Category: Environment & Weather

Andromeda Galaxy

Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, is the farthest object visible to the unaided-eye — it is two-and-a-half million light years away. It consists of an estimated one trillion stars (or about twice as many as the Milky Way). Andromeda is visible even in most urban areas, though just as a smudge of light.

Click image for larger version and to learn more.

To find the Andromeda Galaxy on a clear, dark night, first find the constellation Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia is on the opposite side of the North Star from the Big Dipper. Cassiopeia is W shaped (the W could be upside down or sideways). Follow the V on the right of the Cassiopeia W as if it were an arrow. Go 15 degrees in the direction the arrow points (you can determine 15 degrees most easily by extending your arm full length and then stretching your index finger and your pinky; the distance between the fingers will then be about 15 degrees; this works no matter your size). Andromeda Galaxy is just to the right of this point.

And, although it doesn’t mention Andromeda Galaxy, Tonight’s Sky January 2010 is a terrific short narrated animation of this month’s sky.

Added thought. There are possibly 500 billion galaxies. The Milky Way, one of them, has 500 billion stars. Loosely interpreted that means 2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars (500 billion times 500 billion). Surely the odds alone demonstrate that there must be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Why would our planet of all the possible planets be the single one? And even if a God created it all, why would there not be beings in God’s image, as some think we are, in a billion (a trillion) different places? I mean, why bother with all that otherwise?

The cold facts on wind chill

But no amount of tweaking will make wind chill more comprehensible. The language of “equivalent temperatures” creates a fundamental misconception about what wind chill really means. It doesn’t tell you how cold your skin will get; that’s determined by air temperature alone. Wind chill just tells you the rate at which your skin will reach the air temperature. If it were 35 degrees outside with a wind chill of 25, you might think you’re in danger of getting frostbite. But your skin can freeze only if the air temperature is below freezing. At a real temperature of 35 degrees, you’ll never get frostbite no matter how long you stand outside. And despite a popular misconception, a below-32 wind chill can’t freeze our pipes or car radiators by itself, either.

Daniel Engber – Slate Magazine has more on why wind chill is a silly and misleading number.

2009’s Most Disturbing Film Is A Documentary

You might have already heard about The Cove. Described by one critic as “Flipper meets the Bourne Identity,” it’s a compelling marriage of edge-of-your-seat infiltration/espionage and more traditional documentary storytelling, all in the service of exposing the bloody secret of one small town in Japan, where every year in a secluded cove tens of thousands of dolphins are rounded up in nets and harpooned to death, their meat repackaged as other kinds of seafood and sold in supermarkets across Japan. I saw the film a few weeks ago and it quite honestly gave me nightmares.

mental_floss Blog

Meanwhile —

Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”.

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

Times Online

The Solstice

The Winter Solstice, the moment when the Earth’s axial tilt is fully 23º26′ from the sun, is Monday, December 21st, at 10:47 AM MT in the northern hemisphere. It is, of course, the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Earth’s orbit is elliptical not circular. The earliest sunset (in the northern hemisphere) was around two weeks ago. The latest sunrise is in about two weeks.

But Monday is the shortest time between the two, the shortest daylight of the year in the northern hemisphere.

For more than 1600 years in western Europe the northern winter solstice was celebrated on December 25th, though astronomically it increasingly came later than that due to errors in the Julian calendar.

There'll be a hot time on the old planet soon

“There’s a parade of world leaders standing up here today and speaking on and on and on about proposals that’ll keep us below 2 degrees and pretending that the stuff on the table has any hope of doing that. And the U.N. itself knows that it’s going to go at least 50 percent hotter than they’re pretending.”

Bill McKibben as reported by Dot Earth Blog

350 ppm [parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere] is being considered in Copenhagen as the threshold for disaster. That is expected by most to lead to a 2ºF rise in temperatures and a disaster. A new U.N. document indicates we are well are on way to 550 ppm and a 5.4ºF rise.

The Known Universe

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

American Museum of Natural History

Link via kottke.org – home of fine hypertext products.

I say we go with public opinion because this is a democracy

What do scientists know anyway? That bunch of pointy-headed, ivory-towered know-it-alls.

An overwhelming number of scientists (84%) say the earth is warming because of human activity, while just 4% of scientists say there is no solid evidence the earth is warming. Yet only 56% of Americans say that scientists agree that global warming is real and man-made. More than a third (35%) say scientists have not reached a consensus on climate change. The public’s perception of where the scientific community stands on climate change is tied to their own opinions on the issue.

Pew Research Center

When the sacred becomes toxic

From High Country News, a brief look at the fights over San Francisco Peak and Mount Taylor. An excerpt:

When the Spaniards returned, they were less heavy-handed in their proselytizing, fearful of a repeat. Still, cultural tensions between the Southwestern tribes and the European newcomers have not gone away. And more and more, it seems, that tension is finding its way into natural resource battles.

Do you have fire insurance? Car insurance? Life insurance? Why?

You have them, if you do, because though the event may be unlikely, it’s catastrophic if it happens and you aren’t prepared.

We just know two things: one, the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there for many years, so it is “irreversible” in real-time (barring some feat of geo-engineering); and two, that CO2 buildup has the potential to unleash “catastrophic” warming.

When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and is “irreversible” and potentially “catastrophic,” I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all about.

Thomas L. Friedman

Climate emails line of the day

“Nothing in the [Climatic Research Unit] e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.”

From an editorial in Nature.

But Ephraim says 'wait till we know the threat' line of the day

And again, we’re putting 90 million tons of it into the air today and we’ll put a little more of that up there tomorrow. The physical relationship between CO2 molecules and the atmosphere and the trapping of heat is as well-established as gravity, for God’s sakes. It’s not some mystery. One hundred and fifty years ago this year, John Tyndall discovered CO2 traps heat, and that was the same year the first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania. The oil industry has outpaced the building of a public consensus of the implications of climate science.

But the basic facts are incontrovertible. What do they think happens when we put 90 million tons up there every day? Is there some magic wand they can wave on it and presto!—physics is overturned and carbon dioxide doesn’t trap heat anymore? And when we see all these things happening on the Earth itself, what in the hell do they think is causing it? The scientists have long held that the evidence in their considered word is “unequivocal,” which has been endorsed by every national academy of science in every major country in the entire world.

Al Gore talking to John Dickerson – Slate Magazine

And another one quits

Apple has joined Nike, Pacific Gas & Electric and our very own electric utility PNM Resources in resigning from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because the organization’s stance on climate issues is so unthinking opposed to any plans to reduce greenhouse gases.

Old Faith-Full Moon

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This photo was taken at the last full Moon, Septemeber 4th. Tonight’s full Moon is the Harvest Moon (the full Moon closest to the autumnal equinox). It will be fullest at 12:10 AM Sunday, MDT.

Click image for larger version and to learn more.

Mother Nature is a bitch

About a week ago, Typhoon Ketsana (known in the Phillippines as “Ondoy”) made landfall, and according to the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), Ketsana dropped 455 mm (17.9 in) of rain on Metro Manila in a span of 24 hours on Saturday – the most in 42 years. A month’s worth of rainfall in a single day washed away homes and flooded large areas, stranding thousands on rooftops in the city and elsewhere. Ketsana later crossed over to Vietnam and Cambodia, where it is still active. Over 360 people are known to have been killed, and damage estimates are reaching $100 million. Unfortunately, another tropical storm may be headed toward the southern Philippines on Wednesday but is still 1,000 km (600 mi) off the coast. Here is a selection of photographs from the affected areas over the past week. (36 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com