Skywatch Friday: An Afternoon in the Sun

Several months ago I realized that we were nearing what would come to be called (in our ever more hyperbolic media outlets) The Great American Eclipse, but didn't get terribly excited because we wouldn't be experiencing much of it here in Texas. I thought about driving north to Kansas to catch totality, but wasn't thinking far enough ahead to actually make plans. By the time the event was upon us, I had actually missed the window for obtaining glasses, and was facing the probability of a pinhole projection experience.

Fortunately for us, an old friend, boss, and fellow astronomy buff invited us to his place to watch through his appropriately filtered telescope, and he had glasses. So, I whipped up some thematically appropriate snacks (chile con queso and black bean dip), found round yellow and blue corn chips, and located well-named wine (Moon X and Honey Moon) and beer (Luna y Sol), and we headed a bit south to an amazing refuge from suburban life, bordered by a forest and a meadow. I was so mesmerized by the green space that it almost distracted me from the business at hand. But not quite.

We spent the day observing through the telescope, the glasses, and a nifty little pinhole setup. The Beloved Spouse discovered that he could take photos through the telescope lens with our Canon Eos, and we got a variety of shots that recorded the 75% of totality available in the Dallas area. One of the later photos even shows the sunspots visible through the telescope (using a telephoto lens).

In all, we had a splendid day, enjoying the company of my friend (whom I hadn't seen for a couple of years) and his wife, catching up with news, and enjoying the terrific view from their back porch. I even swapped photos with my kids, one of whom was rather closer to the action, in Seattle, and sent me wonderful shadow pictures.

In another seven years Dallas will be in the path of totality when the next total eclipse passes over a small portion of the southern US (in 2024), so we're already planning another soiree. By then we'll have acquired filters for both our telescope and the camera, and will be much better prepared.

I have to admit that I was caught completely off guard by the enthusiasm that greeted Monday's event. A generally scientifically apathetic public was swept into a kind of frenzy, most likely because we were all so eager to find something uplifting to distract us from depressing political news. But the eclipse is over, and within a day the fever had abated--or was, rather, deflected to the latest lottery jackpot.

So I doubt that all that many of the people who were so engaged by Monday's hoopla will care a whit that September 5 marks the fortieth anniversary of Voyager 1's launch (the anniversary of Voyager 2's launch occurred the day before the eclipse). Some of us, however, are currently awaiting the arrival of our copies of The Golden Record, at which time we'll be able to geek out on the contents of the box it comes in, with all the rewards for having backed the Kickstarter campaign. Folks who missed the initial campaign can buy a copy from Ozma Records when it becomes available to the general public.

So, happy Skywatch Friday. I had a bit of fun getting the Beloved Spouse to reproduce approximate 75% totality with corn chips, but the photo was taken of the sky, so it counts.

News From Out There

 Relative sizes and distances of Alpha/Proxima Centuari stars from the sun

For as long as I could, I resisted the temptation to jump on the Proxima b bandwagon and start waxing poetical about habitable planets in light of recent news. A week or so isn't really all that long, but given the alignment of heavenly bodies in my particular cosmos, that's probably long enough. I could not, however, resist at all the inclusion of the rather wonderful artist's interpretation of what the planet might look like, even though it means noting the European Southern Observatory's requirement to credit ESO/Kornmesser as the source:

One reason I felt compelled to mark this moment is that twenty years ago I discovered a terrific novel about Jesuits in space by Mary Doria Russell: The Sparrow, which takes place on a planet called Rakhat in the Alpha Centauri system. (For Russell's take on the coincidence, see this article on her website.) The book, and its sequel, Children of God, was the first thing that came to mind when I heard about the discovery of Proxima b.

 

The little red circle under the star on the left marks the location
of Proxima Centauri in relation to the other two. 

As if to punctuate this coincidence, my bi-weekly pilgrimage to Half Price Books netted a novel by Stephen Baxter called Proxima (2013), and then New Scientist featured a cover story on the discovery on 27 August. I'm still wandering around on Green Mars (I'm rereading Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy because I can't really remember much about it), so I haven't had time to get into the Baxter book. Quite frankly Baxter's been knocking novels out so quickly that I can't keep up. I've got two or three others on my shelves that I haven't even looked at. At any rate, it now goes to the top of the heap under Blue Mars. (For movies that have used the Alpha Centauri region as a remote--ahem--location see this post on the Discover magazine blog, Dbrief: Alpha Centauri, The Hollywood Star System.)

And then there's the new Coursera MOOC I started a month ago, "Imagining Other Earths" taught by Dr. David Spergel out of Princeton's astronomy department. This one's twenty-four weeks long and is described in its blurb thus: "Are we alone? This course introduces core concepts in astronomy, biology, and planetary science that enable the student to speculate scientifically about this profound question and invent their own solar systems" (the grammar isn't mine). I thought it would be a good idea to get better at the science if I'm going to keep working on stories about old bats in space. So far I've learned tons, and it's helping me keep my invented planets straight.

Then, as if all that weren't enough, a message comes through the SETI board to look out for media blather about a "Candidate SETI SIGNAL DETECTED by Russians from star HD 164595 by virtue of RATAN-600 radio telescope." The board moderator/SETI project scientist Eric Korpela poked a hole in that balloon, noting that "of course, it's been announced to the media" and that reporters "won't have the background to know it's not interesting." So even though folks are looking at it, it's not coming from the constellation Centaurus, and thus it's probably not worth calling up the Father General of the Society of Jesus to see if he can arrange to buy a hollowed out asteroid to use to mount an expedition.

Good thing, too, since humans would probably screw it up.

As expected, however, my science fiction feeds on Flipboard were full of announcements about "interesting" signals, and I imagine that the less skeptical among space-fans will be glued to the interwebs for a while. Meanwhile, there's more substantial fare available at The Pale Red Dot, and a nice article on EarthSky by Larry Sessions on the composition of the Alpha Centauri system.

I do so love this stuff.

The reason I enjoy this sort of thing quite as much as I do is because "outer space" is the ultimate "nowhere"--the ou (no) topos (place), with the potential to be the eu (good) topos. When Thomas More made this marvelous pun in the sixteenth century, he tapped into a human longing that goes back to ideas of Eden in the Judaeo-christian tradition, or of a golden age imagined in classical antiquity. Nowadays, of course, modern technology invites us to look for "nowheres" that at one time would have been inconceivable except as fantasy. Most of us with any science background at all know that living on other planets still belongs in the realm of fantasy, but every little frisson of hope implied by a nearby habitable planet (or even a more habitable moon or Mars) where we could do a better job of living with each other than we do now is potential nectar to the hopeful. And I think hope really is the underlying impulse among utopians.

Especially now, when we increasingly seem to be on the verge of dystopia, at the hands of the greedy, the willfully ignorant, the misguided, the bigoted, the fanatic, the atavistic--essentially all of the enemies of ideals like tolerance, wisdom, and justice that utopias are built on.

Of course, even in fictional "noplaces," things don't always turn out well. It almost seems that whenever we try to imagine something better, the reality of who we are and have been creeps in and muddles things up.

And still we dream on. I'm not sure what all that dreaming means, but it does keep me from falling on my sword, and provides me with a reason to get up every morning, take the dog for a walk, and get back to the business of wondering what it would take to actually make things work.

Image credits: "Pale Red Dot" (J. Mencisom) and Alpha Centauri region image (Guy Vandegrift) from Wikimedia Commons. "Artist's Impression of the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri" ESO/M.Kornmesser, originally found on Wikimedia Commons.

The Carrington Event

One of my favorite science fiction scenarios is the production of an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) that wipes out our digital technologies and transforms society as we know it.  I first learned about this phenomenon many moons back in connection with the Carrington Event which occurred on this day 156 years ago and caused all manner of discombobulation around the globe. I was reminded of it this morning through Spaceweather, which celebrated the anniversary by pointing out that we had only just escaped an equally devastating CME (coronal mass ejection) in July of 2012. The eruption was massive--apparently as strong as the 1859 event, but missed us. What it did, however, was remind us (according to the Spaceweather article) "that extreme space weather is not a thing of the past."

Richard Carrington was by all accounts a wizbang astronomer, and on that fateful day was busy drawing the sunspots he was observing in his private lab. As he watched, the spots coalesced and disappeared--but only after erupting into "a white-light solar flare--a magnetic explosion on the sun." (NASA Science News)

The NASA article also describes the aftermath:

Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii. 

 Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted. 

The article goes on to reassure us that flares of this magnitude seem to be rare, but also notes that our current electronic technologies are all at risk--as are our satellites and astronauts (if they're doing EVA when it occurs). This is where the science fiction fodder comes in, because although world-wide space agencies are busy studying flares, Spaceweather notes that a Carrington-grade flare could effect damage on the order of a trillion dollars worth "and require four to ten years for complete recovery." I should note here that CMEs and solar flares aren't the same thing, but often occur together (Christensen). The July 2012 event, in fact, began with a flare that was followed by a CME (Anthony).

Nor, as I've only recently discovered, are EMPs and CMEs the same thing. EMPs can be manufactured, and the effects of a CME are in some ways like those of an EMP, but there seems to be a great deal of controversy on the interwebs about which would cause what. 

What this teaches me is that if I want to use these kinds of events as a backdrop to a story (as I actually already have, but the story isn't about the science; it's about the people and what they do to survive, which could happen in any number of scenarios), I need to bone up on both.

At any rate, there seem to be a number of books/movies/stories already out there, which gives me more stuff to read (if any of it's any good; one promising book is by Roger Zelazy and Thomas T. Thomas, Flare, from 1992). And of course there are all those Prepper websites that I've already run across in my real estate porn forays into Land For Sale In Montana.

Anyway, happy Carrington Day. And remember to sign up for Spaceweather (especially if you live in Montana and points north; they notify folks about auroras). Also, read the cited articles, both with more information and quite interesting.

Sources:

Anthony, Sebastian. "The Solar Storm of 2012 That Almost Sent Us Back to a Post-apocalyptic Stone Age." 24 July 2014. ExtremeTech. Ziff Davis, L.L.C. Web. 02 Sept. 2015.
"August 2010 CME SDO Multi-Wavelength." Multiple contributors. Wikimedia Commons. (There are multiple CME images in the Commons, but this was the prettiest.

Christensen, Bill. "Shock to the (Solar) System: Coronal Mass Ejection Tracked to Saturn." 05 Nov. 2004. Space.com. Purch. Web. 2 Sept. 2015.