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
"Out of bounds"
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Summer Sky Tour Part I
Six eyes.
Six pointed ears
Three white beards
Three crimson cummerbunds.
Three drooping hats
One joyful smile
One confused frown
One expression of faint interest.
All focused on the remarkable flower in the remotest part of the Icelandic
wilds that, legend had it, imparted knowledge and wisdom to those in its
proximity. For the last few minutes, the flower stood silent and, as the
tallest of the three visitors believed, it would remain silent forever.
Though presently vibrant under the Sun's influence, it would soon to decay
and dissolve into the rocky soil below. All the while it wouldn't utter so
much as a syllable for, as every sensible soul knows, flowers don't talk.
The shortest visitor, the one who maintained a hopeful grin, was certain
that this remarkable blossom would soon speak, for he had heard from some
of the others that it was, indeed, as it was believed to be: a sage plant
which, like the murmuring willow or the reeds that repeat ancient secrets
once spoken into hollows, conveyed knowledge to those inclined to receive
it. After a few more minutes of silence, that grin faltered a bit and he
met the tallest one's hard stare with some trepidation, but he didn't give
up hope. The one who was neither the tallest nor the shortest had no idea
what to expect, but decided to remain anyway, if for no other reason than
to avoid going into their hovels. Icelandic summer days were so
blissfully long. The skies were so blue and boundless and the dynamic land
so restless with rumbles and torn by chilled winds that he could have
remained there forever and ever, if only to admire a single flower that was
supposed to start talking any minute now...
Two hands
One knob
One spinning machine
One dome.
Forty people
One microphone
One mind that, for the moment, had to stop day dreaming.
"Ladies and gentlemen, in a moment we are going to transport ourselves from
a warm June morning to a cooler June evening. We can accomplish this
transition with the aid of that metallic ant poised on the pedestal. We
call that our planetarium projector, although, semantically, that machine
IS the 'planetarium.' Its function it to transform that porous aluminum
dome above our heads into the night sky.
"We have to admit, of course, that our simulation cannot compete with the
real thing. The actual sky is far more vibrant, energetic, and even more
colorful than this small, but still lovely, replication. Consider this
the map, or the thumbnail sketch that one can use to navigate around the
sky.
"First matters first. As always, we begin with some distance
determination. The sky is replete with stars, but devoid of road signs.
We must figure out a way to ascertain the directions. Toward this aim, we
employ a technique that navigators used for centuries. We first locate
Polaris, the north star. Despite popular belief to the contrary, it is not
the brightest star, nor is it directly overhead. Instead, it ranks low in
the list of the night sky's fifty brightest stars, and it is 43 degrees
above the northern horizon, because we here in the Southworth Planetarium
are about 43 degrees north of the equator.
*Big and Little Dippers*
Image by Jerry Lodriguss
"Not an easy star to find, but, of course, one can use the Big Dipper to
find Polaris. Simply extend a line out from the outer bowl stars about a
'dipper's length' to find Polaris, which, itself, is the end handle star in
the Little Dipper.' These patterns are circumpolar, meaning that they
will never set, at least not at our latitude. That makes them very
handy, for they are always visible and can be used to guide us to the other
directions. Our theatre has uni-directional seating, which is why Polaris
is to the back of you. South is to your front, the east to the left and
the west to the right. Over the course of an evening, the stars appear to
migrate across the sky as a consequence of Earth's rotational motion.
"Now that we've established our directions, we proceed at once to the
western evening sky to behold the magnificent lion, Leo which, at the
moment, is hosting the spectacular giant planet Jupiter. Though we know
Jupiter is a behemoth of a world hundreds of times larger and more massive
than Earth, it appears star-like. Planets are so far away that we don't
see them as discs with the unaided eye. However, they aren't pinpoint
light sources so they do not twinkle as stars do.
*Leo the Lion and Jupiter*
Image by www.beckstromobservatory.com
<http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiaorbt1rvNAhUHQVIKHbUgATcQjB0IBg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.beckstromobservatory.com%2Fwhats-up-in-tonights-sky-2%2F&psig=AFQjCNG4pUdYUFDkOhZCukz0bZZkD1y7JQ&ust=1466686412857725>
<https://www.google.com/search?tbs=simg%3Am00&tbnid=drmSabKflwnARM%3A&docid=ht1IDdMBAJ0cTM&bih=493&biw=1192&tbm=isch>
"Leo the Lion has been perceived as a lion, or a sphinx or another
crouching animal for thousands of years. The wonderful thing about
constellations is that they maintain their shapes for thousands of years
even though the stars comprising them move at more than a hundred miles a
second. We, too, sitting here in this theatre, are moving at a comparable
speed toward a point in Hercules called the 'apex.' Fantastically, we're
moving so quickly because we're in orbit around a supermassive black hole
at the galactic nucleus. We're also propelled along by material within
the galaxy, most of which we cannot directly observe. That which is unseen
moves us along.
"Now that the sky is firmly set, I am going to come out into the audience
with you, which is what I prefer to do, anyway. It also gives me the
opportunity to use my special microphone. For now, not only am I
addressing a captive and entranced audience in the dome, but my voice is
also being broadcast in the dense jungles of Equatorial Guinea, the
Australian outback, north central Canada, and, now, somewhere in the
Westfjords district in Iceland. As a brief backstory, a graduate
student in the geosciences does work with us on occasion. An avid traveler,
he devised this strange, albeit wondrous, idea of planting special
microphones in some of the most isolated parts of the words and, through a
technique that I couldn't understand if you explained it to me in small
increments, allows my voice to echo at these exotic locales whenever I use
this special wireless microphone. So, at the end of this tour, your
thunderous applause will shatter the silence of three continents and one
northern island nation. Now, I have no idea if anybody is ever able to
listen to me or us because he told me he wanted to put these devices in the
farthest reaches. Perhaps now that we're broadcasting in Iceland, maybe
we're entertaining gnomes! Well, not that they would understand English.
ha ha ha!"
Three frowns
"Now, let's continue..."
Part II tomorrow...
"RADIO ASTRONOMY!"
Friday afternoons at 1:00 p.m.
on WMPG 90.9 FM www.wmpg.org
How much astronomy can be accomplished in a spectacular port city where 95%
of the nights are obscured by iron-thick clouds, the ambient light polluted
haze blocks our view of everything except the pirate phantoms congregating
around the docks, and the closest major observatory is literally the Hubble
Space Telescope that never veers closer to us than about 1400 miles?
Answer: One devil of a lot!
"WMPG: Radio Astronomy" is, in our own irrational opinion, a 15 megaton
astronomical deficiency compensator careening through the interstellar,
roaring inexorably toward the uncharted, exploring the exotic, scrutinizing
the enigmatic, and delving thigh deep into every level of physical reality,
from the quantum phantasmagoric to the uber-magnificient galactic and
through every gradation inbetween. (And, yes, you're right, this fathead
hasn't the faintest idea what he just said.)
On Friday afternoons at 1:00 p.m. WMPG's "Radio Astronomy" staggers
humanity with an entire half hour devoted to the sky and Universe.
Panelists Bernie Reim, Heidi J. Vierthaler, Nat Lippert, and Edward Gleason
engage in mind-expanding and soul-enriching discussions and interviews.
We've hosted asteroid experts, astrophysicists. celestial mythologists,
astro-photographers. and even, heaven help us, planetarium directors!
Once a month, we invite two frenzied hooligans from the Southern Maine
Astronomers to talk about the latest developments in the rich and
variegated world of astronomy, astrophysics and space science. Each show
begins with Berne Reim's "What's Up in the sky!”
"Radio Astronomy" literally promises you the Universe! The saturnine will
smile, the estranged will reconcile, anger will abate, stress will
dissipate and all the bleak aspects of life will be cast into scintillating
iridescence. Join us every Friday afternoon for a dynamic half hour
that so crackles with energy and electricity one would think we had our own
Plutonium powered radio isotope thermoelectric generator