Cumberland-Times Sky Columns
June 2006

June 4: WHAT'S UP IN JUNE?
June 11: THE SUN'S FAMILY
June 18: GOVERNMENT ENERGY REPORTS
June 25: FSU's EXPLORITARIUM & PENDULUM

June 4: WHAT'S UP IN JUNE?

If the next few nights are clear, check out the evening moon. Each night, the moon appears a little wider and farther to the left (of where it was the previous night at the same time). The slow change in the moon's lighted shape is due to our companion moving around us. From night to night, the moon moves about 55,000 miles to the East along its orbit. Along the moon's left edge, the sun is rising. Until next Sunday, we will see an increasing portion of the moon's sunlit half; then next Sunday moon will be full, appearing in between the Scorpion and the Teapot (Sagittarius). In the nights following full, the moon will appear to shrink; the sun begins to set on the moon's right edge. The moon will be rising later and later each evening, until it no longer rises before midnight. After a few days hidden in the sun's glare around June 25, the moon will reappear in the last few days of June as a slender crescent low in the western twilight.

After the moon, the next brightest thing you will notice in this month's evening sky is a very bright point of light. Unlike the stars, this object shines with a steady, untwinkling light. In contrast to the shifting moon, this object appears in nearly the same position as darkness falls. This is the giant planet Jupiter, over 11 times as wide across as the Earth. Jupiter is more than five times as far from the sun as the Earth but it shines brightly because of its highly reflective clouds of ammonia. Unlike the moon, Jupiter through a telescope always appears nearly full. During the evening, Jupiter drifts from the southeast to the south due to the rotation of the Earth. (This motion is also shared by the sun (during the day), the moon (whenever it is visible) and the other planets and night stars.

The best star group to view on June evenings is the Big Dipper, near the top of the sky. If you have no idea of your directions, face Jupiter and turn so that Jupiter is in back of you. Then look high for an upside down Dipper or Ladle of 7 moderately bright stars. The two stars farthest to the left point down and right to the North Star, a modest star about half way up in the sky. The Earth's North Pole is nearly aimed at the star; so as the Earth turns, it seems as if all sky bodies (sun, moon, planets and other stars) are orbiting the North Star. The height of the North Star tells us where we are in the Northern Hemisphere. We are roughly halfway between the North Pole and the Equator; so the North Star appears about halfway up in our northern sky.

June 11: THE SUN'S FAMILY

Our solar system has been called the sun's family, the sun and all the bodies that orbit our home star. The sun contains over 99.8% of all the matter in our solar system so its gravity keeps all the other bodies moving around it. After the sun, the most important bodies in the solar system are the planetary bodies. There are nine official planets, large bodies that have their own paths around the sun. The ancients knew of five planets or wanderers, point like objects that appeared to drift along the zodiac (a zone of the sky where there are 12 well known star groups such as Leo, Taurus, etc.) During the 1600's, there was a big upheaval in human thought as it was realized that the Earth was just another planet. The development of gravitational calculations and telescopes led to the discovery of 3 more planets (a new planet in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries). Our 21st century has seen the discovery of several Pluto like objects even farther from the sun. (One of them, called Xena is bigger than Pluto and takes twice as long to orbit the sun.)

The moons of the planets are somewhat smaller bodies that orbit their planets as the planets travel about the sun. Over 130 moons have been discovered, the great majority orbiting the four giant planets (Jupiter has 61 known moons!) There are 7 major moons comparable to our moon (at least 2000 miles across) with Jupiter having 4 of these. The majority of these moons are likely captured asteroids with gravity so weak that they resemble potatoes with three different dimensions.(Above a certain size, gravity compacts bodies into spheres.)

Yet smaller than the larger moons of the planets are the asteroids, most of which lie in the asteroid belt between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter. About a thousand asteroids at least a mile wide cross the Earth's orbit and will likely collide with the Earth over the next few billion years. We can be thankful for a Cumberland sized asteroid that collided with the Earth 65 milion years ago that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The most picturesque objects that orbit the sun are the comets. The recent comet impact last July 4th indicated that comets are likely half ice and half dust; previously called "dirty icebergs", comets are now called "flying mudballs". Comets that come into our vicinity of our solar system are typically several miles across. But the vast majority of comets are in two comet regions - the Kuiper belt (shaped like a doughnut) beyond the orbit of Neptune and the much larger Oort Cloud (shaped like a hollowed out pumpkin). There are likely hundreds of billions of comets in our solar system, of which only a very tiny portion are observed each year. About once a decade a bright comet shines in our skies and is easily visible to the eye. (The last such bright comet was Comet Hale-Bopp in the spring of 1997.)

June 18: GOVERNMENT ENERGY REPORTS - TWO GOVERNMENT REPORTS

In early May, I was watching C-SPAN and I was delighted to see our House Representative Roscoe Bartlett (6th District - Maryland) give an excellent talk on Energy. Representative Bartlett has a Ph.D. in Biology and has taught at the University of Maryland. Barlett's talk was given late in the evening of May 2nd and can be downloaded and printed from his website www.bartlett.house.gov . The following is an overview of Representative Bartlett's main points.

Dr. Bartlett based his talk on two hard hitting but unpublicized government studies - The Department of Energy's Hirsch report on "Peaking of World Oil Production" and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' "Energy Trends and their Implications". Both of these reports can also be downloaded from Bartlett's website.

The Hirsch report states that as the peak in world oil production approaches, there will be enormous volatility in prices with huge economic, social and political costs in the trillions of dollars. There are some steps that could be taken to reduce these impacts, provided we start about a decade prior to the peak. (The best analyses of peak oil date put it from 5 to 15 years hence, although some experts feel that is has already past, and will not be apparent until a few years from now.) One problem is that the average heavy truck is on the road for decades; research is needed to develop alternative engines and vehicles to run on non-petroleum fuels. If these trucks were replaced over the next ten years (a very big 'if'),we could continue to provide our businesses with products for sale to consumers (me and you). This change in fuels will be much quicker than any changeover in fuels in the past that were spread out over a number of decades (Example, wood to coal in 2nd half of 19th century and coal to petroleum in the 1st half of the 20th century).

The world's largest supplier of petroleum, Saudi Arabia has been unable to increase its production of oil since April 2003. The United State's petroleum production peaked in 1970; we now produce only half as much petroleum presently. In fact 33 of the top 48 oil producing countries have reached a peak in their oil production.

Natural gas, a cleaner energy source peaked in domestic production in 1973. Our current U.S. reserves for natural gas will last 8.4 years at current consumption rates. Our current U.S. reserves for petroleum will last 3.4 years at current consumption rates. (This is why we import about 65% of the petroleum we use.) Discoveries of new petroleum in the United States has dropped to very low levels in contrast to the discovery rates in the 40's through 70's.

70% of the petroleum consumed in this country is for transportation (cars, SUV's, trucks, very expensive recreational vehicles for cheap vacations, motorcycles, etc.)

The U.S. has more oil wells than all the rest of the world combined with over 1/2 million wells in contrast to 400 in Saudi Arabia and 300 in Iraq. All those U.S. oil wells for only 2% of the world's oil reserves! The amount of petroleum in our Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWAR) will provide about 6 months of our needs; it will take a number of years to extract this oil.

That the United States with 2% of the world's petroleum reserves and less than 5% of the world's population continues to consume 25% of the world's petroleum (of which 2/3rds is imported) poses a great security risk to our country's welfare.

We must be aware of the needs of the People's Republic of China which has been scouring the world for oil, signing agreements with Canada, South America and the Middle East. Last year, China launched 14 new submarines in contrast to our Navy's one new submarine.

Nuclear fission energy is not the answer as there remain about only 20 years of high grade uranium ore left.

The U.S. has centuries of coal reserves but coal burning produces the most carbon dioxide of any fossil fuel. And the consequent air pollution from burning many types of coal will restict us to the better grades of U.S. coal, leaving us with only 85 years of reserves.

Making our new liquid fuels from crops poses just one problem, much of the fertilizer used is derived from petroleum!

My conclusion (Dr. Doyle) is that there are just three good options for our energy future. These are photo-voltaic cells (now expensive that allow us to turn sunlight into electricity), wind turbines (to provide electricity and generate hydrogen for our future fuel cell cars) and rapidly growing trees on plantations (for space heating whose costs compare with today's natural gas).

June 25: FSU's EXPLORITARIUM & PENDULUM

Our Compton Science Center is offering a new facility for the schools and public - an Exploratorium, where students can view some of Cavallero collection of wild animals and a number of hands on science displays. Dr. Joseph Cavallero of Richmond donated his collection of wild animals gathered on hunting trips to the Rocky Mountains (both U.S. and Canada), Africa and Asia. The hands on displays will be increased in the coming school year. The planner for our Exploratorium is Greg Andorfer, former Director of the Maryland Academy of Sciences in Baltimore. Greg was the producer of Cosmos, Carl Sagan's award wining television series on the history of science and the universe. This fall, the Exploratorium will be available for school tours with related short presentations at the Frostburg State Planetarium in Tawes Hall.

Another dramatic display is the Foucault Pendulum in Compton's central lobby where every 7 seconds a large brass weight swings back and forth in a central enclosure. After about a half hour, the swing plane will seem to have moved to the left of where it previously swung, if one marked the previous near point on the brass rail with a piece of chalk. While it seems that the pendulum swing plane has changed, it's actually the Earth turning underneath the pendulum. For the pendulum's plane stays fixed in space while the Earth spins at about 15 degrees an hour towards the East (15 degrees = 360 degrees/24 hours). From high over the North Pole, the Earth's rotation would appear counter clockwise. So any pendulum swing would appear to turn clockwise. This apparent turning of the Pendulum swing plane would be best observed at the Poles where the swing plane would rotate through 360 degrees every 24 hours. But as one moves away from the poles, the period of rotation of the pendulum plane increases to 24 hours divided by the sine of the latitude. Frostburg is about latitude 39.9 degrees North so the period of the pendulum to rotate 360 degrees = 37.4 hours. In a half hour, the pendulum plane will shift 360 degrees/37.4 hours x 0.5 hours or about 4.8 degrees. Since the enclosure has a radius of 1.5 meters, this will be a shift of about 12.6 centimeters or 5 inches.