Very Basic Astronomy

This is harder than I thought… trying to find a very basic astronomy video or web site.  Easier to just write it out.  And trying to not be condescending.

With the exception of eight things, every light in the sky you can see with just your eyes is a star.  Including the sun.
1. Planet Mercury (hard to see unless you know where and when to look)
2. Planet Venus
3. Our Moon
4. Planet Mars
5. Planet Jupiter
6. Planet Saturn
7. An occasional comet or meteor
8. Airplanes/Satellites/Space Station/Shuttles (man made stuff in the sky)

The sun is a star.  It is our star.  It is really really close to us, compared to any other star you can see which is the only reason it looks different.

Other stars all seem to have planets in orbit around them, but we, with our eyes cannot see any of them.

The order of things is: Earth is a planet in orbit around the Sun.  The Sun is a star in orbit around the center of the galaxy.  Our galaxy is one of billions in the universe.

Our sun is an average star, born from dust and gasses that coalesced about 4 billion years ago into our solar system, destined to burn out and explode in another 4 billion years.  All of the elements in our solar system heavier than Helium were created in the fires and deaths of previous stars in the previous 10 billion years. The carbon in your right hand was probably not created in the same star that created the carbon in your left hand.

The stars we see with our eyes in the sky are all in our galaxy, a fat disk of billions of stars, 100,000 light years across, with a massive black hole in the center.   We are about 2/3s of the way from the center to the edge so there are stars from our galaxy all around us.  Looking towards the center of our galaxy is what the Milky Way is, looking towards where most of our galaxy’s stars are from our point of view.  If a model of our galaxy was made 100 yards across, our entire solar system, including Pluto's orbit, would be smaller than a grain of sand at that scale.   The light from most of the stars at the center of our galaxy is blocked by clouds of dust and gasses, otherwise the Milky Way would be nearly as bright as the sun.  Infrared and x-ray telescopes can see through that dust and show us the structure at the center.

100,000 light years distance = 6 × 10¹⁷ miles = 600,000,000,000,000,000 miles.

There are billions of galaxies in the universe, each with billions of stars.  They are faint and impossible to see without a telescope with one exception, the Andromeda galaxy which can been seen from a dark location on a moonless night.  If you hold a dime at arm’s length against the darkest, emptiest, part of the sky, in that direction the Hubble space telescope saw thousands of galaxies.  Each of these are millions of light years from each other now.  The Universe is expanding, all of the galaxies are moving away from each other.  Someday, a future civilization in our galaxy will not be able to see the light from any other galaxies or of the background radiation from the Big Bang. They will not be able to derive the true history and structure of the universe.

We are far more insignificant than you have ever imagined.

I was told to look in the mirror as an answer to this.

I look in the mirror and don't see any hatred of minorities. I am a minority. I've tolerated religion all my life and still do, I don't oppress anyone, and seldom make claims without evidence. However, religion doesn't get a free pass anymore. If it makes claims that can't be substantiated, it gets questioned. No longer is faith a virtue. No longer can religion claim moral high ground. No longer can religion claim the only purpose and meaning to life. No longer can religion claim any explanation for why or how we came to be. Showing where religion is wrong is rational human growth, progress out of darkness and superstition. That isn't war, that's rational thought. That's growing out of fear and into understanding of our place in the universe. If the religious feel embattled and persecuted, they should consider the arguments they make based on ancient texts and personal anecdotes that usually are easily explained by statistics, imperfect human perception, and corruption.

I do hate. I hate mutilation of children's genitals in the name of religion. I hate stoning of women on religious grounds. I hate the child abuse that is telling a small child that they will burn in hell without proper belief in gods/Jesus/whatever. I hate the undemocratic control religion has over people with the subsequent inevitable abuse of power. Hate is not always a bad thing.

Another FB battle. Lara Logan

Sorry for the formatting... just capturing another FB argument.

Catherine Gile likes an article on The Daily Beast.
Saturday at 5:15pm ·

She is an outstanding woman.
Lara Logan’s War Cry
www.thedailybeast.comThe CBS News and ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent stunned a Chicago audience with her interventionist critique of America’s response to the attacks in Libya. James Warren reports.

Catherine Gile It's refreshing to see someone in the mainstream media brave enough to speak out loudly.

October 13 at 5:17pm · Like

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Bob Stone She knows firsthand of the violence as she was attacked personally while in Egypt covering the situation there. She barely survived.

October 13 at 8:56pm · Like · 1

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Tom Hail She is an outstanding woman and I've always respected her reporting. I would have to question her impartiality after what happened to her in Egypt. She knows first hand we can't "Shoot ’em, bomb ’em, fuck ’em. They will kill your children." without killing their children. That makes me think she is on a revenge thing for the attack on her. What a mess. There is no solving it almost to anyone's satisfaction.

October 13 at 9:51pm · Like

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Bob Stone Tom of course she has a "Revenge thing" going on. I want revenge on the ones that attacked her and also the ones that killed our people in Lybia. It's not REVENGE it is called JUSTICE!!! Someday there will be a time you will have to stand and fight and protect your family and yourself, WILL YOU???

October 14 at 8:07am · Like

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Tom Hail And she'll get justice from who? She was attacked in Egypt by the religion of Islam with its medieval regard for women. Not by Al-Qaeda or the Taliban who are just parts of that religion of ignorance. Libya is, with it's Islamic drivers, a power struggle. Is justice being sought by the US? I think so! When has it not? By Obama's administration more so than the last administration who got distracted by Iraq. She advocates a level of conflict that would be global in nature. Against who? WWII was against specific countries and foes. Fighting Islam and its people with force will accomplish nothing, much like the war on drugs. Only education and time will end this and I don't see it happening with stupid shit like this. Will justice be achieved from everyone's point of view? No. Never. Only education and prosperity will end it. Stand and fight? That is what I do every day.

October 14 at 9:33am · Like

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Bob Stone FIGHT! For what and for whom. Actions speak louder than words and time is running out.

October 14 at 9:44am · Like

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Tom Hail Time is running out? What is the timeline? There is a deadline? We have all the time it takes to either solve the conflicts or destroy ourselves.

October 14 at 9:46am · Like

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Bob Stone The timeline runs out for every member of our armed forces that is killed or wounded and the people such as Lara Logan and the little 14 year old Pakistani girl who only wnated an education. Talk to a GOLD star family about timelines. You say you stand and fight everyday, again for what and for whom??

October 14 at 10:03am · Like

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Tom Hail Ha! And how many thousands more service men and women will die following Logan's path? Not to mention civilians. By your reasoning, time has already run out. I fight for a prosperous future for my kids, my community, my nation, my species. Prosperity brings justice. Education brings prosperity. Fighting indiscriminately does not. In the short term hunting the Libyan terrorists is necessary but it doesn't bring justice for everyone. Some satisfaction for some, but that doesn't solve anything.

October 14 at 10:28am · Like

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Bob Stone By prosparity,do you mean money, wealth,being better than your neighbor, having more than anyone less fortunite? You will fight for yourself only, or will you stand and fight for all people who are not allowed to "Prosper" in the way you GOT YOURS. What if you were not fortunate to be born in America and have the opportunities you had all your life. Is justice being you and letting the less fortunate of the world FIGHT and DIE just wanting to get and education so they too can prosper same as you? Some people have to fight for their lives before they can fight for their prosperity.

October 14 at 10:59am · Like

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Tom Hail No, prosperity is living without fear with food and shelter and being able to grow and explore. The point is to understand that the need to FIGHT and DIE isn't the only way to prosperity. Education gets people there. Someday it may be clear to everyone. In the meantime people will continue to fight and die futilely. Logan's way.

October 14 at 11:34am · Like

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Bob Stone OK then. Some people have to fight for their lives before they can fight for an education to become prosperious. Freedom isn't free! It's paid for by the ones who have fought and died for it. That is fact not futile attemts.

October 14 at 12:06pm · Like

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Bob Stone ATTEMPTS.

October 14 at 12:06pm · Like

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Catherine Gile If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything. Freedom is not free I don't care what university taught you otherwise. There are people out there who hate you because you do not think like they do and btw they far out number you.

October 14 at 1:00pm · Like

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Tom Hail Huh? It's pretty easy to say the old trope "freedom isn't free" and not really understand it. The cost of freedom isn't just fighting and dying in defense of it. You also have to fix the causes for the conflicts and military actions can not do that. Did I say not to defend yourself? To not bring to trial those responsible for terror or crime? Have I said anything like that? Have I not spent 30+ years of my life as a defense contractor engineer? I am not a pacifist. Sure they outnumber me, but you know what? This country is doing very little to solve the problems. Mainly because of attitudes of fear like yours. It prevents solutions. Believe it or not, progress is being made, prosperity is increasing around the world over the last 100 years. But I see that fear and irrational thinking can easily undo years of progress.

October 14 at 9:29pm · Like

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Catherine Gile My attitude is not fear based it is reality based. What progress are you talking about, the progress of progressive thinking people?

October 15 at 8:57am · Like

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Bob Stone HUH???? Defence Contractor Engineer( nice title). If fighting for freedom insn't an answer to keeping free and "prosrerious" what are you doing working for a DEFENCE CONTRACTOR? You must hate your job supporting and supplying the tools of war to this nation. I also put my entire professional life in service to keeping this country safe while working for the Dept. of Defence DARCOM, plus a tour in the U.S. Army in Vietnam seening the reality of what FIGHTING for freedom means . I most likely just don't get it.

October 15 at 9:09am · Like

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Tom Hail Fact. The rate of starvation in the world has decreased, military conflict decreased, health improved over the last 100 years. That is progress. If it improves for everyone, the fear and injustice declines. Your attitude does nothing to improve it and can cause it to set back. Here is an old trope " lead, follow, or get out of the way." If we aren't leading the world to improve, they will push us out of the way. We are leading today but barely. That can change easily with isolationist fearful thinking. Bob, you made my description of my job a title. I am the Milstar Flight Engineering Manager at in addition to being the spacecraft Certified Principle Engineer for on-orbit operations. Milstar is a communications satellite supporting all branches of the US DOD and State Dept. We strive for and achieve nearly 100% dependability of that constellation of satellites. I do not hate my job. Not the technical side anyway. I am proud of our support to the troops around the world whatever they are doing. I know what they have been doing. One of the most deadly things to a guy on the ground is to lose communications with his team, leadership, and command. The dependable flow of information also means that fewer innocent people get killed, that unnecessary destruction is not wrecked. I also know the flow of diplomatic information saves lives and helps find solutions. That is the part I can do. What they do with it in the Pentagon and White House can only be affected by my vote. Bush was an idiot, Cheney a crook, they killed thousands of our troops, squandered our resources in Iraq and fucked up Afghanistan. Why you would vote for Romney/Ryan blows my mind, they are the same idiots and not smart enough to be crooks! Fighting for freedom comes in many different forms, not just with military force. Occupy Wallstreet was a freedom fight. The blasphemy rights fights, civil rights, gay rights.... they are all freedom fights. You were part of a very violent fight but not the only fight.

October 15 at 9:00pm · Like

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Bob Stone Tom, thank you for your clarification of your job description. Keep um flying. The decisions that are made in the White House affects what happens in this country and now the world over. As far as the flow of dipllomatic information saving lives goes ,One Ambassidor and three others dead and no solution in site!! Another four years of Obama and company is all the reason needed to change leadership . Hope your satellite can find an answer.

September Young Eagles Rally

EAA119 Sept 2012 YE

Very nice day today to fly Young Eagle kids.  43 got into the air and Tina got a second flight as well.  44D is on the ground today because the annual inspection is due, so no flying for me today.  The only plane I could rent was taken.  That was ok, I was busy running the show.  :-)  When the Stearman showed up (yellow biplane) the drooling by all the pilots was embarrassing.  Everyone wants a ride in that, myself included!  I pointed at Tina who had been helping with registration and said "Tina, you're flying in that, ok?"  She jumped up and was ready to go in no time.  No grumbling by anyone!  Awesome day.

Sikh Temple Killer

I don't want to know the killer's name.  I don't want to see his face.  I'm not interested in his motive.  I don't care.

I  Don't  Care

I don't care because who he was and why he did it is irrelevant.  Unimportant.  Meaningless.  He removed his relevancy when he chose to commit this act.  He removed himself from our society and attacked it without provocation.  His actions are probably a symptom of our our society's failure to educate but that doesn't mean he needs to be glorified (even negatively) by the media.  The best way to fight against this form of terrorism is to ignore the killer.  Don't give him relevancy since he has none.

I only care about the innocent people who were murdered and their families and community.  They are relevant.  Who were they?  What did they do?  What will they do now?

FW: Funny

Stupidity isn’t illegal.  It isn’t a disability either.

Teach the controversy!

It cracks me up every time I hear "students should make their own decisions" about evolution vs ID vs creationism taught in schools. Especially when in the same breadth only abstinence sex education is acceptable in many places. No condoms or birth control. No choice on abortion. No questioning the bible...

Field Trip

120 3rd graders from Calabasas Elementary School came to WVI on 20 May on a field trip.

Note to the organizing teacher and the volunteers I had with me:
Yasmin,
I got the thank you letters from the classes and have had a good time going
through them.

Your kids were very well behaved but more importantly were interested and asked
a lot of questions.  It was my pleasure to let them in my plane and to talk to
them about flying and the airport.  I am sure the other volunteers feel the
same.  I hope to see them again around the airport, because airports are cool!

To all the volunteers ("airport people") who helped out:
Chris, the loudspeaker worked great, thanks!
Theresa, thanks for the great ideas, display in the terminal and putting up with
us
Rob, thanks for getting power up and being Rayvon's mechanic
John, thanks for the airplane to show and bringing a great friend who got 120
kids through map reading exercises
Dennis, thanks for showing your plane and let the kids climb in
Mary, thanks for leading the crowds out to the compass rose and back, did you
get your walk in?
Juan Carlos, thanks for the models and ground school help
Jim, thanks for the help on the ramp and ground schools
Abby, thanks for showing Theresa's airport info in the terminal
Rayvon, thanks for the great intro speech and showing your beautiful Bonanza.

I hope I didn't forget anyone.

It was a good day.
Tom

Reluctance to Let Go

Reluctance to Let Go

"There’s a movement afoot to frame science/religion discussions in such a way that those of who believe that the two are incompatible are labeled as extremists who can be safely excluded from grownup discussions about the issue."

"What troubles me is how much our cultural conversation is being impoverished by a reluctance to face up to reality. In many ways the situation is parallel to the discussion about global climate change. In the real world, our climate is being affected in dramatic ways by things that human beings are doing. We really need to be talking about serious approaches to this problem; there are many factors to be taken into consideration, and the right course of action is far from obvious. Instead, it’s impossible to broach the subject in a public forum without being forced to deal with people who simply refuse to accept the data, and cling desperately to the idea that the Earth’s atmosphere isn’t getting any warmer, or it’s just sunspots, or warmth is a good thing, or whatever. Of course, the real questions are being addressed by some people; but in the public domain the discussion is blatantly distorted by the necessity of dealing with the deniers. As a result, the interested but non-expert public receives a wildly inaccurate impression of what the real issues are."

"Over the last four hundred or so years, human beings have achieved something truly amazing: we understand the basic rules governing the operation of the world around us. Everything we see in our everyday lives is simply a combination of three particles — protons, neutrons, and electrons — interacting through three forces — gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force. That is it; there are no other forms of matter needed to describe what we see, and no other forces that affect how they interact in any noticeable way. And we know what those interactions are, and how they work. Of course there are plenty of things we don’t know — there are additional elementary particles, dark matter and dark energy, mysteries of quantum gravity, and so on. But none of those is relevant to our everyday lives (unless you happen to be a professional physicist). As far as our immediate world is concerned, we know what the rules are. A staggeringly impressive accomplishment, that somehow remains uncommunicated to the overwhelming majority of educated human beings."

"... understand the reluctance to let go of religion as the lens through which we view questions of meaning and morality. For thousands of years it was the best we could do; it provided social structures and a framework for thinking about our place in the world. But that framework turns out not to be right, and it’s time to move on.

Rather than opening our eyes and having the courage and clarity to accept the world as it is, and to tackle some of the real challenges it presents, as a society we insist on clinging to ideas that were once perfectly reasonable, but have long since outlived their usefulness. Nature obeys laws, we are part of nature, and our job is to understand our lives in the context of reality as it really is. Once that attitude goes from being “extremist” to being mainstream, we might start seeing some real progress."

We know so much now and can explain in many better ways how and why we are here. Religion fears being replaced by new facts and makes the noises necessary to keep itself relevant to the world. Keep the people ignorant of new truths and meanings, keep a wall between science and perceived non-science. If religion can't do that, then it will become irrelevant to the public.

Autism and the search for simple, direct answers

PZ Myers has a review of a paper on Autism that helped me better understand what the current thinking on what Autism is.

A large study of almost a thousand autistic individuals for genetic variations that make them different from control individuals has found that Autism Spectrum Disorder has many different genetic causes: there isn't one single gene responsible for ASD, but a constellation of hundreds, each with the potential to affect the development of the brain and cause the symptoms of autism. They don't know exactly how each of these genes contributes to the disorder, but they have found that many of them are involved in growth and cell communication and the formation of synapses in the brain.

The bottom line is that there are many different ways to cause the symptoms of autism, and it's a mistake to try to pin it all on single, simple causes. Any hope for amelioration lies in understanding the general functional processes that are disrupted by mutations in various pathways.

[amelioration: the act of relieving ills and changing for the better]

Mars Opportunity Still Going Strong!

The Mars rover Opportunity is now the longest operating lander on Mars, surpassing the Viking 1 lander that lasted more than 6 years on Mars. Opportunity was designed for 90 days on Mars. It is currently on a trek to the crater Endeavor, eight miles away. It can see it's goal on the horizon. The older rover Spirit is currently hibernating in the Martian winter and if it wakes up in the spring, it will take over the title of longest operating lander. It is, however, stuck in a sand dune and only able to take stationary science data. This is actually valuable now that it isn't moving, some more precise and longer term measurements can be taken.
People crap on NASA for it's failures. The Mars Rovers and many other NASA missions are amazing in what they have achieved and are still achieving. Phoenix, Galileo, Cassini, Magellan, Apollo, SOHO, Chandra, Spitzer and even Hubble... These should all be names every school kid and taxpayer knows and sees as examples of how hugely successful we can make a project work.

The Don't Diss Darwin Institute

The Don't Diss Darwin Institute: "Comfort's confused polemic, disguised as an informational Introduction but full of mistakes, half truths, untruths, muddled logic, old creationist arguments, misleadingly excerpted quotations, and ill-framed analogies — plus a good dose of fire and brimstone at the end — will do a severe disservice to anyone who takes it for an entryway to Darwin's great book."

Why I’m pro-vax

If you think vaccines are an evil conspiracy, are designed to make us sick, are filled with toxins, are a bad thing, then spend 6 minutes and 53 seconds educating yourself.

Because you’re wrong.

Day In The Sky 2009

Day in the Sky happened on the 18th. 451 people flew with 47 pilots and planes in 170 flights. It was quite a day! I got in five loads in between my hand wringing and coordinating with different groups. Several of Liz's students got rides and I saw mostly smiles and appreciation from parents/family. The air over Watsonville was filled with airplanes and NorCal air traffic control was amazed at what was happening. The pilots and ground crews did a great job keeping everyone safe. But next year... not so many planes/flights. Or somehow spread it out more evenly.

Open Mindedness

Excellent and simple explanation of what it means to be "Open Minded".

'Heat the Hornet' by Richard Dawkins - RichardDawkins.net

'Heat the Hornet' by Richard Dawkins - RichardDawkins.net:

"A scientist arrogantly asserts that thunder is not the triumphal sound of God’s balls banging together, nor is it Thor’s hammer. It is, instead, the reverberating echoes from the electrical discharges that we see as lightning. Poetic (or at least stirring) as those tribal myths may be, they are not actually true. "

"Coyne is right to identify the most widespread misunderstanding about Darwinism as the idea that, in evolution, “everything happens by chance”. This common claim is flat wrong – obviously wrong, transparently wrong, even to the meanest intelligence (a phrase that has me actively restraining myself). If evolution worked by chance, it obviously couldn’t work at all. Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false. This one misunderstanding, single-handed, accounts for much of the uncomprehending opposition to evolution that made it necessary for Jerry Coyne to write his book in the first place. The need was great; the execution is superb. Please read it."

I am reading this book (Why Evolution Is True, by Jerry Coyne) and am enjoying it a lot. Every High School Senior should read it before going to college. :-)

"You're afraid to look at both sides"

I've always wondered how to attack that statement. This helps me a lot! Don Quixote! Of course! They might be dragons! There might be a god! The obvious has to have some say. Teach the controversy? What controversy? There is none. Ignorance of a subject doesn't make a crazy alternate any more likely.

Ignorance Meets Intolerance

Books - Four Stakes in the Heart of Intelligent Design - NYTimes.com

"Next month is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, who by an odd quirk of history was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln, and to commemorate the occasion there are almost as many Darwin books jamming the conveyor belt as there are new books about Abe. These recent additions to the already vast Darwin literature include biographies, encyclopedias, defenses of evolution and reconsiderations of “The Origin of Species,” which came out 150 years ago, another milestone worth remarking.

But in this country at least, Darwin is not nearly as beloved as Lincoln, and in the struggle for bookstore supremacy he will most likely fall short. Polls repeatedly suggest that at least half of all Americans regard as fundamentally erroneous Darwin’s conclusion that human beings are descended from earlier species, and Kenneth R. Miller in his new book “Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul” points out that among industrialized nations we rank next to last, above only Turkey, in our acceptance of evolution and its principles."

And She's the California Constitution

YouTube - And She's the California Constitution:

I fully believe marriage is a religious idea that got forced into our laws.  If I had my way, all reference to "marriage" would be removed from our laws to be replaced with civil union.  But that ain't happening anytime soon.