Artsnova Digital Art and Space

Clouds Over Olympus Mons color composite Mars Global Surveyor picture by Jim Plaxco

I’ve been asked to give my Imaging Mars presentation at the Northwest Suburban Astronomers and Harper College Astronomy Club’s Astronomy Day 2007 event on April 21 2007 at Harper College in Palatine IL. The Northwest Suburban Astronomers have been hosting Astronomy Day events for as long as I have lived in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. The first one I attended was back in the mid-1980’s.

This year’s event is being held at Harper College in Palatine. It is free and open to the public. Doors open at 5:30pm. If the weather is clear, telescopes will be set up outside for night sky observing and the college’s observatory will be available as well. I’m happy to say that local chapters of the National Space Society, as well as the NSS itself, played a role in the private fund raising that got this observatory built. Way to go NSS, NISA, CSSS, and CSFSL5.

The center of activities for the evening will be Building Z. Inside there will be displays, telescopes, information tables, a portable planetarium providing sky shows for the kids, and various kid-oriented craft activities. The programming lineup is:

Harper College is located northeast of the intersection of Algonquin and Roselle Roads in Palatine IL. In the map below Building Z is marked with a red Z and parking lots 2 and 3 are outlined in red.

Map to Harper College for Astronomy Day

To illustrate this post, I used a picture of that great Martian volcano Olympus Mons that I created by combining separate Mars Global Surveyor wide angle camera images. To learn more about Olympus Mons and the picture, see Clouds Over Olympus Mons at the Mars Art Gallery.

Ad Astra, Jim

Image: Hubble Space Telescope image of N90 star forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud

For several years now the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere has sponsored an annual art contest for school children. The “Catch a Star 2007″ competition is sponsored by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the European Association for Astronomy Education (EAAE).

Right now you can visit the 2007 gallery and vote for your favorite pictures. There are five galleries:

• Age less than 10 years
• Age 10 and 11 years
• Age 12 and 13 years
• Age 14 and 15 years
• Age 16 years and older

Voting is a factor in the awarding of prizes. The winners will be announced at the “Science on Stage 2″ international science teaching festival in Grenoble France, April 2-6 2007, and will be posted on the “Catch a Star” website. So go check out the Catch a Star! 2007 Gallery and vote for your favorite entries.

In the Age less than 10 years gallery, some of my favorite pictures were In the Space by Matas, Meteor by Samantha, and Black Hole by Matthew. In the Age 10 and 11 years gallery, my favorite was Solar Corona by Alexey. In the Age 12 and 13 years gallery, I liked Mysterious comet by Lazar and Solar System by Swati. As it turns out, the Age 14 and 15 years gallery was my favorite overall. My favorites here were Mars by Daria, Planet by Juste, and Galaxy by Dibyajyoti. Lastly in the Age 16 years and older gallery, I liked Sapere aude! by Agnieszka. Strange but I felt that this gallery, which should have had the best entries, was actually the weakest.

So be sure to check out some children’s visions of our universe at the Catch a Star! 2007 Gallery.

Ad Astra, Jim

Image: Fate of the Sister by Jim Plaxco. A depiction of a binary star system in which one of the stars has gone supernova. Original image size: 27 x 21 inches.

I recently discovered a great collection of free online courses being offered by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Known as MIT OpenCourseWare, it consists of complete courses in a wide variety of disciplines. You don’t even have to register - just download the files to your computer. The courses provide lecture notes, review problems, quizzes, and solutions using a combination of html, xml, and pdf files.

What caught my eye were the Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Physics sections. Classes in the Physics section that I downloaded are:

• Relativity
• Introduction to Special Relativity
• Exploring Black Holes: General Relativity & Astrophysics
• Introduction to Astronomy
• Modern Astrophysics
• The Early Universe
• Cosmology
• Astrophysics I

Closer to home the section Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences contains a number of interesting courses including:

• The Solar System
• Hands-On Astronomy: Observing Stars and Planets

Lastly, for the budding rocket scientist there is in the Aeronautics and Astronautics section the following courses:

• Rocket Propulsion
• Space Propulsion

In fact there is easily more than enough material available to keep the enquiring mind busy for years. My advice: go forth and learn.

Ad Astra, Jim

While surfing the web, I came across a great resource for lunar observers and anyone else interested in our Moon. The book is “Photographic Moon Book” and was written and illustrated by Alan Chu. The book is a 225 page 100 megabyte PDF. Most amazing about this high quality reference book is that it is free. This particular edition of the book was just released this month so my coming across it just now was a happy coincidence.

The book is divided into several sections. About This Book provides the reader with a brief introduction to the book itself.

An Overview provides a general introduction to the Moon and to observing the Moon.

The Lunar Features & Events section consists of 33 MAP subsections that in addition to abundant observation details also contains selenographic information. Following the maps are four EVENT subsections that each discuss in detail libration, the lunar terminator, the crescent Moon, and eclipses and occultation.

The book then jumps to the Farside of the Moon making use of Apollo images, then pausing to cover lunar features named after Chinese persons.

Lunar Spacecraft provides a very brief overview of the unmanned and manned missions to the Moon. A map of the location of lander missions to the Moon, both manned and unmanned, is also provided.

The Methods of Imaging section is an introduction to photographing the Moon.The author provides information on a couple different techniques as well as camera related settings.

The book’s appendices consist of the following sections:

• Data of Lunar Images provides photographic and observational information about the author’s lunar photos used in the book,
• Data of the Moon provides a numerical summary of the Moon’s characteristics,
• Glossary contains a number of useful definitions,
• References provides a list of books and web sites for more information,
• Crater List provides the name, longitude, latitude, and diameter for named craters,
• Index that looks to be quite thorough.

Coming across this excellent lunar reference was really a treat and I give it two thumbs up. Thank you Alan Chu for creating this excellent reference guide to the Moon and making it available to the public for free.

Download Site for Photographic Moon Book

Ad Astra, Jim

Finally. After years of ignoring my astronomy oriented web site Astronomical Adventures I finally spent some serious time on it performing a complete overhaul of the site. I replaced the ancient HTML tables design (created and not modified since 1999) with a CSS tableless layout conforming to the XHTML 1.0 Transitional standard.

In addition to the redesign, I added three new articles to the site. One article, The Milky Way Galaxy, is a very basic introduction to our Milky Way galaxy. I also wrote an article The Location of the Solar System in the Milky Way which illustrates and explains our location in the galaxy. The final article is a tutorial. The Drake Equation Tutorial explains the Drake Equation and its parameters. The Drake Equation is associated with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the galaxy. In addition to the tutorial I have for download both an OpenOffice Calc and a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet version of the Drake Equation so that people can play with the equation for themselves.

I must confess that the driver for this undertaking were the preparations I undertook for my participation in the 2006 Windycon Science Fiction Convention. I wrote about my participation in that convention in the entry Windycon Science Fiction Convention Programming Schedule.

So pay a visit to Astronomical Adventures and let me know what you think.

Ad Astra, Jim

Last night was the first session of the “Astrophotography and Large Telescopes Workshop” class that I am taking at the Adler Planetarium. The class is being taught by astronomer Dr. Mark Hammergren and consists of three three hour sessions. The course description for the class reads as follows:

“Use research-caliber telescopes and specialized equipment to photograph your favorite deep-sky objects! Get hands-on access to the Adler’s 20-inch reflector in the Doane Observatory and remote control over the 150-inch reflector at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. Learn to find and photograph faint asteroids, nebulae, galaxies, supermassive black holes and more.”

In last night’s class we discussed a variety of topics including:

• competition for observing time at the major observatories
• planning observing sessions at the major observatories
• characteristics of CCDs
• evaluating CCD performance
• quantifying CCD irregularities via bias frames, dark frames, etc.
• instrumentation (visual, IR, spectroscopy, etc.)
• discussion of the telescopes that we will be using
• elementary information on RGB and the creation of color images in Photoshop using the Hubble Space Telescope Eagle Nebula image as the example.

Following the lecture portion of the class we had the opportunity to go outside and see the Doane telescope in action. The Adler’s Doane Observatory is home to a 500-pound Cassegrain reflector with a 20-inch (0.5 meter) diameter mirror. The telescope uses a fork-style equatorial mount and its 0.5 meter diameter aperture and 4 meter focal length gives it a focal ratio of f/8 at prime focus. The mirror was created using the spin-cast technique. For instrumentation, there is a Finger Lakes Instrumentation 1024 x 1024 pixel CCD that has a 21 arcminute field of view.

According to Dr. Hammergren, in choosing targets for our Doane observing session we should focus on objects that are at least 30 degrees above the horizon; in the eastern part of the sky; and that are at least 15th magnitude for point sources or 13th magnitude for extended objects. Note that the Doane is open to the public during the planetarium’s Far Out Friday events. and for special observing events. Because this was a “Far Out Friday”, we had to be content to wait our turn to get a look through the telescope. The target this particular evening was our own Moon.

The picture at the top of this post was taken as I waited inside the dome for my turn to look through the telescope. Afterwards I headed outside to take some exterior shots of the observatory. One set that I was particularly pleased with was used to create the picture seen below. I dubbed it “Ghosts of Doane Observatory” because of the specter like appearance of the figures.

The second class in the series will be devoted to using the Adler’s Doane Observatory for making our telescopic observations, For this class, we will have exclusive use of the observatory. I can only hope that we will have a clear night for our class.

For the third and final class, we will get to use the Astrophysical Research Consortium 3.5-meter Telescope at Apache Point Observatory. In terms of instrumentation, we will be using either the SPICAM (Seaver Prototype Imaging camera) CCD camera or the DIS (Dual Imaging Spectrograph). SPIcam is a SITe 2048×2049 pixel CCD with a 4.78 x 4.78 arcminute field of view with 0.14 arcsecs per pixel. For details see Quick Guide to using Spicam. The Dual Imaging Spectrograph has a 4 x 6 arcminute field of view. Unfortunately I have no additional information about this instrument.

I am looking forward to the remainder of the class and with working on the images that we acquire doing our observing runs.

Ad Astra, Jim

Yesterday I received an email that contained some pictures of the relative sizes of the planets and some stars. One of the more impressive pictures was one that showed the relative sizes of Antares and Betelgeuse, two red giant stars, as compared to our own Sun. In the discussion of these images one person posed the question “so … How significant should we really be feeling, right about now?”
which set me to thinking.

I have seen statements to the effect that there are as many galaxies in the Universe as there are stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. I have seen estimates for the number of stars in the Milky Way that range from 100 billion up to 400 billion. For our purposes let’s suppose that the number is closer to 200 billion
and that all galaxies average the same number of stars, realizing that any average of this type could be off by literally astronomical proportions.

So we are talking about 200 billion galaxies that average 200 billion stars each. Simple multiplication reveals that there are on the order of 4 x 10²² stars in the Universe. In more traditional form, that is 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

Now that’s a lot of stars but consider this: I have seen estimates that a person who weighs 70 kilograms has about 7 x 10²⁷ atoms in their body. Again that’s 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, a whopping big number. That means that there are more atoms in my body than there are stars in the entire universe.

You can get a ballpark on the number of atoms in your body by first converting your weight from pounds into kilograms with 1 pound being equal to 0.4536 kilograms. Then all you have to do is plug your weight in kilograms into the following equation:

Atoms = (your weight in kilograms / 70) x (7 x 10²⁷)

And as a parting shot, realize that the latest estimates are that the atoms that make up all our bodies and all the stars and all the dust and gas of the universe represent only about four percent of the “stuff” that makes up the Universe. Kind of gives you the feeling of doing a Linda Blair head spin (couldn’t resist that since this is Halloween).

Ad Astra, Jim

This is easily the most impressive picture that I have ever seen of Saturn. The picture of Saturn shown above is one of two versions of this Cassini panorama of Saturn.

With respect to how this picture was made, quoting from the CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations) web site:
“This marvelous panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006. The full mosaic consists of three rows of nine wide-angle camera footprints; only a portion of the full mosaic is shown here. Color in the view was created by digitally compositing ultraviolet, infrared and clear filter images and was then adjusted to resemble natural color.“

I definitely encourage you to read the article In Saturn’s Shadow at the CICLOPS site and download the pictures of Saturn there. Another article about this unique panorama can be read at JPL Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan web site.

Looking back at the space and astronomical art that was being creating prior to the space age only goes to show that nature is more beautiful and varied than imagined by the mind of man.
Ad Astra, Jim