Sky Scouts: Setting an Example in Citizen Science

March 11th, 2010 by Tavi Greiner

Have you submitted your Globe at Night observation, yet?  The U.K.’s  21st Purley Beaver Colony has!

Last weekend, I had the distinct pleasure and privilege of speaking with a group of young skywatching scouts from the U.K.  About 25 people – children and parents – crowded into Croydon’s Norman Fisher Observatory in London, England, while scout leader, Paul Harper, connected all of us via skype chat.  We couldn’t see each other, but I could hear the delightful (and delighted) voices of all the children as they described their views of the night sky and gave me their Globe at Night sky report.

I shall never forget the sounds of those young voices shouting out their observations.  First came their Globe at Night report – a clear 4th magnitude sky from atop the 500′ plateau that is home to England’s RAF Kenley airfield, where the Norman Fisher Observatory resides.  Then came their excited recollections of the sky.  Sam remembered “the Great Bear” of Ursa Major;  Ashley recalled Orion’s “Big Belt”; little three-year-old Miles saw the stars of Cassiopeia; and (impressively) eleven-year-old Christy explored Orion’s bow!  And, of course, they all remembered bright orange Mars.

Paul Harper (aka @HonorarySpock) devotes much of his time to sharing the night sky with others and working with local scouts.  On this particular weekend, he hosted the 21st Purley Beaver Colony and their friends and family as they explored Orion and the surrounding constellations.

Much of Paul’s scout work is done as a chairperson of the Croydon Astronomical Society.  Their observatory, recently renamed to honor CAS member Norman Fisher, is open to the public every Saturday evening, September through May.  This weekend, it will once again be filled with the joyful voices of children, as Paul encourages two more scout groups to look to the sky to submit their own GlobeAt Night reports.

As if scouts and sky weren’t enough, Paul also contributes outreach time to AFM*Radio – recently as a guest on Rebecca and Jeff Setzer’s Astronomy Out and About and as a regular co-host of Richie Jarvis’ Under British Skies.  He is also the voice of @CroydonAs, offering observatory and sky updates for those in the Croydon region.

Now, if this one man can do all that, can we not, each of us, take a moment to submit a single Globe At Night report?  With only a few days remaining in this event, the time to do it is now.  Remember, every count counts – the more awareness we raise about light pollution, the greater our possibility of returning to dark skies!

Of Fusion Crusts and Strewn Fields: Science Channel’s “Meteorite Men” Make an Impact

March 2nd, 2010 by Tavi Greiner & Rob Keown

PHOTO CREDIT: Photograph by Caroline Palmer © Aerolite Meteorites www.aerolite.org

Join us Sunday, March 7 at 9pm EST (March 8 at 0200 UTC), for a special AFM*Radio presentation featuring Geoffrey Notkin of the Science Channel’s Meteorite Men!

In a pre-recorded interview, we speak with Geoff about all things Meteorite Men, including how the show came to be, some surprising results of the show, and his remarkable fourteen-year friendship with Meteorite Men co-host, Steve Arnold.  Geoff also discusses some of world’s more fascinating impact sites, the intricacies of meteorite hunting,  and his own passions for science, meteorites, and music.

If you aren’t able to make the original airing at 9pm EST, you can catch one of the AFM*Radio replays at midnight, 3am, 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm, or 6pm (EST).  You can also listen to the podcast version, posted above.

For your pre-show enjoyment, the following list includes links for the websites, magazine, and book mentioned during the interview:

Meteorite Men website

Meteorite Men on Discovery’s Science Channel website

Meteorite Men on Twitter

Meteorite Men on Facebook

Meteorite Men on Quest tv in the UK

Geoffrey Notkin’s Aerolite website

Geoffrey Notkin’s Guide to Meteorite Identification

Geoff Notkin’s Geology.com column, Meteorwritings

Geoff Notkin’s review of Christopher Cokinos’ book, The Fallen Sky

Christopher Cokinos’ book, The Fallen Sky (available in hardcover and e-book formats)

E.P. Grondine’s book, Man and Impact in the Americas, at Amazon.com

E.P. Grondine’s book, Man and Impact in the Americas, signed and half-priced!

The Tricottet Collection’s Nininger Legacy Exhibit

H. H. Ninger’s books, available through Amazon.com

The Meteorite Magazine website

NorthEast Astronomy Forum (NEAF) website

NEAF Tweetup Attendees List (contact @CraftLass to have your name added)

Glossary of Meteorite Terms

Quantum Leap: The Standard Model, part 2

March 5th, 2010 by Thomas Kennedy

Guest author, Thomas Kennedy, features a twice-monthly series, Quantum Leap, wherein he guides readers through the fascinating world of quantum mechanics. This is issue 009.
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So the question is, “what is Elemental?” In 1661, Robert Boyle determined that something that can’t be broken-down by a chemical reaction is an element, a notion, according to Wiki, that held for almost 300 years and a definition I still recall from high school chemistry class. This was a major moment in the process of understanding what the underlying building blocks of life are. Now, for the first time, man had a tool and a way to codify his approach to answering the questions of what is fundamental.

By 1869, a total of 63 elements had been discovered. As the number of known elements grew, scientists began to recognize patterns in properties and began to develop classification schemes. Attempting to understand this pattern and how to best organize it led to the development of the Periodic Table of Elements.

There has been some disagreement about who deserves credit for being the “father” of the periodic table – the German, Lothar Meyer, or the Russian, Dmitri Mendeleev. Both chemists produced remarkably similar results at the same time, working independently of one another. Meyer’s 1864 textbook included a rather abbreviated version of a periodic table used to classify the elements. This consisted of about half of the known elements listed in order of their atomic weight and demonstrated periodic valence charges as a function of atomic weight. In 1868, Meyer constructed an extended table which he gave to a colleague for evaluation. Unfortunately for Meyer, Mendeleev’s table became available to the scientific community via publication (1869) before Meyer’s appeared (1870).*

Mendeleev created a card for each of the 63 known elements. Each card contained the element’s symbol, atomic weight, and its characteristic chemical and physical properties. When Mendeleev arranged the cards on a table, in order of ascending atomic weight grouping elements of similar properties together, (in a manner not unlike the card arrangement in his favorite solitaire card game, patience,) the periodic table was formed. From this table, Mendeleev developed his statement of the periodic law and published his work On the Relationship of the Properties of the Elements to their Atomic Weights, in 1869. The advantage of Mendeleev’s table, over previous attempts, was that it exhibited similarities not only in small units such as the triads, but showed similarities in an entire network of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal relationships. In 1906, Mendeleev came within one vote of being awarded the Nobel Prize for his work.*

For the next installment, “Charge!”

Watch for Issue #10 of Thomas’ “Quantum Leap”, here on A Sky Full of Stars, on March 19, 2010.

*Western Oregon University citation