David Oesper

Radio Quiet Zones

If you thought light pollution is bad (and it is!), radio pollution for radio astronomers is much worse. Even years ago, terrestrial pollution of the radio spectrum tended to swamp faint celestial sources at many frequencies, and in 1958 the FCC established a 13,000 square mile rectangular region of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland as the National Radio Quiet Zone. Two facilities within this protected region—whose natural topography helps to screen out many terrestrial radio emissions—are the Sugar Grove Station and the Green Bank Observatory near Green Bank, West Virginia. The world’s largest fully-steerable radio telescope dish was built at Green Bank in 1956. Though the original 300-ft. dish collapsed in 1988 due to a structural failure, it was rebuilt in 2000 as the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, a leading facility for radio astronomy.

Counties wholly within the NRQZ, where many radio-emitting sources are regulated or banned outright, are Alleghany, Augusta, Bath, Highland, Nelson, and Rockbridge in Virginia, and Hardy, Pendleton, Pocahontas, Randolph, and Upshur in West Virginia.

The NRQZ isn’t the only radio quiet zone. Here are some others:

Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico
Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act (AGAA), South Africa
Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), Chile
Australian Radio Quiet Zone WA (ARQZWA), Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO)
Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO), Canada
Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), China
Institute for Radio Astronomy in the Millimeter Range (IRAM), Spain
Itapetinga Radio Observatory (IRO), Brazil
Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT), Mexico
Pushchino Radio Astronomy Observatory, Russia

The best place in the world to do radio astronomy is not on our world at all but instead on the far side of the Moon. Radio telescopes deployed on the lunar farside could “listen” to the universe with absolutely no interference from Earth. The solid body of the Moon (and its lack of an atmosphere) would completely block all radio signals and noise emanating from the Earth and Earth orbit. And some radio telescopes could be quickly and easily deployed (think long-wire antennas rather than radio dishes). Of course, the Moon itself will need to be designated as a radio quiet zone so that any lunar colonies, rovers, or satellites operate at frequencies and times that will not interfere with scientific work. Maybe infrared or optical lasers would be a better way to communicate?

How would data from a lunar farside radio observatory be transmitted back to Earth? One way would be to have a dedicated lunar satellite that receives data from the radio observatory while it is traveling over the lunar farside. It would then re-transmit that data to Earth while it is traveling over the Earth-facing nearside.

Another (probably more expensive) approach would be to have a series of radio relay towers spaced at intervals from the radio observatory around to the lunar nearside where a transmitter could send the data back to Earth.

A third choice would be to locate the radio observatory in a libration zone along the border between the lunar nearside and farside. At a libration zone radio observatory, data would be collected and stored until each time libration allows a direct line-of-sight to Earth.

The crater Daedalus, near the center of the lunar farside, has been suggested as the best location for a radio astronomy facility on the Moon (Pagana et al. 2006).

There is also a region above the farside lunar surface where radio emissions from Earth and Earth-orbiting satellites, would be blocked by the Moon, called the “Quiet Cone”, as illustrated in the diagram below.

The Earth-Moon L₂ Lagrange point (EML2) is probably going to be within the lunar quiet cone. Because L₂ is an unstable Lagrange point, a radio telescope in the quiet cone would need to be in a halo orbit about EML2, and a tight one at that to avoid “seeing” any radio emissions from the highest Earth-orbiting satellites.

References
Antonietti, N.; Pagana, G.; Pluchino, S.; Maccone, C.
A proposed space mission around the Moon to measure the Moon Radio-Quiet Zone, 36th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Held 16 – 23 July 2006, in Beijing, China.

Name That Comet

As of this writing, there are 3,635 comets named SOHO, over 300 comets named LINEAR, some 179 comets named PANSTARRS, 82 comets named McNaught, 62 comets named NEAT, and so on.

Except for the comets discovered by Scottish-Australian astronomer Robert H. McNaught (1956-), all of the above comets were named after various semi-automated surveys.

SOHO = Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (spacecraft)

LINEAR = Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research

Pan-STARRS = Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System

NEAT = Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking

How do we distinguish between comets having the same name? Each has a separate comet designation. The first Comet LINEAR has a designation of P/1997 A2, and the most recent Comet LINEAR has a designation of C/2017 B3.

A comet designation starts with one of the following prefixes:

P/ – a periodic comet (orbital period < 200 years or confirmed observations at more than one perihelion passage)

C/ – non-periodic comet (orbital period ≥ 200 years and confirmed observations at only one perihelion passage)

X/ – comet for which no reliable orbit could be calculated (generally, historical comets)

D/ – a periodic comet that has disappeared, broken up, or been lost

A/ – an object that was mistakenly identified as a comet, but is actually a minor planet (asteroid, trans-Neptunian object, etc.)

I/ – an interstellar object that did not originate in our solar system

This is then followed by the year of discovery, a letter indicating the half-month of discovery, followed by the numeric order of discovery during the half-month.

So, we can see that the first Comet LINEAR, P/1997 A2, is a periodic comet discovered in 1997, between January 1 and January 15 of that year, and it was the second comet to be discovered during that period of time. After the second perihelion passage, P/1997 A2 (LINEAR) was subsequently given the periodic comet number prefix of 230, so the full designation for this comet is now 230P/1997 A2 (LINEAR).

Likewise, the most recent Comet LINEAR (at the time of this writing), C/2017 B3, is a non-periodic comet discovered in 2017 between January 16 and January 31, the third comet discovered during that period of time.

Interestingly, if different periodic comets have the same name, they are sequentially numbered. Perhaps the most famous example is Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 that broke up and crashed into Jupiter during July 1994. There are a total of nine periodic comets named Shoemaker-Levy. They are:

192P/1990 V1   Shoemaker-Levy 1

137P/1990 UL3  Shoemaker-Levy 2

129P/1991 C1   Shoemaker-Levy 3

118P/1991 C2   Shoemaker-Levy 4

145P/1991 T1   Shoemaker-Levy 5

181P/1991 V1   Shoemaker-Levy 6

138P/1991 V2   Shoemaker-Levy 7

135P/1992 G2   Shoemaker-Levy 8

D/1993 F2      Shoemaker-Levy 9

However, four additional non-periodic comets were discovered by the Carolyn & Gene Shoemaker and David Levy team. They have not received a numeric suffix and are all called “Comet Shoemaker-Levy”:

C/1991 B1      Shoemaker-Levy

C/1991 T2      Shoemaker-Levy

C/1993 K1      Shoemaker-Levy

C/1994 E2      Shoemaker-Levy

This strikes me as a bit strange. Why afford a numeric suffix to a comet name only when it is a periodic comet? Why not give all comets named “Shoemaker-Levy” a numeric suffix. Normally, we would number them all in order of discovery, but since the nine periodic comets have already received a number, we would have to number the four non-periodic comets as C/1991 B1 (Shoemaker-Levy 10), C/1991 T2 (Shoemaker-Levy 11), C/1993 K1 (Shoemaker-Levy 12), and C/1994 E2 (Shoemaker-Levy 13).

I would like to see all comets, both periodic and non-periodic, receive a numeric suffix to their names whenever there is more than one. So, instead of Comet LINEAR we would have Comet LINEAR 1, Comet LINEAR 2, Comet LINEAR 3, and so on.

By the way, the days of amateur astronomers discovering a new comet will probably soon come to a close. Though this is a little sad, it does tell us that the entire sky is being monitored much more closely than in the past, by a number of automated surveys. And that is a good thing, because we will be much less likely to miss anything “new” in the sky.

~~None~~ One of the comets this year (so far) ~~have~~ has been discovered by amateurs.

UPDATE – November 20, 2018: California amateur astronomer and prolific comet hunter Don Machholz, along with Japanese amateur astronomers Shigehisa Fujikawa and Masayuki Iwamoto, independently discovered a new comet on November 7. The new long-period comet has been named C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto). Remarkable!

Here is the current tally of comet discoveries (or recoveries) this year:

Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System)
C/2018 A1 (PANSTARRS)
364P/2018 A2 (PANSTARRS)
C/2018 A4 (PANSTARRS)
P/2018 A5 (PANSTARRS)
C/2018 F4 (PANSTARRS)
P/2018 H2 (PANSTARRS)
P/2018 L1 (PANSTARRS)
P/2018 L4 (PANSTARRS)
P/2018 P3 (PANSTARRS)
P/2018 P4 (PANSTARRS)
C/2018 P5 (PANSTARRS)
372P/2018 P6 (McNaught) [recovery of P/2008 O2]

ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System)
C/2018 A3 (ATLAS)
C/2018 E1 (ATLAS)
C/2018 K1 (Weiland) [H. Weiland, ATLAS]
C/2018 L2 (ATLAS)
C/2018 O1 (ATLAS)

MLS (Mt. Lemmon Survey)
C/2018 A6 (Gibbs) [A.R. Gibbs, MLS]
C/2018 B1 (Lemmon)
P/2018 C1 (Lemmon-Read) [M.T. Read, Spacewatch, Kitt Peak]
C/2018 C2 (Lemmon)
C/2018 EF9 (Lemmon) [originally classified as an asteroid]
C/2018 F1 (Grauer) [A.D. Grauer, MLS]
C/2018 F3 (Johnson) [J.A. Johnson, MLS]
C/2018 KJ3 (Lemmon) [originally classified as an asteroid]
P/2018 L5 (Leonard) [G. Leonard, MLS]
C/2018 R3 (Lemmon)
C/2018 R5 (Lemmon)

SONEAR (Southern Observatory for Near Earth Asteroid Research)
C/2018 E2 (Barros) [Joao Barros, SONEAR]

NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer)
C/2018 EN4 (NEOWISE) [originally classified as a Centaur asteroid]
C/2018 N1 (NEOWISE)

Spacewatch
366P/2018 F2 (Spacewatch)

CSS (Catalina Sky Survey)
367P/2018 H1 (Catalina)
C/2018 M1 (Catalina)
C/2018 R4 (Fuls) [D.C. Fuls, CSS]

NEAT (Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking)
368P/2018 L3 (NEAT)
370P/2018 P2 (NEAT)

ASAS-SN (All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae)
C/2018 N2 (ASASSN)

OGS (ESA Optical Ground Station)
369P/2018 P1 (Hill) [recovery of P/2010 A1]
371P/2018 R1 (LINEAR-Skiff) [recovery of P/2001 R6]

373P/2018 R2 (Rinner) [Jean-Francois Soulier, Maisoncelles, and Krisztian Sarneczky, University of Szeged, Piszkesteto Station (Konkoly), independently recovered P/2011 W2]

374P/2018 S1 (Larson) [Krisztian Sarneczky and Robert Szakats, University of Szeged, Piszkesteto Station (Konkoly), recovered P/2007 V1]

375P/2018 T1 (Hill) [Krisztian Sarneczky, University of Szeged, Piszkesteto Station (Konkoly), recovered P/2006 D1]

Cosmology: The History and Nature of Our Universe

Mark Whittle, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Virginia, has put together the most comprehensive and comprehensible treatment on the subject of cosmology that I have ever encountered. Cosmology: The History and Nature of Our Universe, a series of 36 thirty-minute video lectures for The Great Courses (Course No. 1830), is a truly remarkable achievement.

Even though this course was released ten years ago in 2008, all of the material is still completely relevant. This is the course on cosmology that I’ve always wanted but never had. Enjoy!

Cosmology has come a long ways since I was a physics and astronomy student at Iowa State University from 1975-1980, and again in 1981, 1984, and 2000-2005. I’m glad to see a course specifically about cosmology is now offered at a number of universities. When I was an undergraduate student at ISU, it was unheard of. The University of Wisconsin at Madison Department of Astronomy currently offers both an undergraduate and a graduate course in cosmology: Astronomy 335 – Cosmology, and Astronomy 735 – Observational Cosmology. And the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Iowa State University now offers an undergraduate/graduate dual-listed cosmology course: Astro 405/505 – Astrophysical Cosmology.

When I retire in a few years, I would love to be a “fly on the wall” at the UW-Madison astronomy department. Wonder if they could use an expert SAS programmer to help analyze the massive quantities of data they surely must have? (Though the last time I interviewed for an astronomy job, at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, the interviewers had never heard of SAS but asked if I knew Python, which of course is what nearly everyone is looking for and using these days. Tomorrow, it will be something else…). In retirement, at the very least I would love to immerse myself in a few astronomy courses at UW-Madison. Something to look forward to!

Blue Light Blues

One by one, all of our warm white lights are being replaced by cold, harsh, bluish-white LEDs. And it is happening fast.

Everywhere. In our streetlights, our workplaces, even our homes. How do you like looking into those blue-white vehicle headlights as compared with the yellow-white ones we have been using since the automobile was invented?

LED lighting is the way of the future, don’t get me wrong, but we should be specifying and installing LED lights with a correlated color temperature (CCT) of 2700K or 3000K—with few exceptions—not the 4000K or higher that is the current standard.

Why is 4000K the current standard? Because blue-white LEDs have a slightly greater luminous efficacy than yellow-white LEDs. Luminous efficacy is the amount of light you get out for the power you put in, often measured in lumens per watt. But should luminous efficiency be the only consideration? What about aesthetics? In addition to luminous efficacy, there are other, more significant ways to reduce power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions:

Use the minimum amount of light needed for the application; no need to overlight
Use efficient light fixtures that direct light only to where it is needed; near-horizontal light creates annoying and visibility-impairing glare and light trespass, and direct uplight into the night sky is a complete waste
Produce the light only when it is needed through simple switches, time controls, and occupancy sensors; or, use lower light levels during times of little or no activity

Even the super-inefficient incandescent light bulb (with a CCT of 2400K, by the way), operating three hours each night uses less energy than the light source with the highest luminous efficacy operating dusk to dawn. Think about it.

In my town, as in most now, the soothing orange 1900K high pressure sodium (HPS) streetlights are being replaced with 4000K LEDs. That’s a big change. It will completely transform our outdoor nighttime environment. Warm-white compact fluorescents are 2700K, and even tungsten halogen bulbs are 3000K. Do we really want or need 4000K+ LEDs?

We are currently witnessing a complete transformation of our illuminated built environment. Not enough questions are being asked nor direction being given by citizens, employees, and municipalities. The lighting industry generally wants to sell as many lights as possible at the highest profit margin. We as lighting consumers need to make sure we have the right kind of light, the right amount of light, and lighting only when and where it is needed.

Higher color-temperature lighting of 3500K or higher is often specified for office lighting during the day to more closely match daylight color temperature, but all to often this type of lighting is also being specified for nighttime use. Lower color temperature lighting of 2700K or 3000K should be used for residential lighting and any other lighting that is primarily being used after sunset, such as streetlighting, parking lot lighting, and security lighting.

Effective Diameter of an Irregularly-Shaped Object

A diameter of a circle in 2D is defined as any straight line segment that intersects the center of the circle with endpoints that lie on the circle. Since all diameters of a circle have the same length, the diameter is the length of any diameter.

Likewise, a diameter of a sphere in 3D is defined as any straight line segment that intersects the center of the sphere with endpoints that lie on the surface of the sphere, and the diameter is its associated length.

But how do we define the diameter of an irregularly-shaped object such as a typical asteroid or trans-Neptunian object?

For a well-characterized object such as 951 Gaspra—the first asteroid to be photographed up close by a spacecraft—we’ll see the dimensions of the best fitting triaxial ellipsoid given in terms of “principal diameters”. In the case of Gaspra, that is 18.2 × 10.5 × 8.9 km.

In certain circumstances, however, it would advantageous to characterize an irregularly-shaped object using a single “mean diameter”. How should we calculate that?

There are two good approaches, provided you have enough information about the object. The first is to determine the “volume equivalent diameter” which is the diameter of a sphere having the same volume as the asteroid. This is particularly relevant to mass and density.

For purposes of illustration only, let’s assume Gaspra’s dimensions are exactly the same as its best-fitting triaxial ellipsoid. If that were true, the volume of Gaspra would be

$V = \frac{{4\pi abc }}{3}$

where V is the volume, and a, b, and c are the principal radii of the triaxial ellipsoid.

Plugging in the numbers 9.1 km, 5.25 km, and 4.45 km (half the principal diameters), we get a volume of 890.5 km³.

The volume equivalent diameter is

$d_{vol} = \left (\frac{6V_{obj}}{\pi } \right )^{1/3}$

where d_vol is the volume equivalent diameter, and V_obj is the volume of the object.

Plugging in the volume of 890.5 km³ gives us a volume equivalent diameter of 11.9 km.

The second approach is to determine the “surface equivalent diameter” which is the diameter of a sphere having the same surface area as the asteroid. This is most relevant to reflectivity or brightness.

Once again using our triaxial ellipsoid as a stand-in for the real 951 Gaspra, we find that the general solution for the surface area of an ellipsoid requires the use of elliptic integrals. However, there is an approximation that is more straightforward to calculate and accurate to within about 1%:

$S\approx 4\pi\left ( \frac{a^{p}b^{p}+a^{p}c^{p}+b^{p}c^{p}}{3} \right )^{1/p}$

where S is the surface area, p ≈ 1.6075 can be used, and a, b, and c are the principal radii of the triaxial ellipsoid.

Once again plugging in the numbers, we get a surface area of of 478.5 km².

The surface equivalent diameter is

$d_{sur} = \left (\frac{S_{obj}}{\pi } \right )^{1/2}$

where d_sur is the surface equivalent diameter, and S_obj is the surface area of the object.

Plugging in the surface area of 478.5 km³ gives us a surface equivalent diameter of 12.3 km.

You’ll notice that the surface equivalent diameter for 951 Gaspra (triaxial ellipsoid approximation) is 12.3 km which is larger than the volume equivalent diameter of 11.9 km. The surface equivalent diameter is apparently always larger than the volume equivalent diameter, though I leave it as an exercise for the mathematically-inclined reader to prove that this is so.

References
Herald, David (2018, October 23). [Online forum comment]. Message
posted to https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/IOTAoccultations/conversations/messages/65158

Thomas, P.C., Veverka, J., Simonelli, D., et al.: 1994, Icarus 107. The Shape of Gaspra, 23-26.

Bike Path to Nowhere

The Dodgeville area is badly in need of an off-road paved (asphalt) bike path. Every time I go to Madison, I am envious of all the bike trails they have. Why can’t small towns like Dodgeville and rural areas have some paved bike paths, too? Brigham County Park in rural Dane County has a beautiful new trail. Why not Iowa County?

I’d really like to see the Military Ridge Trail between Dodgeville and Ridgeway paved. Anyone interested in serving on an ad hoc committee with me to make that happen?

There is a 5.1-mile paved trail called the Shake Rag Trail which runs along US Highway 151 between Dodgeville and Mineral Point, but it is far from ideal. First of all, there is no safe way to bike to it from Dodgeville! You can ride through the hospital parking lot to Heritage Lane, head south until you get to Brennan Rd., turn right, but when you get to WI Highway 23, you have to ride along the east shoulder of that busy road with fast-moving vehicles for 0.4 miles to get to the bike path, as shown in the map below.

What a relief! You’ve now reached the paved bike path, and it is off-road!

But, after traveling only 0.5 mile, the bike path suddenly ends at Chris-Na-Mar Road.

You now ride 0.7 miles on Chris-Na-Mar Road, and then the off-road bike path starts up again.

Now, you get to ride 1.3 miles on an off-road paved bike path. Yay! But the bike path again abruptly ends at County Road YD. It is not clear what you should do next except maybe turn around?

Persistence pays off, and if you soldier on you’ll find that you can ride 2.1 miles on County Road YD until you reach the off-road bike path again. You’re almost to Mineral Point!

The bike path goes another 0.5 mile until it ends at Shakerag St. in Mineral Point. You’ve traveled a total of 5.1 miles on the Shake Rag Trail, but less than half of it was on a bona fide bike path.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad that the Shake Rag Trail got built. But for any of you who have ridden the crushed rock Military Ridge Trail between Dodgeville and Ridgeway (all off-road), you’ll understand how much nicer Military Ridge Trail would be than the Shake Rag Trail if only it were paved.

Eclipsing Binaries

With the advent of relatively inexpensive CCD cameras, amateur astronomers with modest-sized telescopes are in an excellent position to contribute valuable scientific data to the astronomical community. One type of object that can be very interesting and useful to observe is the eclipsing binary. And there are a lot of them.

Due to a sometimes fortuitous alignment of the orbital plane of a binary star along or near our line of sight, one or both stars pass directly in front of the other periodically, and this type of object is known as an eclipsing binary.

The brightest eclipsing binary in our sky is Algol (Beta (β) Persei). Known to vary in brightness since antiquity, astute ancient Arab astronomers gave Beta Persei the name “al Ghul” which, loosely translated, means “the Demon Star”. Today, we know that Algol’s brightness variations are caused by a hot blue B8V star (Algol A) going behind and in front of its cooler and less massive but larger K0IV companion (Algol B). Since the two stars orbit each other once every 2.867328 days (they are very close, separated by just a little over 5½ million miles), every 2 days, 20 hours, 48 minutes, and 57 seconds Algol B passes in front of much-brighter Algol A for a few hours, and the single point of light we see from Earth dims by 1.3 magnitudes. This is the primary eclipse. A secondary eclipse also occurs half a period before or after each primary eclipse. When Algol A passes in front of Algol B, the brightness of the point of light we see drops by only 0.05 magnitude. This shallow secondary minimum occurs because Algol B is not nearly as bright as Algol A.

Eclipsing binaries like Algol (which are close enough to each other to form an interacting pair) are interesting subjects for amateur astronomers to monitor. Periods can change, phases can shift, and unexpected events can occur, such as when Dr. Jim Pierce (now Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at Minnesota State University in Mankato) and I were the first to observe ultraviolet flare events from the eclipsing binary V471 Tau at Iowa State University’s Erwin W. Fick Observatory in 1978.

So, how do you know when eclipses will occur, how deep they will be, and how long to monitor the star before, during, and after the event? A great starting point is the Eclipsing Binary Ephemeris Generator by Shawn Dvorak which shows you a number of stars that will be in eclipse and observable from your location on any given night. The Timing Database at Krakow (TIDAK), maintained by Jerzy M. Kreiner at the Mt. Suhora Astronomical Observatory in Poland, is another great source of eclipsing binary information.

A schedule, if you will, of eclipsing binary primary eclipses (like other astronomical events) is called an ephemeris. Eclipsing binary ephemerides look like this one for Algol:

HJD = 2452500.21 + E × 2.867315

Here, HJD is the heliocentric Julian date of minimum light. Julian date is a continuous count of days and fractions thereof elapsed since an arbitrary starting date of noon Universal Time (UT) on January 1, 4713 B.C. The heliocentric Julian date removes the orbital motion of the Earth from the ephemeris calculations, centering the times of events on the Sun rather than the Earth. An event could be observed to occur as much as 8.3 minutes earlier or later than calculated depending on where the Earth is in her orbit relative to the star. The first number in the equation above, in this case 2452500.21, refers to the heliocentric Julian date of some arbitrary starting minimum. The E stands for epoch, simply a consecutive integer count of successive minima, and the second number, in this case 2.867315, refers to the orbital period of the eclipsing binary in days. The Kreiner website takes the chore out of choosing the appropriate value of E for the time you want to observe by calculating the HJDs (and corresponding Earth-based UT dates and times) of the eclipsing binary you choose over the next several days.

You should monitor a star before, during, and after the eclipse, so having a rough of idea of what object you should observe and when does not require you convert heliocentric Julian date to the Julian date at the telescope. However, any event times from data you record at the telescope must be converted to HJD for it to be useful. There is an online tool to do this for you. Of course, you not only need to know the UT date and time of an event, but also the equatorial coordinates (right ascension and declination) of the object you were observing to calculate the heliocentric Julian date.

We’re not even going to get into barycentric Julian date (BJD), or the fact that the distance between the Sun (or the barycenter of the solar system) and the eclipsing binary of interest is growing (radial velocity > 0) or shrinking (radial velocity < 0), and that this means that the period we measure is not exactly the same as the true orbital period of the system. But it is very close.

Earth’s Changing Climate

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued an important special report yesterday on climate change. In the accompanying press release, they state the following:

- Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO₂from the air.
- This report will be a key scientific input into the Katowice Climate Change Conference in Poland in December, when governments review the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.
- We are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice.
- Warming of 1.5ºC or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems.

In the Summary for Policymakers, the IPCC states that “warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts.”

This last point is very important. Even if humanity disappeared from the face of the Earth tomorrow, it will take centuries to millennia for greenhouse gases in our atmosphere to return to pre-industrial levels.

Richard Wolfson, Professor of Physics at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, states in his excellent 2007 video course, “Earth’s Changing Climate” (The Great Courses, Course No. 1219),

The atmosphere, living things, soils, and surface ocean waters all represent short-term carbon reservoirs. Cycling among these reservoirs occurs mostly on relatively short time scales. In particular, a typical carbon dioxide molecule remains in the atmosphere only about five years. But the rapid cycling of carbon through the atmosphere-biosphere-surface ocean system means that any carbon added to that system remains there much longer—for hundreds to thousands of years. Because the added carbon cycles through the atmosphere, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide goes up and stays up for a long time.

We’ve known about this aspect of climate change for a long time. It is based on solid science. Any action we take now, either positive or negative, will affect Earth’s environment many generations into the future.

I know of no better introduction to climate science than Richard Wolfson’s video course. Even though it was produced 11 years ago, it is still completely relevant.

Earth’s Changing Climate, The Great Courses, Course No. 1219

Historical Astronomy Magazines Online and DVD

Excellent astronomy magazines have come and gone throughout the past several hundred years, and the time has come to start digitizing microfilm, microfiche, or printed copies of all these magazines and journals, and make them available at an affordable price to individuals and institutions on DVD and via the Internet. First on my list? Popular Astronomy, which was published from 1893 until 1951 at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, a worthy predecessor to Sky & Telescope.

Some of the volumes of Popular Astronomy are available online, thanks to the HathiTrust Digital Library:

Volume 1, 1893
Volume 2, 1894
Volume 3, 1895
Volume 4, 1896
Volume 5, 1897
Volume 6, 1898
Volume 7, 1899
Volume 8, 1900
Volume 9, 1901
Volume 10, 1902
Volume 11, 1903
Volume 12, 1904
Volume 13, 1905
Volume 14, 1906
Volume 15, 1907
Volume 16, 1908
Volume 17, 1909
Volume 18, 1910
Volume 19, 1911
Volume 20, 1912
Volume 21, 1913
Volume 22, 1914
Volume 23, 1915
Volume 24, 1916
Volume 25, 1917
Volume 26, 1918
Volume 27, 1919
Volume 28, 1920
Volume 29, 1921
Volume 30, 1922
Volume 31, 1923
Volume 32, 1924
Volume 33, 1925
Volume 34, 1926
Volume 35, 1927
Volume 36, 1928
Volume 37, 1929
Volume 38, 1930
Volume 39, 1931
Volume 40, 1932
Volume 41, 1933
Volume 42, 1934
Volume 43, 1935
Volume 44, 1936
Volume 45, 1937
Volume 46, 1938
Volume 47, 1939
Volume 48, 1940
Volume 49, 1941
Volume 50, 1942
Volume 51, 1943
Volume 52, 1944
Volume 53, 1945
Volume 54, 1946
Volume 55, 1947
Volume 56, 1948
Volume 57, 1949
Volume 58, 1950
Volume 59, 1951

Office Blues

I’ve been in the work force for 38 years, and I have always had a cubicle with full-height partitions or an office of my own. As a computer programmer, I’ve always needed to concentrate intensely for most of the work day. That requires a certain amount of freedom from visual and auditory distractions. I need to focus.

This week, the work environment I have had throughout my career is being taken away from me, forcibly, as it is for all of us where I work. We had no input. No explanation was given. The decision was made at the highest levels of our company’s management. We are moving to open office.

We still have cubicles—if you want to call them that—but no partition is higher than eye level when sitting in an office chair. No more upper shelves, no more book shelves. Only a work surface and a meager amount of drawer storage underneath. No more physical barriers between rows. Just one big, noisy, overilluminated room. Everything and everyone exposed for all to see from anywhere in the room.

Speaking of illumination, as part of the office “improvements” they have also replaced the warm white fluorescent lights we have used for decades—with a correlated color temperature (CCT) around 3000 to 4000 K—with significantly brighter and bluer LED lights having a CCT of 4000 to 5000K or higher. It provides a cold, harsh, clinical illumination, not at all like the natural daylight they are trying to emulate. LEDs are, of course, readily available in the warmer color temperatures of 2700K to 4000K.

I am not alone. Many of my coworkers—some much younger than me—do not like open office nor the bluer, brighter lights we now have to endure.

This just adds additional stress to an already stressful job. When is management going to learn that one size does not fit all?

Anyone need a top-flight SAS programmer with good communication, mentoring, and teaching skills?