War of the Worlds 2.0

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! If you didn't notice, my last two blog posts were a little... unusual.  While stargazing is a favorite pastime of mine, a few of the things I wrote about were... shall we say... "slanted" for entertainment purposes.  Hey, at least I'm telling you.  Hollywood never extends you that courtesy when they stretch scientific truths.  I'm talking to you, "The Day After Tomorrow" (though I still loves ya in my geeky way).

Everything I wrote about in my "Planetary Stargazing" post is 100% true.  Every time I take my telescope out, I look for Saturn and Jupiter first (and then I head over to the Orion Nebula and the Andromeda Galaxy, if the time of year is right).  It was, however, a setup for an online mulitplayer reenactment of Orson Welles' famous radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds."  It was called "War of the Worlds 2.0" and it was set in motion by these folks at Twitter.  Twitter, as many of you know, is a sort of broadcast mini blogging system.  Those of us who took part in the broadcast offered updates throughout the day as we made our way through the carnage and terror.  The puppet masters at WotW 2.0 told us what was going on so that we were all on the same timeline.  Obviously, I made more of these updates via Twitter than I did via my blog because in the event of an alien invasion, I would be FAR more likely to have my iPhone with me for Twitter updates than I would be to carry a laptop around for making coherent, lengthy observations.  Whether or not said iPhone (or even Twitter) would be up and running in such an event is another matter.  Hey, it's still fiction.

Which brings me to my "Flee?  Not me!" post.  Yeah, this one was a crock.  I mean, it's all real, but it wasn't observed two nights ago and no one was fleeing (that I know of).  The first two videos I linked to were taken about two years ago by local Colorado news traffic copters.  It is actually footage of a Russian rocket body re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.  It is NOT, as the idiots at Fox "concluded" the Quadrantid meteor shower.  For my full, original rant on that subject, read my post on Chicken Little and the Notion of God.  I mention it about halfway down.  The third video is footage of a fireball (big freakin' meteor) that someone captured.  I offered them up here on my blog as the kind of post a quizzical astronomy enthusiast/healthy skeptic would write if alien cylinders were raining down on the planet.

I, for the record, am not that healthy skeptic.  I would simply assume they were UFOs and run around pointlessly through the streets, praying to whatever god would take me.  I mean, I've seen movies.  Duh.  Ahem.

If you are interested in reading about my "very bad day," I will be posting my tweet feed within a day or so (I have to move into my new house first).  I'll included a couple of other folks for clarity's sake (because I "reply" to them), but there were too many players who made this fun for me to really list everyone.  You can also see the archive of the entire War of the Worlds 2.0 event here.

Flee? Not Me!

Exciting stuff today! Turns out last night was the perfect night to look at the stars! Check out this atmospheric weirdness:

And:

What is all this stuff? It's NOT a meteor shower, I can tell you that. The quadrantids? I wish they were that cool! Not only that, but the first two burnt up like something unnatural- something man-made. I'm guessing it's a satellite or a rocket or something. I just can't figure out why there are so many of them all over the place. Some people are freaking out and skipping town. I'm going to investigate. Apparently there are some on the ground.

Planetary Stargazing

I have to say, it is always a pleasure to look at the planets when stargazing. They are sometimes shockingly bright. Venus is so striking that it is often called in as a UFO when it is at its brightest. Even if you don't have a telescope, the planets "stand out" in their way in the heavens- they don't twinkle as much as their neighboring stars, they are always in a different place in the sky, and their colors tend to stand out (particularly Mars, which is a bright red/orange). However, if you DO have a telescope, they can be a real treat. The first time I looked at Saturn through a telescope, I remember seeing the shadow cast by the rings on its globe. I suddenly felt very dizzy and became keenly aware of the fact that I was standing on a similar globe- a "planet" called Earth. I realized that the solid ground upon which I was standing was in fact a sphere hurtling faster than I could imagine through the vastness of space (a sphere many times smaller than the one I was looking at through the telescope).

Many people never experience this sense of smallness and wonderment. I might add that many of these people also tend to be the "skeptical" voices when it comes to life outside of this planet. Once you start reflecting upon the vastness of space and the variety within our own solar system, extraterrestrial life doesn't seem to be so far-fetched. In fact, we seem to be making new discoveries of extra-solar planets, and possibly even Earth-like planets, every day. Just one more variable becoming more of a certainty in the famous Drake equation supporting the likelihood of extraterrestrial life!

If you have clear skies and even a good pair of binoculars, I suggest trying to find Jupiter (and its four largest moons, which are easy to see with a small telescope), Saturn (and its rings), and of course, the red home of many a terrestrial science experiment: Mars (and its ice caps). I plan on doing so tonight, as we are having unseasonably warm weather and crystal-clear skies! In fact, it's odd how still it is right now...