Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Astute readers may have noticed that posts on this blog now come adorned with a yellow icon at the top left that says "Digg This!" and has a number in it. I’m guessing that most folks reading this blog don’t know what this means. Let me explain.

Social networking is a driving force on the web now. People’s sites live and die on the word of others. When you have an incredibly good site, like, say, Bad Astronomy, it rises to the top. Other people like it, they mention it on their site, and links pour in. Life is good.

But not good enough. I’m really glad to have the readers I do, but I always want more. I want to spread the gospel of science and astronomy! Well, you know what I mean. Flagrant self-promotion is my only option, which I do all the time. But despite the snarky silliness I usually use (did I mention this is an incredibly good site?) I can only do so much.

But there are some amazing sites out there that do a fantastic job of getting the word out. One of the most popular is Digg.com. There, people can see what sites/blogs/pictures/whatever other people like, and vote on them, up or down. I look at Digg pretty much every day; the space section is really good. And I find that usually at least one or two of the Top 10 stories there is worth reading.

If you see a story you like, you submit it to Digg, and others can digg it. The problem is, that can be a bit tedious, so I have made it easier for you, O My Loyal BABloggees: hence the yellow button. If you click it, you will be swept away to Digg, where you can easily go through the process to submit the blog entry. And even better, if someone has already done it, all you have to do is click the button and it will be Dugg automatically! One caveat: you need to register with Digg, but that only takes a sec, and they won’t do anything with your email, etc etc.

Remember my Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006 post? It got submitted to Digg and within two days had hundreds of diggs and got over 200,000 visits! That’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Not every post deserves to get Dugg (like this one certainly doesn’t; it’s just a public service announcement), but if you see one you really like, give it a shot. I’d appreciate it.

Digg it, baby.

Optional other titles for this post: Baby Can You Dig Your Man (with apologies to Steven King), and Can You Digg It, Yes I Can (with apologies to Chicago).

Sometimes a good idea may be immortalized in writing, or sculpture, or painting.

Bad ideas get spoofed in comics. Stellar Worlds is spoofing the Moon hoax.

It would be impolite of me to say I agree with the characterization. So instead I’ll just point you to the comic and let you make up your own mind if these guys writing books about the hoax are cranks or just kooks.

Tip o’ the artist’s beret to Aaron Price.

The European Southern Observatory has just announced they have discovered a previously unknown globular cluster orbiting the Milky Way.

Globular clusters are roughly globe-shaped (duh) collections of stars, usually containing a few hundred thousand to a few million stars. They orbit the centers of galaxies like bees buzzing around a hive, spending most of the time well outside their galaxies. We know of about 150 such clusters orbiting the Milky Way. Our Galaxy is a flattened disk, so globular clusters are usually easy to spot when they are well outside that plane. But sometimes, during their orbit, the pass right through that plane, and we see them against a crowded background of stars. Worse, the dust in the Galaxy obscures the clusters, making them very difficult to find.

This one, named FSR 1735, had been seen in previous surveys but it was unsure if it was a globular cluster or not. The image above, from the New Technology Telescope in Chile, appears to have removed that doubt. The cluster, containing something like 100,000 stars, is a bit difficult to see in the image, but it’s the clot of stars in the center, somewhat denser than the distribution of background stars.

The cluster is fairly rich, but has remained hidden because it’s located only about 10,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way, where the Galaxy is fairly thick with stars. To bring up that analogy again, it’s a bit like trying to find a fly in a swarm of bees suspended in thick fog — or in this case, dust. Infrared light can pass through the dust, so searches for new globular clusters are made in the IR: this image is in the near-infrared, with wavelengths just outside the range of the human eye. The colors in the image are therefore not real, but represent different wavelengths of IR light.

The cluster is about 30,000 light years away, and is only about 7 light years across. Imagine, 100,000 stars packed into a sphere that tiny! For comparison, the nearest known star system to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light years away. What would the sky look like from a planet orbiting a star in such a cluster? It would be filled with stars, most yellowish,orange, or red, with hundreds of them blazing away brighter than Venus appears in our night sky.

The Universe is a beautiful place, and a surprising one. I’m always amazed at what delights are so close, yet lurk just beneath — or for this case, just outside — our notice.