As I talked about it class briefly, there’s a drone in the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park and it was a TOTALLY big deal, especially right away. I found a good article that was from 11 months after the event so provided some context and updates: A crashed drone could destroy Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring in the Idaho State Journal newspaper. Scientists are worried about the battery especially. Now we’re almost 10 years later, that drone has never been recovered, and the colors are still beautiful (they’re caused by the microbes) so hopefully all is well. Time will tell.
If you’re in my 2023 Solar System class, please put a comment here showing that you’ve found my blog and that you’re following it 🙂 Please include your first name. Note that you MUST be logged in to your own WordPress blog when commenting or else you’re doing it wrong!
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If you’re in my 2021 Solar System class, please put a comment here showing that you’ve found my blog and that you’re following it 🙂 Please include your first name and last name initial. Note that you MUST be logged in to your own WordPress blog when commenting or else you’re doing it wrong!
Also make sure you have bookmarked the big class blog aggregator: Astro2110 – The Solar System. From there, you can follow everyone or specific classmates if you like (when I post them).
If you’re in my 2021 Solar System class, please put a comment here showing that you’ve found my blog and that you’re following it 🙂 Please include your first name and last name initial. Note that you MUST be logged in to your own WordPress blog when commenting or else you’re doing it wrong!
Also make sure you have bookmarked the big class blog aggregator: Astro2110 – The Solar System. From there, you can follow everyone or specific classmates if you like (when I post them).
20 new protoplanetary disks, as imaged by the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP) collaboration, showcasing what newly-forming planetary systems look like. (S. M. ANDREWS ET AL. AND THE DSHARP COLLABORATION, ARXIV:1812.04040) Found on Dr. Ethan Sharp’s Starts With A Bang blog
I’d love to show you a whole bunch of videos that show planetary formation! Some showcase certain parts of formation better than others but they all are pretty awesome.
Planetary Formation – by NASA for the James Webb Space Telescope, uses data from computer models (3:21)
Planet Formation – narration by Harrison Ford, I like that it has some timescale information in it, part of a larger series (3:13)
Short animation from the NASA Deep Impact spacecraft – it especially shows comet formation but watch for: a) gravitational forces bringing smaller things to bigger things in orbits (bound and unbound), and b) those conglomerating rocks/metals getting a layer of ices (0:55)
Two renderings (i.e. computer simulations) of protoplanetary disk gravitational instabilities (i.e. planet formation), one is face on (0:44) and one is an oblique angle (0:44)
The California Academy of Sciences has a really nice former planetarium show segment about Simulating Solar System Formation (and it explains why the Kuiper Belt (and Oort Cloud) look the way they do) (4:22)
blocked on copyright grounds From “Space with Sam Neill” Episode: “Star Stuff”, I really like how this one is done (I started it at 1:27) – here
The “Formation of the Moon” video that I commented does happen to be one of my favorites despite the speeding up of some events that they did (3:37)
More Moon formation – this is from a supercomputer simulation and it has the weirdest music! It’s also a bit old and you don’t need to watch until the end… (4:05)
Below is an image of the Orion Nebula (we can see it during our observations this semester 😉 ) from the Hubble Space Telescope showing some of the protoplanetary disks that have been found in this nebula. Look!!! New baby planetary systems! 🙂
A collection of 30 never-before-released images of embryonic planetary systems in the Orion Nebula are the highlight of the longest single Hubble Space Telescope project ever dedicated to the topic of star and planet formation. Also known as proplyds, or protoplanetary discs, these modest blobs surrounding baby stars are shedding light on the mechanism behind planet formation. (from 2009) https://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic0917/
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This total lunar eclipse will be the last non-partial one Earthlings can observe until 2021. There will be several partial lunar eclipses, but no totals :-/ Total lunar eclipses are the neat ones because the Moon turns yellow-y, then orange-y, then copper-y, then red! Note that this eclipse is going to be LONG – FIVE HOURS LONG. Well, the good part will be 3.5 hours long. My recommendation for observing a lunar eclipse is go look, then go do something else for at least 5 minutes, 10 minutes is probably better. Then look again and you should see a change! If you continuously look, you won’t see the gradual change.
A couple of great websites to use to investigate timing and what you can expect are:
Sky & Telescope has a useful and brief set of descriptions of all eclipses in 2019 with a lovely graphic for this particular one (reproduced below): Solar and Lunar Eclipses in 2019
If you want the total, real, everyone-uses-these-numbers, science-jargon deal, go to the page of NASA eclipse guru Dr. Fred Espenak – Total Lunar Eclipse of 2019 Jan 21
Eclipse diagram with key timepoints with TIMES IN UT (not in Central!!) from Sky & Telescope – Leah Tiscione Screenshot of key timepoints for the 2019 January lunar eclipse for Nashville, TN specifically. Note that the good action starts with the partial eclipse start and ends when the partial ends. from TimeAndDate.com
Lunar eclipses are visible from the whole nighttime side of Earth so lots of people get to see these (as opposed to total solar eclipses). They also don’t need any special eye protection because you don’t need any to look at the Full Moon any other time and all that’s happening is the Full Moon will get dimmer. You’ll be fine 🙂
Also, people are all ga-ga over “The Super Wolf Blood Moon” but you don’t need the hyperbole. It’s a cool experience regardless. If you want to know why the name is that, check out the “Trivia” at timeanddate.com
So have you ever seen an eclipse? Which kind of eclipse and what kinds of things did you notice or feelings did you have?
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If you’re in my 2019 Solar System class, please put a comment here showing that you’ve found my blog and that you’re following it 🙂 Please include your first name and last name initial. Note that you MUST be logged in to your own WordPress blog when commenting or else you’re doing it wrong!
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If you’re in my 2018 Solar System class, please put a comment here showing that you’ve found my blog and that you’re following it 🙂 Please include your first name and last name initial. Note that you MUST be logged in to your own WordPress blog when commenting or else you’re doing it wrong!
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If you’re in my 2017 Solar System class, please put a comment here showing that you’ve found my blog and that you’re following it 🙂 Please include your first name and last name initial. Note that you MUST be logged in to your own WordPress blog when commenting or else you’re doing it wrong!
Also make sure you have bookmarked the big class blog aggregator: Astro2110 – The Solar System. From there, you can follow everyone or specific classmates if you like (when I post them).
