John Bevis: The Greatest Forgotten Amateur Astronomer?

His “popularity” may have last peaked during the middle of the 1990s, but does anyone this day and age still remember John Bevis – probably England’s greatest amateur astronomer? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Amateur astronomers who had spent enough time in the library doing old school style research will probably associate amateur astronomer John Bevis with the discovery of the Crab Nebula in 1731 and his observations on an occultation by the planet Venus of Mercury back in May 28, 1737. But does his name still register in the overall consciousness of today’s amateur astronomical community?

Though he probably gained a “brief” peak in popularity during the mid 1990s in lieu of Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head on the MTV Channel, John Bevis would have been both forgotten and relegated into the dustbin of history had it been for the “old school” researcher repeatedly uncovering his “Ghost Book of Manchester” since the 1980s. Born in old Sarum Witshire back in November 10, 1695, John Bevis was more well-known as a doctor in his hometown than as an accomplished astronomer before passing away back in November 6, 1771. 

And given the mainstream press attention of the dramatic Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impact on the surface of the planet Jupiter back in July 16, 1994 and the subsequent Hollywood’s interest in the possibility of comets and gigantic asteroids hitting the planet earth causing an extinction level event – it made two box office grossing movies during the latter half of the 1990s as in Deep Impact and Armageddon – and not to mention that the mainstream press recently found out there are more people manning America’s fast food industry than looking at the skies for comets and asteroids that might wreck havoc on earth, it has become a cause célèbre back then to “empower” the amateur astronomer so they might become joint partners of NASA’s Spaceguard Survey given the results of the 1992 Spaceguard Report and the 1995 Shoemaker Committee Report. 

London physician John Bevis would only had been remembered as a good doctor – instead of an accomplished amateur astronomer – had his plans to publish a very extensive star atlas more detailed than anything ever published before had destined to failure. In 1738, Bevis erected a private observatory at Stoke Newington on the outskirts of London where he began an ambitious project – the compilation of a star atlas that was to contain many more stars than Johann Bayer’s Uranometria of 1603 and to have greater exactness. The final product was to be Bevis’ Uranographia Britannica, an atlas of 51 charts to be accompanied by a catalog of star positions. 

Given the high cost of publishing at the time, John Bevis started to look for patrons and subscribers to cover the cost of publishing his Uranographia Britannica. Bevis collected more than 180 subscriptions and the plates are beautifully engraved each having a dedication to the particular individual or learned society in the United Kingdom and across Europe that had subscribed to the work. The first mention of the Uranographia is in a letter Bevis sent to Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1748, promising to send him a copy as a present. Despite of famous royal patrons at the time – like Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales – Bevis’ Uranographia Britannica wind up being proverbially called as a “Ghost Book of Manchester” and might sent Bevis to ignominious historical obscurity. 

John Bevis was rescued from ultimate “historical obscurity” back in 1981 when William B. Ashworth Jr. of the University of Missouri in Kansas City published a paper entitled “John Bevis and his Uranographia (ca. 1750).” The paper which appeared in the February 1981 Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society contained both a description and a critique of the work, which seems to describe the very atlas.  Until William B. Ashworth Jr. published his paper in 1981, Bevis’ star atlas had been largely forgotten by the scientific community. And thanks to the November 1997 research by the Manchester Astronomical Society for mid to late 18^th Century “ghost books”, Kevin Kilburn, Michael Oates and Anthony Cross finally unearthed a filed copy of Bevis’ atlas in the Manchester Astronomical Society’s library back in November 12, 1997. The atlas consists of the elaborate frontispiece, 51 star charts, the advertising broadsheet and an index. Thus the Manchester copy is one of the most complete and best preserved of the 1786 “ghost book”. 

Voyager I: First Human Made Object to Escape the Solar System?

Since its first flight in September 5, 1977 as a way to fully explore the outer planets of our Solar System, is Voyager I now the first human made object to completely escape our Solar System? 

By: Ringo Bones 

If the Heliopause marks the outermost boundary of our Solar System, then the Voyager I spacecraft, which was launched almost 40 years ago as a way to explore the outer planets of our Solar System is now indeed the first human made object to have completely escaped our Solar System. According to NASA scientists and via peer review of scientists elsewhere across the world – instrument data recently collected by Voyager I had indeed confirmed that it has indeed completely left our Solar System. Ed Stone – the chief scientist and part of the original team that comprised the Voyager program was quite overwhelmed when he got the notice that Voyager I has indeed passed beyond the Heliopause. Despite coasting along after the gravity assists provided by the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn at a “mere” 20 kilometers per second into the depths of interstellar space, Voyager I will reach our nearest stellar neighbor – Proxima Centauri – in 40,000 years time. Although Voyager I’s plutonium 239 fueled thermoelectric generator could still be guaranteed to work by the year 2040 or 2050. Voyager I -for all intents and purposes – is now indeed going on an interstellar voyage.  

Launched to take advantage of the rare planetary alignment that only happens once every 175 years, the two Voyager spacecraft –Voyagers I and II – was originally sent to take close up photos of the outer planets – i.e. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – and collect other useful data. Even though the two spacecraft’s imaging system is comparable in technology used in the early 1990s era Video CD systems that rely on Reed-Solomon coding, it was considered state of the art back in 1977. After sending back stunning pictures of Jupiter, Saturn and their moons and then off to Uranus and Neptune and their moons during the past couple of decades or so, Voyager I also carried with it a gold plated LP containing sound of the earth and excerpts of Classical and Rock N’ Roll music plus that now famous golden plaque showing the location of our Solar System and our home planet with reference to nearby stars and the nude human male and female figure said to be readable for millions of years while travelling in the cold vacuum of space. 

Mother Nature’s Vacuum: Better Than Man’s?

Given what we currently know and been capable so far, is Mother Nature’s vacuum more perfect than that currently been created by our electronic thermionic vacuum tube engineers and scientists? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Believe it or not, the Horsehead Nebula is 50,000 times more rarefied than the vacuum created inside the glass enclosure of a typical thermionic vacuum tube. Elsewhere in the Cosmos, the convection currents of the outer atmosphere of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse – in the constellation of Orion – is so rarefied that the atoms comprising the convection currents are more loosely packed than in the most perfect vacuum that scientists and electronic thermionic vacuum tube engineers had been able to create so far here on Earth. Given the disparity between what we have been able so far to create, will we be able to ever create our own vacuum so rarefied that it could rival that or even exceed that found surrounding the Horsehead Nebula or the outer atmosphere of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse? 

In reality, the thick cloud-like misty appearance of the Horsehead Nebula and other related celestial phenomena as seen from our Earth-based vantage point can be for all intents and purposes be considered an “optical illusion”. These “cosmic mists” in reality are more rarefied than the highest – or hardest - laboratory vacuum we can create so far here on Earth, but in many regions of the Milky Way galaxy, they are banked so deep, cloud upon cloud, that they completely hide the stars and galaxies which lie behind them. 

Part of the difficulty in creating a vacuum that rivals that or exceed that of the Horsehead Nebula or the outer atmosphere of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse was explained by Dr. Harvey C. Rentschler in the meeting of the American Physical Society – which was then published on the July 1943 issue of the Scientific American magazine. In his experiments conducted 8 years before 1943 had led him to conclude that atoms of gas – oxygen, hydrogen, or nitrogen – actually dissolve in the crystalline structure of some metals just as salt dissolves in water. These gas particles then “loosen” the electrons in this structure, causing them to be emitted from the metal more readily when heat is applied. And according to Dr. Rentschler, this should result in longer-lasting thermionic vacuum tubes and accomplish important savings in the size and number of electric batteries, generators and other apparatus needed to supply the filament power. So despite the use of clever chemical getters, creating an artificial vacuum here on Earth by scientists and electronic thermionic vacuum tube engineers that rival that or even exceed the vacuum surrounding the Horsehead Nebula, the outer atmosphere of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, or other related celestial phenomena is – at present using current technology – still an almost quixotic quest.  

The Russian Ural Meteorite Impact and the Asteroid Flyby: Cosmic Coincidence?

Even though astronomers say the both events have nothing to do with each other, were the Russian Ural Region meteorite impact and the asteroid flyby just mere cosmic coincidence? 

By: Ringo Bones

Friday, February 14, 2013 could be a very memorable date for anyone interested in cosmic events as a 2-meter meteor broke up over the skies of Russia’s Ural Region producing a shockwave equivalent to five times that of the Hiroshima A-Bomb that injured over a thousand people and causing over 30-million US dollars in property damage. Pieces of the meteor had even struck as far afield as neighboring Kazakhstan.  Though astronomers say the events are unrelated, Asteroid 2012 DA14 – with a diameter of 150-meters – just came within 28,000 kilometers – just a tenth the distance between the Earth and the Moon, and grazed the orbit window of geosynchronous satellites. 

The smaller two-meter meteor that broke up over the Urals might be the one posing the most danger but our current optical and radio telescope technology are not sensitive enough to see and detect two-meter wide or smaller meteoroids as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere. And even though the odds of being hit by a former celestial body is insignificantly low at 1 in 150-trillion, it doesn’t offer comfort to the over 1,000 Russians injured by flying shattered glass caused by the shockwave of the meteorite strike – though the last one such event happened in the general region was back in 1908 where a large meteorite exploded over Tunguska, Siberia. And the only person ever hit and injured by a meteorite strike was Mrs. Ann Hewlett Hodges.

Is The Star Betelgeuse Going Supernova?

Given that astronomical observations made between 1996 and 2011 have shown that the star Betelgeuse shrank by 15%, is it soon going to become a supernova?

By: Ringo Bones

Back in 1996 and even more recent astronomical observations made in 2011 have shown that the star Betelgeuse shrank by 15%, and given what astronomers have learned over the years observing stars, it is very likely that Betelgeuse could go supernova in 500-million years’ time. But should all of humanity be worried?

Given that one of the hypothesized causes of the Permian Mass Extinction of 250 million years ago was a supernova or stellar explosion that was much closer to planet Earth than the 100 light-year minimum safe distance for such events to not disrupt the ozone layer or fry the Earth’s surface with lethal amounts of ionizing radiation, we should all be a little worried about the star Betelgeuse going supernova. But there are some very important factors to consider before anyone gets carried away by the hoopla over a repeat of the Permian Mass Extinction in our near future.

First, the minimum 100-light-year safety distance for supernovas is, in truth, but an arbitrarily set safety distance on what astronomers know so far for supernovas not disrupting our planet’s ozone layer or frying Earth’s surface with lethal amounts of gamma radiation given that some stars with weird magnetic field configurations that go supernova can still wreak havoc to the ozone layers of Earth-like planets 500-light-years from them. Second, given that Betelgeuse is about 700-light-years away from us, and assuming the star had gone supernova back in 1996, we – and Earth’s astronomers - would only know that Betelgeuse went supernova in 1996 only after 683 years into the future given it would take light and other information pertaining to Betelgeuse going supernova 700 years to get to Earth. So it might only be a problem – or an astronomical wonder – for humanity’s future generations hence.

Going supernova or not, Betelgeuse is quite a fascinating star in itself. As a red supergiant in the constellation of Orion, Betelgeuse is a very peculiar over-bright star. In spectral type, Betelgeuse is only a red M-star, shedding its ruddy light from a surface only half as hot as our sun’s. Normal M-stars are 10-times smaller in diameter and 1,000 times dimmer in light than our sun. But Betelgeuse equals 800 suns in diameter and 14,000 suns in brightness.

Another more fascinating aspect of this star is that the outer edges of Betelgeuse contains huge curtains of billowing gas that rise and fall quicker that the whole globe of the star’s rotational period. And in these convection currents, the atoms are more loosely packed than the most perfect vacuum that our own scientists have so far been able to create on Earth!

Saturn’s Rings: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

They seem to be the same age as their parent planet, but is there evidence that Saturn’s rings are younger than their parent planet? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Conventional wisdom suggests that Saturn’s rings are the same age and therefore always been a permanent fixture of the planet itself but research done since 1984 have seem to prove otherwise. Many scientists have been forced to abandon the long-established notion that the rings of Saturn are as ancient and as enduring as the solar system itself. It now appears that the rings could not have formed along with the planet 4.5 billion years ago. Rather, they are a recent addition – as in no more than 100 million years old. Furthermore, the same processes that created them are already sowing the seeds of their destruction. This makes Saturn’s rings a “passing fancy” that will disappear before the next 100 million years go by. In all likelihood, Saturn has “fathered” several generations of rings over the course of the planet’s lifetime. 

“I’m interested in all the ring systems,” says Jeffrey Cuzzi of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, who was drawn to his work by the confounding mystery and beauty of Saturn’s rings. What we currently know about the astrophysical principles behind planetary ring formation theory suggest they are primarily created by the breakup of a planet’s own moons going to pieces or captured comets caught on the fly and then torn to shreds by competing gravitational forces. If you scoop up all the scattered particles of ice and dust glittering Saturn’s ring system – or other planetary ring systems – and pack them together, you could mold a moon about the size of Saturn’s moon Mimas – a little under 250 miles in diameter. Such a satellite probably existed quite close to the planet Saturn about 100 million years ago. Then came along a comet or another big celestial body on a collision course and blasted this ancient moon to bits. 

This ill-fated moon, more likely, lay within Saturn’s Roche Limit – named for the 19^th Century French mathematician Edouard Roche and defined the region close to a planet where where competing gravitational forces are strong enough to shatter unstable satellites or prevent them from forming in the first place. Within the Roche Limit, the destructive tidal forces dominate other effects. Tidal forces pull those parts of an orbiting body that are relatively close to the planet more strongly than the parts farther away; as a result, the satellite – held together only by the weak glue of its own gravity – may literally be pulled to pieces. Though not all orbiting bodies must submit to tidal forces – NASA’s fleet of space shuttles and the International Space Station, for example, orbits well within planet Earth’s Roche Limit yet does come undone, because its constituent parts are held together by nuts, bolts and the fierce crystal cohesion of the molecules of its metallic parts. 

“The ring systems are a little bit like poppies on a hill,” muses Cuzzi, “You come back next year to the same place, and you’ll still see poppies on the hillside, but they’re not the same poppies you saw last year. In the same way, the rings of the planets may not be the same rings that were there a million years ago – or 10 million or 100 million years ago. They’re just the most recent incarnation. And the process just keeps on going.” Sadly, there's probably only a very small handful in the global astronomical community who is accommodating to the theory that Saturn's rings might not be more than 100 million years old.

NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover: A New Era In Unmanned Space Exploration?

At a little over 2 billion US dollars and several generations more advanced than the 2 Viking Landers from the mid 1970s, does NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover truly represent the new era in unmanned robotic space exploration?

By: Ringo Bones

In today’s social network world, the NASA Mars Curiosity Rover seems to have revealed something that I thought vanished long ago – as in American’s jumping for joy in anticipation of an awe-inspiring scientific discovery. With news of viewing parties by elementary, middle-school, high-school and college students across the nation, it seems that the Mars Curiosity Rover is now the most social network inclusive of all of NASA’s unmanned robotic spacecraft. Even the NASA Mission Control guy with a Mohawk haircut managed to earn a sizable social network following previously reserved for reality show participants. But the question now is, will the new Mars Curiosity Rover uncover scientific data about the red planet that the two Viking Landers previously missed?

Back in May 31, 1977, the biological instruments of Vikings 1 and 2 were shut off. Scientists concluded they had found no life on Mars, but was it really due to the “anomalous results” when the Vikings 1 and 2 tested the Martian soil back then? That’s why everyone – as in mere civilian science buffs - interested in the prospect of finding life on Mars are currently rooting for the Mars Curiosity Rover because it is way more advanced than any unmanned robotic spacecraft sent to explore the red planet. Remember, when the Viking Landers were sent to Mars, the meteorite ALH84001 was yet waiting to be found in the icy wastes of Antarctica.  

The primary hurdle that makes any unmanned robotic exploration of the red planet a Herculean task is distance. Even though at 186,000 miles per second we send and receive data and signals elsewhere on our planet almost instantaneously, it takes on average 20 minutes to send a data-filled radio signal to Mars – making autonomous function a necessity for unmanned robotic exploration of Mars since the Vikings 1 and 2. Despite these hurdles, the new Mars Curiosity Rover managed to send back standard resolution pictures of the Gale Crater and Mount Sharp – the high resolution pictures take a little longer to send back to Earth because the new rover’s space-worthy little transmitter can only handle so much data at any given time.

According to NASA, the Mars Curiosity Rover is the most advanced robotic space probe they have built so far. Advanced as these robotic spacecraft are, they can’t fully replace the versatility of a human being actually landing and exploring Mars – and remember, when was the last time the American public threw a ticker tape parade for a robotic spacecraft down Madison Avenue for a mission accomplished celebration? Expensive, risky or not, a manned exploration to Mars should be NASA’s next priority.