Category: science in public

Science Through Backyard Astronomy

July 23, 2020

With so many of us home or not venturing far from home in these COVID-19 times, it’s a great time to do some local backyard astronomy. And you can contribute to valuable citizen science efforts by submitting your observations to GLOBE at Night. This year’s campaign extends through the entire calendar year, so take advantage of any clear skies, do some observing, and be included in this study of light pollution worldwide!

As of July 2020, citizen scientists from around the world have contributed 20,442 night sky observations to help quantify light pollution around the world. Participating is simple: go outside about one hour after sunset and locate the constellation(s) identified for that month.

August: Cygnus, Hercules
September: Cygnus
October: Cygnus, Pegasus
November: Pegasus, Perseus
December: Perseus

(For star-hunting tips as well as Southern Hemisphere constellations, view the GLOBE at Night website.)

View of Cygnus the Swan in the northern sky, Creative Commons image from Till Credner.

Once you’ve found the constellation in the sky, compare your observation with a brightness magnitude chart, and report your finding along with your latitude and longitude on the website. You can look at the GLOBE at Night results to see how the light pollution of your skies compares with that in other locations around the world.

This year’s observing period continues through December, so visit the website to learn more, get out there and marvel at the stars, and submit your observation to be counted and contribute to learning more about light pollution, both locally and globally.

Simple Math with Oil Spills

May 8, 2013

A blast from the past! Oil spills and unit conversations, a middle school Practical Uses of Math and Science (PUMAS) example published in 1999.

The short story: On February 4, 1999, the 639-foot freighter New Carissa became grounded near Coos Bay on the Oregon coast. Aboard the ship were 400,000 gallons of bunker fuel, threatening to leak from the fractured hull and damage the state’s fragile beach habitats. With an approaching storm increasing the chances of a disastrous spill, authorities decided to set the ship afire, a choice not without controversy and risks of its own. What would be the potential scale of the disaster if that much oil did spill? 400,000 gallons is equivalent to 400,000 milk jugs –- a lot of milk. But how much space does 400,000 gallons really take up? Some simple arithmetic can help put the quantity in perspective.

See the full article at: https://pumas.gsfc.nasa.gov/files/02_23_99_1.pdf

Eyjafjallajokull – and how local eruptions can have broader-scale impacts

March 22, 2010

Today’s news carried this interesting article about the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. (Typing the word Eyjafjallajokull is great fun–and and trying to correctly say it even more so.)

In certain cases, volcanic eruptions spew large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, where it forms an aerosol, essentially a suspension of sulfate particles in a gas. These aerosols can stay high in Earth’s atmosphere, often for two to three years, and, if the eruption is large enough, will spread out over an entire hemisphere or even the globe. Aerosols absorb some of the longer wavelength terrestrial radiation from Earth, warming the upper atmosphere. They also reflect incoming sunlight back to space, leading to cooler surface temperatures. In this way, a localized volcanic eruption can affect climate worldwide–past volcanic events have led to colder seasons, freezing at lower latitudes, and crop failures. Learn more by reading this story of how scientists have used observations and models to fit the pieces of the volcano-climate puzzle together.

Today’s Instructional Lesson: Seiches

March 1, 2010

A seiche is an oscillation associated with a standing wave that occurs in an enclosed or partially enclosed body of water, resulting from seismic activity or meteorological effects.

graphic of wind-driven seiche
Click to view this University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute animation of a wind-driven seiche. Seiches are not uncommon phenomena on the Great Lakes and adjacent bays and rivers.

Seiches have been observed on lakes, reservoirs, ponds, rivers, and even swimming pools. You can create your own seiche in your bathtub, just by rocking back and forth. At the right frequency, you can set up an oscillation–essentially a small-scale seiche–that allows the waves to grow until they overflow the bath.

A similar “sloshing”–in this case a seismic seiche–was observed on Saturday, February 27, on Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana, caused by an earthquake 4,700 miles away off the coast of Maule, Chile. Lake Pontchartrain sits on the Mississippi Delta, which contains a deep layer of surface sediments. Seismic waves can resonate through this sediment more easily than through more firm surface types, making the Gulf region particularly sensitive to earthquake-induced seiches. The seiche affecting Lake Pontchartrain occurred 11 minutes after the 8.8 magnitude Chilean earthquake and resulted in water levels about 6 inches higher than the predicted tides.

Want the video version? Derek Kevra at WWLTV has a great explanation of the quake and resulting seiche here. And if you want to learn more about seiches in history, check out this page from the USGS Earthquake Hazards program.