Astronomy Blog

Belgian Moon

I've been working in Belgium for the past three weeks and have been kept very busy. Hence the lack of posts here. The weather has been pretty overcast too, so I have only managed a few glimpses of the summer triangle, Jupiter and the Moon.

Tonight the sky was clear and the just-past-full Moon was particularly striking. I wanted a photograph but I only had my cheap and cheerful digital camera with me. It has no manual exposure settings so totally over-exposed the Moon on my first attempt. However, I managed to fool the auto exposure by pointing the camera at a bright security light, half pressing the shutter then turning around and fully pressing the button. The result isn't too bad and it is possible to make out some of the mare. I was taking the picture over the tops of the trees so the Moon is slightly eclipsed by a branch which blew into the shot.

Seeing the full Moon made me realise there are less than two weeks to go until the total solar eclipse. The solar eclipse will be visible from Greenland, Russia, Mongolia and China and a partial eclipse will be seen from parts of Europe, the Middle East, and India. I wish I was going to a point that can see totality but I'll just have to make do with a partial eclipse. If you watch the eclipse remember to view it safely and not to look directly at the Sun.

Looking the other way

The night sky is a big place. It is so big in fact that it is difficult to monitor all of it all the time. Sometimes, despite the many amateur and professional astronomers looking skywards, something goes bang and we miss it. That happened back in June 2007 when the star USNO-A2.0 0450-03360039 exploded and became a naked eye novae. Nobody on Earth saw it. Luckily, during October 2007, ESA's XMM-Newton accidentally spotted the novae as it was slewing from one target to another and alerted everyone else. It is pretty amazing that between six billion people we failed to spot one of the brightest novae for almost a decade.

There are plans such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope to map the entire sky on a daily basis but they are have not yet been built. In the mean time we will continue to rely on the amateur astronomers of the world and serendipitous discoveries such as this one.

Make-make: the third Plutoid

Astronomy Picture of the Day is a brilliant resource with great pictures of the cosmos every day. It isn't usually a source of news for me but today is an exception. According to APoD, 2005 FY9 has finally been given a name and has joined the ranks of the plutoids. The new name for the large lump of stuff in the outer solar system tentatively named 2005 FY9 is Make-make (pronounced MAH-kay MAH-kay apparently). The name is that of the Polynesian creator of humanity and was suggested due to the placement of the discovery telescope on a Pacific island. Along with 2003 EL61 and 2003 UB313 (better known as Eris), Make-make was one of the objects discovered by Mike Brown that forced the IAU to reconsider the definition of a planet.

Although we have no images of the surface of Make-make, APoD have bravely substituted an artist's impression of Sedna until we do.

Adopt a Scientist

The uncertain funding situation of astronomy seems to be a global problem. Via etacar11 on Twitter I see that the SETI Institute has an "Adopt A Scientist" programme. Like animal adoption programmes, for only a few pounds, dollars, euros (or other favourite currency) per month you could help astrobiologists look for Martian analogs in California. You could even visit the Allan Telescope Array and have dinner with Jill Tarter and her husband.

The SETI Institute is a private, non-profit organisation and this type of fundraising is important to help them continue with their work.

It's the Moon, over

I first caught this via Will Gater and I notice that Rob has blogged it too. To highlight misuse of the 999 service - the UK's emergency services number - Welsh police have released examples of what you shouldn't call them about. The example in the BBC News story is of a man calling 999 to report a mysterious, unidentified, luminous object hovering over a nearby mountain. After a police car was dispatched to identify the object, they reported back on the radio with "It's the Moon, over".

The audio is quite amusing, and it is easy to laugh, but this also highlights something else. Some people (I hesitate to say many) look up into the night sky so infrequently that they can't identify something even as familiar as the Moon. For thousands of years the Moon has been familiar to humanity. Now, nearly 40 years after the first human landed on our largest satellite, it seems that some people fail to identify it in the night sky. Why is this? I don't know. Could it be the increase in light pollution? Perhaps people are just too busy to look up? No doubt they have more pressing concerns down on the ground. Perhaps they just don't share the thrill of knowing our place in the universe.

I hope that the International Year of Astronomy can be a call to arms to amateur and professional astronomers, and others that like space stuft to re-engage people with humanity's shared heritage of the night sky. In early April 2009 there will be a chance for a global star party as part of the 100 hours of astronomy. That will be a great opportunity for sidewalk/guerilla astronomy. Perhaps by 2010 there will be no more calls to the police wondering what the Moon is.