I had read that the Antietam battlefield nearby was a world apart in terms of the visitor experience.  I wanted to explore that.  Add to the physical experience the fact that my knowledge of the battle fought there was pretty basic.  It was an opportunity to learn something very new.  Since returning, I’ve been reading about the battle with renewed perspective – looking at the maps I can put together the spatial relations in a way that I never could before.  And even though I’ve visited G’burg, I still have trouble with those relationships because of the size of the field and the interposition of “civilization” on the battlefield.  So Antietam did not disappoint.

The first interesting thing was the setting.  Antietam was fought at Sharpsburg, Maryland along the Antietam Creek and near the Potomac River crossing at Shepherdstown.  This area is in the Cumberland Valley – the northern extension of the Shenandoah Valley.  In many ways, it reminds me of Holmes County.  The land is rolling.  Farming is good – but you have to work with the geography.  The people here have been here for many generations.  There are still folks living on the battlefield farms and surrounding areas who are descended from those who lived here at the time of the battle.  Our guide for the field has lived here for many years.  But he was not born here, and he is constantly reminded that he is an outsider.   The residents are largely Mennonite.  They are of German ancestry.   One of the famous landmarks on the field is the Dunker Church.  It was a church of a German pacifist sect that practiced baptism by immersion – hence the local name “Dunkers”.   Again, it reminds me of Holmes County in many ways.

Samuel Pry Mill at Antietam Creek

One of the great ways to learn G’burg is through their Licensed Battlefield Guides – a group of people who have to study and take a challenging exam to qualify.  They are independent from the NPS, but operate in concert.  You hire one to drive you around.  You can get a general tour, or ask for specific concentration – for instance if you are really interested in Culp’s Hill or the Cavalry Field.  They are well worth the $$.  I was happy to find out that Antietam also has Battlefield Guides.  So we arranged for one.  We toured with John Powell, an older gentleman who the young lady in the bookstore described as “a walking encyclopedia” – and indeed he is.

We arrived Tuesday afternoon and, upon the advice of a civil war blogger/author, we purchased the audio tour CD.  We drove the field and learned the “lay of the land” and listened to the CD production.  The CDs were well done – it would be nice to be able to pick and choose a little about the content you listen to (I guess the Internet spoils me).  But for $20, they are a great way to tour.  Our tour with John was on Wednesday morning.  We contracted for 2.5 hours – he gave us nearly 4.  When we “tipped” him, he thanked us and told us that he donates his tips to the fund for acquiring and upgrading properties on the field.

Thoughts on the battle?  It was very representative of the styles of the two commanders – McClellan’s “hands off” style on the field which resulted in his piecemeal introduction of his forces resulting in their needless sacrifice.  He also was unwilling to commit fully to battle – keeping a large reserve.  Lee on the other hand managed the battle hands-on, introducing everything he had – and usually just in the nick of time.  His audacity showed in the campaign as a whole, and his willingness to give battle with his back against the river.  Little Mac had the opportunity to destroy Lee’s army, and did not do it.  The battle and its follow up resulted in his removal from command after the mid-term election.

I’m currently reading Stephen Sears’ “Landscape Turned Red“  – universally recognized as the best overall book on Antietam. (I’ve had it for years but didn’t get past the first 30 pages… symptomatic of my ADD reading habits…)  John recommended “The Gleam of the Bayonets” by Murfin and “Antietam” by Frassanito – the latter being a photographic history featuring the Brady photos taken by Gardner and Gibson – the sensational battle photographs that for the first time showed the dead of battle to the public.

The Sunken Road - looking west

The iconic Lower or "Burnside" Bridge over Antietam Creek

We made a loop through western Maryland, visiting the Antietam battlefield, down the Shenandoah Valley to Luray and over the mountains to Green Bank before heading back to the ranch.  I will probably do a post on each of these with some photos.

We were fortunate to have great weather for the trip – mid-sixties and sunny all three days.  We didn’t hit the cool and rain till we crossed back over the Ohio River.  By then, the horse smelled the barn, and it didn’t matter.  It was somewhat reminiscent of our wedding 30 years ago where we had an 80 degree day for our wedding and a couple lovely fall days before the weather again turned cold and wet as it is likely to do in late October.  Of course, the important thing is still having each other.  30 homicide-free years as we like to joke.  But speaking for myself, I can say with assurance that we are closer now then we were back then.  And I can’t imagine it any other way.

One thing we had this time was a family to come home to – we had to spring three dogs from the kennel.  After a couple of days of schmoozing to make sure we wouldn’t leave them again, I think they are pretty much back to normal as well.

The planetarium “state of the art” has continued to grow technologically.  I was far from the only person dissatisfied with the aesthetics of the sky as portrayed by Digistar systems.  The new installations generally combine an optical projector for the beautiful star field with computer projection for “full dome” immersion in the program.  This gives the best of both worlds in a sense.  I’ve seen a couple of these systems – one at Ward Beecher planetarium at YSU and one at the GLPA conference in Merrilville, Indiana.   They are impressive.

At the same time, we are seeing many planetaria close.  School planetariums are falling victim to budget problems.  Many school planetariums were Spitz installations in the early 1960′s in the wake of the Sputnik “wake up call” for science education.  But now, many are dated and in need of serious investment for repair and upgrade.  So many schools just decide to close them.  The Cleveland area once boasted a good number of school planetaria – I don’t know how many are left.  I know of a couple that closed just recently.  And I suspect that some disctricts decide to use the retirement of long time planetarium teachers as an excuse to pull the plug.   On the public front, Flandrau planetarium in Tucson has closed.  We just saw the Shafran planetarium in Cleveland cut a long-time staff member.

The state of the art for programming is much like it is for astronomy education – there is so much neat new stuff going on that the empahsis is on the “gee whiz” rather than on the basic education that planetaria excel at.  The full dome systems give a great immersive environment. They can be programmed for 360 surround on a space environment, a planetary landscape, or just about anything that you can think of.

But the problem for me is that which I have written about before – all sizzle and no steak.  There are exceptions – good science writers like Carolyn Collins Petersen at Loch Ness put content above sizzle.  But many others do not.  Is it necessary in order to succeed in the MTV/ADHD world?  I would like to think not.  But then I’m a planetarium dinosaur.

(Note – the above are my opinions…. subject to change.   Please don’t confuse them with facts or the opinions of someone who knows something.)

For the past couple of years we have had a pair of cardinals living somewhere in one of our trees.  I haven’t spotted their nest, but they definitely make their presence known.  I’ve read that cardinals are very territorial and very protective.  The last two years we have had the female of the pair regularly perching on a lilac branch near our sun room window and throw herself at the window – presumably at her own reflection.

This year the male has joined in the action, but at the other back corner of the house.  The two back bedrooms that we use as offices have three windows that are close to large lilacs or other bushes.  Mr. Male Cardinal has been thumnp thump thumping against all three of these windows, with Robin’s window being his favorite.  This does allow for some nice close-up views and some photo ops.  I kind of always assumed they were flying into the window beak first given the clicking sound of the impact.  But as the last picture reveals, they are coming feet first.

(Note – the pics were taken from indoors through the window and screen – hence the lack of sharpness)

Under the Small Sky
By Dave Gill, Planetarium Dinosaur

As many of you may know, I have recently ended my career as a professional planetarian.  I worked for almost 20 years  at Hoover-Price Planetarium at the McKinley Museum in Canton.  I started out as a fill in weekend lecturer and then we evolved a rotation to give me more shows and Tim some weekend time off.  So I ended up doing probably 30-50 shows per year depending on Tim’s coaching schedule and other factors.  My resignation was for a combination of reasons.  Mostly I wanted the time back.  So, with this passing, I want to share a few reflections on planetaria in the following paragraphs.

Our friend Barbara Vaughan wrote one of her short pieces for this newsletter in response to the recent demolition of the old Hayden planetarium in New York.   She wrote:

Good-bye Old Friends

I enjoy reading “Focal Point” in Sky & Tel.  Some are real chucklers; some are real attention getters;  one is real sad–for me anyway.  The June 1997 issue describes the end of the Hayden Planetarium in the American History Museum of Natural History in New York City.

That’s the place where astronomy really started for me after that not-so-promising night out with my brother and cousin.  My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Rosenburg, knew New York City like the back of her hand.  Each month or so she took 30 kids into the city and introduced us to wonders of the world and universe, past, present, and future.  I just know that each and every one of us found at least one interest which we’ve carried through out lives.  For me, it was the Hayden Planetarium.  I sat there in absolute, mouth-dropping, dumb-founded awe as the narrator took us into the night, through the constellations, and back into the dawn.  I wanted it to go on forever.  I wanted to sit through it again–and again.  But we were off to more things of new  interest.

Now the old planetarium is gone and is being replaced with what sounds like a busy, mind-boggling, multi-media center.  I wonder if it will instill the same and awe and curiosity in someone or if it will it be just another entertainment center.

Interestingly, the Hayden Planetarium connection goes a bit further.  The author of 1001 Questions Answered About Astronomy was James S. Pickering, Assistant Astronomer, American Museum–Hayden Planetarium.  Good-bye, old friends.  Thanks for the memories–and the inspiration.

When I read this, I immediately felt a responsive chord inside of me.  It got me to thinking, and I wrote a quick reply back to Barb expressing my agreement with her sentiments.  She urged me to publish my comments.  I decided to think about them a little and expand on them. So here they are, Barb.  She described her feeling as “absolute, mouth-dropping, dumb-founded awe”.  What a wonderful phrase!  I think the key word is awe.  That sense of awe keeps drawing me back to the stars.  What can be more awe inspiring than a sky filled with brilliant pinpoint stars against a black background like diamonds on black velvet?  This is, for me, a religious experience.  Dave Ross took a wonderful quote from Joseph Campbell, which he used to introduce “Shadows of the Night”:

“The purpose of a ritual or body of myth is to awaken in the individual a sense of awe and participation in the inscrutable mystery of being”

But that is what the night sky does for me on some deep, un-plumbable level.   That is why the writing of Chet Raymo is special for me.  He addresses these issues in the language of astronomy.  Astronomy for me is the melding ground for science, which I am versed and comfortable in, and the spiritual or mystical, in which I am not.  (Stay tuned for Raymo’s new book, “Skeptics and True Believers” coming this spring.)Back to planetaria.  A planetarium is a model of the night sky.  For me, a planetarium ought to be evocative, not provocative.  It should draw out feelings from within, not be “in your face”.  The sky should be the star, not just a backdrop.  When I go to shows at major planetaria, I often spend my time just gawking at the sky, not paying attention to the other program going on.  So the quality of the sky is paramount to the experience of recreating the awe-evoking night sky.  When I did shows myself, I always tried to choose my music carefully to set a mood.  I had a couple favorite pieces for sunsets – music which rather than falling away as the light faded, actually built to an emotional climax as I brought out the stars in all their glory.  If I did a good sunset, I felt I had done my job.  Sometimes I even got applause as the stars came out.  I knew I had evoked a response.

Have you ever been to one of the older planetaria?  The world’s elite planetaria were built by Zeiss.  The Hayden and Adler facilities were “powered by Zeiss”.  I never visited these, but I have been to the old Buhl in Pittsburgh and Morehead in Chapel Hill, NC on a number of occasions.  These were also Zeiss installations.  What a sky they presented!  The sky was so realistic!  One program I saw at Morehead featured the southern sky, so they had to put the instrument through its paces, and I got to see the wonders of the southern Milky Way as I had never seen them.  Frankly, I don’t remember much else about the show (I think it was about Inca sky legends…).

The first Digistar planetarium I visited was in Richmond.  A couple things immediately struck me.  The theatre was used as an Omnimax, with the seating in an incline (vertigo city, by the way).  Instead of the sky being overhead, where you had to look up to the heavens, it was “in your face”.  What a different metaphor! The stars were “unnatural”.  They seemed large and greenish rather than gleaming pinpoints.  There were no red giants.  The Digistar sky is created and projected by a computer.  They were able to scramble the stars up and race them around the sky before putting them back where they belonged.  I don’t remember why they did this – probably because they could.  I just remember feeling something was wrong.

With the building of the new Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, the old Buhl Planetarium met its demise.  The cathedral to the stars, which used to be a stand-alone citadel in Pittsburgh, is now subsumed inside the larger museum, just another entertainment feature.  It too has a Digistar sky.  I used to suggest the club take Pittsburgh trips regularly.  After two trips to the new Buhl, I don’t really care if I ever go back.  (We could also write a similar essay about modern interactive science museums vs. older display-oriented ones… but we’ll leave that rant for another time.)

I realize that there are many reasons for the evolution of planetaria.  One is economic.  The president of AstroTec in Canal Fulton, who make domes for planetaria all over the world, told me that the cost of Digistar completely blows other technologies out of the water.  They can’t compete.

I know that people today have increasingly short attention spans (I know – I suffer from that in spades).  They want to be entertained.  Much has been written about planetaria as education tools vs. planetaria as entertainment.  I am not sure I buy it.  Why can’t being educated in and of itself be entertaining?  I enjoy learning.  Am I that much of a square peg?  So the planetarium show for the MTV generation is full of fast-moving special effects – slides all over the dome, video, computer animation, and green globby stars – when they use the stars at all. There is no time for contemplation or feeling.  The difference for me is like listening to music and letting your mind interpret the experience versus watching a music video and having one person’s (wacko) idea shoved in your face.  I remember one time at Hoover Price a man with two small boys got up and noisily tried to leave during the program.  As he brushed past me, he said something to the effect that the program was too boring for his kids.  As the kids went by, I heard one starting to cry that he didn’t want to go. Hmmm.

That is why I mourn the passage of Hayden. (And Adler is being renovated as well, with a new projector and dome). Not because I have been there and had an intense personal experience like Barbara.  I haven’t.  I mourn it because of what it represented.  It was a facility where the sky was the message.  It was set up so that the planetarium dome was the focus of the facility.  You could tell as you drove up that it was a planetarium by the distinctive dome. You can tell what Chartres, Notre Dame or some other cathedral is just by looking at it.  They were built for one purpose – to evoke awe and a sense of participation in the inscrutable mystery of being.  For me, that’s what the sky does – whether it is the big sky or the small sky.  The old planetaria did that for me.  The new planetaria leave me empty and cold- vaguely unsatisfied and sad.  That is the same feeling I get looking at the night sky from my back yard.  Robin doesn’t understand why I feel that way.  It’s not what I can do with the sky (she always tries to tell me what all I can do even under lousy suburban skies) it is the experience of the sky.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had a fascination with Mount Everest.  I don’t know why. But I do.  I remember reading a book about the conquest of Everest when I was a kid – came from the Canal Fulton library.  It had the story of the mountain – Mallory and Irvine, the reconaissance, Hillary and Tenzing.  That was probably a mid-late ’60′s book.  I read other articles and books when I could find them.  Then with the tragic season of 1996, I read/listened to “Into Thin Air”, the amazing story of that sad event. I even got to hear Beck Weathers when he was at Mount Union as a Schooler Lecturer.

With the advent of the Internet and global communication, there have been live updates in recent years during Everest season – usually April and May – the brief lull between winter and the Monsoon.  This year, National Geographic is tracking an expedition of mountain veterans as they climb the mountain again. There are daily updates, video clips, interactive maps, etc.  as these adventurers climb up to the Roof of the World.

Space Weather News for April 2, 2009

http://spaceweather.com

SPOTLESS SUNS: Yesterday, NASA announced that the sun has plunged into the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. Sunspots have all but vanished and consequently the sun has become very quiet. In 2008, the sun had no spots 73% of the time, a 95-year low. In 2009, sunspots are even more scarce, with the “spotless rate” jumping to 87%. We are currently experiencing a stretch of 25 continuous days uninterrupted by sunspots–and there’s no end in sight.

This is a big event, but it is not unprecedented. Similarly deep solar minima were common in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, and each time the sun recovered with a fairly robust solar maximum. That’s probably what will happen in the present case, although no one can say for sure. This is the first deep solar minimum of the Space Age, and the first one we have been able to observe using modern technology. Is it like others of the past? Or does this solar minimum have its own unique characteristics that we will discover for the first time as the cycle unfolds? These questions are at the cutting edge of solar physics.

You can monitor the progress of solar minimum with a new “Spotless Days Counter” on spaceweather.com. Instead of counting sunspots, we’re counting no sunspots. Daily updated totals tell you how many spotless days there have been in a row, in this year, and in the entire solar cycle. Comparisons to historical benchmarks put it all in perspective. Visit http://spaceweather.com for data.

This will be interesting, as the sun-weather connection is not well understood. There is undoubtedly some connection between the sunspot cycle and climate patterns, but how this interacts with the El Nino/ENSO cycle and the other forcings set in motions by anthropogenic activity is extremely complex. Any cooling, as seen during the Maunder Minimum will give the climate deniers more ammunition to doubt the AGW scenario.

We don’t pay a lot of attention to space weather.  It doesn’t matter in your decision of which coat to wear or whether to carry an umbrella.  In general, it passes pretty much unnoticed for those of us inside the Earth’s geomagnetic shield.

Jeff Masters at the Weather Underground posted a very disturbing piece about some studies of the possible effects of space weather.

Many of us remember the great auroral outbreak 20 years ago in March, 1989.  Around here we saw blood-red auroras in the southern sky that evening – I’ve got slides somewhere to prove it. A group of us from the WCAC were working on a mirror in my basement in Perry Heights when we got a phone call from Dean Wilson telling us to get out and look.  It was amazing. Auroras were seen as far south as Cuba

But for folks farther north, it was a real problem.  The storm, caused by a coronal mass ejection, took down the entire power grid in the province of Quebec.  To understand how this can happen, recall a little physics.  Faraday showed that moving electrical currents cause magnetic fields and that moving magnetic fields induce electric currents.  The shifting magnetic fields caused by the geomagnetic storm induced stray currents in transmission lines and transformers that caused some to overheat and burn out their insulation.   6 million customers were down for at least 9 hours. Smaller grid outages were noted in the US.

Dr. Masters uses the figure called the “Dst” – (Disturbance storm time – a measure of the number of charged particles entering the atmosphere at the equator).  Reliable measurements have been recorded since the 1950′s.  Earlier major events have been estimated by secondary means – auroral observations, etc – compared to more recent “calibrated” events.  This is where it begins to get scary:

1) Dst = -1600, Carrington event, September 2, 1859
2) Dst = -900, May 14-15, 1921
3) Dst = -589, March 13, 1989 Superstorm
4) Dst = -472, November 20, 2003
5) Dst = -401, October 30, 2003

The 1921 event wiped out telegraph service east of the Mississippi, caused fired in telegraph offices and injured several operators.  But the 1859 event produced auroras bright enough to read newspapers.  Auroras were seen as far south as Venezuela.  Magnetometers around the world “pegged”.  It is the largest magnetic event in recorded history.  The change in magnetic flux, dB/dt (another measure of the strenght of the event) was 10 times that of the 1989 superstorm.

So, what would happen if we had a Carrington event today? If nothing were done, the grid is very vulnerable,  In his article, Dr. Masters shows maps of large areas of vulnerability indicated by computer models. Most of the US east of the Mississipi could go down, leaving over 130 million people without power – possibly for months with a cost of $1-2 trillion in the first year.  One of the worrisome things is that the capacity to manufacture replacement transmission equipment is considerably diminshed, and currently has long lead times.

The good news is that space weather predictions are much more sophisticated and power generators are paying close attention.  They learned from 1989.  More recent events like the 2003 outbreaks were successfully weathered.  They have emergency protocols in place.

What this doesn’t address is the vulnerability of our assets in space – communication, GPS, weather and climate monitoring satellites are all very vulnerable and could be knocked out.  Loss of weather satellites increases risk to coastal areas from hurricanes because forecasting accuracy would be seriously reduced and warning times would be less. Think of the integration of GPS into our daily lives – cars, cell phones, etc.  And of course there is a relatively permanent presence in the ISS that would be at serious risk.

We are currently at an extended solar minimum – we are not sure what the new solar cycle will bring.  But even a relatively small solar outburst can cause major havoc if pointed directly at us.  So, just because you don’t check the space weather forecast in the morning doesn’t meant that a lot of other people aren’t keeping tabs on the star next door.

This is a rather unique rock – named 5391 Emmons.  (Dick referred to it as his “pet rock” or once as “the five thousand three hundred ninety first rock from the sun”.)  It is an asteroid discovered by the late Eleanor Helin and named for Dick in honor of his lifetime of achievements in astronomy education.  We were proud to have helped Dick see this asteroid in 2002. (Could it have possibly have been 7 years ago?)

Why did Dick need our help?  He could observe circles around most of us – even in his early eighties.  The problem was that Dick’s observing was pretty much limited to what he could see from his home.  He wasn’t able to pack up his telescope and observe from darker skies.  This particular little ornery rock was quite faint – about 16th magnitude – requiring both a larger scope and a darker sky.  During its opposition in 2002, I tried it from my back yard, which is a little better than Dick’s, using my 14″ scope.  I couldn’t find it.  Eventually we did find it from The Wilderness Center with the 10″ Resetar Meade, the 16″ Keller Cass and my 14″ Dob-Newt.  Read the stories at the index linked above for the gory details.  On interesting twist that Dick added to the mix.  He had bought an image intensifying eyepiece which he paid a pretty penny for.  We used that as well.  It did help somewhat with the brightness of the image, but it also caused some other problems – an inverted field of view and high magnification.  These had to be compensated for in mental software at least.  But we saw the rock (as did Dick) with both the electronic eyepiece and the one using more traditional silicon.

I bring this up because…. it’s ba-a-a-a-ck.   5391 Emmons will be at opposition this autumn – November 1 to be precise.  The photo below shows the retrograde path through Aries in October and November.  It is a good time of year for a project like this – October/early November are our best observing times around here.  Maybe it is time for a project.

Lemonade!

I’m sure that as you traverse through this life on our small blue planet, you have heard some insufferably cheerful person utter the terminally sweet saying: “If life gives you lemons – make lemonade!”. For those of us in the appropriately gloomy crowd (the Eeyores among us), this is almost more than we can take. But even I had to sit back and admire the use a friend of ours is making of a bad situation.

Those of you who have had the pleasure of knowing Dick Emmons know that he is one motivated, driven man. He loves his astronomy – particularly satellites. His passion has been with him for many years, and he still engages in satellite observation every chance he gets. He is particularly enchanted with geostationary satellites – ones which circle the earth in an orbit synchronized with the Earth’s rotation. They are thus over the same spot on earth all the time. Over the years Dick has alerted us from time to time when a geostationary would be near some easy target so the less skilled among us (i.e. me) could find it. Particularly, Dick always sends predictions for a couple geostationaries that like to “cross” M-11 in the fall. (Watch the WCAC web page for occasional updates from Dick.)

To observe these, you need a sophisticated tracking platform called “earth”. Your generic Dobsonian telescope will track it just fine – recall that the satellite appears to be stationary. So as the earth turns, the satellite will stay put and the stars will drift by. That is what makes these little devils fun to watch. If you know where to point, you can find the faint satellite appearing to “move” against the background. But you can watch it for quite a long time without ever nudging your telescope. Once you find one, it will appear in the same spot each night but 3 minutes and 56 seconds earlier each night – the difference between a solar and sidereal day.

Dick's collection of telescopes - 1998

Dick has a small flock of them he currently watches. As I was visiting him recently, he was showing me a new 10” telescope residing in his garage. He bought the 10” because it picked up about a half a magnitude for him in his light polluted North Canton skies. He was referring to his garage as his “satellite observatory”. I nodded my head and listened dutifully until he dropped this next little gem on me. He was particularly lamenting one loathsome light in a neighbor’s yard. But then he got a big grin on his face. He said, “This is why I call it my satellite observatory”. He had a chalk outline on the garage floor where he would align the base of his new 10” telescope. Then he would point the telescope at a particular azimuth – identified by a landmark across the street – I don’t recall if it was a utility pole, a chimney or what it was. But he knew… Then, he showed me a diagonally-placed piece of duct tape on his garage wall. He said “When I position the telescope on the floor in this outline, and point it toward my landmark, and move the telescope in elevation so that the shadow of the finder telescope as cast by that terrible yard light coincides with the duct tape, my geostationaries are right in my field of view! It saves me a lot of time looking for the guide stars.”

I about fell over. It was so clever… so resourceful… so… so Dick. Leave it to our ever-resourceful friend to take a situation like a bad light in the spot he likes to observe, and turn it into an advantage! What a life lesson! Although Professor Emmons is retired, he is still teaching.

So next time it is clear out and I decide I have 150 excuses not to observe, I will think of Dick’s satellite observatory. And I will smile. And I hope I’ll pull my telescope out into a relatively dark spot and look for a couple variable stars.

Somewhere, even Eeyore is smiling. And sipping lemonade.

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