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FOAP Newsletter Summer 2025 |
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President's Message
Dear Members - Summertime is here! Warmer temperatures, later sunsets, lots to enjoy outdoors. That includes the nighttime sky and we hope many of your summer evenings will include looking up to explore the heavens. This month’s newsletter includes great articles by Mike Rhee (What’s In the Sky This Month) and by our regular Space News contributor, Jennifer Bartlett, on what you can experience over the next few months.
This month we will be recognizing our inaugural Student Advisors cohort, a volunteer program established by FOAP a year ago to engage secondary students in Arlington with the planetarium. All of us on the Board of Directors have enjoyed working with the students, hosting our public weekend programs and supporting myriad other FOAP activities. Join us at our June 15 show (1:30PM) when we will take a few minutes to celebrate this inspiring and impressive group of teens. Interested in volunteering as a Student Advisor next year? Learn more on our website. The application deadline is June 30.
The Friends wind down just a bit after this month’s public show weekend on June 14-15. But not for long. We hope to offer a special program at the planetarium in July (watch your email for details) and the Arlington County Fair in August is a big event for us each year. We continue to seek volunteers to work with us and thank so many in our community for your continued support. Happy Summer!
Theresa Carroll Schweser
FOAP President |
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FOAP At the Arlington County Fair
By Dana OttThis year, for the second year in a row, the Friends of Arlington’s Planetarium will be partnering with the Arlington County Fair to offer the Portable Planetarium Dome to fair attendees as a free exhibit! Last year there was overwhelming interest in the portable dome, and we have made some upgrades to the equipment that will improve the viewing experience going forward.
The 2025 Arlington County Fair will be held from August 13-17 at the Thomas Jefferson Community Center located at 3501 Second Street South, and includes both indoor and outdoor events with rides, vendors, exhibits and more. Last year there were over 84,000 attendees! Admission to the Fair is free (though there are charges for some rides).
FOAP will be operating the Portable Planetarium Dome on Friday evening, and Saturday and Sunday all day. We will be showing different films each day, allowing Fair attendees to participate in multiple viewings if desired. We welcome volunteers, both to operate the portable dome as well as coordinate and staff the table outside the portable dome. If you are interested in volunteering for FOAP at the Arlington County Fair, please contact Dana Ott at dana@friendsoftheplanetarium.org. We hope to see you there! |
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David M Brown Public Planetarium Shows for June!
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The Friends of the Arlington Planetarium (FOAP) will be hosting full dome planetarium shows about Exploring the Cosmos on Saturday, June 14 (6:30 and 8:00pm) and Sunday, June 15 (1:30 and 3:00pm).
Show details and an advance ticket sales notice will be released to members next week. |
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Graphic: Webb’s Stunning 3D Visualization: A Cosmic Evolution Through 5,000 Galaxies Credit: SciTechDaily.com
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The Cosmos By Kaya Soverign
The cosmos is basically everything that exists: stars, planets, galaxies, and all the space in between. Another word for cosmos is “universe,” everything we can touch, see, and even things we can not. Black holes are a component of the universe that we can not directly see because they do not emit or reflect light, making them invisible to telescopes.
Scientists use telescopes and send spacecraft to study the cosmos. They are trying to figure out how the universe began, what it's made of, and whether there is life beyond Earth. |
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The cosmos makes us think about our place in the universe. It makes us question where we came from and where we are going.
Fun fact: The biggest star we know of, UY Scuti, is so massive that if it replaced our Sun, it would reach past Jupiter.
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Jokes for Kids Only!
Q: Why is it impossible that Earth is flat?
A: Because if it was, cats would have pushed everything off its edge by now? Q: What kind of stars wear glasses? A: Movie stars! Q: Who wrote the book My Life in Outer Space? A: I. Malone Q: What did Mars say to Saturn? A:Give me a ring sometime! Q: What is the fastest liquid in the universe? A: Milk - pasteurized before you see it! |
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What's in the Sky this Month By Mike Rhee |
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Someone once said that if astronomy is good for the soul, then summer is time for meditation. Indeed, looking up at the summer night sky, filled with stars and punctuated by the hazy celestial river of the milky way galaxy, can be a spiritual experience for some. Read more...
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From Philosophy to Observational Science By Jennifer Bartlett
Cosmology is the branch of astronomy that studies the universe itself. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term comes from Greek κόσμος, which means both “order” and “world.” Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 – 495 BCE), an ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician, reputedly taught that the planets move in accordance with mathematical and musical patterns. In the millennia since he taught, the different subdisciplines of astronomy became less speculative and increasingly rigorous in the application of the scientific method. However, how does one measure “all that is”? or test a hypothesis about the universe from within it? In the early 20th century, observational cosmology became a reality. In 1924, Swedish astronomer Knut Lundmark (1889-1958) published distances to galaxies that are constant with our current best measurements of the expansion of the universe. An American astronomer, Vesto Slipher (1875-1969) had previously shown that light from distant galaxies is redshifted, indicating that they are moving away from us. Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), a priest and physicist from Belgium, wrote a 1927 paper explaining the theoretical grounds for an expanding universe. He also presented observational evidence that the rate at which galaxies moved away from us was proportional to their distance. An expanding universe implied a once smaller universe, one that might have undergone a “Big Bang.” As the universe expanded and cooled after such a Big Bang, neutral hydrogen atoms would form. Photons, or light “particles”, that had interacted frequently with the free electrons would no longer be easily scattered by the atoms. Those photons would permeate the universe. However, the expansion of the universe would stretch their wavelengths until a radio telescope is needed to detect the “cosmic microwave background radiation.” Arno Penzias (1933-2024) and Bob Wilson detected this low-level persistent buzz in their antenna in 1965 for which they received shared a Nobel Prize. In September 2015, the US Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Italian Virgo collaborations directly detected gravitational waves emanating from the merger of two black holes. The black holes had been circling towards one another. The gravitational waves are distortions of spacetime, or the fabric of the universe itself, rippling outward from massive objects in motion. In the next decade, observational cosmology will continue to reveal more about the large-scale structure of the universe and the interactions between the densest objects known. From these results, we will learn more about how our world is ordered. |
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To the Outer Planets and Beyond By Jennifer Bartlett
On September 5, 1977, the Voyager 1 probe launched on a mission to the outer solar system. It flew by Jupiter in 1979 discovering the faint rings around this gas giant and adding two new moons, Thebe and Metis, to the many already known. Moving on, it flew by Saturn in 1980. In that system, it imaged five new moons and a new ring. It revealed the complexity of Saturn’s ring system, including shepherd moons that shape rings and gaps. When it passed Titan, it showed that this moon was enveloped in a thick atmosphere that is 90% nitrogen. The presence of complex molecules of hydrogen and carbon atoms suggested that prebiotic chemical reactions might be possible on this cold, distant world.
From the Saturnian system, Voyager headed northward out of the plane of the Solar System. It is venturing outward at about 37,000 miles per hour. At a distance of 3.7x10^9 miles or 40 times the distance between the Earth and Sun, Voyager 1 took its last pictures of the Solar System planets, including the iconic “Pale Blue Dot” that is Earth. In 1998, it became the most distant human artifact at about 6.4x10^9 miles or 70 times the Earth-Sun distance; it overtook earlier but slower probes. |
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By 2004, it had reached the region around the Solar System where the solar wind slows to subsonic speeds as it encounters the interstellar medium, the termination shock and Heliosheaf. It exited that region in 2012 moving through the Heliopause and into interstellar space. Despite a temporary interruption in its operations in late 2023, Voyager 1 continues to transmit data from four of its original eleven instruments: Cosmic Ray Subsystem (CRS), Low-Energy Charged Particles (LECP), Magnetometer (MAG), and the Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS). To ensure the its antenna continues to point towards Earth so that we can receive this data, NASA restored its primary roll thrusters, which had no used since 2004. Each command took 23.5 hours to reach the spacecraft after which engineers had to wait another 23.5 hours to learn what happened.
For nearly half a century, Voyager 1 has been returning science data that shows us the space environment of the interplanetary and interstellar medium. It is going places we cannot yet send human explorers. When its final system fail, its momentum will continue its outward trajectory. As a final mission, it caries a golden record with greetings from Earth to any aliens that it might encounter.
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As Far as the Eye Can See
By Jennifer Bartlett
Looking into the night sky, all the stars we see with our eyes are part of our home, the Milky Way Galaxy. Under good conditions away from city lights, you might see thousands of the 250 billion stars in the galaxy. However, you can see other galaxies.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the Magellanic Clouds are easy to detect with your naked eye, if you do not mistake them for … well, clouds. These dwarf galaxies orbit our Milky Way at distances of 1.6x10^5 light=years for the Large and 2.1x10^6 light-years for the Small. A light-year is the distance light travels in a tropical year, or 5.9x10^12 miles. The Large Magellanic Cloud has about 30 billion stars while the Small Magellanic Cloud has less than a billion. Through gravitational interactions, the Milky Way is taking gas from the Small Magellanic Cloud.
Because we are not in the Southern Hemisphere, we have the challenge and reward of sighting the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). This barred spiral galaxy has about twice the stars the Milky Way does and is about 2.5x10^9 miles away. We are on a collision course with this larger galaxy but that event is billions of years in the future.
For now, stay up late to see the Andromeda Galaxy rise in the northeast shortly around midnight in June (11 PM in July, 10 PM in August). Schedar is the bright star at the point of the deeper peak of the W-shaped Cassiopeia. It points down towards the Andromeda Galaxy. Alpheratz is the bright star in one of the two lower corners of the great square of Pegasus. From it, the two trails of stars that make up the constellation Andromeda curve downwards. Mirach is the brightest star in Andromeda and midway along the lower trail. Slightly above it on the other trail is the dimmer Mu and slightly above that is the Andromeda Galaxy. Congratulations! You are seeing the most distant object visible to your eyes alone and absorbing light that left the Galaxy when our ancestors were developing stone tools. |
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This message has been sent to you from the Friends of Arlington's Planetarium.
Friends of Arlington's David M. Brown Planetarium
P.O. Box 7029
Arlington, VA 22207 USA
Copyright (C) 2025 Friends of Arlington's David M. Brown Planetarium (FOAP). All rights reserved.
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