M & T C J

I’m still tinkering. I’ll keep varying the header and background photos because there are so many beautiful photos at the Hubble site. And I’ve added a few links that I intend to really use. For example, CalSky (which is not specific to California); check out “CalSky Intro”, Tim), and Hubblesite and STScI.

I guess I’m trying to make this blog our star-gazing portal and record keeping site. That was my original thought anyway. I’d like to use it to narrow our options, not drown us. Clean and uncluttered is my goal. I wonder if it will work out. Also, I guess I’m just trying to figure out how to use some of this modern internet media for some real purpose.

Most of all, it’s nice being in touch with you. Surprising you with a new header photo feels good too. Ah, the simple life . . .

Still cloudy,

~mfd

Today’s APotD reminded me of a book I want to recommend to you: Rare Earth: why complex life is uncommon in the Universe, by Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee (Copernicus, an imprint of Springer-Verlag, 2000). It’s full of interesting astronomical information (Brownlee is a professor of astronomy, Ward of geological sciences). Just last night I read this:

The scattering process that bestowed on Earth life-giving material from the outer solar system also has a dark side. We have noted earlier that the accretion process never really ended. The rate is many orders of magnitude less than it was 4.5 billion years ago, but, as in any solar system where planets form by accretion of solids, the process still goes on. The annual influx of outer solar system material falling to Earth is 40,000 tons per year. This is mostly in the form of small particles, but larger objects occasionally hit. The small particle flux is one 10-micron particle per square meter per day and one 100-micron particle per square meter per year.  (pp 48-49)

So the APotD was perfect today: some of the 40,000 tons per year! The “dark side” refers, of course, to the now much rarer larger bodies (1-, 10-, or 100-kilometers in diameter), whose impacts would have serious or dire consequences for plant and animal life.

Still cloudy and raining here.

~mfd

I uploaded a cropped version of a Hubble Space Telescope photo of the Carina Nebula as a header theme. Southern hemisphere beauty, but when else will we see it? I copied it from this web page today, March 1, 2011:

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/pr2007016a/

Credit for Hubble Image: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The photo is in the public domain, like all STScI photos (I think).

Next time, I’ll focus on star gazing. Cloudy today and tonight though.

MFD

Okay, not very imaginative, but here it is.