A roof with a view - over the golf course that now surrounds it. Apparently not only the pagoda in Kew Gardens but also the Shard can be seen through gaps in the foliage of a nearby tree.
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
09 October 2022
The King's Observatory
17 March 2019
Photographing the sun's journey
One of my favourite parts of The Sun exhibition at the Science Museum (till 6 May) was the Solargraphy project, designed and coordinated by Tarya Trygg, photography lecturer in Finland. The project is part of her PhD work.
Participants set up a pinhole camera and left it in place for a year. The exposed film shows the tracks the sun made across the sky -
11 January 2019
Places to go, things to see - part 1
Gdansk, a "fair-tale port city" (reconstructed after being 90% bombed in WW2), is rumoured to have a wonderful engineering museum, and is the birthplace of 17th century astronomer Hevelius, who mapped the moon ("The sketched topography reveals that as more of the moon is illuminated in its cycle, the features visible one night are not in the same location the next."). He and his wife Elisabeth, also an astronomer and born in the same year as Selenographia was published, are buried in St Catherine's Church. After her husband's death in 1687, Elisabeth went on to compile their star catalogue, which was published in 1690.
| One of the 40 engraved plates in Johannes Hevelius's 1645 Selenographia (via) |
In Norwich, the Sainsbury Art Centre has an Elisabeth Frink show, "Humans and other animals" till 24 February. A version of "Mirage II" was shown at the Royal Academy for many years and I liked to see it there -
| (via) |
Birmingham, for Matthew Krishanu's several shows (he teaches painting at Camden Arts Centre and I have benefitted from his demonstrations and patience) -
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15 February 2018
Poetry Thursday - an astronomy poem by Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn'd astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
- Walt Whitman
Found via the discussions in the excellent online astronomy course "In the night sky: Orion", which has been a source of insight and of astonishing information - did you know that there are 170 billion galaxies (or maybe a trillion) - each containing millions or billions of stars, and their moons and planets, incomprehensibly many; some are millions of light years away, incomprehensibly far. From the dust between them, some flung out by stellar collisions in the 13.7 or 13.8 billion years of the universe's existence and the rest a remnant of the Big Bang, more stars continue to be made as the dust particles, tiny as they are, are attracted to each other by gravity.
Of course in the still, you miss the 3D effect - have a look at the video, it's spectacular!
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
- Walt Whitman
Found via the discussions in the excellent online astronomy course "In the night sky: Orion", which has been a source of insight and of astonishing information - did you know that there are 170 billion galaxies (or maybe a trillion) - each containing millions or billions of stars, and their moons and planets, incomprehensibly many; some are millions of light years away, incomprehensibly far. From the dust between them, some flung out by stellar collisions in the 13.7 or 13.8 billion years of the universe's existence and the rest a remnant of the Big Bang, more stars continue to be made as the dust particles, tiny as they are, are attracted to each other by gravity.
Other great sources highlighted by participants are this tool to see the Milky Way in light of different wave lengths - http://www.chromoscope.net/ - and a series of videos from the Hubble Telescope: the one on the Horsehead Nebula is so good - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL5L4VFgkdo, and the 3D technique explained in that video has been applied to the Orion Nebula -
| (via) |
14 August 2017
Blast from the past - actually, two of them
19 August 2007
A metaphor for blogging?
Could be ... lots of little flashes as various people visit the blog, or as topics for posts appear briefly in the blogger's mind - and behind those, the great vast untapped universe....
Technical details: this, from the Astronomy Picture of the Day website, is the result of combining a series of 30-second images of the night sky during the annual August Perseid meteor shower - comet dust burns up as it enters the atmosphere, and on a clear and moonless night, it's great to see - usually one flash at a time.
Technical details: this, from the Astronomy Picture of the Day website, is the result of combining a series of 30-second images of the night sky during the annual August Perseid meteor shower - comet dust burns up as it enters the atmosphere, and on a clear and moonless night, it's great to see - usually one flash at a time.
Marion commented that it looked like a cosmic sneeze!
This year the meteor shower was supposed to be especially good - and sure enough, I missed it again, either because of cloudy skies or because of simply forgetting. There's a very short timelapse video here (and probably elsewhere). Hopefully that article (in The Telegraph, can nothing be trusted?) is the only one that confuses those two "astro" occupations:
"The Perseid meteor shower, one of the best-known among astrologists, " - tsk, tsk, Telegraph....
The second "blast from the past" goes back many years, to 1971, when ex-hubby and I were living with kind friends Jim and Betty in the small beach town of White Rock BC, in the month before going to England for ex-h's MA studies. We all took chairs and blankets outside and kept our eyes on the heavens. Perhaps we even saw a meteor or two; perhaps a bottle of wine was involved. After a while it got quite chilly and we gave up and went in.
Decades later I learn that the shower is best seen, in the northern hemisphere, in the hours before dawn. I doubt we would have got up that early....
Note to self: be in a dark-sky area next year ... and do something about getting decent glasses before then. You never know, the clouds might not get in the way. I'd love to see a shooting star - and/or a planet (Saturn?) through a telescope.
Meanwhile the Astronomy Picture of the Day site continues to provide astro...y photos of wonder and interest - just look at this solar corona, it could be something (celestial phenomenon? he did a few of those) drawn by William Blake -
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