Here’s a link to a copy of an article originally written in 1989. It’s written for the masses not just those with a professional or avocation interest in astronomy, so feel free to pass the link on to your friends. You know the kind of friends I’m talking about. These are the friends who openly question your sanity when they hear you rustling about in your backyard deep into the summer night. Yes, the same friends who stare at you in bewilderment when you calmly state you hope the rains get here early during the day so the skies are clear by midnight. These friends need to know you’re not alone. These friends need read Hooray for the Perseids!

To Boldly Go…

The Quest.

Man’s calling.

That’s when we undertake The Quest.

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Why have the objects in the night sky so enthralled mankind? Over the centuries, the stuff of astronomy has provided everything from a means to navigate to the perfect romantic setting. Yet from the beginning of history, astronomy brought to our species a more important quality. Astronomy has become a method of measuring not only time and distance, but also an approach for appraising our own position within the grand scheme.

Imagine combining the factual awe of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos with the viral excitement of Fox’s American Idol – that’s AstronomyTop100.com! In 2009, we created an interactive web-site reality game that ranked the Top 100 Greatest Images and Imaginations in Astronomy and Space Exploration. The purpose of this virtual outreach project was to accomplish nothing less than to invigorate a passion for the stars and beyond.

Nominations took place throughout the spring of 2009, after which we began the Preliminary Round of voting. This round was a series of weekly voting opportunities allowing everyone across the world to rank their favorites among these eight categories: Ancient Artifacts, Discoveries, Engineering, Events, People, Popular Culture, Sights and Theories.

By the summer, we started the Quarter-Final Round of voting. We took the top five First Round winners in each category and asked voters to rank these forty until we determined the top 20 by the end of summer.

In the early fall, we started the Semi-Final Round of voting. We took the top 20 from the Quarter-Final Round and asked voters to rank them to determine a top 10 by Halloween.

At the Science Teachers Association of New York State Conference pre-meeting on October 31, we launched a massive PR campaign into the secondary schools and the public in general to encourage everyone to vote in the Final Round. In just six weeks, we invited thousands of professional and amateur astronomers, engineers and scientists and secondary school teachers and their students to vote on their favorites among these final top 10 candidates. In the end, we saw participation span the globe, capturing interest and votes from five out of the seven continents (as well as Oceania).

Finally, come Friday, December 4^th, 2009, we tallied all the votes and determined the final ranking for the entire top 100. The announcement of the Top Ten Ranking was held secret until a live internet simulcast on that December day at the Rochester Museum and Science Center’s Strasenburgh Planetarium.

Since then, we’ve remodeled our site from a DreamWeaver-based survey machine into a WordPress-based book that, for the first time, reveals the final ranking for the Entire Top 100. Roughly each week (depending on the creative energy of your host), we’ll unveil the next Great Image and Imagination in Astronomy and Space Exploration. Stay tuned and next week we’ll start with #100. Can you guess it? We’ll give you a hint: He’s in the People category. We’ll give you another hint: As Dante wrote of him in the Inferno, he is “the father of all those who know.”

Do you think you know who he is? If so, put your guess down in the comment area and be sure to check back next week to see if you’re right.

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If you thought seeing the forest for the trees was a problem…

…imagine sitting in a forest of stars. With these brilliant gaseous orbs filling the sky as far as the eye can see, wouldn’t their infinite illumination create a perpetual daylight?

But wait! That’s exactly the predicament in which we find ourselves! Or so thought Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (1758 – 1840) in 1826. Actually, he probably thought of this before then and likely until he died, but suffice it to say, it was in the year 1826 that Olbers is on the record for postulating that, whatever direction you look in, there’s bound to be a star, no matter how far away it might be. And if there’s a star there, then there’s starlight there, too. And if every point in the heavens contains a star, we must see such radiance where ever and when ever we look. Ergo, darkness cannot exist.

But we do have darkness! What gives? Now, old Olbers was certainly not some sort of nineteenth century nut case. In fact, many see him as an accomplished astronomer, having discovered two asteroids and five comets. He also carries among his credits the invention of Olbers’ Method, where he introduced a much easier way to calculate the orbits of comets. So, how did Olbers explain his Paradox? He hypothesized the sky appeared dark due to the existence of interstellar clouds of dust that shielded our fragile Earth from the constant bombardment of the bright lumens.

Today we have a much better explanation. It turns out the German scientist did not know the universe is expanding. (He wasn’t alone. The rest of mankind did not become aware of this until a century later when Edwin Hubble correctly interpreted his visual observations – and came up with Hubble’s Law as a result – as evidence the universe is slowly exploding.) Well, once you take expansion into effect, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to conclude not only is far away starlight dimming, but it’s also shifting towards the red end of the spectrum (and, eventually, off the visible chart all together).

What holds in a nonexpanding universe falls asunder in an expansionary universe. It’s all Einstein’s fault. But, more on that later…

What’s more American than apple pie, baseball and…

Apollo 14 Astronaut Alan Shepard Golfs on the Moon. Release Date: February 6, 1971; Image Source: NASA (Public Domain)

…golf?! Sure Scotland may take credit for inventing the game, but leave it for a witty American to take the sport to its greatest heights – literally!

Nothing says this more than the jovial astronaut himself, live from the moon and facing the TV camera:

Houston, while you’re looking that up, you might recognize what I have in my hand as the handle for the contingency sample return; it just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that’s familiar to millions of Americans. I’ll drop it down. Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can’t do this with two hands, but I’m going to try a little sand-trap shot here. (Pause)

After several abortive attempts and two balls, Shepard nailed the ball, looked up and said, “Miles and miles and miles.”

Of course, it really didn’t go that far. And Alan Shepard wasn’t the only sportsman about Apollo 14. Lunar module pilot Edgar Mitchell threw a makeshift javelin. The balls and the javelin remain on the moon to this day, an eternal testament to the popularity of sports – and imports – to the American Culture.

Remember this Date: March 4, 1979

The Day We Discovered Life in the Universe

Voyager 1 Image of Io. Release Date: April 5, 1979; Image Source: NASA (Public Domain); Credit: NASA/JPL/CIT

We know things move in the universe, but for all the pictures we’ve taken, we’ve never really seen the kind of animated movement only live action can offer. That all changed on March 4, 1979 when Voyager 1 flew past Io, Jupiter’s closest Galilean moon and one of the four Jovian satellites discovered by Galileo that have captivated our attention over the past four centuries. Of course, we might have discovered this six years earlier if not for a glitch. In December 1973, Pioneer 11 offered the first close-up glimpse of Io, revealing a rocky surface, a thin atmosphere and radiation belts. Unfortunately, according to the NASA Publication Pioneer Odyssey, of the thousands of commands sent to Pioneer 10 during the 24 days of its Jupiter encounter, only one was lost due to those radiation belts – the one including the close-up pictures of Io.

According the NASA release associated with the above image, the picture,  a special color reconstruction, shows one of the erupting volcanoes on Io discovered by Voyager 1 during its encounter with Jupiter on March 4 at about 5:00 p.m. The spacecraft sat a mere 310,000 miles away as it captured the 60 mile high plume, representing the first evidence of an active extraterrestrial volcano. NASA explains the “method of color analysis allows scientists to combine data from four pictures, taken in ultraviolet, blue, green and orange light. In this picture one can see the strong change in color of the erupting plume. The region that is brighter in ultraviolet light (blue in this image) is much more extensive than the denser, bright yellow region near the center of the eruption. Scientists will use data of this type to study the amount of gas and dust in the eruption and the size of dust particles. Preliminary analysis suggests that the bright ultraviolet part of the cloud may be due to scattered light from very fine particles (the same effect which makes smoke appear bluish).”

Astronomers believe tidal heating induced as Io orbits Jupiter causes Io’s volcanic activity. Spewing sodium and sulfur into its thin air, the volcanic eruptions are even now shaping the Io’s surface. Voyagers 1 and 2 discovered seven erupting volcanoes on the moon’s dazzling red-orange surface. Unlike their Earthly counterparts, rather than expelling 2,000° F molten lava, these volcanoes eject molten sulfur at only a few hundred degrees.

Io – and its active volcanoes in particular – remain one of the biggest surprises of mankind’s initial decades of space exploration.

The Discovery That Forever Changed Our Universe…

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (undated) Credit: American Association of Variable Star Observers; Source: Wikipedia (Copyrighted: The copyright holder allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the original image author and image description are credited)

…came from a deaf American woman born on the 4th of July in 1868. Shortly after her graduation from what we now call Radcliffe, an illness caused Henrietta Swan Leavitt to lose her hearing. The Harvard College Observatory eventually hired her as a human “computer.” Her job: review the hordes of glass photographic plates and calculate the brightness of the stars in them. While reviewing a study of variable stars in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (small satellite galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way) she developed a fondness for the many Cepheid Variable stars within those two galaxies. A Cepheid Variable star dims and brightens over a regular period, so named because, in 1784, John Goodricke identified the first such example with the star δ Cephei in the constellation Cepheus. Leavitt became an accomplished variable star hunter, cataloguing 2,400 such stars during the course of her work – more than half the total known at the time.

In analyzing the plates, Leavitt began to notice the brighter Cepheids exhibited a longer period of variability. Four years later, after further analysis, she surmised the brightness of Cepheid Variables had a direct relationship with their period of variability. She deduced this relationship because all the stars in the Magellanic Clouds have the same distance from Earth. Since their distance is known to be constant, their relative brightness can be directly compared. She published her results in 1912. Unknown to all at the time, her discovery would forever change our understanding of the universe.

Cepheid Variables (and their kin RR Lyrae) have since become “standard candles” used to measure intergalactic distances. This discovery allows us to more precisely measure the distance of globular clusters and galaxies. Ironically, at the time of Henrietta Leavitt’s discovery of the period-luminosity relationship, astronomers did not know the galactic “nebula” they saw lay outside the boundaries of the Milky Way. It wasn’t until 1923 when Edwin Hubble conclusively proved for the first time one of these galactic “nebula” was indeed another galaxy – the Andromeda Galaxy. He did this only by discovering a Cepheid Variable within the 2.2 million light year distant galaxy. Unfortunately, Henrietta Leavitt never saw the cosmological implications of her stellar discovery. She died of cancer in 1921.

If we learn how electrons accelerate, can we know…

Image of Cassiopeia A - The Youngest Known (Visible) Supernova Remnant; Release Date: November 15, 2006; Image Source: NASA (Public Domain) Credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/UMass Amherst/M.D.Stage et al.

…the engine moving the ions and protons buzzing around the universe? The source of the acceleration of these Cosmic Rays has long baffled astrophysicists. An analysis of data from the Chandra Observatory may have provided an important clue to the answer the mysterious behind Cosmic Rays.

For fifteen months during the years 2004 and 2005, scientists pointed the Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) to a remains of what was then believed to be the youngest supernova remnant in the Milky Way – an expanding debris field of a the explosive finale of red superstar around 1667AD. [In 2008, astronomers discovered a 140 year-old supernova whose close proximity to the dust shrouded galactic center made it impossible for Earth-based observers to see back then (source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080514131118.htm).]

According the official release (http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/casa/), data produced by ACIS allowed astronomers to detail the acceleration of electrons within the fast expanding nebula wrought forth by the cataclysmic devastation during the star’s violent demise. They discovered these particles were being accelerated at close to their theoretical speed limits (that’s where the “relativistic” part comes in). But, more interesting has been the apparent source of this acceleration. Like a slow moving pinball ricocheting from the bumpers of your typical arcade machine (that’s where the “pinball” part comes in), each electron bounces off the magnetic fields in the shock wave. With each bounce, the electron gains acceleration. After enough bounces – a few as fifty years worth and as many as two hundred years worth – these miniature charged particles can zoom through the universe at relativistic speeds.

Since its discovery by Henri Becquerel in 1896, radiation has captivated, first, terrestrial scientists and then, both astronomers and the public when, thirty years later, Robert Millikan proved their origin to be extraterrestrial and originated the term “cosmic rays.” Later, we would find cosmic rays pose problems to humans aboard long space journeys. Millikan himself, though, came out on the losing end of an argument as to what exactly these little buggers were. He thought they came from the “birth cries” of newly created atoms – the same kind of spontaneous creation that evokes similarities with cosmology’s steady-state theory. Ironically, the ACIS data suggests cosmic rays come not from the birth of atoms, but from the death of stars.

If one picture is worth a thousand words…

Mission Control watches the first live TV signal beamed by an American spacecraft, October 14, 1968; Image Source: NASA (Public Domain)

…than how many words does a live video merit? Think about it. Are you more likely to remember the radio broadcast of a championship game or a live television broadcast of that same event? As with many things, the Apollo program presaged our love for video – no wonder why the producers of MTV chose an image of an Apollo moon man as its logo!

Ironically, it took four years for a camera to make it inboard a US manned spacecraft. With the need to remove any unnecessary weight from the crew’s cabin, NASA engineers – with the nodding approval of the unwary astronauts who piloted those rockets – found the camera a luxury too heavy to carry. Still, with the moon landing approaching, William A. Lee wrote in the spring of 1964, “It may be assumed that the first attempt to land on the moon will have generated a high degree of interest around the world. . . . A large portion of the civilized world will be at their TV sets wondering whether the attempt will succeed or fail.” (source: history.nasa.gov/SP-4205/ch11-4.html)

Unfortunately, the tragedy of January 1967 may have only attracted more viewers. With Apollo 7 representing American’s first manned flight since the loss of Grissom, Chaffee and White, interest in the mission grew more intense. Once space borne, though, the professionals in the cabin placed work before play, and flight plan changes led spacecraft commander Walter Shirra to cancel the first of several planned broadcasts. However, when the red light finally turned on, what a show it turned out to be! With cue card one-liners (“Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming In, Folks” and “Hello from the Lovely Apollo Room High Atop Everything”) provided courtesy of Michael Kapp, (producer of the Bill Dana “Jose Jimenez in Orbit” record album in the 1960s), the crew left America – and the world -with a fond smile in their hearts and NASA with a public relations coup.

From that point on, TV cameras no longer looked too heavy and NASA has equipped every manned space vehicle with them since. Television viewers across the globe saw the human story of space, and many astronauts – at least for a short time – became folk heroes. Today, NASA even has its own channel, NASA TV.

If you needed a great opening scene for a movie…

Scenographia systematis mvndani Ptolemaici (Scenography of the Ptolemaic cosmography) by J. van (Johannes) Loon, 1660; Chart Source: Wikipedia (Public Domain)

…(Slightly blurred soft focus view of a book-laden study, the papers of research strewn over a busy desk) Several wizened gray-haired professors mull over ancient texts, trying to explain the many enigmatic references to a wondrous device, perhaps created by Archimedes himself, employing technology centuries ahead of its time, its blueprints lost forever in the conflagration of the Library of Alexandria in 48 BC. What was it? Could it provide a vital clue to many unsolved antediluvian mysteries? Why have we never found one? (Fade out)

(Flashback to circa 85-60 BC) An ancient Roman merchant ship carrying the spoils of war from conquered Greece tosses in the heaving Aegean Sea. In its hold, among the large statues, coins and precious jewels, sits a simple crate, containing what the crew no doubt considers nothing more than a mere mechanical plaything valued more for its bronze content than anything else. The raging tempest and the heavy freight prove a deadly combination for the vessel’s 100 year-old timber and the transport, its cargo and all hands perish into the realm of Neptune. (Fade out into the rain)

(Dissolve into the rain of 1901 AD) Another storm brews on the horizon, but this time the ship’s captain shows patience, deciding to wait for more favorable weather. Instead, he and his crew spend their idle time using modern diving suits to plunge for sponges. In the process, they discover an antiquated wreck of unknown origin filled with precious treasure – and one box of encrusted machine parts. They toss the box aside and delve into the priceless trinkets. (Fade out amid jubilant sailors.)

(Return to modern times) Scientists now believe the Antikythera Mechanism may represent the world’s first analog computer. The machine contains dozens of triangular teethed gears and appears to perform extraordinarily accurate calculations to determine the position of the sun, moon, possibly the planets and even the stars. It not only predicted solar eclipses, but also divided the calendar into the four-year cycles of the Olympiad. Most curiously, the Antikythera Mechanism mimics the complexity of clockwork not designed in Western Europe until a millennium later. What did the ancient Greeks use this object for? Sorry, but you’ll have to wait for the sequel. Scientists have yet to identify its true use with any certainty.

The Age of Exploration might not have happened if…

The Story of the Barbary Corsairs by Stanley Lane-Poole and Lieut. J. D. Jerrold Kelley, G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, 1890; Illustration Source: (Public Domain)

…sailors did not look to the heavens for guidance. And we don’t mean spiritual guidance, we mean real navigational guidance. The Mariner’s Astrolabe, the smaller and relatively more modern brother of those large, unwieldy ancient astronomical calculators known as planispheric astrolabes, allowed sea-going vessels to stay the course once they lost sight of land. Using a recognizable star, usually Polaris (the North Star) at night and the Sun during the day, the navigator would point the Astrolabe’s arm (the “Alidade”) at the star to determine the ship’s position (well, at least its latitude). Needless to say, without a mariner’s astrolabe (and not too many rainy days), east-west travel might have proved more dangerous (and less popular among a certain set of Pilgrims) during the Age of Exploration. Who knows where the world would be today without this small, but ingeniously practical, tool!