THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
207-780-4249      www.usm.maine.edu/planet
70 Falmouth Street     Portland, Maine 04103
43.6667° N                   70.2667° W
Founded January 1970
Julian date:  2457661.16
               "A proton is to a human {in size] as a human is to the
volume of space separating the Sun and Alpha Centauri."
                     -John Allen Paulos  "Innumeracy"


*THE DAILY ASTRONOMER*
*Thursday, September 29, 2016*
*Solar Storm?*

It is said that the Titanic's 1912 sinking demonstrated that nature will
sometimes appear deceptively quiescent, but will never relinquish control.
   Solar storms are other reminders that, despite humanity's impressive
technological advancements, we remain disquietingly vulnerable to nature's
whims.     The Sun constantly propels a "solar wind" from its uppermost
layers, a wind that pervades the solar system all the way  out to the
heliosphere.      Along with this wind, the Sun often issues forth coronal
mass ejections and flares that, if sufficiently powerful, could disrupt
communications and make life a sordid horror for the 98% of Earthlings
psychologically addicted to smart phones.

However, Earth is presently under a somewhat gentle assault from a G1 class
geomagnetic storm, a comparatively minor solar storm which poses little to
no danger to our electrical infrastructure.    However, this storm is still
 producing a continuous outflow of charged solar particles that have
produced stunning auroras around Earth's higher latitudes.

​*Jubulant skywatchers celebrate the appearance of an aurora*
*display over Iceland.   An onslaught of solar wind has produced aurora
over this island nation for six consecutive nights.   Image:  Olivier
Staiger,  spaceweather.com <http://spaceweather.com/>*

Aurora occur when these charged particles "excite" atoms with the
atmosphere.  When an atom is excited, one or more of it electrons are
elevated into higher energy levels.   One can envision these levels as
being like a series of concentric orbits, provided one realizes that such a
vision does not reflect reality. (Electrons are not as neatly discrete as
planets.)     When the excited electrons settle back down to lower energy
levels, they'll emit the photons that comprise the aurora glow.

The Sun has been curiously quiet so far this year.    Our parent star has
experienced 20 "spotless days," when the region facing us has shown no sun
spots at all.   There were only three spotless days between 2011-2015,
inclusive.  Fewer spots generally indicate lower solar activity.  At the
moment, however, a nifty little sunspot complex AR2597 is percolating along
the Sun's southern limb, but doesn't pose much of a threat to us.  Instead,
Earth is basking in a smooth solar outflow that is alighting the high
northern skies and reminding us of what is truly in charge, after all.
*______________________________________________________________*

*PANDORA PARCHMENT  # 2:   "What happened before the Big Bang?"-J.C.*

This question is perhaps the most common of the "unaskables," those
questions that are self-negating.   Mind you, it is a sensible question
that many people ask, but to which we cannot offer a satisfactory answer.
   According to cosmologists, literally nothing happened prior to the Big
Bang because time, itself, was created in that event,    The word "before"
is temporally relative.   Intuitively, this notion seems nonsensical, for
we are accustomed to living in a world that operates on cause and effect.
Find a rock on a beach and you know that something happened to put it
there: perhaps a melting glacier?      The genesis event, popularly called
the "Big Bang" was an effect without a known cause.    It created
space-time and energy, some of which formed the matter comprising the
material Universe.    There was no "before," anymore than there is anything
"outside" of the Universe, because the word "outside" is spatially
relative.

Some cosmologists wonder if, perhaps, our Universe was born out of a black
hole that formed in another Universe.      This notion does supply a cause,
albeit in an alternate reality.   While this hypothesis does satisfy our
intuitive need to have a preceding cause to the cosmic birth event, it
doesn't address the ultimate first cause:  what made the first Universe.
It would surprise me if that question is ultimately unaskable, as well.
_______________________________________________________________________
FROM THE CATACOMBS OF INFINITE KNOWLEDGE
*"Black Moon Rising"*

*​*
At the risk of sounding behaving like wet blankets, tomorrow's "black moon"
shouldn't bring out a global-wide catastrophe.   If it does, we'll
apologize profusely and live stoically with the shame.       A "black moon"
is nothing more than the second new moon in a single month.  This term is
not as well known as "blue moon," the nickname given to the second full
moon in a single calendar month.

Black moons and blue moons are not that rare.    They happen once in about
 three to four years.     An entire lunar phase cycle lasts approximately
29.5 days, which is known as the moon's synodic period.       Every month,
save February, consists of either 30 or 31 days, so one can have a blue
moon or a black moon in any given month.   This time, the black moon
happens to occur in September,     And, to reiterate, we do not anticipate
that Earth will be destroyed as a consequence of  Friday's "black moon."
(Yes, we understand that this last statement will prove devastatingly
disappointing to those who've been closely watching the Presidential
campaign.)

We advise you to simply enjoy the commencement of another lunation cycle.
Look for the crescent moon in the western evening sky starting early next
week.      Of course, if, by chance, we happen to have a black moon in
February, feel free to panic.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Damn....that's the end of the article.
We always hate to stop.