esiegel | April 15, 2013"Upon one occasion, while engaged upon a seven-foot mirror, he did not remove his hands from it for 16 hours together." -from Caroline Herschel's obituary
Welcome to another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each Monday, we highlight a different one of the 110 deep-sky objects that Messier catalogued so that comet-hunters wouldn't confuse these permanent fixtures with transient comets. But each object has a unique, remarkable story in its own right.
Image credit: The Messier Objects by Alistair Symon, from 2005-2009.
Out of the 110 objects, a full forty of them are galaxies…
esiegel | April 13, 2013"There is an energy with stop-motion that you can’t even describe. It’s got to do with giving things life... to give life to something that doesn’t have it is cool, and even more so in three dimensions, because, at least for me, it feels even more real." -Tim Burton
Of course we always like to think of the world as being constantly in motion, with time flowing smoothly and continuously from one moment to the next. Living in our bodies, it feels -- as Ozomatli would say -- like no matter what, you
Can't Stop.
But our perceptions fool us. It's why you can take a series of stationary images,…
esiegel | April 12, 2013"Orbiting Earth in spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase beauty, not destroy it!" -Yuri Gagarin
Fifty-two years ago today, the first human being left Earth, and we began our journey into outer space. But back in 1961, we didn't really know how far outer space stretched, or where all the matter and energy in the Universe came from.
Image credit: NASA, 1962.
That all changed with the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (by Penzias and Wilson, with the Horn Antenna, above), and subsequent measurements that led us to the Big Bang picture of…
esiegel | April 10, 2013"A cosmic mystery of immense proportions, once seemingly on the verge of solution, has deepened and left astronomers and astrophysicists more baffled than ever. The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing." -William J. Broad
Three classic observations -- the Hubble expansion of the Universe, the leftover cosmic microwave background radiation, and the observed abundance of the light elements -- lead us inevitably to modeling our Universe as having begun in a hot, dense state from which it expanded and cooled. There is no other explanation that agrees…
esiegel | April 8, 2013"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." -Henry David Thoreau
Welcome to another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! Each week, we take a look at the 110 deep-sky objects that comprise the Messier catalogue, the first comprehensive catalogue of fixed, deep-sky objects that could possibly be confused for potential brightening comets.
Image credit: Giacomo Bongiorno of Le Meraviglie del Cielo.
Today, to mark our hitting the quarter-century mark in looking at these nebulae…
esiegel | April 7, 2013"Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human." -Albert Ellis
In my experience as a human being, I've seen far too often what evils can come from judging people who are different from you and the groups you identify with. We're all unique creatures, and we all will face many of the same challenges and fears in our lives, as Natalie Merchant reminds us in her rendition of the folk classic,
Poor Wayfaring Stranger.
I don't have the right to speak for anyone other than myself, of course, but I have…
esiegel | April 5, 2013"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Universe has been around for a long time: 13.8 billion years, to be precise. As humans, we're relatively young, and our species has only been around for the last couple of hundred thousand years of it. For nearly all of human history, this is what the night skies have looked like.
Image credit: The Milky Way, by Stephane Guisard.
When the Moon isn't out and you're in a place that's…
esiegel | April 3, 2013"On what can we now place our hopes of solving the many riddles which still exist as to the origin and composition of cosmic rays?" -Victor Francis Hess
We've come a tremendously long way in our understanding of the Universe, but there are plenty of mysteries still to be revealed. Way back in the late 1800s, we noticed that there was an unaccounted-for excess in the amount of ionization in the upper atmosphere, something that our Sun and Earth, by themselves, couldn't explain.
Victor Francis Hess -- the originator of the quote atop -- decided to go see for himself, and conducted a series of…
esiegel | April 1, 2013"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." -Dale Turner
This April Fools' day, even though the rest of the internet revels in trickery, happens to fall on a Monday. Over here at Starts With A Bang, that means it's time for Messier Monday, an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects catalogued by Charles Messier in the 18th Century to help comet-hunters avoid confusion. Today, the catalogue boasts 107…
esiegel | March 31, 2013"I'm not anybody's judge; I don't know what motivates people to do what they do. But I have a lot of admiration for anybody who can start with absolutely nothing and make a little something out of it." -Wilford Brimley
I've got a lot of respect for the creativity that goes on over the internet, ever since the original Winnie-the-Pooh and Spirit of Christmas videos I saw way back in the 1990s. But unlike the corporatized Harlem Shake, there's a classic from more than seven years ago that keeps spawning new videos: Wilford Brimley's commercials!
Image credit: Liberty Medical.
As I've told…
esiegel | March 29, 2013“If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens… Where Is Everybody?” -Stephen Webb
It's one of the biggest conundrums in the Universe, known as the Fermi Paradox: if the Universe is so conducive to life, and if there are so many opportunities for it within our galaxy alone, why isn't there any evidence (outside of the History Channel) of extraterrestrial life?
Image credit: Peter Essick, via National Geographic.
Moreover, why haven't we been visited by some extraterrestrial intelligence? After all, given the fact that our Universe is nearly 14 billion years old, while our galaxy itself is only a…
esiegel | March 28, 2013"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -Benjamin Franklin
Recently, a number of people -- of widely different ages and levels of education -- have contacted me for advice on whether or not pursuing a PhD in astrophysics/physics/science-in-general is right for them. Of course, I can't tell you whether a path is the right one for you or not, but there are certain questions I think everyone should ask themselves if this is, in fact, something you're considering. I'm going to be speaking mostly from my own experiences, both from what I've lived and from my peers, mentors and…
esiegel | March 27, 2013"The radiation left over from the Big Bang is the same as that in your microwave oven but very much less powerful. It would heat your pizza only to -271.3°C, not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it." -Stephen Hawking
One of the most powerful predictions of the Big Bang -- the fact that our cold, star-and-galaxy-rich, slowly-expanding Universe came from a hot, dense, much more homogeneous state -- was the existence of a bath of leftover radiation that should be detectable, even today.
Image credit: Pearson / Addison Wesley, retrieved from Jill Bechtold.
Back when the…
esiegel | March 25, 2013"I wouldn't dream of working on something that didn't make my gut rumble and my heart want to explode." -Kate Winslet
Welcome back for another Messier Monday! At the start of each week, we take a detailed look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier Catalogue. This week, we've got a very special happening in the night sky to introduce you to.
Image credit: Tenho Tuomi, Saskatchewan, Canada.
One of the most common class of object in the Messier Catalogue are galaxies external to our own Milky Way, which make up a whopping 40 of these 110 objects. Occasionally -- a little…
esiegel | March 23, 2013"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." -Confucius
I never was any good at taking someone's word for it; I've always been the type of person who wants to learn it for myself, and often that means living it and finding out on my own. This weekend, I'm still reeling from the loss of Magnolia Electric Company's Jason Molina, who died of alcohol abuse earlier this week. I'll remember him best for his heartbreaking vocals and lyrics, particularly at the concert I saw him…
esiegel | March 22, 2013"For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return." -Leonardo da Vinci
It's been a busy week here at Starts With A Bang, and with the two recent big posts -- one on the eve of Planck and one just after the first big data release -- I certainly wasn't planning on writing one today. After all, there are only so many things one can do in a week, and we've certainly learned some unprecedented things about the Universe just over the last couple of days.
Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration…
esiegel | March 21, 2013"Much later, when I discussed the problem with Einstein, he remarked that the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest blunder he ever made in his life. But this “blunder,” rejected by Einstein, is still sometimes used by cosmologists even today, and the cosmological constant denoted by the Greek letter Λ rears its ugly head again and again and again." -George Gamow, the father of the Big Bang model
The Big Bang -- the prediction that the Universe started from a hot, dense, rapidly expanding state -- tells us where our cold, star-and-galaxy-rich, slowly expanding Universe full of…
esiegel | March 20, 2013"Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view." -Max Planck
Tomorrow morning, at 8 AM my time, the press conference that cosmologists have spent the past decade waiting for will finally happen, and the Planck satellite -- the most powerful satellite ever to measure the leftover radiation from the Big Bang -- will finally unveil its results about the origin and composition of the Universe.
Image credit: ESA / LFI and HFI Consortia.
They've figured out how to subtract the…
esiegel | March 19, 2013"A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves." -Banksy
One of the great joys I got to experience came last year, when for the very first time, I was invited to be a guest of honor at a most fabulous convention: MidSouthCon 30!
Image credit: MidSouthCon XXX, originally from http://www.midsouthcon.org/.
I went into it not knowing what to expect, and I wound up having one of the best times I could have asked for. I met some of the kindest, most interesting people I've ever met in my life, and I felt like everyone there immediately accepted me into their…
esiegel | March 18, 2013"Every star may be a sun to someone." -Carl Sagan
Welcome back to yet another Messier Monday! Each week, we highlight one of the 110 deep-sky objects that make up the Messier catalogue: Charles Messier's legacy to comet-hunters and amateur astronomers, pointing out some of the most easily visible deep-sky objects as seen from our vantage point on Earth.
Image credit: Yvett Bass (M1-M55) and Josh Sanford (M56-M110), via Dan Bruton of SFASU.
Once-a-year, around the new Moon nearest to the vernal equinox, many amateur astronomers around the world attempt to view all 110 objects in the same…