North America to See An Eclipse of the Blue Moon January 31

On Wednesday morning, January 31, residents of North America (and particularly those on the west coast) will experience a rare triple event:

* The full moon will enter the Earth’s shadow and show a total eclipse (turning the full moon into a dark reddish disk)

* This will be the second full moon in the same month – something we call a blue moon

* And it will be a “supermoon,” where the Moon is full just as it’s closest to our planet Earth (this last thing by itself is not especially rare; in fact it will be third “supermoon” in a row).

Having all three together is unusual. The last time we had a blue moon totally eclipsed in the U.S. was more than 150 years ago.

Here are the times of the eclipse of the Moon on the morning of January 31 in different U.S. time zones:

Eclipse Circumstance                  Pacific Mountain Central Eastern

Partial eclipse begins                 3:48 am 4:48 am 5:48 am 6:48 am
Total eclipse begins                   4:52 am 5:52 am 6:52 am ---
Total eclipse ends                      6:08 am 7:08 am ---         ---
Partial eclipse ends                    7:11 am ---         ---         ---

--- means that Moon has already set (is below the horizon)

You can see that in the eastern half of the U.S., the full Moon sets before the total eclipse or just as the eclipse is getting good, but in the western half of the U.S., some or all of the eclipse will be ready to delight those who can get up early (before the Sun does) that morning.

If you are planning to get up to see the last part of the total eclipse, there is one other factor to keep in mind. The eclipsed Moon is setting in the west as the Sun is rising in the east. That means you have to have a clear sight-line toward the western horizon for the eclipse. If buildings or trees block your view in that direction, you could miss the event. So scout out the location where you plan to be in advance. (Maps and charts can be seen at: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/obser…/january-lunar-eclipse/ )

Note: Only the total eclipse turns the Moon an eerie dark red (because of the bending of red light in the Earth’s atmosphere.) Once the total eclipse is over, the reddish effect that eclipse fans like (and the media call a "blood moon") will be gone.

Our remarkable photo, by Elias Politis, shows a 2011 lunar eclipse sequence over the Acropolis in Greece. Click on the image to see it larger.

First Visitor from the Realm of the Stars Ever Found Is Oddly Shaped

Astronomers around the world have been observing a small but fast object that gives every indication of coming from some other star system. It's the first such "interstellar" visitor we have ever observed. And it's characteristics are quite unexpected.

Most astronomers expected the first such deep-space visitor to be a comet -- a chunk of icy material (which our solar system has in great abundance outside the orbits of the main planets.) But all the characteristics of this visitor argue against that idea. It didn't evaporate and develop a "tail" as it came closer to the Sun than Mercury. Any comet would have done that.

And it seems to spin in less than 8 hours. Something made of snowballs or ice might fall apart from such a fast spin. So it appears that our visitor is made of rock -- more like an asteroid and not like a comet. And its color is dark and reddish, like some asteroids we have seen from our own system.

Furthermore, its shape -- which we can estimate from the way the sunlight reflected from it changes -- is also odd. It appears to be much longer than it is wide. Our best estimate is a cigar shape (see the attached painting from the European Southern Observatory), perhaps half a mile long and only 80 yards in diameter. But it could also be a flat cylinder -- which reminds some people of the shape of the main body of the Starship Enterprise.

(Just to be sure, astronomers at the SETI Institute used their antenna array in Northern California to check if the visitor was sending any radio messages. Nothing was found.)

First discovered by a team led by Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii using a Hawaiian telescope, the visitor has been given a Hawaiian name: Oumuamua, which means "scout or messenger, arriving first" -- not a bad fit. Its scientific designation is 1I2017U1. The 1I stands for first interstellar object ever discovered!

When we found it on Oct. 19th, it was coming in fast from the direction of the constellation of Lyra. It's now going out at a speed of 86,000 mph relative to the Sun. It already crossed the orbit of Mars and will reach the distance of Jupiter in May 2018. Having been whipped around by the Sun's gravity, it will go out in a new and random direction, back toward the realm of the stars.

We expect that such visitors should be passing through all the time, but we haven't discovered them until now. With new surveys of small, dim objects in the sky soon getting under way, we expect to find a lot more small pieces from our own neighborhood -- and beyond. Stay tuned.

A Ring Around the Dwarf Planet Haumea

European astronomers have announced the first discovery of a ring around a dwarf planet. Dwarf planets are similar to Pluto, in that they are small and hang out in a zone with others of their kind. This one, Haumea, is beyond Neptune, taking 284 Earth years to go around the Sun.

The ring is very faint, but astronomers at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia were able to find it when they saw Haumea cross in front of a star. The star’s light went out not only when Haumea crossed in front of it, but briefly before and after, indicating a ring was present.

All four of the giant planets in our solar system have rings, but this is the first found around a smaller planet. Its cousin Pluto definitely doesn’t have one, because we looked when the New Horizons probe went by it.

Haumea is named after the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth and has another oddity. It spins so rapidly – taking less than 4 hours for one spin -- that it doesn’t look exactly round, but more oval shaped. It’s the least round of any world we know bigger than about 60 miles across. It has two known moons, and now a ring too. The zone past Neptune, called the Kuiper Belt, is just getting more and more interesting.

(Our illustration is NOT a photo, just an artist's impression, based on what we have observed so far.)

New Hubble Image of Jupiter's Red Spot

Astronomers are eagerly awaiting new information about the Great Red Spot, the largest and most colorful storm in the atmosphere of the giant planet Jupiter. The Juno spacecraft just flew as close as 5600 miles over the Red Spot, and the information is coming slowly back to Earth. This giant storm is currently about 10,000 miles wide -- larger than the entire planet Earth -- although it is smaller than when the Voyager spacecraft flew by in the 1970's. Why it has been shrinking and why it's color is so vivid are mysteries planetary scientists are trying to solve. 

In the meantime please enjoy the attached Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter, taken on April 3, when the Earth was closest to Jupiter in its yearly orbit. The Red Spot is vividly clear on this wonderfully detailed image, taken from just a few hundred miles above our planet's surface.  (Click on the image to see it bigger.)

Eclipse Talk on YouTube and New Kind of Eclipse Stamp

   

We are exactly two months away from the eclipse of the Sun that is coming to North America on August 21, 2017. I gave an illustrated, non-technical talk on the eclipse in the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture series, and it is now available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Folgs58oI The talk has lots of information and visuals on where and how the eclipse will be visible, how to watch it safely, and how the U.S. is preparing for the huge crowds that are expected in the narrow zone where the eclipse will be total.

   Yesterday, the U.S. Postal Service issued its first ever "thermochromic" stamp in honor of the eclipse. That means when you touch the picture, it changes. Clearly this is a stamp every science nerd...er...fan will want to have. You can get them at your post office or by mail through: https://store.usps.com/store/

   If you have not planned for the eclipse yet, now is the time to start thinking about where you will be on Monday, Aug. 21 and how you and your family or colleagues will observe the eclipse. In the video, I explain what is happening and give suggestions for safe viewing techniques. (Remember, any time any part of the Sun is showing, it's not safe to look at with just your eyes or sunglasses.)

   Thanks to grants from the Moore Foundation and Google, three astronomy colleagues and I were able to distribute 2 million safe eclipse-viewing glasses to public libraries nationwide. Check with your library to see if they are participating. The free booklet for libraries can be downloaded by anyone at: http://www.starnetlibraries.org/EclipseGuide/ 

The 'All-American' Eclipse of th

New Views of the Planet Jupiter

The first results are in from the Juno mission exploring the giant planet Jupiter, and there are many surprises.

Look at the beautiful image here (click on it to see it bigger), showing the first detailed views of Jupiter's south pole region. The colors are a bit exaggerated, but the structures are real. You are seeing giant cyclones and anti-cyclones, as large as 600 miles across! That's extreme weather the 11 o'clock news team doesn't even dream about.

I'll remind you that Jupiter is not a solid planet -- most of it is made of gas and liquid. Yet there is enough material inside the giant planet to make 318 Earths. Scientists did not know whether at its very center it might have a small solid core or not. Heat from within rises and various molecules move up and down, producing complex bands, zones, and storms in the upper atmosphere.

Additional Juno discoveries include that Jupiter has a bigger core than expected, but that it has a fuzzy-looking structure, as if it were not sharply defined. The giant magnet inside Jupiter that surrounds it with the most powerful magnetic zone of any planet was also found to be stronger than anticipated.

Furthermore, the northern and southern lights on Jupiter are excited not only by charged particles captured from space (as we have on Earth) but also, unexpectedly, from charged particles coming from inside Jupiter.

As usual, when we get better instruments focused on a world or process in astronomy, we find that some of our old assumptions or ideas will need to be revised. That's what makes astronomy so much fun.

Below is an image showing 14 days of the Juno spacecraft approaching and then moving further away from Jupiter's cloudy atmosphere. (Click on it to make it bigger.)

A Mini-Pluto at the Edge of Our Solar System

Astronomers have better measurements now of what is turning out to be a smaller version of Pluto located so far away that it may take 1,100 years to orbit the Sun. Nicknamed D.D. (or DeeDee) for Distant Dwarf, this remarkable small world appears to be about 400 miles in diameter -- only about 1/4 the size of Pluto, but possibly still big enough to be round like a planet.

D.D. was found in the fall of 2016 by a team of astronomers led by David Gerdes of the University of Michigan. As so often happens in astronomy, they were looking for something completely different, but found D.D. as part of their work. Now they have used an array of radio telescopes, called ALMA, to measure D.D.'s size and also to estimate its temperature. Ninety-two times as far from the Sun as the Earth is, D.D. is thought to be at minus 405 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 243 degrees Celsius; or only 30 degrees above nature's limit, absolute zero.)

D.D. is part of a whole zone of icy objects out beyond Neptune (astronomers call them Trans-Neptunian Objects or TNO's,) About 2,000 TNOs are now known, but most of them are too small and irregular (knotty potato-shaped) to be called dwarf planets. Pluto, the first TNO dwarf planet, was discovered in 1930, but in the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, others were found, including Eris, Makemake, and Haumea. (If the names sound unusual, it's because we are trying now to name these outer worlds after mythological beings from many cultures, not just the ancient Greeks or Romans!)

We need more observations of D.D. before we are ready to call it a dwarf planet. If you thought that Pluto was being insulted when we called it a dwarf planet, perhaps it will help you to know that Pluto is the "first" of a whole new category of worlds. Five dwarf planets are now officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union, and at least six other worlds out beyond Neptune may eventually be included in the group. It may be years before we know if D.D. will join them.

But it's wonderful to see the Sun's family growing in this way, with our new instruments and surveys able to find worlds that literally are "far out!"

Two Million Free Eclipse Glasses through Libraries (and a Free Booklet)

As you may know, there will be a rare eclipse of the Sun on August 21, 2017, and it will be visible throughout the United States. A spectacular TOTAL eclipse will be seen on a narrow path (about 70 miles wide) from Oregon to South Carolina. The rest of the U.S. and North America will see a PARTIAL eclipse, where only a part (but a substantial part) of the Sun is covered by the Moon. To look at the Sun when part of it is showing, special (but not expensive) glasses are required or you could damage the sensitive tissue in your eyes.

Millions of people will need glasses on August 21, and for the last year I have been grappling with the issue of how to get glasses to as many people as possible. Now, I am delighted to tell you that several astronomy colleagues and I have been able to get funding for glasses to be distributed through public libraries nationwide.

Thanks to the generosity of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation near San Francisco and Google, two million safe eclipse glasses will be made available through public libraries. Each library will get a supply of glasses to share free of charge and a booklet all about the eclipse and how to explain it to the public. The booklet, which I wrote with my colleague Dennis Schatz, is now ready and can be downloaded free at:

http://www.starnetlibraries.org/EclipseGuide/

The first part of the booklet explains all about eclipses, the August eclipse and when and how it will be visible in different parts of the country, and how to observe it safely. It's written for beginners in science, so we hope everyone can benefit from it. The second part consists of information to help librarians plan public programs around the eclipse.

You could do your city or town a big favor by taking the booklet or just its web address in to your local library and encouraging them to participate in the eclipse and the glasses giveaway. Libraries can register for the program (through the STARNet Library Network at the Space Science Institute) at the website: http://www.starnetlibraries.org/2017eclipse/

If, for some reason, your library can't participate in the program, there is information in the booklet on how to get eclipse glasses from the companies that manufacture the certified safe glasses that will protect you and your family's eyes. This spring is the time to make plans for where you will be and what you will do when the eclipse arrives on August 21.

Bubbly Burp Tracks Giant Black Hole's Last Meal

Observations with a number of telescopes, including the Hubble, have now dated a kind of burp in the eating habits of the giant black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. It appears that about six million years ago, the central black hole "ate" a large cluster of stars and the neighborhood around it was energized by the process of the meal.

Black holes are regions where material (starting with dead stars) has collapsed so much, that nothing, not even light, can get out. The black hole at the center of our Milky Way now includes enough material to make more than 4 million stars like the Sun! It's what we call a "supermassive black hole" and lurks in the middle of our Galaxy like a giant speed trap for unwary stars or star groups that get too close.

As material is in the process of being "swallowed" by the black hole, it glows with desperate radiation, just before it falls in and disappears from view. A great bubble produced by the black hole as it ate its last serious meal has now been tracked by astronomers with much greater precision.

Just like the sound of the burp your uncle makes (after a heavy Thanksgiving meal) can travel through the dining room, so the bubble from this last meal can be seen traveling through the Galaxy like a giant expanding shell. The shell was probe by the Hubble as the light of distant objects raced through it and astronomers were able to measure the speed of the bubble's motion.

Six million or so years ago, it appears that a large clump of stars or gas (the raw materials of stars) was consumed by the black hole, making two "Fermi bubbles" in the Galaxy. Since then, the black hole has only been "snacking" -- tearing apart and eating an occasional star or random bit of gas. But no serious meal has made a big bubble from the mouth of the black hole since then.

Our diagram shows how in the six million years since that meal, the bubble has expanded at speeds of two million miles per hour and made a giant bubbles north and south of the black holes that extend for tens of thousands of light years. That kind of puts your uncle's last burp into perspective!

A Hidden Baby Galaxy in our Cosmic Neighborhood

An international team of astronomers, led by researchers at Japan’s Tohoku University, has just reported finding the faintest satellite galaxy ever seen orbiting our home galaxy, the Milky Way.  All stars are born in great islands or groupings of stars called galaxies.

Big galaxies like the Milky Way are surrounded by smaller “baby galaxies” (or satellite galaxies), some of which collide with it over cosmic times.  About 50 such galaxies are currently known to orbit our Milky Way – with the two “Magellanic Clouds” (discovered by Ferdinand Magellan’s crew) being the most famous of them.

Because many of the smallest galaxies are very faint, they are hard for us to make out.  Remember, we are inside the Milky Way, and so (as we try to look outwards) we always have to observe through the stars and star clusters of our own galaxy.  The faint baby galaxies can be hard to tell apart from clusters or groups of stars in the Milky Way itself. (This is why it’s hard to get a good photo of the Milky Way; we are inside it and so it’s like trying to take a selfie from inside your kidney.  The view is not so clear.)

Still, using the giant Subaru telescope (whose mirror is more than 24 feet wide), the team was able to find the faintest baby galaxy ever found, which is being called Virgo I (since we see it in the constellation of Virgo.)  At an estimated distance of 280,000 lightyears from us, Virgo I was much fainter than earlier surveys for our neighbor galaxies were able to reveal.

The whole Virgo I “dwarf galaxy” is only about 248 lightyears wide.  Compare that to the 100,000 lightyear diameter of the Milky Way! The Magellanic Clouds are estimated to be 7,000 and 14,000 light across.  So you can see that Virgo I really is just a baby. See the tiny smudge it makes on our accompanying image.

But if one such baby galaxy has escaped our notice until now, chances are many others like it may also be out there.  Some of our theories predict that major galaxies like the Milky Way should be surrounded by many more dwarf galaxies that we have seen so far.  Virgo I leads astronomers to think that more may be out there -- just waiting for bigger telescopes and more observations before they are discovered. 

Enjoy Sunday and Monday's "Supermoon" But Don't Fall for the Hype!

You may read stories in the media about Sunday evening’s or Monday morning’s full moon being a “supermoon.” And it is true that – by a slight amount – the full moon just before Monday’s sunrise will be the closest, brightest, and largest-looking full moon since 1948.

But the average person won’t notice much difference between this “supermoon” and an ordinary full moon. Clouds, smog, and human lights turn out to have a much greater effect on how bright a full moon looks to us. Still, if you look carefully under dark skies, you might convince yourself that the full Moon Sunday night and Monday before dawn looks a bit bigger and brighter than usual.

“Supermoon” is not an astronomical term. It was suggested by an astrologer and suddenly became popular in the media (who always favor superlatives) in 2011. We astronomers have been stuck with it ever since.

Why are some full moons bigger and brighter than others? It’s because the Moon’s orbit around us is not a perfect circle, but on oval shape called an ellipse. That means sometimes the Moon is a bit closer to us and sometimes it’s a bit further away. If a full moon happens just when the Moon is closer, we get a bigger and brighter looking full moon. The more precisely the closest moon and the full moon coincide, the better the super effect. Nov. 14th, the moon is full at 5:52 am Pacific time, while the moon is closest at 3:23 am. That’s a pretty close coincidence.

Does the “supermoon” have any significant effect on planet Earth. You may read predictions that there will be much greater tides or even earthquakes Monday morning. Don’t believe it! We have slightly stronger tides every time the Sun, Earth and Moon are lined up (which they are at every full moon). But the only time the supermoon will show itself in a significantly stronger effect on the shore is if we happen to be in the middle of a huge storm. And the Sun and Moon have no effect on earthquakes, which happen deep inside the Earth.

So if you happen to glance at the full Moon Sunday evening or Monday morning, enjoy the knowledge that the Moon is a bit closer to you. You may even howl at the Moon if the candidate of your choice didn’t get chosen in our recent elections. But don’t add the “supermoon” to your list of things worth worrying about.

(Photo of the Lick Observatory with the Moon behind it by Rick Baldridge of the Peninsula Astronomical Society.  This was taken with a special lens to enlarge both the observatory and the Moon.)

Water Worlds in the Solar System

There is new evidence for the existence of liquid water in the cold outer regions of our solar system. Astronomers using the Hubble Telescope see plumes of water erupting from the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, and measurements of Saturn’s little moon Dione indicate that it must have a substantial layer of liquid water deep underground.

In recent years, more and more evidence has accumulated that liquid water exists among the moons of the giant planets. We have known for a while that there is likely to be an underground ocean of water beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa, and perhaps also under the surface of its moon Ganymede (the largest moon in the solar system.)

Then the Cassini mission found great geysers of salt water emerging from the icy cracks on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, a world much smaller than the Jupiter moons we just discussed. The big deal here is not that there is water, since water ice makes up a large part of many of the solid worlds in the outer solar system. The big discovery is that, even in those icy realms, enough heat can be generated inside these moons to have oceans of liquid water.

The Hubble work is the second report of plumes coming out of cracks in the ice of Europa. Earlier work, also done with the Hubble, also hinted at such plumes, but now astronomers have observed them in ultraviolet light as Europa was crossing the face of Jupiter. Our top image shows you what was observed, with a visible-light picture of Europa photoshopped in to show you what the moon looks like. A short NASA movie explaining the discovery can be seen at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QJS9LcB66g

The work on Dione was more indirect. This moon of Saturn’s is about 700 mi across, more than twice as big as Enceladus. The presence of water was suggested by measurement of the gravity of Dione, as the Cassini spacecraft flew by it. The gravity measurements fit with the presence of a water layer deep inside the moon, perhaps 60 mi beneath the surface.

(The bottom image shows a very detailed image of Dione's surface from the Cassini spacecraft.  You see many icy cracks and fractures, whose sides show as white cliffs.)

Something must heat the buried “oceans” in these moons to keep them liquid. In some cases, it is a tug of war between the gravity of the mother planet on one side, and a large moon on the other. Or it may be some kind of rocking back and forth, which scientists call “libration”. Whatever allows liquid water layers to exist out there, the fact that they do makes them an interesting place to look for the beginnings of life.

Water Worlds in the Solar System

There is new evidence for the existence of liquid water in the cold outer regions of our solar system. Astronomers using the Hubble Telescope see a plume of water erupting from the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, and measurements of Saturn’s little moon Dione indicate that it must have a substantial layer of liquid water deep underground.

In recent years, more and more evidence has accumulated that liquid water exists among the moons of the giant planets. We have known for a while that there is likely to be an underground ocean of water beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa, and perhaps also under the surface of its moon Ganymede (the largest moon in the solar system.)

Then the Cassini mission found great geysers of salt water emerging from the icy cracks on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, a world much smaller than the Jupiter moons we just discussed. The big deal here is not that there is water, since water ice makes up a large part of many of the solid worlds in the outer solar system. The big discovery is that, even in those icy realms, enough heat can be generated inside these moons to have oceans of liquid water.

The Hubble work is the second report of plumes coming out of cracks in the ice of Europa. Earlier work, also done with the Hubble, also hinted at such plumes, but now astronomers have observed them in ultraviolet light as Europa was crossing the face of Jupiter. Our top image shows you what was observed, with a visible-light picture of Europa photoshopped in to show you what the moon looks like. A short NASA movie explaining the discovery can be seen at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QJS9LcB66g

The work on Dione was more indirect. This moon of Saturn’s is about 700 mi across, more than twice as big as Enceladus. The presence of water was suggested by measurement of the gravity of Dione, as the Cassini spacecraft flew by it. The gravity measurements fit with the presence of a water layer deep inside the moon, perhaps 60 mi beneath the surface.

(The bottom image shows a very detailed image of Dione's surface from the Cassini spacecraft.  You see many icy cracks and fractures, whose sides show as white cliffs.)

Something must heat the buried “oceans” in these moons to keep them liquid. In some cases, it is a tug of war between the gravity of the mother planet on one side, and a large moon on the other. Or it may be some kind of rocking back and forth, which scientists call “libration”. Whatever allows liquid water layers to exist out there, the fact that they do makes them an interesting place to look for the beginnings of life.

Planet Discovered Around the Nearest Star

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory are announcing today that they have found an Earth-sized planet orbiting the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri.  The star is only 4.2 light years away (which is roughly 25 thousand billion miles – that’s close for astronomers!)

The newly found planet takes 11 days to orbit its reddish star (compare that to Mercury, the closest planet in OUR solar system, which takes 88 days to go around the Sun.)   You might think that a planet that takes only a week and a half to orbit its star must be outrageously hot, but the difference is that Proxima Centauri is a much fainter and cooler star than the Sun.  So the planet could be in the star's habitable zone (liquid water may possibly exist on its surface.)

We found this planet, as we have many others, not by getting a picture of it, but by measuring the pull of the planet on the star.  As the planet circles the star, from one side of it to the other, the planet’s gravity, small as it is, makes the star wiggle just a little bit.  And it’s this wiggling of the star that we can detect from Earth and use it to estimate the mass (gravity) of the planet.

This method can only tell us the minimum mass that the planet must have, and that turns out to be 1.3 times the mass of the Earth. (The wiggle, by the way, only changes the motion of the star by about 3 miles per hour, toward us and then away from us.  That’s a tiny change, but modern instruments are able to make out changes in speed that small.)

A planet with that low a mass is most likely a solid rocky planet, like ours.  Being so much in the gravity embrace of the star, the planet may have one side permanently pointed toward it, much like our Moon has one side permanently pointed toward the Earth as it goes around us. The Proxima Centauri planet would then also rotate in 11 days, making its day and its year the same length!   That’s weird to think about.

The fastest planetary probe we have built so far would take something like 80,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri.   It’s hard to get graduate students to volunteer for that kind of trip!  But, as you may have heard, Yuri Milner, the Russian-American billionaire physicst, has, earlier this year, pledged a hundred million dollars for a research effort to develop a mini-probe, smaller than the smallest cell phone, yet with working instruments, that could ride powerful laser beams and get to the nearest star system in only 20 to 25 years.

Clearly, Project Breakthrough Starshot, as it’s called, will now focus on Proxima Centauri, the nearest of the three stars in the closest star system.  Bets have been on one of the other two stars (called Alpha Centauri, after the brightest in the pair) to have planets, but the first discovery belongs to Proxima.  What an exciting time to be alive.

Above is an artist's conception of what Proxima would look like from the planet's vantage point, and below is a diagram with key characteristics of the Proxima system compared to our own.

Happy One Year Pre-Anniversary of the All-American Eclipse of the Sun

August 21 is exactly one year before the 2017 eclipse of the Sun which will sweep across one country and one country only -- the US. On a Monday morning (Aug. 21, 2017) this "All-American" eclipse (as it's being called) will begin on a beach in Oregon and cross the country diagonally to end in the afternoon on a beach in South Carolina.  See the map below.

The eclipse will be total (moon covering the Sun completely) only in a path about 60 miles wide and we expect huge crowds and traffic jams in that zone. The rest of North America (500 million people) will see a partial eclipse, with a big bite taken out of the Sun. Special eclipse glasses or ways of projecting an image of the Sun will be needed to see the partial eclipse safely.

The full story,in everyday language, with a map and times for major cities, and safe viewing guidance, can be found in a free 8-page excerpt from a book, called Solar Science, that Dennis Schatz and I wrote for teachers. It is at: http://bit.ly/2bkGSvA

There is a national committee that I serve on trying to arrange a good experience with the eclipse for as many people as possible. Wish us luck! Dennis and i are also working with science teachers, libraries, and science and nature museums to become centers of eclipse information for their communities.

I'll say more about preparations for the eclipse on this page as the year goes on. But for now, you may want to note the date and if you have friends or relatives in the total eclipse zone, be extra nice to them starting now.

And thanks to Prof. Tyler Nordgren of the University of the Redlands for permission to use his cool poster.

Map of the 2017 Total Eclipse Path

For those of you who are teachers, or who know a teacher, we will be doing a webinar on how to prepare yourself and your students for the eclipse.  For more see:

http://bit.ly/2bbAwfo

Perseid Meteor Shower May Show an Outburst

This Thursday and Friday, there will be one of the best annual meteor showers you and your family can watch -– the Perseids.    And some experts are even predicting that there might be a meteor “outburst” this year –- where the number of shooting stars increases beyond the usual rates.

This is a complicated year for watching the Perseid meteor shower, because the evening sky has a roughly half-lit-up moon in it, making it more difficult to catch the faint “shooting stars.”  So if you can wait until the Moon sets (between midnight and 1 am), you should have better viewing in the pre-dawn darkness.   (That’s great advice for people on camping trip and insomniacs, but probably not useful for those who have to get up for work.)

The best night is the evening of Thursday, Aug. 11 and morning of Friday, Aug. 12^th, although there could be significantly more meteors in the sky on the night before and the night after too.  Meteors or “shooting stars” (which have nothing to do with stars) are pieces of cosmic dust and dirt hitting the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and making a flash of light.  These flashes could happen anywhere in the sky, so it’s best to view the shower from a wide-open place.  See the list at the end for viewing suggestions.

The Perseid meteors are cosmic “garbage” left over from a regularly returning comet, called Swift-Tuttle (after the two astronomers who first discovered it).  The comet itself returns to the inner solar system every 130 years or so; it was last here in 1992.  During each pass, it leaves dirt and dust behind and it is this series of long dirt and dust streams that we encounter every August.  Some scientists who study comets and meteors are predicting that we might briefly encounter an especially crowded part of the debris stream this time.

Each flash you see is a bit of material from the comet hitting the Earth’s atmosphere and getting heated up (and heating up the air around it) as it speeds through our thick atmosphere.  Both the super-heated dust and dirt and the heated air contribute to the visible light we observe.  Since comets are left-overs from the early days of our solar system, you can tell yourself (or your kids) that each flash of light is the “last gasp” of a bit of cosmic material that formed some 5 billion years ago.

EIGHT HINTS FOR “TAKING A METEOR SHOWER”

1. Get away from city lights and find a location that’s relatively dark

2. If it’s significantly foggy or cloudy, you’re out of luck

3. Your location should allow you to see as much of the dome of the sky as possible

4. Allow time for your eyes to get adapted to the dark (at least 10 -15 minutes)

5. Don’t use a telescope or binoculars – they restrict your view (so you don’t have to be part of the 1% with fancy equipment to see the shower; this is a show for the 99%!)

6. Dress warm – it can get cooler at night even in August (and don’t forget the insect repellent while you are outside)

7. Be patient (it’s not fireworks): keep looking up & around & you’ll see flashes of light

8. Take someone with you with whom you like to spend time in the dark!

Big Day for Astronomy Discoveries: Gravity Waves, Alcohol and Tatooine 9

The national organization of professional astronomers (the American Astronomical Society) is meeting in San Diego this week, and there is BIG news from the meeting: More gravity waves, wood alcohol in space, and a big Tatooine-like planet.

Scientists working with LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) have announced their second discovery of gravity waves. (The first was announced in February.) Once again they observed two giant black holes coming closer and closer and then merging into a bigger black hole. In the merger, some of the mass in the system is converted to energy, and comes out as the waves of gravitational energy Einstein predicted about 100 years ago.

The black holes that merged were 14 and 8 times as massive as our Sun, somewhat smaller than those in the first discovery. Scientists estimate that the black hole that came out of the merger had as much stuff as 21 Sun. This means an entire Sun's worth of mass was converted to energy -- explaining why we could detect the gravity waves, even though such waves are much, much weaker than other waves we know and love, like radio or x-rays.

In the second discovery, a team of astronomers from around the world used the giant ALMA array of radio telescopes in Chile to measure the presence of alcohol in the planet forming disk of a young star 170 light years away. Alas, the kind of alcohol they found is what we call "wood alcohol" or methanol, not the drinkable version. Still, this is the first detection of one of the complex building blocks of life in the region around a newly formed star that is making planets as we observe it.

We have found many of the basic chemical building blocks of life in comets, in chunks of rock that fall from space, and especially in the great clouds of raw material (gas and dust) from which new stars form. But this is the first time we see the "fingerprints" of such a molecule in the flat disk around a star which is the nursery from which planets like Earth and Jupiter emerge. The name of the star is TW Hydrae in case you want to search for more information. (Our image shows an artist's impression of the disk and the molecules of methanol.)

And, finally, in a discovery that is bound to warm the hearts of Star Wars fans everywhere, astronomers have announced the discovery of the ninth, the largest, and the furthest planet orbiting two stars. Such a world could have two suns in the sky at the same time -- just like Tatooine, Luke Skywalker's home planet.

The newly discovered planet, called by its catalog number Kepler
1647b, is about the size of Jupiter and takes three years to orbit its star. The star system is about the same age as our own. And most intriguingly, the new planet orbits in the "habitable zone" of the double star -- meaning that the temperature in the planet's neighborhood would be comfortable for water and life as we know it.

Now Jupiter-sized planets are probably mostly gas and liquid, like Jupiter is, and have no surface for life to evolve on. But such planets may have large solid moons, like Jupiter and Saturn do. On such moons, an atmosphere and oceans may form and remain, so that an environment for life may yet exist in this strange, beautiful system. (We can't find moons yet, only planets, so for now, we have to leave such thoughts to the science fiction writers.)

And those three are only the most interesting of the many discoveries announced at the meeting. We really do seem to be living in a golden age of observational astronomy!

There is a Possible Super Earth in the Outer Solar System

Out there, way beyond the Sun's family, astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Among these alien planets, we have discovered a significant number of "Super Earths" -- planets more massive than our Earth but less massive than the smallest giants in our solar system, Uranus and Neptune. Our solar system has no such Super Earths, but many other systems do; they may be quite common.

Now, Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin at Caltech, propose that we might just have a Super Earth in our solar system, but so far from the Sun, it takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make one orbit! (Pluto, for comparison, takes about 250 years.)

Brown and Batygin have been examining the orbits of icy chunks way beyond Pluto, in the region we call the Kuiper Belt. There are several chunks out there, including one Brown discovered in 2003, called Sedna, that move in an oddly aligned way. After testing many computer models to explain their odd orbit, their best model indicates there could be a planet 10 times the mass of our own Earth, whose stronger gravity is affecting the motions of many objects out where it orbits. Just a few of the affected chunks have been discovered so far and the planet itself has NOT be seen.

So this is a somewhat daring hypothesis, which the two astronomers explain in this brief video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6poHQ2h00ZA

Please note that our image is a painting that Caltech commissioned. No one knows what this Planet Nine looks like.

Now here is the human side of the story. Michael Brown led the team that discovered Eris, the dwarf planet that is the same size as Pluto, in 2005. When he discovered it, he told his wife that he had just discovered a tenth planet and she had made a good decision in marrying him. Alas, instead of being acknowledged as the 10th planet, Eris caused astronomers to rethink the status of Pluto, and remove it from being the 9th planet. Brown was gracious about it, but you can imagine how disappointing it all was for him.

So now Brown may have "discovered" (or at least predicted) a real new planet. He is already nicknaming it "Planet Nine" and it's so big, no one will be able to call it a dwarf! If it is confirmed one day, he can go back to his wife and tell her, "Well, maybe I only discovered a dwarf planet before, but now I have discovered a real planet at last." Not a bad thing to discuss over dinner!

You can see a video where Brown discusses his role in the Pluto and Eris story at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pbj_llmiMg

Brown and Batygin