Solar System
esiegel | August 30, 2012"I have announced this star as a comet, but since it is not accompanied by any nebulosity and, further, since its movement is so slow and rather uniform, it has occurred to me several times that it might be something better than a comet. But I have been careful not to advance this supposition to the public." -Giuseppe Piazzi, discoverer of Ceres, the first Asteroid
Out beyond Mars, but not quite out as far as Jupiter, a collection of thousands of rocky objects, ranging in size from pebbles all the way up to the size of Texas, lies the asteroid belt.
Image credit: David Minton and Renu…
esiegel | August 23, 2012"It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see." -Winston Churchill
We've come a long way in this Universe. Over the past 13.7 billion years, we've formed the light elements out of a sea of protons and neutrons, cooled and expanded to form neutral atoms for the first time, gravitationally collapsed hydrogen and helium gas clouds to form the first stars, borne witness to generations of stellar deaths and rebirths, lived through the formation of hundreds of billions of galaxies and the clustering together of thousands or more galaxies into clusters, filaments,…
esiegel | August 6, 2012“We are much closer today to being able to send humans to Mars than we were to being able to send men to the moon in 1961, and we were there eight years later. Given the will, we could have humans on Mars within a decade.” -Robert Zubrin
This is what we can accomplish when we invest in something big.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Mars Science Laboratory.
I'm not talking about the Olympics, of course. I'm talking about investing in science, in exploration, in robotics, in engineering, in technology, and in humanity, and what can we accomplish?
Image credit: Mars Curiosity / NASA / JPL…
esiegel | August 2, 2012"Ignignokt: Well well, I know that. I said that, but it's his nap time now.Err: 'Cause he like, sleeps during the day.Ignignokt: But at night he feeds.Err: And it's always night on the Moon!Ignignokt: Don't f*** with me, Err." -Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Moon Master
Ahh, the Moon. The brightest object in our night sky is familiar to all inhabitants of Earth, and during its full phase, easily outshines everything else in the night sky, combined.
Image credit: Furious Photos -- Amazing pictures by a delusional hack.
Capable of casting strong shadows, and easily giving off a light that's bright…
esiegel | July 20, 2012"The achievements of Apollo were so bold and our subsequent efforts so timid that the energy of those years seems like a youthful dream." -Buzz Aldrin
43 years ago today, humanity took our first steps on another world, venturing nearly 400,000 kilometers from home and walking on the surface of the Moon.
Image credit: NASA, Apollo 11, photo by Neil Armstrong.
Of course, what we found there was a world whose soil was very similar to our own, but devoid of any atmosphere, liquid, or signs of life, present or past. But out beyond the Moon, visible in the distance even when viewed from Earth,…
esiegel | July 13, 2012"For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature." -Ann Druyan
Here on Earth, we are well aware of how devastating storms can be. From hurricanes to flash floods, an unpredictable change in weather can turn a serene setting into a catastrophe in no time at all. The clouds that fill the skies can often portend what type of weather is coming, and to me, the most impressive and fearsome of all is the rare and remarkable…
esiegel | July 11, 2012"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." -Neil Armstrong
Here on our little wet rock in our Solar System, we often remind ourselves what a small world Earth actually is. The farther out in space we reach, the more this appears to be true.
Image credit: NASA / Apollo 11, taken by Command module pilot Michael Collins.
The Earth is the largest of the four inner, rocky planets in our Solar System, at more than 12,000 km in…
esiegel | July 9, 2012"You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo" -Eminem
Here on Earth, a cold, frozen winter lasts three months, with the Sun's rays pointed a maximum of 23.5 extra degrees away from your part of the Earth from normal.
On Mars, however, winters are even more severe.
Image credit: Calvin J. Hamilton.
With a slightly more severe axial tilt than Earth, an extra 78 million kilometers separating it from the Sun than our planet, and the coldest season of…
esiegel | June 30, 2012"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." -Mark Twain
So, you've been around a while, seen all sorts of things, and learned an awful lot about the world, solar system and Universe that we live in. But how well do you know it, really?
Image credit: NASA / Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
To scale and in order, these are the eight planets you know so well. There are the four rocky worlds of our inner solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and the four gas giants that dominate the outer solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and…
esiegel | June 26, 2012"We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." -Bill Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut
From hundreds of miles up, the International Space Station speeds around the Earth, completing 18 orbits a day, looking down on us and returning some absolutely fabulous images.
Image credit: Fyodor Yurchikhin and the Russian Space Agency Press Services, of Greenland from the ISS.
But what you may not appreciate is that my favorite images taken from the ISS weren't taken by American Astronaut Don Pettit (better known as @astro_Pettit), but rather by a…
esiegel | June 22, 2012"Some prophecies are self-fulfilling
But I've had to work for all of mine
Better times will come to me, God willing
Cause I can't leave this world behind" -Josh Ritter
You sure can't leave this world behind. At least, not very easily. The reason for it, of course, is gravity.
Image Credit: Physclips, via the University of New South Wales' School of Physics.
Here on the surface of the Earth, the gravitational potential well is pretty large; large enough that there's no easy way off. Sure, you can pour a huge amount of energy into a rocket to try and overcome this gravitational potential…
esiegel | June 19, 2012"Soon the earth will tilt on its axis and begin to dance to the reggae beat to the accompaniment of earthquake. And who can resist the dance of the earthquake, mon?" -Peter Tosh
Every year, there are two special days where every place on Earth receives the same amount of sunlight -- 12 hours -- split evenly between night and day: the equinoxes!
Image credit: timeanddate.com.
Like all known objects that revolve around another due to gravity, the Earth rotates along its journey around the Sun. But on those two days of the equinox (from the Latin, meaning "equal nights"), the Earth's axis-of-…
esiegel | June 14, 2012"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody." -Mark Twain
Back before the telescope was invented, Saturn was known as the Old Man of the Skies. The slowest-moving of the naked-eye planets, it's the only one that would reliably be in nearly the same location, year after year. You can find it all summer, after sunset, by following the "arc" of the handle of the big dipper all the way until you run into the brightest northern-hemisphere star, Arcturus, and then speeding on to the very bright Spica. Saturn is right next door.
Image credit: EarthSky.org.
But…
esiegel | June 8, 2012"Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen." -Larry Niven
Here on the solid ground of the Earth, the Sun and Moon rise and set on a daily basis. During the hours where the Sun is invisible, blocked by the solid Earth, the stars twirl overhead in the great canopy of the night sky.
Image credit: Chris Luckhardt at flickr.
In the northern hemisphere, they appear to rotate around the North Star, while in the southern hemisphere, the stars appear to rotate about the South Celestial Pole. The longer you observe -- or for photography, the longer you…
esiegel | June 5, 2012
Image credit: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Good luck, clear skies and great viewing for everyone out there trying to see the Venus Transit!
Update 1: Watch the event live here, or watch the embedded NASA video stream, below:
Live video from your Android device on Ustream
Update 2: here are the results of my Transit "expedition", where I didn't get any good photos directly through my protective eyegear, but the binocular trick paid off handsomely.
Image credit: Kelly Montgomery, from my crummy binoculars duct taped onto a tripod.
No, really, that's what this is. For those of you who'…
esiegel | June 4, 2012"Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties." -James Jeans
Here on Earth, every living thing is based around four fundamental, elemental building blocks of life: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and, perhaps most importantly, carbon.
Image Credit: Robert Johnson / University of Pennsylvania.
From diamonds to nanotubes to DNA, carbon is indispensable for constructing practically all of the most intricate structures we know of. Most of the carbon in our world comes from long-dead stars, in the form of Carbon-12: carbon atoms containing six…
esiegel | June 1, 2012"The moon shuts off the beams of the sun as it passes across it, and darkens so much of the earth as the breadth of the blue-eyed moon amounts to." -Empedocles, ~450 B.C.
Less than two weeks ago, I saw my first annular eclipse, with some spectacular results at the moment of maximum eclipse.
From my first eclipse expedition, to False Klamath Cove, on the coast in northern California.
This happens, of course, because -- from our point of view -- the Moon appears to pass in front of the Sun, blocking a fraction of the light coming from it.
Image credit: NASA / Solar Dynamics Observatory.
And…
esiegel | May 24, 2012"Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." -D.H. Lawrence
Here in our Solar System, the planet closest to our Sun is Mercury, speeding around in a complete orbit once every 88 days, with daytime temperatures reaching a sweltering 400° C, or around 800° F.
(Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University / Carnegie Institute of Washington.)
With its size, temperatures, and distance from the Sun, Mercury has had its entire atmosphere stripped away by the Sun. And while these temperatures might seem hot, in comparison with…
esiegel | May 21, 2012"A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success." -Elbert Hubbard
I've had the great fortune in my life to see a great many wonderful things with my own eyes, including the rings of Saturn, the phases of Venus, a couple of faint, distant galaxies, and a large number of sunsets, sunrises, and lunar eclipses. But as far as solar eclipses go, I missed the only realistic opportunity I ever had to see -- as Cara Beth Satalino would say -- that
Shimmering Thing.Back in 1994, an annular solar eclipse happened just 300 miles from where I…
esiegel | May 17, 2012"The Earth destroys its fools, but the intelligent destroy the Earth."
-Khalid ibn al-Walid
Usually, when we talk about terraforming, we think about taking a presently uninhabitable planet and making it suitable for terrestrial life. This means taking a world without an oxygen-rich atmosphere, with watery oceans, and without the means to sustain them, and to transform it into an Earth-like world.
The obvious choice, when it comes to our Solar System, is Mars.
Image credit: Daein Ballard.
The red planet, after all, is not a total stranger to these conditions. On the contrary, for the first…