I have a nursery tale to tell you. It’s about newborn babies, gassy babies, babies getting so heated they destroy their nursery. But it has a happy ending.

Our story begins like so many children’s tales: with a picture.

OK, first, wow. That’s a very pretty picture (click it for access to a vastly bigger copy). But what is it?

It won’t really help you much if I tell you that it’s named NGC 1333 (the 1333^rd object in the New General Catalog of celestial objects, which was published in 1877, making it not terribly new anymore), but it might help more if I say that it’s a region of gas, dust, and hot young stars (that phrase should up my Google ranking!) in the constellation of Perseus. It’s about 1000 light years away, give or take. I’ve seen many images of it, but none quite like this. Why not? Because this one is in infrared.

Regular readers (both those who eat their bran and otherwise) know that looking in the infrared can tell you a lot more about an object than visible light alone can. In this case, infrared light is useful because it can travel through dust that would otherwise block the visible light. NGC 1333 is a beautiful object in visible light, but there doesn’t appear to be many stars in it. If you look in the IR, though, the stars jump right out as they do in the Spitzer picture.

The very cool science thing about this is you can, using IR, sweep aside the curtain of dust veiling our view and peer deep into the heart of the dust complex (to mix a metaphor). It’s been long known that stars are born in such clouds, but here we see clear evidence for it. Well, I do, at least, but I’m kinda used to looking at things like this. So let’s take a closer look.

A star is formed when a cloud of gas and dust collapses. Maybe it smacked into another cloud, or maybe a nearby star blew up and the blast wave slammed into the cloud. No one is quite sure what triggers cloud collapse, or at least what proportion of collapse is caused by what event. But either way, when the cloud starts to compress, it gets denser and heats up. The core gets pretty warm, and emits IR light. This leaks out of the cloud, so we expect star-forming clouds to pour out IR light. IR is invisible to “regular” telescopes; it takes an IR detector to see it, like the kind Spitzer has onboard. When Spitzer looks at NGC 1333, it sees lots of infrared light, supporting the idea this is a stellar nursery.

As the cloud collapses, random swirls and eddies get amplified because angular momentum is conserved (like when a figure skater draws her arms in during a spin and her rotation increases). The material starts to spin, and as it collapses the stuff on the outer edges flattens into a disk. In the center, the gas is getting very dense and hot. Eventually it forms the star itself. Any magnetic field in the gas gets amplified as the collapse continues, too. Due to some pretty complex physics (that, to be honest, is not entirely worked out) the gas near the center can be blown out as twin beams, like a light house. This is common in young stars, and again if you look at the Spitzer image you’ll see several stars with these beams, or jets, coming out. So this is further evidence we’re looking at stars in the very earliest stage of life.

If you’ve ever played with a top, you know that it can wobble as it spins. This is called precession. It’s due to a force acting on the top, like friction from the floor. The Moon has gravity which tugs on the Earth, and the Earth precesses as it spins, too. So too with baby stars: a nearby star, or a planet that formed in the disk can tug on the disk itself, causing the entire system to wobble. So you might expect to see some of the jets from the young stars to bend, just like how the water sprayed from a sprinkler looks like it’s bending when, in reality, the water drops are moving straight. The source is spinning, making it just look like the stream is bending.

Well, lookie here:

That’s an incredible picture– those jets are billions of miles long, tens of billions. But again, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. See how the gas at the tips of the curved arms is green? In this image, green light (which is really IR and just colored green in the picture) represents warm gas that is hitting cooler gas; in this case, warm gas in the jet hitting the colder gas surrounding the star. Again, more evidence that this is a star in the throes of birth. It’s indirect evidence of a planet in there as well.

NGC 1333 is gorgeous, but it won’t always be. Eventually, as do we all, those stars will age, and reach maturity. Their solar winds will blow away the surrounding gas and dust, leaving behind a cluster of young stars, maybe like the Pleaides. Eventually that too will disburse, and the stars will roam the Galaxy alone. Some may travel in pairs, though. Hmmm… this anthropomorphism goes a long way.

I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it many times again: one of the reasons I love astronomy is not just because of the beautiful pictures, but because those pictures have such a deep and enthralling story to tell. And it’s a story, a novel, whose plot hangs together, with no plotholes, no deux ex machina, no bad dialog, and no Hollywood ending. We understand so much of the Universe, and there is so much left to learn! That’s why we’ll keep on building telescopes like Hubble, and Spitzer, and Chandra, because so much of the book is still left to be read.

Note added November 17, 2005: The Senate passed the budget as well.

There were some interesting news items out of NASA in the past day. I got some email about all this from the American Astronomical Society (AAS), which issues press releases pertaining to astronomy, space science, and of course NASA.

The first bit of news out of NASA is that the control and management of the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program has been given to the Ames Research Center (which is local to me) in Mountain View, California. Interesting. I heard some time ago (I do have some sources) that this might happen, but now it’s a done deal. Of course, whether we actually go back to the Moon or not is up to how NASA gets funded (Bush is the one who created this “vision”, and there is no guarantee the next President will also want to pursue this line of exploration). Speaking of which…

The second news item is that the NASA budget, which is controlled by Congress, was passed by the House (and is expected to be passed by the Senate). I was curious to see what would happen in the House, as arguably NASA’s biggest friend there is Tom Delay. Basically, the total amount for NASA (16.457 billion dollars) is about the same as for last year. Bear in mind that many other budgets will be decreased by about 2%, and this can be considered a minor victory for NASA. However, even after the budget passes, it may get cut by that 2%. Welcome to politics.

Some specifics:

1) The budget for Science, Aeronautics, and Exploration has increased 7.6% from last year. It looks like much of this is due to the increased spending needed to develop the new Constellation Systems program, the part of NASA that will create new rockets to replace the Shuttle. That part of the budget tripled to $1.1 billion.

2) This little bomb was tucked away in the email:

Congress has allocated $271 million for the Hubble Space Telescope in anticipation of a servicing mission to repair the telescope. This amount is $50 million more than the President’s requested level.

Holy cow! Now, this does not mean it’s a done deal. NASA has already said that there must be two successful Shuttle missions in a row before they will consider servicing Hubble. But this is still a good sign. Still, I’ll note that in a budget that has not increased, we’re talking a “zero sum game”: if some program gets increased, another decreases. I’ll need to look over the budget myself and see what’s what, but with the James Webb Space Telescope getting into budget overruns (big ones), this may be big trouble for other, less sexy missions. I’ll note I work on some of those less sexy missions, so this is of personal concern to me.

3) Congressional earmarks (dedicated money chosen by Congress which must be spent on specific projects) are loved and hated by the people affected. It’s great to see some projects funded that might get passed over by NASA if they were only allowed to be in a general fund, but maybe NASA is better at making that decision than a (biased) congresscritter who may be looking to fund something in their home district. This really is just pork-barrel politics, and it rubs me the wrong way, even if good things get funded this way. This year, Congress earmarked a record $321 million. Wow.

This specific earmark caught my eye:

“$1,000,000 for Downey, California related to housing of a Space Shuttle mock-up”

That’s a lot of cash to build a model of a rocket that has only a few years left in the program. Hmmmm.

4) The National Science Foundation, a huge science grant-sponsoring organization, got an increase of 3% to their budget! That’s wonderful news.

5) Mars exploration funding remains constant at $680 million.

An interesting analysis was posted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It’s good reading.

And in a final analysis of one NASA program… renowned physicist Stephen Hawking recently spoke in California. In the Q&A session at the end, he was asked what he thought about Bush’s plan to go to Mars. He replied simply, "Stupid".

I am still amazed when I cruise the web and find some great astronomy site about which I was previously unaware. The latest is Sky Factory, done by gifted amateur astronomer Davide De Martin. He has several beautiful images (taken from public domain images from the Palomar observatory and reprocessed for color) that are displayed at very high resolution, and then you can pan and zoom around them with some fun software he has on the site.

I spent quite a bit of time playing around near Orion’s Belt. I saw quite a bit of nebulosity I’ve never seen before! Amazing!

He also has phenomenal wallpapers for your desktop, like this one of supernova remnant Simeis147:

Man, I love supernovae remnants!

So go there and play. But set your alarm– otherwise you’ll be there a very long time, investigating the cosmos with incredible detail.

One of the best things about the web is how someone will come up with some app, and then it evolves into a million little cool things.

Google maps is the killerest of killer apps. It has a million uses (I have a friend who uses it to map out arcologies for Shadowrun, for example, and if you don’t know what that means you are terminally uncool– wait, no, it’s an RPG so you probably are cool if you don’t know what all that means). One use has been exploited by Frappr, where you can create your own map and let people sign up with their location. A nifty use for it is for a blog, where readers can stick in their own locations.

So I had to do this for the Bad Astro Blog.

BABloggers, sign up! Show me where you are (you can add a picture too). You can keep up with the map by clicking this icon on the sidebar of my blog:

Amazingly, before I had even posted this blog entry, I had four people sign up, one of whom is in Spain. Pretty nifty. And it would be soooo cool to find that someone at Outpost 31 reads this blog…

Incredible.

Kansas was the laughing stock of the world a few years back when they devalued evolution in their state science standards for young students. Their reputation was only marginally improved when the creationists who used misleading tactics to get on the school board were ousted.

But a new school board is in again. And they learned nothing since the first time: they voted to falsely smear real science once again.

I am upset by this, very upset. Intelligent Design is a virus, a parasite on reality, and it once again has a toehold, even after what is becoming a resounding defeat in Dover, Pennsylvania.

I don’t have time to write my thoughts now, so instead I’ll point you to my friend PZ Myers at Pharyngula, who shows just why the new school board is dishonest, misleading, and willing to destroy the futures of the very children it should be fostering.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Warning! This blog entry contains nudity. Sortof. And it’s mine, so really: beware.

A little while back, I did something I rarely do: shower in the afternoon. I’m a morning showerer because it helps wake me up and it relaxes my old stingy muscles.

But this time I broke with tradition, and showered after lunch. It was a warm, cloudless day, so I opened the little window in the shower to let in the sunlight and enjoy the warm afternoon air streaming in. When I looked down, I got a surprise!

No, not shrinkage. When I looked down, I saw… a rainbow. Now, I’m no stranger to apparitions in my shower. But this surprised me. A rainbow, in the shower! How delightful!

The rainbow in question. The rainbow is at the bottom middle of the image. The Sun is well off to the upper left in this image (maybe 130 degrees to the left as I took the shot), and the bright spot is the direct sunlight hitting the shower curtain.

But why did it surprise me? Geometry, that’s why. In general, to see a rainbow, the Sun has to be behind you. That’s because a rainbow is caused when the sunlight is bent twice inside a raindrop. Together, those two bends send the light almost back in the direction it came; actually about 140 degrees. In other words, if your back is to the Sun, the rainbow will be 180 – 140 = 40 degrees in radius, centered on the direction opposite the Sun (this explanation might make more sense).

So to see a rainbow, you have to have your back to the Sun. But in my shower, the geometry was different. I was facing the Sun, more or less. But after some thought (I do some of my best thinking when sprayed with hot water), I realized this all made sense. The window was above my head, and I was looking down. So in a sense the sunlight was coming from behind me. That 40 degree difference from 180 is what made it visible at all, floating above my belly. For the picture I took above, I wound up facing a different direction to get the best angle on the rainbow.

Satisfied, I continued my ablutions. Then something else caught my eye. As I looked straight into the shower stream, I saw lots of droplets flashing colors, especially red:

The colored drops in question. I took this picture facing the stream, with the Sun above me and90 degrees to my left. The lens of the camera fogged up, which is causing the fuzziness and halos.

These colored droplets were well away from the critical 140 degree rainbow angle. I’m still not sure what caused them. I didn’t use a flash for the picture, and I did see the colors with my own eyes.

So I have one solved and one unsolved mystery. But I did learn one important thing: naked science is fun! Almost the most fun thing you can do in a shower.

Take a look at this:

Cool, huh? It’s NGC 891, a relatively closeby edge-on spiral galaxy. OK, now keep that picture in mind for a sec while I digress.

A couple of years ago I bought a pair of binoculars at a star party. They’re pretty nice, and I can see amazing stuff from my back yard (the Crab Nebula is a pretty easy target on a clear, moonless night). The problem is, they’re so big that holding them is hard. The lenses are a full 7 centimeters across, and the binocs weigh about 1.5 kilos (3 pounds), so I can hardly keep them pointed. I bought a tripod to hold them up, which has helped a lot.

So I like them, and they’re big enough to be impressive. At least, I used to think so. Then I heard about the LBT… the Large Binocular Telescope. Unlike your typical telescope which has one mirror, the LBT uses two mirrors to observe its targets. And these aren’t small mirrors– they are 8.4 meters across each– the combined area is equivalent to a single mirror nearly 12 meters across. That’s huge! But it’s even better than that…

The mirrors are spaced several meters apart. By carefully combining the images produced by each mirror, details can be seen in an astronomical target that are far smaller than either mirror could do on its own. This technique is called interferometry, and it’s been used in radio astronomy for decades. It’s much harder at optical wavelengths, but we’re clever, we apes. LBT will be able to use it routinely to see objects as small as 0.005 arcseconds across. By comparison, Hubble’s resolution is about 0.1 arcseconds. That means LBT will be able to resolve an object just ten meters across if it were sitting on the Moon! Hubble’s resolution limit at that distance is about 200 meters.

Currently, just one mirror is operating at LBT. But when you have a half million square centimeters of mirror, you can still do a lot. You can go pretty deep (seeing faint objects) and see lots of detail. OK, now go and look at that image of the galaxy NGC 891 again. That image is really deep, showing faint stars and galaxies. It was taken by the LBT, of course, in what’s called the “first light” image (the first time the ‘scope actually observes a target in the sky).

The LBT, with one mirror tied behind its back, took that image in just 5 minutes of observing! That’s pretty impressive. Imagine what this thing can do when it’s let loose on a target for an hour, or for five hours!

And when the second mirror comes online, it’ll be more impressive. It’ll be able to easily resolve Jupiter’s moons, for example. It can look for planets orbiting other stars, and peer deep into the Universe to see what was happening a long time ago, near the time when the first stars formed.

When I was younger, this stuff was considered a pipe dream. Now it’s a reality. Sometimes I wonder what could possibly be next.