Category: The Universe

On Wednesday, November 8, observers in the Western Hemisphere and Pacific will be able to see the planet Mercury cross the face of the sun. Such “transits of Mercury” are fairly rare, so if you’ve got access to welding glasses or a telescope with a sun filter, it’s worth a look. (I’ll be using my NASA glasses left over from the transit of Venus in June 2004.) Your science teachers may be able to help.

You can find more details here.

More (added November 8–better late than never):

There are lots of links (including Webcasts) and information at NASA’s Sun-Earth Day site:
http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2007/events/mercurytransit.php

The Exploratorium in San Francisco offers a Webcast and information about how to build a viewer for the transit.

–Robert

This sounds like fun: If you send your name to NASA by November 4, they’ll record it on a microchip and launch it on board a spacecraft bound for the Asteroid Belt. Purely symbolic, of course, but not bad as symbolism goes.

Here’s the site:

http://www.dawn-mission.org/DawnCommunity/Sendname2asteroid/nameEntry.asp

Added 1 November: Meanwhile, the Planetary Society is offering a similar chance to fly your name to Mars:

http://planetary.org/home/

By special request of agrrrfishi, who is working to save tigers.

We sense a groundswell of enthusiasm for this topic, so–why not?

IAU names dwarf planet Eris

14-September-2006, Munich: The International Astronomical Union
announces the names (136199) Eris for the dwarf planet provisionally
named 2003 UB313 and Dysnomia for its moon.

The dwarf planet formerly known as 2003 UB313 received the official
designation (136199) Eris, or Eris in short, from the International
Astronomical Union on 13th September 2006. The name was accepted almost
unanimously by the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
(WGPSN) and the Committee for Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN).

Eris is the second dwarf planet in a sub category of objects of which
Pluto is the prototype.

The name Eris was proposed by one of the discoverers, Michael Brown
(Caltech, USA). (136199) Eris was discovered on 5th January 2005 by M.
E. Brown, C. A. Trujillo, and D. Rabinowitz at the Palomar Observatory.

Eris is a the Greek goddess of discord and strife. She stirs up jealousy
and envy to cause fighting and anger among men. At the wedding of Peleus
and Thetis, the parents of the Greek hero Achilles, all the gods with
the exception of Eris were invited, and, enraged at her exclusion, she
spitefully caused a quarrel among the goddesses that led to the Trojan war.

Eris is pronounced ee’-ris (see link 4).

Eris¹ moon, formerly known as S/2005 (2003 UB313) 1 and now known
technically as (136199) Eris I, has been named Dysnomia.

Dysnomia is the Daimon spirit of lawlessness. She is the daughter of
Eris, goddess of chaos and strife, and the counterpart to Eunomia who
puts an end to the anger of grievous strife.

The name Dysnomia was accepted unanimously by the members of the WGPSN.
The name was proposed by Mike Brown, a member of the discovery team.

The new designations have been approved by the IAU Division III
Organizing Committee and by the IAU Officers and have been announced in
IAU Circular 8747 13 September 2006.

Easing into the school year with a little help from your friends. But not too much help, please.

It’s hot. Well, no, it’s cold–extremely cold. But it’s in the news, and MBers are already talking about it. So here’s a place for anything more that needs to be said.