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Astronomy for Teachers, 1st session: 19 November 2007

Why Astronomy is cool

Show and tell

Theme: "Why Astronomy is cool."

  1. Mauna Kea - JCMT, Submillimeter array assembly building, CSO, Subaru, UH 0.6-meter, Keck 1, Keck 2, UKIRT, IRTF, UKIRT, UH 2.2-meter, Gemini, and CFHT.
  2. Arecibo - 300m diameter radio dish in Puerto Rico.
  3. SALT - 11m South African Large telescope, the largest in the southern hemisphere. First light in November 2005.
  4. Swift telescope - a new gammaray and x-ray telescope designed to help find the astronomical objects that produce gammaray bursts: some of the largest explosions in the universe.
  5. Surprise: Earthrise from Apollo 8 in orbit. It took them just under 4 days to get there.
  6. Earth and Moon from Galileo, 1990. Note the size and brightness differences (the moon was artifically brightened to bring out detail!), as well as which side is illuminated.
  7. SOHO prominence and magnetic field structure from best of SOHO. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K. Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structure. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures.
  8. Surprise: Solar flare strikes SOHO. 5 November 1998 from best of SOHO. Protons accelerated to 10% the speed of light arrived at SOHO in about an hour, causing numerous bright points and streaks in the last two images.
  9. Spirit rover at the top of `Husband Hill'' in the Columbia Hills on Mars, just after reaching the summit in August 2005.
  10. Thin rings around Saturn with Enceladus, taken in polarized infrared.
  11. Surprise: ring ripples. Prometheus and Pandora (not in frame) maintain the outer F ring, Pan (20km across, visible) maintains the Encke gap and its ringlet with ripples.
  12. M56 from Lynch Observatory. Globular cluster" ~33,000ly distance, 85ly across, several hundred thousand stars.
  13. Surprise: SDSS funny double star (white-dwarf, red giant) with strange spectrum. No link, but if you want to see the data, please e-mail me!
  14. Ring nebula. A famous planetary nebula. The blue gass is Hot and the gas cools as you look further out in the ring, red being the coolest. ~1ly across, 2000ly distant.
  15. Surprise: McNiel's nebula, part of the Orion complex. Young star outburst lit the surrounding gas. It was discovered by an amateur observer in Kentucky.
  16. Crab nebula, x-ray: pulsar and hot gas (wrong scale - too large), visual: synchrotron electrons and hydrogen gas, IR: warm dust, Radio: free electrons.
  17. Surprise: SGR1806-20 as observed by Integral Dec 27. 2004 (a Russian satellite saw the reflection of the signal from the moon, 12 other satellites also saw it, some while not even looking in the correct direction).
  18. Multiwavelength Milkyway. The galaxy we live in, as observed in a variety of wavelengths.
  19. Surprise: new SDSS dwarf merger. Should be symmetric top/bottom, dotted line is Sagittarius dwarf. Press release today!
  20. Andromeda. The closest large galaxy near us. Very similar to our own Milkyway.
  21. Tadpole Galaxy - Arp 188. Distance 420 million ly, Tail length is roughly 280,000ly. This galaxy was disrupted by an interloper that passed through a few million years ago. The long tail is the gas that was pulled off, which will eventually form into its own small galaxy.
  22. Abell 1689 taken in 2002 by ACS. Surprise: look at the arcs: the cluster of galaxies in the center is acting like a fun-house mirror, and distorting the light from the background galaxies. Prof. Dave Goldberg studies the shapes of those arcs to determine how much mass is causing the bending of the image.
  23. Hubble ultra-deep field. 11.3 days total exposure time. Every dot that doesn't have diffraction spikes is a galaxy: there are thousands in the image, and it is a very small fraction of the sky.
  24. Surprise: Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from the WMAP satellite. Penzias and Wilson discovered the CMB in 1963 and won the Nobel Prize for their discovery.
  25. Surprise: Family portrait from Voyager 1. The Voyager I spacecraft took this picture on its way out of the solar system. Earth's image is refered to as the "Pale Blue Dot."

Carl Sagan's quote about that last image, given at a commencement address. For more from Dr. Sagan on that theme, as well as a generally uplifting and interesting book on Astronomy, see Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. There are two versions, one with illustrations and one without. Make certain you get the version with illustrations, as they are a large part of what makes the book so great.

The Joseph R. Lynch Observatory has been made possible by the Generosity of Joseph R. Lynch '58 and the GE Foundation.