Tabla de contenidos para August 2023 en Astronomy

On Oct. 9, 2022, NASA’s Swift and Fermi observatories detected the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever seen: GRB 221009A. Astronomers around the world quickly turned as many telescopes as possible to its location, ultimately spending more than two months collecting follow-up data. Since then, some have concluded that evidence of a supernova could be buried in the glow of the GRB’s aftermath. If confirmed, the find would support the prevailing view that GRBs are part of the explosive process that sees massive stars collapse into black holes. A study analyzing the light curve and possible supernova signature of GRB 221009A was published March 28 in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters devoted to the event. Gamma-ray bursts are the most intense outpourings of energy known in the universe.…

Bob’s recent book, Earth-Shattering (Little, Brown and Company, 2019), explores the greatest cataclysms that have shaken the universe. → Most of us know what works and what doesn’t. When my pal Seth Shostak explained to me how SETI hunts for possible aliens, the methodology sounded impressive even if success at locating ETs seemed as doubtful as scanning individual Super Bowl attendees’ faces at the turnstile and discovering that some are lizard people. Launching Astronomy magazine in 1973 seemed to display a similarly implausible optimism. Was the subject popular with a broad enough audience? Would the magazine encounter competition? Furthermore, major publishing changes were afoot in the early 1970s. Long-established publishing houses were folding, and the initial transformation to digital was underway — a harbinger of today, when most people stare…

YEARS 1973-2023 IN MID-SEPTEMBER 1982, I arrived at our little stone building at AstroMedia Corp. in Milwaukee for my first day of work. I had no idea what adventures awaited. I was hired as the junior assistant editor of Astronomy magazine, and I couldn’t have been more excited. Straight from Miami University in southwestern Ohio, I brought the observer’s magazine I had started in high school, Deep Sky, with me. I was 21, wide-eyed, and ready to explore everything the astronomy world had to offer — and to report on it too. This year we celebrate Astronomy’s 50th anniversary. I’ve been on the staff for only 40 of those years, but I’ve seen the majority of the history of this title. First issues The magazine was founded on May 27, 1973,…

Trying to predict anything about science or technology a half-century in advance may seem like folly. But there’s a reason we’re willing to go out on a limb. For one, astronomy is a field in which looking 50 years ahead doesn’t seem so far-fetched. The project that would become the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is currently revolutionizing the field, was first proposed in writing in a 1996 report, a quarter-century before its launch. Its successors are already in the works. Thus, we are only extrapolating a couple of generations of flagship observatories into the future. To get a bead on where the field will be 50 years from now, we asked a panel of astronomers, many of whom are contributors to this magazine. Enjoy this preview of the…

IN THE PREMIER ISSUE of Astronomy, dated August 1973, a page labeled “Wanted: Contributors to Astronomy” put this call out to imagers: “Photographs, preferably in color whenever possible, but black and white are acceptable. For color, transparencies are preferred over prints, made with as large a film print as possible. We would like to receive 4x5 transparencies, but accept 35mm. Black and white prints should be on glossy paper, 5x7 inches or larger. Photos are used with accompanying articles, singly in special ‘Star Gallery’ photo spreads and to illustrate articles by other authors.” Let’s be honest. Nobody in the ’70s was taking great shots of celestial objects. Even the professional observatories were producing images that today would be considered substandard. I used to purchase slides of deep-sky objects from Palomar…

Molly is an avid astrophotographer active in STEM outreach. She is pursuing her Ph.D. in nuclear engineering. → I got started in astrophotography in July 2015, when I received my first telescope as a gift: an 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain on an altitudeazimuth mount. After nearly falling over, seeing Saturn for the first time, I decided I must attach a camera to the telescope somehow so I could share that beauty with the world. Astrophotography is often associated with expensive telescopes, robotic mounts, and highly technical challenges. But getting started can be easier than you think: All you need is a basic DSLR and a tripod. Star trails Images of star trails are stunning and easy to make. Start with your DSLR and a short-focal-length lens (a stock 18–55mm zoom lens at…

THE JULY 1997 ISSUE OF ASTRONOMY included an eight-page article titled “Ask Astro,” in which renowned stellar astronomer James B. Kaler answered 20 reader-submitted questions. At the end, a small sidebar announced: “Starting with the August issue, Astronomy will be running a monthly question-and-answer column.” Since then, this column has answered some 1,000 questions about science and the astronomy hobby. Here are some of the most popular and poignant questions we’ve answered through the years. The questions have been generalized, as we’ve received variations of them over and over, while the answers are attributed to the writer according to their professional position and affiliation at the time they provided it. Q | WHY IS JUPITER NOT A STAR OR A BROWN DWARF? A | Although 318 times more massive than Earth, Jupiter would…

With intensity I have enjoyed Bob Berman’s articles for many years and continue to do so. Just a comment regarding his April 2023 column “Danger and glory”: He mentioned how difficult it is to view the Horsehead Nebula with an amateur scope. And it is. However, with larger scopes using a hydrogen beta filter, it is doable. Even with small scopes, it is easy to see it if one uses an image intensifier. I have a friend with a 12-inch scope who found it very easily using an image intensifier, while I found it was easy with my larger 18 and 28-inch scopes. But of course, an intensifier is expensive. —Robert Douglas, San Francisco, CA Clear definitions Bob Berman’s column on a star in Orion’s belt (April 2023) contained everything…

A ROAR OF CHEERS and rocket boosters arose as SpaceX’s integrated Starship and Super Heavy booster, the most powerful launch system ever created, lifted off the launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:33 a.m. CDT on April 20. It was the first test flight of the combined 394-foot-tall (120 meters) rocket stack. Starship’s flight plan called for it to complete nearly one full orbit of Earth, reentering the atmosphere and landing in the Pacific Ocean about 62 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Kauai. But not all was well as the rocket lifted off: Multiple engines did not fire, causing the rocket to slide off the pad as it began its ascent. Just 85 seconds later, the flight’s fate was sealed when SpaceX lost control of the booster’s central 13 engines.…

HOW TO USE THIS MAP This map portrays the sky as seen near 35° north latitude. Located inside the border are the cardinal directions and their intermediate points. To find stars, hold the map overhead and orient it so one of the labels matches the direction you’re facing. The stars above the map’s horizon now match what’s in the sky. The all-sky map shows how the sky looks at: 11 P.M. August 1 10 P.M. August 15 9 P.M. August 31 Planets are shown at midmonth MAP SYMBOLS STAR MAGNITUDES STAR COLORS A star’s color depends on its surface temperature. The hottest stars shine blue Slightly cooler stars appear white Intermediate stars (like the Sun) glow yellow Lower-temperature stars appear orange The coolest stars glow red Fainter stars can’t excite…

IT’S EASIER TO THINK OF what we can build than what we might discover, because with building we can see the steps. And we have instruction books: the reports from committees, like the decadal surveys published by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences. We’ve already got our hands full with wishes for observatories. We’ve wished for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a Hubble Space Telescope on steroids that will see Earth-like exoplanets around Sun-like stars. We’ve wished for a farinfrared observatory, the Origins Space Telescope, to detect molecules in cold, dusty objects and see stars and planets forming. We’ve wished for the Lynx X-ray observatory, to understand extreme temperatures around black holes and explosions of all sorts. At the rate of one per 20 years, we won’t have all of these telescopes…

IN THE NEXT 50 YEARS, I think that planetary science will advance in so many fundamental ways that it may be almost unimaginably more advanced than it is today. In fact, my prediction is that the advances from here to the 2070s will dwarf those from the 1970s to the 2020s, which is saying a lot. By the ’70s, I expect we’ll have human exploration taking place on multiple worlds in the solar system, with Antarctic-like, semipermanent bases scattered around the globes of at least Luna and Mars. I also expect we may by then have much larger and more powerful launch vehicles, even fusion-based or high-power electric propulsion, making trip times an order of magnitude shorter than today. Just think: Mars in a few weeks, Pluto and the Kuiper…

IN THE AUTUMN OF 2002, I had a not-so-typical observing experience. My wife and I lived in El Paso, Texas, and we had a small observatory just a stone’s throw from our house. About 2 a.m. one morning, I walked out to the building to observe some double stars. When I got there, I noticed the door was ajar, and something about it felt odd. So — and I’ve never done this before or since — I pulled out a small pocket flashlight and switched it on. There, in the middle of the observatory, was an adult skunk. And it was looking right at me. I remember thinking, “Well, as long as it’s facing me, I’m safe.” I turned around and went back in the house to fetch a camera.…

Phil received the Walter Scott Houston Award at Stellafane 2018 for his lifelong work promoting and teaching astronomy. → The premier issue of Astronomy featured a column called “Constellation Close-up” written by Thomas C. Bretl. The first installment profiled the zodiacal constellation Capricornus. In honor of the magazine’s anniversary, let’s rewind to 1973 and revisit Capricornus with our binoculars to enjoy some of the same targets that Mr. Bretl featured 50 years ago. Although its brightest star is barely above 3rd magnitude, Capricornus is one of the oldest constellations in the sky. Its origins date back at least 3,500 years to summer in ancient Mesopotamia. The name is Latin for “horned goat,” but Capricornus is depicted as a sea-goat, with the front half of a goat melded to the tail…

Mars looms large, but the highlight of this shot is the Red Planet’s smallest moon: Deimos, just 7.7 miles (12.4 kilometers) wide. The close-up was taken by the United Arab Emirates’ Hope spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2021. On March 10, Hope made its first of several planned flybys of Deimos, sending back unprecedented photographs of the moon’s farside. “This was approximately 100 kilometers [62 miles] up, and I don’t believe we will get that close again,” Hessa Al Matroushi, the science lead for the Emirates Mars Mission, tells Astronomy. The flyby allowed the probe’s two spectrometers to record crucial data about the moon’s composition. They suggest Deimos is made of material similar to Mars itself and not the carbon-rich rock that would be expected if…

THE MYTHIC ACHIEVEMENTS of the Apollo program gave our civilization a jolt of self-confidence and ambition. It fueled a zeitgeist that promised even greater things. We were on our way to Mars with the Viking landers and to the outer planets and the stars with the Voyager probes. Was there anything we could not accomplish if we simply applied our will and our brains to it? Yes, there were intimations of trouble ahead, signs that we were living at odds with our environment. The month before the first Moon landing, the polluted, oil-slicked Cuyahoga River that runs through Cleveland burst into flames. But there was a feeling of optimism that we could solve the ecological disasters we created just as we had the seemingly insoluble challenges of human space travel…

This map unfolds the entire night sky from sunset (at right) until sunrise (at left). Arrows and colored dots show motions and locations of solar system objects during the month. THE PLANETS IN THEIR ORBITS Arrows show the inner planets’ monthly motions and dots depict the outer planets’ positions at midmonth from high above their orbits. THE PLANETS IN THE SKY These illustrations show the size, phase, and orientation of each planet and the two brightest dwarf planets at 0h UT for the dates in the data table at bottom. South is at the top to match the view through a telescope. JUPITER’S MOONS Dots display positions of Galilean satellites at 4 A.M. EDT on the date shown. South is at the top to match the view through a telescope.…

ONE THING THAT PARTICULARLY excites me when thinking so far ahead is that it’s reasonable to imagine we’ll have a sizable radio telescope on the farside of the Moon. This is important to shield the telescope from all the human-generated radio frequency interference (RFI) on Earth. It will also open up the lowest frequencies from space that are blocked by Earth’s ionosphere. There’s probably some exciting new science down there we don’t know about! However, I anticipate this observatory will be automated and I will never see it with my own eyes — with remote observing now routine, it seems hard to imagine a farside lunar radio telescope wouldn’t be, too. I think we will still have ample amounts of radio astronomy occurring on Earth (as long as we get a…

AS OF 2023, astronomers have been arguing about how fast space-time is expanding for nearly a century. So I’m going to be real and say that I expect us to be arguing about this for another 50 years. Today, astronomers are divided on the pace of the universe’s expansion, known as the Hubble constant. One camp finds that in the modern universe, two galaxies separated by 1 million parsecs (1 Mpc, or 3.26 million light-years) appear to recede from each other by roughly 73 kilometers per second. The other group, based on measurements of the early universe and our cosmological models, finds this rate to be around 68 km/s/Mpc. Yet a third type of measurement has landed at 69 km/s/Mpc. The Hubble tension, as this debate is now known, is big…

Internal integration William Optics New Taipei City, Taiwan The new f/5.9 Gran Turismo 81 WIFD APO refractor is equipped with a patented internal two-speed focuser, an update from previous scopes in the brand’s Gran Turismo series. The unique internal mechanism prevents vignetting and image shift, while the scope’s lens design stays aligned even with temperature and weather changes. The refractor’s durable design also allows it to support heavy equipment without flexing. $1,998.00 +886-2-2809-3188 https://williamoptics.com Steely enclosure NexDome Observatories Inc. Port Coquitlam, BC Steel domes are an excellent option for your observatory. NexDome enclosures are made from aircraft-grade aluminum and offer extreme weather protection from wind and snow. The dome can be moved manually, or fully automated via the three-motor system. Each can house scopes up to 1 meter; available in…

HOW TO USE THIS MAP This map portrays the sky as seen near 30° south latitude. Located inside the border are the cardinal directions and their intermediate points. To find stars, hold the map overhead and orient it so one of the labels matches the direction you’re facing. The stars above the map’s horizon now match what’s in the sky. The all-sky map shows how the sky looks at: 10 P.M. October 1 9 P.M. October 15 8 P.M. October 31 Planets are shown at midmonth MAP SYMBOLS STAR MAGNITUDES STAR COLORS A star’s color depends on its surface temperature. The hottest stars shine blue Slightly cooler stars appear white Intermediate stars (like the Sun) glow yellow Lower-temperature stars appear orange The coolest stars glow red Fainter stars can’t excite…