The Astronomy Files

Goodbye Pluto

After a lot of contentious debate by professional astronomers, the planet Pluto has officially been downgraded to a "dwarf planet".  Too bad since we don't really know what it looks like.  Even Hubble can only get a few pixels of data on the camera chip (see image above and to the right of Pluto and it's moon Charon).  But the New Horizons mission is already on it's way to investigate the ex-planet.  Had this downgrade happened before launch, it probably would have been scrapped by NASA.

Galaxies, Stars, Solar Systems, Globular Clusters, and Planetary Nebulae

I've been occupied with other things for the past week or so but I've collected a few articles from pertinent web sites.  Here's some good ones:

• Deuterium as a tracer for star and galaxy formation
• When stars collide
• Solar systems in Orion
• The large and the small in harmony

Not much time to do observing either but I did take my 10" truss tube out a couple of nights ago.  My back yard is a light polluted place but I'm surprised at what I can observe in the man-made twilight of Sugar Land. 

Globulars, especially the brighter ones, are pretty easy targets.  M13 is always easy to see and I like it's little brother, M92.  But there's another easy one in Hercules that Messier somehow missed, NGC6229.  At magnitude 9.4, it's still observable in the city muck, even with an 8" scope. 

But if you're really stuck in the light pollution, give planetaries a try.  M57 is big, bright, and can be found even in a finder scope.  Another good planetary is the Dumbbell, M27.  There's also some pretty good reflection and emission nebulae in the southern sky this time of the year.  The Swan, M17, the Eagle, M16 (which is actually an open cluster but is associated with nebula IC4703), and M8, the Lagoon are good examples

Open clusters are good to observe, too.  I really like M11.  It's one of the most beautiful open clusters you will ever lay eyes on.  This object has over 600 stars but with a small scope you may see only a hundred or so.  It's worth a taking a long, long look.

Hunting The Ivory Bill

My father was a great outdoorsman and, along with him, I spent a lot of my youth tromping around in the woods of East Texas.  One of the animals he used to describe to me was a bird called the Ivory Bill Woodpecker.  He claimed he had seen this bird many times and in fact, corresponded with Armand Yramategui, the curator of the Burke Baker Planetarium, and for whom the Armand Bayou south of Houston is named, about the Ivory Bill.  At that time, the Ivory Bill was considered extinct and Mr. Yramategui was highly interested in my father's experience observing the bird.  Unfortunately Armand Yramategui was killed by a couple of thugs who carjacked him on a Houston freeway.

In all my experience in the woods, I never saw an Ivory Bill.  I have seen many Pileated Woodpeckers, a close but smaller relative that has similar looks.  But over the years there have been claims of seeing this elusive bird in the wild.  The likely places left to spot one seem to be Arkansas in the deep deciduous forests and the Louisiana swamps.   In fact a kayaker reported seeing one in 2004 but expeditions in the area have failed to produce another siting.

But now NASA has gotten into the search.  This bird historically needed big timber to survive and the NASA search is supposed to identify the type of forest that Ivory Bills might inhabit.  For the sake of my father and Mr. Yramategui, both gone from this Earth, I hope they find one.

A Cataclysmic Variable In The Making

Red giant stars (which our Sun will become in, oh, 4 or 5 billion years) typically blow off their atmosphere, forming a planetary nebula and reducing the parent star to a white dwarf.  But sometimes very strange things can happen to binary systems.  Case in point:  A brown dwarf survived the transition phase of a red giant into a white dwarf without being destroyed.  But things aren't looking up.  It will eventually be destroyed.

Near Infrared Images Of Jupiter

New stuff coming in from University of California astronomers who imaged Jupiter with the Keck II scope on Mauna Kea.  Shooting at 1.58 microns and using adaptive optics they were mostly interested in the dynamics of the Great Red Spot and Red, Jr.  The GRS and Red, Jr. rotate opposite each other since they are in adjacent atmospheric bands.  Some scientists have predicted a merger between the two but so far that has not happened.