The Challenger Telescope at Fremont Peak is (as amateur telescopes go) a monster.  It weighs in right around 2000 lbs, but is so finely balanced that you can move it with a fingertip.  It’s on a fixed ‘English Cross’ mount, and can hit any point in the sky (with the exception of near-horizon objects due to the observatory walls).

With a 30-inch mirror it can pull in objects as faint as Pluto and can gather enough light to make potography of faint diffuse nebula a reality.  Planned upgrades include additional automation for imaging.  This is a serious telescope.

With a serious piece of equipment, operators must be trained by the Association before they are allowed to run the telescope.  This involves several pages of written materials on procedures and rules, as well as a hands-on training session in moving the telescope.   While the telescope is fitted with digital setting circles, it is moved by hand.  My oldest daughter was trained and certified to run it two years ago, at the age of ten.   At the time, she was the youngest person ever trained to run the telescope.   Now that record has been broken.

When Hannah was trained, she was 2 months away from her 11th birthday.  Now her younger sister Rosie has also been trained.  Rosie is a bit over three months away from her 11th birthday.

I’m looking forward to bringing Rosie up to the peak and letting her point the scope during a public session. That’s always a blast, to see young people, especially kids her age, really getting into astronomy.    One of these days I’ll post some scans of her sketches.

In a previous post I ranted about the severe and obvious errors in a Burger King commercial that rankled me.  Well, apparently someone else pointed out the problems to Burger King as well, becuase they’ve heavily edited the commercial.

In the new version, the two men are sitting down eating their BK Steakhouse Burgers as before.  However, when the third man asks “What did you do to earn that Steakhouse Burger?” there is a cut-away to a new scene of the first man, who says simply “I discovered a new planet”.  This is obviously a new shot.  The background and camera angle are both different than the original version, and there are no identifying objects in the background of this shot.  It was probably re-shot in a different studio with as close of a background as they could get, and edited into the commercial, replacing the original (very erroneous) explanation.

Also different is the reaction of the third man at the end of the commercial, when the second man says “I helped”, the third man says (sarcastically) “You helped.  You arrogant punk!”

The commercial is quite a bit shorter than the original as well.

All I can say is ‘kudos’ to BK for immediately fixing the horrific errors in the first version of the commercial.

So, have you seen these commercials yet?  The ones for the Burger King Steakhouse Burger?  I’ve caught three of them so far, and they are all similarly annoying, but the last one ticks me off.  I’m quoting these from memory, so these are probably not exact.

The first one I saw went something like this:  Two men are sitting in a lunchroom, eating their BK Steakhouse burgers.  A woman enters the scene, and asks one man “What did you do to earn that Steakhouse burger?”  He replies “I gave half my paycheck to charity.”   She nods happily, and then asks the second man “And what did you do?”.  The second man replies “I was just hungry.”  The woman angrily slaps the second man and calls him an arrogant and selfish jerk.  The tagline is “The steakhouse burger is so special, people will think you’re special too”.

I saw another variation a few days ago, which I frankly can’t remember.  However, last night I saw this one:

Two men are sitting at a table in a room lined with rack-mounted electronics.  On the table is a small (6- or 8-inch) Newtonian telescope.  Obviously this is *supposed* to be an observatory in a university setting.   A third man enters the scene and asks “What did you do to earn that Steakhouse Burger”.  The first man replies “I found a moon around Regulus 359, in the Crab Nebula.  It may support life”.   The third man asks the second “And you?”.  The second man replies “I helped”.  The third man angrily replies “You either *find* a new star, or you *don’t* you arrogant <bleep>”.

Of course, the point is supposed to be that these burgers are really good, and that people will expect you to have done something special to earn them.  However, this commercial grates on my nerves because of the obvious errors, so the producers and directors of this commercial get no BK Steakhouse Burger!

First of all, Regulus is a star, not a constellation.  There is no star ‘Regulus 359′.   Regulus is a particular star, the brightest star in Leo. It is a triple star system, so there is a Regulus A, B and C, but no ‘Regulus 359′.

The star ‘Wolf 359′ is in Leo, which may be where the commercial got ‘Regulus 359′.  Wolf 359 is a small, dim, red dwarf star, only about 7.8 ly away.  Regulus A is about 77.5 ly away, and is a type B star, young, hot, and also spinning very rapidly.

The ‘Crab Nebula’ is not anywhere near Leo, it’s in Taurus.   It’s also a supernova remnant, so anything “in the Crab Nebula” would be toast.

So, let’s assume that ‘Regulus 359′ is supposed to be a star, then what they discovered would be a ‘planet’, not a ‘moon’.   As far as I know, we’ve only been able to discover some extrasolar planets by the wiggle they put into their host star.   There has been some spectroscopic analysis of the reflected light from some planets, but no direct imaging.   I don’t see how we could discover a ‘moon’ at this point (but I could be wrong).

Is that supposed to be the telescope that they used?  It looks like a commercial 8-inch newt.   It would be really cool if we could image extrasolar planets from that scope, but not very damn likely.

And lastly, they can’t keep their story straight for the whole 30 seconds.  Guy #1 says ‘moon’ and guy #3 says ’star’.  Which is it?

All in all, this commercial belongs on Phil Plait’s site as an example of bad astronomy in the media.    Sorry guys, you had an opportunity to earn that BK Steakhouse Burger, but now I have to take them away.

Recently I purchased a 125mw green laser.  You can see my previous posts on this here, here, here, and here. 

On May 31, I took my new 125mw laser and the trusty 5mw laser up to Fremont Peak for a public program.  I was able to use the 125mw and cast a visible beam as soon as we could see Saturn.  I couldn’t see the 5mw at all, but the 125mw was bright enough even in the civil twilight  to cast a visible beam and aid in aiming the Challenger.

The 125mw was a big hit with the other astronomers.  I was able to point out objects with it for about an hour before the 5mw lasers became visible.  “Oohs” and “Ahs” were abundant, even from the other astronomers.

Remember, if you purchase one of these, you really should take the warnings seriously.  A 125mw laser can blind someone if it reflects off of a mirror surface (specular reflection) and hits them in the eye, and FAA regulations state that this class of laser device is illegal within 20 miles of a commercial airport.

So I make use of the Google alerts feature, and have news stories related to astronomy sent to my inbox daily. Usually these are straightforward, if sometimes mundane stories (things like such-and-such astronomer with such-and-such university is the recipient of such-and-such a grant). However, once in a while something truly bizarre sneaks in, like this editorial at Indiadaily.com:

The extraterrestial slightly advanced civilization in star WOH G64

Now, I frequently see stories from the India Times on astronomy… Astronomy is popular in India it appears, and the stories that I have seen so far in India Times have all been fact-based, pro-science stories.

What is IndiaDaily? Is it the equivalent of a tabloid? The editorial seems to be strangely absent of anything resembling fact or critical thinking. In seven short paragraphs, it makes the amazing claims that:

a) ‘Some Scientists’ say that the system is dominated by strange extraterrestrial life forms

b) These life forms are ion-based

c) These life forms are intelligent

d) These life forms are slightly more advanced than us

e) Ion-based life forms are also present in the earth

d) These earthly ion-based life forms are ‘primarily undetected’ by our ‘primitive’ technologies.

Wow!

Actually these claims are in the last three paragraphs. The first four paragraphs appear to make unremarkable claims about observations of a star that is lighter and cooler than expected. I haven’t fact checked those yet, and I don’t think I’ll bother.

–

Update: Here’s the “real” story on the star.

Carnival of Space #55 is up on Catholic Sensibility

This Sunday, May 25, NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander will make it’s descent to the northern plains of Vastitas Borealis on Mars.  It will be there looking for sub-surface water ice.   Unlike the rovers, this will be a stationary lander.  See the full write-up on space.com

I’ve found 8 image artifacts so far (including the one in the previous post).  I’ve taken screenshots of them and placed them on my Flickr photostream.

In most sciences, artifacts are things to be avoided.  Unless you’re an archaeologist, you do *not* want artifacts in your data.  Case in point: I was playing around with the Microsoft WorldWide Telescope  when I ran across this image, sitting out between Sirius and Orion.  If you look closely, you can see that it is an image of a brightening sky and multiple super-imposed images of the instrument package of a large telescope.   I don’t know which one, but with all the clutter there, I’m thinking it has to be a fairly big one.

Over at BadAstronomy, Phil Plait has a write up on SN2008D, a Supernova caught in the act of exploding on January 9, 2008.   It turns out that Alicia Soderberg, an astronomer at Princeton, had SWIFT pointed at SN2007uy, and caught the X-Ray flash of SN2008D, which is something we’ve never seen before.