5 posts tagged “astronomy”
- New airship era takes off in Tokyo
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Tuesday November 20, 2007
The Guardian
The new helium-filled Zeppelin NT is 75 metres (246ft) long and will take passengers between 300-600 metres above Tokyo at speeds of up to 50 miles an hour.
Built by the German firm Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik, the Zeppelin will offer regular weekend and holiday flights over Tokyo from this Friday, including a night flight on Christmas Day and a sunrise excursion on New Year's Day.
Tickets for the 90-minute trips, the first commercial airship flights in Japan, will cost 126,000 yen (£550) for daytime flights and 168,000 yen for those at night, says its owner, Nippon Airship.
"We will fly much lower than an airplane at a leisurely pace," said the firm's president, Hiroyuki Watanabe.
Although it is about the same length as a jumbo jet, the Zeppelin's cabin has room for just eight passengers and an attendant. Travelers who find themselves unnerved by the airship's steep ascent, powered by three 200 horsepower engines, and its ability to hover motionless above the Japanese capital's skyscrapers needn't worry: the cabin is equipped with a bathroom.
Japan Travel Bureau will organise 104 flights in Tokyo in the coming weeks and hopes to offer services in other parts of Japan in the spring, possibly to include trips over imperial burial mounds in Osaka and Buddhist temples in the ancient capital of Kyoto.
Dirigibles have been around since the end of the 19th century and were used - largely unsuccessfully - by Germany as bombers during the first world war before being put to use by the Nazi propaganda machine in the late 1930s.
Shades of Graf Zeppelin, USS Shenandoah and - oh the humanity - the Hindenburg.
By MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Twice as big as a jumbo jet and soaring twice as high, they may soon be deployed to guard Canada and the United States, scanning for intruders on the Pacific Northwest's long coastline and international border.
The U.S. North American Air Defense Command -- NORAD -- in Colorado Springs, Colo., is considering a 21st-century generation of airships to watch for attacks, just as the military blimps from Tillamook, Ore., guarded the coastline and shipping lanes during World War II.
These airships, however, would be based on "lighter-than-air principles (but) would be more analogous to low-altitude satellites," said Maj. Ed Thomas, U.S. Aerospace Command spokesman in Colorado Springs.
The 700- to 800-foot-long dirigibles of the 1930s could soar up to 15,000 feet at nearly 80 mph. Specifications for the new generation of airships remain classified, but modern military planners envision a fleet of 10 remote-control craft. The airships, packed with radar and modern communication gear, could remain aloft for months, patrolling 13 miles above the Earth's surface in the calmest part of the atmosphere.
Satellites, by contrast, are much more expensive and can orbit or be parked thousands of miles above the surface. And unlike satellites, which generally cannot be retrieved except for a special space shuttle mission, airships can land for repairs or to take on new equipment.
"We are looking, from NORAD's perspective, at being able to provide enhanced radar coverage" of the perimeter of the continent, Thomas said. Ground-based radar is limited by the Earth's curvature.
NORAD, working jointly with the Army's space and missile defense command, has solicited design concepts from Lockheed Martin and The Boeing Co. A potential Department of Defense contract looms, though neither estimates nor funding have been developed.
The aerospace industry has been talking about airships for years. In addition to defense implications, high-flying airships might be used for resource management, disaster communications and weather monitoring. A South African concern considered building some in 1997, and last January India announced plans to develop its own. Some German firms have been talking about using modern technology for lighter-than-air cargo carriers.
Lockheed already owns veteran blimp maker Goodyear Aerospace Corp. of Akron, Ohio, and has been making airships since 1929. Lockheed now produces "Aerostats," small, remote-controlled, tethered blimps that float 15,000 feet high and are used to monitor the U.S.-Mexican border. It also builds the manned blimps used as flying billboards.
- Banana blimp to hover over Texas?
In an art installation sure to launch a thousand UFO conspiracies, Montreal artist César Saez plans to send a 1,000-foot helium blimp in the shape of a banana into low Earth orbit over the Lone Star State.
If everything goes right, the fruity dirigible, known as the Geostationary Banana Over Texas, should launch in August 2008.
The astrofruit is an artistic commentary on the absurdity of American politics -- especially Texan-style kookiness, says Saez.
"I see Texas like a crossroads of important social and cultural happenings in the states and in the world," he says.
He estimates the project will cost $1 million, and so far he's raised one-eighth of that, including a $15,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Technically, Saez's "geostationary banana" is misnamed, as the blimp will neither circle the equator nor reach an altitude of 22,236 miles. Instead, it will orbit in near space, meandering the stratosphere at 100,000 to 160,000 feet above the Earth's surface.
Buoying the banana will require serious engineering mojo. Lightweight bamboo poles will form the dirigible's skeleton, which will support several polyethylene bags filled with 7 million cubic feet of helium.
A system of valves will keep the banana blimp pressurized during its ascent, while propellers on the surface will help it navigate the powerful jet stream.
As the airship rises, those narrow air currents will speed it eastward from its launch pad in northwest Mexico over to the Texan oil fields.
Once the banana hits the stratosphere, it will be kept stable by a system of wind-activated gyroscopes, each rotating on a different axis.
As the gyroscopes wobble, they'll whirl the banana in a boomeranglike trajectory across the Lone Star State. Maybe.
"It's going to be a bit random. We want the banana to steer itself," says Saez. "Like having a boat in the lake going around in circles."
Ground observers should be able to spot the airship's curved shape with the naked eye; Saez estimates the banana will appear 10 percent to 20 percent the size of the moon.
After about a month, radiation from the sun will cause the airship's outer surface to deteriorate, peeling the banana's synthetic paper skin, allowing helium to leak out and forcing the airship to descend. As the banana plummets through the atmosphere, friction will quickly incinerate the structure before it lands.
Like a Quebecois Christo, Saez specializes in outlandish art installations. His previous work includes coloring the water in the Louvre's fountains and releasing a fleet of inflated white crosses into the Montreal skies.
The Federal Aviation Administration declined to comment on Saez's banana blimp, as did the Balloon Federation of America, various aviation experts and even Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aerospace company behind SpaceShipOne.
Manny Teran, founder of aerospace design firm nearSpace Technologies and an engineering consultant on the blimp, is optimistic it'll get off the ground.
"The technology is sound," says Teran. "It's far out, but it's all possible. Technology has come a long way since the Hindenburg."
- Money and Politics in the Land of Oz
By Quentin P. Taylor
"The story of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was written solely to pleasure children of today" (Dighe 2002, 42). So wrote L. Frank Baum in the introduction to his popular children's story published in 1900. As fertile as his imagination was, Baum could hardly have conceived that his "modernized fairly tale" would attain immortality when it was adapted to the silver screen forty years later. Though not a smash hit at the time of its release, The Wizard of Oz soon captured the hearts of the movie-going public, and it has retained its grip ever since. With its stirring effects, colorful characters, and memorable music (not to mention Judy Garland's dazzling performance), the film has delighted young and old alike for three generations. Yet, as everyone knows, The Wizard of Oz is more than just another celluloid classic; it has become a permanent part of American popular culture.Here is the extraordinary story behind the extraordinary story of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'. Most of us have seen the movie version of this allegorical tale, but few of us are aware of what the various characters, places and things represented in the mind of Frank Baum, the tale's author. Professor Quentin Taylor of Rogers State University invitingly titles the piece presented below 'Money and Politics in the Land of Oz'. Though 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was written over 100 years ago, the themes will be recongizable to those with an interest in golden matters. Though gold is painted as a villain in Baum's story, it represented then many of the same things fiat money does today. Whereas gold was considered a tool of oppression by the Populists of 1900, it is considered an instrument of financial and personal freedom today. So, as you can see, we have come full circle, and gold has travelled a yellow brick road of its own. Happy reading. --Mike Kosares
Abstract: L. Frank Baum claimed to have written The Wonderful Wizard of Oz "solely to pleasure the children" of his day, but scholars have found enough parallels between Dorothy's yellow-brick odyssey and the politics of 1890s Populism to suggest otherwise. Did Baum intend to pen a subtle political satire on monetary reform or merely an entertaining fantasy?
Oz as Allegory
Is Oz, however, merely a children's story, as its author claimed? For a quarter of a century after its film debut, no one seemed to think otherwise. This view would change completely when an obscure high school teacher published an essay in American Quarterly claiming that Baum's charming tale concealed a clever allegory on the Populist movement, the agrarian revolt that swept across the Midwest in the 1890s. In an ingenuous act of imaginative scholarship, Henry M. Littlefield linked the characters and the story line of the Oz tale to the political landscape of the Mauve Decade. The discovery was little less than astonishing: Baum's children's story was in fact a full-blown "parable on populism," a "vibrant and ironic portrait" of America on the eve of the new century (Littlefield 1964, 50).
Oz: This is positively the finest exhibition ever to be shown -- well, eh...well, be that as it may, I, your Wizard, per ardua ad alta, am about to embark upon a hazardous and technically unexplainable journey into the outer stratosphere...to confer, converse, and otherwise hobnob with my brother wizards.
And I hereby decree that until what time, if any, that I return the Scarecrow, by virtue of his highly superior brains, shall rule in my stead, assisted by the Tin Man, by virtue of his magnificent heart, and the Lion, by virtue of his courage.
Obey them as you would me.
- Comets
Shigemi Numazawa
Of interest here is the similarity of events related to Dec. 10th and our current situation. It was Dec. 10th 1684 when Edmund Halley presented Issac Newton's deviation from Keplar's laws of gravity in the form of the De motu corporum in gyrum (Latin: "On the motion of bodies in an orbit") to The Royal Society. In 1692, Halley also presented to the Royal Society...except this time it was about his theories on Hollow Earth...
(Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society of London), Halley put forth the idea of a hollow Earth consisting of a shell about 500 miles (800 km) thick, two inner concentric shells and an innermost core, about the diameters of the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury. Atmospheres separate these shells, and each shell has its own magnetic poles. The spheres rotate at different speeds. Halley proposed this scheme in order to explain anomalous compass readings. He envisaged the atmosphere inside as luminous (and possibly inhabited) and speculated that escaping gas caused the Aurora Borealis.[2]
Then, in 1986 Comet Halley (so named for Edmund Halley for his prediction of the comets return) returns...NASA hoped to capture low altitude photos of the comet using the space shuttle. Tragedy ensues however when on January 28th STS-51-L "Challenger" explodes 72 seconds after take-off. [see also Comet Hale-Bopp] On Dec. 10th 1996, Halley's Comet is photographed by the Giotto spacecraft showing it's nucleus albeit nothing nearly as amazing as our recent heavenly flare-up of Comet Holmes (Triple H).
- Led Zeppelin reunion postponed due to finger injury
Here is the "Official" statement from http://www.ledzeppelin.com/
November 1, 2007Led Zeppelin Guitarist Jimmy Page Fractures Finger
The Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert, originally scheduled for Monday, November 26th and featuring Led Zeppelin, Bill Wyman and the Rhythm Kings, Paul Rogers, Paolo Nutini, and Foreigner has been postponed until December 10th due to Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page fracturing his finger.
The injury to Page’s finger, which was sustained this past weekend, will not allow him to play guitar for 3 weeks.
The specialist treating Mr. Page said, “I have examined the fracture to Mr. Page’s finger, and it is my opinion that with proper rest and treatment, he will be ready to resume rehearsing in three weeks time, and thus able to perform on December 10.”
Jimmy Page added, “I am disappointed that we are forced to postpone the concert by two weeks. However, Led Zeppelin have always set very high standards for ourselves, and we feel that this postponement will enable my injury to properly heal, and permit us to perform at the level that both the band and our fans have always been accustomed to.”
~.~
Galileo's Middle Finger
From Curious Expeditions:
It is a remarkable bit of irony, that finger. Venerated, kept in reliquary, subjected to the same treatment as a Saint. But this finger belonged to no Saint. It is the long bony finger of an enemy of the church, a heretic. A man so dangerous to the religious institution he was made a prisoner in his own home. It sits in a small glass egg atop an inscribed marble base in the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, or the History of Science Museum in Florence, Italy. … As with a fine wine, it took some years for Galileo’s finger to age into something worth snapping off his skeletal hand. The finger was removed by one Anton Francesco Gori on March 12, 1737, 95 years after Galileo’s death. Passed around for a couple hundred years it finally came to rest in the Florence History of Science Museum. Today is sits among lodestones and telescopes, the only human fragment in a museum devoted entirely to scientific instruments. It is hard to know how Galileo would have felt about the final resting place of his finger. Whether the finger points upwards to the sky, where Galileo glimpsed the glory of the universe and saw God in mathematics, or if it sits eternally defiant to the church that condemned him, is for the viewer to decide.
Holmes and Dish: Mila
Image via hubblesite
via Centripetal Notion
SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist
posted: 09 November 2007
06:25 am ET
We're now coming into the home stretch of the last good apparition of Mars until 2016. Now blazing in the late-evening east-northeast sky like an eye-catching yellowish-orange "star," Mars is less than six weeks away from its closest approach to Earth during this apparition.
At the beginning of the year, the red planet was 221 million miles (356 million kilometers) from Earth. This week, it will be 63 million miles (102 million kilometers) away and it now shines some 10 times brighter than it did on New Year's Day.
Since Jan. 1, Mars has progressed more than halfway around our sky and now is on an easterly course through the background stars of the Zodiac. It currently resides smack in the middle of the constellation of Gemini, the Twins.
But on Thursday, Nov. 15, that steady eastward course is going to come to a stop.
Wandering 'star'
Actually, for the past few weeks, Mars has appeared to slow in its eastward trajectory as seen from Earth. It seems to waver, as if it had become uncertain. Finally, on Nov. 15, it will pause and come to a halt.
Then, for about the next 11 weeks, the "wandering star," as ancients called it, will reverse its course in the heavens and move backward against the star background – toward the West. Then, on Jan. 30, 2008, it will pause again, before resuming its normal eastward direction.
All the planets exhibit this "retrograde motion" at one time or another. But for the longest time, the ancient astronomers were unable to come up with a satisfactory explanation for it. For one thing, while behaving in this strange manner, Mars will also appear to deviate somewhat from its normal course; the retrograde motion will appear to bring it a little above its regular orbital track. In other words, for those of us watching from Earth, Mars will appear to travel in a loop.
Yet, the Greeks staunchly believed that the sun, moon and planets all moved around the Earth in perfect circles. They had a great difficulty in representing and calculating this mysterious loop and for a long time they had no adequate explanation for it.
The Greeks finally explained away this anomaly by assuming that the planets moved around the Earth in smaller "epicycles" – that is, a small circle whose center moves along its main orbital circle around Earth, resulting in complex, almost coil-like curves. Unfortunately, the actual observations of the planets never seemed to fit this strange orbital mechanism, ultimately making the Greeks explanation quite useless.
The truth emerges
It was not until the year 1543 when the great Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) had his lifelong work "De revolutionibus" published, that the secret of the odd retrograde loops were finally revealed. By demoting the Earth from its hallowed position at the center of the solar system and replacing it with the Sun, he was able to triumphantly explain the riddle of the apparent "backwards motion effect" of the planets.
In fact, it's the same effect obtained when passing another car on a highway: Both cars are going in the same direction, but one is moving more slowly. As they pass, the slower car will appear to be moving backward in relation to the faster one.
Copernicus simply applied the same effect to the planets. In the present situation, both Earth and Mars are moving in the same direction around the Sun, but the slower one, Mars, appears to move backwards compared to the faster one, Earth.
Just an illusion...[more]
via Space
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