Solar
This is a wonderfully produced little documentary on our Solar System.
Uranus is such a weird planet, yo. It’s my favorite.
That is all.
TWSB: I dare you to cross the line
WOAH, SCIENCE!
(Sorry, I’m hyper.)
Today I finished formatting a business textbook (barf) and actually started working on a fun textbook for once.
Astronomy! In the second chapter I read about something I’d never heard about before: forbidden lines.
What’s a forbidden line? According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it’s an emission line in the spectra of certain nebulae that is not observed for those same gases on earth. Why? Because apparently, on earth those gases cannot be rarefied sufficiently.
Forbidden lines result from electrons in the upper energy levels of gases transitioning to a lower energy level. This transitioning requires the atoms to be undisturbed (i.e., not bumping into other atoms) and takes a long time. The resulting photon emissions are very weak. In labs on earth, these transitions are even rarer (“highly improbable”) because the excited atoms have a much greater chance of hitting other atoms and disrupting the level transitions of the electrons.
In interstellar space, however, the atoms are able to be undisturbed long enough for the electrons to make these transitions. In fact, according to the Encyclopedia of Science, up to 90% of the visible brightness of some nebulae can be attributed to these forbidden spectral lines.
Cool, huh?
TWSB: Kitt Peak
So This Week’s Science Blog is going to be a little different. Why? Because my mom, Kurt, and I went up to the Kitt Peak National Observatory to stare at some badass stars and galaxies this evening.
So I shall tell you about that.
The KPNO is part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and has a total of (I think) 21 telescopes, including a badass sun telescope (seriously, HOW COOL?).
Anyway. Here is a picture of the sunset from up there. This is the only picture I took because, obviously, we were up there mainly during the nighttime.
First we saw Jupiter, and when I asked the guy there he said that it still wasn’t clear whether or not the southern equatorial band was reappearing yet. Through the telescope we could see the giant planet plus the Galilean Moons.
Then we got some star charts and went outside to try and find Orion, the Dippers, the Seven Sisters, and a bunch of the astrological constellations. I also found out that no matter how good the binoculars are, I still suck at using them.
We then hung out in one of the telescope rooms and stared at the Andromeda galaxy, some orbiting star pairs, a couple globular galaxies, and then the moon, which was ridiculously detailed in the telescope and pretty much blinded all of us.
If you’re ever in Arizona, get up to Kitt Peak and check out the firmament of awesomeness above us. And if you’re there during the day, for the love of GOD go check out the largest solar telescope on the planet.
Woo.
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