Milky Way viewed from Joshua Tree National Park, via Department of Interior Twitter feed: There is some spectacular stargazing to be had @JoshuaTreeNP in #California. #MilkyWay
The bucket list of places to watch stars just keeps growing. Interior’s photo from Joshua Tree National Park should make you salivate, too.
Who is the photographer?
When you go, look up Chris Clarke and buy him a drink.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
I’m stealing this wholesale from the Tumblr site of the U.S. Department of Interior, America’s Great Outdoors.
The site features great Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sites often, and this week will highlight places on BLM lands in California that are great for stargazing. They call it a “social media takeover” of the feed by California BLM.
How good is the star watching? Look at these photographs. (I’ve added a few comments of my own.)
Piper Mountains Wilderness, California, by Bob Wick
Another great place to see the Milky Way.
King Range National Conservation Area, California, by Bob Wick
These photos are stunning. These .gifs also demonstrate how the atmosphere really is a fluid, flowing over mountains — “the curvaceous hills of California,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called them in a travelogue he delivered from the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Teachers, not just great geography illustrations, but also illustrations for environmental science and physics.
Amargosa Wild and Scenic River, California, by Bob Wick
San Gorgonio Wilderness, California, by Dan Maus
Slinkard Wilderness, California, by Bob Wick
Slinkard Wilderness? I admit I do not know of some of these places. I’m willing to learn, first hand . . .
Kingston Range Wilderness, BLM California, by Bob Wick, BLM
California Coastal National Monument, California, by Bob Wick
California Coastal National Monument reminds me that Republicans in Congress push a proposal to prevent future presidents from protecting such lands with National Monument designation under the Antiquities Act. Critics say these BLM lands are not special enough to merit protection.
Do the photos say otherwise?
North Maricopa Wilderness, California, by Bob Wick
Cadiz Dunes Wilderness, California, by Bob Wick
Point Arena-Stornetta in California Coastal National Monument, California, by Bob Wick
A printer-friendly, and search engine-friendly list of the sites above, if you’re putting them into your GPS or search feature to plan your vacation:
June #conservationlands15 Social Media Takeover: Top 15 Places to Stargaze on the #mypubliclandsroadtrip in BLM California
1. Amargosa Wild and Scenic River
2. Cadiz Dunes Wilderness
3. California Coastal National Monument
4. Carrizo Plain National Monument
5. Fort Ord National Monument
6. Kingston Range Wilderness
7. Little Black Sands Beach in King Range National Conservation Area
8. Lost Coast Trail at King Range National Conservation Area
9. North Maricopa Wilderness
10. Piedras Blancas Light Station Outstanding Natural Area
11. Piper Mountains Wilderness
12. Point Arena-Stornetta in California Coastal National Monument
13. San Gorgonio Wilderness
14. Slinkard Wilderness
15. Whipple Mountains WildernessThanks for following the June #conservationlands15 features on My Public Lands Tumblr, and our takeover of americasgreatoutdoors Instagram account (https://instagram.com/usinterior/). Stay tuned all week as the #mypubliclandsroadtrip visits these top 15 California spots for stargazing and much more.
Bob Wick and Dan Maus may have the best jobs in U.S. government service, judging by their photos. Nice of them to share.
What do your shots from those places look like? Show us in comments, maybe?
Leave a Comment » | Astronomy, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Milky Way | Tagged: America's Great Outdoors, Astronomy, Milky Way, Outdoor Recreation, photography, Public Lands, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
From the Facebook site of the U.S. Department of Interior: Visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado and see some of the steepest cliffs, oldest rock and craggiest spires in North America. Pictured here is a stunning shot of the #MilkyWay rising above the Black Canyon. Photo courtesy of Greg Owens — at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
Looking at that river, it’s difficult to understand that it’s just half the flow. Ranchers and farmers bored a tunnel to channel half the water of the river to the Uncompahgre Valley through the 5 mile-long Gunnison Tunnel, completed in 1909. Many of the overlooks into the incredibly steep canyon reveal only snippets of the ribbon of water that runs the whole length of the canyon.
I like how this photograph captures reflected light off the water, and makes the river appear easier to see than it usually is, especially at night.
Stunning geology, great hikes — you should go.
Especially you should go if you think about the geology that contradicts creationism. The canyon is loaded with volcanic inserts that deny flood geology and every other geological distortion offered by creationists, maybe better than the Grand Canyon in that regard.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Ready to go camping this summer?
Wilderness Society Tweeted: Starry sky from near Beaver Meadows in Rocky Mountain National Park. Photo by Bryce Bradford
Bryce Bradford captured the Milky Way from Beaver Meadows in Rocky Mountain National Park.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Where many journeys to the stars, start: “Hayden planetarium at night” by Alfred Gracombe – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons. The Hayden Planetarium is part of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
I’ve been known to answer a snarky question from a student, “where are we, really, in the universe, and how do we know the Sun doesn’t orbit the Earth?” with a showing of the Eames’s “Powers of Ten.”
But those films, great as they are, show some age.
Among other things, we know a lot more about the cosmos now, than we did then.
In 2009 the American Museum of Natural History showed this film, “The Known Universe,” for several months.
For visions of what happens when we leave Earth at faster-than-light speeds, it’s very good!
Information on “The Known Universe”:
Uploaded on Dec 15, 2009
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.
Data: Digital Universe, American Museum of Natural History
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/univ…Visualization Software: Uniview by SCISS
Director: Carter Emmart
Curator: Ben R. Oppenheimer
Producer: Michael Hoffman
Executive Producer: Ro Kinzler
Co-Executive Producer: Martin Brauen
Manager, Digital Universe Atlas: Brian AbbottMusic: Suke Cerulo
For more information visit http://www.amnh.org
Tip of the old scrub brush to Jack Mitcham at the Neil de Grasse Tyson group on Facebook.
2 Comments | Astronomy, Museums, Science | Tagged: American Museum of Natural History, AMNH, Astronomy, Science, Space exploration | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Four minutes of a glorious full Moon rising over Joshua Tree National Park — reduced to a 6-second Vine.
I do like a little well-done time lapse. In this one, the action of the clouds playing peek-a-boo with the Moon is a lot of fun. It’s just the sort of astronomical action I love to watch in the National Parks.
Desert sunset at Jumbo Rocks Campground, Joshua Tree NP. Photo by Brad Sutton/NPS
I wonder where Lian Law took that time-lapse of the Moon. Anyone know?
More:
Screen capture of the Moon rise Vine video by Lian Law, National Park Service.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Somewhere in Arizona?
Saguaro cactus and the Milky Way; photo by Bob Wick, U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Via Wilderness Society on Twitter, and flickr.
The Wilderness Society added a quote:
“I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.” – Henry David Thoreau
If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere between Phoenix and Tucson, but I don’t know. Mr. Wick managed to get a good exposure without distorting the shapes of the stars. Somewhere far away from city lights.
Anyone have more details? Gotta track down the quote, too.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Look what the Hubble Telescope found!
Photo from Hubble Telescope (via Washington Post) suggests “conservative Christians” can lay off their hatred of science, and especially astronomy, and let funding for NASA increase again.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Yeah, it’s processed. Nice image, good photography, deft hand at the computer.
Happy Statehood Day, Kansas.
Photo from the Wichita Eagle. Caption there: Star trails paint the night sky above the Home on the Range Cabin. Home on the Range cabin built was 1872 by Brewster Higley, author to the words of Home on the Range song. —The photo is a composite photo of more than 500 individual photos to capture the night sky. (May 2, 2014) Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/state/article8132118.html#storylink=cpy
Photo of a cabin built in 1872 by Brewster Higley, the lyricist to the so-old-and-loved-it’s-almost-traditional “Home On the Range.” A bill in the Kansas State Senate proposes to designate part of U.S. Highway 36 as the Home On the Range Memorial Highway.
(Who took the photo? The Wichita Eagle didn’t give a credit!)
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Tweet from the Wilderness Society. Devil’s Tower National Monument, in Wyoming, at night. Photo by Alex Weimer, from his flickr feed
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Posted by Ed Darrell
[Today is actually the day! You may fly your flag if you choose. This is the traditional Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub Hubble Day post.]
Lift a glass of champagne today in tribute to Edwin Hubble and his great discovery. Not sure what to call it — Hubble Day, Looking Up Day, Endless Possibilities Day — whatever, this is the anniversary of Edwin Hubble’s announcement that he had discovered the universe is much, much larger than anyone had imagined, containing far more stars than anyone had dared guess.
It’s a big universe out there.
Ultraviolet image of the Andromeda Galaxy. Wired caption: “Photo: Edwin Hubble’s 1920s observations of Andromeda (whose ultraviolet spectrum is rendered here) expanded our notions of the size and nature of a universe that is itself expanding. Galaxy Evolution Explorer image courtesy NASA.”
So, today is a good day to celebrate the universe in all it’s glory – December 30.
On December 30, 1924, Edwin Hubble announced he’d discovered other galaxies in distant space. Though it may not have been so clear at the time, it meant that, as a galaxy, we are not alone in the universe (whether we are alone as intelligent life is a separate question). It also meant that the universe is much, much bigger than most people had dared to imagine.
90 years ago today.
I keep trying to get people to celebrate.
In 2008 for Hubble Day, Wired picked up on the story (with a gracious link to 2007’s post here at the Bathtub). Wired includes several links to even more information, a good source of information. See Wired’s 2009 post here.
Hubble was the guy who showed us the universe is not only bigger than we imagined, it’s probably much bigger and much more fantastic than we can imagine. (See J. B. S. Haldane’s “queerer” quote.) Hubble is the guy who opened our imaginations to the vastness of all creation.
Hubble’s work would have been impossible without the earlier work of one of the great, unsung women of science, Henrietta Leavitt, as Wired explained:
He trained the powerful new 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson in Southern California on spiral nebulae. These fuzzy patches of light in the sky were generally thought to be clouds of gas or dust within our galaxy, which was presumed to include everything in the universe except the Magellanic Clouds. Some nebulae seemed to contain a few stars, but nothing like the multitudes of the Milky Way.
Hubble not only found a number of stars in Andromeda, he found Cepheid variable stars. These stars vary from bright to dim, and a very smart Harvard computationist named Henrietta Leavitt had discovered in 1912 that you could measure distance with them. Given the brightness of the star and its period — the length of time it takes to go from bright to dim and back again — you could determine how far away it is.
Hubble used Leavitt’s formula to calculate that Andromeda was approximately 860,000 light years away. That’s more than eight times the distance to the farthest stars in the Milky Way. This conclusively proved that the nebulae are separate star systems and that our galaxy is not the universe.
How does one celebrate Hubble Day? Here are some suggestions:
A few of the images from the Hubble Telescope
December 30, 1924, Edwin Hubble announced the results of his observations of distant objects in space.
Edwin Hubble
In 1924, he announced the discovery of a Cepheid, or variable star, in the Andromeda Nebulae. Since the work of Henrietta Leavitt had made it possible to calculate the distance to Cepheids, he calculated that this Cepheid was much further away than anyone had thought and that therefore the nebulae was not a gaseous cloud inside our galaxy, like so many nebulae, but in fact, a galaxy of stars just like the Milky Way. Only much further away. Until now, people believed that the only thing existing outside the Milky Way were the Magellanic Clouds. The Universe was much bigger than had been previously presumed.
Later Hubble noted that the universe demonstrates a “red-shift phenomenon.” The universe is expanding. This led to the idea of an initial expansion event, and the theory eventually known as Big Bang.
Hubble’s life offered several surprises, and firsts:
Hubble was a tall, elegant, athletic, man who at age 30 had an undergraduate degree in astronomy and mathematics, a legal degree as a Rhodes scholar, followed by a PhD in astronomy. He was an attorney in Kentucky (joined its bar in 1913), and had served in WWI, rising to the rank of major. He was bored with law and decided to go back to his studies in astronomy.
In 1919 he began to work at Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, where he would work for the rest of his life. . . .
Hubble wanted to classify the galaxies according to their content, distance, shape, and brightness patterns, and in his observations he made another momentous discovery: By observing redshifts in the light wavelengths emitted by the galaxies, he saw that galaxies were moving away from each other at a rate constant to the distance between them (Hubble’s Law). The further away they were, the faster they receded. This led to the calculation of the point where the expansion began, and confirmation of the big bang theory. Hubble calculated it to be about 2 billion years ago, but more recent estimates have revised that to 20 billion years ago.An active anti-fascist, Hubble wanted to joined the armed forces again during World War II, but was convinced he could contribute more as a scientist on the homefront. When the 200-inch telescope was completed on Mt. Palomar, Hubble was given the honor of first use. He died in 1953.
“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.”
That news on December 30, 1924, didn’t make the first page of the New York Times. The Times carried a small note on February 25, 1925, that Hubble won a $1,000 prize from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.
(Does anyone have a suitable citation for that video? Where did it come from? Who produced it? Is there more somewhere?)
Resources:
Hubble Space Telescope, working homage to Edwin Hubble – NASA image
Even More Resources:
Andromeda as we can see it today. Wikimedia image: The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. The image also shows Messier Objects 32 and 110, as well as NGC 206 (a bright star cloud in the Andromeda Galaxy) and the star Nu Andromedae. This image was taken using a hydrogen-alpha filter.
3 Comments | Astronomy, Big Bang, History, History of Science, Physics, Science, Space exploration | Tagged: Astronomy, Big Bang, December 30, Edwin Hubble, Galaxies, History, Hubble Day, Hubble Telescope, Physics, Red Shift, Rhodes Scholar, Science, Space exploration | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Wilderness Society on Twitter: Star trails over the famous Desert View Watchtower at the Grand Canyon. Have a good night… (Photo by Spencer Goad)
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Milky Way over Devil’s Tower, Wyoming; Photo courtesy of Dave Lane Astrophotography. — at Devils Tower National Monument-Official NPS site.
From the Department of Interior’s Facebook page:
America’s first national monument, Devils Tower is a geologic feature that protrudes out of the rolling prairie in Wyoming. David Lane captured this amazing 16-image panorama of the monument illuminated by the Milky Way and green airglow. Of visiting Devils Tower, David says: “From ancient stories of the Pleiades taking refuge at the top to the generations of Native Americas that held it sacred, it had a deep sense of age and a stoic nature that impressed me. It’s so unexpected, so large in person, so steeped in traditions.”
Photo courtesy of Dave Lane Astrophotography. — at Devils Tower National Monument-Official NPS site.
Dave Lane Astrophotography seems to have this photographing of the night sky down really well.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Philmont caption: A view of the Philmont sky this weekend! The Tooth of Time is visible in the lower right corner. We have a Canon 5D Mark II with a 16-35 2.8 lens. The exposure was 30 seconds. Bryan Hayek took the photo.
Milky Way viewed from the National Scout Ranch at Philmont, New Mexico.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Capturing stars and fireflies in the same shot takes some great skill and planning in a photographer.
From his Twitter feed:
Alex Wild @Myrmecos: And also trying more challenging lighting environments, like night shots of fireflies.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 