Download Mon Sep 23, 2013 NEPTUNE`S DISCOVERY Neptune was

Mon Sep 23, 2013
NEPTUNE’S DISCOVERY
Neptune was discovered by Johanne Gottfried Galle on the evening of September 23rd, 1846. He was working at the
Berlin Observatory, whose director, Johanne Encke, grudgingly gave permission to use the observatory’s nine inch
refracting telescope to search for a possible eighth planet. Galle had been asked to search the skies at a particular
location by a French mathematician, Urbain Leverrier, where this mysterious world ought to be. Through the eyepiece,
Galle saw a tiny, faint blue dot – was it just another star? Galle and his assistant Heinrich d’Arrest opened up their book
of star maps, something called, the Berliner Akademischen Sternkarte, (I think I said that right,) and found that his star
was “not on the map!” The next night they found that the tiny dot had moved against the background of fixed stars - it
was a wanderer, a planet. Neptune is still in our sky, over in the constellation Aquarius in the southeast after sunset
tonight, and yes, you’ll need a pretty good-sized telescope to see it.
Tue Sep 24, 2013
ASTRONOMY CLUB MEETING
There will be a meeting of the Treasure Coast Astronomical Society tonight at 7:30. It will be in the big auditorium at the
Science Center on the main campus of Indian River State College. Any interested sky-watchers are welcome to attend.
Pretty much all of the Treasure Coast Astronomical Society members own at least one telescope, but if all you have is a
pair of binoculars, or even just an interest in the sky and astronomy, then this is the club for you. Each meeting features
astronomy lessons and highlights different constellations. The Society also helps out at planetarium shows by letting
visitors look through their telescopes to see such cosmic wonders as the moon, the planets, star clusters, nebulae and
galaxies. So once again, the meeting is at 7:30 this evening at the IRSC Science Center here in Fort Pierce.
Wed Sep 25, 2013
HOLST’S “THE PLANETS”
Gustav Holst was born on September 21st, 1874. He wasn't an astronomer, but a composer, and in fact his knowledge
of astronomy was rather limited; but in 1915 he wrote a piece of music that you often hear on this radio station, and
also quite a bit in planetariums. It's called, "The Planets", and in it Holst wrote music to describe each of the seven
known planets (the one we’re standing on - Earth wasn’t included, and neither was Pluto, which wasn’t discovered until
1930). The music mirrors the mythical characteristics of each planet. So Mercury, which takes only 88 days to go around
the sun, has a fast-paced, allegro tempo, but also scherzando, fitting for the playful messenger of the gods; while slowmoving Saturn, which takes over 29 years to orbit the sun, has music that is a slow and stately adagio. War-like Mars is a
militant march, the planet of love - Venus - is a beautiful legato, and the music for Jupiter is allegro giocoso, jolly and
grand, as befits the King of the planets.
Thu Sep 26, 2013
STAR CHARTS
With modern computers, laptops, ipads and smartphones, there are all kinds of star charts available to anyone who
wants to look up and learn about the stars. Being old-fashioned, I still find myself most comfortable looking at star
charts that are drawn on paper, with black dots on a white background, which provides the best contrast. Both
electronic charts and paper charts show the bright stars as big dots and the fainter stars as smaller dots. Star charts are
filled with all kinds of cryptic writing: the brightest stars have Arabic, Greek or Latin names written beside them. We can
also use the Greek alphabet as well as the Roman alphabet to designate stars from bright to dim: Spica is the brightest
star in Virgo and so is designated as Alpha Virginis. The next brightest star, Zavijava, is Beta Virginis, and so on down until
you run out of letters. So for the past few hundred years, Flamsteed numbers have been used, as we catalog the stars in
each constellation from west to east.
Fri Sep 27, 2013
THE ASTRONOMER’S ALPHABET – B
This is the Astronomers Alphabet. Today we move on to the letter “B.” “B” stands for “black holes,” of course, those
strange, enigmatic objects which used to be massive stars, that at the end of their lives, didn’t explode, but imploded,
pulling themselves in on themselves – they have so much gravity that even their light can’t escape, making them
invisible to the eye. “B” is for “Betelegeuse,” a very large red giant star that marks the shoulder of the constellation
Orion the Hunter. Betelgeuse is a billion miles in diameter; if it were where our sun was, it would fill up the solar system
all the way out to Jupiter! “B” is also for “Barnard’s Star,” named for the American astronomer E.E. Barnard. Barnard’s
Star is also red, like Betelgeuse, but very small, and so dim that even though it’s one of the nearest stars to us, we can’t
see it without a pretty good telescope. And over in the western sky this evening is one more “B” – the constellation
Bootes the Shepherd.