Jim Colyer

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I have had four rounds of astronomy. Round one was as a teenager in the early 1960s. I learned the constellations and watched meteor showers. Round two was in my 30s. I got into cosmology, learned the features of the moon and wrote my first astronomy paper. Round three was in my 50s. I subscribed to Astronomy Magazine, wrote this paper and went to an Australian Star Party to see the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. Round four was in my 60s when I wrote the "Night Sky" paper.

History
Each period in history sees the sky in a different way. The way a civilization perceives the sky is related to its travel capabilities. As man's knowledge of geography has increased, so has his understanding of the earth's place in the larger scheme.

Greek astronomer Ptolemy lived in the second century. In his book called the Almagest, he had the earth at the center with the sun and planets going around it. This view stood for 1400 years.

In 1453, Copernicus in Poland got it right. He expounded a heliocentric doctrine. Modern science was born. Really, Copernicus revived a forgotten idea of the Greek Aristarchus. The Greeks had science. The Scientific Revolution which grew out of the Renaissance was a return to Greek ideas. The Middle Ages were dominated by the Church, and the Bible ignored science.

The road leading from superstition and false information was very long. For centuries, man's concept of reality was shaped by the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible does it state that the earth is flat, but the implications are there: Satan taking Jesus to the mountaintop to show him the world's kingdoms and references to the "four corners of the earth." Heaven was above. Hell was below. Even Shakespeare retarded the growth of science with ghosts, witches and fairies. No wonder, the people who settled in America knew so little about the nature of the things.

Things were changing. Europe was expanding, and the printing press spread new ideas. By the time of Columbus' voyages, most people knew that the earth was round. It became irrefutable when Magellan sailed around it, a grueling three-year voyage during which he was killed.

Tycho Brahe was an observer. He found a nova in Cassiopeia in 1572. As a theorist, he was a dud. He knew the planets circled the sun but thought that both the sun and planets circled the earth. He built an observatory near Hamlet's castle in Denmark.

It took Tycho's assistant, Johannes Kepler, to make sense of his work. Kepler's laws of planetary motion showed their orbits to be ellipses. The closer planets are to the sun, the faster they move.

William Herschel was the father of stellar astronomy. He built telescopes and made the first model of the Milky Way. Erroneously, he placed our solar system at its center.

Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were physicists who laid the groundwork for modern astronomy. Newton introduced the concept of gravity, the tendency for two bodies to attract whether they are the earth and an apple or the earth and the moon. Einstein gave us relativity. Relativity says that the speed of light is the only absolute, that speed and time are relative to the observer. While the most distant galaxies may recede at 99% of the speed of light, they will never equal it.

Even genius can be wrong. Newton was an alchemist, and Einstein did not believe that the universe was expanding. Einstein was born in southern Germany. He formulated his theory of Special Relativity in 1905 and his theory of General Relativity in 1915. Being Jewish, he emigrated to the United States when the Nazis gained control of Germany.

Astronomy can be studied as a series of levels proceeding outward. Space has depth. Perspective rules. There are motions within motions. We explore the solar system and reach for the stars. The Milky Way becomes one of countless galaxies. We search for extraterrestrial life. We question the origin and destiny of the universe.

Solar System
The solar system began as a cloud of dust and gas. The cloud began to spin and contract. It contracted into a disk with the sun at the center. Planets formed in the disk. Gravity caused rocky, terrestrial planets to form near the sun. Gas giants floated farther out. Celestial bodies are round because they are molded by the effects of spinning. All stars may have planets.

There are two kinds of objects, those which shine by their own light like the sun and those which reflect light like planets.

The sun is an average star 93 million miles away. Its surface is 11,000 degrees. Sunspots are dark because they are cooler. The sun shines by nuclear fusion. Hydrogen turning into helium emits energy in the form of heat and light. This energy is stored in fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas.

The sun is a middle-age star and will burn another five billion years. It will then become a red giant. The planets will be consumed, and Earth's oceans will boil away. The atmosphere will go as the sky turns black.

Mercury is so close to the sun that many astronomers have never seen it. Mercury's surface is cratered like the moon's. And like the moon, it has no atmosphere.

Like Mercury, Venus is between the earth and the sun. For this reason, Venus never strays far from the sun in the morning or evening skies. It can be seen in the western sky after sunset. It goes through phases visible through a small telescope. Venus is brightest in its crescent phase because it is closer to Earth. It gets as bright as -4.5 magnitude. Venus accompanied by a crescent moon is one of the most beautiful sights in nature.

Venus is about the size of Earth, and we might expect similarities. But the surface of Venus is 900 degrees because of a greenhouse effect. Its atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide.

Earth
From space, Earth is a blue planet spotted with white cloud tops. It is 25,000 miles in circumference and 8,000 miles in diameter. Earth revolves around the sun every 365 days, a period which we call a year.

Earth's orbit varies over millions of years. It stretches and shrinks, accounting for ice ages.

Earth tilts 23 1/2 degrees on its axis. This tilt causes the seasons. Northern and southern hemispheres alternately lean into and away from the sun. When it is summer in the United States, it is winter in Australia.

Earth's moderate distance from the sun is a factor in the evolution of life. It is neither too hot nor too cold. Liquid water can exist. Where there is water, there is life.

Mountains are caused by stresses in the earth. Our atmosphere came from volcanoes. It provides pressure and protects us from deadly rays. It extends 300 miles. It rained for millions of years to create the oceans.

Life began in the sea (so we have read). Four billion years ago, chemicals began showing signs of life. Viruses straddled the line between the living and nonliving. One-celled organisms developed. Plants colonized the land. Plants produced oxygen by photosynthesis. Invertebrates evolved, then vertebrates. Fish evolved into amphibians which evolved into reptiles. Dinosaurs lived in the Mesozoic Era between 65 million and 220 million years ago: Tyrannosaurus, brontosaurus, stegosaurus, ankylosaurus and duckbills. I wrote a paper titled "The Other Sciences" which was dinosaur-based. A species is a group of animals whose members breed with one another. There are over one million species of animals.

The continents formed one land mass called Pangea. As continental drift occurred, reptiles evolved into birds and mammals. Most paleontologists believe that birds are dinosaurs. There was an age of giant mammals in the Cenozoic Era. Mammoths and mastodons became extinct only at the end of the recent Ice Age. Man has existed in some form for five million years. He evolved from primates in southeast Africa and spread through Europe and Asia. From Asia, he populated the South Pacific islands and walked across the land bridge at the Bering Strait into the Americas. That was 50,000 years ago. Races as we know them came into existence 20,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. Civilization was born in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Recorded history spans 5,000 years. The colonization of the Americas by Europeans from the Renaissance forward is the most important human migration in history. World population is currently 6 billion with 300 million in the United States.

Natural history is understood in terms of the Geological Time Scale. Paleontologists study the fossil record. Fossils are found in sedimentary rocks, those laid down by water. The age of rocks can be determined by radio carbon dating. To know the age of rocks is to know the age of the fossils in them.

Environment
I wrote Save The Planet because I am a songwriter, not a fanatic. I recall Al Gore's book about the environment. It was so technical, it was unreadable. George Bush 41 referred to Gore as "Ozone Man" because of his obsession with the ozone layer. I have read that the ozone layer repairs itself. Global warming became the big issue with Gore. This is the tendency for man-made carbon dioxide to trap heat in Earth's atmosphere. The fear is that the earth will be heated to the point that the polar caps melt, flooding coastal cities. Unchecked, Earth may become like Venus although we would be dead long before that. Paradoxically, geologists say we are between Ice Ages. If another Ice Age is inevitable, global warming might serve as a means for heating our planet. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can trap the sun's energy and prevent glaciers from flowing north and south and driving populations to the equator. It is crazy. We are trying to figure out whether we will burn up or freeze to death, whether we will drown or die of thirst because all the water is locked in ice. If global warming is taking place, it may not be a bad thing. It got pretty cold in Nashville last winter. If it is a bad thing, man's ingenuity may find a remedy. I am rational. With the population of the earth at six billion and climbing, we need to manage natural resources responsibly. The rainforest of South America cannot be destroyed without consequences. We should be planting trees in North America, one for each we cut down. Houses have traditionally been built with lumber. Books have been made from paper. That can change. New building materials can be developed. Libraries can become electronic. The large mammals of Africa need to be protected, otherwise they will be extinct in a few decades. It is up to the governments of African countries and their National Park systems. At the same time, it is a world problem. Man is one species despite his fragmentation into religious sects and nationalities. If man were to act as one species (I am not promoting a one-race concept) and stop warring, he would put his house in order. The energy and money spent by Muslims, Jews and Christians fighting would go a long way toward developing alternative fuels. Fossil fuels will eventually be depleted. It will take time, but the amounts of coal, oil and gas in the ground are finite. If man does not prepare for the time when they are gone, civilization will collapse. For all the talk about renewable energy and hybrid cars, we are nowhere near a state of practical application.

The Moon
In 1981, I used maps to identify the moon's prominent features. The dark maria are lava plains. Lava flowed from the moon's interior when the impacts were hard enough. Five maria combine to form a foot with three toes: Serenity, Tranquillity, Crises, Fertility and Nectar.

There are not many lava plains on the far side of the moon. The crust is thick on the far side, so it did not break and flood the lowlands with lava.

The moon is geologically dead. If a meteor hits, the crater is more or less permanent. There are some interesting craters. Aristarchus is the brightest. Plato is the darkest. Copernicus, Kepler, Aristarchus and Grimaldi form a Y-shape. Tycho in the south is stunning! Craters have central peaks, caused by the ground bouncing back. Recent craters have rays extending from them. The rays are stuff which was thrown out. The Apennine mountains rise 20,000 feet.

Earthshine is Earth lighting the lunar night. It is sunlight bouncing off the earth, hitting the moon and coming back to our eyes. Earthshine is seen during the moon's crescent phases when the moon is nearly in line with the sun and the earth. The horns of the moon always point away from the sun.

The moon appears to wax and wane in its monthly orbit. Phases of the moon are new moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, last quarter and waning crescent. The new moon is "no moon" because the side reflecting the sun is turned away from us.

First quarter is lit on the right. Last quarter is lit on the left. Quarter phases are a quarter of the cycle (90 degrees) from the sun in either direction.

A blue moon is a second full moon occurring in a calendar month. Blue moons are not that rare. They occur once every 2.7 years.

Until recently, it was thought that the earth and moon formed at the same time. It now appears that the moon came into existence when an asteroid crashed into the earth and ripped part of it away. This accounts for the moon not having a metal core. Old theories are earth-based. New theories are space-based.

The earth has slowed the moon's spin until it keeps one side to us. The moon undergoes two weeks of daylight and two weeks of night. There is no such thing as a "dark side" because the side we never see gets two weeks of light each month.

The moon is 240,000 miles from Earth. At our doorstep! If we drove around the world 10 times, we could be on the moon. Light travels between the earth and moon in 1.2 seconds.

The moon causes the tides in our oceans. It tugs at our atmosphere as well, but we are so deep in the atmosphere that we are unaware of it.

In March, 1960, I saw a total lunar eclipse. The moon took on a dark, copper hue. It remained visible because sunlight was refracted, or bent, onto it by the earth's atmosphere.

The earth casts a shadow into space. An eclipse of the moon occurs when it passes through this shadow. Usually, the moon passes above or below the shadow. A lunar eclipse can only occur during a full moon because the sun, earth and moon have to line up.

Earth's shadow has two parts. The umbra is the dark inner cone. The penumbra is the outer part which receives some sunlight.

"Umbra" is Latin for shadow. Latin terms are confusing.

A total lunar eclipse involves five stages: penumbral, partial, total, partial and penumbral. During totality, the moon is completely inside the umbra.

I saw a partial solar eclipse in Nashville, February 26, 1979. It was subtle. Had I not known of it in advance, I would not have suspected anything out of the ordinary.

During a solar eclipse, the moon passes between the earth and sun. Solar eclipses occur less than lunar eclipses because of the relative sizes of the shadows cast by the earth and moon. The earth casts a large shadow, so eclipses of the moon are common. The moon casts a small shadow, so eclipses of the sun are rare. That the sun and moon appear to be the same size in the sky is a coincidence.

Our sky is blue because air reflects light. The sky on the moon is black because there is no air. The blue earth in the sky is the only color. From the moon, the earth is stationary but goes through phases.

The temperature of the moon's surface varies 500 degrees, from 225 to -275.

Minerals in the moon rocks vary somewhat from those on Earth. There were no fossils in the moon rocks. Life began in the sea, and the moon has never had water.

American astronauts went to the moon six times between 1969 and 1972. 12 men walked on its surface. Neil Armstrong was the first. He made a mistake when he delivered his prepared statement. He said, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." He meant to say, "One small step for "a" man." Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquillity.

Weirdos claim that the moon landings were staged. They point to a picture of the American flag supposedly blowing in the wind as proof. Of course, there is no wind on the moon. Actually, a horizontal bar was attached to the top of the flag to keep it from going limp. I am not sure if these people are crazy, stupid or making a joke. I debated Bart Sibrel in the parking lot of a karaoke bar in Nashville. Bart was convinced that we never went to the moon. It eventually came out in the national news that he approached Buzz Aldrin (second man on the moon) in California and tried to force him to swear on a Bible that the moon landings were not fake. Buzz punched him in the jaw! Bart tried to sue, but the Los Angeles County District Attorney refused to file charges.

Outer Planets
Mars
The outer planets exhibit retrograde motion. They appear to travel backwards as the faster Earth overtakes and passes them. Mars is the dramatic example.

Percival Lowell studied Mars from his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He saw what he mistook for canals built by Martians.

Mars gets its redness from dust storms. Its surface contains iron oxide (rust). The polar caps consist of frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice). Mars has a huge volcano known as Olympus Mons and a canyon called Valles Marineris.

Mars' atmosphere is too thin for water although there is evidence that water once flowed on the planet. The only way to know whether life evolved is to go there and bring back rocks to see if they contain fossils. A journey will take a year, six months to get there and six months to return.

The Viking spacecraft landed on Mars in 1976. It found chemicals said to "mimic" life. The essentials for life are water, nutrients and energy. Scientists study the Atacama desert in Chile, the driest place on Earth, to learn about Mars.

The Mars Science Laboratory will be launched in 2011 to determine whether microbes evolved on Mars. There may have been a zone of life in the early solar system extending from Venus to the asteroids.

Phobos and Deimos are the Martian moons. In Homer's Iliad, they were Fear and Panic, sons of the god of war.

The asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter. Jupiter's influence kept this collection of rocks from coalescing into a planet. Ceres is an asteroid.

Difference in size means a difference in gravity. Large worlds like Earth and Venus hold atmospheres. Small worlds like our moon and Mercury do not. Medium-size Mars has a thin atmosphere. Worlds with atmospheres have less craters because the atmospheres vaporize meteors and cause erosion. Earth has a few craters. Mars has more. Mercury and the moon are have many.

Gas Giants
Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn and was deflected. Voyager 2 went on to Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2 spent 12 years (1977-89) on a Grand Tour. All the gas giants have rings.

Jupiter is a failed star. If it were larger, nuclear reactions would have begun and it would shine by its own light. It consists of hydrogen and helium, the most common elements.

Jupiter has bands because it rotates so fast that its clouds are stretched into patterns. The Great Red Spot is a storm. The Galileo probe reached Jupiter in 1995.

Jupiter has 63 moons. Europa, Ganymede, Callisto and Io are the largest, named for Jupiter's lovers. Galileo saw them through his telescope in 1609. Io has the only volcanoes in the solar system beyond Earth.

Saturn is a ball of gas light enough to float in water. Its rings are beautiful. They are made of rock and ice. There are seven main rings. As Saturn orbits the sun in 29 years, we see the rings open at the top, edge-on, open at the bottom and edge-on.

Saturn has 62 moons. Titan is larger than Mercury and is the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere.

Cassini discovered the gap in Saturn's rings. Huygens discovered Titan.

The Cassini spacecraft imaged Saturn from above, showing it surrounded by rings. The Huygens probe descended into Titan's atmosphere.

Uranus was knocked on its side. Modern astronomy is explained in terms of collisions. Consider that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid. If the ancients thought the heavens benign, today's universe is a violent place. Uranus was discovered by William Herschel in 1781.

Voyager 2 imaged Neptune's Great Dark Spot against blue methane.

Small, rocky Pluto at the edge of the solar system is erratic. Its orbit takes it inside Neptune. Pluto has three moons: Charon, Nix and Hydra. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. New Horizons spacecraft, will reach Pluto in 2015 at a distance of 3 billion miles.

Beyond Pluto lies the Kuiper Belt (pronounced like viper). Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) are small, icy objects like Pluto.

The Voyagers have left the solar system and are on their way to the stars. They contain recordings of Earth's languages and music.

The solar system and everything in it is 4.6 billion years old. This includes the sun, planets, moons, asteroids, comets and meteors.

Comets, Meteors, Asteroids
Comets are scraps left over from the formation of the solar system. There was a lot of debris at that time, and craterization took place on a massive scale. Comets orbit the sun. They develop tails as the sun melts ammonia and methane. The tails are millions of miles long and point away from the sun, driven out by the solar wind. Halley's comet orbits beyond Neptune, returning every 75 years. Halley was not the first to see his comet but the first to predict its return.

I saw comet Ikeya-Seki on Halloween morning, 1965. It was fuzzy and dim but worthwhile. I saw Hyakutake in 1996 and Hale-Bopp in 1997.

It took 30 years to see my second comet, which I found the morning of March 24, 1996. Hyakutake was as bright as the Big Dipper stars and extended its handle. It was fuzzy with no discernible tail. Two mornings later, it was close to the Little Dipper. The morning of March 27, it was below the North Star. Hyakutake upstaged Hale-Bopp which had gotten advanced publicity. Japanese are comet hunters.

Shoemaker-Levy 9's impact with Jupiter gave astronomers their first glimpse of a collision in space. Jupiter is a vacuum cleaner, sucking up stuff and protecting Earth.

In the early 1960s, I began watching the Perseids. The Perseids are the best meteor shower. They occur annually in August. The night of August 11 and morning of August 12, 1964, I counted 351 meteors. Toward morning, they were dropping in the east like snowflakes. Many were bolides, leaving bright trails. The best one appeared after daybreak. My cousin was yelling, and I looked up to see a meteor as large as a full moon. It was exploding and changing colors.

Meteor showers are associated with comets. The Perseids are associated with Swift-Tuttle. As Swift-Tuttle orbits the sun, it leaves behind debris. Meteoroids get strung out along its path. Most of the meteors entering our atmosphere are like grains of sand. They are vaporized by friction about a hundred miles up. In a shower, meteors emanate from a point in the sky called the radiant. Showers are named for the constellations behind their radiants. We see more meteors toward morning because the earth has turned to meet them head on.

Meteorites are objects which survive and fall to earth. Meteorites are made of iron and nickel. Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona, is evidence of a large meteorite which collided with Earth 50,000 years ago.

200 impact craters have been found around the world. One is near Odessa, Texas. Meteorites are found on the ice in Antarctica. O. Richard Norton says meteorites are pieces of asteroids. The largest found in the United States came from Willamette, Oregon. I saw it in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

There is one instance of a person being hit by a meteorite. In 1954, a woman in Alabama was sleeping on her couch when a meteorite crashed through the roof. It ricocheted and hit her in the side.

Comets and asteroids leave craters. Craters have been mapped from Space Shuttles. The idea that dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid is now accepted. Scientists point to the Chicxulub (Cheek-shoe-lube) crater in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula as the impact which killed the dinosaurs and two-thirds of all species. That is pinning it down. Evolution may be driven by impacts.

Something hit Siberia in 1908. It is known as the Tunguska Event. Trees were flattened, but no crater was found. The comet or asteroid vaporized before impact.

Earth's atmosphere acts like sandpaper, smoothing craters out. Water erodes, and plate tectonics reshape the earth. Otherwise, the earth would look like the moon.

Stars
Stars are always there, even in the daytime when they are washed out by the sun. This is something we may not understand as children. As the earth revolves in its orbit, different parts of the stellar panorama are exposed in the night sky. Seasons become identified with constellations.

Constellations are illusions. They are two dimensional. They existed in the minds of the ancient Greeks. Stars are at various distances. They are three dimensional. Some appear bright because they are close. Others appear dim because they are far away.

The most recognizable constellations are Ursa Major (Big Dipper), Scorpius, Orion and the Southern Cross. The Vikings saw the Dipper as a wagon.

The pointers in the cup of the Big Dipper point to the North Star. Polaris is overhead at the north pole and maintains its position as the earth spins. It is a wee bit off. Over 26,000 years, the earth wobbles like a top. This accounts for precession of the equinoxes and a shift away from Polaris as the North Star.

The Zodiac consists of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. The sun, moon and planets remain against the background of the Zodiac because of the flatness of our solar system. Everything is in the same plane.

The most elaborate story in the sky is that of Perseus and Andromeda, told by the fall constellations. There are Andromeda's parents, Cepheus and Cassiopeia, and the monster, Cetus. Pegasus is there, the winged horse ridden by Perseus. Perseus holds the head of Medusa, represented by the variable star Algol.

Constellations are tied to Greek and Roman mythology. Stars forming the constellations are in our own star cloud and close to our sun when we think in terms of the whole Milky Way.

The Greeks explained the Milky Way in poetic fashion. Legend had it that Hercules was born of an affair between Zeus and a mortal. When Zeus wanted his wife, Hera, to suckle the baby, she pushed it away and her milk flowed across the sky.

Visible stars range from 1st to 6th magnitude. The brightest are Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centauri, Arcturus, Vega and Capella. The Arabs named them. We see 4,000 at any one time. Stars twinkle because of our atmosphere. They are so far away that they appear as points of light even through large telescopes.

Stars are trillions of miles away. Their distances are measured in light-years. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 6 1/2 trillion miles. Light is the fastest thing in the universe at 186,000 miles per second. The closest star is a companion of Alpha Centauri, 4 light-years, or 26 trillion miles, away.

Double stars are the rule. Mizar, the second star in the handle of the Big Dipper, is a double star. So is Albireo at the end of Cygnus. The contrast between its blue and yellow components is striking.

Astronomers like to compare stars to people. Stars are born. They age. They die. Stars are born when gaseous nebulas shrink under their own gravity. Mass determines whether a celestial body will become a star. If there is enough mass, the pressure and temperature at the core will be great enough for nuclear reactions to begin.

Stars form in clusters. The Pleiades are condensing from the surrounding gas. The Orion Nebula and the Trifid Nebula are stellar nurseries. Nebulas glow when they reflect starlight. The Horsehead Nebula is dark but outlined by starlight behind it.

Stars come in colors. Blue-white stars are young and hot. Yellow stars like the sun are in the mid-temperature range. Red giants are old and cool.

Stars die in two ways. Average stars like the sun become red giants. They die peacefully by exhausting their fuel. Antares and Betelgeuse are red giants.

When a star burns all its hydrogen, it burns helium to form carbon. The elements are made inside stars. Our bodies are made from the remnants of ancient stars.

A dying star giving off a shell of gas is called a "planetary nebula". This is a bad name because it has nothing to do with planets. The Ring Nebula in Lyra is a dying star.

A dying star shrinks to become a white dwarf. A white dwarf is the core of a red giant. They can be brown or red but are still called white dwarfs.

Massive stars die by becoming novas and blowing up. A nova was seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud in 1987. Novas become pulsars and may become black holes. Black holes are collapsed stars whose gravity is so great that even light cannot escape. They lie at the centers of galaxies. A quasar is a galaxy falling into a black hole.

Milky Way
The Milky Way is our galaxy, and we are inside it. This is not apparent right away as we look at the glimmering arch across the sky. The Greeks saw milk. But the Milky Way consists of 200 billion suns, 100,000 light years across and 2,000 light-years thick. If we could stand outside the Milky Way, we would see a disk with a bulge in its middle. It is shaped like a fried egg or a flying saucer. Our solar system revolves two-thirds of the way from the center toward the outer rim. It takes 200 million years for it to revolve around the galaxy. This is a cosmic year. The last time our solar system was in this place, dinosaurs roamed the earth. In the desert in 1979, there was an instant when I felt myself revolving around the galactic center.

Our solar system is located in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. The Milky Way is bright in the direction of Orion as we look down the spiral arm.

Since we are inside our galaxy, trying to figure out its shape is like someone in a house trying to determine the shape of the house. The structure of the Milky Way and the sun's position in it was ascertained by Harlow Shapley in 1917. We can understand it when we know what we are looking at. The Milky Way circles the sky. Its bulging center is in the direction of Sagittarius where the star clouds are thick. The thin part of the circle, visible in winter, is in the direction of the outer rim. When we look at right angles to the Milky Way, we are looking out the top or bottom of the disk. Stars are sparse. As we might expect, more galaxies can be seen through the top or bottom.

Patches of gas and dust like the Cygnus Rift and Coalsack obscure parts of the Milky Way. People once thought these were holes. Because of the gas and dust, we use radio telescopes to study the center of the galaxy. The Milky Way is 10 billion years old.

Cosmology
The universe is 13.7 billion years old. 13.7 billion years ago, all the stuff in the universe was concentrated in a speck of infinite density, a singularity, a mathematical concept. It exploded. This is what astronomers call the Big Bang, the point at which time began.

Primordial energy and matter flew in all directions. Things cooled. Gas clouds condensed into galaxies. Galaxies are aggregates of stars, the building blocks of the universe. There are 300 billion galaxies. Some are distinctive. The Whirlpool and Sombrero look like works of art. Galaxies are categorized according to their structures. The Milky Way is a spiral. M87 is elliptical. The Magellanic Clouds are irregular.

The Milky Way belongs to a Local Group of 35 galaxies. The Andromeda Galaxy M31 is in this group. M31 is a spiral similar to the Milky Way but larger. It is 2.3 million light-years away and is the fartherest visible object. M31 is moving toward us and will merge with the Milky Way.

Charles Messier assigned numbers to fuzzy patches in the sky. He cataloged 110 objects so he would not mistake them for comets. He lumped nebulas and galaxies together. The more thorough New General Catalog (NGC) dates from the 19th century.

Galaxies form in clusters, and these in turn make up superclusters. The Virgo supercluster is vast. The Local Group is in the Virgo supercluster. Still, the universe is mostly empty.

Proof of the Big Bang came from the work of Edwin Powell Hubble. By applying the Doppler Effect to light, Hubble found that light from galaxies showed a red shift. This suggests that galaxies are receding, moving away from each other. This is what we mean by the Expanding Universe. If we run it backwards, there is a point at which all galaxies converge. Furthermore, the farther apart galaxies get, the faster they travel. The question becomes whether expansion will continue forever or whether there is enough gravity in the universe to pull it back together. This would be the Big Crunch and suggests an oscillating universe, one which alternately expands and collapses. Black holes may provide the gravity for a Big Crunch. The universe is not expanding in space. Space is being created as it expands. The balloon analogy is used, blowing up a balloon with dots on it to represent galaxies.

We ask what was before the Big Bang. The answer is nothing. There was no space, no time and no events. It was the beginning in the truest sense.

E. P. Hubble was the greatest astronomer of the 20th century. Shapley thought that external galaxies were inside our own.

Cosmology was the step I was trying to take since I was a teenager. Carl Sagan's Cosmos was a breakthrough. To paraphrase Sagan, "The Cosmos is everything that has been, everything that is and everything that will be." Sagan saw man as poised on the shore of a cosmic ocean, intelligence as a means for the cosmos to know itself. The terms "cosmos" and "universe" are interchangeable.

Telescopes
In Swim With Dolphins, I wrote, "I wanna see the stars, Mauna Kea's calling me." September 13, 2003, I stood atop this extinct volcano 13,750 feet above sea level. "It is beautiful!" I thought. The volcano was stark and brownish, barren of vegetation. There was a Mars-like surrealism. I watched the sun set above the clouds. Stars blazed! The Milky Way, the plane of our Galaxy, arched brilliantly overhead. I was on the Big Island of Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It gets no better than this. Hawaii is at 20 degrees northern latitude. The north star appears lower and the constellation Scorpius higher than from Kentucky and Tennessee although not as high as from Australia where it gets straight up. I sensed the curvature of the earth. Mars was at its closest, and I wondered why it was less red than when it was farther out. Our guide said, "Increased sunlight hitting the surface neutralizes its redness." The moon rose. I enjoy astronomy and saw a bit of everything. 13 telescopes dot the summit of Mauna Kea. There are the two Keck domes and the Japanese Subaru. Subaru is Japanese for "Pleiades." Mauna Kea is run by the University of Hawaii and Caltech. It is the only large observatory I have seen. I was above 40% of our atmosphere's oxygen but felt no different. It misted on the drive up. Rainbows were plentiful. Beauty heals.

There are two kinds of telescopes: the refractor and the reflector. The purpose of each is to collect light. The refractor uses an object lens. The reflector uses a mirror. The biggest telescopes are reflectors like those at Kitt Peak.

Photography revolutionized astronomy. Photographic plates record more detail than the human eye. The pictures we see in books are long-exposure photographs.

The Hubble Space Telescope was put into orbit by the Space Shuttle. Because it is above the atmosphere, its pictures are superior to those of earthbound telescopes. I was disappointed with the Space Telescope. It produced books full of chaotic images with no comprehensive breakthrough in theory. There will one day be an observatory on the far side of the moon.

Planetariums are places where sky shows and lectures are given. Star patterns are projected inside a dome. I have visited planetariums in Louisville, Nashville, Salt Lake City and New York.

Space Travel
The Soviet Union kicked off the Space Age with Sputnik in 1957. The United States answered with NASA (National Aeronautics & Space Agency). I stood in my parents' yard watching Echo I fly over.

The Mercury astronauts were John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Alan Shepard, Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, Gordon Cooper and Scott Carpenter.

Glenn got a hero's welcome after orbiting the earth three times. Grissom died in a fire.

Saturn 5 rockets sent men to the moon. Apollo 11 was the first landing. Neil Armstrong's footprint will last millions of years. Buzz Aldrin was second on the moon. Apollo 13 was brought back when an oxygen tank exploded. I was on my way to Germany. The 12 Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon are:

Apollo 11 - Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin
Apollo 12 - Charles Conrad, Alan Bean
Apollo 14 - Alan Shepard, Ed Mitchell
Apollo 15 - Dave Scott, James Irwin
Apollo 16 - John Young, Charles Duke
Apollo 17 - Harrison Schmitt, Eugene Cernan

The Apollo program has been followed by a golden age of planetary exploration as NASA worked with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Competition between the United States and the Soviet Union drove the Apollo program. The spirit of cooperation which is supposed to put men on Mars is less of a motivator. Space Shuttles orbited 200 miles up and circled the globe in 90 minutes. Women were the most famous to fly in the Shuttles: Sally Ride and the ill-fated Christa McAuliffe. Columbia and Challenger blew up.

The Shuttles will be retired in 2010. The Orion spacecraft will carry crews and supplies to the International Space Station. NASA plans to return to the moon by 2020 and to reach Mars by 2030.

It is during opposition that we will go to Mars. Mars is closest during opposition when it varies from 35 million to 50 million miles away. It is far more challenging than going to the moon, about 200 times farther.

21 nations are involved in the International Space Station. Michael and I got a feeling for the ISS at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.

Futurists let their imaginations run wild. They foresee mining the moon, terraforming Mars and colonizing the galaxy.

Congress is skeptical of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) although interest remains. Estimates of the number of alien civilizations range from zero to a certainty that the universe is teeming with life.

Astronomers began finding extrasolar planets in 1995. 429 exoplanets have been discovered. A system with 3 planets was found around a star in Andromeda.

Most exoplanets found so far are gas giants like Jupiter, unlikely candidates for harboring life. We are searching for Earth-like planets.

The assumption that life began in the sea is questioned in the Space Age. It may be that Earth was seeded from another solar system. Seeds of life may have traveled through interstellar space to take root in the favorable conditions of Earth. This is the Panspermia theory.

Spores are one of the hardiest forms of life. Spores may travel to planets via comets and meteors. They are less likely to travel through interstellar space, but we cannot rule it out. Our perception is evolving as we reach into space.

UFO sightings, close encounters and abduction stories are false. Such phenomena are explainable as aircraft or balloons, Jupiter or Venus, science fiction, psychiatric cases, hoaxes and lies. Roswell is a hoax. Claims that the government conceals UFO information are absurd.

Physics
Energy is the ability to do work. The four forces in nature are the strong and weak nuclear fields, the electromagnetic field and the gravitational field. The strong nuclear field holds protons and neutrons together. Nuclear bombs unleash this energy. The weak nuclear field is associated with radioactive decay. Gravity is the weakest force although it is very long-range.

Einstein overturned Newtonian physics when he debunked the idea that objects attract. He showed that mass bends, or curves, space. The effect is what we call gravity. The analogy of a trampoline, bowling ball and marble is used. A bowling ball on a trampoline bends it. A marble will move toward the ball and will orbit it if its movement is right.

Einstein showed that space and time are connected. Gravity is the effect of space-time being bent by matter. The sun bends space-time. So does the earth.

The best definition of space is that it is a "fabric" in which everything is embedded. Space contains everything.

Space has three dimensions, called "spacial dimensions." They are length, width and height.

Objects move up & down, forward & backward, side to side and through time. Time is the 4th dimension. It is a direction in which things travel.

Weird
The more exotic ideas are like something from Star Wars. Dark Matter is supposed to account for 90% of the mass in the universe. We cannot see it nor can it be detected. Then there is Dark Energy!

Wormholes may be tunnels in black holes which lead to parallel universes. An infinite number of universes may make up the multiverse, each universe having a Big Bang. Is this fantasy? Astronomy has gotten far out. We need a return to practical concepts.

Science vs Religion
Science and religion have clashed since Galileo turned his telescope toward the heavens.

The tug-of-war is really betweem departments as to whom is going to receive funding. Which group of noncontributors will get paid? Neither scientists nor theologians put food on the table.

So much of the Bible is perceived as the fulfillment of prophecy. Can we take "prophecy" literally or should we view it as working backwards, that it is invented after the fact.

According to the Bible, the Virgin Mary got pregnant without Joseph's sperm and genetic material. An egg fertilized by Spirit! An angel informed Mary's husband of her pregnancy. Are we to believe that angels exist as Billy Graham does or should we regard them as relics of Hebrew mythology?

Billy Graham believes in demons. I am 64 and have never seen a demon. Nor have I seen a miracle. The Bible is a string of impossibilities. Some people say these things do not happen today but happened back then. The notion seems ludicrous. Why try to force reality into a theological box?

The star of Bethlehem! Chances are it was a literary star with no counterpart in nature. Someone is always trying to prove that it was a comet or a conjunction of planets.

Is sin real? Sin does not exist in nature. A cat kills a mouse. No sin.

If Jesus is God, why has He not already returned? Why not set things right? If the universe is 13.7 billion years old, will it take Him another 13.7 billion years?

Can we believe that Jesus ascended into heaven? Floated into space? In film biographies of Jesus, He has those piercing blue eyes. The Anglo-Saxon Jesus! He reels off vague parables which are riddles to the modern world. The surest way to confuse is to use a parable, analogy, metaphor or simile. What is God? Where is He? Is theology man's invention? Books, art and movies take things out of context. They distort life into episodes with hopes of commercial success. Does the Bible do this? Why do we have to buy Bibles to read the word of God? Why do preachers criticize money, then beg for it?

Apart from the imagination and art, how could Jesus have raised Lazarus from the dead? We live in a natural universe. Faith cannot make the impossible happen. Yet, Jesus said, "I am the Resurrection, and the Bible says that all things are possible with God. Are not those who speak of an "empty tomb" failing to distinguish between a real tomb and a tomb of the mind?

Preachers wear suits and give the appearance of being rational. When they speak of a rapture and physically rising through the atmosphere, we have to wonder.

Evangelist Jimmy Swaggert extoled virtue while patronizing prostitutes. Morality seems more plausible within a scientific framework. It is not science which uses nuclear energy for bombs. It is military establishments which traditionally embrace religion.

Mormons are on the edge. They believe that Jesus came to western America to save the Indians. If intelligent life is discovered in another part of the galaxy, a sect will arise claiming that Jesus redeemed lost aliens.

The age of theology lay between 3000 B.C. and 600 A.D. Science began only 400 years ago. Carl Sagan called science, the "candle in the dark."

Science is the answer: observation over revelation, objectivity over subjectivity and evolution over creationism. Our eyes and ears tell us how things are. It is as we suspected when we were kids, before religion clouded our reason. Religion is flawed. We are physical, not spiritual. We are alive when we are alive, dead when we are dead.

The supernatural does not exist outside man's imagination and his myth-making process. Sagan left us with these words, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Science is the candle, not astrology, not mythology, not religion.

This being said, I still subscribe to the ultimate message of the gospels. If the universe is 13.7 billion years old and in middle age, Jesus could very well return in another 13.7 billion years. He will return to save souls at the brink of the universe's demise. He will save all believers wherever they are in the cosmos. At that point, religion and science become one. The 1% of truth in the Bible merges with the 1% of truth in science. God created the universe, and divine evolution is the means by which it was made. Eternity kicks in. Heaven!

What do we know of God? He is the uncreated Creator. He is eternal and infinite. He is all-powerful, omnipotent. He is everywhere, omnipresent. He is all-knowing, omniscient. The New Testament reveals Jesus to be all of these.

God is Spirit (energy) in the Old Testament. He is flesh in the New Testament. Jesus fulfilled 300 prophecies. They are skimpy, but when you put them together, they form a sketch of Jesus Christ as Savior.

The Resurrection is the cornerstone of Christianity. According to the Bible, we must believe it to receive God's grace. Then we become children of God.

If a Creator, responsible for the surge of energy which exploded as the Big Bang, suspended the laws of nature to manifest Himself in the space/time continuum, then the Incarnation, miracles and Resurrection are true even if they are expressed in symbols.

I got saved in 1972. I knelt beside my bed at my grandmother's where I was living. My Bible lay on the bed. A white, unearthly light lit up the room. Understanding poured into me as I thumbed through the pages of the New Testament. I sensed a deeper reality lying under the veneer of this world. It was like a veil was pulled back and the truth of Jesus and the cross was revealed. He took my sins and gave me eternal salvation.

Do I believe? Of course! Hallelujah! Thank you! Jesus!!
JESUS PAID MY DEBT

Southern Constellations
We cannot see the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere from the United States because the tilt of the earth in its orbit is not great enough. The earth itself blocks our view. To see the southern stars, we must journey to or below the equator.

Of the 88 constellations, 32 are seen from the Southern Hemisphere. Many were named by the Frenchman Nicolas Lacaille, the last person to create constellations.

Animals dominate. There are two mammals, six birds, two reptiles, two fish and one insect.

..1 Centaurus - centaur
..2 Lupus - wolf
..3 Pavo - peacock
..4 Tucana - toucan
..5 Grus - crane
..6 Apus - bird of paradise
..7 Phoenix - phoenix
..8 Columbia - dove
..9 Hydrus - serpent
10 Chamaeleon - chameleon
11 Dorado - swordfish
12 Volans - flying fish
13 Musca - fly

Lacaille named the scientific instruments and tools.

14 Horologium - clock
15 Pictor - painter's easel
16 Octans - octant
17 Circinus - compass
18 Antlia - air pump
19 Telescopium - telescope
20 Norma - carpenter's level
21 Ara - altar
22 Reticulum - net (in an eyepiece)
23 Fornax - furnace
24 Sculptor - sculptor
25 Caelum - chisel

Four constellations are part of Argo, the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed.

26 Carina - keel
27 Vela - sail
28 Puppis - stern
29 Pyxis - compass

This leaves (30) Indus, the Indian, (31) Triangulum Australe, the southern triangle and (32) Crux, the Southern Cross. The Cross points to the south celestial pole. Its bright stars are known as the Three Marys.

According to the gospels, the three Marys at the cross when Christ was crucified were Mary Magdalene, the Virgin Mary and Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus. This is the only allusion to Christianity in the sky.

Bright stars of the Southern Hemisphere:

1 Canopus - Carina
2 Alpha Centauri - Centaurus
3 Achernar - Eridanus

Star Parties
On Michael's 18th birthday, March 11, 2002, I took American Airlines to Los Angeles, then flew Qantas down to Sydney, Australia. We crossed the equator and international dateline at about the same place. I got a motel and rode a train to Sydney Harbor. I saw the Opera House, Harbor Bridge and the Rocks (Old Town).

My purpose in going to Australia was to see the southern stars and constellations. Monte Wilson of the Astronomical Society of New South Wales (ASNSW) met me at my motel. We rode through the Blue Mountains to Wiruna, three hours northwest of Sydney, to the South Pacific Star Party (SPSP)

I was lucky. The weather was great all three nights, and I got to stay in the house, referred to as the "White House" because they let Americans stay there. There was a couple named Tom and Lucy from Texas who proved invaluable. Lucy had lived in Louisville in the Bardstown Road area.

"I saw the Southern Stars burning in their glory!" I saw Canopus, Alpha Centauri and Achernar. I saw the Southern Cross and the Coalsack. I saw the missing piece of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds. The Clouds were fainter than I imagined. They are satellites of the Milky Way.

Tom kept finding galaxies and nebulas in Tony Buckley's 20 inch. We looked at Jupiter and Saturn. Scorpius was straight up. The hub of the Milky Way in Sagittarius was high and prominent. I looked into our galaxy's thickest part, something I only saw along the horizon back home. Orion was upside down.

The southern constellations are abstract. To trace even Argo and Centaurus would take time. Seeing Scorpius overhead stayed with me, that and seeing Scorpius and Orion in the sky at the same time.

I was impressed at how close Sirius and Canopus are and that the Southern Cross is not far below Scorpius. Canopus is brighter than Sirius but 13 times farther away.

I will not forget walking out of the house that first night and looking up at the southern sky for the first time. It was ablaze with stars!

The southern sky is spectacular because you also get the bright winter stars of the north.

ASNSW Treasurer Max Gardner drove me back to Sydney. He took me to his home and showed me the city. We crossed the Harbor Bridge, driving on the left side. Sydney is halfway between the equator and the south pole.

Max explained that Australia is a constitutional monarchy. It is part of the Commonwealth of Nations (British Commonwealth). The Queen is head of state.

Crossing the Pacific Ocean, we came close we came to Hawaii. I wondered how long it would be before I saw Hawaii. Noticing a book about Alaska in Max's bookcase, I wondered how long it would be before I saw Alaska.

I arrived back in Nashville, March 18, 2002. One week later.

Karen and I went to the Tennessee Spring Star Party, April 1-2, 2006, at Fall Creek Falls State Park. Frogs croaked hideously as we sat with other stargazers and picked out the spring constellations. A man had his telescope set up and was showing galaxies on a screen. His technology was futuristic. The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) was like an image in a magazine, large and detailed.

The Whirlpool is in Canes Venaciti 23 million light years away. The small galaxy at the left is behind the Whirlpool. We know this because the dust from the Whirlpool's arm is in front of it.

We looked at Bode's Galaxy (M81), a spiral in Ursa Major. We talked about the chances of life elsewhere in the universe.

I went to Alaska for the northern lights. I flew to Anchorage and traveled to Denali by train. A full moon interfered with my plans. The northern lights are caused by the solar wind hitting gases in the upper atmosphere. Each gas emits different colors. Oxygen emits green and yellow. Nitrogen gives off blue and violet. Oxygen and nitrogen at low altitude give off red. Green is the most common. The lights occur around ovals at the poles because the earth is a magnet, pulling particles north and south. We do not hear much about the southern lights because the large population centers are in the north. Other planets have northern and southern lights.

Michael and I attended the Grand Canyon Star Party at Yavapai Point, June 9-10, 2007. It was a good time for planets, and amateur astronomers had their telescopes set up. We observed Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Venus blazed as it hung over the Canyon. Even though I do not want Michael to get into astronomy because it takes people out of the world, a superficial experience such as this is good.

Michael and I may be in Colorado for the 2010 Perseids. There will be no moon.

I struggled for my knowledge of astronomy. My family knew nothing of it. I remember my father saying we would never go to the moon. He made this statement around 1957 during a game of Rook (cards) with his brother. I sat watching. I suppose he thought man would never go to the moon because God did not mean for it to happen. Sometime later, my father pointed to the Pleiades and told me it was the Little Dipper. It was pointless to tell him he was wrong. In his later years, I told him the sun is a star. He denied it. I brought my sister in, and she confirmed that the sun is a star. He never said a word. I am not putting my family down. They were good people. They just had no interest in astronomy. When we landed on the moon in July, 1969, my grandmother made the comment, "I thought the moon was a ball of fire!"

Links:
Astronomy Magazine
Sky & Telescope
Astronomy Now
Astronomy Today
NASA
JPL
Cumberland Astronomical Society CAS
Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association
Las Vegas Astronomical Society
Grand Canyon Star Party
Central Nevada Star Party
Nebraska Star Party
Stargazer Online Richard Bell
Astronomical Society of New South Wales
South Pacific Star Party
SETI
Sky Tonight
Kitt Peak National Observatory
Louisville Astronomical Society
Mars Society
Welcome to the Universe
International Meteor Organization
American Meteor Society

Bibliography
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..5 Bernhard, Bennet & Rice. Handbook of the Heavens

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14 Kerrod, Robin. The Book of Constellations: Discover the Secrets in the Stars. Barron's, 2002

15 ________. The Moon. Minneapolis, Lerner Publications, 2000

16 Knight, David C. Galaxies: Islands in Space. New York, William Morrow, 1979

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25 ________. Cosmos. New York, Random House, 1980

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29 Wilford, John Noble. Mars Beckons: the Mysteries, the Challenges, the Expectations of Our Next Great Adventure in Space. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990

30 Zim, Herbert S and Robert H. Baker. Stars: A Guide to the Constellations, Sun, Moon, Planets and Other Features of the Heavens. New York, Golden Press, 1975

Originally written 1995-1996
Revised 2010