Astronomy – jyroberts.info

Recommendation- Webb Telescope

admin January 30, 2022 January 30, 2022 Recommended

Soooooo – I have really gotten behind on writing posts. In my defense, I used my holiday break to redesign a website, and then I have been getting adjusted to a new internship/practicum for this semester with NC LIVE, in addition to continuing work as a research assistant, a class, and working as an intern at the campus library. So I am going to go ahead and say that updating is going to be a spotty for a few months! I have decided to try to do at least two Recommendation posts a month, and see how that goes. If possible, I will add another post sometime in the month. It’s just a matter of getting into the habit, so here goes!

I decided to post a few embeds about the Webb Telescope that just achieved its halo orbit of the L2 point last week. It was an incredible achievement, and I was tracking it from it’s launch on December 25 to is final orbit. NASA has a great website that has updates on how it is proceeding and what is coming up. Now that the telescope is completely unfolded, and it is in place at the L2 point, there are several months of testing and getting the mirrors completely aligned for observations. I remember the same process being done for the Hubble telescope, but without all the great internet options for keeping up with it’s progress. I was taking astronomy as Hubble was being launched and tested, and I remember the excitement of waiting for the first images (which were a big problem that had to be corrected with a spacewalk).

I have been listening to a number of podcasts about the telescope, and I also wanted to know more about Lagrange Points (Webb is at L2 of 5). So in addition to the NASA JWST link, I have a YouTube video by a Scottish physicist named Scott Manly, who has a really good video explaining what the Lagrange points are and how they work. For general information about the telescope and what it is going to look for, I am including two podcasts from Vox media’s Unexplainable, which I have recommended before. These two podcasts are each about 25 minutes, and give a good overview. If you like astronomy like I do, the Webb Telescope is a great thing to be excited about!

Webb Telescope –NASA website link

You can also check out the YouTube videos of the big points of opening the telescope. They are usually about 2 hours long, but they contain a lot of information from the people actually doing the work of launching and unfolding the telescope. (The featured image for this post is from the NASA artist images of the telescope in space; you can find those from this link as well!)

General overview from Vox

Lagrange Points description

Recommendations – Documentaries

admin May 12, 2021 June 1, 2022 Recommended

In this post, I am going to recommend a couple of documentaries about two of my favorite subjects, astronomy and language. I have watched both of these videos numerous times, and they always make me happy and tear up at the same time, as well as being just really good documentaries. Both of these videos are available on NCLive through most public and academic libraries. However, if you are not in North Carolina, you can check your own public library video streaming and DVD collection. The astronomy documentary, The Farthest, can also be found on PBS Passport. And currently the language documentary, Breaking the Maya Code, is on Amazon Prime.

I’ll start with The Farthest – Voyager in Space released in 2017, which is a film on the building, launch, and travel to the outer planets by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. It is one of the best astronomy videos I have ever watched, and I really like documentaries and films on astronomy. The format includes commentary by some of the scientists who worked on the project, together with still photography, contemporary video, and a great music score that weaves into a whole that is both informative and entertaining. The film captures the epic scale of the achievement, but also makes it personal to the people that worked on the project, emphasizing the human aspect of the search for answers through science. While it has a lot of good science information in it, the emotion it conveys about why we reach for the stars, and strive to know what is outside our planet, is a constant theme of the film. If you want to feel optimistic about the human species, this film can give you hope. (2 hour film)

The second film I want to recommend is called Breaking the Maya Code (2008). Like the above documentary, it is one that combines interviews of linguists with a really good narrative and great pacing. The music score can’t compete with The Farthest, but other than that, it is an excellent documentary. The subject of this film is the effort to translate the Maya glyphs found in ancient Central American cities, after almost all books of the writing were destroyed during the Spanish Conquest. As a historian and a new librarian, I find this documentary painful when considering how much was lost when European colonists destroyed so many books of the Mayan people during the 1600s. However, it is also uplifting to see some efforts being made to return the writing to those Mayan descendants now living in southern Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, especially since their modern language is what gave the clues to translating the ancient writing. The film follows the beginnings of the efforts to translate the carvings of the Mayans by Europeans during the 1800s, then goes back to the reasons for the loss of the language. From there, it picks back up with the efforts in the 20th century to figure out the complex Mayan language and translate it to better understand the Mayan culture. One of the most fascinating parts of the film is how the invention of the fax machine and the photocopier made such a difference in the speed of understanding. Even before the advent of the internet and its coordination of scientific discovery across the world, these two machines helped researchers to collaborate in their efforts. That cooperation and the use of many minds to make progress is inspiring for the future. And the last part of the video, about the schools in Guatemala that are teaching Mayan writing to its children, is a wonderful use of historical knowledge to help a people connect with the past that was taken from them. All in all, a great documentary to watch for anyone. (2 hour film)

Featured image at top is “Zine Study XIV: [language]” by Shawn Econo is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Not Seen Since 1226!

admin December 22, 2020 December 22, 2020 Science

Happy Winter Solstice! And I hope you looked at the evening sky tonight to see the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. The two planets were close enough together in their orbits (as seen from earth) to appear as one point, or if you could look through a telescope or even binoculars, you would be able to see both together! I pulled out my 6 inch Dobson telescope to get this view, and managed to take a picture through the eyepiece with my phone. (My dad is the real photographer in the family, and he decided to try it out; turns out it works!) There is a bit of over exposure of the light from the planets, so you can’t see the spaces between the rings and Saturn (the oval on the bottom) or the stripes on Jupiter’s surface, but you can see the four Galilean moons if you look closely (those would be Io, Europa, Gannymede, and Callisto). The two close to Jupiter are really visible, but look closely to either side on the same plane, and you can just see the other two (the one on the right side is very faint, it is about half the distance from Jupiter as the one on the far left). These were easier to see just looking through the eyepiece of the telescope, but the camera had a little trouble picking them up. Not bad though!

The conjunction happens every 20 years, but it hasn’t been this close during the night in 800 years, so the last time was before telescopes, in 1226! While I have looked at these planets separately, I had never been able to look at both like this together, so it was a really nice thing to see, since it will be another 400 years before they get this close again (don’t think I’ll be around for that one). If you are interested in some background, there is a short article on Vox.com about the great conjunction, and of course, NASA has a good write up about it, too.

If you have any interest in reading up about the planets, or other parts of the solar system, NASA has a great interactive on it, where you can get an overview, zoom in and out on the different parts of the solar system in real time layout, and click on links that take you to pages on the planets, moons, asteroids, and even where the major satellites are located. I highly recommend taking a look, even if you aren’t very interested in astronomy. It might make you take a look the night sky differently!

For anyone wondering why the image is backwards if compared to others, it is taken through a telescope mirror, so the image gets reversed, and I didn’t change it. Here it is right side up!