Specola Guestbook: March 20, 1911 – P. H. Cowell

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This entry is part 21 of 24 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. Today’s guestbook entry is from March 20, 1911, when P. H. Cowell made a visit. Next to his name, Philip Herbert Cowell F.R.S. (1870-1949) wrote, “Nautical Almanac Office, Gray’s Inn, London.” He was superintendent of the H.M. Nautical Almanac Office, part of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, from 1910-1930. As an astronomer, he was particularly dedicated to celestial mechanics, computing and refining the orbits of many comets and other solar system bodies. He developed a method for computing perturbations in an orbit that proved to be both relatively simple and robust.  He is known for refining the orbit of the moon and resolving a discrepancy between its observed orbit and its theoretical orbit. He also showed that the supposed perturbations of the orbit of Neptune–that suggested the existence … Continue reading →

Skyward by David Levy: November 2019 – A Daydream

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This entry is part of 20 in the series Skyward by David Levy

Young Stephen was sitting at his desk in school, feeling bored. As he sat, he thought of the beagle, named Clipper, that his parents bought him. It was time for Clipper to take young Stephen on a tour through the night sky. On command Clipper appeared and said, “Tonight I will have you meet the Moon, and a new star.” “A brand new star I have never seen before?” “We are going to visit a couple of places in the sky—first the Moon, and then the Dog Star.” “Why”? Stephen demanded. “Because I said so,” Clipper howled. After all, Clipper is a beagle. And beagles are dogs too. Suddenly a cloud of whirling gases appeared out of nowhere. As Stephen hugged Clipper tightly, both boy and beagle slipped into the wormhole and somehow navigated through space and time. When they emerged, they were walking on the Moon. All was white, and mountains and crater walls towered into the sky. Despite … Continue reading →

Errors Published for Children

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An abundance of erroneous information can be found in books.  Unfortunately, that includes science books for children.  Recently I have been perusing children’s science books, looking for good material for the Vatican Observatory Faith & Science site, and I keep coming across things like the images below—a page from Scientists Who Made History: Isaac Newton (published 2001 by Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers: A Harcourt Company).  This is from a section of the book that talks about Newton studying the motions of the planets. Note the caption that reads “An early diagram from the 1600s showing the movements of the planets, all of which are travelling around the Sun in the center of the illustration”.  But note that, in fact, the Sun is not in the center of the illustration.  The Earth is in the center.  It is not travelling around the Sun; the Sun is travelling around it. The diagram is of the theory of Tycho Brahe.  Brahe’s name can be … Continue reading →

From the V.O. Faith and Science Pages: Emilie Du Châtelet on the existence of God

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Today’s featured entry from the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science pages: “Emilie Du Châtelet on the existence of God” (click here for it) Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet, wrote, among other things, a translation and commentary on Isaac Newton’s Principia (published posthumously in 1759), and a physics textbook for her son…. The second chapter of this textbook was addressed to the question of God’s existence [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 … Continue reading →

Sunspots for young children

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A recent Space Week workshop was attended by a class of young children. They ranged in age from 8 years down to 5-year-olds. A sun based drawing activity seemed like fun to me. I delivered a simple explanation of the power of our nearest star. How a sunny day helps us to smile, and how the sun does so many things for us every day. My presentation was very colourful showing off solar features like sunspots and prominences.  Sunspots for young children needed to be exciting and full of easy words.           I decided that drawing a sunspot would be achievable. Occasionally during workshops, I do a demonstration drawing to help kids to be more flowing in their efforts. Most kids will draw the edges of things and then try to add detail inside their shape. The shape they draw to start their effort dictates how the drawing progresses. Sometimes children get upset because their drawing … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: The competent man

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This entry is part 1 of 187 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in October 2018 When was the Golden Age of science fiction? To quote sf fan Peter Graham, it’s “twelve.” But certainly science fiction came into its own during World War Two and its aftermath when John W. Campbell edited Astounding Stories. Alec Nevala-Lee’s new book, Astounding, provides a fascinating look at Campbell and three of his most notable authors: Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard. When I was twelve I was a passionate consumer of their stories, anthologized and conveniently shelved in our public library just outside the children’s section. Even then I knew these stories were silly, if fun. What I never appreciated at the time was how this genre would come to dominate our culture. One striking insight of Nevala-Lee’s excellent book is how those early science fiction stories praised the engineer as “the competent man.” The way they glorified competence perhaps reflected the fact that most of … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – November 5, 2019

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This entry is part 121 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

Jupiter is low on the horizon, and Saturn is high in the southwestern sky after sunset  this week. Mars appears low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. The Moon appears in the south-southeastern sky after sunset this week – going from first quarter, to a waxing gibbous, to full early next week. The full Moon appears high in the southeastern sky above the constellation Orion at 10:00 PM on Nov. 11th. The Pleiades star cluster (M 45) and the constellation Taurus with the bright red star Aldebaran appear nearly overhead at midnight all week. Venus appears low on the southwestern horizon after sunset   Transit of Mercury Transits occur when a planet or another body moves in between another distant body and an observer; transits of our Sun are rare and fascinating astronomical events, and one is happening on November 11, 2019 from 7:36 AM-1:04 PM EST! You will need a telescope to see Mercury cross the face of … Continue reading →

Agassiz’s mentor

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This entry is part 11 of 12 in the series Lunarcy

When the libration is right you get a rare view of a huge crater that is normally out of sight. Here you can see it as a large oval near the limb with black basaltic flooded areas on its floor and a sparkling white offset central peak. This is the great crater Humbolt (213km dia.) named after the explorer, naturalist and geographer that was the mentor of Louis Agassiz. This presentation gives us a nice demonstration of just how shallow these grand depressions are. It has huge cliffs on the far side and a floor covered with rimae just barely seen from earth view here. These were likely caused from settling of the flooded floor as it cooled. Adjacent to the near side of Humbolt is the ghostly outline the crater Phillips (128km). Just beyond Phillips is a small bright floored crater Phillips A (13km). In the upper left corner of this image is the fabulous crater Petavius with the … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook: Dec 13, 1910 – Maurycy Rudzki

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This entry is part 20 of 24 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. Today’s guestbook entry is from December 13, 1910, when Maurycy Rudzki made a visit. Next to his name, Maurycy Pius Rudzki (1862-1916) wrote, “k.k. Sternwarte Krakau” (The Royal Observatory of Krakow). [n.b. Moritz is a variation of Maurycy] Rudzki was a geophysicist who directed the department of geophysics and meteorology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He was the first person to be formally called a professor of geophysics. He established the first seismological observatory in Krakow, and in 1904 started the bulletin, Resultate der meteorologischen, seismologischen und magnetischen Beobachtungen an der k.k. Sternwarte in Krakau. His research included seismology, oceanography, meteorology, and cartography.  In geophysics, his research focused on elastic anisotropy as it pertained to the propagation of seismic waves.     … Continue reading →

Navy Jets Harassed by Magical Mermaid Tic Tac UFOs!

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Have you heard the news about the UFOs and the Navy pilots?  It has been covered by a variety of media outlets.  Years ago there existed a cheesy tabloid newspaper called the Weekly World News.  You could find copies for sale in the check-out lanes of grocery stores.  The front page of the WWN always featured some sort of bizarre story about half-human/half-bat creatures, or Bigfoot, or (of course) UFOs and Space Aliens.  The WWN is gone from the checkout lanes, but today it is the major news outlets that are providing coverage of UFOs and Space Aliens. The UFO coverage relates to U.S. Navy pilots who have reported encountering objects shaped like “Tic Tac” candies, but large (up to 40 feet long).  The Tic Tacs reportedly fly about and perform all sorts of incredible aerial maneuvers.   Just recently the Navy confirmed that certain video clips related to these reports (video clips that have been banging around the internet for … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Featureless Features

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This entry is part 94 of 187 in the series Across the Universe

At the end of September 2016, Rosetta finally ended its mission by crashing into its comet. This column, about an earlier aspect of the Rosetta mission, first appeared in The Tablet in October 2010; we first ran it here in 2016.   Back in July [2010], ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, en route to a comet rendezvous in 2014, flew past asteroid Lutetia, a 100 km pile of rock orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. The result of that encounter was a hot topic of both the European Planetary Science Conference in Rome in September and a meeting of American planetary astronomers in Pasadena in October [2010]. Studying asteroids has always been challenging. Even in the largest telescopes they’re mere dots of light, too small to show any shapes, much less surface details. We can only infer their nature from the most subtle of hints: how their brightness varies as they spin, how much infrared light they radiate, their visible and infrared colours. Minerals that contain … Continue reading →

In the Sky This Week – October 29, 2019

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This entry is part 120 of 125 in the series In the Sky This Week

The Moon appears near both Jupiter and Saturn this week in the southwestern sky at dusk. Saturn and Jupiter are excellent observing targets; Jupiter is getting lower towards the horizon each evening, and will be lost in the glare of the Sun in early December. Note: This region of the sky will have a conjunction of the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus in late November – stay tuned! Mars appears low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. The Moon joins Venus and Mercury low on the southwestern sky at dusk on Oct. 29th – Mercury may be challenging to see. See if you can catch a glimpse of earthshine on the Moon for the next couple evenings. The constellation Ursa Major and the very familiar “Big Dipper” asterism appear in the north-northwestern sky a few hours after sunset this week We get a LOT of clouds here in Michigan, and thunderstorms are not unusual; I saw this article on … Continue reading →