Pluto Rant

People seem to whine a lot about Pluto not being a "planet" anymore, since it was entitled a "dwarf planet". Truth be told, I was a little bit miffed myself, but I'm pretty sure I was six at the time.... Maybe twelve. I don't really remember. I do remember wondering what they were going to do with the planet mnemonic, because it used to be "My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" and now it's... "My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine." Nine whats? I don't know. I'm not in fifth grade anymore. People don't give you mnemonics for the order of the planets when you're in college.

The point is, it has since been explained to me why Pluto is no longer considered a planet, and it makes a great deal of sense. After all, would you rather memorize eight planets? Or would you rather include Pluto in the definition of a "planet," and then memorize thirteen hundred planets? I'd prefer the eight, thanks.

For the record, I believe the definition of a planet is that it must be large enough to be (roughly) spherical, that is in direct orbit around the sun (so that the moon--which is, coincidentally, larger than Pluto--doesn't count) and large enough to have cleared its own orbit. There are only eight objects in our solar system that fit this definition. If you count Pluto (which is large enough to be roughly spherical, but not large enough to have cleared its orbit of other orbiting bodies), then you also have to include a slew of other orbiting objects... of which Pluto is not, in fact, the largest.

Also, another thing people like to neglect when they're getting butt-hurt over Pluto, is that Pluto is a rock. Pluto does not have feelings. Pluto has no sentience, and is not upset that it is not considered a planet. Why do we get so sentimental about inanimate objects, sometimes?

What are you even doing out there, Pluto?

Semi-Relevant: WTF are Those Red Giants Doing up There?

When one looks at an HR diagram (ie, a Color-Magnitude diagram), one may wonder what those stars are doing, hanging out up above the general trend. Well, I did, anyway. Not right away, mind you, it took at least three years for me to wonder this, between the first time I saw this diagram and the first time I wondered what they were doing all the way up there. It turns out it's not really just the red giants that are doing weird things, and that there are a couple separate groups of stars that don't fall onto the main sequence.

In general, the full diagram would look something like this:

So, the answer to my above question is, as I understand it, that the main sequence actually represents the lifetime of a star. Depending on the star, it may break off and drift up into the realm of the red giants later on in it's life (I think around 10 billion years, ish?). If it's really massive it might not go down the main sequence at all, instead heading straight over to the supergiants. After that, more complicated things happen (ie, it could supernova, if it is a large enough star, and subsequently form a white dwarf...). So, as far as I can gather, the reason there are subsets in addition to the main sequence is that stars change as they age, and different stars age differently.

References:

NASA: Chandra X-Ray Observatory

Astrology

There's a certain amount of misunderstanding associated with astrology versus astronomy, and the "signs of the zodiac." It's a little bit annoying, truth be told, so I guess I'll rant about astrology for a little bit.

Astrology, according to Merriam-Webster, is "the divination of the supposed influences of the stars and planets on human affairs and terrestrial events by their positions and aspects." Astronomy, meanwhile, is science. People seem to get a little bit confused about what the zodiac actually are (is? I think zodiac is plural. But if so, I'm not sure what the singular form is. Maybe it is singular). The zodiac are actually just the regions of the sky where the sun passes throughout the year.

At some point in our history, people decided it would be convenient to name regions of the sky, so that we could point out things more easily. This makes a great deal of sense. It's rather similar to dividing the US into states, in some respects (except that constellations don't argue with each other about whether two stars can marry each other). At this point in time that is all the constellations are. They are chunks of they sky that we have labelled with ancient greek names, so that we can point things out more easily.

Have you ever actually looked at the so-called symbols in the sky? I'm honestly not sure how someone looked at Ursa Major and thought "that looks just like a bear." And Leo honestly looks rather more like the Lochness Monster than a lion, to me. Here's the thing: the stars that make up these constellations are not connected in any way. They are simply clusters of stars, which appear to be close together when viewed from earth. They're not related, they're not close together, they didn't form all at once, they're not magical, and they definitely do not predict the future. Here's what they actually do: they burn.

Why is it that we feel that stars themselves are so boring that we need to force them into animal shapes and give them cute little names and pretend they predict the future? Isn't it enough that each of those stars is farther away than we can even conceive, that they're burning off hundreds of thousands of tons of hydrogen every day, and that they still have enough mass to hold entire systems of planets in place?

References:
Beau Peep Comics by Roger Kettle and Andrew Christine

What DO Astronomers Do?

Astronomy. Astronomers probably do astronomy.

This prompt is a little bit open-ended. What do astronomers do on a day-to-day basis? Well, that depends on the astronomer. A lot of them teach at universities, along with the rest of the physics research community (I say 'rest of' at the risk of lumping astronomy in with physics) as universities are a convenient place to get funding for research. As such, on a day-to-day basis, I imagine they do a great deal of writing on chalkboards, and, depending on the school and the class, grading exams / homework / blogs, lecturing, creating lesson plans, etc. Then there's, of course, the time they need to spend on helping students along (from answering questions on coursework to mentoring to writing letters of recommendation).

On the research side there's likely a great deal of writing proposals (in fact, probably a great deal more than anyone would really like), so that they can have funding and continue doing research. Once funded, they get to (hopefully) collect data. Considering that data needs to come from one of the telescopes either here or in space, any specific data they want to collect requires a request for time at a telescope. As I understand it, the telescopes are generally set up such that any researcher can write a research proposal and ask for use of the telescope. When I say 'use,' I mostly mean that someone (most likely not the researcher him or herself) punches in some numbers, and the telescope moves to take pictures of the area of the sky that said researcher wants to look at.

So, anyway, once they've gotten their data they get to analyze it (again, like the 'rest of' the physics researchers). The analysis depends on the data, but it doubtless includes a lot of computer programming, and sitting and waiting, and possibly a good deal of looking at photographs of stars / galaxies / nebulae... etc.... It really depends on what they have and what they're going to do with it.

Then they get to write another paper. Then they get to submit that for publication, which seems to take months, because it includes peer reviews, and revisions, and more reviews, and possibly all-out rejection and complete re-writes and so on. Then they get published (hopefully), and do it all again! (Or continue working on the same thing...) These steps can, of course, be (and almost always are) taken within a group of astronomers.

So, in conclusion, they do very much the same thing as the rest of the people in the world: they eat, they sleep, they go to work, they come home, they bring work home with them, they work more, and then they drink coffee because they forgot to sleep.

References:
Image by Myle Pinkey

The Lord of Mordor Sees All

This is rather old (circa 2005), but I stumbled across it and thought it was neat / amusing. The image above is from the Hubble Space Telescope of Fomalhaut, which is a star in Pisces Australis (about 25 light years away). The rings / Sauron's Eye is actually dust around the star. The dust around the star is thought to be maintained by collisions between comets, etc., orbiting Fomalhaut.

Another interesting thing about Fomalhaut is that it is only about 1/20 the age of our sun, and might provide us a sneak-peak of what our own sun was like millions of years ago. Fomalhaut is also unique in that Fomalhaut b (astronomers are so creative with their names) is orbiting around it. Fomalhaut b is the first exoplanet to be photographed in the visible light region and is estimated to be about three times the mass of Jupiter.


References:
Image from Hubble Space Telescope / NASA (public domain)
Semeniuk, Ivan. "Hubble Spies Lord of the Stellar Rings." New Scientist. N.p., 2005. Web. 09 Jan. 2013.
"Fomalhaut." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 01 Sept. 2013. Web. 09 Jan. 2013.