Mon Aug 19, 2024 AUGUST FULL MOON
The moon is full today. It will rise at sunset, and be visible in the eastern sky as night begins. About an hour after moonrise, the planet Saturn will come up a little to the east of it, appearing as a yellow-tinted star-like object. Tomorrow night the moon will have shifted closer to it, and the two will appear together in the evening in the constellation Aquarius. Colonial Americans knew this as the Dog Days moon. The Sioux Indians say that this is the Moon When the Geese Shed Their Feathers. The Ponca call it the Corn is in the Silk Moon, meaning it's a good time to harvest the corn; other tribes have names like the Big Ripening Moon of the Creek and Seminole Indians or the even more simply named Corn Moon of the Zuni. To the Cherokee, though, this is the Drying Up Moon, appropriate after a long hot spell of summer weather.
Tue Aug 20, 2024 MARDUK BRINGS ORDER OUT OF CHAOS
Ancient Babylonians described the early Universe as a watery chaos they called Mammu. Out of Mammu came a monstrous dragon named Tiamat. Tiamat then spawned the Babylonian gods, but in time she decided to destroy them. Her grandson Marduk fought and defeated her, using her body to serve as a framework for the cosmos. Half of her became the sky, where Marduk set the god Anu; the other half was made into the foundations of the earth, and Marduk made Ea its god. Marduk became the principle sky god, like Zeus in ancient Greece, and gave the other gods responsibilities for the southern and northern skies and their constellations, while Marduk reserved the planets and stars of the zodiac for himself. And old Tiamat? You can see a vestige of her in the constellation Draco the Dragon, winding between the Big and Little Dippers tonight.
Wed Aug 21, 2024 THE PLUTO VOTE
On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union voted Pluto out of the planet club. At the time the IAU had about 10,000 astronomers as members, but on the last day of their conference in Prague only 424 of them voted. And you had to be in the room to vote – no mail-in ballots. Does this sound like scientists aren’t any different than your average politician? Yes it does. And that’s because scientists are people too, and therefore can be just as mean, stubborn and stupid as anybody else on the planet. Members of the American Astronomical Society weren’t happy about the vote. Neither was Alan Stern, the principal scientist who oversaw the successful New Horizons mission to Pluto that took place in 2015, revealing an incredible world with nitrogen ice plains and great water ice mountains.
Thu Aug 22, 2024 RAY BRADBURY AND MARS
The science fiction and fantasy writer Ray Bradbury was born on August 22nd, 1920. He began his career by writing short stories for pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, Planet Stories and Galaxy Science Fiction. He also wrote, “Fahrenheit 451,” “R is for Rocket,” and “The Golden Apples of the Sun.” His book, “The Martian Chronicles,” came out in 1950; it was a series of related short stories about the colonization of the planet Mars, something which is very much in the news these days. Bradbury envisioned terraforming Mars, also being discussed lately. While building pressure domes and living underground on Mars is perhaps achievable, trying to restore a viable Martian atmosphere is still well beyond our current technology. But if you’d like to see the red planet, you’ll find Mars over in the southeast before dawn, along with Jupiter, above the constellation Orion!
Fri Aug 23, 2024 VOYAGER 2 REACHES NEPTUNE
On August 23, 1989, the Voyager 2 spacecraft sailed past Neptune on its journey toward the stars. It is the only probe that has every taken close-up pictures of the eighth planet, and the images it sent back were amazing. It found an earth-sized hurricane – the Great Dark Spot - in Neptune's southern hemisphere. And great cirrus clouds were seen zipping through its atmosphere at fifteen hundred miles an hour! Voyager saw three major rings orbiting Neptune, which were thicker in some spots than in others. It found several more moons, all of them dark and irregularly shaped. It also sent back images of methane ice volcanoes erupting on the frigid surface of its largest moon Triton. Then Voyager 2 sailed on, headed out into deep space; it’s expected to pass the star Sirius in another 300 thousand years.
