Stupid Astronomer Tricks #17: Input/Output

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This entry is part 17 of 17 in the series Stupid astronomer

Almost over!

We're running a membership drive this month – our goal is 150 new members – and as a part of it we're including this blatant clickbait series... Besides, it's a chance to tell some of the funny stories that come up during cloudy nights at the VATT!

The old astronomer tells the tale... Yesterday we talked about the problems of getting rid of the gas in the absorption tube after its spectrum had been measured. Just piping it outdoors left a telltale red spot, so for the next gas the lab personnel decided to be more clever.

Along with inorganic chemicals like the ones mentioned yesterday as possible constituents of Jupiter's atmosphere, there were many organic molecules that might exist there; most of them presumably derived from broken-up and reassembled bits of simpler, more basic compounds such as HCN, better known as hydrogen cyanide. So the tube was dutifully filled with cyanide and the spectrum measured. Now, to get rid of the cyanide...

Even astronomers know that this chemical is deadly. They also knew that it could be dissolved in water, so their first step was to pump the gas into a glass beaker of water; then, all they had to do was to get rid of the water. This should be easy enough, right? This is Arizona! Water evaporates quickly.

This is not a flying saucer. But is it an intake or an exhaust vent? They don't teach you that in graduate school... (Image from captiveaire.com, who will happily sell you one of these guys)

While no one was looking, they took their beaker up to the roof of the building. Noting the large air conditioning vents there (this is Arizona!) they carried it to the corner of the roof farthest from those vents... uncovered the beaker... and waited for it to evaporate away.

Meanwhile, in another room of the building, the graduate students were assembled to hear one of their own presenting his research on his thesis topic, an obscure observational technique (that never did work). As they were pleasantly drifting off to sleep in the seminar room, a professor with a chemistry background suddenly leapt to her feet.

"Everyone out of here!" she exclaimed. "I smell cyanide!"

The building was evacuated. The campus patrol and fire department came to look for the source. And someone went up to the roof to warn the guys up there... who were standing as far as possible from the air conditioning exhaust vents, not realizing that this put them exactly next to the air conditioning intake vent...

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Size and Distance Models

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Introduction My December blog (The Headless Angels and the Four Science Concepts) dealt with science concepts in general, and concluded with a brief discussion of size and distance models of the Solar System. Larry and I developed the models many years ago for use in teacher in-service training workshops. The updated activities described below are now being used for Girl Scout Adult Leadership Workshops under the auspices of a NASA-funded program, Reaching for the Stars: NASA Science for Girl Scouts. SIZE MODEL 1: The Diameters of the Planets Background: Planetary scientists sometimes use the Earth as a reference point in making measurements. For example, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is called an Astronomical Unit, or AU, and is used to describe distances in the Solar System. Another example is Earth’s atmospheric pressure (14.7 lb per square inch); it is referred to as one atmosphere (1 atm), and the atmospheric pressures of the other planets are sometimes expressed … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – January 28, 2020

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This entry is part 133 of 133 in the series In the Sky This Week

The handle of the “Big Dipper” asterism points nearly straight down toward the northeastern horizon at midnight this week. The waxing crescent Moon appears near at dusk on Jan 29th & 30th. The Moon appears near the star Aldebaran at dusk on the evenings of February 2nd-4th. Jupiter appears low and Mars appears high above the southeastern horizon at dawn this week. M 47 Messier 47 (M47 or NGC 2422) is an open cluster in the constellation Puppis. It was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654 and independently discovered by Charles Messier on February 19, 1771. It was later independently discovered again, under the current name NGC 2422. There is actually no cluster in the position indicated by Messier, which he expressed in terms of its right ascension and declination with respect to the star 2 Puppis. However, if the signs of Messier’s coordinate differences are changed, the position matches that of NGC 2422. Until the equivalency of M47 with NGC 2422 was found, M47 was considered a lost Messier Object. The discovery that M47 and … Continue reading →

Stupid Astronomer Tricks #16: The Great Red Spot

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This entry is part 16 of 17 in the series Stupid astronomer

Down to our last few entries! We’re running a membership drive this month – our goal is 150 new members – and as a part of it we’re including this blatant clickbait series… Besides, it’s a chance to tell some of the funny stories that come up during cloudy nights at the VATT! The old astronomer tells the tale… These past few days, we’ve been talking about the gas tube that used to run through the Lunar Lab, a meter wide and hundreds of meters long, filled with various hideous gases that were thought to be found in planetary atmospheres; the idea was to run sunlight through the gas and measure the wavelengths that each gas would absorb. One gas in particular, thought to be responsible for the color of Jupiter’s Red Spot, was phosphine. Phosphine is one phosphorus atom surrounded by three hydrogen atoms; if you look at the periodic table of the elements you see that P is just … Continue reading →

Truth and Trolls: Betelgeuse Going Boom?

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“Hey Father, did you hear that Beetlejuice is going to explode tomorrow?” Whenever I hear such statements, my first response is always a smile at the mispronunciation of Betelgeuse. A couple years back, I shared with Br. Guy how I was a little embarrassed to find some missed typos in my first book, God’s Canvas, after it had been published. Br. Guy consoled me by sharing that it was a couple years before someone pointed out that the star “Betelgeuse” was misspelled “Betelguese” in his book, Turn Left at Orion (and the misspelling wasn’t his fault). It was one of those beautiful moments of realizing nobody is perfect and I shouldn’t expect that I would be any different. The second response when hearing of Betelgeuse’s impending demise was, “Oh boy… here we go again.” Whether it be Mayan Calendars supposedly predicting the end of the world, a comet that will destroy the Earth from three astronomical units away (meaning three … Continue reading →

Stupid Astronomer Tricks #15: The importance of good optics

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This entry is part 15 of 17 in the series Stupid astronomer

We’re running a membership drive this month – our goal is 150 new members – and as a part of it we’re including this blatant clickbait series… Besides, it’s a chance to tell some of the funny stories that come up during cloudy nights at the VATT! The old astronomer tells the tale… We described yesterday the absorption tube that once upon a time ran the length of the Lunar Lab… a meter wide, several hundred meters long, filled with the sorts of gases that might be found in the atmosphere of Jupiter… scary stuff like phosphine, silane, hydrogen sulfide, not to mention various wicked organics that people like Carl Sagan touted as evidence of life but which were, in fact, quite toxic to most life. How did the residents of this building feel about sharing their space with several hundred cubic meters of this nasty stuff? Nobody talked about it… though it’s notable that the floor with the tube was otherwise … Continue reading →

Under the Rainbow

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This entry is part 17 of 17 in the series Lunarcy

Situated on the western shores of Mare Imbrium, south of (and overshadowed by) Sinus Iridum (the bay of rainbows) are a curious collection of mountains, domes to be more precise, called (north to south) Gruithuisen northwest, Gamma and Delta or in the Lunar Dome Atlas, G3, G1 and G2. Seen here they are above center with the two southern domes being rather obvious and the northwestern one being a small peak casting a long thin shadow. This whole region is filled with little gems but often missed because of the grandeur of the Sinus. The northernmost of the three is also the shortest being only 1020m in height with the next one south being 1900m and the southernmost 1740m. They were all formed from eruptions of rather viscous during, appropriately enough, the Imbrium epoch (3.85-3.2 billion years ago). The crater from which they derive their names, Gruithuisen (17km dia.) is south of the small patch of unnamed mountains south of … Continue reading →

Stupid Astronomer Tricks #14: Waiting for the sun

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This entry is part 14 of 17 in the series Stupid astronomer

We’re running a membership drive this month – our goal is 150 new members – and as a part of it we’re including this blatant clickbait series… Besides, it’s a chance to tell some of the funny stories that come up during cloudy nights at the VATT! The old astronomer tells the tale… People think that astronomers come in two varieties, observers and theorists. But in fact there is a third group, a lively bunch of laboratory experimentalists who help the rest of us understand what we observe and what we need theories to explain. For example, it’s not enough to take spectra of stars or planets; you have to know what each of those lines and dips in the spectra mean. That requires work in the lab to measure the spectra of pure elements, or minerals, or the kinds of gases you might expect to find in a planet’s atmosphere. With the advances in advanced visible and infrared detectors in the … Continue reading →

Religious Scientists: Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955); Jesuit paleontologist

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This entry is part 12 of 12 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church

If one mentions the name Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the first thing that comes to mind is his philosophical/theological speculation on the evolution of Creation and mankind toward its ultimate Omega Point. During his lifetime (i.e. before the Second Vatican Council), such theories were quite controversial and he was not permitted to publish them. Even today, while many people embrace his writings, others continue to view them with skepticism. Regardless of one’s views regarding his theology or philosophy, one must also recognize that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was quite an accomplished scientist in the fields of paleontology and geology. He investigated early hominids, and took part in the discovery of Peking Man in China. Biographical Sketch: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born on the first of May, 1881, into a large French family in the region of Auvergne. His father instilled in him an interest in geology, and his mother encouraged his prayer and spiritual development. He attended a Jesuit … Continue reading →

From the V.O. Faith and Science Pages: Laura Maria Caterina Bassi of Bologna

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Today’s featured entry from the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science pages: “Laura Maria Caterina Bassi of Bologna” (click here for it) Laura Maria Caterina Bassi (1711-1778) of Bologna, Italy is often identified as being the first woman to earn a doctoral degree and the first to be a university professor (where she eventually became the highest paid member of the faculty)…. Laura Bassi accomplished her work in the realm of science while also being a wife, and mother of eight children… [click here to continue]. The Faith and Science pages (F&S) are a unique resource on the web.  The material in F&S is stuff that you will find nowhere else (or at least not without a lot of digging).  Featured areas on F&S include “History of Church and Science”; “Church and Science Today”; “Science and Scripture”; “Science, Religion & Society”; “Life in the Universe”; “Cosmology”; and more.  The level of the F&S material ranges from being accessible to all audiences, … Continue reading →

Stupid Astronomer Tricks #13: Weak tea

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This entry is part 13 of 17 in the series Stupid astronomer

Starting our final week! We’re running a membership drive this month – our goal is 150 new members – and as a part of it we’re including this blatant clickbait series… Besides, it’s a chance to tell some of the funny stories that come up during cloudy nights at the VATT! The old astronomer tells the tale… When I was a graduate student, we were paid a stipend by the department, money that our professors had written into their grants to pay for students. Our income was $300 per month, spread over ten months. (Summer salaries were another story; if they existed at all.) You could just about make ends meet on this salary so long as you didn’t have pesky needs like doctors or dentists or anything unexpected. Most of us got by on the basis of coming from families with enough money to backstop us. No surprise that the overwhelming majority of us were white, male, and mostly Protestant… … Continue reading →

The Infinite – Faith and Math (re-run)

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This post is a re-run of a post that originally ran in August, 2018. This post is part of a series of posts on Pi, infinity, and other things mathematical. Click here for the series. Why might a person see great intrinsic value in mathematical knowledge? Why might a person be a “math nerd”? Consider this lengthy quotation, from a piece written by Fr. Ron Rolheiser that was published in The Record (the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky) some time ago,* in which Fr. Rolheiser reflects upon the words of a woman who had gone through a profound spiritual experience: What she remembers most and most wants to share with others is this: “I learned that God is very close. We have no idea how close God is to us. God is closer to us than we ever imagine!” Her experience has left her forever branded with a sense of God’s warmth, love, and welcome, but what’s left … Continue reading →