Free open viewing is held every Wednesday evening, weather permitting. Check dates below, times change according to season.Please note: The buildings are closed at 10:30 PM.

Feb. 28

Mar. 7, 14, 21, 28Apr. 4, 11, 18, 25May 2, 9, 16, 23, 30

Click here for Spring Schedule and detailed information

The state-of-the-art Observatory features a research-grade, Classical-Cassegrain telescope housed within a six-meter retractable dome with a 20-inch mirror and is capable of viewing objects millions of light years away. The Observatory is operated by astronomers from Bergen Community College.

The telescope has several special filters designed to help minimize the effects of the areas light pollution. The precision instrument also includes specialized cameras to photograph various astronomical objects, a photometer to measure the brightness of stars and study how they vary over time, and a spectroscope to analyze wavelengths of light to determine the chemical composition of light-emitting objects.

All ages are welcome and children must be accompanied by an adult. Twenty-five people may occupy the Observatory at any one time. Entry is on a first-come, first-serve basis. Check-in at the Science Center adjacent to the Observatory.

Note: To access the observatory telescope, a visitor must be able to climb 25 steps in spiral formation. The stairs have railings on either side, approximately 2 feet apart.

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William D. McDowell Observatory | NJSEA

Scientists, educators, writers, artists & more reveal how they explore the universe at a bar near you!

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Each FREE event features accessible, engaging science presentations on topics ranging from planets to black holes to galaxies to the beginning of the Universe. Presenters are from local research and educational institutions. In NYC these include AMNH, Columbia, CUNY, NYU, Princeton, Yale, Rutgers, and more. Most events have games and prizes to test and reward your new-found knowledge, and you could even win Neil Tysons Trash Treasures (TM)! There is always lots of time to ask questions and interact with the presenters and other scientists who inevitably tag along for the beer.

Astronomy on Tap was created in NYC by Meg Schwamb, now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Academia Sinica (Taiwan). NYC events are currently organized by Emily Rice, an astronomer and professor at the College of Staten Island, and Brian Levine, astrophysics educator at the American Museum of Natural History.

Astronomy on Tap satellite locations are active in Austin, Seattle, New Haven (CT), Lansing (MI), Tucson, Ann Arbor (MI), Washington, D.C., Chicago, Santa Barbara, Palo Alto, Urbana (IL), Los Angeles, (and are in development in several more other cities), and fly-by events have occurred in Washington, D.C., Chicago and Taipei. Events have also taken place in Columbus (OH), Santiago, Chile, and Rochester (NY).

Our lovely logo is by the multi-talented planetary astronomer Dr. Alex Parker.

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To find out about our events, follow us on Twitter @astronomyontap, Facebook, or sign up below for our email newsletter.

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Astronomy On Tap Science is even better with beer!

Contemporary Examples

The authors took care to eliminate the possibility of other sources of polarization, which is always a concern in astronomy.

Muslims made many discoveries in mathematics, chemistry, physics, medicine, astronomy and psychology.

Nearly everything we know about dark matter so far comes from astronomy.

One of the big challenges in astronomy involves determining when the first galaxies formed, and what they looked like.

Cosmic ray observations are more challenging than many other forms of astronomy.

British Dictionary definitions for astronomy Expand

the scientific study of the individual celestial bodies (excluding the earth) and of the universe as a whole. Its various branches include astrometry, astrodynamics, cosmology, and astrophysics

Word Origin

C13: from Old French astronomie, from Latin astronomia, from Greek; see astro-, -nomy

Word Origin and History for astronomy Expand

c.1200, from Old French astrenomie, from Latin astronomia, from Greek astronomia, literally "star arrangement," from astron "star" (see astro-) + nomos "arranging, regulating," related to nemein "to deal out" (see numismatics). Used earlier than astrology and originally including it.

astronomy in Science Expand

astronomy in Culture Expand

The science that deals with the universe beyond the Earth. It describes the nature, position, and motion of the stars, planets, and other objects in the skies, and their relation to the Earth.

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Astronomy | Define Astronomy at Dictionary.com

Astronomy is a natural science. It is the study of everything outside the atmosphere of Earth.

It studies celestial objects (such as stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets and nebulae) and processes (such as supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, and cosmic microwave background radiation). This includes the physics, chemistry of those objects and processes.

A related subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with studying the Universe as a whole,[1] and the way the universe changed over time.

The word astronomy comes from the Greek words astron which means star and nomos which means law.[2] A person who studies astronomy is called an astronomer.

Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences. Ancient people used the positions of the stars to navigate, and to find when was the best time to plant crops. Astronomy is very similar to astrophysics. Since the 20th century there have been two main types of astronomy, observational and theoretical astronomy. Observational astronomy uses telescopes and cameras to observe or look at stars, galaxies and other astronomical objects. Theoretical astronomy uses maths and computer models to predict what should happen. The two often work together, the theoretical predicts what should happen and the observational shows whether the prediction works.

Astronomy is not the same as astrology, the belief that the patterns the stars and the planets may affect human lives.

Early astronomers used only their eyes to look at the stars. They used maps of the constellations and stars for religious reasons and also to work out the time of year.[3] Early civilisations such as the Maya people and the Ancient Egyptians built simple observatories and drew maps of the stars positions. They also began to think about the place of Earth in the universe. For a long time people thought Earth was the center of the universe, and that the planets, the stars and the sun went around it. This is known as the geocentric model of the Universe.

Ancient Greeks tried to explain the motions of the sun and stars by taking measurements.[4] A mathematician named Eratosthenes was the first who measured the size of the Earth and proved that the Earth is a sphere. A theory by another mathematician named Aristarchus was, that the sun is in the center and the Earth is moving around it. This is known as the Heliocentric model. Only a small group of people thought it was right. The rest continued to believe in the geocentric model. Most of the names of constellations and stars come from Greeks of that time.[5]

Arabic astronomers made many advancements during the Middle Ages including improved star maps and ways to estimate the size of the Earth.[6]

During the renaissance a priest named Nicolaus Copernicus thought, from looking at the way the planets moved, that the Earth was not the center of everything. Based on previous works, he said that the Earth was a planet and all the planets moved around the sun. This heliocentrism was an old idea. A physicist called Galileo Galilei built his own telescopes, and used them to look more closely at the stars and planets for the first time. He agreed with Copernicus. Their ideas were also improved by Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton who invented the theory of gravity. At this time the Catholic Church decided that Galileo was wrong. He had to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.[7]

After Galileo, people made better telescopes and used them to see farther objects such as the planets Uranus and Neptune. They also saw how stars were similar to our Sun, but in a range of colours and sizes. They also saw thousands of other faraway objects such as galaxies and nebulae.

The 20th century saw important changes in astronomy.

In 1931, Karl Jansky discovered radio emission from outside the Earth when trying to isolate a source of noise in radio communications, marking the birth of radio astronomy and the first attempts at using another part of the electromagnetic spectrum to observe the sky. Those parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that the atmosphere did not block were now opened up to astronomy, allowing more discoveries to be made.

The opening of this new window on the Universe saw the discovery of entirely new things, for example pulsars, which sent regular pulses of radio waves out into space. The waves were first thought to be alien in origin because the pulses were so regular that it implied an artificial source.

The period after World War 2 saw more observatories where large and accurate telescopes are built and operated at good observing sites, normally by governments. For example, Bernard Lovell began radio astronomy at Jodrell Bank using leftover military radar equipment. By 1957, the site had the largest steerable radio telescope in the world. Similarly, the end of the 1960s saw the start of the building of dedicated observatories at Mauna Kea in Hawaii, a good site for visible and infra-red telescopes thanks to its high altitude and clear skies.

The next great revolution in astronomy was thanks to the birth of rocketry. This allowed telescopes to be placed in space on satellites.

Satellite-based telescopes opened up the Universe to human eyes. Turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere blurs images taken by ground-based telescopes, an effect known as seeing. It is this effect that makes stars "twinkle" in the sky. As a result, the pictures taken by satellite telescopes in visible light (for example, by the Hubble Space Telescope) are much clearer than Earth-based telescopes, even though Earth-based telescopes are very large.

Space telescopes gave access, for the first time in history, to the entire electromagnetic spectrum including rays that had been blocked by the atmosphere. The X-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet light and parts of the infra-red spectrum were all opened to astronomy as observing telescopes were launched. As with other parts of the spectrum, new discoveries were made.

From 1970s satellites were launched to be replaced with more accurate and better satellites, causing the sky to be mapped in nearly all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Discoveries broadly come in two types: bodies and phenomena. Bodies are things in the Universe, whether it is a planet like our Earth or a galaxy like our Milky Way. Phenomena are events and happenings in the Universe.

For convenience, this section has been divided by where these astronomical bodies may be found: those found around stars are solar bodies, those inside galaxies are galactic bodies and everything else larger are cosmic bodies.

Diffuse Objects:

Compact Stars:

Burst events are those where there is a sudden change in the heavens that disappears quickly. These are called bursts because they are normally associated with large explosions producing a "burst" of energy. They include:

Periodic events are those that happen regularly in a repetitive way. The name periodic comes from period, which is the length of time required for a wave to complete one cycle. Periodic phenomena include:

Noise phenomena tend to relate to things that happened a long time ago. The signal from these events bounce around the Universe until it seems to come from everywhere and varies little in intensity. In this way, it resembles "noise", the background signal that pervades every instrument used for astronomy. The most common example of noise is static seen on analogue televisions. The principal astronomical example is: Cosmic background radiation.

There are way astronomers can get better pictures of the heavens. Light from a distant source reaches a sensor and gets measured, normally by a human eye or a camera. For very dim sources, there may not be enough light particles coming from the source for it to be seen. One technique that astronomers have for making it visible is using integration, (which is like longer exposures in photography).

Astronomical sources do not move much: only the rotation and movement of the Earth causes them to move across the heavens. As light particles reach the camera over time, they hit the same place making it brighter and more visible than the background, until it can be seen.

Telescopes at most observatories (and satellite instruments) can normally track a source as it moves across the heavens, making the star appear still to the telescope and allowing longer exposures. Also, images can be taken on different nights so exposures span hours, days or even months. In the digital era, digitised pictures of the sky can be added together by computer, which overlays the images after correcting for movement.

With radio telescopes smaller telescopes can be combined together to create a big one, which works like one as big as the distance between the two smaller telescopes.

Adaptive optics means changing the shape of the mirror or lens while looking at something, to see it better.

Data analysis is the process of getting more information out of an astronomical observation than by simply looking at it. The observation is first stored as data. This data will then have various techniques used to analyse it.

Fourier analysis in mathematics can show if an observation (over a length of time) is changing periodically (changes like a wave). If so, it can extract the frequencies and the type of wave pattern, and find many things including new planets.

A good example of a fields comes from pulsars which pulse regularly in radio waves. These turned out to be similar to some (but not all) of a type of bright source in X-rays called a Low-mass X-ray binary. It turned out that all pulsars and some LMXBs are neutron stars and that the differences were due to the environment in which the neutron star was found. Those LMXBs that were not neutron stars turned out to be black holes.

This section attempts to provide an overview of the important fields of astronomy, their period of importance and the terms used to describe them. It should be noted that astronomy in the Modern Era has been divided mainly by electromagnetic spectrum, although there is some evidence this is changing.

Solar astronomy is the study of the Sun. The Sun is the closest star to Earth at around 92 million (92,000,000) miles away.[8] It is the easiest to observe in detail. Observing the Sun can help us understand how other stars work and are formed. Changes in the Sun can affect the weather and climate on Earth. A stream of charged particles called the Solar wind is constantly sent off from the Sun. The Solar Wind hitting the Earth's magnetic field causes the northern lights.[9] Studying the Sun helped people understand how nuclear fusion works.

Planetary Astronomy is the study of planets, moons, dwarf planets, comets and asteroids as well as other small objects that orbit stars. The planets of our own Solar System have been studied in depth by many visiting spacecraft such as Cassini-Huygens (Saturn) and the Voyager 1 and 2.

Galactic Astronomy is the study of distant galaxies. Studying distant galaxies is the best way of learning about our own galaxy, as the gases and stars in our own galaxy make it difficult to observe. Galactic Astronomers attempt to understand the structure of galaxies and how they are formed through the use of different types of telescopes and computer simulations.

Hydrodynamics is used in astronomy for mathematically modelling how gases behave. Strong magnetic fields found around many bodies can drastically change how these gases behave, affecting things from star formation to the flows of gases around compact stars. This makes MHD an important and useful tool in astronomy.

Gravitational wave astronomy is the study of the Universe in the gravitational wave spectrum. So far, all astronomy that has been done has used the electromagnetic spectrum. Gravitational Waves are ripples in spacetime emitted by very dense objects changing shape, which include white dwarves, neutron stars and black holes. Because no one has been able to detect gravitational waves directly, the impact of Gravitational Wave Astronomy has been very limited.

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Astronomy - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On Earth, we experience rain composed of liquid water. On Titan, it rains liquid methane. And on Uranus and Neptune, it rains solid diamonds. For the first time, researchers have now simulated and observed this process here on Earth, proving that this long-held assumption is likely correct, once and for all.

The work, published August 21 in Nature Astronomy, combined a high-powered optical laser with the X-ray free-electron laser at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). The LCLS creates X-ray pulses that last a million-billionths of a second, allowing for ultrafast high-precision monitoring of processes that occur all the way down to the scale of atoms. As a result, the researchers were able to watch tiny diamonds form as shock waves passed through plastic, offering a peek at processes that take place in planetary atmospheres on a much grander scale.

The experiment focused on inducing shock waves in a plastic material called polystyrene, which contains hydrogen and carbon two elements found in abundance inside Uranus and Neptune. According to theory, methane (four hydrogen atoms and one carbon atom) inside the planets atmospheres forms hydrocarbon chains that in turn form diamonds in response to the right temperature and pressure. This occurs more than 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) beneath the planets surface. There, the diamonds precipitate out and sink deeper into the atmosphere, a diamond rain.

Though this has been assumed to be the case for decades, the exact process has never been observed in experiments on Earth before now. Some previous experiments failed because the pressures and temperatures inside the atmospheres of these planets cannot be created in the lab for long, and without the ability to record data at the speed afforded by the LCLS, any transitions were missed. Other experiments produced graphite or diamond, but were conducted at lower pressures or required the introduction of additional materials.

Using an optical laser, the researchers induced one, then a second shockwave in a polystyrene sample at the temperatures and pressures found within Uranus and Neptune. As they probed the material with 50-femtosecond X-ray pulses (a femtosecond is a quadrillionth of a second), they watched the carbon atoms in the plastic become part of tiny diamonds (called nanodiamonds) where the shockwaves overlapped, creating areas of higher pressure.

For this experiment, we had LCLS, the brightest X-ray source in the world, said Siegfried Glenzer, professor of photon science at SLAC and a coauthor on the paper, in a press release. You need these intense, fast pulses of X-rays to unambiguously see the structure of these diamonds, because they are only formed in the laboratory for such a very short time.

Dominik Kraus of Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf and lead author on the paper, added, When I saw the results of this latest experiment, it was one of the best moments of my scientific career.

This work will benefit not only planetary scientists seeking to understand the conditions inside our own local ice giants, but those studying extrasolar planets as well. Learning more about how elements combine and precipitate out of atmospheric layers allows researchers to create better models for a deeper understanding of these planets, including not only their weather, but their sources of energy as well. Diamond rain could create friction as the diamonds sink deeper within the atmosphere, generating heat and affecting atmospheric circulation and other conditions.

We can't go inside the planets and look at them, Kraus said, so these laboratory experiments complement satellite and telescope observations.

The nanodiamonds resulting from this experiment could have other applications closer to home as well, such as use in the medical and technology industries. While such nanodiamonds can be produced in explosions, manufacturing them with lasers could be a cleaner alternative.

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Uranus and Neptune: Cloudy with a chance of diamonds - Astronomy Magazine

The event called The Great American Eclipse lived up to its billing on August 21. Here in Georgia, the total solar eclipse cut a narrow path through the northeastern part of the state before heading out to sea off the Atlantic coast. The last time a solar eclipse was visible in the South was in 1984, when a spectacular annular eclipse traveled diagonally from Louisiana to the Chesapeake Bay. My article about that event, Sunshow in the Southland, appeared in the September 1984 edition of Astronomy.

Flash forward nearly a third of a century. My wife, Joy, and I traveled from our home in Athens to the small northeast Georgia town of Toccoa, where totality would last for 1 minute and 59 seconds. In 1984, the annular eclipse was at its maximum for only 9 fleeting seconds. It was a brief but amazing cosmic event that was but a preview of this year's total eclipse of the Sun.

Toccoa is a charming town of about 8500 people that hosted an influx of eclipse viewers on August 21. Traffic jams plagued many of the roads in Georgia on eclipse day, but the highways to Toccoa were clear. Townspeople and out-of-town eclipse chasers waited patiently for the big event, which local businesses and civic groups touted as Totally Toccoa Eclipse 2017.

When I viewed the May 30, 1984, annular eclipse from the tiny hamlet of Maysville, Georgia, the weather that day was crisp and the sky was clear perfect eclipse weather. In Toccoa on August 21, the weather was hot as the Sun performed its disappearing act but the sky was once again clear and blue.

During the 1984 annular eclipse, I viewed the event with a projection plate attached to a 2.4-inch refracting telescope. Baily's Beads, caused by sunlight peeking through lunar mountains and valleys, were visible, as was the planet Venus in the briefly darkened face of the Sun. The celestial show was even better on August 21. The unaided eye could take in the whole performance during the moments of totality.

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A tale of two eclipses - Astronomy Magazine

Type Ia supernovae serve as important standard candles, allowing astronomers to accurately measure vast distances. These events have been integral to our understanding of the expansion of the universe, as well as the life cycles of Sun-like stars and binary star systems. However, theres still much we dont understand about these stellar explosions; now, a team including researchers at the University of Chicago has seen the first hint of unexpected X-rays coming from around a recent supernova event.

The team discovered the X-ray signature while studying a recent supernova, 2012cav, which was observed with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. In the first observation, taken a year and a half after the supernova went off, Chandra saw 33 X-ray photons coming from the source. Two hundred days later, a second Chandra observation captured 10 photons. Although these numbers are small, they are not insignificant, and have profound implications for the environment around the supernova at the time it exploded. Their work was published online August 23 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

X-ray emission has not previously been seen from type Ia supernovae, which occur one of two ways: Either a white dwarf (the remnant of a star like our Sun) pulls enough mass off a nearby companion that it explodes, or two white dwarfs in a binary system spiral together and merge, then explode. However, X-rays are often seen from a different type of supernova event, a type II supernova, which occurs when a massive star reaches the end of its life and explodes. In this case, the X-rays occur when the supernova shockwave interacts with an envelope of surrounding material, which the star sheds in the years prior to the end of its life.

Thus, X-ray emission around a type Ia supernova suggests the same thing there is a cloak or envelope of material around the star, which gives off X-rays when the explosion reaches it. The trouble is, astronomers dont know why such a cloak of material would exist, because white dwarfs dont lose mass in the way that massive stars do. And the amount of mass inferred from the X-ray measurements of 2012cav is much too high to have been shed by a normal companion star.

What we saw suggests a density about a million times higher what we thought was the maximum around Ias, said Vikram Dwarkadas, a professor at the University of Chicago and a coauthor on the study, in a press release.

2012cav is not the only oddball type Ia supernova of this kind. However, it is the first that has been observed emitting X-rays associated with an envelope of gas. Although other type Ias with circumstellar material were thought to have similarly high densities based on their optical spectra, we have never before detected them with X-rays, said Dwarkadas.

But now that X-rays have been seen coming from one such supernova, astronomers are likely to be awarded time with Chandra to search for the same emission from others. It is surprising what you can learn from so few photons, said lead author Chris Bochenek, a graduate student at Caltech. With only tens of them, we were able to infer that the dense gas around the supernova is likely clumpy or in a disk.

Now the goal is to determine how the gas got there, and whether such disks are present in other type Ia supernovae as well. In addition to searching for X-rays, astronomers can also look for radio emission to learn more about the environments that foster these important yet still mysterious stellar explosions.

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Astronomers catch X-rays from a stellar explosion - Astronomy Magazine

If you have even a passing interest in astronomy, you're probably familiar with the magnificent Orion Nebula, a huge gas cloud busily forming stars in its center. At a distance of about 1300 light-years, it's so close and so luminous that it's easily visible to the naked eye as the middle star in Orion's "dagger."

But there is a whole lot more going on in that nebula than meets the eye. For one thing, the visible part you see in most photos is just a small part of a much larger cloud, one that's cold and dark and so doesn't emit visible light. Stars forming near the inside edge of it ate away at the material, popping a hole in the side of it; that's what we see as the Orion Nebula.

But even thats not the whole picture. There are structures running through the nebula that are completely invisible unless you look using the right kind of light. Astronomers pointed the gigantic Green Bank Telescope toward Orion, tuning it to look at centimeter-wavelength light, far outside what our eyes see. What those observations reveal is amazing: a filament of gas nearly 500 trillion kilometers long!

That shot is a combination of two different images: The blue shows warm dust seen by the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) observatory, which shows the more familiar shape of the Orion Nebula; and the orange is the filament, seen in the light of ammonia gas strewn along its length.

Ammonia is a great way to see these structures because it's a simple molecule that is found in cold, dark clouds, and the light it emits has a wavelength of about a centimeter, which can easily pierce through and escape the surrounding material. Visible light is absorbed nearly completely by such stuff, which is why it looks dark to our eyes. Using microwave and radio telescopes allows us to peer deeply inside these nebulae.

These filaments are seen in lots of regions in the galaxy where stars are forming from dense gas clouds. We've known about them for some time, but things really took a leap forward when the European Space Agency launched the Herschel Observatory, which mapped them using far infrared light.

And now the Green Bank Telescope (or GBT) can map them in high resolution. This is important: Stars are being born along these filaments, and they show up as brighter knots of emission along it. Material from the filament itself flows down into these forming stars like a creek flowing down into a crack in the ground. The protostars' gravity pulls the material in, and they gain enough mass to grow into true stars. When you look at this huge, long structures, you are literally seeing stars in the first stages of being born. Lower-resolution images just show them as lumps, but the GBT can see the material as it falls toward them.

And there's a lot of raw material here. The total mass of this filament is 5000 times the mass of the Sun. Many of these stars might grow more massive than our Sun (Orion is a site of massive star formation), but in general far more lower-mass stars are born there, so tens of thousands of stars could be created here eventually.

It's not clear why these filaments form in the first place. We know that inside dark clouds the gas is in motion, sometimes flowing in huge waves, pushed around by the energy of the stars forming within. One idea is that a filament forms where two waves meet, just as you'd see at the beach if two waves moving in slightly different but converging directions met. They'd form a ridge between them where they collide; that's the analogy to one of these cosmic filaments.

The GBT observations are part of a larger-scale study to observe these filaments in nearby star-forming regions; Orion is just one of the more dramatic ones. But astronomers are trying to answer many still unresolved questions about how filaments birth stars. For example, they can observe the specific motions inside the filament, using the Doppler shift to monitor the direction and velocity of the gas flow. Does it move smoothly or is it turbulent? Does the gas start rotating near the newly forming stars (that's important, since that rotation helps the material flatten into a disk around the star, which can then form planets)? How stable are these filaments; do they last a long time or does their own self-gravity and internal turbulence pull them into pieces?

When I look at images like this, I can't help but wonder if we're seeing what our own Sun looked like 4.6 billion years or so ago. Do we humans owe our existence to some long-ago-dispersed filament of gas, a streamer dozens of light-years long and a trillion kilometers thick that fed the raw materials that built up into literally everything around us on Earth?

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A 500 trillion km long streamer of ammonia in Orion - SYFY WIRE (blog)

Amateur astronomer Leon Rosen of Wyndmoor looks through his telescope and helped participants take photos with their cell phones at the solar eclipse event Monday at the Free Library of Springfield Township. (Photo by Barbara Sherf)

by Barbara Sherf

About 500 mostly local residents converged on the soccer fields behind the temporary location of the Free Library of Springfield on Willow Grove Avenue in Wyndmoor Monday afternoon to watch the much-talked about full solar eclipse.

Reader Services Coordinator Mary Lou Hughes stood at the entrance to the library pointing parents with strollers, seniors on walkers and everyone else to the rear area where 200 special viewing glasses had already been given out before the program started at 1:30.

We were one of the few libraries doing an event like this and are urging people to share their glasses and also view the eclipse through two telescopes set up back there. We also have a NASA feed inside, she said.

Lillian Miles of Glenside was pleased to see the sharing and unity among the crowd. It was amazing and makes me smile to see this. I think after the week weve had with all of the rioting and violence that it does my heart good to see people sharing and being part of something like this, said Miles.

Amateur astronomer Dr. Albert Lamperti, a resident of Oreland since 1980, put the program together in the hope of sparking interest in children and adults. Lamperti got involved in astronomy through his son and has been doing free programs at the library for eight years.

My older son bought a small telescope with his newspaper delivery money, and we saw the rings and Saturn and moons of Jupiter that summer, said Lamperti in an interview from Wyoming, where he traveled to get a better glimpse. I then joined the Delaware Valley Amateur Astronomers club and learned from scratch.

Dr. Lamperti teaches anatomy at Temple University by day, and on nights and weekends, he turns to his avocation astronomy. They are both visual sciences, and that has always interested me, said Lamperti. Im an experiential learner, so I like to see the science.

And see it he did as he shared his experiences from Wyoming. Experiencing totality is an emotionally inspiring, breathtaking, hair-raising, celestial event traumatizing one of the most dynamic events in the solar system to be witnessed by humanity. There was a rousing round of applause for Mother Nature.

Even though this areas residents only saw about 75 percent totality, there were only positive comments. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me, even if you dont get to see it all. Im glad I came out, said Tom Turner of Flourtown.

Amateur astronomer Leon Rose of Wyndmoor had his telescope set up, and dozens stood in line to view the eclipse and take photos on their cell phones. I love doing outreach. I think we see so many here because there is a window between summer camp being over and school beginning, he said. I get a lot out of doing this.

Erdenheim resident Luke Eddis, 10, managed to hold a homemade viewing device made out of a box with some tin foil despite having a broken arm. Its really cool. I think I might do more of this, he said.

Those were golden words to Library Director Marycatherine McGarvey. Our hope is they will come back to our regular astronomy programs and maybe even take some books out on the subject, she said.

Oreland resident David McDugall was on-site with his telescope. We have given talks to kids, teens and adults at the Free Library of Springfield. We watch the moon and constellations and set up a telescope outside of the library entrance to give residents a glimpse on their way to and from the library. I never expected to see this kind of crowd, said the retired Springfield Township Public Works foreman.

He and Lamperti are members of the Delaware Valley Amateur Astronomers Club and frequent their monthly meetings.

His wife, Kathy McDugall, said she might even join the group. It was very interesting, and I would like to check out the astronomy club with my husband, she said. It could be a nice date night.

The next full eclipse visible from the U.S. will occur in 2024 along a path that includes Erie, Pennsylvania.

For more information on the Delaware Valley Amateur Astronomers Club, visit http://www.dvaa9.wildapricot.org. Springfield Township guest correspondent Barbara Sherf can be reached through her web site at http://www.communicationspro.com.

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Area residents over the moon watching solar eclipse - Chestnut Hill Local

Astronomers have produced the most detailed ever images of a star other than the sun.

The red supergiant, called Antares, is known as the heart of the Scorpius constellation because of its rosy hue, discernible to the naked eye, and location in the body of the astronomical beast. The new images, produced using the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope in Chile, are the most detailed yet of the surface and atmosphere of a star beyond our solar system.

Antares, which is 550 light years from Earth, has a mass about 15 times that of the sun, but is rapidly losing material to surrounding space as it expands outwards in the last phase of its life before becoming a supernova. If Antares sat at the centre of our own solar system its outer layers would extend as far as Mars.

However, until now the exact process by which giant stars lose mass from their upper atmosphere has remained unknown.

The latest images aim to tackle this question by mapping the motions of surface material in intricate detail using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).

The instrument combines the light from up to four telescopes to create a virtual telescope with a resolution equivalent to that of a single mirror up to 200 metres across.

How stars like Antares lose mass so quickly in the final phase of their evolution has been a problem for over half a century, said Keiichi Ohnaka, of the Universidad Catlica del Norte, Chile, and the papers first author. The VLTI is the only facility that can directly measure the gas motions in the extended atmosphere of Antares a crucial step towards clarifying this problem. The next challenge is to identify whats driving the turbulent motions.

The observations reveal unexpected turbulence large clumps of upwelling and receding gas in the stars outer atmosphere. These movements could not be explained by convection currents, where the flow of gas transfers heat from the core to the outer limits of a star, pointing to the existence of new, currently unknown processes. The findings are published in the journal Nature.

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Antares: astronomers capture best ever image of a star's surface and atmosphere - The Guardian

By Ken Sackey, GNA

Kuntunse (E/R), Aug. 24, GNA - President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Thursday launched the Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory at Kuntunse, a development set to put Ghana on the pedestal of countries that are into space science.

The President said that the progress marked the beginning of a new era in Ghanas quest to harness the potentials of Space Science and Technology for accelerated socio-economic development.

This development makes Ghana the second country in Africa to own such facility after South Africa.

The President said the new era would not only witness the deepening of knowledge and skills development in electronics and information and communications technology, but also enhance the capacity of scientists to contribute to the world body of knowledge in the ever expanding field of astronomy and space science.

At a short ceremony before cutting the tape to officially open the observatory at the lush foothills of Kuntunse, President Akufo-Addo recounted how, in 2007, the country, under the leadership of President John Agyekum Kufuor, took the bold decision to sign up to the African Square Kilometre Array (SKA) partnership agreement, spearheaded by South Africa, which involved seven other African countries.

This decision, he explained, was made at the time when Ghana did not have any programme in astronomy, and was an example of the bold and visionary leadership of the time.

Its purpose is to propel the country to the enviable league of countries pursuing space science.

Ghana, by this feat, has become the first partner country of the African Very Long Baseline Interferometer Network to complete the conversion of the 32-metre Intelsat Telecommunications Satellite Earth Station at Kuntunse into a functioning radio telescope.

A second phase of the 32-meter antenna involving more engineering work would be carried out to help increase the sensitivity and speed of the dish from 0.09 degrees per second to 0.3 degree per seconds.

The first phase of the observatory involved the structural work of the antenna, electrical works and the total configuration, which used to be a redundant telecommunications dish belonging to Vodafone Ghana that used to point only to one direction.

President Akufo-Addo expressed the hope that the integration of this radio telescope into the African Very Long Baseline Interferometer Network, in preparation for the second phase construction of the Square Kilometre Array across the African continent, will be successful.

He said the recent successful launch into orbit of GhanaSat-1, a satellite developed by three students from All Nations University College in Koforidua, in partnership with their Japanese counterparts at Kyushu Institute of Technology, indicated that Ghana abounded in talent, expressing Governments pleasure to see Ghanaian talents shining, with even greater promise for the future.

The President reiterated the commitment of Government to continue to develop the human capital needed for a sustainable implementation of the countrys space programmes, particularly enhancing the nations human resource capacity in astronomy research.

We have big plans for our national space development programme. These include the establishment of a National Space Data Centre for satellite data collection, management and application. This comprehensive programme will involve the establishment of a national satellite ground receiving station and the launch of satellites, he said.

The radio telescope, being launched today, will expand further our frontiers in space science. I am informed that the radio telescope will provide information from distant bodies in the universe that will help us understand the birth and formation of stars, the death of stars and the general structure of the universe.

President Akufo-Addo expressed optimism that the observatory would enable Ghanaians appreciate the reality and complexity of global warming and its harmful effects such as rising sea levels, coastal erosion, erratic rainfall patterns, prolonged and intense dry seasons, desertification and reduction of vegetation cover on their lives.

It is for this reason that we, as humans and care-takers of our earth, should not compound the pressures on our fragile planet through harmful activities, such as illegal mining and logging and the production of greenhouse gases, he added.

Recognising the role of science and technology in the socio-economic development of the country, President Akufo-Addo said he had charged the Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation to step up efforts in developing a potent science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education model for Ghana.

That, he said, would stimulate the interest of pupils and students in engineering sciences and technology.

With the establishment, shortly, of a Presidential Advisory Council on Science, Technology and Innovation (PACSTI), President Akufo-Addo reiterated his pledge of raising, significantly, funding for Research and Development (R&D) in science, technology and innovation from 0.25 per cent to 1 per cent of GDP in the short to medium term, and increased further to 2.5 per cent in the long term.

It will form the National Science, Technology and Innovation Fund to support R&D in all research Institutions and Universities, both public and private. At the same time, Government will make efforts to increase collaboration among research institutions, industry, especially the private sector, and political authorities at all levels.

These measures, I hope, will make the transition from research to product development and industrial production much easier, he added.

GNA

Link:

President launches Ghana's Astronomy Observatory - Ghana News Agency

About 3,000 people flocked to the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore Monday to see the first coast-to-coast solar eclipse in nearly a century.

Lines stretched out the front door as hundreds waited for their chance to get on the rooftop to peer through telescopes made safe for viewing through special filters. Some donned special glasses. Still others used viewers made from pizza boxes, index cards and coffee cups.

"It's the Super Bowl of astronomy, said Samantha Blau, a program manager at the Science Center, adding that the eclipse would likely be the centers busiest day of the year. During the regular season people may not be paying attention, but everyone is paying attention today.

It was an event America hasnt experienced since 1918: the passage of a total solar eclipse across the continental United States

Across Maryland, thousands of people spent their afternoons outdoors in parks and on rooftops in hopes of seeing the sun mostly blocked by the moon. Other Marylanders hit the road, many to South Carolina, into the path where the moon completely blotted out the sun.

Monica and Fred Alvarado of Annapolis traveled south to sit on the green grass of the Columbia Fireflies minor league baseball park.

Far above them the moon passed in front of the sun, casting a direct shadow on the Earth for a couple of minutes.

The sky was a 360-degree sunset. Then it was twilight in the middle of the day and Venus shone brightly.

"Wow. this is amazing," Fred Alvarado said.

"It was the best thing I've ever seen," Monica Alvarado said.

The view in Baltimore was dimmed by storm clouds, but the sun peeked out multiple times partially blocked out by the moon. The eclipse in Baltimore reached about 80 percent, while a strip of the country running largely from Oregon through Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Tennessee and South Carolina saw a total eclipse.

Michael E. Ruane, Sarah Kaplan and William Wan

Atop the Science Center, visitors looked upward, hoping the sun would peak out from between storm clouds. Whenever it did, cheers broke out.

Alex Madsen, 16, of Towson, came equipped with a viewer made out of a shoe box he tested in his backyard.

Its my first time ever seeing an eclipse, he said. Its incredible because the sun is something like 400 times bigger than the moon, but the moon is 400 times closer to us.

Looking through the shoe box, his mother, Lauren, exclaimed: Oh, my God. Oh, its so pretty. Thats amazing. Who knew an UGGs box could be so valuable?

Dr. Lisa Schocket, associate professor of ophthalmology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, cautioned those about to gaze upward about the dangers of staring directly into the sun.

Its no more dangerous than another day, she said, but most folks dont typically have reason to stare.

We see solar burns more commonly under other conditions, like psychosis or drugs, she said.

Dan Richman, a Johns Hopkins University biophysicist from Mt. Vernon, said he thinks the eclipse generated so much excitement because it reminded us of our place in the universe.

We dont usually think about the fact that we are standing on the surface of the planet and we are orbiting this huge extremely bright star, he said. We just experience the daily cycle. You just take it for granted. But this is a reminder than we are actually part of a solar system; we are out in space. ... We orbit the center of the galaxy at an unbelievable speed.

The Earth moves around the sun at an estimated 66,000 miles per hour. The moon orbits the Earth at more than 2,000 miles per hour.

There are usually six or seven total solar eclipses per decade somewhere in the world. There are many more partial eclipses, when the moon does not fully cover the suns face, and annular solar eclipses, when the moon appears slightly smaller than the sun, creating an apparent ring of fire in the sky at the point of greatest eclipse.

On top of the Science Center, Baltimore Astronomical Society President Darryl Mason said it was his fifth time viewing at least a partial solar eclipse. Hes seen others in Antarctica, Argentina, Chili and Ecuador, he said.

I like to see the diamond ring effect, he said.

In Carroll County, residents greeted the eclipse Monday afternoon with exclamations of Wow! and I see it!

The eclipse began at 1:17 p.m. and reached its peak at 2:42 p.m.

It looks like a Jack-o Lantern in the sky! shouted Sebastian Isaza, 11, at the Carroll County Public Librarys Eldersburg branch.

Eldersburg library branch manager Nadine Rosendale said people started lining up for glasses at 9 a.m. Monday.

We had 500 glasses to give away. At noon, we started giving out the glasses and they were gone in 20 minutes, Rosendale said.

How Baltimore experienced theGreat American Eclipse.

How Baltimore experienced theGreat American Eclipse.

Amateur astronomer Skye Korzie, of Eldersburg, set up a Dobsonian telescope outside of the library to share his view with other observers.

Im a space nerd, Korzie said. I just wanted to see as much as I can and let other people see it too. I think its a good way to get little kids interested in science.

The wait to get into Towson Library to score a pair of the hard-to-find glasses needed to safely watch the eclipse reminded Peggy Szczerbicki of waiting in line for books in the popular Harry Potter series.

More than 150 people snaked around the librarys spiral rotunda staircase Monday in hopes of snagging a pair of the cardboard spectacles.

After arriving at the Towson branch just as employees opened the doors at 9 a.m., Szczerbicki was first in line. The fourth grade teacher said she decided to come to the library after calling around to area stores for glasses and finding them all sold out.

Its the golden ticket, Szczerbicki said.

In Harford County, Hannah Nigrin stepped up to the telescope manned by Harford County Astronomical Society president Rick Fensch, excited to see her first-ever solar eclipse.

The 18-year-old Harford Community College student later described a mix of emotions upon seeing the near-total eclipse. She was one of about 1,000 people who gathered in the parking lot of the community colleges observatory.

It's very intimidating to look at, and it's awesome it's very beautiful, said Nigrin, a Bel Air resident.

More than 100 Howard Community College faculty, staff, students and their family members packed the front lawn of the schools science, engineering and technology building for a glimpse of the solar eclipse.

As Bonnie Tylers Total Eclipse of the Heart played in the background, Luda Bard, a genetics and microbiology professor at the college, and her two children, Ari, 10, and Ammi, 7, smiled when they spotted the eclipse. The family arrived earlier in the afternoon so Ari and Ammi could make their own pinhole cameras out of shoe boxes, aluminum foil and duct tape.

Its very exciting, said Bard, an Ellicott City resident. My husband is an engineer and Im a biologist, so we had a little bit of background to explain the science to the kids.

Total solar eclipses will cross the continental United States twice more in the next 30 years, on April 8, 2024, and Aug. 12, 2045.

For those who missed Mondays view, the path of totality for the 2024 eclipse will be only about 300 miles from Baltimore at its closest, visible from Texas to Maine. The 2045 eclipse will track from northern California to Florida.

Baltimore Sun Media Group reporters Scott Dance, Margarita Cambest, Chase Cook, Michael Eben, David Anderson and Andrew Michaels contributed to this article.

lbroadwater@baltsun.com

twitter.com/lukebroadwater

Originally posted here:

Thousands in Maryland watch 'SuperBowl of astronomy' the first ... - Baltimore Sun

Weve all seen a crescent moon.

But how many people can say theyve seen a crescent sun?

On Monday, area residents will be able to add themselves to that list, many for likely the first time ever, as a partial solar eclipse passes over New England for the first time in decades.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moons path around the earth falls directly in line with the sun, blocking the natural sunlight and effectively turning day to night for a few short minutes.

The event itself isnt all that rare, Wheaton College Professor Anthony Houser said. But the moons position around the earth limits who can take part in the event when, creating the illusion that the astronomical phenomenon only comes about every once in a blue moon.

It happens about every two years, Houser, who runs the astronomy observatory at Wheaton, said. Its just rare that it happens locally. We havent had one on the contiguous United States since 1979. Whereas, I have foreign students from China, and they had two solar eclipses within two years not too long ago.

Its always happening somewhere. Were just fortunate its happening coast to coast here.

But, while the solar eclipse event is spanning across the entire United States for the first time in years, area residents wont be able to enjoy its full effect.

A total eclipse is visible when a location on earth is directly within the suns main shadow or umbra. If you happen to be within the wider shadow, called the penumbra, you see only a partial eclipse.

The path of totality this time around is limited to a stretch of the U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina based on the positioning of the solar spheres in the universe Monday.

But even when the moon is directly aligned between the earth and sun, it doesnt guarantee a total eclipse says amateur astronomer Roger Menard of The Astronomy Association of Southeastern New England.

Thats because the moons orbit isnt a circle, its an oval. That orbit means the moon is closer to the earth at some times than others.

When the moon is closest to the earth, its disc totally covers the sun. When its farther away its disc appears smaller and doesnt quite obscure the entire sun. Instead, the result is an annular eclipse in which the moon is encircled by a bright rim of sun sort of like the candy shell on an M & M.

So, knowledge that Mondays solar eclipse will see the astronomical event at its prime pure totality has left thousands across the U.S. vying for a spot along the eclipses trail.

But, area residents wont be left out.

Makeshift astronomers in our area can count on a second best, Houser said. About 65 percent of the sun will be covered by the moon, leaving residents with an unusual sight. The events peak takes place about 2:46 p.m.

When you look at the sun on a normal day, it doesnt look that big, about the size of a fingernail, Houser said. But at the height of the eclipse youll see the moon take a bite out of it. Weve all seen a crescent moon, but on Monday well see a crescent sun.

Attleboro will not see night, as will areas in the path of totality, but gradually as the eclipse takes place between 1:30 and 4 p.m., the outside will seem dimmer than usual, Houser said.

But because the event will draw watchful eyes to the sky, Houser and other astronomers are urging observers to take precautions in making sure theyre viewing the eclipse safely.

Instinctively, we dont look at the sun, Houser said. Its a natural reflex to look away from the bright sun or to blink to protect our eyes.

But those instincts go to the wayside for special events, and Houser said looking at the suns ultraviolet rays for an extended period of time, waiting for the eclipse to take place, could cause serious damage to ones retina even as far as partial blindness.

Its really important to observe safely, Houser said.

Regular sunglasses dont make the cut.

Special eclipse glasses can be found online or in stores although most vendors have struggled to keep up with demand in recent weeks. After fake glasses were discovered on the online market, NASA and the American Astronomical Society have endorsed brands with sufficient protection and urge viewers to buy from those vendors directly.

If you have proper glasses, when you put them on during the day it should be very dark, Houser said. You should see nothing.

But if you cant get your hands on eclipse glasses, Houser said theres other ways to view safely. NASA has compiled a list of techniques to view the eclipse indirectly on its website, and will also be streaming the eclipse live.

And, area astronomers and recreation facilities have committed to viewing parties, where eclipse glasses will be available to share.

Wheatons observatory deck will be open, and Houser said about six telescopes with safety filters will be available for those who want an even closer look at the sun.

In Foxboro, Troop 7 Boy Scouts will join the recreation department in hosting a special viewing party at Booth Playground from 12:30 to 4 p.m. Eclipse glasses will be on sale for $5.

And Recreation Director Debbie Giardino went to extra lengths to make sure no one will be without. Her department and the Boy Scouts will have 450 pairs of glasses on hand.

I didnt want to run out of glasses and have people miss the experience or put themselves in danger, Giardino said. If theres extra, theres extra.

Giardino said the event will be a party complete with food and a live stream of the total eclipse on a TV nearby.

She heard about plans of the gathering from the Boy Scouts, who will earn a badge from the event, and joined forces to make the event an experience all of Foxboro can enjoy.

We have the mechanics: The building, the wherewithal, the staff, all of the amenities that they were looking for, she said. But this was their idea from the start.

I think its a great community event. This is what we do. I hope families will come and made a day out of it. Its the end of summer and lifes too short not to enjoy an event that last took place 38 years ago.

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A crescent sun: Solar eclipse to mark astronomy event of the decade, even in New England - The Sun Chronicle

Will Smith

As director of planetary sciences at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C., Burlington native Jim Green has spent much of his adult life sending research vehicles into space.

But as Green put it, it took a gravity assist to get him there. In space, the term is used to describe a ship maneuver that uses the gravitational field of another planet to slingshot toward its destination.

In life, a gravity assist can be a teacher, or a telescope, or a particularly encouraging parent. When Green, a 1969 BHS graduate, was in high school, he was blessed by two gravity assists. One was his chemistry teacher and astronomy buff Don Vinson.

The other was the 12-inch Alvan Clark and Sons refractor telescope that sat atop the now defunct Apollo High School. Built in 1937, the telescope was moved from the school to John Witte Observatory 30 years ago the same year the observatory was built.

It (the influence of the telescope on Greens career) was enormous, he said. I could observe whatever I wanted to.

Green returned to Burlington for the first time in five years Wednesday morning to celebrate that 30th anniversary. He saw that fabled telescope again Wednesday night during a meet and greet with the Southeastern Iowa Astronomy Club.

Its a fabulous tool, he said.

Back in high school, the ever ambitious Green wasnt satisfied with peering through the telescope. He wanted to take 35mm pictures in color and black and white, and worked with Vinson to construct tools to help him do that.

He even constructed a work-around so the telescope could be used to view the sun. Technically, the roof of the Apollo School wasnt a very stable position for a telescope. But its ability to open young minds surpassed any technical limitations.

We got to the point where we just did the best we could. Its on top of an old building, cars would go by, the place would shake. It just never tracked well. After a few minutes, the tracking was off, Green said.

When he was informed by members of the astronomy club that it works fine at the observatory, Green was ecstatic.

I knew it was the school he said. We really messed with that so much.

Green will speak at at Aldo Leopold and Edward Stone Middle School this morning, capping off his tour with with a public presentation at 7 p.m. tonight titled "Search for Life Beyond Earth and Space and Time. The presentation will be at Edward Stone Middle School, and there is no admission fee. The doors open at 6 p.m.

Im going to be talking about what weve been finding out from our missions, scouring the solar system. And many of them (missions) are looking for life," he said.

Most recently, Green and his team of NASA scientists conducted a detailed analysis of the solar eclipse that took place Monday. The benefits of that research will be uncovered in the months to come.

We had the ability during the eclipse to look at the lower corona. Thats actually very hard to do with satellites, he said.

NASA spent a year-and-half planning for the eclipse, and that preparation included 56 high-altitude balloons equipped with cameras that documented the sun's shadow.

We watched the shadow of the sun racing across the country at 2,000 miles an hour," Green said.

Green said the research will be helpful, but it doesnt compare to the inspiration the eclipse sewed in the hearts of impressionable children.

"When you think about everybody who saw that, there might be several thousand kids for which this event was so impressive to them, they want to learn more about the moon. Then they want to learn more about the sun. And then they want to do well in school. And then they want to become scientists and engineers, he said.

The visit and presentations were made possible by the Southeastern Astronomy Club and the Rand Lecture Trust.

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From NASA to Burlington - Burlington Hawk Eye

As it is told in some Chinese folk stories, dragons chase away the Sun during a total solar eclipse. These stories have been told for generations. Now, some new stories will be passed on. This time, the main characters are a team of Chinese astronomers and the local people in a small Oregonian town.

Dallas, Oregon, might not be on many peoples radar. But its not short on lovers of the sky. Just down the road from the farm where the Chinese team stayed, a local man had built his own observatory into his house. And hes surely not alone.

A kind invitation When I wrote a story earlier this year about this same Chinese astronomy team, which would travel 7,000 miles to observe the Great American Solar Eclipse, I didnt expect any follow-ups or readers responses. The team later told me, however, the story netted many readers. And in the meantime, a library manager from Dallas, Oregon, invited them to Dallas, instead of their original destination of Lincoln City, for a better chance of clear skies.

In general, Dallas has less cloud cover than Lincoln City. The latter is near the coast, which makes it more likely to have a marine layer of clouds, said Mark Johnson, manager of the Dallas Public Library. Dallas, 40 miles from Lincoln City, is less affected by the sea.

Johnson is also the guy who contacted the Chinese team after reading my story. When we talked on the phone several weeks ago, he told me his town would close the main street and many lecturers and events had been scheduled.

"It will be a large party for three days, he said. The library itself also planned to close from 10 to 12, because staff members would want to experience totality.

Who wouldnt?

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Chasing the eclipse from China to Dallas, Oregon - Astronomy Magazine

Astro Nite is designed to allow all ages to delight in astronomy. Photo provided BURTON The University of Michigan-Flint astronomy team will take their high-powered telescopes to For-Mar Nature Preserve and Arboretum and lead participants on a solar system tour set up on the ground, designed to teach participants about the planets and other astronomical features of the solar system.

With over an estimated 9,000 visible stars to our eye across the entire night sky, and billions visible using telescopes, it is hard not to be fascinated by astronomy, said Nicole Ferguson, head naturalist at For-Mar.

The program will be held 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 26, partners U of M-Flint and For-Mar and will feature a campfire with astronomy storytelling, astronomy crafts and a moon phase activity which will reproduce the solar eclipse which occurred Monday are part of the planned activities.

There will also be solar eclipse and constellation crafts. The crafts are great takeaway reminders that help families remember all of the things they learned during Astro Nite at For-Mar, Ferguson said. She added the campfire is a great addition to any nocturnal fun.

For Astro Nite, a campfire provides that perfect place for participants to gather and tell stories about the stars, she said.

The U of M-Flint Astronomy team will point the telescope to the sky to look at the moon and its many craters, planets like Saturn and Jupiter and different stars and far off galaxies.

We will also be talking about nocturnal animals, Ferguson said.

Ferguson said Astro Nite is suitable for all ages and abilities because of the wide variety of activities for kids and adults.

Dr. Rajib Ganguly, associate professor of physics, heads up the volunteer team. Ganguly also is the astronomy professor for U of M-Flint.

Ferguson said For-Mar has a great dark sky location that makes it great for both looking at and learning about astronomy first-hand. For-Mar is one of the leading outdoor educator facilities in our area, she said.

Astro Nite has taken place for the last five summers at For-Mar.

Nature centers and outdoor education facilities are perfect locations for astronomy classes and events, Ferguson said. In addition to our once-a-year Astro Nite event, we also lead monthly full moon hikes (and) talk about what is in the night sky each month.

The Astro Nite team puts on two annual Astro Nites at the U of M -Flint campus in collaboration with the Longway Planetarium, and shares astronomy information on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/UmFlintAstroNite/.

For details on Astro Nite, visit geneseecountyparks.org There is no cost, and preregistration is not required.

Read more here:

Astro Nite to bring wow factor of astronomy to community - Burtonview

By Kelechukwu Iruoma

Prof. Emeritus Francis Allotey has urged government at all levels in the West African countries to invest heavily in Astronomy and Space Science as parts of efforts set to realise the millennium development goals.

Allotey said this at the West African International Summer School 2017 Tagged: Ghana West African International Summer School for young Astronomers 2017, held at Ghana Atomic Energy Centre (GAEC)/ Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute (GSSTI).

The two week Astronomy Summer School was organised for young astronomers across space researchers, universities undergraduate and graduates to sharpen their intellectual capability in the advancement of space research, engineering and astronomy in Africa continent which involved six West African countries which were Gabon, South Africa, Nigeria, Gambia, Columbia and Ghana including other European countries.

He said investing in astronomy and space science will enable them gain a good stand globally in science, adding that governments need to fund science heavily to work and improve on astronomy and space science in the continent.

The Acting Director, National Space Research and Development Agency NASRDA-Centre for Basic Space, Nsukka (CBSS), Dr Bonaventure Okere, in his remark, said: Engaging youths in Space Technology Research with manpower will provide adequate solutions to myriad of problems facing Information Communication Technology in Africa as well as address daily environmental challenges in rural communities like a magic wand.

Dr. Okere a Nigeria renowned Astrophysicist described astronomy as a foundation for technological development. He applauded Prof Seidu Onalo Mohammed, Prof Borofice Ajayi, Professor emeritus, Pius N. Okeke and Nigerian government, for their commitment to Space development, adding that the foundation laid would continue to grow and evolve in serving the Nigeria space industry.

Other remarkable achievements, Okere highlighted were to coordinate astronomy activities in West Africa and help encourage the introduction of astronomy in the schools curricula. He said Nigeria was considered to host the West African Regional Office of Astronomy for Development WAROAD, WAROAD, because the country has become a model for Space Science and Technology development in West Africa and Africa at large, he added.

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Don urges West African countries to invest in astronomy, space science - Vanguard

COLUMBUS (WCMH) Jim DeGrand of the Ohio State University Geography department brought his telescope to the oval Monday afternoon. He was pleasantly surprised by the turnout and the level of interest in the eclipse. Its fantastic, DeGrand said. Its great that people are engaged in a celestial event you know. How often does that happen?

With the start of classes still a day away, hundreds of students and faculty poured onto the oval to watch and to share the experience with others.

Very, very exciting, said first-year student Claire Cary from Cleveland. I dont have any other word for it. Its just thrilling to be able to experience it.

Cloud cover obscured the view from the oval throughout much of the eclipse. But watchers were in awe when the clouds gave way. They watched through eclipse glasses, cameras and pinhole box projectors.

Astronomy professor David Weinberg said the astronomy department distributed thousands of eclipse-watching glasses including 1,400 over the past two days. We have been shamelessly promoting our undergraduate astronomy courses and yesterday when we gave out a thousand glasses, we also gave out lists of all our courses.

Astronomy major Gaby Torrini said the cloud cover did not take away from how special it was. This is pretty exciting for me because its the first solar eclipse Ive been old enough to enjoy and really want to see, Torrini said.

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OSU uses eclipse to promote astronomy classes - NBC4i.com

Monday's solar eclipse began in Erie around 1:10 p.m. and concluded shortly before 4 p.m. The highlight or literal low light came at 2:30 p.m., when the moon covered 75.9 percent of the sun.

The blue sky turned dim.

Mother Nature flipped a switch to illuminate the ornamental lights outside Penn State Behrend's School of Science. People young and old climbed a step ladder to gaze through a telescope. Others, donning flimsy cardboard glasses, tilted their heads upward. Even the large pores of leaves cast crescent-shaped cutouts into the shadows below.

"It's amazing, Mother Nature, and everyone gathering together to celebrate this wonderful thing that's happening today," 48-year-old Anne Regener, of Erie, said. "It's pretty special, this natural phenomenon."

Monday's solar eclipse began in Erie around 1:10 p.m. and concluded shortly before 4 p.m. The highlight or literal low light came at 2:30 p.m., when the moon covered 75.9 percent of the sun. In other sections of the country, from Oregon to South Carolina, onlookers witnessed the first total solar eclipse since February 1978. The last visible partial solar eclipse for the region was in 1994.

Regener was among the hundreds of people who gathered for a free public viewing event at Penn State Behrend, which set up three telescopes outside the School of Science, offered tours of the Yahn Planetarium and handed out free eclipse glasses to the first 100 people in line.

"Beautiful," marveled Lydia Chimenti, of Erie, as she stepped back from an Orion telescope to see the early stages of the eclipse. "It took a big chunk out of (the sun). It looks like somebody took a bite out of a cookie."

Chimenti, an astronomy enthusiast, took astronomy classes at Behrend 15 years ago and returns periodically for special events at the planetarium. She's planning to travel to Iceland in October to view the northern lights. She took a half-day off work for the eclipse.

Johnny Carr, 13, of Franklin, drove an hour with his mom, Johnna Carr, and sister, Ava Carr, for the event.

"It kind of looked like a big piece of cheese with a cut in it," he said after looking through a telescope. "It was pretty cool."

Sophie Bleil, 10, a fourth-grader at Clark Elementary in Harborcreek, couldn't see much through the telescope, but her face lit up when she tried eclipse glasses.

"You can see a crescent," she said.

A few dozen people arrived at Behrend two hours before the event began to line up for free eclipse glasses, which most area stores were sold out of late last week.

Others arrived with their own creations. Kellan Loranger, 4, of North East, carried a makeshift eclipse viewer designed from an empty box of Shredded Wheat. Jay Amicangelo, a chemistry professor at Behrend, couldn't get his hands on the specialty glasses, so he transformed a shoe box into a pinhole viewer.

School of Science employees helped small children and students make their own pinhole viewers out of black construction paper and tinfoil. Holes were poked using tooth picks. Freshman Brandon Banas, 18, used his to capture the sun's crescent shape on a blank white sheet of paper he set on the sidewalk.

Priscilla Hamilton, 60, of Harborcreek, came armed with a paper towel tube that was covered by a pin-poked piece of paper at one end. But she didn't need it.

"I didn't think I was going to be one of the 100 people lucky enough to get my own glasses," the retired U.S. Army dentist said.

Then there was Bill Augur, 69, also of Harborcreek. He tried a contraption in 1994 without much luck, but gave it another try Monday after going online for help. Augur arranged a pair of binoculars on a tripod, covering all but the lenses with a large cardboard box. It also projected the sun's orange-peel shape onto a piece of paper.

Some people tried to photograph the eclipse using their glasses as filters. Behrend sophomore accounting majors Khushi Kantawala and Katerina Ellis were among them. Kantawala, 18, propped up her glasses until Ellis was able to snap the perfect shot.

"It's actually really cool, I've never seen one," Ellis said.

"My mom called and said, 'Don't look at the sun. Go to your classes. Don't look up there,'" a laughing Kantawala said. "I said, 'Mom, it's college, you know I'm not going to (listen).'"

Darren Williams, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Behrend, used a yellow-painted Styrofoam ball about the size of basketball and a softball to demonstrate what would occur once the eclipse began. Williams said Monday's eclipse wasn't as dramatic as the one in 1994.

"In the '94 (eclipse) for Erie, the moon passed directly in front of the sun, but it was too far away," he said. "It looked too small to cover up the whole face of the sun, so you saw the edge of the sun peeking out from the moon."

That eclipse covered about 95 percent of the sun, compared to 76 percent coverage Monday.

For the next eclipse in 2024 the sun will be 100 percent covered for the Erie area, he said.

"That's very rare for one location on Earth to experience eclipses of this magnitude separated by only seven years," he said. "Usually it's 20, 30 or 40 years between major eclipses."

Matthew Rink can be reached at 870-1884 or by email. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNrink.

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Eclipse brings out astronomy buffs, curious observers - News ... - GoErie.com

The Aug. 21 solar eclipse brought out astronomers highly professional and decidedly amateur, and those who gathered at McLean High Schools observatory had their pick of ways to enjoy the spectacle.

The schools outdoor courtyard bustled with activity far in advance of the peak eclipse time in mid-afternoon. Astronomy teacher Dean Howarth was tickled by the high turnout.

Its great. Theres been a swarm of people here for two hours, he said. The goal is to get people this interested in science all the time.

Scores of children and adults donned special protective eyewear to look safely at the eclipse and some put one of those dark lenses over their smartphones cameras to take pictures of the phenomenon.

Gazing through the glasses was a bit eerie. It seemed as if the whole universe consisted of an orange crescent and impenetrable blackness.

The courtyards prime viewing location was its refurbished observatory. Visitors entered the lower level of the structure and watched news coverage from around the country of the eclipse on a large, flat-screen television.

The line for the observatory upstairs was long and the crowded conditions were stifling, but those who were waiting put things in perspective.

I shouldnt complain, said math teacher Emily Jaffa. Most schools dont have an observatory.

After ascending a steep staircase, visitors got to view the eclipse through a 14-inch-diameter reflector telescope that was covered with a deep crimson hydrogen-alpha filter. The view filled the field of vision and offered extraordinary detail of the sun.

Weve seen every planet in the solar system with this scope, so its pretty capable, Howarth said.

The only thing missing was a camera mount for the viewing lens. Some tried to take photos through the lens with their smartphones and digital cameras, with mixed results.

Such eclipses usually happen about twice in a given lifetime, and people often have to travel to see one, Howarth said. By good fortune, another eclipse in 2024 will cast a shadow from the countrys middle area up toward New England, he said.

Howarth may travel to be within the line of totality for that eclipse.

It was easier to sacrifice knowing there was another one coming up, he said.

Eclipses usually happen twice a year, but most often in places where there are no people, such as over the Pacific Ocean, Howarth said.

The Earth is pretty big, and the shadow the moon casts is pretty small, under 20 miles, he said. The line of totality for this eclipse ran from Salem, Ore., to Charleston, S.C.

Back outside, McLean Highs faculty had arranged multiple ways to experience the eclipse. Some visitors peered into cereal boxes that had been turned into pinhole cameras by cutting out one section for viewing and covering another hole with tinfoil that had a pinprick to let in light.

Solar projectors showed the crescent getting thinner and thinner as the big moment approached. These devices regularly had to be repositioned slightly owing to the Earths revolution.

Elsewhere, pegboard suspended above the ground projected hundreds of tiny white crescents in evenly spaced rows and columns. Pedestrians headed out to their cars afterward could see the same effect, albeit less orderly, from sunlight that had penetrated small gaps in the leaves of overhead trees.

The eclipse only was blocked a few times by clouds. The weathers timing was fortunate, as heavy rainstorms rolled through about half an hour after the eclipses peak.

Observers young and old stared up at the sky and cheered when the eclipse peaked at 2:42 p.m.

Andrew Diller, who teaches astronomy and oceanography at McLean High, said the eclipse was a rare opportunity to bring people together to witness an astronomic spectacle.

This is a cool thing that doesnt come around very often, said McLean High student Devin English.

Classmate Cate Pearce, who took astronomy during her last school year, valued the phenomenon for scientific reasons.

The last total eclipse like this in 1918 was when they proved Albert Einsteins general theory of relativity, Pearce said.

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Eclipse allows everyone to be an astronomer for the day - Inside NoVA