I just found out I’m one of the lucky 150 Tweeters chosen to attend the next NASA Tweet-Up – the launch of STS-133! The launch is currently scheduled for November 1.

You’ll be able to follow me on Twitter and of course I’ll be posting here throughout the two days I’ll be at the Cape.

DSC_0170, originally uploaded by david parmet.

Sagittarius sits right below the heart of our Galaxy. Somewhere in that cloud is a supermassive black hole surrounded by a couple hundred million stars.

Shot from the backyard of our vacation house on Cape Cod - f 2.8 at 20 seconds. ISO 1600. Click through for annotations, notes, etc.

I wish it weren’t so bright but that’s life.

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DSC_0055, originally uploaded by david parmet.

This picture was shot looking north over Cape Cod Bay. The light on the lower left is from Boston – more than 90 miles away from where I took the picture.

This is what we are losing – dark skies are quickly vanishing all over the world as the city’s insatiable appetite for bright lights grows. Even in my own little backwater town, an hour from New York City, every day it seems the security lights, the lights from the neighbor’s pool or tennis courts or the light over the back door stays on later and later.

There’s a lot you can do. Encourage the use of LEDs and other alternatives. Lobby your community to adopt stricter lighting standards. Join the International Dark Sky Association. And just turn the damn lights off.

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Check out these cool new ads from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

For centuries science has made our world a better place. But recently, organized interests are attempting to turn science, especially climate science, into a political football. The Union of Concerned Scientists has launched a national advertising campaign to showcase the dedication and personal histories of scientists studying climate change.

I’m also happy to see they are going right after Faux News for muddying the waters and misrepresenting the facts on climate change.

Those of us of a certain age will remember Jack Horkheimer closing down our local PBS station every night, entreating us to keep looking up at the stars.

R.I.P. Jack and thanks for the inspiration.

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DSC_0020, originally uploaded by david parmet.

While camping this weekend, I was taking some pictures of the night sky – working to refine my ISO / shutter speed combinations.

I didn’t realize I caught a Perseid in the act until yesterday when I was taking the shots off of the media card.

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DSC_0056, originally uploaded by david parmet.

We came, was saw, we observed. Perfect weather – a clear calm sky and mild temperatures – made for perfect observing last night, the final night of Stellafane 2010.

I only made the decision to go around Noon on Saturday – a friend phoned me from the camping field and told me I better get up there, the weather was perfect. I got there barely in time to set up my tent before sunset but somehow managed to get a perfect spot to set up – right next to where I parked and with an unobstructed view of the Northern and Eastern skies.

My own personal list of things I can finally cross off of my bucket list (Astronomy edition) included seeing the shadow of Io crossing Jupiter, finding M51 in my finder scope (!); seeing clearly the intertwining limbs of the two galaxies and seeing the barest hint of a spiral structure in Andromeda.

But the highlight was the Milky Way, clear as spilt milk spread across the sky.

These pictures are rather rough and need some processing, but for now they will do.

The Backyard Stargazer is on a brief hiatus while the observation platform / back deck is being rebuilt.

Richard Laermer pointed me to an interesting piece comparing the relationship  between professional and amateur astronomers to that between journalists and bloggers.

You can read the whole thing here at TechDirt.

I think the comparison is apt to a point. In astronomy, the professionals – mainly the folks at the large research institutions and universities who have access to the expensive equipment – do most of the theoretical work while the amateurs – folks who have a love of astronomy but never pursued it as a career – fill in on the observational side. A perfect example happened only last month when amateurs observed two meteor hits on Jupiter.

Most professionals who are working on advanced research don’t have the luxury of being able to wander over to Jupiter for a quick look. Observation time on the larger telescopes is reserved months, if not years in advance and there just aren’t enough eyes at that level to be watching the whole sky. But amateurs, many of whom have fairly sophisticated equipment (at least when compared to that of only a few decades ago) and the time and inclination to pursue a whim now and then, can turn their eyes wherever the professionals can’t.

This relationship has been tremendously beneficial to professionals and amateurs alike.

In the media world, on the other hand, aggressive bloggers have been stepping on the toes of the main stream media, most obviously in politics and entertainment but also in local coverage where the larger media outlets cannot spare the resources. And in regions of the world where it is just too difficult or dangerous to send a journalist, there are countless bloggers, videobloggers and twitter-erers to fill in the gaps.

The relationship has grown hostile, with journalists lashing out at the ranks of the amateur press corps, calling them conflicted and not held to professional standards.

I think though that this is where the comparison ends. In journalism, the huge shifts in how media is consumed and distributed have put tremendous pressure on the traditional media outlets. This pressure is being passed down to the newsroom where journalists are finding it harder and harder to earn a comfortable living in an ever shrinking media market. It makes perfect sense for the reporter at the city desk to feel threatened by the local blogger with a camera and a sense of purpose because that blogger means that the journalist can be quickly out of a job.

Astronomy, on the other hand, is funded primarily by research grants. And with the huge costs for the most advanced tools of the trade, only governments and extremely well-financed  institutions are playing in the game at this point. So there’s no reason for the professional working with the Hubble Space Telescope to fear the amateur with a 10 inch SCT in her backyard. The professional will get the grants and the amateur will enjoy the fruits of the professional’s research and may even have an opportunity to make important discoveries on her own that the professionals are precluded from.

What would make for a comparable situation in the media world would be to find that common ground and common interest that supports both sides. Perhaps when more journalists, newly freed from the newsroom and the print world, are covering their old beats for online start-ups, the reconciliation will begin.

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Enjoy!

via Bad Astronomy

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