Stardate Jan 30th

STARDATE

Stardate, March 24th OJ 287 http://stardate.org/radio/program.php?f=detail&id=2008-03-24


It's hard to think of a black hole that's a hundred million times as massive as the Sun as little. But in   more...a distant quasar known as OJ 287, that may be the case. According to a team of astronomers that studied the system, the black hole appears to orbit another black hole that's the most massive yet discovered — 18 billion times the mass of the Sun.

A quasar is a small object that can outshine an entire galaxy of normal stars. It's probably powered by a disk of superhot gas spiraling around a supermassive black hole.

Astronomers have been watching OJ 287 for more than a century. It's about three and a half billion light-years away, and it looks like a faint, fuzzy galaxy. But twice every 12 years, it flares up. Each outburst lasts a few days.

Although many astronomers are skeptical, an international team says the flareups and other evidence suggest that the system consists of two giant black holes. The smaller one orbits its bigger cousin once every 12 years. Its orbit is stretched out, and it's tilted. So twice during each orbit, it passes through the hot gas surrounding the bigger black hole, causing the flareups.

The team tested this model last year. It predicted that a flareup would occur on September 13th — and it came right on cue, bolstering the model of how OJ 287 works. The same team of astronomers will be looking for more evidence when the next outburst is due — in about eight years.  less

Darkness and light work together in strange ways. The darkest astronomical objects, for example, are black holes — dense objects with such powerful gravity that not even light can escape from them. Yet   more...black holes power the brightest objects in the universe: quasars.

A typical quasar is hundreds of times brighter than our entire galaxy of hundreds of billions of stars. Yet all this light comes from a region that's no larger than our solar system.

A supermassive black hole sits at a quasar's center. Although the black hole itself emits no light, material falling into the black hole is heated both by friction and by the black hole's gravity. Because this material is so hot, it shines profusely.

The brightest quasar in Earth's sky is in the constellation Virgo. You can see Virgo's brightest star, blue-white Spica, rising above the Moon late this evening.

The quasar is known as 3C 273. Through a telescope, it looks about as bright as Pluto. But while Pluto is just a few billion miles away, 3C 273 is two billion light-years away.

To put that in perspective, imagine that a faster-than-light spacecraft could zip from Earth to Pluto in just one second. At that same speed, the craft would require more than a thousand centuries to reach the quasar.

We can see this distant object only because it's fantastically bright — a tremendous display of light from the heart of darkness: a supermassive black hole  less

Stardate, March 22nd, Moon and Spica The Moon will stage a beautiful encounter tonight with one of the most prominent stars of spring: Spica, in the constellation Virgo. The star is a little to   more...the lower left of the Moon as they rise in mid evening, and they'll be even closer at first light tomorrow.

Spica and the other stars that decorate the night sky form a giant calendar. They appear in the same place, at the same time, year after year.

The stars of Virgo rise a little after sunset at this time of year, and sail across the southern sky during the night. They rise about four minutes earlier each night, so they stand higher in the sky later on in the spring.

Because of this, Virgo is known as a spring constellation. You can see some or all of its stars on most nights of the year, but the stars put on their best display in the evening sky during spring.

When the constellation was first drawn, thousands of years ago, the Sun appeared against its stars during late summer — a time when grain was ready to harvest. As a result, Virgo is associated with several goddesses of life and fertility. And Spica represents a stalk of wheat.

Look for Spica snuggling close to the Moon throughout the night. They'll be closest together at first light tomorrow, when they'll be low in the southwest. At their closest, they'll be separated by a degree or two — about the width of a finger held at arm's length.

http://stardate.org/radio/program.php?f=detail&id=2008-03-22  less

With eight "official" planets, our solar system is the most planet-rich star system that we know of. But a system in the constellation Cancer is catching up. Astronomers have discovered five   more...planets there, and they're looking for more.

The system is known as 55 Cancri. It's about 40 light-years away, and its star is similar to the Sun.

Astronomers discovered the first planet orbiting 55 Cancri in 1996. They announced the discovery of the fifth planet just last year. All the planets are giants, and they're all pretty close to the star itself, so the system is quite different from our own.

Even so, the most recently discovered planet is intriguing, because it's at the right distance from the star for liquid water — a distance known as the habitable zone. Since water's a key ingredient for life, any planet that could have water is considered a possible home for life.

Unfortunately, the planet is about 45 times as massive as Earth. Such giants aren't good candidates for life. But if the planet has any moons, they could offer a friendlier environment — perhaps a solid surface, a thick atmosphere, and pools of water.

55 Cancri soars high overhead tonight. It's not visible to the unaided eye, but you can see it through binoculars, near the constellation's northern edge. It's about halfway between two bright planets — orange Mars, which is high overhead at nightfall, and golden Saturn, which is about halfway up the eastern sky.  less

Stardate, March 20th, Vernal Equinox Spring is arriving in the northern hemisphere today. The Sun crossed the equator into northern skies at 12:48 a.m. Central Daylight Time — the moment of the   more...vernal equinox. The days will continue to grow longer until the summer solstice in June.

In ages past, the vernal equinox was often considered the most important day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Life was returning to the landscape after the winter months, and it was about time to plant crops — a good day to celebrate.

In fact, the equinox was so important that in many cultures, the time around the equinox marked the beginning of the new year. That includes western Europe — and especially Great Britain and its American colonies, where until 1752, the year began on March 25th.

Astronomers adopted the vernal equinox as the start of the celestial year. They use a coordinate system with lines of right ascension and declination — the equivalent of longitude and latitude on Earth. The starting point for this system is the Sun's location at the moment of the vernal equinox — celestial coordinates zero, zero.

Thousands of years ago, the vernal equinox took place when the Sun was passing through Aries, the ram, so the equinox is sometimes called the First Point of Aries. But Earth wobbles on its axis a bit, so the Sun shifts a bit with respect to the stars. So today, the Sun is actually one constellation over at the equinox — near the western edge of Pisces.

http://stardate.org/radio/program.php?f=detail&id=2008-03-20  less

Stardate, March 19th, Moon, Saturn, and Regulus
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For sheer beauty, nothing in the solar system beats the rings of Saturn. Thousands of individual rings encircle the planet, made o For sheer beauty,   more...nothing in the solar system beats the rings of Saturn. Thousands of individual rings encircle the planet, made of bits of ice and rock.

Some recent research indicates that the rings will continue to decorate the solar system for a long time.

For decades, the leading idea has been that the rings formed within the last hundred million years — perhaps when a small moon was pulled apart by Saturn's gravity, or smacked by a passing comet. In this scenario, the rings are fairly short-lived, so Saturn itself would outlast them by billions of years.

But last year, a team of researchers concluded otherwise.

The team was led by Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado. It studied observations by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004.

The team concluded that the rings contain a lot more material than anyone had thought. The material is continually churned up, with large chunks breaking apart, and smaller ones coming together to form bigger ones. This process makes the rings look much younger than they really are — like a house that gets a fresh coat of paint. So the rings may be as old as Saturn itself — and likely to stick around for billions of years more.

Saturn is in great view tonight. It looks like a bright golden star quite near the Moon. It's a little to the upper left of the Moon at nightfall, with the true star Regulus close by. Small telescopes reveal Saturn's glorious rings

http://stardate.org/radio/program.php?f=detail&id=2008-03-19 (more) (less)
Tags: Stardate Star Date Stardate.org  less

Stardatye, March 18th, Moon, Regulus, and Saturn

Explorer 1
AUDIO: At 10:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, on January 31st, 1958, the attention of the American people was focused on Cape Canaveral, Florida, as a giant rocket was catapulted toward outer   more...space. Few events in American history have been so awaited, prayed for, worked for, as the Army's successful launching of Explorer 1.

This Army film may have overstated the case a bit, but there's no doubt that after the Soviet Union had launched not one, but two Sputniks, Americans clamored for action. NASA didn't exist yet, so the job of placing a satellite in orbit fell to the military. The Navy tried first, but its Vanguard missile exploded on the launch pad. The Army tried next, with a team led by Wernher von Braun, who had supervised the design and construction of Nazi Germany's V-2 terror weapons. 50 years ago tonight, all was ready.

AUDIO: Time: late evening, Friday, January 31st, 1958, in a blockhouse at Canaveral. The countdown to Explorer 1...45 seconds, rudder drive armed, destruct armed...all right, give me range safety. [countdown sounds stay in background]..I don't have it yet ....20 seconds...15 seconds...10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3,

Explorer 1 weighed just 30 pounds, yet it made the first important scientific discovery of the Space Age. It found that Earth is encircled by radiation belts -- charged particles from the Sun that are caught in Earth's magnetic field. The belts were named for James Van Allen, the scientist who designed the instrument that found them.

AUDIO: ...2, 1, firing command, firing command! [rocket sound]

Explorer 1 got the United States into the space race -- and began a legacy of scientific discovery beyond our own planet.  less

Of course, this logo IS really 20th Century Fox, but in "Futurama" form. Enjoy!!

Jr really really just walking everywhere

Chita@Cash 30th Anniversary

Chita@Cash 30th Anniversary

Part of a liveset from Jan Liefhebber.

Jan sings for Sebastian

jan schneider for congress

Up In Smoke 30th Anniversary pt 7

Up In Smoke 30th Anniversary pt 6

Up In Smoke 30th Anniversary pt 5

Up In Smoke 30th Anniversary pt 4

Up In Smoke 30th Anniversary pt 3

Up In Smoke 30th Anniversary pt 2

Up In Smoke 30th Anniversary pt 1