StarWatch: Moravian University Astronomy

AUGUST 2023

AUGUST STAR MAP | MOON PHASE CALENDAR | STARWATCH INDEX | NIGHT SKY NOTEBOOK

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lunar phases

1407 August 6, 2023: Perseids On Tap This Week: Sunday morning, August 13, will present a wonderful opportunity to view the 2023 Perseid meteor shower with minimal interfering moonlight. The Perseids are probably the best shooting star event of the year and for good reason. They combine relatively high rates with warm, short summer nights when many individuals are engaged in outdoor vacation activities, such as camping. * Meteor showers are the result of dust released by comets as they orbit the sun. If a comet’s path crosses the plane of Earth’s orbit or comes near to it, an annual meteor shower will most likely be the result. The progenitor of the Perseids is Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle which last returned to the sun in 1992 and is expected to debut again in 2125. As a result of its many passages around Sol, debris has been spread fairly uniformly across all of its orbital path, enhancing the reliability of the Perseids to produce a consistent showing year after year. * The best advice for observing is not to start too early in the evening. Midnight is a good target time to begin viewing because prior to that we are protected by the Earth itself. The analogy is similar to raindrops hitting a vehicle moving through a downpour. The precipitation is preferentially striking the front windshield of your car while the rear window gets only a little rain because it is protected by the automobile. Likewise, in the early evening we are being shielded by the Earth and see reduced meteor activity. As local midnight approaches, the Earth begins to rotate into the meteoroids, allowing it to sweep up more of these particles, resulting in an upsurge of activity. • In the midnight hour some of the colliding Perseids will be skimming the top of the Earth’s atmosphere. These events can create long bright trails, sometimes fireballs, as they are ablated (destroyed) more slowly by the thinner layers of air. • This year, the West Coast and Hawaii are the favored locations for peak rates which can be as high as a meteor per minute for an observer with keen vision watching from a rural locale. According to the International Meteor Organization, the East Coast sees peak rates occurring between 3 a.m. through 10 a.m. August 13. This means that enhanced meteor activity will most likely happen in the predawn hours of August 13. * Perseids are easily identified because they will appear to diverge from a vanishing point, similar to how a long, straight stretch of roadway will appear to narrow and converge at some distant location. See a photo and star map of the radiant concept below. * Perseids will appear to diverge from the top of the upside-down, V-shaped constellation of Perseus. Virtually all of the shooting stars that trace back to this region of the sky will be shower members. * During this week meteor rates will continue to increase through Sunday morning the 13th. These shooting stars will have a tendency to be brighter with more fireballs being spotted before maximum than post-maximum nights. This was the case for the evenings that I observed the Perseids on the banks of Flathead Lake in northwestern Montana in 2016 and from Guernsey State Park in Wyoming in 2018. I saw brighter meteors on maximum night than on the following evenings. Rates also dropped to about half of the activity of the previous night. That again is very consistent with normal Perseid encounters. * Don't forget the warm clothing, sleeping bags, pillows, tarps to protect against the dew, drinks, and snacks to keep everyone awake. This will make your Perseid experience more enjoyable. Think clear skies mixed with a couple of bright, memorable fireballs! Ad Astra!

1408

August 13, 2023: Where the Hell is Hanksville?

I have a yellow shirt with that slogan emblazoned upon it. In fact, I'm pretty sure I have two, but the other one has eluded me this summer. You could locate this shirt in only one place, Hanksville, where it could be found everywhere for sale, but that has changed too! About six years ago the Hanksville supply started to dwindle until today it cannot be found anywhere within the Hanksville town borders which encompasses 1.72 square miles, some of it in the Fremont River. My guess is that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church, raised an eyebrow because of the usage of "Hell" in the slogan. I also have to admit that I was a little hesitant to purchase it and wear it in public except in Hanksville. So now you know that Hanksville is most likely located in Utah, and it is. * This shirt, washed each night, has been worn nearly every day since my return from Australia on May 5, and it has been all over the Lehigh Valley as my friend, Adam Jones, and I have gathered and ordered supplies to advance the construction of my backyard observatory. You can see a photograph of me here wearing the shirt as I happily worked to deepen a trench which now carries water to the observatory building and my backyard. * As spring melted into the heat of full summer, no one commented about my shirt. I began to wonder if anyone had ever heard of Hanksville, Utah, population 220, or cared that this town which was electrified in 1960, even existed. However, last week I struck gold or perhaps put in a more Hanksvillian way, uranium. Post World War II Hanksville, was a mining center supporting as many as 351 souls, according to the 1980 census. Now in its diminished capacity, it looks to tourism to support its local economy. * I was in the Sherwin-Williams store along Route 378, when a sales representative, a high school student taking on a summer job, responded. "It's in Utah. Yes?" I was literally flabbergasted. He had completed a map-reading unit in his social studies class and had come upon the town. I gave him an enthusiastic compliment. Three days later, Don Bartholomew, walking his two dogs past my property answered the call of my shirt telling me that he had passed through Hanksville at least several times in his travels across the Southwest. * In a town where virtually every teenager wants to escape and summer labor has to be imported from foreign countries, I would most likely have been perfectly content growing up there because it simply can't get any darker in the continental US at night. Its remoteness, lack of vegetation, and red rock also attracted the Mars Society where they constructed the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) located about seven miles from town on Cow Dung Road. The sign always gets stolen, so the rough, unmarked dirt road which leads you to the site as well as to a dinosaur dig is normally unmarked. * Over the last 20 years, contributions from Elon Musk, an anonymous donor, and Moravian University (from public contributions) allowed for the construction of two observatories, one which monitors the sun and the other robotic, to which Moravian University has a 25 percent timeshare in its usage. I'll be traveling to Hanksville and MDRS in October to help maintain both observatories as well as to view the annular (solar) eclipse which occurs on October 14. So now you know a little bit more about the town of Hanksville and why it is so important to the University and to me. Ad Astra!

I have worn this shirt nearly every day since I continued the building of my observatory with Adam Jones in mid-May, but only recently have I talked to people who actually knew that Hanksville, population 220, was located in Utah. Adam R. Jones image, 2023...

Yes, Blondies really does exist, but only in Hanksville. Left Sarabeth Brockley, me, happily in the center, and Ginger Fiore, right. Peter K. Detterline image, 2017...

Out near the dinosaur dig, north of the Mars Desert Research Station, where Moravian University has use of a robotic observatory... Adam R. Jones photo, 2017...

The Mars Desert Research Station on Cow Dung Road, about seven road miles SW of Hanksville... Photo credit, Adam R. Jones, 2017...

1409 August 20, 2023: Blue Moon, August 30th: Once upon a time, the connotation of a blue moon was sorrowful and remorseful as in Elvis Presley's melancholic song by the same title. It also had the connotation of an event or occurrence that did not happen very often as in once in a blue moon. The origin of the blue moon phrase goes back some 500 years when to say the moon was blue was to indicate some type of absurdity. By the 18th century, once in a blue moon took on the connotation of never, such as I'll climb Mt. Everest the next time the moon is blue. * Yet sometimes the moon can actually can appear blue when it is high in the sky. This occurs infrequently when extremely fine dust particles associated with volcanic eruptions and forest fires are airborne and scatter Luna's reflected sunlight. Air molecules create the same effect, causing the sky to appear blue on a transparent day. This is because the scattering of shorter wavelengths of light is more preferential than with longer wavelengths. The concept of a rare, non-repetitive event which began to take root in the mid-19th century is the most popular non-astronomical definition of a blue moon today. * However, the astronomical connotation of a blue moon as the second full moon occurring within the timespan of one month took me by surprise many years ago when I wrote one of my first StarWatch blogs on the subject. I was quite familiar with the second full moon in a month definition, but I nevertheless thought I would do a quick check in one of my 60 plus books on the moon housed in my personal library. An hour later, I was panic stricken because only one of the books detailed a blue moon as created by fine dust suspended in the Earth's atmosphere. There was no mention of the second full moon occurring in a month's time. * Now it appears as if our love affair with blue moons began as a mistake in the July 1943 edition of Sky and Telescope magazine where the astronomical blue moon was traced to the 1937 edition of the Maine Farmers’ Almanac (photo below). However, here the blue moon date occurred on August 21, clearly not the second full moon of the month, since it takes 29.53 days for the moon to complete its cycle of phases. What happened? * The Maine Farmers’ Almanac used a seasonal scheme for determining blue moons based upon a uniformly moving sun which made the seasons of equal length. There were normally three full moons for each season, and each of these was given a name. When a season contained four full moons, the rule was to designate the third full moon of that particular season as the blue moon. This allowed the other three, named full moons to continue in good step with the seasons. In other words, the blue moon to the Maine Farmers’ Almanac acted as a sort of reset moon to bring the seasonal full moon names back into step with the correct time of the year. The blue moon as we use it today, the second full moon occurring within the timespan of one month, resulted from an interpretative error published in the March 1946 issue of S&T that drew its information from the 1943 article. It gained traction in the late 20th century through radio and print media that had contact with the 1946 S&T material. And there you have it. The new definition of a blue moon explained. Ad Astra!

1410 August 27, 2023: Student Reflections on "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry": One of the interesting aspects of teaching in a liberal arts university is that you get students who think out of the box when they take a science course. Sure, not all of their thoughts are scientific, but it reminds me of William Herschel (1738-1822), a trained musician who composed and conducted the Bath, England orchestra and was preeminent in its music scene up to the early 1780's. As a serious hobby, Herschel ground and polished his own speculum (metal) mirrors and built probably the finest reflecting telescopes of his day. He had an idea to conduct an all-sky survey of the heavens looking for objects that had never been charted. During the numerous surveys that he accomplished, Herschel discovered thousands of star clusters, double stars, nebulae, as well as the planet Uranus on March 13, 1781. At a time so late in the evolution of astronomical thought, no one had ever considered doing this. I attribute it to the fact that Herschel did not have any career training in astronomy, and therefore, was not bound by the tenets of the professionals of his day which involved mostly the vindication of Isaac Newton's development of gravitational theory. * For several years I have had my students listen to and reflect upon the audio book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, written by Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, to help jumpstart my astronomy class. The assignment has produced some very interesting thoughts. * Here is one from Steffani Smith, a senior music major who wrote, "At the outset, Tyson takes us back 14 billion years to the beginning of the universe. He tells us the story of the big bang and how each moment of time at the very beginning was monumental. So much can happen in less than a second, in proportions that are difficult for us to understand. I think of my experience as a gymnast. I needed to be in control of every muscle and use them all in one rapid burst of energy to lift off the ground. Each movement was filled with intent, so although I know that the universe had no sense of consciousness or intentional control, it fills me with awe that the beginning occurred with such accuracy, that as a result we have a beautiful solar system, and a planet so successful at maintaining life." * Joshneil Ferguson, also currently a senior music education major mused on this quote from Chapter Two of Tyson's book. Perhaps one day we will learn that Newton's gravity indeed requires adjustment. It has happened before. Einstein's 1916 general theory of relativity expanded on the principles of Newton's gravity in a way that also applied to objects of extremely high mass. "I found this quote from the book particularly interesting as it dwells upon the idea that knowledge is inherently built upon the basis of ideas that preceded them. This motif frequently resonates throughout time as the scientific advances of today are only possible due to the Newtons and Einsteins of the past. This ideology loosely ties itself to a quote from the Broadway play, Hamilton, that resonates deeply with me as I strive to become a teacher. This quote says, 'Legacy is sowing seeds in a garden that you never get to reap.' Since they sowed their seeds, we are able to sow our seeds in that same garden for others in the future to reap. Wonderful thoughts from two people who embraced science from a liberal arts background. Wishing everyone success in the Fall 2023 term! Ad Astra!