My Page: Irwin Horowitz
6degrees AstroBlog
Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
It was 38 years ago today. Across the country, families gathered around their televisions to watch as grainy images were being sent back over 250,000 miles across space as Neil Armstrong bounded down the ladder of the lunar module Eagle and uttered one of the most famous quotes in human history: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
It is hard to believe that less than 3½ years later, the crew of Apollo 17 lifted off from that same surface. This was the last time humans left the close environment of Earth orbit. We have sent robotic explorers to each of the planets in the solar system (including one currently en route to the former planet Pluto). However, human space flight has stagnated during the past 3½ decades. Now, we cheer whenever a space shuttle mission manages to safely return from another routine trip to the space station. This is hardly the stuff of which dreams are made of.
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6degrees AstroBlog
Astronomy News from London Meeting
While attending a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in London, astronomers from Caltech announced yesterday that they have observed some of the most distant galaxies ever detected. Using one of the twin 10-meter Keck telescopes located at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii, Professor Richard Ellis and graduate student Dan Stark reported that the light they measured left the host galaxies over 13 billion years ago, when our universe was only about 500 million years old.
This light may very well have come from the first generation of stars to form in the infancy of our universe. The standard model of the Big Bang predicts that after the first few minutes, space was filled with a mixture of free electrons and simple nuclei containing protons and neutrons. Free electrons are very good at scattering light, so during this time our universe was highly opaque and very bright. After about 300,000 years, the expanding universe cooled sufficiently for simple atoms to form, as the electrons became bound to the nuclei. When those electrons were bound up, space became transparent and very dark. It wasn’t until this first generation of stars had formed that light once again shone forth across the universe.
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6degrees AstroBlog
Bogus Basin Star Party Rescheduled
Saturday night, Bogus Basin Ski Resort, the Treasure Valley Math & Science Center and the Boise Astronomical Society will be co-hosting the rescheduled annual Bogus Basin Star Party, weather permitting, in the parking lot of the Frontier Lodge located at the ski resort. I invite everyone to come up and join us for an evening under the stars. We will be starting at 7 p.m., with viewing of the Sun prior to sunset using specially filtered telescopes. At 7:30 p.m., park rangers will take interested attendees on a nightlife nature hike around the area that will last about one hour.
Sunset will occur around 9:30 p.m., and then the magic truly begins. As the twilight gives way to darkness, Venus will stand out as a shining beacon in the west. A much fainter Saturn will be located to the right of our sister planet and the pair will descend down together towards the horizon. While this is occurring, mighty Jupiter rises above the trees in the southeast. We will observe a plethora of objects, from binary stars and star clusters, to nebulae and galaxies millions of light years away. We will take our guests on a constellation tour, pointing out such luminaries as Ursa Major (the Great Bear) and its famous asterism the Big Dipper, Leo the Lion, and Hercules.
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6degrees AstroBlog
Suggestion on Immigration ReformAs I sit in the guest room at my parent’s apartment in Palm Beach, recovering from surgery on my right hand for carpal tunnel syndrome, I am afforded time to think about some of the issues currently plaguing our nation. In particular, immigration reform has been a hot-button topic with both sides passionately arguing their respective positions with little hope for a compromise. Also, President Bush’s commutation of the prison sentence for Scooter Libby has dominated the airways as we have been celebrating our nation’s birthday.
Taking a page from the president’s constitutional playbook, I would like to offer a suggestion on how to resolve the immigration dilemma. President Bush can issue a pardon to all undocumented workers who sole “crime” is entering and residing in our country without the proper paperwork.
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6degrees AstroBlog
A Cosmic Pas de Deux
Stars, like people, have lives. They are born. They live for millions or billions of years. They die. Sometimes those death throes end with a bang. More often they are little more than a whimper. Unlike people, star birth often involves multiple offspring but no parents. Astronomers estimate that about half of all the stars in our galaxy are located in multiple star systems. Sometimes these companions are visible in a backyard telescope. Often the two bodies orbit so close to one another and are at such tremendous distance from us that they appear as a single point of light when we observe them.
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6degrees AstroBlog
On the arrival of my great nephew
Amid all the tragedy and heartbreak being experienced around our nation, I hope that a small bit of good personal news can help to brighten everyone’s day. Today, my nephew Rob and his wife Katie announced the arrival of their first child, Michael Anthony Stadelman. He weighed in at 7 lb., 6 oz. and was born at 12:17 p.m. EDT at Southside Hospital in Bayshore, New York. Mother and baby are doing well. It remains to be seen how daddy is doing.
I have no doubt that if you were to ask my six nieces and nephews their opinion of me, they would all call me a “terrific uncle.” But now, I am officially a “great uncle.”
6degrees AstroBlog
Should We Move Boise to Pacific Time Zone?
June nights are short in the northern hemisphere. The Sun sets later and rises earlier now than at any other time of the year. The reason for this is that the Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted relative to the plane of its orbit at an angle of 23.°5 (about ¼ of the distance from pointing straight up to laying completely on its side), and in June the North Pole is pointed towards the direction of the Sun. As you move further north from the equator, the length of nighttime decreases. Indeed, on the summer solstice, the Sun doesn’t set at all for anyone located north of the Arctic Circle. In contrast, we experience the opposite effects during December around the winter solstice.
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6degrees AstroBlog
Idaho Governor Otter Signs on to Global Climate Challenge
Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has signed an executive order to have the Department of Environmental Quality coordinate efforts by state agencies to track greenhouse gas emissions.
I applaud this effort by my governor. It's a refreshing change of pace from the business as usual approach many Idaho political leaders have been taking on this critical issue.
Those of you who have read my comments elsewhere on New West know my position on this issue. It is one that I have come to after reviewing the scientific basis for anthropogenic climate change. Many out there are still skeptical, and that is an understandable position to take. The Earth’s atmosphere is a very complex system, with multiple forms of equilibria interacting simultaneously. However, there are a few things that are crystal clear to me. First, by examining the Keeling curve, which has measured the concentration of atmospheric CO2 since the late 1950s, it is clear that there has been a constant trend upwards over that time. It is rising at a rate of 1-2 ppm each year and has risen in absolute terms about 20% over the last four decades of the 20th century. If we also look at the paleological data (page 31 of linked PDF file) acquired from ice cores drilled in Antarctica, we see that the present day observed levels of the gas far exceed anything that has been naturally occurring over the past several hundred thousand years.
The only reasonable explanation for the current increase is
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6degrees AstroBlog
Bogus Basin Public Star Party
On saturday, May 19, Bogus Basin and the Boise Astronomical Society will be co-hosting the annual Bogus Basin Star Party, weather permitting, in the parking lot of the Frontier Lodge located at the ski resort. I invite everyone to come up and join us for an evening under the stars. We will be starting at 7 p.m., with viewing of the Sun prior to sunset using specially filtered telescopes. We should also be able to observe both the crescent moon as well as brilliant Venus in broad daylight, a rather rare opportunity to do so. At 7:30 p.m., park rangers will take interested attendees on a nightlife nature hike around the area that will last about one hour.
Sunset will occur shortly after 9 p.m., and then the magic truly begins. As the twilight gives way to darkness, the moon and Venus will stand out as a pair of shining beacons in the west, descending down together towards the horizon. Above them, the magnificent Saturn will dominate the evening sky, and will serve as the highlight of the party. Later on in the evening, mighty Jupiter will rise above the trees in the southeast. In between, we will observe a plethora of objects, from binary stars and star clusters, to nebulae and galaxies millions of light years away. We will take our guests on a constellation tour, pointing out such luminaries as Ursa Major (the Great Bear) and its famous asterism the Big Dipper, Leo the Lion, and Hercules. There is also a faint comet which should be visible in our larger telescopes.
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6degrees AstroBlog
Boise Steps Up for the Earth
How can a small group organize a major environmental action in only seven weeks?
When folks think about environmental issues like global climate change, the city of Boise, Idaho doesn’t exactly leap to the forefront as a fertile ground for finding much sympathy and activism. Idaho is the reddest of red states in the union, and as such, environmental issues are often viewed as the domain of “hippies, commies and veggies,” and not something that real people should care about. So what chance did a small group of committed people have to organize a successful event in Boise calling for congressional action to address this growing crisis? We had just 50 days.
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