esiegel | July 29, 2013"Pinwheel, pinwheel spinning around. Look at my Pinwheel and see what I found.
Pinwheel, pinwheel, breezy and bright. Spin me good morning, spin me good night." -Janet Gardner
It's time for another Messier Monday, where each week, one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the famed Messier Catalogue -- the first large, accurate catalogue of non-cometary objects -- gets an in-depth treatment. These objects are not only a good representation of the brightest deep-sky objects visible from Earth, they're a good sample of the different types of objects visible from any random location in the…
esiegel | July 28, 2013"If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito." -Anita Roddick
There's a lot to enjoy when it's warm and tropical, which it is many places this time of year. The flowers are out, the Sun often shines, and there's no shortage of spectacular music. Have a listen to to West Virginia-based band The Recipe, as they rock out (and give a shout-out to Neil Armstrong's moonwalk) in their great song,
Whiskey Pickle.
But there's an unwelcome visitor that comes along with this kind of weather: the mosquito.
Image credit: public domain image; source unknown.
Some…
esiegel | July 26, 2013"That's why I enjoy taking myself out of my own element, my own comfort zone, and hurling myself out into the unknown. Because it's during those scary moments, those unsure steps taken, that I am able to see that I'm like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly I illuminate magnificently and fire dusts begin to fall off of me... I'm a shooting star. A meteor shower. But I'm not going to die out. I guess I'm more like a comet then. I'm just going to keep on coming back." -C. JoyBell C.
Here in the Solar System, meteor showers are one of the things we take for granted on Earth. In particular…
esiegel | July 24, 2013"But certainly the laser proved to be what I realized it was going to be. At that moment in my life I was too ignorant in business law to be able to do it right, and if I did it over again probably the same damn thing would happen." -Gordon Gould, inventor of the laser
You're used to the iconic image of an observatory's dome surrounded by a dark sky. From within, a telescope peers up at the heavens. And with a huge amount of light-gathering power that dwarfs a fully dilated human eye, we can use this tremendous tool to peek into the dark depths of the Universe.
Image credit: Fort Lewis…
esiegel | July 22, 2013"Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair, that sliver of malice, that makes them think, 'Aha, here is the story.'" -Ayelet Waldman
Welcome back again to another Messier Monday, where we're all set to take an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky wonders that make up the Messier catalogue. Looking at the nearby stellar remnants, star-forming regions and young star clusters, as well as the more distant and larger globular clusters, the most common of all the Messier objects are also the most…
esiegel | July 18, 2013"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent." -Victor Hugo
Well, they say that man cannot subsist on bread alone, nor should he want to, and I suppose I'm no different. You all know I'm a big fan of music, particularly live, and with outstanding musicianship. You don't get much more outstanding than David Grisman, who's been tearing it up for around 40 years, producing some amazing music, like
Flatbush Waltz > Opus 57.
I've never seen him live, and that's all about to change. Because this year, he's headlining Northwest String Summit.
Image credit…
esiegel | July 17, 2013"These neutrino observations are so exciting and significant that I think we're about to see the birth of an entirely new branch of astronomy: neutrino astronomy." -John Bahcall
You've been around here long enough to know about the Big Bang. The vast majority of galaxies are speeding away from us, but more than that, the farther away they are from us, the faster they appear to be receding.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and H. Ebeling.
But it's more than that; when you look at a distant galaxy, because the speed of light is finite, you're actually looking at it in the distant past. Since…
esiegel | July 15, 2013"The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy." -Ezra Pound
It's time for another Messier Monday, where we profile one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier catalogue! This was the first large, accurate catalogue of fixed, non-transient objects to be assembled, and it makes for a delightful collection of targets for skywatchers all across the globe.
Image credit: Alistair Symon.
All throughout the next month, the Summer Triangle will delight skywatchers everywhere, as it flies high overhead in the early parts of the…
esiegel | July 14, 2013"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!" -Abraham Lincoln
There's a whole lot going on in the world right now, and you don't need me to tell you about it. You don't need me to tell you about injustice, inequality, persecution, or any of the other troubles facing humanity today, in my country and…
esiegel | July 12, 2013"By denying scientific principles, one can maintain any paradox." -Galileo Galilei
Day and night. It seems like the simplest, most natural thing about our world, that the Sun illuminates one half of the Earth at a time.
Image credit: Public Domain Image from Desktop Wallpaper HD.
While the Earth spins on its axis, orbiting the Sun, roughly half of our lives are spent bathed in the glorious daylight provided by our parent star. The other half is spent in the dark of night, our world illuminated only by the distant stars and galaxies visible from a great distance, along with a few nearby…
esiegel | July 10, 2013"It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing — a somewhat unfamiliar conception for the average mind." -Albert Einstein
You've heard and seen it plenty of times: Einstein's most famous equation, E = mc2. I've taken you inside this equation before, which lays out how much energy is stored in matter-at-rest, and tells you how much energy you need to create matter in the first place.
Image credit: Niels Madsen, ALPHA / Swansea / CERN.
That's right, you can create matter directly from energy; we do it all the…
esiegel | July 8, 2013"Cross that rules the Southern Sky!
Stars that sweep, and turn, and fly
Hear the Lovers' Litany:
'Love like ours can never die!'" -Rudyard Kipling
Welcome back for yet another Messier Monday, where we choose one of the 110 deep-sky objects making up Charles Messier's 18th Century catalogue to highlight in detail. Originally designed as a catalogue to help comet-hunters avoid potential confusion with faint, fuzzy objects, this now serves as a wonderful collection of star clusters, nebulae, stellar corpses, globular clusters and galaxies, among others.
Image credit: Pedro Ré of Astrosurf, via…
esiegel | July 6, 2013"If I see a spider in my house, I put it in a cup, and then I take it outside. I save it. What is wrong with me?" -Jacqueline Emerson
There's something not only incredibly useful but also beautiful about the intricate structure of a spider web. It's such a universally admired phenomenon that it's become a metaphor for many other things, as Welbilt sings you in their song,
Spiderweb.
Dependent on the type of spider and various environmental factors, the web can take on any number of beautiful shapes.
Image credit: Darlyne Murawski, via National Geographic Society, 2007.
Image credit:…
esiegel | July 5, 2013"I see a lot of new faces. But, you know the old saying, 'out with the old, in with the nucleus.'" -The Simpsons
Looking around the Universe today, there's no doubt that there's plenty of hydrogen and helium around; after all, it's the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium that powers the vast majority of stars illuminating the entire cosmos!
Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and H. Ebeling.
But here on Earth, hydrogen and helium are only a small part of the world we inhabit. By mass, hydrogen and helium combined make up far less than 1% of the Earth, and even if we restrict ourselves to the…
esiegel | July 3, 2013"To disagree leads to study, to study leads to understanding, to understand is to appreciate, to appreciate is to love. So maybe I'll end up loving your theory." -John Wheeler
Out there in the Universe, there's a lot to marvel at. Over billions of years, gravity has attracted different portions of the expanding Universe together into large superclusters and filaments, each made up of clusters, groups, and individual galaxies separated by great cosmic voids.
Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey, 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, and Millenium Simulation.
From the observations of this structure…
esiegel | July 1, 2013"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them" -J.R.R. Tolkien
Every Monday has been devoted to our ongoing series on Messier's objects for nearly a year now, and we've covered some spectacular objects, from open star clusters to spiral galaxies, from globular clusters to giant ellipticals, from star-forming nebulae to the rare starburst galaxy, and from the lone supernova remnant to Messier's greatest mistake. With 110 deep-sky wonders to choose from, each one tells its own unique story.
Image credit: Mike Keith of http://cadaeic…
esiegel | June 28, 2013"It's a wonderful world. You can't go backwards. You're always moving forward. It's the wonderful part about life. And that's terrific." -Harvey Fierstein
Yes, it's true. As stationary and secure as it seems when you plant your feet firmly on the ground, the reality is we are always moving through the cosmos.
Image credit: H.A. Rey, via Samuel J. Wormley of http://www.edu-observatory.org/.
About its axis, the Earth spins around once per day. Unless you're at the exact north or south pole of the planet, that means that you are in motion, too! The fastest-moving among us are located at the…
esiegel | June 26, 2013“...the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” -Carl Sagan
As many of you know, I'm fortunate enough to live in a city that values science and scientific knowledge so highly that the our local news station, KGW, routinely brings on scientists to talk about the lastest developments in our endeavors to understand the Universe around us. Just last week, I was invited to share five wonderful minutes of airtime with the viewers of not just Portland, OR, but (thanks to the web)…
esiegel | June 24, 2013"New stars offer to the mind a phenomenon more surprising, and less explicable, than almost any other in the science of astronomy." -George Adams
Welcome back to another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! The Messier catalogue was the very first accurate deep-sky catalogue with over 100 objects, finally topping out with 110 in its final form today. Compiled in the 18th century by Charles Messier and his assistant Pierre Mechain, this collection of fixed, deep-sky objects contains 110 of the brightest, most easily found and most spectacular sight in the entire sky.
Image credit: Tenho…
esiegel | June 22, 2013"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!" -Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you're a regular here, you're no doubt more connected and interested in what lies beyond this world than most. But how often do you truly get to experience the wonder of a dark night sky for yourself? Like a great many of you, I live in the city, and in a particularly cloudy, overcast part of the world. During much of the year, it's far too cold to be out stargazing, and for perhaps the…