Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I just got back inside from observing the comet 8P/Tuttle. It’s moving! It’s in Aries tonight, several degrees from where it was last night. It also looked to be a bit fainter, though the size is about the same. It was easy to find in my big binocs (15×70s), so it shouldn’t be too hard in smaller ones too.

It’s moving so quickly that a daily skymap is needed to trace its path; check SpaceWeather.com or Heavens Above for the latest one. Again, you should also check BAUT for recent images, too. If you have any, post ‘em!

Ah, the first pareidolia of the year! It’s like a bright sunny morning in America!

What does this look like to you?

If you said the Virgin Mary’s big toe, you win!

If you think it’s the Virgin Mary herself, well, then you agree with the family upon whose wall it appeared:

“I feel like it’s telling us something, like it’s protecting us,” Quintana said. “It’s like a miracle.”

Her family concurs.

“I think God is trying to tell us something, like a message from heaven,” said Mariah Quintana, Donna Quintana’s granddaughter.

If that’s a message from heaven, then someone should tell heaven to clean their fax machine. In fact, that looks just as much like the Grim Reaper as it does Mary, so maybe their wall is marked for doom, not protection.

That makes just as much sense as their claim. Or maybe it’s a message telling them that proper foot hygiene is important. Will 2008 bring a pandemic of fungus? Ingrown toenails? Maybe it’s a sign to encourage foot washing.

Hey, if Armageddon comes to Earth because of this, don’t blame Desenex.

Via Fark. C’mon, BABloggees, you need to send these to me when you see ‘em!

Via Tom’s Astronomy Blog I learned that there is a bright-ish comet in the sky for northern viewers. Called 8P/Tuttle, it’s hovering right at the edge of naked-eye brightness.

I went out last night after checking Tom’s skymap, seeing that the comet is almost straight overhead after dinnertime. That puts it in a difficult spot for binoculars, but there is a good signpost: the long, skinny triangle of the constellation Triangulum points right at the comet!

So I mounted my binocs on the tripod, put on my flannel-lined pants, my parka, and my gloves (it was about 15 degrees F last night), and headed into the backyard. The nearly vertical alignment of the binoculars did indeed make this difficult, but the comet is easily bright enough to spot: it was a big fuzzy patch about a degree across. However, it’s spread out so much that I doubt it’s really naked-eye visible. I’ll note that at first I wasn’t sure if I was seeing the comet or the big face-on spiral galaxy M33, also known as the Triangulum Galaxy, which is pretty close tot he comet’s position. I went inside to check my own star chart and saw I had the comet.

So I’d recommend trying for it if you have a small telescope or binoculars. It’s very pretty (no tail, but still cool). Spaceweather has been posting tons of images of its encounter with M33, as has my own Bad Astronomy & Universe Today bulletin board. If you get some pictures, post ‘em to BAUT! And check out this picture of the comet with Comet Holmes; it’s incredible.

And I’ll try again tonight, but this time I’ll leave the tripod indoors, and use a chaise longue instead. It’ll be more comfortable!

At first, I didn’t want my first post of the new year to be about antiscience, but instead on something more uplifting. Still, we all know this holiday is arbitrary, and since evil never rests, we cannot either.

Florida is in serious trouble. People at all levels of education administration are making noises about downplaying evolution education in schools, promoting Intelligent Design creationism, and generally destroying our children’s future.

But others are fighting back. Brandon Haught from Florida Citizens for Science is taking up arms (I’ve mentioned him before). Alarmed at the rate at which Florida administrators are retreating from reality, he has created a Watch List to keep track of who is saying what. He has quotations from reality-deniers who want to push creationism, from parent activists to county education officials and up to the state level. He has added three new counties to that list: St. Lucie, Palm Beach, and Martin.

If you live in Florida, bookmark that list! When a newspaper editorial comes out, or someone is quoted as wanting to violate the First Amendment, Brandon will update his list. You can then write letters to the newspapers, or to the committee involved. It is up to you, Floridians, from having your state sink into an intellectual swamp, setting the clock back a thousand years.

And it works. For his Polk County entry, Brandon has this:

Polk County: Tim Harris, Margaret Lofton, Hazel Seller and Kay Fields, all school board members, told the Lakeland Ledger they support other theories in the science classroom, Nov. 20. Updated: Due to a flood of pro-science correspondence, the school board backed off of their anti-evolution push.

You see? Pressure from rational people can actually get the job done.

Don’t let them define the terms. Don’t let them erase reality. Don’t let them get into positions of power where they can overturn centuries of scientific progress. And if they are already there, vote them out. Pay attention to any and all candidates’ stand on this issue.

It is no exaggeration to say that the future of Florida and even this nation depends on our being able to push this sort of rot out of our schools and teach out kids about real science. And as Brandon has shown, pushing back works.

So maybe this first post of the new year is a bit uplifting. There’s hope, and that’s a good thing.