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Journal of the Amateur Astrono mers Association of New York December 2010 Volume 58 Number 12, ISSN 0146-7662

EYEPIECE
out. There wer e about a dozen scopes and ma ny shared their binoculars. Sunset was fabulous. Venus, Saturn and Mars were cluster ed in the shape of a right triangle in the wester n sky. Further north along the horizon, Mercury could be seen above the distant mountaintop. Over the course of the session, we watched Jupiter and its moons, Uranus, Neptune and the rising crescent Moon. One session highlight was hunting for Pluto. Tony brought a printed star chart, which enabled him to star hop with a 10" reflector to the star field. He reduced the field of view to a half -degr ee a nd recognize a bow tie-shaped asterism that we refer enced to share our observations. Field notes and sketches seemed to r einforce Sam Brown's "All About Telescopes " guidelines for the 10-inch scope, wher e it reached ~13.9 limiting ma gnitude, just shy of Pluto's mag 14.1. The September 11 session was really over befor e we arrived, but a small group of devoted dark-sky trippers ascended the stairway to the Milky Way to take in the late summer sky. Riding up, the sky remained overca st, although we wer e hopeful and optimistic. The clouds broke, revea ling some patches of clear sky around the Summer Triangle. We caught glimpses of open clusters in Cygnus and the Ring Nebula, Double Double and globular cluster M56. By 11:30, we left. It had been uneventful beyond the company of fellow AAAers. On October 2, things started off with really windy conditions, up to 30 mph gusts, and it was a given that the temperature would drop lower than previous visits. At sunset, the sky pr esented Sagittarius, Scorpius and Upstate continued on page 10

Heading Upstate to Climb the Stairway to the Milky Way
By Peter Tagatac and Thomas Haeberle
Some have called it the backbone of the night and without the Milky Way, fragments of darkness would come crashing to our feet. In summer, the Milky Way splits the sky from Cassiopeia down to Sagittarius. In the early 20th century, with the r ealization that "spiral nebulas" are exter nal galaxies and are themselves Milky Ways, the universe all of a sudden beca me incomprehensively infinite. And so a multitude of Milky Ways a waited those who went upstate this summer a nd fall to observe at NorthSouth Lake in the Catskills. Our stairway to the heavens began from Palenville, riding a winding road to what locals call the mountaintop. For our second year of deepsky observing, we'd developed a routine. "The restaurants are gr eat. Going up that mountain for the viewing was fun," enthused Gerceida Jones. The AAA organized four trips, from July through October. The ritual of eating at Selena's & Nick's Diner, talking Astro shop and observing with like-minded folks is gratifying and fulfilling, a community of people one could never tire of. Some of the rock-stea dy observers on our trips wer e: Rich Rosenber g, Stan Fertig, Yee Wei Mui, Tony Hoffman, Mark Dallmeyer, Lynn Darsh, Shoba Bandi-Rao, Petra Tomse, Tim Law and us. We wer e greeted by a raging storm in the distance on our first trip and watched it advance towards us. Tony, camera on hand, captured some dramatic shots. With telescopes still assembled, the storm abruptly arrived at the la ke, causing the tea m to pack up and lea ve in a hurry by midnight. Next month's trip offered another chance. The August 7 session was best in terms of weather and sky conditions, duration of the session and observer turn-


What's Up
By Tony Hoffman The Sky for December 2010
An Eclipse for the Longest Night. The first lunar eclipse visible fr om New York in nearly three years occurs the night of December 20-21, just hours befor e the Winter Solstice. The eclipse won't start until after midnight. The Moon begins to enter Earth's dark umbral shadow at 1:33 a.m. Totality begins at 2:41 a.m. and lasts mor e than an hour. Around the Solstice, the Sun is at its most southerly point of the year, which mea ns the Full Moon will be riding exceptionally high, just past the horns of Taurus near the Gemini border. Good Year for Geminid Meteors. The Geminid meteor shower, one of the year's best, peaks on the night of December 13-14. Prospects will be best after the fir stquarter Moon sets around midnight. Observers under dark skies can expect to see 100-120 meteors per hour radiating from a point near Castor. Unlike most meteor showers, the debris responsible for the shower comes not from a comet but a rocky asteroid, 3200 Phaeton. An Amateur-Discovered Comet in Outburst. In early November, two Japanese amateur astronomers independently discover ed a comet the old-fashioned way: visually, through the eyepieces of their telescopes. It is the seventh comet discover y by Kaoru Ikeya --who also co-discover ed the gr eat Kreutz sungrazer Comet Ikeya Seki in 1965 and 2002's bright Comet Ikeya -Zhang--a nd the second for Shigeki Murakami. The comet was likely in outburst when discover ed, and has exhibited a rapidly cha nging appearance reminiscent of 2007's Comet Holmes (although without the tremendous incr ease in brightness). In December, the comet will pass from Virgo into Libra in the mor ning sky and ma y be visible in small to medium-sized telescopes. December sky; Moon December December 4.9. December December December
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near Jupiter. December 14 Geminid meteor shower peaks. December 21 Full Moon at 3:13 a.m.; total lunar eclipse (see above); Winter Solstice at 6:38 p.m. December 25 Moon at perigee, 228,953 miles from Earth, 7:16 a.m. December 27 Last-quarter Moon at 11:18 p.m. December 28 Moon lies near Saturn. December 31 Moon lies near Venus.

Jupiter Ruled the Sky at Starfest
By Joseph A. Fedrick
The night of October 16-17 was clear, starlit and Moonlit. The waxing gibbous moon was already rising in the east as I saw it from Central Park around 4 p. m., just appearing between two buildings at 74th Street and 5th Avenue. I gradually made my way to the Sheep Mea dow and the AAA's annual Starfest. By the time I arrived, it was already dark, a score of telescopes wer e set up and the big dark shadow of the Jovia n moon Ganymede ha d already transited the Jovian disk. The smaller shadow of Jupiter's moon Europa soon followed and transited the disk later. I observed that shadow through one of the scopes. I could see Jupiter's South Equatorial Belt was still ver y much faded while the North Equatorial Belt was a dark orange-brown. Just a few degr ees northeast of Jupiter was Uranus. I observed it through another scope a nd glimpsed its tiny but definable non-stellar pale gr een-blue disk. Among the many Starfest scopes was a Galileoscope, similar to one Galileo used. Craters of the Moon wer e easily discer nible through it. Other scopes pointed at the Moon and other objects, including the ghostly pale smoke ring-like Ring Nebula, the M13 globular star cluster, the M11 open-star cluster and the contrasting topazyellow and sapphir e-blue stars of Alberio in Cynus. Starfest was a great success, but by November observing sessions wer e waning and the few sessions still open wer e at relatively remote locations. Ther efor e, I retreated to my home and used a 60mm r efractor to observe Jupiter for any evidence of a so-called revival of the South Equatorial Belt. As of November 12-13, I saw none. It was still very pale.

1 li 2 4

Mercury at greatest elongation in evening es near Saturn. Moon lies near Venus. Venus at greatest brillia ncy, ma gnitude -

5 New Moon at 12:36 p.m. 7 Moon lies near Mercury. 13 First-quarter Moon at 8:59 a.m.; Moon lies


A Message from AAA President Richard Rosenberg
Hello members: If you have alr eady r enewed your membership in the club, thank you. If you haven't, please send us your renewa l promptly. The fewer notices we ha ve to send out, the mor e we save on mailing costs and effort. Just send a check or money order for your dues ($25), and if you can, a donation. Send it to Amateur Astronomers Association, PO Box 150253, Brooklyn, NY 11215. In the wee hours of December 21, ther e will be a total lunar eclipse. Partial phase will run from 1:32 to 5:01 a. m., with totality between 2:41 and 3:53. We'll also look at Saturn and objects in the spring sky. We ha ven't decided on a spot to view the eclipse (suggestions are welcome). When we decide on a location, I'll send out an e-ma il. If you'r e not online, give me a call. Another winter event will take place at Belveder e Castle in Central Park on December 22. From 5 to 7 p. m., I'll give a talk which will be based on a Power Point presentation on the history of our solar system a nd the evolution of the Sun. I'll put it on the website after the talk is given. The talk will be followed by observing. We should have gr eat views of the Pleiades, Orion Nebula and Jupiter, among other targets. If you'r e online, look at T current month. Each month cember's main subject will month's Evening Sky to get his Month's Sky. Go to www.aaa we look at gatherings of planets be the eclipse of the Moon. We star charts for the current month, .org, click on Obser ving, then This Month's Sky, then the in the mor ning or evening sky, illustrated by charts. Dealso list daily events of the current month. Click on the and a description of how to find stars and constellations.

Happy holidays to all of you! Rich Rosenberg, president@aaa.org, 718-522-5014

AAA December Lecturer to Discuss Phoenix Mission to Mars
Dr. Suzanne M. M. Young, chemistry instructor at the University of New Hampshire, will addr ess the AAA Friday, December 3 on "Top 10 Discoveries of the Phoenix Mission to Mars and the Implications for Biohabitability." The fr ee public lecture begins at 6:15 p. m. in the Kaufma nn Theater of the AMNH. "The [2007-09] mission had a goal of sa mpling to deter mine whether this environment may have been habitable for life at some time. " Young notes. "It made extensive atmospher ic and ground measurements. Water ice in the regolith was confir med. Salts discover ed offer evidence for the presence in the past of liquid water. These and other discover ies will be discussed. Sources of bioener gy, key bio-elements and ions, and environmental toxicity and pH will be outlined." Young did mission research for several years. She helped design instruments and develop exper imental procedures, and was science plan integrator at mission control during the entir e operation, primary and extended. Other lectur es are: January 7, Robert Nemiroff, Michiga n Technological University, " Best Astronomy Pictures of the Day, 2010." February 4, Neil Weiner, NYU, "Illuminating Dark Matter." March 4, Andrea Dupree, Harvard-S mithsonia n Center for Astrophysics, "Searching for Extrasolar Planets with Kepler." April 1, Greg Matloff, New York City College of Technology, "Regr eening the Earth Using Space Resources." May 6, David J. Thompson, NAS A, "Exploring the Extr eme Universe with the F er mi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. " Dupree's talk will be the annual John Marshall Memorial Lecture, which honors the late president and executive director of the AAA who died in 1997.
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Physicists Hone In on the Building Blocks of Matter
By Lynn Darsh
What questions about fundamental particles and forces are puzzling particle physicists? How do these touch on cosmology? Wher e and when might answers be found? Dr. Micha el Tuts, professor of physics at Columbia University, offer ed insights and expla nations in an October 22 AAA lecture at the AMNH, "Particle Physics at the LHC and Cosmology." Tuts described the basic building blocks of matter, the denizens of the particle zoo that scientists ha ve experimentally verified and the hypothesized particles that physicists hope to discover using the world's highest ener gy particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) run by CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research). "We'r e opening up a new ener gy frontier wher e the most exciting discover y may be the unexpected," he predicted. The LHC will be capable of accelerating particles to the high energies seen at 10-10 of a second after the Big Bang. Tuts said physicists want to recreate conditions of the early universe to answer such funda mental questions as: How do elementary particles get their mass? Are ther e more tha n three space dimensions? What is dark matter? How do we account for the matter -antimatter asymmetr y? Will string theory provide a way to unify all the forces, including gravity? In the LHC's 27-km.-long tunnel near Geneva, filled with mor e than 1,200 34-ton ma gnets, protons sla m into protons 40 million times a second, creating new particles. The 7,000-ton ATLAS particle detector captures ima ges at the sa me rate. Trigger systems elimina te "garbage collisions" and r educe 40 terabytes of data produced per second to a few hundr ed hertz of recorded data. Nationa l computing centers, such as Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Isla nd, receive the output and send it on to a worldwide computing grid of 26,000 CPUs. Tuts, the U. S. ATLAS program ma nager, and 2,800 other scientists from 38 countries and 176 institutions analyze r esults in hopes of detecting new particles to answer those funda mental questions. One of four particle detectors connected to the LHC, ATLAS is the size of an eight-story building, took 20
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years to build and has about 100 million channels of electronics. Tuts compared it to a ship in a bottle, showing a one-minute time-lapse photographic montage of its construction. ATLAS was designed to search for particles like the Higgs boson, an elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. "To observe the Higgs requires tremendous precision and the ability to sift through all the data and throw out the uninter esting stuff." Because the Standard Model theorizes that particles get their mass by interacting with the Higgs field, a field that would per meate all of space if the Higgs particle exists, physicists have been searching for the Higgs at Fer milab outside Chicago. "The last piece of the Standard Model that's missing would be solved by finding the Higgs particle," said Tuts, who worked on the project at Fermilab. "We're closing in on wher e the Higgs mass could be and the LHC will surely find it if it exists." Currently, the LHC operates at lower energy levels than the high levels for which it was designed. It will shut down for repairs and upgrades for 15 months, starting in 2011. Tuts thinks it will be 2014 or 2015 before the LHC could provide evidence of the Higgs. If by then ther e's no evidence, theor ists would need to get to work to extend the Standard Model. To understand how particles might acquir e mass, Tuts asked the audience to ima gine the effect of Einstein walking into a crowded cocktail party. People cr owd around Einstein, slowing him down. "Elementary particles interacting with the Higgs field are like Einstein interacting with the people in the cocktail party. Massive particles (Einstein) are massive because they interact strongly with the Higgs field."

Space-Imaging Website Gets Backing
The Planetary Society has joined forces with unma nnedSpaceflight.com (UMSF) to support the a mateur space-ima ging website. The society will host a galler y of amateur-processed photos. The ima ges are photos from interplanetary voya ges. The goal is to produce views of Website continued on page 7


NASA Invites People to be Twitter Correspondents
By Tony Hoffman
Representing the AAA at the Custer Institute's annual ja mboree in October, I spoke on "NASA's Socia l Butterfly Effect," detailing its use of social media as a PR tool, and my experiences as an invited Twitter correspondent at launches and other NASA events. Early this year, I was chosen by NASA to attend two launches at the Kennedy Space Center, the Solar Dyna mics Observator y (SDO) in February and Space Shuttle Atlantis in May. I also attended the Washington press confer ence wher e the first SDO images wer e released, and an event accompanying the World Science F estival (WSF) in which participants met astronauts and NASA's only Nobel laureate, John Mather, who won in 2006 for work on the cosmic micr owave background infor mation. NASA's "Tweetups" (twitter meet-ups) are an growth of the agency's aggr essive outr each through Web and social media--Facebook, Twitter, YouTube others--in communicating its mission a nd sparking cussion and enthusiasm about it. outth e and disWe saw the launch closer than anyone not in a bunker. At the press confer ence to unveil SDO ima ges, we sat in the first row and asked questions. All NAS A asked was that attendees tweet their experiences, photos and videos. I learned how much of a roller-coaster ride the space business is. Delays and scrubs are part of the process, in which launch safety and success are paramount. Fewer than half of shuttle flights go up when scheduled. I flew into Orlando three days before the SDO launch tweetup, because Space Shuttle Endea vour was scheduled to launch the next morning. At midnight, weather prospects looked good, but it soon clouded up, and at 4 a.m., half an hour befor e launch, they scrubbed it. The next morning, the launch went flawlessly. Similarly, the night befor e SDO's scheduled launch, a cold front blew through, leaving clear skies but high winds. NAS A won't launch an unma nned spacecraft if winds exceed 20 knots, and although winds exceeded it as the launch window opened, they subsided to a point wher e a go was given. The countdown clock stopped at four minutes, but when it resumed, a wind gust triggered a halt, and launch was postponed until the next da y. I called my Custer talk "NASA's Social Butterfly Effect," from the chaos-theory Butterfly Effect in which sma ll events can prove consequential down the line, just as an idea of merit or an intriguing ima ge ca n be tweeted and retweeted, eventually reaching a large audience a nd stimulating discussion. NAS A outreach progra m manager Beth Beck notes the butterfly effect is evident in NAS A Buzzr oom (http://buzzroom. nasa.gov/), a website that follows current discussions, photos, videos, tweets, Facebook posts and more about NASA. "The info spreads like wildfire. We can understand what the world is saying about us. You call it butterfly. I call it buzz. "The biggest benefit of social media is that they crack open the castle door. People really wa nt access. Social media allow us to share and others to share with us. But it's more tha n two-way. It's a multiplier effect. People share with people who share with people. The coolest thing is seeing how astronauts are embracing socialmedia tools to reach out to the public in new wa ys."
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Twitter is a "micro-blogging service" that lets people post very short updates (140 characters max), which may include links to photos or videos. NASA has made effective use of social media, including Twitter, to build a bridge between its engineers and astronauts, and ordinary citizens. Aboard the final Hubble repair mission, Mike Massimino (@AstroMike) beca me the first astronaut to tweet from space. His descriptions prompted me to post a screenshot of his musings on Facebook, with the caption "Why Twitter Matters." (http://on.fb. me/d6Vj10). Although NASA previously hosted Twitter events, they really hit stride when it invited 100 people who applied through Twitter to attend a Space Shuttle launch in 2009 and communicate their experiences. I missed that event, but applied for the next. Out of about 300 applicants to the SDO-launch tweetup, I was one of 15 chosen. We met astronauts and project personnel. We got enhanced tours of NASA facilities. The night befor e the Atlantis launch, we wer e driven to near the launch pad, wher e we sa w retraction of the rotating service structure that surrounds the shuttle while it's prepped for launch.


Tenth Anniversary of the 3-D Digital Universe Atlas
By Edward J. Fox
Today, 3-D movies are, again, becoming the rage. But researchers at the American Museum of Natural History have been thinking about the universe in 3-D for years. The museum celebrated the 10th anniversary of the 3-D Digital Universe Atlas October 26 at the Hayden Planetarium. Brian Abbott, the Hayden's mana ger, digital universe, and Carter Emmart, director of astrovisualization, demonstrated evolution of the Digital Atlas as a tool to catalog and present ever-growing knowledge about the universe. Abbott and Emmart first demonstrated the Zeiss Mark IX Projector, intended to be the heart of the planetarium. With its state-of-the-art fiber optics, it can project a catalog of about 9,000 stars on the dome with ver y high r esolution. But the Zeiss, as fine an instrument as it is, has limitations. It's limited in the number of objects it can project and the fact that it can't project or orient the viewer in three dimensions. Ten years ago, the evolution of data about the universe and the ability of computers to help manipulate that data opened up new possibilities, including cataloging and presentation of the universe in thr ee dimensions. This was demonstrated with the digital-universe presentation. The relative positions of stars was demonstrated by orienting the projection, not just from Earth, as we see them, but from other positions in space. The projection was rotated so the audience exper ienced that stars are at vastly differ ent distances from Earth. This was accomplished by projecting the image on the twodimensional dome. This isn't the in-your-face action 3-D movie feel, requiring special glasses. It's achieved by computer manipulation of data in such a way that the audience's perspective is changed and it appreciates the depths of the universe. It's transported into space so it can, for exa mple, see stars in the Big Dipper from the side, rather than our nor mal head-on observing. In so doing, the audience ca n see that stars vary in distance from Earth. The key is knowing as much as possible about each star's distance from Earth and its relative brightness. One by one, each must be cataloged and infor mation entered
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into the digital atlas. Then computer programs must be written to ma nipulate and present the data for use by professional researchers and to awe lay audiences. This project was begun by the AMNH with cooperation and funding from NAS A. It was started with a room full of computers and infor mation on fewer than 10,000 stars and space objects. Over the years it evolved to be even mor e impr essive. Computers beca me mor e powerful, and can now be operated by laptops. Available da ta beca me mor e accessible from multiple sources, so have steadily grown to include millions of stars and objects. Graphics computer programs were developed to present infor mation with better resolution. It still doesn't match the fiber-optic clarity of the Zeiss, but it presents millions of stars. The demonstration flew viewers around the known universe and back in time. They appreciated the vast size and distances of the Milky Way and the universe. One milestone was superimposition of a graphic spher e that delineates the distance radio waves have traveled for the last 70 years, the timefra me in which strong radio waves have been generated on Earth and sent into space. This spher e has a radius of 70 light-years. As viewers saw a depiction of the Milky Way, with a dia meter of some 100,000 light-years, they comprehended the size of the galaxy, locations of known exoplanets and, even more so, the vastness of the universe. The new software is the Uniview program developed by Sciss AB of Sweden and the AMNH. It provides sea mless visualization of the known universe, enabling viewers to be flown from the Earth to the farthest reaches of the universe, using data from multiple sources. The return to Earth demonstrated the timeliness of the da ta input. Cloud cover in the Chicago area was visible, showing a huge October 26 storm that hit the area. The basic Digital Universe Atlas is distributed via packages that contain the Milky Way Atlas and the Extragalactic Atlas. Free software (Partiview, precursor to Uniview) allows one to explor e the universe by flying t h r o u g h i t o n y o u r c o mp u t e r . S e e h t t p : / / www. haydenplanetarium.org/universe/download/


Grand Unification Theory is Strongly Rebutted
By Alan Rude
Speaking at the Hayden pla netarium October 18, Dartmouth College professor of natural philosophy, and professor of physics and astronomy Marcelo Gleiser took the contrarian view to that of physicists and cosmologists who have been seeking, for decades, a so-called theory of ever ything--a grand unification theor y combining electroma gnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity. In a lecture on "A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe," based on his recent book of the sa me na me (S imon & Schuster, $25), Gleiser called these mainstr ea m scientists the "unifiers" and suggested strongly their efforts will be in vain, since we'll never be able to observe and test their theories through obser vation. This is especially true for string and superstring theories, he said. Gleiser proposed that this search by the unifiers-Einstein among the first and foremost--is the logical outcome of huma n inquiry which has been seeking to find a simple, all encompassing rea lity underlying the diversity of the physica l world. He described this as "oneness," the belief that there's a creator and driver of all ther e is. This belief goes back at least to the time of the P haraoh Akhenaten, was continued by the great Greek philosophers--Thales, Pytha goras, Plato--and then by the gr eat monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christia nity and Islam-with their concept of one all-powerful creator. Scientists pursuing the grand unification theor y believe the cosmos is orderly and symmetrical, and that through mathematics we can discover these symmetries. A corollary belief is that symmetry is beautiful and that, as Keats put it, "beauty is truth." Gleiser argued that symmetry is violated at both the macro and the micr o level and that this is a good thing. The universe is full of imperfections. At the time of the Big Bang, ther e was a tiny imbalance between matter and anti-matter, with matter predominating. Since matter and anti-matter destroy each other upon contact, the tiny excess of matter left over beca me the building blocks of the universe. If matter and anti-matter had been in perfect balance, there would be no matter. The cosmos would be only a bath of radiation. Imperfection, therefor e, is the most important factor in our existence, he asserted. The speaker cited a few imperfections discover ed by mathematicia ns and scientists over the years: Kepler's elliptical orbits when circles wer e deemed the perfect shape, the right-handed a nd left-handed configurations of DNA and, most significant of all, the " arrow of time," which runs only one wa y. He displayed a large hea dshot of Marilyn Monroe on the domed ceiling of the planetarium. Citing the mole on her left cheek, he asked if a similar mole on her right cheek would have added or detracted from her appearance. So much for the idea that symmetry always r esults in gr eater beauty. At the end, Gleiser jumped to a startling conclusion which was, in my opinion, not grounded in anything he'd said before: Because the universe has no discernable pattern or organization, humankind is just an accident. He ma intained the odds against intelligent life developing are astronomical (no pun intended). His blea k picture is that we are effectively and utterly alone in the cosmos and ther efore our mission is to concentrate on saving our planet and its envir onment. A fine ecological message, no doubt, but one that didn't flow logically from his earlier arguments. I hope he's wrong. It would be a sad thing for huma nkind to be isolated in the cosmos and bound for ever by the "surly bonds of Earth." Website continued from page 4 other worlds as they might appear to huma n voya gers. AmateurSpaceIma ges.com will be an online gallery wher e ima ge processors can share images. Anyone can uploa d ima ges, but a UMSF tea m will OK what's placed in the ga ller y. Amateurs can breathe new life into old data. Only a tiny fraction of spacecraft-ima ge data is processed into pictures released to the public.
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A Roundup of Some Noteworthy Recent Astronomy Books
Eyepiece typically reviews one book per issue. Once again, the large volume of astronomy titles and the holiday season have impelled us to do a book roundup, so readers can be aware of as many books as possible. Happy holidays!--Dan Harrison "Sizing Up the Universe: The Cosmos in Perspective" (National Geographic, $35) is by Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott and Robert J. Vanderbel, chair of Princeton's department of operations research and financial engineering, and a researcher in probability and optimization who pursues astrophotography as a hobby. It provides new r esearch into the massiveness of planets, stars, and galaxies using scaled maps, photographs and object comparisons to demonstrate actual size. Gott's map of the universe allows him to plot everything from satellites orbiting Earth to distant galaxies. He speaks at the Hayden December 6 (see page 15). As a bonus, the authors' 1.5-million-selling Map of the Universe is published for the first time in a book, presented on an oversize foldout page that maximizes its presentation of satellites, planets, stars and galaxies. To write "Chasing the Sun: The Epic Story of the Star that Gives Us Life" (Random House, $35), British author Richard Cohen did mor e than seven years of research to illuminate our relationship with the Sun. The result is a look at the Sun's role in science, medicine, language, mythology, religion, art and literature. Reporting from locations in 18 countries, Cohen offers observations on ever ything from the ways early Christians saw the Sun and its rays to the Sun's role in creating tidal ener gy to the wa ys such leaders as Mao and Hitler coopted the Sun to enlarge their authority. Dr. Bryan E. Penprase, chair of the physics and astronomy department, and professor of astronomy at Pomona College, has written "The Power of Stars: How Celest i a l O b s e r v a t io n s H av e S h a p e d C iv i l i z ation" (Springer, $39.95). The book covers a history of the huma n response to the sky, including sections describing constellation lore from many cultures, star maps and star tales. The book also describes a wide range of models of the universe, timekeeping systems, and celestial architecture from a ncient and moder n civilizations. "Having a better understanding of how other cultures responded to the sky ma kes the entir e experience of star 8

gazing mor e enjoyable," Penprase says. "How Old Is the Universe?" (Princeton University Press, $29.95) by Vanderbilt University astronomy professor David Weintraub, will be published next month. Weintraub doesn't simply answer the titular question. He explains how scientists arrived at the age of 13.7 billion years. He also introduces r eaders to funda mental concepts and cutting-edge advances in modern astronomy. The age of our universe carries profound implications for science, religion and philosophy. Weintraub traces the centuries-old quest by astronomers to fathom the secr ets of the night sky. He shows how independent lines of inquiry and painstakingly gather ed evidence, when fitted together like pieces in a cosmic puzzle, led to the longsought answer. Weintraub familiarizes readers with the ideas and phenomena at the