Astronomy for a rainy Monday

We have had so much rain recently that there has been very little opportunity for stargazing (not that I am in any way complaining about the rain).  To compensate, here are some astronomy-related videos and links for inspiration. :)

Firstly, another beautiful time-lapse video from Knate Myers.  The photos used were all taken from astronauts aboard the ISS.  The soundtrack is from the movie Sunshine (which I only recently saw) and lends a gravity (no pun intended) to the video.



Speaking of the ISS, our favourite astronaut, Col. Chris Hadfield has been quite active since returning to Earth.  He has released a book An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, is championing Movember (see video below), and was also interviewed about the new movie Gravity and his fear of floating off into space.

And, if you haven't seen it already, this fantastic cartoon, written by Hadfield and illustrated by Gavin Aung Than is really uplifting and I think can apply to any goal in your life.


And lastly, a great video (below) and article about the Very Large Array that was used in the movie Contact.

A Year of Sky on Earth

A History of the Sky from Ken Murphy on Vimeo.

Check out this amazing video of the sky from the same place, taken every day for a year.  It's so interesting to see the different sunset and sunrise times throughout the seasons.  Read more about it here at NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Seeing Saturn

On Saturday night, I saw Saturn and it's rings through a telescope for the first time.  It really was an amazing experience seeing the elongated rings around the planet, tiny as it was.

It has reminded me how much I want to check out the Brisbane Astronomical Society and go along to one of their public viewing nights (number 5 on my list).

19 July 2013 was 'The day the Earth smiled', whereNASA's Cassini (a spacecraft that is currently orbiting Saturn), turned it's camera on Earth and took a photo of Saturn and it's rings with Earth in the background.  There were lots of events around the globe to celebrate this fun, slightly arbitrary day, but the photos that resulted are really quite amazing.

Photo of Earth from Saturn.  Image from NASA's Photo Journal.

Astrophotography

These amazing photographs are by French photographer Thierry Cohen.  He has combined photos of cities, which have altered to remove light, and photos of the night sky from similar locations, to create these images.  They're stunning, what a creative use of astrophotography.

San Francisco 

Sao Paulo

Paris

via the New York Times

The Accelerating Universe

Last week, I was fortunate enough to go to a great lecture on the Accelerating Universe presented by 2011 Nobel Laureate for Physics, Professor Brian Schmidt.  He spoke about his research and how his team came to their conclusions about the universe accelerating.  It was definitely the highlight of my rather bleak week (mostly spent sick in bed).  Professor Schmidt was a great public speaker, I learnt about the difference between theorists and experimentalists within the field of astrophysics, and that some astrophysics still like to include Pluto in the list of planets in our Solar System (go Pluto!).  I had to leave early, but question time at the end was conducted through twitter #uqastro.

UQ's School of Mathematics & Physics calendar always has some great event on (like the Quest for Extremely Large Telescopes or the Transit of Venus events that I went to last year).

Professor Schmidt will also be offering a free online astronomy course at ANU through edX.org next year (read about it here and here).  MOOCs are really coming into their own at the moment which is so exciting for someone like me who loves to learn and study!   I really enjoyed the Intro to Astronomy course I did through coursera.org/Duke University over the Christmas Holidays (I still have a couple of units to finish).  Astronomy has got to be one of my favourite things to learn about, I am such a space nerd at heart!



Images of Pluto taken by the Hubble Space Telescope via NASA.

Nasa Moon Phases Animation

NASA has recently released a fantastic animation of the different phases of the moon, found here.  Each frame represents one hour and shows the different aspects of the moon for the coming year, 2013.  NASA attributes the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for the high resolution terrain details that we now have of the moon.  The short video is definitely worth a watch (even if the soundtrack seems a little incongruent).

More Astronomy Time-Lapse by Knate Myers

The Knate Myers 2013 Calendar I ordered came this week and the shots are so beautiful.  He posted another time-lapse video this week, I would love to be able to take shots like this!



Snow Timelapse - Test Shot from Knate Myers on Vimeo.

Star Talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Friday viewing with the great Neil deGrasse Tyson.  StarTalk is such a great show, I'm so glad they turned it into a YouTube series!

Our observable universe

While I have always been fascinated with astronomy, I find that reading astronomy facts is quite different from experiencing them.  For example, the Sun is approximately 150 million km from Earth; I know what the Sun looks and feels like to me on a daily basis, but that number, 150 million km, doesn't mean much.  Similarly, the fact that we are on a planet orbiting a star, in a solar system which exists as a tiny part of a galaxy, is something I know intellectually.  As much as I experience what life is like for me on my piece of Earth, I don't really know what it feels like to be hurtling through space as part of my planet/solar system/galaxy/universe.

I came across these photos by Knate Myers and then this video.  It is one of the most amazing astronomy videos I have ever seen; the images of the Milky Way are breathtaking.  It is so incredible, I feel like spamming everyone I know saying: "YOU NEED TO SEE THIS!"  It allowed me to experience those facts that I have learnt about, to see what it looks like to spin on a planetary axis in space, and to feel like I'm a part of this galaxy.


Skylights - Timelapse Film from Knate Myers on Vimeo.

Introduction to Astronomy

I've started a Coursera course in Introductory Astronomy last week and so far I am thoroughly enjoying it.  Some of the images shown in the first lecture were absolutely amazing, but it soon descended into a lot of math (which I'm actually enjoying).

Andromeda Galaxy (M31) by R Gendler

Astronomy

I'm obsessing over Astronomy at the moment, in particular artistic representations, especially old ones. One of my favourite things to do is to see the Saturday night live show at the Brisbane Planetarium (incidentally Brisbane was named for Sir Thomas Brisbane who was a keen astronomer and built Australia's first observatory).
Here are some of my current favourite finds.

Lunar Calendar, Full Moon Poster, Tromp L'Oeil Floor Mat, and Moon Phase Pillows, all from Urban Outfitters.

Bad Astronomy Blog

19th Century Astronomy Illustrations from Web Odysseum:

Illustration of our solar system from the Chandra X-ray Observatory:

Navigating by the stars tattoo:

And finally, I checked out some books from the Library, 'Observing the Heavens' by Peter Hood from 1951 and 'Atlas of the Universe' by BR Ernst and TJE de Vries from 1961.