From Skies to Stars
By Ed Downs
Member, Astronomy Club of Tulsa
Ed Downs with his Orion Dobsonian telescope.From Skies to Stars is a new feature appearing in In Flight USA for the first time. In Flight USA is keeping our promise made in the August 2011 editorial regarding the downfall of America’s manned space program. At that time we committed to keeping the flame of space exploration alive by bringing our readers regular information about astronomy, space exploration and space sciences. We have joined up with the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium (TASM) and the Astronomy Club of Tulsa (ACT), a dedicated group of professional and amateur astronomers, science enthusiast and professional educators who have generously offered to share their ongoing outreach program with our readers. We invite readers to participate and let us know what you would like to read. The staff at In Flight USA may be reached at editor@inflightusa.com. Read on, and discover the universe!
Now, you may be asking, what is the connection between flying and astronomy? Basically, that connection is the sky, travel, altitude and spectacular scenery. It is only distance that truly varies. Astronomers have virtually no limit to range! Like pilots, astronomers plan “cross-country flights” that cross the galaxies. Like pilots, astronomers keep logbooks, filled with stories of viewing adventures, sights that only they may have seen.
Wait, you say, isn’t one look at the moon the same as every other look at the moon? If you have seen one nebula, you have seen them all, right? Not by a long shot! Not only are there many different types and power of telescopes, but also different accessories, all mixed in with the experience of the astronomer. And then there is computer enhanced Astro-Imaging, which allows today’s “amateur” to create photos that look like they are straight from the Hubble Telescope, at affordable prices!
You will learn about astronomical equipment that only a few years ago would have been available exclusively to the pros. For as little as $500 one can be visiting deep space objects like nebulae and galaxies, or perhaps distant comets heading our way from the Kuiper Belt or Oort cloud, which linger outside the orbit of Pluto. The rings of Saturn become a playground and the remarkable Jovian moons (a composite of which may have served as an inspiration for the planet “Pandora” in the science fiction movie, “Avatar”) introduce us to the specter of extraterrestrial life. We will borrow a page from Carl Sagan’s’ book, “Cosmos” and board the Lightship Photon I, (named after the elementary particle that carries light) for journeys that may take hundreds of thousands of years. And each month, there will be a specific adventure in which you can participate.
This writer’s 12-inch reflector telescope (an Orion Dobsonian with computer star finder) had no difficulty locating the famed red supergiant, Betelgeuse, in the upper left corner of the constellation “Orion.” Orion can be seen about half way up in the Southeastern skies if you look up between 7:00 and 8:00 in the evening. It moves towards the South as the evening wears on. Look for three stars in a row that make up his belt. To the upper left is orange Betelgeuse and down and right is the bright blue white star Rigel. The reddish orange hue of Betelgeuse is plainly visible.
The telescopic flyby in our lightship required us to travel some 640 light years from Earth to see the largest star in our galactic neighborhood. Known as a “variable star,” Betelgeuse is so large that, if placed in the middle of our solar system, the chromospheres (a star’s atmosphere) would reach Jupiter, easily consuming all of our inner planets. The “variability” of Betelgeuse’s brightness is because it is a dying star, eating away at its own nuclear core. This neighboring super red giant will someday explode, that is, become a supernova, with a fierceness that could make our sky appear as though we have two Suns. In astronomical terms, “someday” can mean tomorrow (which would actually be 640 years ago, did I mention time travel?) or sometime in the next million years. But not to worry, the great distance will protect us from the actual blast, yet our satellite systems are probably not going to like the resulting GAMMA ray burst. I guess we will all simply have to add that to our fear of asteroids colliding with earth! Did I mention that astronomy is full of excitement? Stay tuned, there is more to come.
Learn more at www.TulsaAirAndSpaceMuseum.org and www.astrotulsa.com. Join the adventure at these fine web sites. The universe is waiting for you.
