Coronal loops are curving structures that appear as arcs above the photosphere of the Sun. Hot plasma causes these loops to glow in the extreme ultraviolet and X-ray portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Electrified plasma flowing along powerful magnetic field lines gives coronal loops their characteristic shape.
Continue reading →We had a winter of record winds, freezing temperatures and darkness. However this week, it seems the summer has finally arrived in Ireland. On May 21st I noticed a developing sun pillar on the horizon. As it progressed I took several images, each equally beautiful. The pillar of light interacted with the sky and the sea, altering colour and bringing drama as it peaked and faded after sun set. Beautiful to watch, it seemed to pierce the clouds just above the suns departure point. Sun pillars are shafts of sunlight glinting off ice crystals in our atmosphere. This phenomenon is explained well here on this wonderful site Atmospheric Optics On May 23rd the sun offered an active region for drawing. OK now the atmosphere was not the steadiest I have ever seen, but it was hot and the sky was blue. The active region was small and complex, the challenge to draw the sun in h-alpha with my … Continue reading →
Castletown House is a Georgian palace set in a magnificent landscape in Co Kildare. The building is full of grace and elegance of times long past . That splendour coupled with all that is required of a building for public events makes Castletown House a special place. It was a pleasure to be invited to do a workshop in this excellent venue. Particularly timely as it was on the eve of the launch of NASA’s InSight mission. The evening was set up for my Marvellous Mars drawing workshop. The audience were families , mams, dads and children, a perfect combination. It was a beautiful, with late warm sunshine , a powder blue sky over the greenest of green trees. Flowers, shrubs and land stretching out over 120 acres that seemed to go on forever It occurred to me that perhaps my audience might be small due to the pleasant weather and bank holiday. However 42 people arrived , sat … Continue reading →
People are believers. A couple of years ago National Geographic did a story with the headline “The World’s Newest Major Religion: No Religion”, which addressed how “the religiously unaffiliated, called ‘nones’, are growing significantly”. However, even the religiously unaffiliated are often believers. Many of my Astronomy 101 students are ‘nones’. When the class touches on early ideas about how the universe works, ideas that might involve religious concepts such as the god Helios being the reason for the rising and setting of the sun, students will often volunteer their lack of belief in any religion, and marvel at how people ever relied on ideas like Helios to explain the world. But when the class moves into the subject of intelligent life on other worlds (where we learn about the historical and scientific track record regarding the idea of intelligent extraterrestrials—and it is not a good track record, as I have recently discussed at length) a surprising number of students reveal … Continue reading →
A giant nineteenth-century orrery that mechanically reproduces the motions of the inner solar system can be found at the Center for Kentucky History in Frankfort, Kentucky. The orrery—also known as a planetarium—was created to be a teaching tool by Thomas Barlow (1791-1865) of Lexington, Kentucky, with his son Milton. However, it is also a work of astronomical art! I actually learned about the Barlow from Jamie Day, a professor of physics at Transylvania University in Lexington. He gave a talk on it at a conference at the University of Notre Dame in July of 2017.* This is the second grand-scale piece of astronomical art in Frankfort, Kentucky that I have featured in the Astronomy in Art and Architecture series (click here for the whole series)—the other being the Kentucky Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Thus Frankfort, Kentucky’s Capital, is definitely worth a visit if you are interested in astronomy. *The title and abstract of Prof. Day’s talk at the University of Notre … Continue reading →
When the phrase “The Terminator” is mentioned in may conjour up ominous dark tones lurking within its meaning. A science fiction phrase where a cybernetic organism can ask for ‘your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle’ then ride off to alter the course of humanity. Or the visually rich line that demarks daytime on the moon’s surface from night-time on the moon’s surface. The terminator is far from a straight line, it is ragged and uniquely fluid. Sunlight illuminates unevenly as it fills craters. Shadows form and transform during its progression across the lunar topography. Craters that penetrate the terminator and show their rims as glints of light in the blackness bring a tactile quality to a sketch. Lunar sketching in the area of the terminator often brings up a dilemma . When a sketch takes several hours, sometimes the terminator vista alters to offer a new and brightly lit feature. This crater or mountain only revealed as you finish. … Continue reading →
Imagine that you heard someone make some broad general statement about basketball players: “basketball players take no interest in philosophy”, perhaps. And, imagine further that the notion that basketball players avoid philosophy is in fact accepted as conventional wisdom. But then you find several books on philosophy written by LeBron James and Larry Bird. Or suppose you heard some general statement made about musicians—that cellists don’t eat hamburgers, maybe—and suppose that the conventional wisdom is in fact that cellists don’t eat hamburgers. But then you see photos of Yo-Yo Ma and Mstislav Rostropovich munching Big Macs and Whoppers, respectively. Those general statements about basketball players and cellists are imaginary. However, perhaps you have actually heard this general statement: “scientists are not religious”. And maybe: “the best scientists are definitely not religious”. In some circles, that seems to be the conventional wisdom. In 2017 Oxford University Press released a new book by Robert Iliffe entitled Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds … Continue reading →
I wanted to explore the lunar surface using something different. My usual tools are soft pastels, conte sticks, my fingers, brushes and other instruments. My aim was to achieve greater detail while experimenting. Wooden toothpicks and cocktail sticks are useful, however, they lose their points very quickly. Metal tools might give me a better more durable range of lunar sketching implements. On the hunt for teeny tiny metal devices, I came across a set of quilling tools. They are something to do with curling paper and card, anyway in the pagkage was a quilling needle. This is a very sharp long needle with a wooden handle, so yes it offered possibilities for use in lunar sketching. The area close to the terminator near the South West region of Mare Serenitiatis looked like it had a lot of linear features and subtle shading mixed in with some well defined craters like Manilius, Agrippa and Godin, ( Mare Tranquillitatis region) and … Continue reading →
Recently I was invited to do two workshops at St Columba’s College in Dublin. I decided to launch my new workshop for 2018/2019 entitled, Let’s Go To The Moon – Apollo 11 . The college was founded in 1843. The architecture is a cross-pollination of Victorian , Georgian and 21st century on a 140 acre setting on the slopes of the Dublin mountains. The day I visited the grounds were acutely swaddled in snow,adding to the rich atmosphere of the place and its history. The phrase deep and crisp and even echoed in my head. My workshops were part of the college Arts Week 2018. Attending were a mixture of primary school and first year second level pupils. The sessions took place in the beautiful new science building fully equipped for exploring the moon landing through drawing. The room has a lovely new 8 inch dob, which the science teacher will use to share the moon and other night time … Continue reading →
Wednesday, March 14, is Pi Day. If you are not familiar with Pi Day, here is the story: March 14 is called Pi Day because it is 3/14, and of course 3.14 is Pi rounded to two digits (Pi being 3.1415926535897932384626433832795…). It has been celebrated in various forms for thirty years. Google did a Pi Day Doodle in 2010. Pi is fascinating. It is infinite, but it is not repeating and it is not ‘random’. It means something—namely the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Within its infinity are many interesting things. Its infinity of digits contain all sorts of numbers; you can explore what is in the first two billion digits using the SubIdiom Pi calculator (click here for the calculator). Try it out. Put in some digits. See if those digits can be found in the first two billion digits of Pi. For example, how about the numbers 1-9 in ascending order? SubIdiom says … Continue reading →
This column first ran in The Tablet in March 2017 What do you tell a room of bright young high school science students? That has been my challenge recently, visiting Jesuit high schools across North America. Pope Leo XIII wanted the Vatican Observatory to show the world how the Church supports science; while the other Jesuits have been doing the science, I’ve been “showing the world”. The hardest but most important message for these students to hear is the need to look beyond the math and sciences they love, to treasure as well other course work that they might find more difficult to appreciate. Unlike in Britain, schools in America are less likely to narrow their focus purely into “arts” or “sciences” tracks, but the students themselves may well gravitate into the sciences because they feel awkward in the disciplines where they feel less talented. Science is a field of exciting ideas; but it’s the arts that provide an essential … Continue reading →
Below is a slide show of the original nine drawings of the proms on the solar limb on July 19th 2007 Proms It is truly fascinating to watch prominences on the solar limb. One day back in July 2007 the sun came out after many weeks of dullness. The eastern limb was graced with many twisting dancing proms. In order to capture the movement and continuing changes in the structure of the proms I decided to do a sequence of drawings. In general I would draw what I see and then wait 15 or 20 minutes before drawing the same proms again. A slight haze developed, therefore the sketches have a little more time in-between them. The morning proms seemed to leap into space, with the exuberance of dancers in a ballet. In the afternoon the action continued, this time akin to bubbles interlinking and changing shape . Arcs of energy holding on to the limb. Some proms seemed to … Continue reading →
