Last year, the brightest object ever seen in the universe was detected. This was a gamma-ray burst (or GRB, in astronomers’ usual lingo) 7.5 billion light-years away, which means that the light we saw was emitted 7.5 billion years ago, more than half of the universe’s current age of 13.7 billion years.

Last week, the orbiting Swift Observatory topped that discovery with the detection of a gamma-ray burst that is 13 billion light-years away!  The source of the burst is likely a supernova, the explosion of a star much more massive than our Sun.  Known as Population III stars, these were the earliest stars to form in our universe, and produced the seeds of later star formation, generating chemical elements like iron, calcium, oxygen, and so forth—that are essential for life on Earth.  So as far removed from daily life as this gamma-ray burst might seem, it is because such huge, early stars existed and exploded in such a violent way that we are here today.

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The M. D. Anderson Planetarium was mentioned in today’s Jackson Sun as a good, inexpensive option for family entertainment:
http://www.jacksonsun.com/article/20090421/LIFESTYLE/904210301/1024

As mentioned in the article, we have two more public nights for this season:

• May 4, 2009 at 7:30 PM:  Oasis in Space
• May 18, 2009 at 7:30 PM:  “Black Holes:  The Other Side of Infinity”

Admission is $5 per adult, $3 per child under 18, and $10 for a family of 3 or more. Lambuth students, faculty, and staff are admitted free with their ID.  For school, church, scout, or other groups, please see our school/group page.

I am also still gathering names for a Jackson Astronomy Club.  (For those of you who have sent me messages already, I will be getting back to you soon!)  If you are interested, please send me an e-mail at francis@lambuth.edu.  For more information, see my earlier post.

Also, if you’re on Facebook, we have a page and a group. Please feel free to join and/or drop me a line through that medium if you’d like.

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Since becoming director of the planetarium in 2007, I have met a lot of people who are amateur astronomers in Jackson and the surrounding area. However, there doesn’t seem to be an astronomy club in town!

So, I am trying to gauge interest in an astronomy club. If you are interested, please send me an e-mail at francis@lambuth.edu.  We’re going to try to have an organizational meeting sometime in the next few weeks, but here are my ideas:

• The primary purpose is for all of you to connect with each other.  It’s your club, not mine, although I will provide whatever help and resources I can, not least of which is our planetarium facility for meetings and activities.
• One past practice that we have discontinued is the observations after regular planetarium programs.  The major reason for that is that the roof of Hyde Hall is not really a safe location.  However, I would like to restart that activity, and I think members of the community could assist me a lot by helping set up telescopes and showing non-astronomers how to use them.  As a bonus, you would have access to our nice telescopes!
• And of course there could be outings to regional museums, other planetaria, group meetings with other clubs in the area, and far more than I can think of right now.

So, I look forward to hearing from you!

P.S. Also, if you’re on Facebook, we have a page and a group. Please feel free to join and/or drop me a line through that medium if you’d like.

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These are exciting days at the M.D. Anderson Planetarium:

• We have expanded our web presence by adding a page on Facebook.  We will post all our events there, host discussions, and talk about what you as the public would like to see at our planetarium.  Become a fan today!
• On March 2 and April 6, we debut the new program Oasis in Space.  This program explores our Solar System and beyond, in search of water and habitable Earth-like planets.
  
• On March 16 and April 20, we will debut Astronaut, narrated by Ewan MacGregor. What does it take to become an astronaut? This program will tell you!
  

All programs begin at 7:30 PM. Admission is $5 per adult, $3 per child under 18, and $10 for a family of 3 or more. Lambuth students, faculty, and staff are admitted free with their ID.

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On February 9, 2008, the M. D. Anderson Planetarium reopened after a major upgrade.  Our grand reopening celebration was shared by over 300 people, who watched a special planetarium presentation, a chemistry magic show, various programs in the library, and the keynote address by Lawrence Krauss, well-known author and professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University.  In the year that followed, we have had more than 1,000 people coming to our programs, through school, church, and family groups, as well as individuals.  Thank you all for helping make this such a successful year!

In honor of our anniversary, we are announcing two new programs and a special event:

• Special Presentation:  What is Life? In honor of the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, the Lambuth Biology Department and Planetarium team up to explore life in all its forms on Earth, and what they can tell us about the possibility of life on other worlds.  (This one-time presentation will happen Monday, February 16.)
• Oasis in Space: Life on Earth, throughout its variety, depends on liquid water for existence.  This program takes a tour through our Solar System and beyond, to search for places where liquid water can exist.  (Shows on March 2, April 6, and May 4.)
  
• Astronaut:  What does it take to get a person into space?  What demands are required for a person to become an astronaut?  Narrated by Ewan MacGregor, this program demonstrates the challenges someone must overcome to travel beyond the shelter of Earth’s atmosphere.  (Shows on March 16 and April 20.)

All programs begin at 7:30 PM.  Admission is  $5 per adult, $3 per child under 18, and $10 for a family of 3 or more.  Lambuth students, staff, and faculty are admitted free with ID.

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The M. D. Anderson Planetarium welcomes you to the Winter/Spring 2009 Season!  We will be introducing a new show this season (which I am still in the process of selecting), as well as bringing back our most exciting program, “Black Holes:  The Other Side of Infinity” on this coming Monday, January 12.

Winter/Spring 2009 Schedule

• January 12, 2009 at 7:30 PM:  “Black Holes:  The Other Side of Infinity”
• January 26, 2009 at 7:30 PM:  “Hubble Vision 2″
• February 2, 2009 at 7:30 PM:  “Black Holes:  The Other Side of Infinity”
• February 16, 2009:  Show to be determined
• March 2, 2009 at 7:30 PM:  “Black Holes:  The Other Side of Infinity”
• March 16, 2009:  Show to be determined
• April 6, 2009 at 7:30 PM:  “Black Holes:  The Other Side of Infinity”
• April 20, 2009:  Show to be determined
• May 4, 2009: Show to be determined
• May 18, 2009:  Show to be determined

Note:  for January, we are breaking the usual “first and third Mondays” pattern, due to Lambuth’s winter break and Martin Luther King Day.

Admission is $5 per adult, $3 per child under 18, and $10 for a family of 3 or more. Lambuth students, faculty, and staff are admitted free with their ID. Please write or call 731-425-3283 to inquire about group rates.

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I have just added a new page, Astronomy Links, which is designed to provide many different sources of information
about various areas of astronomy. I’m sure I have missed many useful
resources, so I’ll be updating this page in the future. In the
meantime, please visit, enjoy, and send comments!

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Tonight, we present…

Hubble Vision 2

An exploration of the ways in which the Hubble Space Telescope has helped us understand our universe. Lots of truly beautiful pictures!

The show begins at 7:30 PM. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for children, and $10 for families of 3 or more people. Lambuth students, faculty, and staff are admitted free with identification.

I am late in posting this announcement because we have recently upgraded the site! Please keep an eye on this space for new content over the next few weeks.

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Please pardon the long title, and the slight departure in subject matter.  As always, what I write here is my own, and does not reflect the policies or opinions of Lambuth University, my employer.

I am somewhat hesitant to publish this on the planetarium website, since it could be construed as unduly political, and whatever I say will be viewed through the lens of each reader’s political opinions.  However, as a planetarium director and a strong believer in science education for the general public, I find it hard to let Senator John McCain’s comments about “overhead projectors” slide.

During the second and third presidential debates, Senator McCain used the Adler Planetarium in Chicago as an example of government waste.  He derided the $3 million upgrade in their nearly 40-year-old equipment as replacing an “overhead projector”, denigrating and belittling the project.  The Adler Planetarium is the oldest planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, and receives about a half-million visitors each year, about 40% of whom are children.  Many of the visitors come from the Chicago metropolitan area, which like most urban areas in the country (including Jackson) is exceedingly light-polluted.  This means that many of the visitors are unable to see more than a handful of the brightest stars—even on a clear night—due to the excessive amount of artificial lights.

The M. D. Anderson Planetarium is a much smaller facility in all respects:  we have a smaller potential audience, a smaller facility, and a much smaller staff (to wit, one part-time employee who happens to be me).  However, we also recently replaced our old “overhead projector”, which was only two years older than the current projector at the Adler, with a new digital projector.  This was a major undertaking that cost us well over $20,000, required extensive rewiring, and the development of all new programming.  I can only imagine what it must cost to run a planetarium as large as the Adler, in terms of both money and energy.

Continue Reading »

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Earth obviously has life.  But, if we were looking at the Earth from outside the Solar System, could we detect it with current technology?  Likewise, if there is life on Mars, or Titan, or Enceladus, or wherever, is our equipment good enough to find it?

A recent article on Astronomy.com discusses using the Venus Express probe to study Earth. Since Venus Express is orbiting Venus, Earth appears in its instruments as a featureless dot, but the probe can try to identify the chemicals on Earth indicating life’s presence. This is similar to earlier missions to the Atacama Desert in Chile, which attempted to find microbes in the soil using technology similar to that of the Mars Rovers.

You might think that finding life is pretty easy, but experiments such as these show it isn’t quite so simple. Robotic probes tend to look for chemical tracers, since those are easy things to look for. However, life itself is more than just its chemicals, so it remains to be seen if missions like the Phoenix Mars lander will find life. In other words, if life exists on Mars, will the instruments on Phoenix be good enough to find it?

Speaking of Mars, on Monday, October 20, we present a revised and improved version of Water on Mars, Life on Mars.  On July 31, 2008, the Phoenix Mars Mission team announced the first direct evidence for water on the desert planet Mars. In this special presentation, we will take a look at Mars, what we know about it, and what we hope to learn in the future. We will see

• how Mars is similar to Earth, and how it is very different;
• why water is so important to Earth, and what it might mean for Mars;
• what finding water on Mars means about the possibility of life on Mars;
• and other exciting topics!

I hope you can join us on October 20 at 7:30 PM.  As always, admission is $5 per adult, $3 per child under 18, and $10 for a family of 3 or more. Lambuth students, faculty, and staff are admitted free with their ID.

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