I love being a science communicator, being with people and sharing my knowledge of the universe. However, I have a personal fascination with the universe, and although this helps me learn more and ultimately makes me a better communicator, there is something nice about connecting with the stars in a traditional way, ie with a telescope. Every year, usually in Summer (a short season in Canada), I venture to a dark sky location and get in some observing, to remind me of the real universe that’s out there. Since I also love the visualization of space as a communication tool,...
In the year 1610, it was commonly believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe, that all bodies rotated around the perfect planet, placed by god with the heavens around it. Galileo Galilei dealt a major blow to this idea, by using an early telescope to improve his vision and look up at some surprising dots. These dots formed a line that went straight through the bright planet Jupiter. As Galileo looked again and again, night after night, he noticed that they not only persisted, they moved. Their motion was predictable, and Galileo realized that they were orbiting Jupiter, just...
Last year after getting a Canon DSLR camera, I spent as much time as I could doing some basic astrophotography. I took photos of stars, planets, the Moon, and even did some star trails. One thing I quickly realized is that there are limitations if you don’t have a tracking mount or a telescope adaptor. The tracking gives you a method for taking longer exposures, and the telescope adaptor as expected gives you the ability to zoom in on distant objects. Even with these temporary limitations (I hope to invest in them someday) there are still a lot of options...
Everyone in Canada looks forward to the Perseid meteor shower each August. The weather is warm, the skies are clear, and they have a high zenithal hourly rate (ZHR). But once they are done, it’s not long before the weather starts to cool down, Canada moves into Autumn and eventually the deep freeze of winter sends our fine nation into hibernation. But if you do feel like coming out of your fort this weekend, in an unseasonably warm December, you will be treated to what has often been the best meteor shower of the year: The Geminids. Under ideal conditions,...
Titan is the most interesting body in the solar system from a weather standpoint. It has a thick and robust atmosphere, a liquid cycle of methane and other hydrocarbons, and it has seasonal variations in these patterns. It’s essentially a cold and oxygen-deficient version of Earth. Because the seasons on Titan take 7.5 years to pass, we have few opportunities to study them up close with the Cassini spacecraft. So as long as Cassini is operating, we are using our time wisely to see how Titan is changing. The first major change is a giant ice cloud that has formed...
After an epic weekend of eclipse talk, NASA came out with a press conference that overshadowed much more than just the Moon. The announcement, as many had speculated, revealed that conclusive evidence shows there is flowing water on Mars. Like seasons on Earth, warmer conditions cause water to flow down steep hills and into valleys. The speculation came due to the invitation of Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology to the NASA panel. Ojha noticed strange features on Mars as an undergraduate student in 2010, while looking at images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)’s High Resolution Imaging Science...
A few days ago we passed the Autumnal Equinox, and said goodbye to Summer in the northern hemisphere, as the southern hemisphere welcomed Spring. This is all due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis at 23.5 degrees. As it orbits the Earth, the tilt alternately points the hemispheres toward direct sunlight, bringing summer during that time and winter 6 months later. But what about the North and South pole? What happens there? In summertime, because the North pole is actually tilted toward the Sun, the region receives direct sunlight for 6 months! The Sun just never sets! Check out...
What is the brightest object in the sky? Why the Sun of course. Second brightest? The Moon. Most people are able to answer this question quite easily, but what is the third brightest? The fourth? Many people will confidently say Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, or Polaris the north star. The answer is that the planet Venus is third and the planet Jupiter is fourth. It shouldn’t be that surprising that planets hold these positions. They are much closer than the distant background of stars, and the human species has been observing them since the dawn of recorded...
As we are approaching the New Horizons bypass of Pluto just over a month from now, there is a lot of focus on the Plutonian system, from its strange Moons to its enigmatic surface. As we wait for the first ever high resolution images of the surface of Pluto, we can look to Hubble data to give us our fix. The best image of Pluto taken up to today, by Hubble, is blurry and at best can lead us to speculation about what we are seeing. But Hubble, as always, produces valuable science, and has given new insights into the...
It’s been cold lately. The temperature has fallen somewhere between Hoth and Pluto, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon. It seems we complain about the weather no matter the season. It’s too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too bright, too dark. We do have a lot of variation in the seasons, but compared to some other planets, Earth is pretty mild in its climate. One such case is the recently discovered Kepler 432b. A massive planet six times heavier than Jupiter with a comparable size, it orbits closer to its parent star than Mercury...
