Category Archives: astronomy

Fedcon #30, June 2022.

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I went to this year’s Fedcon. Starting with visiting a few friends in The Netherlands on the way, I arrived at the convention hotel on Thursday afternoon.

None of the group I know very well had arrived yet, so after checking in – this time it went smoothly – I took a bit of rest in the room.

Early evening Dutch friends Annette and Detlev had arrived, and during the evening a few more of the old friends arrived A newcomer to the group, Wolfgang, was also a pleasure to get to know. In a sense the convention had already started.

Friday the official part of the convention started, with panels, Q&As photo-ops and a lot of chats. My friend Melanie, known to me from two Worldcons, also arrived and we went to a few panels together, and were generally hanging out often.

Friday was good fun I had 3 nice encounters.
First of all I got a talk with a physicist who is also writing science fiction on the space travel subject, with the more plausible physics involved. Talked for about half an hour.
Then, at the opening ceremony the ESA people had a surprise for us: They told that a member of the team making presentations could not come due to travel difficulties. We received a video message with her excuse, and it was a good one: She was on the ISS – travel difficulties, indeed 😉
I can now rightfully claim to have received a message from space 😉

After the opening I walked a bit outside, and got to have a short (small talk) with one of the guest actors. A great time was had.
Also, I got to meet a younger fan coming from Florida, and working in Switzerland, dressed up as Spock. A well done costume.

Finally there was a musical show. FEDCON RATPACK, with Vaughn Armstrong, Casey Biggs, Max Grodenchik and Nana Visitor singing and playing nerdy songs played to older music. They really enjoyed doing this, and I enjoyed them quite a bit.

Saturday:
This was (of course) the busy day of the con.
Presentation on new tech visions at Star Trek.
Autograph session in the heat. Got my fav photo of Jonathan Frakes signed, and he seemed to like it.
Steve Dix (Englishman living in Germany): Nerd comedy show, quite amusing.
ESA (space agency): Ask the crew (for their different missions) yes, Q&A. They are very good and it looks like they enjoy coming to Fedcon. Also they had a stand where we could find some (free) stuff, posters, stickers, and a tote bag with pictures of a lot of their space crafts.
Q&A with the 9th Doctor, Christopher Eccleston was very good. Better than I had anticipated
ESA made presentation on the James Webb telescope. A fantastic new instrument that is now starting its work on really deep space imaging in the near infrared spectrum.
Meeting more fans, of course.
It comes through very clearly that the ESA people are as happy coming to the con as we are seeing them here year after year.

Sunday:
This was a more quiet day with some autographs, and a few panels.
The “breakfast panel” with Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes was real good fun.

Suddenly the Fedcon is over. Spent all of Sunday evening chatting with other fans.

Excellent convention …

Monday it was time to go home, and I managed to arrive at my house just before midnight.

 

Con Report Fantasticon 2018 in Copenhagen

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My Dutch friend Jarsto and I had decided to go to the Fantasticon, so we both had week end tickets, and went to register Friday evening.
The theme for this years Fantasticon was Steam Punk, and it was quite fun to see people dressing up.
It was good to meet many old scifi friends, and get to meet a few new ones.

Saturday :
I went to the con, arriving about 1230.
More chatting with other fans, and then attending two program points :
Author interview with Lavie Tidhar, who was quite interesting and amusing to listen to. I just might find some of his books to read.
The second was Edmund Schluessel who talked a bit about cosmology, and told the story of two Danish astronomers :
Tycho Brahe who made as accurate measurements of the stars and planet’s positions and movements as is possible without telescopes. Yes, he did that before the invention of telescopes. He provided a massive amont of data, but did not d9o too much with it, but Johannes Kepler could use the data to form his theory and formulas for the movements of tha planets.
Then the talk went into measring the speed of light. Old measurements made with distances on Earth yielded no measurable delay, and light speed was deemed to be infinite, or in any case, not measurable. That was about to change.
Ole Römer who did use a telescope, among others to watch the moons of Jupiter. He noticed a discrepancy in the timing of eclipses of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, and by seeing the difference in timing when Jupiter was near conjunction with the sun, and in opposition to the sun, he measured the offset in timing and arrived at the conclusion that light does indeed have a finite speed. His result, made with the instrumentation and math of 1676.
He arrived at a speed of 200 000km/sec, which is excellent, considering the instuments used, and within a margin of about 30%.
I live a few km from the remains of Römer’s old observatory, and the Kroppedal museum nearby with some of the instruments used in the observatory, and asked if he knew about it. He did not, and I offered to bring him there for a visit, if he should visit Denmark again. He liked the idea, so we exchanged contact information.
After the talk we had an interesting conversation about science fiction and science in general, so I had an excellent Saturday at the con.

Sunday :
I was arriving a bit earlier than on Saturday, and, as usual having some talks with other fans.
In the afternoon there was a recording of a podcast by two groups. The Danish “Hva’ Fan” podcast and the Swedish “Fandompodden” , making a single podcast, spoken mostly in English. I took some pictures of the recording session.
Finally there war an interview with and a reading by the Danish writer Marie Ladefoged.
I came home with 3 books from the convention, two by Marie Ladefoged (in Danish), and one by Justina Robson.
I had a fun time, and I am looking forward to going to more conventions next year.

Kepler Space Telescope Has Found a Strange Star.

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The Kepler space telescope has discovered a most unusual star in its search for exoplanets a long time, but erratic dimming of the light, – up to 20% dimming, which is *a lot*, over a longer period.
There are several hypotheses investigated, including a swarm of comets, or …. just maybe …. a structure built by an alien civilization.

Now, I remember the buzz a few decades ago, when the first pulsars were detected, and some thought the precision of the pulses had to be artificial but – as it turned out – it was a natural phenomenon of a fast rotating neutron star.

I would not jump to the alien conclusion before every other hypothesis has been thoroughly investigated. It could, however become very exciting if all the “natural” hypotheses would have to be discounted …

The article can be found here :

 

Northern Lights

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I consider that there are three great spectacular events to see in the sky. All are very rare, and I have not seen all three of them. Let us take a look at this :

1. Meteor Storm :

In 1998 I was looking to get to see a meteor storm from the Leonid meteor shower. It peaks every 33 years – with variations in the size of the peak.
Following the most common predictions of the peak I made ready to stay up for a night. But – as my luck (or lack of it) was – the show did not happen on that night . . . A slightly different, but even more spectacular show of a fireball meteor storm came one night BEFORE the prediction. Many people missed the opportunity, and so did I. A colleague of mine was up in the middle of the night and thought, “fireworks at this time of the night ?”. When he looked out there was one bright fireball after the other appearing in the sky.
The following night I stayed up, and essentially nothing happened. What a disappointment. Some people claim that it was the show of a century – and I missed it. On top of that – it was a clear sky that night, something of a rarity where I live.

2. Total eclipse of the Sun :

This is one event where 99.9% is *very* different from 100%. I went to see the show in Northern France in August 1999, and nearly missed the climax of the show. but minutes before totality a small blue patch appeared in the sky, and we got to see totality. Quite a spectacle.
I wrote a modest report on the event – with a few pictures, you can find it here.

3. Northern lights – Aurora Borealis.

In Denmark where I come from, I have seen the Northern Lights twice in my life.
Funny enough, moving further South to The Netherlands I would have expected to see less of it there. But in a shorter time span I have seen Northern Lights at least twice, and even photographed it. The photo is far from spectacular, but it will have to do for me.

Enter Norway – to be more precise, the town of Tromsø. There the auroras are a common occurrence. I came across a beautiful time lapse movie made by Ole Christian Salomonsen in Tromsø.
He publishes it (in HD Video) on his blog
I heartily recommend taking a look at the 4.5 minutes of movie, the aurora and his foreground images are – well – spectacular.

Colliding Planets !!

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The Spitzer InfraRed Space Telescope, launched a few years ago, has , more or less by accident found the remains of – not one – *but two* rocky planets around a star about 100 light years away.

The two planets, one estimated to be in the order of Earth sized, the other Moon sized , appear to have collided probably a few thousand years ago, very recent in astronomical terms.

More detail can be found at Bad Astronomer Blog

This is, as far as I know, the first, however indirect, evidence of Earth/Moon sized planets.

That is not all : A few days ago it was reported that the Kepler Space Telescope, launched this year, had detected the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star

Exciting times indeed.

Ice on Mars ! Life on Mars ?

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The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has detected large glaciers just under the surface of Mars.

This can be very interesting as water supply when (yes, I am optimistic) we send people to Mars – they do not have to bring large supplies of water. Could it be that – with care – the people going there can be self supporting with water supply ? Quite possible.

This is also a sign that Mars has had much more water than it has today. Maybe it even had an atmosphere dense enough to support life, more or less as we know it.

Full story.

Hubble Directly Observes a Planet Orbiting Another Star

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This is the kind of thing that can excite me. Imaging a planet 25 light years away in visible light. The Hubble Space Telescope ha done just that.

Around the star Formalhaut Hubble found a ring of dust, corresponding to the Kuiper Belt in our own solar system. an Anomaly in the shape of the ring indicated that the gravitational pull of a planet influenced the ring. The hunt was on.

Two images taken 21 months apart show an object following the star and apparently orbiting Formalhaut in about 870 years.

Before we get too excited, there is no real chance of finding any ET’s in the Formalhaut system. The star is only 200 million years old and burning fast – the life expectancy is only 1000 million years, not enough for life as we know it to develop.

There are indications of further planets around Formalhaut, this time inside the dust ring, but none are observed yet.

More details from ESA’s website