Finding Another Earth

NASA JPL Press Release…

The discovery of a super-Earth-sized planet orbiting a sun-like star brings us closer than ever to finding a twin of our own watery world. But NASA’s Kepler space telescope has captured evidence of other potentially habitable planets amid the sea of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Exoplanet Kepler-542b
This artist’s conception of a planetary lineup shows habitable-zone planets with similarities to Earth: from left, Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, the just announced Kepler-452b, Kepler-62f and Kepler-186f. Last in line is Earth itself. Credit NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
To take a brief tour of the more prominent contenders, it helps to zero in on the “habitable zone” around their stars. This is the band of congenial temperatures for planetary orbits — not too close and not too far. Too close and the planet is fried (we’re looking at you, Venus). Too far and it’s in deep freeze. But settle comfortably into the habitable zone, and your planet could have liquid water on its surface — just right. Goldilocks has never been more relevant. Scientists have, in fact, taken to calling this water-friendly region the “Goldilocks zone.”

The zone can be a wide band or a narrow one, and nearer the star or farther, depending on the star’s size and energy output. For small, red-dwarf stars, habitable zone planets might gather close, like marshmallow-roasting campers around the fire. For gigantic, hot stars, the band must retreat to a safer distance.

About a dozen habitable zone planets in the Earth-size ballpark have been discovered so far — that is, 10 to 15 planets between one-half and twice the diameter of Earth, depending on how the habitable zone is defined and allowing for uncertainties about some of the planetary sizes.

The new discovery, Kepler-452b, fires the planet hunter’s imagination because it is the most similar to the Earth-sun system found yet: a planet at the right temperature within the habitable zone, and only about one-and-a-half times the diameter of Earth, circling a star very much like our own sun. The planet also has a good chance of being rocky, like Earth, its discoverers say.

Kepler-452b is more similar to Earth than any system previously discovered. And the timing is especially fitting: 2015 marks the 20th anniversary of the first exoplanet confirmed to be in orbit around a typical star.

Continue reading “Finding Another Earth”

Unintended Photos 3

I do not do experimental photography… Usually.

I have an uncle that does. He slides the saturation to eleven and publishes the results on his Facebook account. The results are… Interesting? But then it was this same uncle who is at least partly responsible for my getting started in photography when I was a teenager.

Occasionally I come up with the odd bit of happenstance. I was testing some photo processing Python code, a script intended to allow HDR processing of digitized slides. I needed a bunch of test frames so I just shot a bunch of bracketed sets at my desk and on the lanai a few feet away to create a whole directory of test material.

I did not intend any of these frames to be kept. HDR sets taken with a handheld camera? Nothing would align correctly!

A couple of them were… Interesting?

Experiment
A test exposure that was interesting enough not to simply delete.

A Mid-Summer Snowfall atop Mauna Kea

A snowfall on the summit of Mauna Kea in mid-summer. A very pretty event, always nice to have some white atop the white mountain. It is even a better as a contrast to the very hot weather we have been having down below. Everyone has been commenting on the unusually warm weather, particularly Hilo residents who have suffered through record breaking warm days and near 100% humidity.

Midsummer snow atop Mauna Kea
A midsummer snowfall atop Mauna Kea on July 17th, 2015
The amazing, though somewhat predictable result of this midsummer snow is in the number of people who see this natural event through the window of their own biases. Interpreting the snow as a message or a means to further their adgenda…

I have been raised on Big Island all my life (which is a long time) and I have NEVER heard of it snowing in July, snow in May is the talk of the town, but in July? It is a miracle! Especially with the hot humid temperature breaking records, how did a trough get through? It must be a message from above and Poliahu’s blessings to our Mauna Protectors. Now all we need is the Kamakani to blow all of the existing telescopes away! EO – Anela2 comment on the West Hawaii Today website

I would point out to the comment author that I have photos in my archive of midsummer snows from almost all of the last eight summers. I can not remember a summer that has not featured snow atop the mountain, even if my photo collection is not complete. Snow can happen anytime of the year on the summit of Mauna Kea. Most summer snows are like this one, fairly minor and mostly melted away by the end of the day.

If the TMT goes up, I can be that this type of thing won’t happen anymore. That monstrosity will block the trough’s moving through the island as well as the winds. It will throw everything off. – Shalee Kekawa comment on the West Hawaii Today website

Either this is a good example of Poe’s Law, or the author really believes that, a truly sad state of science literacy. It gets worse…

Is anyone testing the snow for any chemicals sprayed from the sky? – Josephine Keliipio Facebook comment

An astute observer will note this same sort of occurrence whenever something unusual happens. A few volcanic eruptions hit the news within a few days and people are claiming it is a sign of imminent apocalypse. While anyone who pays attention to volcanoes is fully aware that 12-20 volcanoes are erupting at any given time on the planet, the event is nothing unusual. Earthquakes are good for the same phenomena.

This common misconception occurs when a person’s attention is attracted to something they do not normally pay any attention. Without any baseline data stemming from experience, everything seems new and unusual. I have yet to see a name for this phenomena, though I am sure it exists.

With all of the attention paid to Mauna Kea this year, I really expect this sort of thing to happen again… And again… And…

What about offerings?

I walk a short distance from the road looking for a vantage point to set up a camera and note three different offerings within a minute, you can do this at any random spot with a good view along the summit road. They are everywhere, old leis pinned underneath rocks, the remains of little bags filled with shells and coral, ti leaf bundles bleached nearly white by the weather.

An old offering
An old offering of shells and coral in a cloth bag left atop Mauna Kea

Out of respect I leave them alone, as does most everyone who spends time on the mountain. They are never in my way, I just note them and move on. But what can you do about these offerings when they begin to be an issue for the environment?

Previously the rate of offerings was fairly sedate, their appearance uncommon but steady. At the summit, at Lake Waiau, at out of the way ahu that few ever notice. Since the TMT controversy started the rate of offerings appearing on the mountain has multiplied tremendously.

In the lowlands, the forest, the seashores, offerings like these would quickly return to the earth from which they were created. The natural process of decay ensuring that the materials are cycled back into nature. The summit of Mauna Kea is different, the very dry environment preserving plant materials for years or decades. Other offerings include materials that do not break down so readily, shell, coral and cloth can persist for a very long time.

Is there a correct way for a cultural practitioner to remove offerings from an area? Is there someone who can be tasked to do this? Many other religions include rules for handling offerings left at shrines or altars, if only to make way for further offerings to be left. Is there no choice but to leave them in place?

Data Transfer from New Horizons

It is going to take a while.

New Horizons Data Transfer
A long wait for your files to transfer!
As we wait for the New Horizons Data to be returned to Earth it is worth considering the difficulty in getting it back. 2.9 billion miles is a long way away for a radio signal. This is not the record, we can still communicate with the Voyager spacecraft at over 12 billion miles out. Unlike Voyager, there is a great deal of data in the memory of New Horizons, we want it here on Earth ASAP.

Each LORRI image is a 1Mpix image at a 12bit depth, even with image compression this is 2.5Mbyte per image. LORRI was one of three cameras taking imagery during the encounter, there is also the data from Alice and Ralph. At the distance of Pluto about the best data transfer rate we can expect is around 1Kbit/sec. I am old enough to remember the days when a 1200 baud modem was state-of-the-art, large files were painful. At this data rate it will take about sixteen months for the entire Pluto encounter data set to be returned to Earth. I can only imagine the anticipation within the mission team, waiting for their data to be arrive.