The Big Dark in Seattle ends today (for this year)
Though we are still in the midst of winter meteorologically (hope everyone enjoyed the snow this morning!), in terms of daylight hours, today arguably marks the end to Big Dark for the season.
Today, February 6th, is:
- The longest day since before Daylight Savings Time ended on November 3rd.
- Today is the first day in which we gain 3+ minutes of daylight each day (a streak that will last until May 2nd).
- The first day with a sunset more than an hour later than our earliest of the year (5:19PM today; earliest of the year is 4:17PM).
Some additional context:
- We're only one month (31 days) from having sunsets after 7PM! (March 9th)
- We've now gained 1h25min of daylight compared to the Winter Solstice on December 21st (~9h50min, vs ~8h25min).
- By the end of February, we will gain an additional 1h12min (and 2 full hours by March 14th!).
- Our current day length (~9h50min) is on par with Winter Solstice in parts of Southern California & the Deep South states.
- In less than 2 weeks (Feb 19th), our day length will be on par with Winter Solstice in Miami.
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NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch
Listened to Carl Sagan's "Pale blue dot" while looking up at the night sky. The colors weren't as vivid as the photo shows, but it was still a magical moment to know we were seeing a special life event.
Another excellent segment from Sagan, titled 'Humility'
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So, given the eclipse, I've seen it brought up again how we are, as far as we know, the only planet in the galaxy which experiences total solar eclipses. It's an astronomical anomaly that our moon perfectly covers the sun.
I have zero proof, but I have been wondering if this isn't simply coincidence, but is instead one of the multitude of variables which was needed to enable our life to exist. Not only does a planet need to be in the Goldilocks zone with water available, but it also needs a moon of proper size to drive the tides similar to ours.
Probably not, but I can't shake the thought.
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How rare is the total eclipse from 2024?
I don't think this is the originator of this video, but I haven't found the true source yet. I found this breakdown of the eclipse frequency fascinating.
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Fascinating astronomy thread about "Zoozve" aka Venus' quasi-moon
Great story about how one dad got curious about something on his kid's astronomy poster and came to learn something new about space.
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"Scientists have found signs of a new kind of gravitational wave. It's really big"
I saw a TikTok explaining this last night and it is really fascinating.
When two galaxies merge, the enormous black holes at their centers are thought to come together and circle each other in a spinning dance that sends giant waves spiraling out.
These waves are like the ripples that move through a pond if you toss in a rock — only these waves move through the very fabric of the universe, and researchers have been eager to study them.
"We've been on a mission for the last fifteen years to find a low-pitched hum of gravitational waves resounding throughout the universe," says Stephen Taylor, a Vanderbilt University astrophysicist who serves as the chair of a team of researchers known as the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav). "We're very happy to announce that our hard work has paid off."
Other research groups using telescopes in Europe, Australia, India, and China also say they're starting to see hints of these waves.
Read the entire NPR article for an excellent explanation of what is going on and why it is such a big deal.
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The James Webb Space Telescope Reveals Fomalhaut's Disk In Unprecedented Detail
The latest jaw dropping space view courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Fomalhaut, a bright, young star 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, illuminates a disk of planet-forming debris. Such debris disks contain clues about exoplanets and even smaller bodies that would otherwise remain hidden.
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Previously, Hubble, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and other telescopes have shown a far-out debris ring surrounding Fomalhaut that’s akin to the Kuiper Belt in our solar system. Analysis of the system’s brightness at different wavelengths had also suggested the presence of a dusty inner disk. Now, the new JWST images reveal unprecedented detail, including a new belt inside the first, an extended inner disk, and a gap between the two. They also show what might be a dust cloud in the outer, previously detected ring.
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Mark your calendars for a very rare comet sighting
"We don't have an estimate for the furthest it will get from the Earth yet — estimates vary — but if it does return it won't be for at least 50,000 years," she said. "...Some predictions suggest that the orbit of this comet is so eccentric it's no longer in an orbit-so it's not going to return at all and will just keep going."
Now, the recently discovered E3 comet, which has been seen with a bright greenish coma and "short broad" dust tail, is set to make its closest approach to the sun on January 12. It will make its closest approach to Earth on February 2.
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SOFIA 747 flying telescope retiring to museum in Tucson
I love science like this, but undoubtedly JWST makes this unnecessary as a project.
The project, known as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA for short, was an engineering marvel. Researchers at NASA and the German Space Agency installed a 38,000-pound, 100-inch reflecting telescope inside a Boeing 747SP. Then, they developed a garage door-like device in the aircraft's main section that could open mid-flight to give the telescope a clear view of the cosmos. The team figured out how to stabilize the huge instrument while the plane was hurtling through the air at 38,000 to 45,000 feet, which was akin to "keeping a laser pointer steady on a penny from ten miles away," per NASA.
But after eight years of scientific operations above the clouds that resulted in numerous discoveries, SOFIA's mission came to an end in September due to budget constraints. On Tuesday, the unique observatory will make its final flight and head to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.
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A look at the Milky Way's Galactic Underworld
A fascinating look at new research which is identifying and looking at the dead stars which fall out and fall below the Milky Way.
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"JWST has released a striking new image of the strange Cartwheel galaxy"
Simply stunning and fascinating to see.
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A fascinating summary and overview of the fast and furious science being done with JWST's new data and images
One of JWST’s much-touted abilities is the power to look back in time to the early universe and see some of the first galaxies and stars. Already, the telescope — which launched on Christmas Day 2021 and now sits 1.5 million kilometers from Earth — has spotted the most distant, earliest galaxy known.
Two teams found the galaxy when they separately analyzed JWST observations for the GLASS survey, one of more than 200 science programs scheduled for the telescope’s first year in space. Both teams, one led by Rohan Naidu at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts and the other by Marco Castellano at the Astronomical Observatory of Rome, identified two especially remote galaxies in the data: one so far away that JWST detects the light it emitted 400 million years after the Big Bang (a tie with the oldest galaxy ever seen by the Hubble Space Telescope), and the other, dubbed GLASS-z13, seen as it appeared 300 million years after the Big Bang. “It would be the most distant galaxy ever found,” said Castellano.
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Absolutely stunning space photos by Judy Schmidt, thanks to James Webb Telescope data
Credit to Judy Schmidt, an amateur space image processor (that's what BoingBoing called her, which brought her work to my attention.) The post's link is to her Flickr account with this and many more amazing pictures she's created.
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