Greetings from Palmia Observatory
Well, we didn't have much luck seeing the latest prediction for Starlink String of Pearls, but some lucky observers caught a distant rocket launch. More about that and comments about our ecological footprint and water ice on the moon discussion at National Exploration Science Forum 2023.
So, OCA Brett Nordby, while doing some observing at OCA Anza site happened to catch and photograph the contrail from a rocket launched from Vandenberg AFB. Check out these two images below. By the way, Brett captured these images with just his iPhone.
 |
| Rocket contrail as seen from OCA Anza site (Source: OCA Brett Nordby) |
This other view is pretty fantastic too. Thanks for sharing, Brett!
 |
| Rocket contrail as seen from OCA Anza site (Source: OCA Brett Nordby) |
Most of this week has been involved with sitting in on NESF remotely online, but before making some comments about that, let's catch up on some reading of this little book "Ecological Footprint." Now as many of you readers know, we have been doing a lot of reading about the transition from fossil fuels to more renewable energy sources.
 |
| Great little introduction ecological biocapacity (Source: Ecological Footprint) |
I have come to accept that most of us throughout the world are to use a term originally discussed on Nate Hagen's podcasts, "Energy Blind." This means that most of us have no idea how significant the use of fossil fuel energy is on how the whole world economy works and what is going to be involved as we strive to transition away from fossil fuels. You can check out his blog on Youtube starting at: The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens.
Anyway, the book references the website, https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en, you can enter your specific energy and material usage in your own lifestyle and see your ecological footprint. The image below shows the Observatory footprint which just includes a small home, made of wood, no food grown at home, air-conditioning, some international airflights each year, a couple of cruises, etc.
Wow, who knew that the relatively "spartan" lifestyle lived here would require 6.5 Earths if everyone else used as much energy and materials and foodstuffs as we do here!
 |
| Ecological footprint for Palmia Observatory (Source: www.footprintcalculator.org) |
The NESF 2023 was held in College Park, MD this week and I shelled out the $100 to be able to attend online. The latest programmatic development of the Artemis program was illustrated, and I followed mostly some of the scientific discussion.
 |
| Cover slide for the NASA Exploration Science Forum 2023 (Source: NASA) |
One of the more interesting presentations for me was where the water on the Moon came from. A summary of some evidence for water on the Moon is shown here. We see clear indication that the correlation with the solar wind shows one source of hydrogen ions on the moon.
 |
| Evidence for Hydroxylation on the Moon (Source: L. Yeo, NESF 2023) |
Another speaker talked about how the solar wind can cause hydroxylation at the lunar surface, but how are the hydroxy ions converted to water. Otherwise, we see mostly hydroxides of the lunar minerals and not a lot of water. Here the author shows that the required temperature rise to cause the formation of water, instead of just hydroxyl ions, could be caused by micrometeorite impacts.
 |
| How did water get on the Moon (Source: Andrew Jordan, NESF 2023) |
I was curious about how the solar wind would strike the polar regions of the moon where ice is still supposed to be found. The permanently shaded regions of craters, etc., would not be in the direct flight path of the solar wind from the sun.
But we need to include the effects of the magnetic fields around the moon. We know on Earth, its magnetic field deflects the main portion of the solar wind, and its path impacts the Earth mainly in the polar regions. The moon has some minor residual magnetic field, but it also passes through the Earth's magnetic field are various times in its orbit around the Earth. The screenshot below identifies that the moon enters the Earth's magnetic field about 3 days before full moon and stays inside until about 6 days after full moon.
 |
| The Moon and the Magnetotail (Source: NASA) |
Another speaker, Kennedi White, Brown University, presented some data collected from a solar storm back in 1989, which shows the abundance of observed hydrogen on the moon's surface. What was especially interesting was the high incidence observed hydrogen at the lunar polar regions during some of the observed time period.
 |
| Detection of hydrogen, especially at polar lunar regions (Source: Kennedi White, NESF 2023) |
Also, after learning how water could be formed on the moon, I can't help but mention one of the early papers that redid the calculations showing the possibility of ice on the moon, once formed, to be stable. It is one thing for water to be formed on the moon from hydroxyl ions, it is another thing for any remaining ice to be stable there. Our good dog walking neighbor and friend, Ken Watson, did some of the calculations while he was at Caltech to show that ice could be stable there in permanently shadowed regions. At the pressure and temperature expected in permanently shadowed regions on the moon, ice would have had the required thermodynamic stability. Thanks, Ken!
 |
| This paper outlined possibility of ice on the Moon (Source: Watson, 1961) |
Finally, we end up this blog post with an interesting article pointed out to us by Sabine Hossenfelder, who often discusses why there doesn't seem to be much real progress in particle physics ever since the discovery of the Higgs. This paper in the European Physical Journal points out how the "the particle era must undergo an important reconfiguration" as the era of "on-shell discoveries" might be at an end. What say you?
 |
| The end of the particle era? (Source: Harlander, et al, European Physical Journal, Nov. 2023) |
Until next time,
No comments:
Post a Comment