A busy summer

Hard to believe that I last posted two months ago. Time flies.

This summer, considering the long dry spell and reasonably clear sky, I've been busy astronomically. The new Trottier observatory at SFU has taken some of my time, along with a number of public astronomy events organized by both SFU and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's Vancouver centre. These events, for instance "Starry Night" at SFU, the Regional Parks' Perseid Meteor shower watch in Aldergrove, Deas Island Park, and other local activities all involved the RASC and it's various volunteers.

During the last couple of months, we set up our telescopes for the public to see objects such as the Moon, the planets Saturn, Venus, and Mars, open and globular star clusters, far-away galaxies, nebulae, and exploded stars. Many thousands of people took part in these activities. The Public has a deep interest in things astronomical. It is particularly gratifying to see so many young people show up at these gatherings. It is the first step to get involved in science, because astronomy involves many disciplines (physiscs, chemistry, biology, geology, for example).

Here is a link to an article, as it appeared on the website of the RASC (http://rasc-vancouver.com/) regarding the opening of Simon Fraser University’s Trottier Observatory and Science Courtyard. It describes the manifold purposes of this great addtion to the university and the co-operation between SFU and the RASC, written by professor Howard Trottier:

http://rasc-vancouver.com/trottier-observatory-and-science-courtyard-at-sfu-wheels-up/

Many thanks are owed to the Trottier family, whose generous gift contributes so much to the scientific community.

Catch up

On June 20, the Moon, Jupiter, and Venus appeared in the evening sky as pictured. Venus has been chasing Earth since the beginning of the year and is slowly catching up. Jupiter has moved from the middle of the night into the evening sky (largely due to Earth's motion around the sun - it's an effect of perspective).

Venus is the closest planet to us and orbits the sun inside the Earth's orbit, and therefore moves faster. It is almost the same size  as Earth, but its surface is submerged in an atmosphere which is about 90 times denser then Earth's. It's surface temperature is about 450 degrees C (900 F). It's a true hell (lead melts).

Jupiter is our solar systems largest planet. You could put about 1500 planets of Venus size into Jupiter. That huge planet orbits 5 times as far from the sun as the Earth. In this image, Jupiter is positioned on the far side of its orbit, and will disappear behind the sun in a couple of months. At this point, it is about six-and-a-half times as far away from us as the sun.

In the spirit of catching up: On the third of May we commemorated the 4th anniversary of our son's death from colon cancer - always an occasion for some tears. 

On May 22nd, I turned 76. It's hard to believe, I still think that I'm in my prime. The little aches and pains accompanying old age say otherwise, however. So the truth is that I'm an old "fuddy-duddy". On May 29, I had a colonoscopy done, in view of our family history. Three polyps were found and removed. Fortunately, none of them showed any evidence of cancer.

Right now, both my wife and I are fighting a persistent cough; it makes sleeping restless. It's been making the rounds in our family - we're the last ones to "catch the bug".

At the moment, I'm involved in a process arranging the running of the new SFU astronomical observatory for it's portion of the Vancouver RASC's* time on the telescope. It's an observatory dedicated to both individual and public observing. More about this in a later post.

*Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

Happy Travellers

This month, we spent three weeks in California, driving to see friends in various parts of the state. The main reason we went down was to celebrate our close friend Henry's eighty-fifth birthday in La Jolla. Over the years we have visited him and his wife, we've gotten to know many of their friends, and most of the family. We were one of four "international" couples; the others were from Sweden and Germany. There were about forty of us present. A great time was had by all - the festivity included a catered Mexican Lunch and a wonderful nine-person Mariachi band, which played for at least two hours.

Our fiftieth wedding anniversary occurred a week later. Seeing that so many of our friends had assembled, we arranged to celebrate that occasion after Henry's "big one". We had not announced this ahead of time, so it was a surprise to all. These anniversary celebrations took place in smaller groups at "Piatti's" Restaurant in La Jolla Shores, and at several "happy hours" at local friends' homes. Needless to say that the drinks flowed liberally, and food was equally plentiful (we have proof: our waistlines tell us so).

After about a week of this, we decided to wend our way home. We stayed with friends in Los Angeles and Chico and continued our anniversary entertainment in that fashion.

This car trip included (in chronological order) Medford, Oregon, and in Calfornia we stpped at Santa Nella, Solvang, La Jolla, Long Beach, Santa Nella again, Chico, Roseburg, Oregon, and Portland. We love travelling by car; you can be very flexible about your route. None of these stops were arranged in advance, we decided where to go while we were on the road.

It was a great trip.

A month later

  

Venus, Moon, Mars (faint dot at lower right of the Moon), Mar 21, 2015 evening

Moon, Mars (middle), Venus, on Feb 20, 2015 in the evening sky.

The top image shows Venus, Moon, and Mars yesterday evening. For comparison, the same three as they appeared exactly four weeks ago, shown above. The Moon has completed one orbit around the Earth, The Earth has moved about thirty degrees along its once-a-year orbit around the Sun. Venus, whose orbit is inside the Earths orbit and moves around the Sun more quickly, is starting to catch up to Earth. Mars, with its orbit outside the Earths orbit, moves more slowly than Earth. Mars, on the far side of its orbit (as seen from Earth) at this time, will disappear behind the Sun in a few weeks, and will then re-appear in the morning sky. This comparison is a good demonstration of the dynamic behaviour of the solar system.
Click on the images for a larger view, or use Zoom option.

A matter of perspective

There was a nice combination of the Moon, Mars, and Venus visible in the West last evening. This picture was cropped from original, taken with 200mm lens, ASA 800, 1/20 sec, handheld. Moon, Mars, and Venus aligned in evening sky. The Moon (top) is closest (360,000km), Venus (bottom) is about 213 million km away, and Mars (middle) 330 Million km.

The relative positions of the planets in February 2015 are shown in the scanned image at the bottom. The Earth is shown in green. Imagine yourself looking from the Earth towards Venus and Mars. Yesterday (February 20 around 7:30 pm) you would have seen the two planets aligned as shown below, located far beyond the Moon (the little black dot labelled "Moon"). The orbits are not to scale. If the picture were drawn to scale, Venus would be about 3 meters and Mars 4.6 meters from the Earth.
 

 

 

Orbit schematic scanned from Sky and Telescope magazine.

Into the New Year

My wife and I hope that all of you had a great holiday season. We enjoyed our usual Christmas family get-together.  For once, the two of us had a "stay-at-home" New Year all by ourselves. After watching the New York time ball at 9pm, we raised a toast or two, reminisced about past riotous New Years' parties here at home, in California and Mexico, and family members and friends who have died, and went to bed around 10pm - getting old, I guess.

A number of astronomical events (including a relatively rare triple shadow transit on Jupiter) were rained/fogged out during this month. A clear sky break during last week made it possible for me to have a look at comet Lovejoy, though. This is a relatively bright comet, easily seen through binoculars. It's bright enough to be seen with the naked eye as a faint, fuzzy star, but not in the light-polluted Metro area.

The days are getting longer; we're looking forward to more sun.

Christmas again

This year seems to have passed more quickly than ever - I think that's a sign of aging: every second, minute, hour, day represents a larger percentage of the rest of life, and somehow, our mind builds that into our perceptions.

My wife and I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, an a Happy, Healthy, and Successful New Year.

This is the fourth Christmas since our son died - we live with the memories and are
thankful for having his wife and children live next door.