Recommended Online Reading

I'm writing another post as I type this but the hour is creeping closer and closer to my Boozy Brunch with my three favourite ladies so I really should get off my butt, shower and put on some pants [EDIT: Actually, with these fine gals, pants are optional]. So instead of my post, I'm going to give you a link to an awesome site I discovered thanks to WilWheaton and BadAstronomer.*

It's called The Big Picture and everyone should have it in their RSS feed. (I also think everyone should have an RSS feed but that's another post). It's a daily story told in pictures. From current news stories to collections for a retrospective, the photos are Ah. Maze. Ing. There was a recent one about the sulphur mines in Indonesia. It's both breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time (the lack of gas masks for the miners just tears at me). But my favourite part about the Big Picture? This is the third year they have done a Hubble Pictures Advent Calendar.

Merry Dorkmas to me!

*Everyone with a passing interest in science should also have the Discover Blogs in their RSS feed. Then you get to follow awesome people like Bad Astronomer, Science Not Fiction, and Not Exactly Rocket Science.

Frohe Nikolaustag!

It's St. Nicholas Day. In Germany and Switzerland (and other parts of Europe, but they're the ones I know) this is the morning you walk up to gifts from St. Nick placed in the stocking at the end of your bed (or just the end of your bed if it's too large) and then Christmas is just gifts from your family.

My ex's family used to send me separate gifts for today and Christmas but now that they no longer work in the post office, they just send them all at once so I don't have the little surprised to look forward to in early December. I was feeling a little bummed about that this morning until I found this link.

Oh NASA, thank you for the St. Nikolaus Day present.

GBC Book Review: The Universe in a Mirror

Robert Zimmerman's The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and Visionaries Who Built It is a look at the minds and politics behind the Hubble Space Telescope written for those of use who are not rocket scientists. It begins with a quick look at how the atmosphere has always been a hindrance in the study of astronomy before moving into how the Hubble came to be.

Again, all photos are property of NASA and their "you can use it as long as you give credit" awesomeness.

I picked this book up as after seeing the Imax: Hubble and hoping to learn some more about the impact that Hubble has had on our understanding of the universe. On that front, I was sorely disappointed as the book skims over Hubble's contributions to our understanding. Truthfully, it's my own fault because the book very clearly states what it's about, I just didn't read it that closely. I did, however, garner a greater understanding of exactly how difficult it was to even get Hubble made in the first place.

I posted this picture before but an explanation is in order. To test the Deep Field Infrared, it was

decided to point Hubble at an 'empty' part of space, one that had no readings on any system ever used.

This is what Hubble was able to show us.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. There were parts I felt like I had to slog through usually when three new people were introduced within a paragraph of each other and I found I had to go back to try and remember who worked where on what with whom. I occasionally found that I was learning more about people's personal lives than I felt I need to for the purpose of the story, but it was also the intent of the author to show how pursuing the dream that would become Hubble destroyed more marriages, careers and lives than we will ever fully understand.

The book takes an incredible amount of data and condenses it into an easy 240 pages (with the afterword which was added to the paperback) and it was clear that the author had the support of pretty much everyone he was writing about as the majority of the non-universe pictures are listed as 'from the personal collection of...'. Zimmerman does a great job of showing the number of people who were instrumental but also at showing their own flaws and limitations. These were ordinary humans after all trying to do what many in their own field of study thought was impossible. He was also very good at showing all the errors which led up to the wonky lens being given the okay. It was fascinating to see how it all played out and when it came time for 'second light', I found myself feeling giddy knowing how well it was all going to turn out.

This picture of the Eta Carinae was taken at 'second light', the moment when the scientists would learn

if their plan to correct the flawed lens worked. Astronomers had know for hundreds of years that

Eta Carinae was dying. What they didn't know was why it didn't appear to respond like a regular Supernova.

This picture answered what 300 years of study could not.

If you have an interest in astronomy or the Hubble, this is a great book to read. In the end, it made me both laugh and cry which is not an easy feat for a science book. In the words of John Bahcall, one of the lead scientists, "[w]e all have a deep desire to know what exists out there. A desire so basic, so beautiful, so much fun, that it unites all mankind." This book is a fantastic 'thank you' to everyone who made it possible.

My Love Letter to the Universe

Thanks to two free passes to the Imax that I won last May, I went to Hubble with my friend, Dani, and her son, Liam, this afternoon. I chose the movie because I've always had a passing interest in space and am always captivated when I see Hubble images but I actually didn't know that much about Hubble except that it was a huge telescope orbiting the earth, it was broken almost immediately upon being put into service, it has made huge contributions to our understanding of the universe, and it takes pretty pictures. (Speaking of pictures, NASA does the awesome thing of allowing anyone to use their photos as long as you state 'Dude, these belong to NASA'. You guys rock!)

I came out of the film finally understanding more about what the images I had seen previously actually meant and exactly how large of an impact the Hubble Space Telescope had on our understanding of the universe. It was incredible and amazing and awe-inspiring and humbling. Not wanting to spend any money, I flipped longingly through the coffee table books on display in the gift shop before I came home and did what any self-proclaimed geek would do, I took to the Internet to learn more. I have spent my Friday night reading about nebulae, star clusters, galaxies, supernovas, and more. Let me repeat what I have oft said before: I am a dork.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was named after Edwin Hubble who was able to prove that there were galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. (He also gave us the Big Bang Theory which indirectly gave us an awesome TV show, am I right?) Until his discovery, the belief in astronomy was that we were the only galaxy in the universe. As you can see from the picture above, that is clearly not the case!

HST has allowed astronomers to determine more precisely the rate at which the universe is expanding and, by extension, a better idea of how old it is. It has captured detailed pictures of stars being created and of galaxies in various states of growth. I watched the film and I felt myself fill with that six year old wonderment at it all. The movie ended and my six year old self wanted them to play it again. "Again! Again," she shouted as my 30 year old self put on my jacket and headed towards the door.

My stepdad had the most wonderful knowledge of the natural world growing up. He's a geologist so knowledge of the history of the earth was to be expected, but his ability to look into the night sky and find constellations when we were camping always amazed me. Even more amazing, he tell me their names in Latin and then spew off facts about what the Romans or the Greeks or another ancient civilisation thought about it inevitably coming to the sentence 'of course, modern science now knows...' and then telling me exactly what modern science now knows. I wish I had seen the movie with him so I could have picked his brain on our way out.

Throughout the movie, the soundtrack kept playing refrains from IZ's Somewhere Over the Rainbow and I found myself contemplating exactly how lucky we are for earth to exist. What a lucky chance that a planet formed which is capable of sustaining life. I believe that, given the vastness of the universe and the sheer number of galaxies, there must be other planets out there like earth but I doubt if we'll ever find them. It's the proverbial needle in the haystack except the haystack is the size of the Pacific Ocean. Hmm, maybe we should call the Mythbusters.

It think it's safe to say that a spark went off in me while I watch the movie and I have a burning desire to learn more (which may show up via the the Great Book Challenge) and I may some how find my way back to the gift shop to peruse the Hubble books again, but for now, I'll leave you with the internal soundtrack I was hearing during the movie.

EDIT: Once again, can't get the embedding to work on this blog (but it does on the other one, why not here?) so you can see the video here.