August 2003

• A Message to the Future
  
  
• Planetary Update
  
  
• Constellation of the Month
  
  
• The Moon
  

A Message to the Future

As technology develops and our capabilities accelerate, we often wonder what the future holds. We also have a curiosity of the past -- how did we progress to this point? Can we use that information to learn the lessons, both bad and good, to help us progress faster and avoid past mistakes?

It's exciting to consider sending messages to our far-off ancestors. It is common for us to create "Time Capsules" -- containers of information which hold a snapshot of our civilization. Parents make them for their children. Universities make them for future graduating classes. And sometimes we create them for the distant future.

The coining of the term "Time Capsule" was made by the Westinghouse Corporation. They created, for the 1939 World's Fair in New York, a tube containing historical facts, statistics, messages, and popular icons of the day. This capsule is buried at the site of the fair, and is not supposed to be unearthed for 5,000 years. Here's the ad that promoted the first time capsule ever.

Just 64 years later, we look back and see that the world has changed more than anyone could have imagined... The things we take for granted, or even find obsolete, today were inconceivable to the folks of 1939. Simple things like plastic containers and nylon stockings weren't even known until the early 1940's. There is the obviously technologies including television, tape recorders, small FM transistor radios, and microwave ovens, that most of us today couldn't live without. More modern advances like personal computers, compact discs, and the Internet are beyond anything anyone could have possibly predicted in 1939. We've walked on the moon and sent space probes beyond our solar system. Even our diversions have changed -- Slinky, Legos, Mr. Potato Head, Play-Doh, Tonka Trucks, Etch-a-Sketch and Nerf toys all come from the second half of the twentieth century.

So what could the far distant future hold? When this time capsule is retrieved in the year 6939, what will they think of our primitive ways?

And if 5,000 years is unimaginable, how archaic will our current culture seem in FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS?

Well, we may have the opportunity to give that future society a chance to find out! It is called KEO, and it is the ultimate time capsule.

KEO will be launched in 2006, and remain in orbit for 50,000 years. When it returns to Earth, its descent into the atmosphere will trigger a synthetic aurora in the sky, announcing its descent in a glorious fashion.

The name of this craft isn't a word that means anything, nor is it an acronym. The creators, in an effort to be inclusive, looked for sounds that were pronounced in every language on Earth -- they found that the phonetics that make up "KEO" are in every language.

The KEO mission is to try to get as many people as possible to contribute to this time capsule. They would like to have a first-hand account of the ideas and feelings of the world. The project has been funded by private contributors; participation in it by the general public is free. You can contribute your own ideas to the project at no charge.

The messages will be stored in DVD format. The KEO satellite will be able to hold enough data so that every human being on Earth (approximately 6 billion people) can provide up to 6000 characters... that's about 875 words, or just under 4 pages of text.

The KEO planners are well aware that DVD readers will likely be obsolete in just decades, and likely be long forgotten by a civilization 500 centuries from now. It is not practical to include a DVD player on the craft -- it would be too large and too fragile to survive a 50000 year journey in space -- but directions will be provided, in symbolic form, to create a reader for these DVDs.

Also on board will be a diamond, which will certainly survive the extended journey -- it is etched with a sequence of human DNA. Also, it has a drop of human blood, a sample of sea water, a sample of air, and a sample of fertile soil embedded inside. There will be pictures of people from throughout the world on board, as well. And an astronomical clock, so they will accurately know how from far in the past this gift has traveled.

Will the KEO satellite survive the journey? Will our descendants be able to read the messages we have left? Will the human race even be recognizable in fifty thousand years? We will likely never know.

But, if you would like to send a message over 1500 generations into the future, KEO just might be able to do that.

Find out more about the KEO project, and leave your own message for the future.

Planetary Update

And then there was one...

Jupiter really has fallen out of the sky to leave only one planet visible to the naked eye for the majority of this month... and that one is MARS.

Mars is the highlight of the summer. It rises around 10:00 pm EST throughout this month, and drifts lazily across the southern sky for the remainder of the night. You really can't miss it -- it is the bright, burnt-orange gleam in the south. There will not be any stars with brightness anywhere near the shine of Mars.

At the end of this month, Mars will be closer to the Earth than it has been in thousands of years. As Earth and Mars swing through their orbits, they occasionally sit on the same side of the Sun. When The Sun, Earth and Mars are lined up, in that order, it is said that Mars is at “opposition”. Since our orbits are slightly elliptical and centered around the sun a bit differently, when opposition occurs, sometimes were are closer to Mars than others.

The orbits of Earth and Mars

The opposition which occurs at the end of this month is the closest ever, making this the best time to see Mars through a backyard telescope.

At around 34.5 million miles distant, some surface features of Mars will be visible from even modest telescopes. If you have a backyard telescope, take this once-in-a-lifetime chance to see variations of light and dark across most of the body of Mars. You may even get a glimpse at the white extremities of Mars, which are its polar ice caps.

During the very end of August, you may be able spot another planet low in the eastern sky about an hour or two before sunrise. This bright spot is Saturn. It will remain quite low in the sky; surrounding trees may obscure it from view. Saturn will slowly come back into view this fall, and be a jewel of the night sky throughout this winter. Jupiter will join Saturn again in the fall, as well. For now, however, Saturn is merely making a tiny little peek over the horizon.

For this month, Mars is appropriately the sole champion of the night sky! Don't miss it...

Constellation of the Month

This month I've chosen a constellation that is little known, but big in size, the snake handler who is called Ophiuchus!

Ophiuchus (pronounced: oh-FEW-kuss) is a large pentagon shape of medium-bright stars. He's in the southern sky as the sun sets -- he's hanging out right above Scorpio. He looks somewhat like a tall house, or a tall tent.

Ophiuchus

Ophiuchus is actually handling a snake, which is a completely different constellation. He is holding onto Serpens, which extends out each side of the base of the pentagon-shaped Ophiuchus. Serpens is the only constellation which is in TWO PARTS -- one on either side of Ophiuchus -- a head and a tail.

Ophiuchus has many stars of note -- I will discuss two of them; one at the very peak, and the other at the center of the base.

The first one I will discuss is Rasalhague (pronounced RAS-ul-hayg, it's a tricky one to say. If it helps at all, it rhymes with “Bubonic Plague”). It is the brightest star in Ophiuchus, and its name is a sort of contraction of an ancient Arabic phrase which means "the Head of the Serpent Collector". It is, indeed, an appropriate title for this star. Rasalhague is about 47 light years from us, which makes it among the closer stars up there; it's sort of in our celestial "neighborhood". It shines with the light of 25 of our Suns, and has about four times the Sun's mass. It has a small companion star in orbit around it -- Rasalhaugue's little buddy is about 1/2 the mass of the sun, and has an orbit that, had it been in OUR solar system, would place it approximately midway between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn.

The star which lies in the middle of the "base" of Ophiuchus lacks an interesting name, and is simply catalogued as Zeta Ophiuchus (or just Zeta Oph). It turns out that it is the third brightest star in the constellation from our point of view. Were it not for some interstellar dust, it would certainly be the brightest!

Zeta Oph is about 10 times further away than Rasalhague, but, with a brightness about 68,000 times that of the Sun, it would certainly outshine even the much closer stars in that region of the sky. There is interstellar dust scattered throughout the galaxy, and some clumps of it are obscuring the view of Zeta Oph, making it appear much dimmer. This star also is about 20 times the mass of the sun, and has a surface which seems to average around 58,000 degrees Fahrenheit. It is a monster of a star, hiding behind a curtain of dust.

Ophiuchus is a large constellation, but has no apparently bright stars to make it easy to find… it is a large, rather plain constellation in the Southern sky. But many of the stars which appear plain are quite extraordinary!

Go find out more about Ophiuchus!

The Moon

For the moon spotters, here's the schedule of the major phases of the moon for this month:

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