Updated: 07/30/2013 09:10:57 AM PDT
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For The Ukiah Daily Journal
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.
--Edwin Powell Hubble
Eliza Wingate, Branch Librarian at the Ukiah Library, is happy with the turnout. The children's room is packed with folks waiting in anticipation for astrophysicist Dr. Kevin Manning's presentation, Astronomy for Everyone : Size and Scale of the Universe.
"When I was nine I saw the moon through a telescope; it shocked me; when I saw the rings of Saturn, it changed my life. I wanted to be an astronaut. Having excellent vision I figured I would be a viable candidate, but being 6' 2", too tall, knocked me out of the running. With my passion for space still intact, I attended Tufts University and received a doctorate in astrophysics. Now that I am retired I want to share what I know with others. This is my second Star Tour, cross county, promoting scientific literacy from coast to coast. I teach at libraries, senior centers, schools and colleges," says Dr. Manning.
Prior to retiring he worked as a consultant with NASA; at the Chandra Observatory; with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Wanting to communicate his love of space science and the universe, he has presented more than 211 programs starting in Long Island, his home, to more recent stops in Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Livermore and Riverside. His talks are family oriented, for all ages, covering the universe, from the very small to the very large and everything in between.
His presentation: engaging, fast-paced, highly informative and accessible from the get-go; his enthusiasm: palpable, contagious; his lecture: accompanied by a state of the art slide show depicting the wonders of our sun, solar system, Milky Way, other galaxies and the edges of the known universe.
"Growing for the past 4.6 billion years, the Big Bang Theory states the universe began as a sphere, about the size of a baseball, exploding into what today is called our observable universe. In order to view its wondrous mystery, the telescope, the primary tool of the astronomer, was developed to enhance our vision."
He takes out a simple pair of binoculars, two refractor telescopes mounted side by side, and explains that diameter of the lens determines the depth and breadth of what can be seen in the night sky. He picks up another pair, with lenses of greater diameter, to make his point. The lens of Hawaii's Keck Telescope, the largest in the world, has a diameter of 10 meters; it's the size of a house. The Thirty Meter Telescope is under development in Chile and plans for the 40-meter Extremely Large European Telescope, in Chili as well, have begun.
Dr. Manning says, "We want to see further and deeper into space, right back to the big bang itself."
So what does it mean that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second? Well, at that speed, one can circumnavigate the earth 7-1 2 times in one second and race to the moon and back in 1.3 seconds. In an entire year, one could travel just a bit under 6 trillion miles.
He explains that in the celestial sphere, the entire night sky, there are 88 constellations (the same as the number of keys on a piano) determined by an official count made in 1930 by the International Astronomical Union.
He shows an awe-inspiring movie clip of the annular solar eclipse in Australia in May of 2013. When the moon is too small to cover the sun completely, it moves in front and creates a thin ring of light around it, breathtakingly beautiful.
He talks space telescopes: the Hubble in 1990; the Compton Gamma-Ray in 1991; the Chandra X-Ray in 1999; the Spitzer Infrared in 2003. They present a varied perspective, a way to look across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio to infrared.
Magnificent shots of the sun; sunspots, giant gaseous ejections of plasma, magnetic storms, hundreds of thousands of miles high, spewing from the sun's molten surface (continuing to take your breath away); 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. A million earths would fit inside.
The aurora borealis, the entire sky ablaze with the northern lights, green, violet and orange; rippling curtains in the wind
"We have a lot in common with stars; we are born, live and die but they live a bit longer, some for trillions of years. The stars burn and glow by nuclear fusion, by hydrogen, the lightest and most abundant element, becoming fused into the heavier elements: helium, oxygen, carbon, even iron. When the hydrogen is extinguished, the core collapses; the other elements burn hotter. The star expands larger and larger eventually engulfing its closest planets. When it reaches the iron in its core, it collapses triggering a horrific catastrophe know as a super nova. The death of old stars leads to new ones. The star known as our sun is expected to have its final performance in about 5 billion years.
"Jupiter, 11 times larger than earth in diameter, with its 62 moons, is our solar system's largest planet. It takes 26 years to circle the sun. Its rings are made up of ice rocks; it has atmosphere and water; there's evidence of water on Mars and on the moon and the asteroids; water is showing up everywhere we look.
"If you follow the bottom of the bowl of the Big Dipper, it leads to Polaris, our current North Star, not the brightest star in our sky. Not even close. Sirius, the Dog Star, part of Canis Major is much brighter. Right there in the middle of Orion's sword, in the Orion Nebulae, new stars are being born as we speak. Unlike our sun, a lone star, most stars exist as binary pairs or multiple star systems. Red stars are the coolest, blue the hottest.
Pictures of nebulae, star forming regions, categorized by Charles Messier planet, diffuse, cloud Omega, Horsehead, Cat's Eye exotic in arrangement, indescribable in color. So spectacular, so magnificent, there are truly no words.
The next shots describe magnitude. Jupiter, by far the biggest planet, dwarfed by the sun; in turn, dwarfed by the stars Sirius, Pollux and Arcturus; dwarfed by Rigel, Alderaan, Betelgeuse and Antares. Next to Antares, the sun is microscopic. Then there's Vy Canis Majoris, a billion times bigger than our sun, the largest star.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, a spiral, with over 400 billion stars and 120 thousand miles across; the Andromeda System, our nearest spiral galaxy, with twice as many stars and 2 million light years away. The two are headed for a collision in 4 billion years, but not to worry, as the space between the stars is so vast, the chances of two stars colliding is negligible. Galaxies, more than 100 billion of them in the observable universe, constantly expanding, extend out 13.2 billion light years. Truly unfathomable numbers.
Outside, things are a bit more mundane until Dr. Manning brings out his eight-inch f8 Newtonian reflector telescope with a 200-millimeter aperture. The white tube is 5-1 2 feet long and he handcrafted it himself. When you look through the lens, very carefully standing right there, on the sidewalk, in front of the library you can see Saturn with its rings, as it appears to be moving across the evening sky, just a mere 900 million miles away.
Dr. Kevin Manning's website is www.lookuptothestars.
He is booking for 2014, but beyond that he is unsure.
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