UNA Planetarium Newsletter
From your Editor Vol. 2. No. 3 March. 3, 2010
Modern science is often perceived as an endeavor that is pursued by a Image of the Month group of geniuses who constantly “discover” new things almost every day. I often get asked what I have “discovered” in my research or if I have discovered any new stars. These impressions of science and scientists come from the fact that science is a subject that is often poorly taught in public schools and that skills needed for science such as math are perceived as if they are in a person’s DNA rather than being an ability that can be cultivated and developed. As a result, people turn away from science and lead them to say that they “can’t do math”.
Far from being aloof, astronomy seems to be one of the more accessible sciences to many people. Most people would never walk into a professional biology or chemistry Galaxies collide in this Hubble Space Telescope image of Hickson Compact Group 31. lab and ask for a tour. However, The distorted galaxy at the left is actually a merger of two galaxies, with a third the public regularly visits galaxy at the right connected by a bridge of stars. A fourth galaxy lies above the observatories and looks through interacting pair. The bluish appearance of the galaxies is due to a massive burst of telescopes. Astronomy is also a star formation which is creating many young star clusters. Studies of these clusters science that members of the public show that some have more than 100000 stars which are less than 10 million years can still contribute to in a old. The galaxy group is 166 million light years away. Images like this give us a hint meaningful way. Projects like to our future. The Milky Way will merge with the galaxy M31 billions of years from Galaxy Zoo allow anyone to now. Image courtesy NASA. contribute to astronomical research. These citizen science Calendar for March 2010 projects will hopefully remove Astro Quote: Man must rise some of the mystique from science. above the Earth—to the top of the Mar. 2nd. Planetarium Public Night Over the next couple months I will atmosphere and beyond—for only th highlight a few of these projects thus will he fully understand the Mar. 5 . Solar Afternoon Program that invite contributions from the world in which he lives. Socrates. th public. Hopefully you will all Mar. 9 . Planetarium Public Night become active astronomical Mar. 11th. Solar Afternoon Program researchers. Anyone who wants to can do science! th Observing Highlights Mar. 16 . Planetarium Public Night
Mel Blake th Saturn arrives in the sky this month Mar. 18 . Solar Afternoon Program Director UNA Planetarium and visible in the low in the eastern sky in Mar. 18th. Shoals Astronomy Club Observatory. mid-evening. Meeting 7:00PM. Late in the month look for the planets Venus and Mercury in the west. In Mar. 20th. First day of spring. April they will be just a few degrees st apart. Mar 30 . Planetarium Public Night.
The March 2010 Sky for North Alabama
How to use this Chart: The sky is shown for 8:00PM, March15th for Florence, Alabama. It will appear this way one hour earlier for each week difference in time. The stars brightness’s are represented by different sized dots. The faintest stars you can see are the small dots; the brightest ones are large dots. Hold the chart with the direction you are facing down. So if you are facing north, hold the chart with north down. The circle represents the horizon and the center of the chart the point directly over your head. So an object half-way between the center and edge of the chart is half-way up in the sky. This chart was prepared using the SkyNow software of R. M. Blake. This chart may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes with the following acknowledgement included: Courtesy UNA Planetarium and Observatory. http://www.una.edu/planetarium/.
Projects and News
Planetarium Afternoon Programs
We have been getting good response to our new afternoon programs. Our weekly afternoon programs take place each Thursday at 4PM. The programs include a “Sky Tonight” planetarium program and weather permitting, solar observing through our new solar telescopes. In the case of poor weather the solar observing will be replaced with a digital planetarium show.
Research You Can Do: Galaxy Zoo 2 Supernova Search
A few months ago we told you about the Galaxy Zoo 2 project. This project involves volunteers who use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to classify galaxies and send in their results to astronomers who use the data for analysis and identification of unusual galaxies. The Sloan survey is repeating coverage of the sky and this will provide armchair astronomers with the opportunity to discover exploding stars – supernovae. Most stars like the Sun fizzle out when they run out of fuel. However, massive stars explode when they end their lives. In addition, mass-transfer in binary stars can send small, dense stars called white dwarfs over the edge and cause an explosion. Astronomers discover these explosions by comparing observations of a galaxy taken before and after the stellar explosions. The stellar explosions appear as bright stars where none were before. The Galaxy Zoo 2 project is organizing such a search that you can participate in and possibly discover a supernova. You can also help study galaxy types and model interacting galaxies. For more information check the Galaxy Zoo 2 website: http://galaxyzoo.org/
What’s Really Out There? By: Deb M. Bailey
Perhaps the most challenging question in astronomy concerns the possibility of life somewhere other than Earth. Could life really exist elsewhere? And if it does, will we ever encounter it? With thousands of UFO accounts and movies depicting aliens visiting from outer space, it seems that we would like to think other life exists. However, we must consider the probability that other100 Hourslife can of exist, Astronomy and if it is intelligent life. The best place to start when attempting to answer these questions is Earth, because it is currently the only known place which has life. By using Earth, we can study the necessary conditionsThe 100for thehours origin of astronomy and ongoing project existence is an of life, search for similar conditions on other planets, and finally, look for the actual internationaloccurrence of effort life elsewhere. to have 100 continuous hours of public outreach and education for To begin, we need to define life asnd we knowth it. All life on Earth evolves on some level and produces offspring. Knowing this, astronomy between April 2 and 5 . UNA we can say that life is anything which can reproduce and evolve to adapt to environment. Life requires the use of energy for reproductionPlanetarium and evolution. will collaborate All known with life the on Shoals Earth is carbon-based, meaning its physical basis is the carbon atom. When carbonAstronomy bonds to other Club atoms, to do sidewalkit forms long,astronomy complex, stable chains and can obtain, store, and use energy. Most other elements are notevents as capable and planetariumof producing programs. long and stable Look chains.for However, there are several elements, such as silicon, that are more abundanttimes on inEarth, the April so there newsletter. is a small possibility that other life is based on another element. The beginning of life on Earth is a difficult concept. The chemical bases for human DNA did not randomly come together all at once. It was developed through a long process of evolution. Once a life form begins to reproduce, natural selection maintains the most valuable traits for survival. Over time, the life form becomes more suited for survival and also becomes more complex in the process. This means that life begins as a very simple process, and becomes increasingly more complex as it evolves. The oldest known fossils on Earth indicate that life began in the sea, and it developed there for nearly 4 billion years before emerging on land. This seems that liquid water is important for life. Water has two distinct advantages over other liquids when it comes to sustaining life. The first is that it has a higher and wider range of temperatures in which it remains a liquid. On Earth, life can exist in either very cold temperatures or very hot temperatures, and the fact that water can exist in both is important. Second, ice floats. This provides sea creatures with insulation. If ice were to sink, it would cool the overall temperature of a body of water. Over time this would cause the entire body of water to freeze, and sea life could not survive.
There is a small likelihood that other planets in our solar system have liquid water. The moon and Mercury are not plausible for life because neither contains any trace of water nor any other liquid medium. While Venus has traces of water vapor in its atmosphere, the surface is too hot for liquid water to exist. However, Jupiter’s moon Europa appears to have liquid water beneath its frozen crust. But Europa’s water is kept warm by tidal heating, so that can change depending on where it is in orbit at any period of time. It’s possible that it was once completely frozen for an extended period of time. Considering how long it took for life to evolve on Earth, it is unlikely that complex organisms could have survived. This is what takes us outside of our solar system when looking for life. If we assume that all life, even that outside of Earth requires liquid water, then we must find planets within the habitable zones, or regions surrounding stars in which liquid water can exist. Our galaxy alone contains about 100,000,000,000 stars, and about half of those are single star systems like our sun. That means we have about 50,000,000,000 stars to consider for habitable worlds like our own.
If we did discover life on other planets outside of our solar system, how would we communicate? Because the distance between each star is so great, it would be incredibly difficult to travel to their world. Even the fastest commercial jet would need about 4 billion years to reach the nearest star. Our communication is limited to that of radio signals. Radio signals are electromagnetic waves that travel at the speed of light. If we were to send a question to a life form 10 light years from Earth, we would wait 20 years for a reply. However, in 1974, a group of astronomers sent a radio signal containing a simple message to the globular cluster M13, which is 26,000 light years away. The hope is that if other life receives the message, they will be able to decode it, and read the message. There have also been searches for extraterrestrial radio signals. This practice has become known as SETI, Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. If we were to discover alien intelligence, our view of our world, and certainly our universe, would change dramatically. We know that the elements we are made of are not only found in our solar system, so it is possible that life exists somewhere outside of the Milky Way. However, it might be thousands of years before we are able to make contact, if we make contact at all. Or maybe we are the only living creatures in the vast array of space.