Third night... well really the fourth night of free astronomy outreach lectures in beautiful downtown Bremerton. The third night was in Spanish, which is totally fitting since the new telescope is being built in Chile. I thought about going down, then decided I really needed a night off to just be involved with my own projects at home, of which I have many. (I know just enough Spanish to be dangerous, every little bit helps to sharpen the skills). The same night I guess they had what they called an "astronomy slam" around downtown in various bars (not all THAT many bars) they said like 220 astronomers were in town for this!!! WOW... so I guess this is a huge convention of astronomers from all over the globe; we had an Aussie (I think) give the intro, and he was barefoot too. They said it was a lot better than meeting in Tucson and Phoenix in August (where they usually meet, 'cause that telescope is top dog right now). They all love Bremerton!!! We seem to be a hidden jewel here. (I think so too) Go figure.

I wandered downtown finally, again finding a parking spot on the bottom level, amazing how many people jockeyed for a spot up on the first level of the garage, I honestly think a lot of people are afraid of parking garages, especially lower levels. What the h*** it was empty (the top was full) and it's nice to not have to endanger the new car paint. I'm glad I go early, the word is out on this program and the theatre filled up this night... not an empty seat. This speaks well of the local populace, but on that level... again the Q&A at the end (and some in the beginning prior to 7 pm kick off) involved Black Holes. (MAN the dumb questions!!! This was a college level lecture, and I bet many were lost!) I'm so glad to see the kids involved, but after the fifth dumb question about Black Holes, it gets a little annoying. Plainly Hollywood has terrified many around 1) killer meteorites and 2) black holes. It IS the stuff of nightmares, but very poorly portrayed on screen (tho Deep Impact was pretty good tech wise). And, bottom line, it is very unlikely that ANY of us will meet our demise by either astronomical apparition.

There IS a mandate from the USA and the UN both to map the heavens and look for NEOs (Near Earth Objects) with an eye to something hitting the Earth, and astronomers are gladly taking the money I'm sure. But seriously the likelihood is low. But yes it's possible....

The title this night was Cosmology: Mapping the Universe's Dark Stuff. Again, the topic veered toward the impending construction of the LSST in Chile. Many impressive stats at data collection were tossed about (I don't think the astronomical community has quite absorbed it all yet, they seem overwhelmed so far), one I liked was "in the first month of operation of the LSST, we will capture more data than all the data from all the telescopes so far, combined" wow.... the camera of the LSST will be sizable, and will be sealed in a cryogenic unit (cold is good for electronics, dryness and cameras) I researched the LSST and it is near Santiago up in the mountains, at around 30* S Latitude, he talked a bit about how the water drops out of the atmosphere at that latitude (tropics, trade winds etc), cloud cover is rare, also from that degree, the entire sky is visible depending on the time of year of course, but you can see it all. Mauna Kea was also considered as a site, but they kept running into Nimbys, so Chile (with their welcoming, money hungry government) was a much nicer option. I agree. Brush up yer Espanol, ya'all. I see economic growth in Patagonia on the horizon.

Local contact is Bob Able at Olympic College, and the website where the videos of these lectures will be is http://www.bkat.org. They aren't up as of this typing, hope to post in this thread eventually. With the graphics. I took some photos of the screens, ditto might post at some point.

This dude giving the lecture "Jim" babbled (he talked pretty fast, but I kept up) a couple of stellar measuring bits (including a Voyager year, that is the distance Voyager travels in a year, I saw no use for it), but I did catch that a parsec is 3.26 light years (a light year is distance, not time). One parsec is analogous to an arcsecond (see your old geometry notes for arcs). If a star appears to move one arcsecond as the earth reaches opposite points in its orbit (aphelion and perihelion), due to natural parallax, then that star is a parsec away.

He also talked about Gaia, which is an EU telescope in orbit, and he said that it can pick up objects 32,600 light years out. He followed with a lot of big numbers about size of galaxy and how far we could see, and it was impressive but not note worthy. I know we can't see it all, and I know it's fuzzy due to Earth's atmosphere and gravitational effect on long-distant-traveling light waves.

He talked about Cepheid variables and "standard candles" and I would have to re-read the Asimov book to be well spoken on this.... but basically it's a way to relate variable stars' magnitudes to their distance. Cepeids are like 1.3 billion light years away. Then he talked about Red Shift, using a Slinky!!! OOO I liked that, a steal for the classroom! Holding up said Slinky, he said while at rest, there sat the Slinky looking pretty normal. With a Red Shift, the Universe expanding, the Slinky expands and the distance between coils gets wider (ie long light waves). Doppler/red shift is a little more complex than that.... Asimov explained it like a train whistle when coming toward you is higher, when retreating it's lower. You are getting the long waves as it recedes. The red waves are the long waves.... therefore the redder the star, the more it's rushing away from you. (Aviation uses Doppler too, as a function of radar, depending on how the waves look, you can tell relative speed of another moving object, and direction).

The gist being, the redder the object, the older it is (ie further away) and the smaller the universe was "as we see it" since we are seeing ancient light (some we are seeing was emitted when reptiles were first colonizing the earth, or before the Himalayas were formed).

Novae were also mentioned as "candles" to help calibrate distance, as the dimmer things are, the further they are, and we can see novae yea unto other galaxies of course.

Where the kicker comes in... is that from what we can tell, the Universe, instead of slowing down and coming back together (as we would assume it would do, due to gravity or entropy), is not slowing down. It (shiver) weirdly seems to be speeding UP! So into the calculations now comes Dark Energy. Which is shoving stuff apart and keeps accelerating the process. It's driving the expansion. These things tend to shake up scientists because it's totally outside everyone's explanations, and scientists love to be able to explain things. They can't this one, but we know it's there.

The next part went into the Twilight Zone, because Quantum theory predicts this... but does not provide a good model. Something seems to be in the empty spaces. General relativity (that which predicts gravity wells) may not be correct. I asked about this again at the end, and he said "Neither Quantum nor General Relativity seem to work for the Dark Energy model" and he dragged in a "coined" phrase for a New Force "quintessence" .......... in other words, they are chasing the same confusion that lay people are in this area. There ARE no solid answers here. The math does not compute. (I'll take their word for it, because the math sure goes off MY personal map)

He also showed a lovely graphic of "background microwave radiation" (BMR) from the first Big Bang I guess, that photo has shown up in NatGeo before, and you can google that for more info. Sorta pretty, and some of these graphics looked like neural networking or algae growth in a pond. Really beautiful and fascinating. Tentative thoughts are on taking the data from the LSST and correlating to the BMR map.

Dark Matter is basically "missing matter", and is predicted by gravity theory.... a later comment was "Dark Matter might be like neutrinos, we think. Dark matter is (possibly) heavier particles than neutrinos, but behave the same way, passing right through things" The time they started looking for Dark Matter was when they realized that in order for the galaxies (which are really really huge) to stay together via gravity and not fly apart, there must be more mass to them than we could see, so they hypothesized Dark Matter, which behaves like normal matter according to General Relativity (gravity wells etc). We can see gravitational lensing with nothing apparently there doing the lensing (so it must be Dark Matter). (google Gravitational lensing, a cool effect, makes you see double star images via light bent by gravity wells)

The LSST will be able to get clearer images, better resolution (more pixels) and perhaps refine what we already can see. The Hubble or Gaia on steroids essentially.

I have one more lecture tonight, allegedly there is a planetarium show on Friday, but I might have to miss that one; I have to baby-sit, and 3 and a half year olds can't sit still that long ... I don't think. I'll have to get Mom's permission if we go.

ref: Universe by Isaac Asimov

Cepheids -- chapt 14
doppler -- chapt 5
red shift -- chapt 13
parallax -- chapt 2

Neosporin is fabulous stuff.... and I'm sorry Evo bit you. She might be in pain, how old is she? Both of you be more careful, and go get her some milk bones to make up. My cats bite me all the time, but it seems natural with them. Once in a while they get smacked if it's too ferocious. Already one cat fight outside the door, apparently two visiting Toms met up out there. Sophie wasn't involved, only as an innocent bystander. Those Toms are whistling up the wrong tree that's for sure, everyone's neutered here!

I have no statistical magic to share.... I have noticed a statistical drop off in interviews from the Moody Blues (Justin specifically of course) and rather than whining about it, I hope they are all ok. Gray is the last one to check in, and that was reply a post I put on his FB about Nichelle Nichols.... (she really is a gorgeous gal, still) Which proves Gray is still rattling around somewhere.

Who IS this joink????