Ah, is there anything more wonderful than being locked in the warm embrace of someone you love? The emotion, the beauty of the moment, the attraction you feel… but wait! Is that pull you feel really from your Significant Other, or is it due to… the Moon?

Just how strong is the gravity from the Moon compared to someone right next to you?

Well, listen to Q & BA Episode 4: "The Gravity of the Situation" and find out!

Viewing options:

Watch it right here, right now!

Watch it on YouTube.

Watch it on Google video.

Download it directly from LibSyn.

Download the audio only version from LibSyn.

Subscribe via iTunes.

Show notes

The Question:

The question was sent in by Jesse C. of Doylestown, PA: "Does a person standing beside you have a greater gravitational pull on you than the Moon? I recently heard someone mention it. It sounds like a bunch of malarkey… but is it true?"

If you want to the calculations for yourself, then start with

where lower case m is your mass, upper case M is the mass of the object (the Moon, the other person, etc.), R is the distance between the two of you, and G is a constant. When you divide the force from the Moon by the force from the person, your mass and the constant divide out (your mass divided by your mass = 1). For the masses of the planets and such, go to The Nine Planets.

Images:

Mu Cephei is from Davide De Martin’s Sky Factory

Eta Carinae is from NASA/Hubble/AURA.

The Sun and Earth are from NASA (the Earth shot is from the fantabulous MESSENGER Earth flyby).

The pictures of the Flatiron/Rocky Mountains and of me fishing in Kansas are courtesy of, um, me.

And since I know people will ask: The T-shirt is available from the FSM website.

… and one more link. Guess why?

When you look up at the sky at night, the velvet vault seems peppered with thousands of stars. But how much of the Galaxy are we really seeing? Just how far away is the farthest star you can see? What about the farthest object?

Q & BA Episode 3: "The Farthest Star" is now online. Here are your viewing options:

• Watch it here as an embedded YouTube video. (Note: I originally had this as a Gooogle video, but the audio and video weren’t synched for some reason. In the file I uploaded they were fine. I tried to re-upload a different file, and the same thing happened, so I have replaced the Google embed with the YouTube one). [Later note: I uploaded a new video to Google and it's fine now. There is a link to it below].
• Go to Google video to watch it (note: updated with a new version where the audio and video match)
• Go to YouTube (Another note: It took YouTube over 12 hours to get the video processed, and that was only after I had to upload it twice! YouTube is teh suck.
• LibSyn (video)
• LibSyn (audio)

I am also trying something new. The ITPC protocol supposedly lets you automatically subscribe to a podcast via iTunes. Here is that link. It worked for me when I tried it, but your mileage kilometerage may vary. If you click on it, tell me in the comments what happened. Unless your machine melts. Then it’s Apple’s fault.

Show notes

The question asked was, "How much of the Milky Way Galaxy do we see with the naked eye?", asked by Richard Saunders. Full disclosure: Richard is a dear friend, but his question was so good I decided to use it despite any possible accusations of cronyism.

For more info about stars, get yerself over to Jim Kaler’s site. He’s one of the nicest guys in astronomy, and his site is pretty cool.

Image pedigrees:

Deneb and Mu Cephei from Davide De Martin’s Sky Factory

Small star next to Sun: NASA/Walt Feimer

Star sizes (for giants): Wikipedia

Keck Observatory: JPL/NASA

GRB 990123: NASA/STScI/Andy Fruchter

M81: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Jupiter orbit: I did that one myself, using The Sky planetarium software.

Orion/Rigel: I had that image lying around at work for an educational activity we developed, and I had permission from the photographer, but danged if I can find it now. Pretty though, isn’t it?

Minties: the best candy lolly in the whole wide world. Yummy. Those are courtesy of many Aussie friends who keep me supplied. Thanks!

Q & BA Episode 2 is now online! It’s called "Journey to the Center of the Sun", and I talk about the density at the center of the Sun, comparing it to water and iron. I also talk about how the Sun makes energy, and marvel at the numbers. At several points marshmallows are involved.

Caveat emptor — I made a mistake in the video. I don’t mean the five hydrogen atoms; I mean something else. Anyone catch it? It wasn’t important enough for me to edit out or anything, but to be honest I’m admitting it (sortof) here. Post a comment if you think you know what it is.

You can see this video on YouTube, on LibSyn (with much better resolution), or get it through iTunes (you need to follow the instructions I posted here).

Incidentally, after a few requests, I have made audio-only versions of the podcasts too. I’ll post them on LibSyn simultaneously with the vidcast, and they’ll have the same episode number as the vidcast, but with an "a" after them. Here is Episode 1a (galaxies), and Episode 2a (the current one about the Sun).

Don’t forget to keep those questions coming!

OK, so I’m new to all this high-falutin’ tech stuff, but I’m working on it.

As far as I can tell, "Q & BA" is now up on iTunes! Sortof. If I search on "astronomy" it’s in the list of podcasts (#39 at the moment, FWIW). Cool. Ditto for "bad astronomy" (though ironically it’s #3 out of 5; those darn Slackers beat me at my own game for interviewing me). But when I go to the "Science and Medicine" category — where I should be listed — nada. Zippo. I’m not sure why, but iTunes confuses and frightens me. I’m willing to listen to advice.

Anyway, if you dare, you can simply drop the RSS URL (http://badastronomy.libsyn.com/rss) into the Advanced –> Subscribe to Podcast option and get it that way.

I’m toying with switching from LibSyn to blip.tv after a commenter mentioned it… or maybe doing both. Comments? Suggestions? I’m new to this, and my ultimate desire is to be king of all media (once I bump off Howard Stern) or at least the Online Astronomy Guru.

One more thing: I know you can’t force viral stuff, but if you like what you see here, please Digg it! There’s a link at the bottom of every post to help you. Digg.com is very cool, and I check it all the time to see what’s hot in the cyberrealms of science. Join up, (it’s free, yadda yadda) and you can digg my posts and get me that one crucial step closer to being lord of all I survey.

Oh yeah– send more questions! There’s a lot of astronomy out there. Surely you must wanna know more about it!

Introducing Q and BA!

It took all weekend, several software and hardware crashes, two PC swaps, and a lot of advice on the movie maker forum, but I finally got out Episode 1 of "Q and BA"! I received more than 75 questions to my call, and so many were on galaxies that I thought it would make a nice splashy first entry. So here you go: Episode 1, "Galaxies".

Note: YouTube’s resolution is pretty junky for the nice images I’m using, so I’m also storing hi-res versions of these videocasts on LibSyn.com, a podcasting site. My videoblog page there is http://badastronomy.libsyn.com/ (this current episode it not there yet). I’m also working on getting these uploaded to iTunes! I submitted Episode 0 (the intro) but as of this writing iTunes does not have "Q and BA" listed in their science podcasts. I’m working on it!

The images I found for the video are public domain. They are from Hubble, CFHT, Spitzer, and one I couldn’t find a pedigree for so I assume it’s free (the wide angle Milky Way shot).

For more information, there are several good places to go. Those links above are a great place to start! Also, Tom Michalik, a Physics professor at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia has a really nice page with images describing our Galaxy and others. You can also try searching this blog for the words "galaxy" and "galaxies" to find lots of other entries I’ve made about them.

Announcing a new feature on the Bad Astronomy Blog!

I’m starting a new feature on this blog: video answers to reader questions! Do you have a burning question about astronomy you want answered by a real live™ professional astronomer? Or by me instead?

Now’s your chance. Send them to me (instructions are below), and I’ll pick one question per week and answer it via the webcam. I’ll then post the video here on the BA Blog.

I call it…

Q & BA.

Get it? Yeah, I know. But it’s the best I could do for now.

Here’s a video intro to what this is all about:

All the info you need is below. I will post the first video answer on Monday, February 5. So read the instructions below and start sending in those head-scratchers today!

How does this work?

All you have to do, my BABloggees, is to send me questions about astronomy — whatever you want to know. What’s the largest telescope in the world? How do we know how hot stars are? Why are so many astronomers so gosh-darn smart, funny, and wonderfully good-looking?

Maybe you have a bad astronomy question. Is the Moon hollow? I saw a movie where there was a lunar eclipse the day after the Moon was new; is that possible? Why won’t Hoagland simply admit that he’s totally 100% incontrovertibly wrong?

Any and all astronomy questions are fair game. A caveat, though: please search the main BA site and see if I’ve answered the question before. Original questions will get more weight. Also, remember that I will answer these via webcam, so try to ask something that I can answer in 2 minutes or so. Things like "Explain the history of the Universe" may very well get skipped, unless I can come up with something funny (like, "Google search ‘Great Green Arkleseizure’").

My limited capabilities include editing video and using still images, crappy models, hand-drawn pictures I can hold up to the webcam, and so on. Don’t expect some slick NASA production. It’s just me and my webcam. And your questions!

I’ll post a new answer every Monday morning (actually, probably more like Sunday night). Remember, the first one goes up on Monday February 5, from questions I receive this week.

How to submit a question:

There are two methods to submit a question. You can email me at thebadastronomer "at" gmail "dot" com (replace the "at" and the "dot" with their symbols), or, if you’re more of an exhibitionist, you can post the question to the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today Bulletin Board. I have created a thread in the Questions and Answers section, and it’s a sticky, meaning it will always be near the top of the page.

I will read your question on the webcam and answer it as best I can. If you don’t want your name to be used, I suggest you email me and state that specifically. Otherwise I’ll use your name together with your city and state (or whatever the local equivalent is). Like, "Neil Tyson from New York New York asks…". You get the picture.

Why am I doing this?

Lots of reasons, actually. One is that I really just like answering questions. I get zillions of emails, and I can’t answer them all, so why not increase that load?

Wait. Nuts. Oh well, too late now.

Also, I enjoy working in front of a camera. Answering email is fun, but being able to set up a repository of answered questions seems like even more fun.

Also, I plan on ruling the world, or at the least the online astronomy aspect of it, and this seems like a good way to start.

That’s it!

I’ve added an image on the right hand sidebar that says "Q & BA". Clicking on it will take you back to this post.

So send me those questions, and I’ll see you on the webcam! Well, I guess you’ll see me on the webcam and not the other way around. But you get the point. Just send me those questions!