Sunday, June 23, 2019

Isn't THIS enough?

In Tim Minchin's fantastic "Storm" he asks the question:
"Isn't this enough?
Just this world?

Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable, natural world?"


One of the things that really irritates me is the need many in the media have to put artist's nearly baseless renderings in the thumbnails or headers for stories about new and fantastic images from actual research. At this moment the probe Juno is orbiting Jupiter and, as an aside to its primary mission, it is returning spectacular images of the largest of our gas giants.

Here's an example of this problem that is, interestingly enough, dated Monday 11, 2018. It starts with this image:

Which, if you look carefully you'll see is a screencap from Cosmos on Fox.

To echo Tim Minchin's words above: Isn't THIS enough?


There are lots more at: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/images/index.html

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Astronomical Hyperbole (Jupiter's moons)

About once a year Jupiter is nearly directly opposite the Sun in our sky. This, in keeping with the terribly creative terminology so common in Astronomy, is called "opposition". When at opposition Jupiter is at near its closest to the Earth so it is bigger and brighter in the sky. This year opposition is in early June and social media was awash with posts announcing this event. But, instead of saying that Jupiter was at its biggest and brightest they breathlessly proclaimed that you'd be able to see Jupiter's four largest moons in binoculars. Which is quite true. The problem is that this isn't unusual. If you have decent binoculars, and can hold them steady enough, you can ALWAYS see Jupiter's moons in binoculars providing the Jupiter is visible and the sky is dark enough. The distance to Jupiter varies by about 20% from an average value so the changes in size and brightness, while noticeable, are just not that big.

*Anything* that encourages people to look up is welcome but this kind of hyperbole just puts silly ideas in people's heads and makes it harder for them to learn about astronomy if they ever get interested.