Mon Aug 12, 2024 PERSEIDS AT THEIR PEAK
The Perseid meteor shower is now at peak activity. These “shooting stars” are bits of comet dust that fall to earth at high speeds, burning up in our atmosphere and lighting up the night sky. Most meteor showers are best after midnight, and with the first quarter moon setting a little after midnight this should be a great shower. Dress warmly, protect yourself against mosquitoes, find a safe spot that’s away from bright streetlights. Bring a lounge chair that lets you lean all the way back, and of course refreshments such as iced tea and chocolate chip cookies, are always a good idea. Look toward the east. Meteor showers are fun, but you can sometimes go for several minutes before seeing one. And if it’s cloudy you won’t be able to see any at all.
Tue Aug 13, 2024 SCORPIUS – MAUI’S FISHOOK
The moon appears to the west of the star Antares in the heart of the constellation Scorpius over in the southern sky this evening. It is one of the few constellations that looks like it should, outlining a scorpion from Greek myth. But to folks in the South Pacific, Scorpius was known as Maui’s fishhook. Maui and his brothers were far out at sea, when Maui’s fishing line suddenly went taut. He urged his brothers to row as hard as they could, and with all his strength, attempted to lift the mighty fish out of the ocean. But it wasn’t a fish; Maui had snagged the sea bottom. He pulled so hard that he brought the ocean floor up to the surface where it became the island of Hawaii. The great fishhook itself flew up into the sky, where everyone can see it tonight, a cosmic reminder of the big one that got away.
Wed Aug 14, 2024 THE AGE OF AN UNBOUNDED UNIVERSE
Some astronomers have recently suggested, based on their interpretation of data from the Webb space telescope, that the Universe is roughly twice as old as we thought: instead of slightly less than fourteen billion years old, it’s now closer to 28 billion. There have been many attempts to determine the age of the Universe by the means of refining the Hubble constant, the rate at which galaxies recede from the initial theorized Big Bang. Not everyone agrees with this new estimate, but we are still talking about the likelihood of a very old, although not infinitely old, Universe. While cosmologists continue to search for that theoretical time when things began, a common thought is that the Universe is still unbounded, like a great unending forest of stars and galaxies that curves back upon itself – a cosmic singularity.
Thur Aug 15, 2024 NAME THAT MOON
Here are some places you’ll find on various moons of our solar system – see if you can guess the moon. This first moon has impact craters named Plato, Kepler, Copernicus, Aristotle and Hevelius, plus great dark features like the Sea of Cold, the Bay of Rainbows, the Ocean of Storms and the Sea of Tranquility. This is easy, it’s the moon, our moon. What about El Dorado, Aztlan, Xanadu and Shangri-La? These features are found on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. This next moon has lots of volcanoes with names like Thor and Loki, Marduk, Maui and Pele. The moon is Io and it orbits Jupiter. And finally, try Kirk, Spock, Uhura, the plains of Vulcan, Nemo, Skywalker, Ripley, Vader crater, the Tardis chasm, and a dark feature at its north pole named Mordor? These are found on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon.
Fri Aug 16, 2024 SUN FACTS
It’s at this time of year that I really understand the power of the sun, especially here in Florida when the sun is very high in our sky in the middle of the day. The sun’s diameter is about 865,000 miles. That’s over a hundred times the diameter of the Earth. And in terms of volume, a million Earths could fit inside it. The Sun's mass is 333,434 times the mass of our planet. The sun contains 99.86% of the mass of the entire solar system! Its surface temperature is over 10 thousand degrees Fahrenheit, while its core temperature is 27 million degrees! The thermonuclear fusion processes that take place there, as hydrogen is converted into helium, supply us with pretty much all of our light and energy. So even though we’re 93 million miles away from the sun, it’s big enough, and hot enough, to keep things sizzling here in sunny Florida.
