Some interesting sites

One interesting site I found out about lately was www.whatreallyhappened.com, which finds unusual viewpoints in the news and presents them in a list of links. The site has an enormous number of links to sites that most of us are not even aware of. Among the things that this site presents is an argument as to why the big chemical plant in Iraq that was recently discovered is probably not a factory of weapons of mass destruction, and the discovery of British weapons in Iraqi inventories.

Another one is that of the Iraqi who has been blogging to the world, http://www.dear_raed.blogspot.com/. He does not have any sympathy for the Hussein regime but he does not like the bombing in Baghdad either, saying that one of his favorite buildings collapsed before his eyes.

And here's a real scary one: http://www.rea-alp.com/~dragnfly/index.html. It is about the upcoming ultimate oil shortage, the time in the future when the demand for oil will exceed the supply, even with all oil suppliers pumping full tilt. One interesting passage is where he calls to task a friend who understands that this oil shortage is coming, but that he still plans a rich retirement full of travel all over the place. The two thoughts contradict. Or you can go to K.S. Deffeyes' site at http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/ and read that not only is the peak of oil production very soon, but that perhaps it may have already happened! Oil production has declined since 2000 November.

Also look at the Interactive Sky Chart of Sky and Telescope's site. When you step through it, it shows you the constellations that are up at each hour on a sky circle representing the dome of the sky. When the Sun rises, you see the background lighten, and when it is daytime, no stars show at all in the chart, only the Sun (and planets) which is what we would actually see.

Astronomy Weekend

We had unexpectedly clear skies this weekend. It is past full Moon and it is the anti-harvest moon in March, when first the Moon is full, then it disappears from the evening sky, leaving dark skies. On Friday night I took my new 8-inch Celestron NexStar telescope to the Science Museum's skywatch. This telescope is a "go to" scope. This means that you find the object on a keyboard, then hit a key to tell the telescope where to point to to view the object. It took a while to get started, as I had to level and align the telescope to north, then aim at the two reference stars Sirius and Capella. Then I told it to go to Jupiter and it went there, and I showed the public Jupiter from my telescope. I also showed Saturn and M42. I also tested out some new equipment, such as a star diagonal, a Barlow lens, and a 9.7mm Super Plössl eyepiece. I found that the Barlow lens magnified the image two times, making it the same, nearly, as the 9.7mm eyepiece, which is a high power (about 160X) eyepiece.

The next night I went out in my back yard and was surprised to see Jupiter with five moons! Now Jupiter has 52 moons or so, but most are captured asteroids. Only four moons deserve the appellation "moon", as they are the size of our Moon. They are easily visible in an amateur telescope, and make a dramatic sight: a solar system within a solar system. On Saturday night, 2003 March 22, however, I saw five moons. Two were on the right, and three on the left. Huhh? I knew that one of them, the faintest one, had to be a background star, and it had to be the inner moon on the right. Indeed, someone in the Richmond Astronomical Society told me that the star was SAO 98075. I looked it up on the Internet and found that Jupiter had occulted (eclipsed) it on 2003 March 20. I also saw M44 Beehive cluster, M42, and made an attempt to see the two galaxies of M51. I tested more equipment. I tried something called a field reducer. That made the image smaller and brighter. With the 40mm Plössl eyepiece, that really made the Beehive cluster stand out. Jupiter was small but bright. I also tried a star diagonal and saw results similar to using my other diagonal.

Last night I went out again, this time to another astronomer's house, where we were having a telescope party. There a telescope that was willed to my astronomical society in 1957 and somehow came apart to several owners came together again when we put two parts together and they exactly fit.

So I saw several stars and gave my telescope a good workout this weekend. I hope for good skies again this weekend.