It’s going to be a fantastic month for star and planet gazers. To begin with, for all you Uranus watchers out there (and you know who you are!), Uranus and Venus will be in the same binocular field for about half the month. Read more about it below!

Also, during the last week in February, you’ll be able to see to see SIX planets. Five of them will be in the sky and well, you’ll have to look down to see the other one! I’ll be sending out a special e-mail to tell you all about it.

And of course, public shows are next week. Don’t know much about the Milky Way? We’ll fix that in February’s public shows. Just scroll down to read all about it!

It’s a grand month for sky watching! Indulge yourself this week!

Pam

1. February’s Public Planetarium shows

2. It’s easy to see GREEN

1. Cruisin’ the Milky Way: The Planetarium Guide to the Galaxy

9, 10 and 11 February 2012

6:30 and 7:00 p.m.

We’re lucky here on Guam. If you have a dark clear sky and not too many streetlights, you may see a band of clouds high in the eastern sky at one hour after sunset. After a while, you’ll notice they aren’t moving and that they form a arc that goes completely across the sky from northwest to southeast. Those clouds aren’t made of water, they’re made of stars and they are your galactic home, the Milky Way.

Most of us don’t know much about the galaxy we live in but we aim to change that with February’s public show, "Cruisin’ the Milky Way: The Planetarium Guide to the Galaxy". At 6:30 p.m. we’ll sail ‘Out to the Edge’, where you’ll discover where we’re located in our star city, and see what lies beyond. At 7:00 we go ‘Into the Core’ and learn about the giant black hole at the galaxy’s center. We’ll see star factories and stellar graveyards and learn what the galaxy and every housewife have in common.

"Cruisin’ the Milky Way: The Planetarium Guide to the Galaxy" will be presented on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, February 9th, 10th and 11th.

It’s everything you always wanted to know about the galaxy. The doors open at 6:00 p.m. Don’t miss it!

2. It’s easy to see GREEN!

From the third through the fifteenth of February, Venus and Uranus will be in the same 7X50 binocular field. Since that’s almost two weeks, there’s little question that you’ll be able to spot Uranus even if it’s cloudy part of the time.

So . . . would you like to join the select ranks of Uranus watchers? Just take your binoculars outside and face west where the Sun disappeared.

That incredibly bright star about two fist-widths above the western horizon at one hour after sunset isn’t a star; it’s Venus. Aim your binoculars at Venus any time after Friday the 3rd and look above her. You should see Uranus, and Venus will get closer to Uranus every night.

So how will you know you’ve found Uranus? Oh, that’s simple. Uranus will look like all the other small stars in your binocular field with a stunning exception. It will be the color of pistachio ice cream. They don’t call it “the lime-green planet” for nothing! Become a Uranus watcher this month! And don’t forget to find Jupiter four fist-widths above Venus at one hour after sunset and use your binoculars to spot its four big moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Have fun!

Greetings everyone! I thought I’d dip into the animal files this week and see what’s new with the other critters that share our planet with us. And it turns out that the first story isn’t about what’s new but about what’s old. Researchers based in Pisa, Italy have used the latest forensic techniques to discover how a dolphin died. Admirable, you say, but hardly news. Well it is, if the corpse is over 4 million years old!

The team has done careful forensic analysis of the bite marks on the fossilized skeleton of a 9-foot long dolphin discovered in northern Italy and reconstructed the events that led to the dolphin’s death. They’ve also determined the probable identity of the killer: a 12-foot long shark that goes by the improbable name of Cosmopolitodus hastalis.

The edges of the bite marks are smooth which ruled out several species of sharks that have serrated teeth. The researchers looked at the mouths of fossilized shark specimens and compared the size and shape of the teeth with the marks on the dolphin’s ribs. This allowed them to narrow the list of suspects to Cosmopolitodus hastalis. It also helped that old Cosmo and his buddies were common in the waters where the dolphin swam.

Detailed analysis of the bite pattern allowed the researchers to go even further. The deepest and clearest incisions are on the dolphin’s ribs. This indicates that the shark attacked from below and probably took out a big part of the unfortunate Flipper’s abdomen by shaking its head violently. After the dolphin died, it rolled over on its back where the shark bit again, close to the fleshy dorsal fin.

The researchers say the study is significant because it demonstrates ‘fossilized behavior’ and gives us a glimpse of the ecological interactions between organisms in prehistoric seas. Fossil remains of prey species with shark bite marks provide direct evidence of what prehistoric sharks ate and how they behaved.

I must confess that it sounds to me like shark behavior hasn’t changed much in four million years!

Skeleton of the dolphin, preserved for 4 million years with the bite marks across its ribs from the shark attack the killed it. (Credit: Giovanni Bianucci)

And for a story a little closer to home in both time and space, have you ever wondered why so many spider webs have those ‘X’s’ on them? A study by researchers at the University of Melbourne has discovered that the white silk crosses are used by orb-weaving spiders to protect their webs from damage.

The team collected a group of orb-weaving spiders and left them to build their webs in the laboratory. Some of the completed webs were severely damaged, others lightly damaged and the remainder left alone. The response of the spiders was then observed.

The team found that orb-weaving spiders respond to severe damage to their webs by building bigger silk crosses, but if the damage is mild they don’t bother adding extra decoration.

The researchers think the dense crosses help make webs more visible to larger animals that might accidentally walk or fly into them and they are not unlike the tape we humans put on a glass door. The spider’s normal prey is small insects who apparently don’t notice the crosses until it’s far too late!

Decorative white silk crosses are an ingenious tactic used by orb-weaving spiders to protect their webs from damage. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Melbourne)

Greetings everyone, I thought we’d dip into the animal file today for a couple of stories that have local implications. Our first one is about those legless creatures that no one’s fond of: snakes. We all know that most poisonous snakes are ‘pit vipers’ which means they have hollow fangs that work just like hypodermic needles to inject the venom. This is one of the reasons the brown tree snake isn’t considered dangerous, because it isn’t a pit viper. Scientists have done some research however, and discovered that what we all ‘know’ just may be wrong! Read on!

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts have discovered that only about one seventh of all venomous snakes rely on the trick with the hollow fang. A typical representative of this group is the rattlesnake that uses its twin fangs to punch holes in the skin of its victims and injects the venom through the holes. But it turns out most snake species have discovered a groovier solution. Their fangs have a groove on the outside that allows venom to flow into the wound.

But this makes no sense when you realize that fur or bird feathers should simply prevent the venom from flowing into the wound. So how do they do it? The answer seems to be that snake venom is amazingly viscous, with a surface tension about the same as that of water. As a result, the surface energy pulls the venom into the fang grooves, where it then flows into the wound. Snakes that prey on birds developed deeper grooves to keep the viscous venom from being brushed away by bird feathers.

When a snake attacks, the fang grooves and the surrounding tissue form a canal. Just like blotting paper, the tissue sucks the venom through this canal. Snake venom also has a very special property to facilitate this effect. You shake the ketchup bottle to make it more liquid so it will come out of the bottle, and in a similar fashion, the shear forces that arise from the suction cause the venom to become less viscous, allowing it to flow through the canal quickly.

Scientists refer to substances with these characteristics as non-Newtonian fluids. These have a very practical consequence for snakes: As long as there is no prey in sight, the venom in the groove remains viscous and sticky. When the snake strikes, the venom becomes more liquid and it flows along the groove and into the wound, where the venom takes its lethal effect.

Having been bitten several times by brown tree snakes, I can testify that their venom is fast-acting and painful. And since they’re bird predators, although I’ve never peered into the mouth of one, I suspect their teeth have those tell-tale nasty little grooves!

The groove in a snake fang (Credit: Bruce A. Young, University of Massachusetts, Lowell)

And in another story with local implications; researchers at the University of Iowa have discovered a bacterium with an unusual appetite. It uses caffeine for food. It’s called Pseudomonas putida and it breaks caffeine down into carbon dioxide and ammonia.

Caffeine contains carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, all necessary for bacterial cell growth. This is important because tests show that compounds formed during the bacterial breakdown of caffeine are natural building blocks for drugs used to treat asthma, improve blood flow and stabilize heart arrhythmias. Another potential application is the decaffeination of coffee and tea as an alternative to the harsh chemicals currently used.

So why does this have local implications? Well, I’m not sure about the bacteria, but there are at least three geckos in my bedroom that are crazy about caffeine in the form of the spilled coffee in my saucer. So it isn’t just the humans and the bacteria that are addicted to caffeine!

Well, I looked in all the files, and didn’t see anything that really grabbed my interest this week until I wandered into the last one: the miscellaneous file. You know, the one where stuff goes that simply doesn’t fit anywhere else. So prepare for a slightly . . . stranger ride than normal.

Our first story is quite timely since we’re heading into the Super Bowl showdowns. So what happens when your favorite team has an upset? Do you get upset too? Well, according to a paper published the Quarterly Journal of Economics you just may get upset enough to beat your wife or girlfriend.

The paper’s authors analyzed the police reports following 900 regular-season National Football League games and discovered that calls reporting men’s assaults on their wives or intimate partners rose 10 percent in areas where the local NFL team lost a game they were favored to win.

The researchers report that the overall rise in violence between the intimate partners they studied was driven entirely by losses in games that matter most to fans. The timing of the calls to police also indicated that violence occurred within a narrow window roughly corresponding to the final hour of a game and the two hours after.

The authors compared the pre-game betting odds to the game results of regular-season games for six NFL teams — the Carolina Panthers, Detroit Lions, New England Patriots, Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs and Tennessee Titans — between 1995 and 2006. This information was matched to records collected from 763 jurisdictions in the relevant states from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, a database of local police reports.

In one-third of the games they tracked, the local team was expected to win by four or more points. When the favored team lost, however, analysis revealed a spike in reports of violence by men against a female partner at home, as compared to weeks the home team didn’t have a game.

So . . . guys, here’s my new mantra for all you sports freaks out there. “It’s only a game. It’s only a game! It’s only a GAME!”

And now, as promised, something completely different! We all remember the news stories about how restaurants pouring oil and grease down their drains caused some big problems in Tumon, but I wondered at the time how slippery grease could block the drains. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered something totally unexpected. Apparently, the fat, oil and grease (FOG) turns into soap!

I’m from far enough back in the sticks that my great-grandmother still made soap and I know that it’s made from FOG (in her soap it was pork fat) and sodium hydroxide, better known as lye. You can also make soap with calcium hydroxide, better known as slaked lime and that’s what’s happening in our sewers.

The researchers say that the FOG must be broken down into its constituent parts: glycerol and fatty acids. The fatty acids then react with calcium in the sewage collection system to form the hardened deposits.

Give the amount of calcium in Guam’s water system; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that the sewers of Tumon are full of hardened soap. I wonder if we could turn it into a tourist attraction?

Welcome to 2012 and the end of the world. NOT!! True, the current Mayan ‘long count’ ends this year, but just as the world didn’t end on 31 December 2011, it will keep right on going into the start of the next ‘long count’ on 22 December 2012.

We’ve got an exciting year coming up including the last transit of Venus you’ll ever see (the next one occurs in 2117), bright passes of the ISS and some lovely planetary conjunctions.

And speaking of bright passes of the International Space Station, on Friday night, you may be able to watch it pass *directly* between Guam and the Moon! Keep reading and I’ll tell you all about it *and* this month’s public shows.

Don’t forget to visit the newly updated Planetarium website at www.guam.net/planet I’ll be posting information about the ISS/Moon encounter on my blog (link is on the website)

Pam

1. DO NOT MISS this Bright pass of the ISS

2. January Public Planetarium shows

Winter Skies

12, 13 and 14 January 2012

1. ISS and the Moon Encounter

There will be a bright pass of the International Space Station this Friday, 6 January starting at 6:52 p.m. You are definitely going to want to watch this one because as near as I can tell, the ISS may pass directly between Guam and the Moon!

Just find Venus (hard to miss) in the western sky and measure 9 fist-widths to the right (or face Venus and then turn 90 degrees to your right). Starting at 6:52 p.m., you should see the ISS appear near the horizon below this spot and move upward and to the right. It should be easy to spot because it will be almost as bright as Venus.

At 6:54:43 p.m. (get an accurate time check for your watch!) it will be due north and three fist-widths above the northern horizon. Keep watching closely because at 6:56:00 p.m. the ISS will be quite close to the Moon.

According to Heaven’s Above, the website I use for satellite passes, the ISS will pass very close to the Moon. According to the Planetarium program ‘Stellarium’ it will pass *directly* between Guam and the Moon.

The only way to figure out which one is true, is for you to go out and watch what happens!!

At 6:56:51 p.m. the ISS will be right below Rigel, the upper foot star of Orion the Hunter and just after 7:00 p.m. it will disappear between Sirius, the brightest star and Canopus, the second brightest star.

Even if the ISS doesn’t appear to travel across the face of the Moon, bright passes are always fun to watch. Make sure you take your binoculars and cameras out for this one and let me know what you observe!

2. Winter Skies

‘Winter Skies’ will be presented next week on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the 12th, 13th and 14th of January at 6:30 p.m. We’ll first journey to the North Pole and then travel to Denver, Miami and finally to Guam. Then we’ll embark on a tour of the Perseus legend cycle constellations, the southern sky groups and the winter Zodiac constellations. We’ll find all the bright stars of winter and tell you how to spot three galaxies without a telescope.

‘Winter Skies’ on Guam are amazing and perhaps the most amazing thing about them is that you can go out and look at them without risking frostbite! After Winter Skies, stay for Quality Time with the Star Lady at 7:00 p.m. I’ll answer your sky questions and then we’ll go out in that lovely (and warm) tropical night and find all the stuff you learned about in the real sky!!

The doors open at 6:00 p.m. each night and Planetarium shows are always free. Don’t miss it!!

I thought I’d delve into the medical file and I found two stories that have more to do with the health of our heads than our bodies. Have you noticed when you’re surfing the web that a lot of people sure think that everybody else is out to get them? Yes, I know even paranoiacs have enemies, but research conducted at the University of Kent in England has shown that people are more likely to believe conspiracy theories if they are willing to conspire.

The title of the paper, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology was Does it take one to know one? and it looked at the responses of 250 undergraduates to 17 alleged conspiracies, like the ‘assassinations’ of Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy, the ‘faking’ of the moon landings and the ‘orchestration’ of the 9/11 attacks by the US government.

In the first study, participants were asked if they would participate in such conspiracies, if they were in a position to do so. The scientists discovered that when participants indicated a willingness to conspire, they usually found the same conspiracy theories to be plausible, interesting, and worth considering.

In the second study, half of the participants were asked to remember a time when they helped someone. The research team thought this would make people realize that they were moral people. When these participants were compared to a control group, they were less willing to conspire, and as a result, were less likely to take conspiracy theories seriously.

So I guess the bottom line is “If you’d do it yourself, you probably believe it happened.”

But researchers at McMaster University have uncovered something really mind boggling. You may not have any control over how you feel about conspiracy theories and a lot of other stuff because that ecosystem you harbor in your gut just may be doing your thinking for you. For the first time, scientists have conclusive evidence that the bacteria living in YOUR gut influence both brain chemistry and behavior!

The findings are important because several common gut diseases, like irritable bowel syndrome, are frequently associated with anxiety or depression. There’s also speculation that some psychiatric disorders, like late onset autism, are associated with abnormal gut bacteria.

Your gut is home to over a trillion bacteria. Most of the time we live in harmony with our microscopic ecosystem and they perform a number of functions vital to health. They digest much of your food for you; they protect against infections and provide nutrition for your gut cells.

The researchers worked with healthy adult mice and showed that disrupting the normal bacterial content of the gut with antibiotics produced changes in behavior. The mice became less cautious or anxious. This change was accompanied by an increase in a brain chemical that’s been linked to depression and anxiety. When the antibiotics were stopped, the gut bacteria returned to normal and so did the brain chemistry and behavior patterns of the mice.

In another experiment, the researchers colonized germ-free mice with bacteria taken from mice with a different behavioral pattern. They found that when germ-free mice with a genetic background associated with passive behavior were colonized with bacteria from mice with higher exploratory behavior, the germ-free mice became more active and daring. Similarly, normally active mice became more passive after receiving bacteria from mice whose genetic background was associated with passive behavior.

Feeling anxious? Aggressive? Depressed? Just take this pill containing a live bacterial culture and we can fix that! Scary, eh?

I have an early Christmas present for you! Several of you have commented on the fact that the Planetarium website hasn’t been updated in about a year now. It was originally done in Netscape (remember that?) and after I lost my office computer I could no longer update the site.

Enter Mr. Bill Kochman, a computer guru who has donated hours and hours of his own time to designing an absolutely awesome website. It will be updated monthly and probably more frequently since he has also included a blog. It may take me some time to start blogging regularly but it will happen! I’m still working on an updated show catalog for all you teachers and hope to complete that next month.

The Planetarium website is still hosted by the wonderful folks at Kuentos and it still features timely information about Guam’s skies and the UOG Planetarium shows. The address hasn’t changed, it’s still

www.guam.net/planet

I am very proud of it. Please visit soon and let me know how you like it.

And THANK YOU, Bill!

Pam

It’s been a long time since we delved into the animal file and I thought we’d do some ancient history with a couple of stories about every little kid’s favorite ancient animals, the dinosaurs.

Although we’ve sort of realized this all along, a definitive new international study coordinated by researchers at the University of New Mexico says that after the dinosaurs went away 65 million years ago, mammals got bigger . . . a LOT bigger, about a thousand times bigger than they had been.

To figure out what happened to mammals after the extinction of the dinosaurs, the researchers collected data on the maximum size for major groups of land mammals on all the continents. Their study included horses, rhinos, elephants and mammoths, armadillos and a number of groups that are now extinct.

They discovered that mammals grew from a maximum weight of about 25 pounds before the dinosaurs went away to a maximum of roughly 17 tons when they had the planet to themselves. I think you’ll agree that’s a big change!

They also discovered what sets the limits for the max body size for land animals. It’s the amount of space available and the climate they live in. The colder the climate, the bigger mammals get because bigger mammals are better at conserving heat.

So . . . definitely the mammals got bigger after the dinosaurs went away, but exactly when DID they go away? There’s been some research about that too. It’s widely believed that the dinosaurs all died somewhere between 65.5 and 66 million years ago when debris from a giant meteorite impact blocked out the Sun, causing extreme climate conditions and killing vegetation worldwide. (It’s called the KT extinction). Now, researchers from the University of Alberta have dated the femur bone of a hadrosaur found in New Mexico at 64.8 million years.

That date suggests this particular plant eater was alive about 700,000 years after the mass extinction event many scientists believe eliminated all the land dinos. The researchers used a new technique that measures the rate that uranium turns to lead. Living bone contains very low levels of uranium but during fossilization (typically less than 1000 years after death) bones are enriched with uranium. The uranium atoms in bone decay spontaneously to lead over time and once fossilization is complete the uranium-lead clock starts ticking.

The researchers think there could be several reasons why the New Mexico hadrosaur survived the mass extinction 65 million years ago. It’s possible the vegetation wasn’t all wiped out and a number of hadrosaurs survived. The researchers also say the potential survival of dinosaur eggs during extreme climatic conditions needs to be explored.

The paper authors believe that their new uranium-lead dating technique will show that more dinosaurs survived the KT extinction and the end of the dinosaurs will have to be revised.

This doesn’t really surprise me. I’ve always found it a little difficult to believe that EVERY land dinosaur died in the KT extinction. It’s a big planet and apparently there are places even hadrosaurs could hide, at least for a while.

Greetings everyone, I hope you were able to see the total lunar eclipse last Saturday night. It was spectacular!

And now, I’d like to take a little poll. I want you to think about the electronic equipment in your home. How old is your TV? How old is your computer? Your cell phone? Your DVD player? Now, try to figure out the age of the oldest piece of functioning electronic gear in your house. I’ve got an ancient phone that’s probably 25 years old and that’s the oldest one for me. Does anyone have anything that’s 35 years old and still works?

Well, NASA does. In 1977 the Voyager space probes were launched and both of them are still working just fine, thank you very much, and they’re still returning astounding scientific data. And after almost 35 years, they’re finally leaving the Sun. No, not just the solar system. The Sun.

It is perfectly true to say that ALL the planets are inside the Sun because the Sun not only puts out energy, it also puts out particles. The solar system is embedded in a HUGE sphere of particles that extends far beyond the orbit of Neptune (and Pluto!). It does eventually end, however, and where it ends is called the heliopause (literally translates as ‘Sun stop’).

Both the Voyages are poised just inside the heliopause and they’ve discovered strange and wonderful things (some of which I’ve talked about in this column). Now, for the first time, the Voyagers have detected Lyman alpha lines from our own Milky Way.

So what’s a Lyman alpha line? It’s a line that appears in a spectrograph that shows where a hydrogen electron transitions from one particular energy level to another. We’ve seen lots of Doppler-shifted Lyman alpha lines generated by bright energy sources in other galaxies, but we can’t see the Milky Way’s Lyman alpha lines because our own Sun is so bright it drowns them out, just like city lights drown out all but the brightest stars.

So the Voyagers are now detecting two different kinds of Lyman alpha signals. Some come from those distant galaxies, and the other is from our own Milky Way, something we’re seeing for the very first time. The Lyman alpha signals from distant galaxies help astronomers understand how and when galaxies form.

The Voyagers are now in the heliosheath (just before the actual heliopause) and the Lyman alpha lines produced by the Milky Way are helping the astronomers generate a crude map of the actual edge of our Sun. The Voyagers are at that edge and they’re peering out into infinity.

Unfortunately, they won’t be able to do it forever. The Voyagers are powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium 238 and the Voyager astronomers estimate that both spacecraft will run out of power somewhere around 2025. They no longer rotate the spaceships to conserve power and data are recorded from a fixed direction. But both spacecraft are still returning data and making new discoveries right now. How much 35 year old electronic gear did you say you had that still worked?

I’m reminded of that quote by Sir Isaac Newton. You know, the one that goes “I’m sitting on the beach playing with pebbles while the vast and undiscovered ocean of knowledge stretches before me.” Thanks to the Voyagers, we’re just beginning to enter that vast, undiscovered ocean.

Just a quick reminder that there’ll be a lunar eclipse that starts at

10:46 p.m. tomorrow night, Saturday, 10 December 2011. Maximum eclipse will occur between midnight and 1:00 a.m. on Sunday morning and the eclipse will be over at 2:17 a.m.

The Moon will be virtually straight overhead for the hour of totality and I suspect it will be a nice orangey-red. There won’t be another total lunar eclipse anywhere over Earth until April 2014.

And there’s more news. The bad news is that the Christmas star special effect refused to put in an appearance this year (I think the bulb is burned)so no Christmas show this year. The good news is that the 6:30 p.m. show is now "The Darker Side of the Moon: A Guide to Lunar Eclipses."

The 7:00 p.m. show is still "Quality Time with the Star Lady".

Please join us tonight or tomorrow night! The doors open at 6:00 p.m.

The shows are free! And don’t miss the lunar eclipse!

Pam