A Darker View

Most news outlets do not employ science reporters. They probably have a sports reporter, a fashion or celebrity writer, or even someone covering the food and arts. But science receives little attention, if local readers or viewers are lucky there might be a meteorologist on staff who does a little science along side the weather forecast. As a result most science articles are simply wire service articles reprinted from a larger news bureau, or press releases from universities printed with a little editing.

Of course, when reprinting a article from another source, the local editor usually writes the headline. This editor may, or may not, understand the science behind the article, this results in odd, sometimes hilarious headlines. Even large news organizations occasionally print really bad headlines, such as the misleading "Scientists discover signs of ancient life on Mars" printed by MSNBC this spring.

Planet Hunter Dr. R. Paul Butler gave a talk at Keck last night as part of the W.M. Keck Public Lecture Series. Dr. Butler is a pioneer in locating planets that orbit stars other than our Sun, exoplanets. Dr. Butler was a member of one of the first teams to start this work, and he remains a leader in this field with dozens of planets discovered. We now know of well over three hundred planets that orbit other stars making this an epic discovery and allowing a fundamentally different understanding of our universe.

While the talk was primarily a review of material I was already familiar with, it was well constructed for the audience present, mainly members of the general public from surrounding communities. The first half of the talk was a discussion of the history of planet hunting and a summary of the techniques used to detect other worlds around distant stars. I always find these sort of summaries useful, good material for my own public work at the VIS, answering questions and doing the evening talks.

Dr. Butler did cover some nice statistics about exoplanets. We have discovered enough planets now that a good picture is beginning to emerge of how other solar systems are constructed. Before we had discovered any other solar systems it was believed that most would look much like our own system, with small, rocky worlds near the star and large gas giants in the outer orbits, with all of these worlds in nice, nearly circular orbits. What we have found is far from that, as he put it "Truth is stranger than fiction". We have found large gas giants very near to the stars, planets with highly elliptical orbits, systems that contain every conceivable odd arrangement. Only a few solar systems discovered resemble our own.

This leads to the goal of discovering Earth like worlds, the holy grail of planet hunting. Our technology is just on the edge of being able to do this. So far we have found large planets, our techniques lend themselves to finding the big ones. But in the past few years a number of "super earths" have been found, planets 3-7 times the size of our own. It may not be too much longer before some team announces the discovery of an Earth sized planet around some nearby star.

Just one more Hawaiian sunset to enjoy. Expect a few more of these as my evening commute home coincides with sunset over the next month. I should be calling April and August my sunset seasons.

...for more feline fun with "Let Me In"...



More information at the Simon's Cat YouTube Channel

Word clouds have been around for a while, but Wordle makes this idea into art. A word cloud is a set of words extracted from a selected text, the more often a word is used, the larger the word appears in the cloud.

Wordle has a great arrangement algorithm, tucking the words together beautifully, with user selectable fonts and colors to allow a very nice appearance in the resulting cloud. Give it a try, it can accept pasted in text, or the URL of a blog feed.

Hat tip to Laelaps

Yeah, it is more than a little bit like this at our house...



This was just released, I hope these episodes keep coming, fun stuff and all too familiar for any cat owner. More information at the Simon's Cat YouTube Channel

Not all planetary nebula are big, bright showpieces. Indeed, most appear quite tiny due to the relatively small physical size of these objects and distance. It is only planetary nebula relatively near to us in the galaxy that are the fantastic objects of shells and loops that can be so fascinating to view and photograph.

Typical of these challenging nebulae is NGC6565, a small nebula located above the spout of the Sagittarius Teapot. This is a young (2 - 2.5kyr) planetary nebula located around 6000ly away¹. Astrophotographs from larger instruments show a simple ring structure with no apparent central star.

I will not say that locating this nebula is easy. Actually it can be quite challenging to locate and observe. The nebula is very small, at 12 arc seconds, located in a dense Milky Way starfield on the north edge of Baade's Window. It is not located adjacent to any obvious feature that will aid in finding this elusive little object. Setting circles or GOTO capabilities can do the trick, but even when viewing the correct field identifying the correct object can be challenging.

The DSS image at the right gives you an appreciation for the challenge. The nebula is located at the exact center of the image, but does not stand out in any obvious way. At low power NGC6565 will appear stellar, blending into the background. Higher magnification is necessary, providing a view of a star that will not quite focus, a "fuzzy star" if you will. A slight green color will also help distinguish this nebula from the starfield. An OIII filter may be helpful in locating the nebula, allowing the glowing gas to stand out a little better amongst the surrounding stars.

Once you do locate it, increase the magnification as far as equipment and conditions will allow. Planetary nebula will often respond well to this approach, high surface brightness allowing the use high magnifications. Fine detail, central stars and shells often become apparent this way.

05 Jun 2005, Vekol Ranch, Maricopa Co., AZ
46cm f/4.5 Deep Violet @ 262x

Small!! A star that will not quite focus, slightly green, brighter at the center with a very small halo

This is a challenge object, a test of skills and equipment. But not a challenge that should prove overly difficult. NGC6565 is an interesting object, representative of dozens of similar planetary nebula visible across the sky. Give it a try...

1) The 3-D ionization structure of the planetary nebula NGC6565
Authors: M. Turatto, E. Cappellaro, R. Ragazzoni, S. Benetti, F. Sabbadin, Astronomy and Astrophysics, v.384, p.1062-1085, 2002

Last week we completed another of the key science interferometric observing run with the Nuller. This puts us halfway into our year long key science program, which so far has been highly successful, few weather or equipment issues, just a lot of good data.

The Nuller is used to suppress starlight, allowing measurement of features very near the star that would otherwise be lost in the glare, features of the exozodiacal dust from which much can be learned about the inner solar systems of these stars where terrestrial (earth like) planets would be found. The observing targets were all bright, nearby stars. It seems odd to be using a pair of 10 meter telescopes to observe stars that actually have names, bright stars that are visible to the eye. Not the usual targets of the Keck telescopes, dim objects at the far reaches of time and space, beyond the reach of smaller telescopes.

Everything went about as well as you could want. No hardware issues, no midnight phone calls. Some minor software issues, but nothing that will compromise the data. The weather was perfect, clear skies and good seeing. The observing list was completed with one night to spare. The last night was used for repeat observations of primary targets observed during the previous nights.

This was a five night run, a typical schedule for the interferometer. Once we get all the equipment up and running, the detectors cooled to cryogenic temperatures, and get all of the many optics aligned, it is best to keep the equipment running for a few nights. The interferometer generally is assigned nights near full Moon, as we are looking at bright stars moonlight is not the negative issue it is for other types of observing. More runs are scheduled, about one a month through the remainder of the year. Enough to keep us busy!

A good chunk of my Saturday was spent on the phone. A failure of a motor on the Adaptive Optics Bench in K1. Phone calls bounce between several people, a programmer, a technician on the summit, the interferometry supervisor who needs the system working for an observing run the next night, and myself. This is typical, the telescopes are a 365 night a year operation. Even on the weekend there is support via a network of computers, phones and people. The goal is simple, keep everything working, keep the telescopes "On Sky".

On the mountain it is the support people we rely on, the technicians who are on the summit every day of the year to carry out routine maintenance and reconfigurations. They are not specialists on any given equipment, but know a little about everything, allowing them to fix just about anything on the mountain with a little help over the phone. In this case I had to rely on one of these techs to be my hands and eyes, talking on the phone, visualizing the equipment as I describe what needs to be done. Flip this switch, turn that off, pull the circuit card, turn it back on.

While the tech does the actual changes I am on my computer checking the equipment remotely. I am logged into the computers on the mountain that control the equipment. Sitting at home, 12,000ft below, I try the motor controller that has failed, and find that I can indeed control the motors, they move at my commands. It is fixed! Maybe not completely fixed, we still need to go up later and understand what went wrong, probably a software conflict with some newly installed gear in AO, but it is working for tonight, the telescope will be on sky.

Consider a tree that has an orange-reddish bark, what happens when you take pictures of such a tree in the deep red light of sunset? Put this tree in a barren, rocky grassland just to complete the setting. The results are something that doesn't look real.

Wiliwili trees (Erythrina sandwicensis) already look a little odd. They are succulent, meaning the trunk and branches are thick, swollen appearing, holding the water needed to survive extended dry periods. Much of the year the branches hold no leaves, only after sufficient rains do the twigs bear bright green leaves, quickly shed when conditions again dry out.

The resulting photos are not altered in Photoshop, this is how the scene really appeared, to both the camera and my eye. The wiliwili tree looked like plant life from another world, all the branches a bright, glowing red in the last rays of sunset.

It seems that Bradley Litwin, the artist that created the Octapult, has created quite a few similar machines. Check them out...



A couple more below the fold...

Human ingenuity is limitless, from microprocessors to jet aircraft to interplanetary probes, we build our world. Some of the most impressive creations are when we simply create art, objects that have no function other than to exist and be seen. I love mobile art, art machines with moving bits of mechanisms that perform some useless task in the most complex way possible. Simple wood construction, wire, a little pipe and an electric motor, all that is needed to create amazing things...



Hat tip to Pharyngula

The sunsets have been spectacular lately. The result is a ringing phone. It is my my wife calling, wondering why her wayward husband isn't home yet. I am parked along the road somewhere, scrambling over boulders of an ancient a'a flow, looking for the perfect place to take a photo. There is this group of wiliwili trees just that just beg to be photographed. When the light is right I can not resist giving these trees another try.