A slightly different trip to the Observatory

I’ve only been to the Observatory 3 times during all the years I’ve lived in LA. By coincidence, a couple of days after our nighttime hike, G and I went back to the Observatory for our third time. This trip was just slightly different in tone. We went all out on the nerd-o-meter and attended this event:

We really wanted to see the video in the Planetarium, but the event line-up was changed at the last moment and somehow we didn’t get the message, so we wound up only getting to hear the lecture. Bummer.

Still, the lecture was actually really interesting. In addition to learning the meaning of the word “Syzygy” [Note: spelled incorrectly in the flyer.- so clearly, I’m not the only Harvard Grad who was unfamiliar. According to Webster’s online : the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies (as the sun, moon, and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse) in a gravitational system] apparently, there are all kinds of things related to sun that can best be studied during an eclipse -- when viewed through proper instruments of course.

I’m going to share some of those tidbits now, seeing as how I am not at all scientifically minded, I am otherwise likely to forget. Don’t worry, there won’t be all that many nerdy science posts – in fact, this maybe the only one ever-- so bare with me.

The best time to see the sun’s corona (the sun’s atmosphere) is during and eclipse. This corona changes shape in cycles of about 11 years. There are polar and equatorial regions and the distribution changes along these lines due to changes in the magnetic field.

It’s also interesting that the corona is infinitely hotter than the surface of the sun (According to Wikipedia: The optical surface of the Sun (the photosphere) is known to have a temperature of approximately 6,000 K. Above it lies the solar corona at a temperature of 1,000,000 K.) No one is really sure why this it.

Finally, it was really just kind of interesting to see images of other celestial bodies, like Venus and Mars, travel pass in front of the sun and look pretty much like a flea on a giant grapefruit. (You can see a video of this on YouTube)

Prof . Jay Pasachoff claimed that it wasn’t the case, but it still seems to me that studying eclipses is just a good excuse to travel all around the word to exotic locations, since every other picture was of him and his students in some fabulous location with their telescopes – most impressive were the series from a coast in Greece.

I really don’t think they paint science properly for students while they’re in school. If I knew exotic travel could be part of the deal, I would probably have paid more attention.