Category Archives: Science

Kentucky Science Conversations – Professor Kate Bulinski writes a guest blog

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This is the second “Kentucky Science Converstions” guest blog.  As mentioned in last week’s post, Prof. Gerry Williger, an astronomer at the University of Louisville here in Kentucky, and Louisville’s Archbishop Joseph Kurtz set in motion a series of ongoing conversations about science.  This conversation has included Williger, Kurtz, Tim Dowling, who studies planetary atmospheric dynamics at UofL, and Kate Bulinski, a geoscientist with the School of Environmental Studies at Bellarmine University in Louisville, and me. I of course had to encourage all of these folks to contribute posts to this blog. Today we have a guest post from Professor Kate Bulinski, who is is an Associate Professor of Geosciences in the School of Environmental Studies at Bellarmine University. She received her B.S. in Geoscience from The Pennsylvania State University in 2002 and her Ph.D. in Geology from University of Cincinnati in 2008. In addition to teaching classes for undergraduate students each semester, she pursues paleontological research often involving her students. … Continue reading →

Kentucky Science Conversations – Archbishop Joseph Kurtz writes a guest blog

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I am happy to introduce to readers of The Catholic Astronomer a few guest bloggers.  In September 2017, with astronomy “in the air” thanks to the August 2017 eclipse, my friend and colleague, Prof. Gerry Williger, an astronomer at the University of Louisville here in Kentucky, sent an invitation to Louisville’s Archbishop Joseph Kurtz to attend some of the talks that are part of the Public Astronomy Lecture Series hosted by UofL’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.  Archbishop Kurtz got right back to Gerry, commenting on his own interest in astronomy, and suggesting that they get together to discuss their common interest.  Gerry in turn suggested inviting me and Tim Dowling, who studies planetary atmospheric dynamics at UofL (and who has written a guest post for The Catholic Astronomer on the 2017 eclipse).  Within a week or two the four of us were having our first meeting.  Astronomy was the spark for this endeavor, but of course there is more … Continue reading →

Sunset for Dawn

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This entry is part 27 of 27 in the series The Dawn Misson to the Asteroid Belt

NASA’s Dawn mission has come to an end; the spacecraft has run out of propellant, and is no longer able to point its antenna at Earth. I’ve seen numerous posts online from distraught astronomers and space enthusiasts – this post will add to that cacophony. The Dawn spacecraft visited the two most massive bodies in the main asteroid belt: asteroid 4 Vesta, and dwarf planet Ceres; Dawn orbited both of these bodies – a first in spaceflight history. Dawn was propelled by an ion drive; with barely a breath of thrust, its engine operated for tens of thousands of hours; Dawn set the record for velocity change produced by a spacecraft’s engines. I’ve followed the Dawn mission since its launch; “The Dawn Mission at Asteroid Vesta” was the first topic I lectured about as a volunteer NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador. So much new and interesting information kept pouring in during the mission, I had to update my Dawn lecture continuously; I’ve … Continue reading →

IAU Adds Lemaître’s Name to Hubble Law

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This year marked my first opportunity to attend a general assembly of the International Astronomical Union.  It was an exciting two weeks in which scientists from all branches of astronomy and space physics gathered in beautiful Vienna, Austria to discuss their research and to do the work of the IAU.  Walking around the meeting venue, one could see astronomers of all stripes, from all over the world, and occasionally one could catch a glimpse of one of the “Big Names” in astronomy wandering about, usually in heated discussion with others about some important topic or other. What makes the IAU different from other scientific meetings is that it serves as the governing body for those aspects of astronomy that require universal agreement, such as the naming of stars and asteroids or of features on planets and moons.  It was the IAU that famously voted in 2006 to change the definition of a planet, which resulted in the “demotion” of Pluto … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Souvenirs from Space

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This entry is part 34 of 175 in the series Across the Universe

This column first appeared in The Tablet in October, 2004; it ran here at The Catholic Astronomer in 2015 Typhoon 23 and I arrived in Japan on the same day. My mission (I can’t speak for the typhoon) was to attend an international workshop on sample returns from asteroids. Our hosts were the  scientists and engineers of  the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who are eagerly awaiting the arrival next summer of their spacecraft, Hayabusa, at asteroid Itokawa. (The remarkable challenges and eventually successes of Hayabusa can are described nicely at its Wikipedia site.) Astronomers usually have to be content with observing their objects from afar. But nothing beats actually going to a place to see what it’s really like. Itokawa is a potato-shaped lump of rock less than half a kilometer in diameter that apparently drifted into our neighborhood from the asteroid belt; though it looks like a typical asteroid, its orbit is not out beyond Mars but rather much … Continue reading →

The Mound, the Fort, and the Church: The Trees Speak to Science (Part II)

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How old is Serpent Mound, a Native American monument notable in part for its astronomical alignments? Last week we saw how E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis argued that the Native American works that they surveyed in the 1840’s had to be many centuries old, by reason of the trees growing on those works. However, you may recall from my post of three weeks ago that the Ohio History Connection (formerly the Ohio Historical Society), who operates the Serpent Mounds site, states that— Thousands of years ago, Native Ohioans populated the landscape with mounds and massive earthworks. In the late 19th century, Harvard University archaeologist Frederic Ward Putnam excavated Serpent Mound, but he found no artifacts in the Serpent that might allow archaeologists to assign it to a particular culture. Based largely on the nearby presence of Adena burial mounds, later archaeologists attributed the effigy to the Adena culture that flourished from 800 B.C. to A.D. 100. This theory … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Eccentric visitor

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This entry is part 3 of 175 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in October 2017 Studying the universe forces us to see ourselves in a new and often disorienting context. It’s not always easy. Talking with astronauts aboard the International Space Station on October 26 [2017], Pope Francis asked them, “traveling in space, thinking about things we take for granted here on Earth like the concept of “up” or “down”… tell us, is there something in particular that has surprised you, living in the Space Station?” The American astronaut Mark VandeHei replied, “in this environment, where we really don’t need the concept of up and down, to get my bearings I still have to decide which direction to perceive as up.” Every day in my meteorite lab I work with rocks that have passed through the sky (“meteorite” comes from the Greek word for sky), tangible evidence that the clouds are not an impenetrable barrier between us and rest of the solar system. We can … Continue reading →

The Mound, the Fort, and the Church: The Trees Speak to Science (Part I)

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My post from two weeks ago discussed Serpent Mound, a large Native American monument, and the possible astronomical alignments in the mound, and really how uncertain is the question of those astronomical alignments. As the Ohio History Connection (formerly the Ohio Historical Society) says— Due to the short sight lines and the inability to define precise alignments… it may not be possible to determine whether the builders of the Serpent really intended it to be aligned to either the sun or the moon. Then last week’s post featured “astronomical alignments” in St. Louis Bertrand Church in my home town of Louisville, Kentucky, and how reliable the calculations and repeatable the results are regarding the position of the sun shining into that church (or into anything else). Not much is uncertain in that case. One nice thing about astronomy is just how reliable and repeatable it can be in so many cases—science at its cleanest and brightest: here are my calculations; … Continue reading →

Dust Storms on Titan

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Data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed what appear to be giant dust storms in equatorial regions of Saturn’s moon Titan. The discovery, described in a paper published on Sept. 24 in Nature Geoscience, makes Titan the third Solar System body, in addition to Earth and Mars, where dust storms have been observed. The observation is helping scientists to better understand the fascinating and dynamic environment of Saturn’s largest moon. “Titan is a very active moon,” said Sebastien Rodriguez, an astronomer at the Université Paris Diderot, France, and the paper’s lead author. “We already know that about its geology and exotic hydrocarbon cycle. Now we can add another analogy with Earth and Mars: the active dust cycle, in which organic dust can be raised from large dune fields around Titan’s equator.” Titan is an intriguing world — in ways quite similar to Earth. In fact, it is the only moon in the Solar System with a substantial atmosphere and the … Continue reading →

Rolling Dunes on Mars

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More and more frequently in recent years, I see images from space that simply take my breath away – this image from Mars did just that. I’m not sure what it is about these rolling dunes on Mars that struck me – maybe it’s that they are so similar to dunes on Earth, yet they exist millions of kilometers away on an alien world. Maybe it’s just that they are beautiful. You can download this image in multiple resolutions here. From the University of Arizona post: Dune fields located among canyon wall slopes are also known as “wall dune fields” and are further identified as either climbing or falling. Falling dunes are defined as large bedforms with lee faces on the downhill side—indicating that this is the direction of their migration—and on moderate slopes greater than 10 to 12 degrees. (A lee face is the the down-wind side of a dune.) On Earth and Mars, these types of dunes are … Continue reading →

The Light of Truth

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My post for last week discussed Serpent Mound in Ohio, and possible astronomical alignments present in that Native American monument. Today is the Autumnal Equinox—one of the days that supposedly is marked by the bends in Serpent Mound—so I am sticking with the theme of astronomical alignments. It turns out that astronomical alignments can be found in all sorts of places, if you think to look for them. A friend of mine, Justin Elliott, is the sort of person who thinks to look for them. He and his family regularly attend either the 9:00 AM or 10:30 AM Mass at St. Louis Bertrand Church in my hometown of Louisville. Perhaps because Justin grew up attending a “megachurch” that is relatively plain compared to St. Louis Bertrand, or perhaps because he has read too many mystery books to his own children, or perhaps because he watched too many movies of the “Indiana Jones” or “DaVinci Code” genres, Justin has a fascination … Continue reading →

Shadow of the Mothership

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This image showing the shadow of the Hayabusa2 spacecraft on the surface of asteroid Ryugu just blew me away! Hayabusa2 is an asteroid sample return mission operated by JAXA – the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The spacecraft has been surveying asteroid Ryugu for a suitable location to take a sample, and drop a couple of  unique rovers. The rovers are designed to move over the surface of the asteroid by hopping. As of this posting, the MINERVA-II1 rover is being deployed to the asteroid’s surface. [MINERVA-II1] The altitude of Hayabusa2 when this image was captured was about 80m! https://t.co/1PhAWx4f9u — HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) September 21, 2018 [MINERVA-II1] Communication with MINERVA-II1 has currently stopped. This is probably due to the rotation to Ryugu, and MINERVA-II1 is now on the far side of the asteroid. We are currently working to confirm if there are images capturing the MINERVA-II1 landing. #asteroidlanding — HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) September 21, 2018 Stay tuned!  … Continue reading →