astronomy@iowa

For Moon Tracking purposes, the waxing gibbous Moon was a few degrees below Regulus (and Saturn, which is not on your star chart) tonight. Denebola and Spica (in Virgo) would be suitable stars from which to measure the Moon’s position.

John Wheeler, the physicist who coined the term “black hole” in 1967 died Sunday at the at of 96. Working with Neils Bohr, the Danish physicist who gave us the model of the atom and was one of the architects of quantum theory, Wheeler co-developed the liquid drop model of the atomic nucleus that lead to an understanding of nuclear fission. Later, as a professor and colleague of Einstein’s at Princeton, Dr. Wheeler established the university as a leading center in the study of general relativity—Einstein’s theory of gravitation.

It was at that time that Wheeler debated one of the more bizarre aspects of general relativity with J. Robert Oppenheimer. Namely, that a stellar core of sufficient mass would collapse into a point of infinite density and wrap the spacetime around it so severely that the resulting object would be cut off from the observable universe. At first resistant to the idea of their existence, he later accepted their mathematical inevitability and called the resulting object a black hole.

Throughout the later years of his life, Professor Wheeler wrestled with the Big Ideas that were famously debated by Einstein and Bohr—the fundamental nature of matter and how reality is revealed through the laws of quantum theory. “Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself,” Wheeler once said.

Further reading: Dennis Overbye’s 2002 profile for the The New York Times “Peering Through the Gates of Time”.

Here’s a product that may well fall into the category of solutions looking for a problem. Well-heeled motorists who shell out roughly $400,000 for a Rolls-Royce Phantom Coupé but still wish to have the illusion of traveling under a starlight sky in a Drophead Coupé may purchase the optional “starlight headlining.” The optional feature uses fiber-optic lights that can be adjusted to create various lighting levels and approximate a starry sky.

Granted, the Coupé does not have a moonroof option, but I’d think that for nearly half-a-million dollars, the artisans at Goodwood would have at least created a realistic sky with recognizable constellations instead of something that looks like it might have been inspired after spending too much time in a discothèque.

Photo credit: Rolls-Royce Motorcars.com

At last Saturday’s Public Observing Night hosted by the Cedar Amateur Astronomers, the 24-inch Boller & Chivens telescope donated by The University of Iowa was turned on Saturn following Doug Slauson’s presentation on the the Ringed Planet. After several very cold months when little work could be done on the telescope, spring finally arrived in East Central Iowa and the re-silvered mirror cell and re-wired electronics were mated with the optical tube assembly. Although seeing conditions were not ideal (So what else is new?), skies were actually clear overhead and allowed for some moderate-power views of Saturn. Visitors were able to glimpse the planet and several of its moons in all their glory.

The nearly 400x views were terrific and only a small taste of things to come as the telescope settles into a productive second life as a tool of public outreach and education.