Department Store Telescopes

Have you been looking up at the stars recently and thought about purchasing your own backyard telescope? Have your kids put telescope on their holiday wish list? Do you want to learn how to take photos of astronomical objects? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then I have one piece of advice for you: don't buy a department store telescope! Yes they are inexpensive and promise to show you beautiful images of the moon and planets, but they are more hassle than they are worth. I've had many friends and family members purchase these telescopes, struggle with their kids for hours in the back yard trying to see something with it, only to package it up the next day and toss it or re-sell it. Why are these telescopes so "bad"? Well, bad is really a poor choice of words. They are usually refracting telescopes designed to look at large bright objects, and they do a good job of that. One of the main complaints I get from people is that the images look blurry, so they try to magnify the image by inserting a higher magnification eyepiece, in hopes of getting a clearer view. What they don't realize is that magnification only blurs the image more. Theses telescope are small (usually a few inches wide) and only collect so much light. Magnifying that light is not going to make things more clear or brighter, its going to enlarge a small dim region, and likely make it look darker than before. The image you see will never look like the one on the box, guaranteed. The second complaint I hear is that they are difficult to "point", as in, even if you think you have it aimed at the moon, you can't see anything. This is a problem with all small, non-computerized telescopes, and can get really frustrating really quickly. My best advice here is to be patient and try to learn your way around the sky. Point the telescope towards the moon and practice lining it up by looking at the stars with your eyes, then through the telescope, and adjusting as necessary. Practice makes perfect with this. Lastly, you must remember that we live on a moving rotating sphere, and therefore, when you point your telescope at an object, it will only stay in your field of view for a short time before you have to readjust. This is true for all telescopes, unless you have one that "tracks".

So, I very much encourage you to buy a backyard telescope, and I don't want a bad experience with a cheap scope to detour your love of astronomy! You can still acquire an excellent, easy to use telescope for a few hundred dollars. Check out websites like http://www.celestron.com/ and http://www.meade.com/ and do your research! Ask friends in a local astronomy club what they suggest, or attend a telescope buying seminar. Often, local museums will offer workshops on how to purchase and operate basic telescopes for the beginner. Check these out, avoid the department store telescopes, and I promise you will love your new investment. Clear Skies!

Stars in Spiral Galaxies

Spiral Galaxy M74

When most of us think of a galaxy we think of a beautiful spiral shaped entity. Astronomers have been studying these spiral galaxies for quite some time now, and have noticed that most of the stars seem be located within the arms. To form a star, you need a giant cloud of molecular hydrogen, and other gaseous materials. The cloud will eventually collapse due to gravity and form stars, and some of those stars may even host planetary systems. Most of the material in a galaxy (gas, dust, rocks, etc.) sits in the spiral arms in the plane of the galaxy. So it makes sense that stars tend to form here; it’s where all the stuff is!  Because the spiral arms contain millions of stars, they glow very brightly in optical light. This allows Hubble, and other telescopes, to image the structure of the galaxy. M74, pictured above, is a perfect example of a spiral galaxy whose structure is illuminated by the light from many stars within its spiral arms.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage(STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration 

Curiosity Self Portraits

I'm sure many of you heard about the Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity in the news back in August. The rover successfully survived the trip and descent to Mars, landing safely in the early morning hours on August 6th (EST). Much of the scientific community was fretting about Curiosity surviving the landing due to all of the creative engineering maneuvers that needed to go of without a hitch for the rover to survive. Thankfully everything went smoothly and we are now beginning to study the Martian surface! A young girl, who has seen many of the photos the rover has taken, asked me why it keeps taking self portraits. "Why not point the camera at the Martian surface?" she asked. "We already know what the rover looks like. It's almost like he's taking a picture of himself for Facebook!"  There is good reason for Curiosity to take pictures of itself, and that is to make sure that everything is functioning properly. We want to make sure that nothing broke during Curiosity's trip, and we also need to make sure that camera, levers, wheels, etc. are all working as they should. Once we trust that everything is working properly, we can start to move the rover and do experiments. So we expect to see many more close ups of Curiosity on Mars, just as a sort of "check-up". Below is an image of almost the entire rover sitting on the Martian surface. Everything looks good to me!

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Is Today Affecting Yesterday?

I came across an article this morning, that’s more about quantum physics than astronomy, but it was so fascinating that I just had to share it with you all. Physicists may have discovered a way that the future can alter the past! Yup, you read that right, what you do today could affect what you did yesterday! How can this happen? Quantum physicists are studying the ideas of non-locality and causality. Non-locality is the idea that two particles can be entangled such that an action on one automatically affects the actions of another. Kind of like two train carts tied together, if I move one the other moves as well. Causality is the idea that tiny particles exist with unknown properties until someone makes a measurement of one of those properties, and these measurements can be strong (I know for sure this is true about the particle) or weak (I think this might be true).

For example, lets say you glance super quickly at an unknown street sign, then look away. You might notice that the sign had a reddish color to it (weak measurement). You look quickly again, and notice there is also some white (weak measurement). Repeat the process and eventually you might figure out that you are looking at a stop sign. Then you stare directly at it for a few seconds (strong measurement) and for sure decide that it is a stop sign. The idea of causality states that the street sign’s properties are unknown (what type of sign is it?) and the signs location is unknown (where is it?) until you look at it and decide it’s a certain one in a certain spot. So how can observing an object properties today affect it yesterday? Try this thought experiment below

A friend and I live in Upstate New York, and we live 50 miles apart. You don’t know where exactly we live, but only that our houses are 50 miles apart and that our bodies are always 50 miles apart no matter what (we are entangles that way). Now you decide you want to figure out where I currently am. You can’t do this by calling or asking me, you have to put tiny bits of information together to figure out where I am (weak measurements). Ok, so you know that I just posted this blog, and therefore, I must be somewhere where there is wifi. You just made one tiny measurement of where I am, without defining exactly where I am. There are tons of place with wifi, so I could be at any one of those places. Measurement number 2, again I’m writing this blog post , so I must be at a computer (for the sake of argument, lets assume it must be a desktop computer). So now, with two measurements, you’ve narrowed down where I am (somewhere with wifi and a desktop computer), but still don’t know exactly where I am. Let’s pretend you were able to make a whole bunch of other measurements and finally figure out that I am at the local library, 10 miles from my house. Now that you’ve made a solid measurement of where I am, you have fixed me in place, and thus fixed my friend in a place exactly 50 miles away from me. Since I am 10 miles from my house, my friend must also be 10 miles from her house (because we are always 50 miles apart). But how did she get there? Sometime in the past, she must have drove from her house, to a point 10 miles away from her house. But we didn’t know or decide that she was 10 miles from home until we figured out where I was located, just now. The act of deciding that I am 10 miles from my house right now, put my friend 10 miles from her house, and thus altered the past in such a way that caused her to drive 10 miles away from her house sometime in the past. So my action of being at the library today, had an affect on what my friend did in the past, or in other words, the future (today or tomorrows actions) had an affect on what happened yesterday!

So what does this all mean? Are your actions today changing the past? Well, physicists aren’t really sure. They think they see this occurring for special particles that are entangled together and have certain kinds of properties. It doesn’t necessarily work on a human scale. But if we understand what’s going on in the quantum world, we may someday be able to use it in the “real” world…

Here is a link to a nice article explaining this in more detail: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/aug/03/can-the-future-affect-the-past

Discovery of the Higgs Boson!

Back on July 4th of this year, physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN announced that they may have a found the much sought after particle called the Higgs Boson. One of the main reasons scientists built the LHC was to look for and hopefully find evidence of the Higgs. But what exactly is the Higgs boson and why is it so important?

To put it simply, the Higgs boson and the accompanying Higgs field are the reason why objects have mass, or in other words, why we take up space. For example, an astronaut in outerspace weighs nothing, as no large body is gravitationally attracting him. But the astronaut still has mass, he still takes up space. But what entity gives him mass, since it's not gravity that is responsible.  The theoretical answer to this is the Higgs field. Physicists think that a Higgs field pervades all of empty space, and Higgs bosons fill this field. When a particle enters the Higgs field, the Higgs bosons crowd around it, making it difficult for the particle to move and thus it feels heavy or massive. Think of it like a celebrity walking into a party. Everyone at the party crowds around the celebrity, making it hard for them to move through the room and thus they feel more massive. The Higgs field interacts with different types of particles in different ways, and the reason for this is not very well understood. But, if we have evidence that the Higgs boson does exist, then we can study it and hopefully answer this and many other questions associated with its discovery!

For a great explanation of the Higgs boson, check out this Ph. D. Comics movie!

Image Credit: Ph.D. Comics

Asteroid Eros as Real Estate?

Eros

Since the only other astronomical body that humans have set foot on is the moon, few laws have been put into place governing who can own what in outer space. Believe it or not, people have tried to claim full ownership of astronomical objects. A man by the name of George W. Nemitz actually tried to claim the near-Earth asteroid Eros as his property! Here's the story: Nemitz worked for a company which helped construct the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Probe Shoemaker, which landed on Eros in 2000. Nemitz claimed that since he helped build the spacecraft, he could claim ownership of whatever body it landed on, under the Homestead Principle. This principle states that if you discover a new piece of land that is not owned by another person or government (and I'm sure law makers were implying a piece of land on Earth), and you make use of it in some way, you can claim ownership. Thus, Nemitz dubbed Eros as a "spacecraft parking facility" and mailed NASA a $20 parking ticket for landing their spacecraft on "his" asteroid! Can you believe that? To Nemitz's dismay, NASA refused to pay the parking ticket, and a court judge dismissed his case. 

Image Credit:NEAR PRoject, NLR, JHUAPL, Goddard SVS, NASA

How Big is the Universe?

To put it bluntly, the universe is absolutely huge! The study of Cosmology, or how the universe was created and how it has evolved, has revealed some very interesting facts. We now know that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate, and that the universe seems to be roughly uniform. The approximate size of the visible universe is 10^24 miles wide! That's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles! The image below represents what we believe the universe looks like. Every white spec in the image represents a galaxy, and there are over 350 billion of them! But notice how uniform it looks; there doesn't appear to be any distinct clumps of matter, its all equally spread out. This is somewhat expected  via the current cosmological theories, but also curious. Why should the universe be uniform? What properties of the beginning of the universe lead to this result, and how precise must they have been produce a uniform universe? Cosmologists are working hard on answering these questions, as astronomers continue to probe the most distant parts of the universe!

 Image credit: atlasoftheuniverse.com