning in my childhood.
When I was a kid, “thoats” lived on Mars. Those deadly six-legged, feline creatures coexisted with green martian warlords, golden-eyed benevolent aliens, and armies bent on Earth invasion. All these possible Marses arrived courtesy Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H. G. Wells, providing fodder for artistic minds. Soon, space-faring nations tried their best to see the mystifying webbed globe close-up. The Mariners and Soviet Mars craft revealed craters, volcanoes, and hints of floods, but no palaces.
The middle of 1975 was to be a summer of spaceships, a 3-month vacation seasoned by steel contraptions visiting the red-canalled world. July was coming. The Vikings were coming. Colorado temperatures warmed, and I headed home from college on spring break. As a respite from my studies, my father took me to see "something fun" at the Martin Marietta facility where he worked. After checking through security gates and circumnavigating desks manned by scowling guards, we ascended a metal stairway and stepped into a long room. Along the length of its wall, bay windows overlooked a bizarre, sterile amphitheater where engineers assembled some of history's greatest space probes. Perched on the vent-covered floor two stories below us, a pair of flattened cones endured the attention of technicians. In each cone, folded like an origami swan, sat a Viking lander. Here, cocooned in ablative heat shields, lay two promises of revelation, two chances to see Mars up close for the first time. Would either one work? Our Cold War Soviet counterparts were attempting the same thing. I was patriotic enough to hope these Vikings would be the first, and fascinated enough that I'd settle for either country's success. Everyone wanted to see as much martian real estate as we could get our eyelids around.
On July 20, 1976, Viking 1 touched down on Mars' plains of gold. It was the anniversary of the first Apollo Moon landing, and although Viking 1 had missed the United States’ bicentennial by 16 days, there was much celebration.
Through the ensuing years, I continued to paint Marsscapes. Astronomy magazine was my first steady client, and though my art would appear in magazines from National Geographic to Harper's, Astronomy will always hold a special place in my artist's heart. Thirteen years after Viking, I found myself at the Soviet Union's Institute for Space Research (IKI), headquarters for Russia's planetary program. Our delegation — hosted by the Soviet government and the Planetary Society — shuffled into a room, outfitted in plastic slippers and hats. Still in street clothes, we stood in the shadow of Phobos One, actual hardware that would soon be Mars-bound. As I thought back to the Viking clean room, I was amused at the difference in each country's approach to space exploration. Both suffered failures; both celebrated victories. We were all on a journey of exploration.
Even before the Phoenix mission, I had the chance to exhibit art on Mars. One of my paintings was selected to fly aboard the Russian Mars 96 mission, along with dozens of other paintings, novels, and songs. The interplanetary exposition was flattened into pixels on a tiny CD and placed aboard a vehicle intended to land on the sands of Isidis Planitia. Jon Lomberg designed the disk. Lomberg also designed the Pioneer 10 and 11 plaques and the Voyager records. But thanks to a malfunctioning fourth stage, my digital painting now rests on the ocean floor, somewhere off the coast of Chile.
A decade after the failed Soviet mission, our disk flew again, in updated form, on the aptly named Phoenix Lander. Who will find it? Will it end up in a museum, helping future Mars settlers to ponder our early days of Vikings and Phoenix Landers? Perhaps there are native martians up there, living in microbial, sub-surface colonies. Part of me hopes so. That same part of me wonders if some of them might even be art collectors. Art, like exploration, is good for the soul.

Pictures of November 20 Canada meteorite

Matt Quandt — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:48:00 GMT

One of our friends from Canada, Richard Huziak, sent us these pictures of meteorites from the November 20 fireball. Here's the message he sent along with the images:

First picture: Approx 1.5Kg, ~8cm in diameter

Second picture: Approx 100g, ~ 5cm in diameter (piece of the inside, ablated in flight slightly after fracturing)

Third picture: 38.6g, 5cm x 3cm x 1.5cm (my very first find )

The first two were found by a local farmer in the past few days. He let me photograph them. I found the 3rd one on Sunday. The announcement of the fall location has set off a flurry of 'treasure hunters' — I'd say about 30 people in the area out looking for fragments. The meteors are likely H5 chondrites, decently attracted to magnets. The fusion crusts are darker than my digital camera shows them. The insides appear to be a lighter, cement gray.

Thanks for sharing, Richard!

Live update from the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory inauguration

Matt Quandt — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:50:00 GMT

Astronomy magazine Contributing Editor Martin Ratcliffe filed this report from the inauguration of the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory in Malargue, Argentina. Ratcliffe sent us this update and images while the event was underway! Thanks, Martin!

November 14 is an exciting day for cosmic-ray astronomy. The inauguration of the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory’s (PACRO) southern site took place this afternoon in Malargue, Argentina. Nestled beneath the majestic snow-capped Andes Mountains, the small skiing town Malargue has become the Mecca for astroparticle physicists in search of the holy grail of cosmic ray astronomy: the source of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). Cosmic rays continually fall toward the 1,600 detectors arranged across 1,150 square miles of Argentina’s Pampa Amarilla (yellow prairie). PACRO is the culmination of a dream of James Cronin and Alan Watson (pictured at right with Paul Paul Mantsch, the Auger Project Manager), who inspired the construction of the large area cosmic-ray detector. These two men developed the idea for the observatory back in 1992. Cronin, a Nobel-prize winner, is a physics professor at the University of Chicago, and Watson is a physics professor at University of Leeds, England.

Cosmic rays strike Earth’s upper atmosphere, creating a cascade of millions of secondary particles — a particle shower — that can be detected on the ground. On very dark, clear nights, PACRO’s 24 large-area telescopes detect faint ultraviolet flashes caused by the cascading shower.

One UHECR makes the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) appear puny. LHC will reach energies of a few trillion electron volts. UHECRs have 100 million times more energy than the subatomic particles accelerated by the LHC. When such particles hit our atmosphere, they generate a cascade of secondary particles, many of which reach the ground. The highest energy UHECRs are rare. Only one strikes a square kilometer of Earth every millennium, hence the need for very large detectors to offer the chance to catch a few per year.

In November 2007, scientists announced the first results from the almost completed Auger array: a correlation between the highest energy cosmic rays and the location of active galactic nuclei. Tentative results like these generated as much a wave of excitement across the community as prospects of greater discoveries lie in wait to the now completed array.

Pierre Auger South cannot see the Northern Hemisphere sky, however. A detailed proposal for a much larger Pierre Auger North (3,100 square miles) is underway. The preferred site is southeastern Colorado in the United States, centered on the town of Lamar. Funding for the northern site remains to be secured.
Why am I here? Aside from the dramatic scenery, wonderful people, and amazing science, the company I work for, Sky-Skan, installed the first digital planetarium in Argentina. It opened officially in August 2008.
On Friday and Saturday we displayed real-time scientific visualizations in Digital Sky of cosmic-ray particle showers in Earth's atmosphere, part of a long-term collaboration with the University of Chicago and Adler Planetarium (thanks to Dr. Mark SubbaRao) and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (thanks to Randy Landsberg) both of whom will be here in Malargue this weekend.

2008 Chiefland Star Party, part three

Matt Quandt — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:44:00 GMT

Paul Atkinson filed his third report from the 2008 Chiefland Star Party. Take it away, Paul!

Monday night was pretty cold for Florida, and an unexpected cold front pushed through. The sky was clear, and the humidity all but disappeared. The seeing degraded from the front blowing through, and it caused the stars to dance quite a bit.

On the field, the die-hard imagers continued while others decided to use the night to observe visually. A tripod with 150 mm Fujinon binoculars was drawing attention from many observers. Because of the cold, I didn’t wander the field nearly as much as I wanted, but I did stop to take in a great view of the Veil Nebula through an 18-inch Dobsonian-mounted reflector.

I spent the night huddled in the new Kendrick Observer Tent. Jim Kendrick of Kendrick Astro Instruments sent his newest model down for me to try out during the star party. See the photo with my 14-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope (C14) and 6-inch Takahashi TOA130 inside it. My buddy Mark Keitel and I observed lots of the faint fuzzies in Sculptor. The observing tent provides protection from the elements, especially the wind, so it was nice to have. The Silver Coin Galaxy (NGC 253) looked impressive through the C14 using a Tele Vue Nagler 31mm eyepiece. Due to Chiefland’s low latitude, many of the objects low on the horizon are located at an acceptable altitude for viewing. Stephan’s Quintet (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, NGC 7319, and NGC 7320) also was a great object. Spinning around the TOA130 gave some great wide-field views of multiple open clusters through Cassiopeia. We called it a night after another long viewing session.

Previous reports:
Part two
Part one