“Cosmos: Possible Worlds”, 4-6: Screaming from the Bleachers

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Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: Possible Worlds is on TV this fall.  It is great to see a popular show about science and scientists—a popular show that is educational.  I am a big Cosmos fan.  But of course, the show could always be better!  Maybe a lot better. Episodes 4 (“The Cosmic Connectome”) and 5 (“Vavilov”) were about the brain, and about genetics and agricultural science, respectively.  On these topics I have little expertise.  Nevertheless, I found troublingly narrow the discussion in Episode 5 of Soviet scientists who during the siege of Leningrad in the Second World War preserved the seed bank at Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov’s plant industry institute.  The show praised how these scientists preserved “several tons of edible material” even as 800,000 people starved to death in Leningrad—including the scientists themselves.  Tyson ends the episode with the following: So why didn’t the botanists at the Institute eat a single grain of rice?  Why didn’t they distribute the seeds and … Continue reading →

Science Week remote workshops

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This week was Science Week 2020 here in Ireland. My workshops have been a feature of the event for many years. Driving all over the country, presenting drawing workshops would be the usual format for me. However, this year the new normal was remote drawing workshops. |My Science Week remote workshops were born. A lot of hours goes into creating videos with drawing involved. Getting myself organised with a desk that had an overhead camera. Sorting out the filming, editing and sound by myself was a bit of a task. A learning curve for me that was well worth the journey and the effort. My videos were in use for Science Foundation Ireland’s Science Week in various schools around Ireland. They were also in use for Mayo Science Festival. I have to say that I missed the interaction with the children. However, I was very impressed with the drawings produced and was delighted that some teachers sent a selection to … Continue reading →

Skyward by David Levy: November 2020

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This entry is part 27 of 27 in the series Skyward by David Levy

Hello, Bennu! Not long ago OSIRIS-REx, a spacecraft sponsored by the University of Arizona and flown by NASA gently touched the surface of asteroid No. 101955, an asteroid named Bennu, tried to grab some material, and then quickly took off again. It was the first try, but it was a huge success! The craft gathered more than twice what was expected—so much that some small pieces of material started to leak out. Of course, if all the sample leaked out, then there was no sample. But that won’t happen. NASA plans to transfer the material to a safe storage container earlier than expected, and then the sample will be safe. The mission, run jointly by NASA and the University of Arizona, cost the U.S. taxpayers about eight hundred million dollars, plus about 185 million for the launch aboard an Atlas V rocket. OSIRIS-REx is an acronym for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer. Asteroid Bennu is an interesting … Continue reading →

ⓜ Faith and the Cosmos: I

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This entry is part 2 of 47 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… So, this is an odd article; not in that it’s unusual, itself — it is typical of the stuff I have written about faith and astronomy. In fact, it’s a nice summary of my ideas. What is odd is that, though I find three or four different versions of this in my files for “stuff I wrote in 2011” and I can see that it was edited (by someone named “Mike”) I have no record of where it was actually published. If anyone reading this can find it in print anywhere, that would be great! I don’t always remember to update my CV with non-science publications. Anyway, what I do see it that it originally was written in the fall of 2011… and the version I am publishing here is actually more or less my original draft, which I think is the freshest if not the most polished version. As with earlier articles that I have published here, this whole … Continue reading →

From the V.O. Faith and Science Pages: Agnes Mary Clerke

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Today’s featured entry from the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science pages: “Agnes Mary Clerke” (click here for it) Agnes Mary Clerke was an influential nineteenth-century writer whose primary subject of interest was astronomy. This entry contains a brief article from the Catholic Encyclopedia plus links to several other articles about her. [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, with even some material oriented toward young readers, up to material for university specialists. The F&S pages, like this blog, are made possible by the Vatican Observatory Foundation (the Vatican … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – November 17, 2020

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This entry is part 173 of 174 in the series In the Sky This Week

Mercury appears with Venus in the eastern predawn sky all week; both planets appear a bit closer to the horizon each morning – by next week, Mercury will be much closer to the horizon. Mars and Uranus continue to appear high in the eastern sky after sunset. If you have a large enough ‘scope, you can see Uranus: This is my shot before scaling it up to the closeup. Uranus is only 15 pixels wide. I took a lot of creative interpretations of the data to get the details you see in the final image, so I would consider it more an artistic rendering than a photo. pic.twitter.com/HbbjhxULFH — Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) November 16, 2020 Jupiter and Saturn continue to appear in the south-southwestern sky at dusk, and setting in the southwest a few hours after sunset; from Nov 17-20, the waxing crescent Moon joins the pair of planets. My wife told me that she had her astronomy students look … Continue reading →

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This entry is part 35 of 35 in the series Lunarcy

Seven days into this particular lunation, we had a favorable libration just at the northern edge of the limb on this image. It allowed for a very good view of a couple craters not usually seen so well. The large dark area in the lower left is the north shore of Mare Crisium and Mare Angius the dark meandering patch on the right side of Crisium. Notice just above it is the large crater Cleomedes (129km dia.) and above that is the well defined Geminus (88km). Then at the top edge of the image is Messala (128km) with its nicely terraced walls. Moving towards the limb you see another fairly well defined crater, Berosus (77km) and to the lower right another similar sized crater with a curious dark stripe across it’s floor, Hahn (87km). It appears from Lunar Orbiter images and the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature: 1:1 Million-Scale Maps of the Moon, that most of the northeast half of the … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook | May 10, 1922: IAU 1st General Assembly part 10

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This entry is part 68 of 70 in the series Specola Guestbook

Since its founding in 1891, many people have passed through the doors of the Vatican Observatory.  A quick perusal of our guestbook reveals several Names, including Popes, Nobel laureates, astronauts, actors, and saints. For the past few weeks, we have been highlighting visitors who came on the occasion of the first General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union.    Today’s visitors all came on May 10, 1922. They are Annie Dodwell, Frank Littell, Cesare Bardeloni, Armand Baar, and Gustave Ferrié. M. P. (or O.) Stroobant There is a “M.P. Stroobant” who signed, possibly the spouse or family member of Paul Stroobant who signed on the next page. I have not been able to find any references for this person. Annie Dodwell Next to her name, Annie Louisa Virginia Dodwell (1870-1924) wrote, “Adelaide, South Australia.” She was an Australian government astronomer and worked with her husband, George Dodwell, who was also a career government astronomer for Australia. Her husband (an IAU … Continue reading →

Oldest U.S. Planetarium Projector Found & Recovered

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This week I am re-posting an article by Glenn Walsh that I learned about through the HASTRO (History of Astronomy) mailing list. This is a fascinating story of lost equipment, stuff in barns, and the Adler Planetarium. Enjoy the read. You can see the original at Mystery Solved! Oldest U.S. Planetarium Projector Found & Recovered (September 18, 2020). Thanks to Mr. Walsh for permission to re-post it here.   A 50-year mystery has been solved! America’s oldest planetarium projector, the Zeiss II / III Planetarium Projector, operated at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium from 1930 to 1969, has been found and recovered. The author of this blog-post, Glenn A. Walsh, is proud to have assisted in the resolution of this mystery. On 1930 May 12, Adler Planetarium opened in Chicago as the first major planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, with a Zeiss Mark II from the Carl Zeiss Optical Works in Jena, Germany. Before World War II, four more Zeiss II Planetarium … Continue reading →

Active Region 2781

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Drawing Active Region 2781 Well, finally I got to see Active Region 2781 !! This active region is an enormous sunspot island of activity. AR 2718 is making its way across the Earth-facing surface of the sun. The last few years have given us crumbs in sunspot regions. However, the suns new eleven-year solar cycle has begun. We can look forward to more action in the future. This active region is over 100,000 km long. I was pleased to be lucky enough to have the time and a sunshine morning to capture it. These are somewhat complex drawings to do. Sometimes my pastel blows off the page before I get to fix it. I also have to try to balance the focus and the bandwidth every few minutes to enable clarity. Or at least the best achievable clarity. That morning the seeing wasn’t the best. The edge of the solar disc was wobbling like the heat haze you sometimes see … Continue reading →

The Virtuous Astronomer, Part III

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This entry is part 3 of 47 in the series And Then I Wrote

And then I wrote… as I mentioned the last two weeks, this article is adapted from a piece published in Italian in Civiltà Cattolica, which they ran in 2012. But I wrote it in English andI’m not sure the original English ever ran anywhere… because it runs to nearly 6,000 words, I have split it into three parts. The first two parst ran the last two weeks; here’s the finale, Part III, and I’ve decided not to hide it behind a firewall this time.. In order to do science, you must believe that science is worth doing. Which goes to the heart of the question: why do we do it? Do we study the stars to gain power or money or security by predicting the future, the way the astrologers try to do? To improve the timing of growing crops, the way the calendar-makers of the ancient world did? But our calendars don’t need constant revision; and our science has shown that astrology … Continue reading →

It’s All Greek. About Three of Kepler’s Book Titles. Part II: Astronomia Nova Aitiologetos

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Astronomia Nova, is arguably Kepler’s most famous work. Analyzing Tycho’s observations of Mars, Kepler breaks with millennia of tradition. Encouraged by Nicholas of Cusa’s style of mathematical Platonism assuming perfect heavenly spheres to be absurd, and under the weight of Tycho’s observations, Kepler concludes that planetary orbits are not perfect circles but rather the next best thing: ellipses. This has become to be known as Kepler’s First Law of Planetary Motion. Astronomia Nova also contains Kepler’s Second Law specifying the rate of orbital motion. The book was published in 1609, just months before Galileo’s report on his first astronomical observations with a telescope, Sidereus Nuncius.

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