Luke
- Dec 30, 2018
- 3 min read

Art Showing!

Hope everyone had an amazing holiday season and are geared up to have a happy new year! I'm excited that I have gotten the opportunity to put up some of my paintings at the Market on Laimer Square. If you're free New Years Day and want to come down to the market around 6p I'll be there with a cheese plate and maybe some wine showing my work. If not it will be up for the next 2 months so swing by to check them out before the end of February.

Here are some of my works that will be on display and for sale at the Market. Most of the pictures do not do the real thing justice as I use metallic and neon paints which play with the light which isn't conveyed on a screen as well as in person.

Grand Planetary Spring

Here the Grand Prismatic Spring of Yellowstone National Park (the largest hot spring in the United States) is re-imagined as a planetary nebula (such as the Ring Nebula)

Grand Prismatic Spring M57 - Ring Nebula

Wanderlust

In film little green men often forcibly take unsuspecting folks and share with them the secrets of the universe. In my experience the secrets of the universe are rarely forced upon you. Here a path has been extended to you offering a wondrous journey for those brave enough to take it. Who knows what’s at the end, maybe there is no end and the path is an infinity symbol with an illusion of being broken. If you tilt your head you might find the path to be my initials L.H.

Night Dive at Koh Ha

Koh Ha (meaning 5 islands) is a set of tropical islands in the Andaman Sea. The islands protected by Thailand as a National Marine Park offering amazing diving and snorkeling opportunities. The Long-tail boat is the most popular boat of Thailand. While there are many differences among all of the boats in Thailand, they all share the decorations on the bow of the boats. This area has usually been blessed by a Buddhist monk and will be covered in ribbon and hanging garlands of flowers as an offering to Mae Yanang, the goddess of safe journey, for good luck and protection

Croydon

Many Aboriginal constellations focus on the dark parts between the stars (example: ‘the Emu in the Sky’) rather than connecting the stars as European explorers did (example: the southern cross). Using the style of Indigenous rock painting particularly stencil art, using the motif of a hand print. Here we have a handprint in the sky. Within the handprint is a tiny paw print representing Croydon a kitten I saved from the Australian outback (or rather I saved the outback from the kitten as cats are invasive and devastating to Australia's ecosystem).

Christmas Comet

As you might have seen in my last blog post Comet 46P/Wirtanen a green comet that graced our skies, peaking on December 16th, became known to many as the x-mas comet because of the proximity to the holidays. I was lucky enough to get a photo of it (shown here) and track it down in a telescope during one of my tours. Here Santa is chasing it as he makes his deliveries.

One of my photos of the x-mas comet. you might notice the head of Taurus in the bottom left hand corner

Cactus at Moonrise

My take on Bob Ross’s Joy of Painting S8E10 “Cactus at Sunset” I have changed the sunset to a moonrise (making the perspective looking east rather than west, or maybe my happy little world spins the other direction). Many hidden treasures can be found by inspecting this painting with different lighting (e.g. a black light)

The Rainbow Connection

Why are there so many paintings with rainbows and what's on the other side? From the mountains to the stars many rainbows can be found in this painting. Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide. Like a prism the white path in this painting is bringing out all of the vibrant colors of the landscape. What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing and what do we think we might see? Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection The lovers, the dreamers and me

Hope to see you there! As I said there will be more than this at the Market and the pictures don't pickup the metallic and neon paints well.

If you want to come to the opening I have made a facebook event with more details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/2092872241024477/

Luke
- Dec 4, 2018
- 3 min read

Christmas Comet!

We will be visited by a bright green comet this December just before Christmas! The comet’s official name is Comet 46P/Wirtanen however because of the timing I think calling it the Christmas Comet (2018) sounds a lot better.

The Christmas Comet is currently the closest thing to the Earth outside of the moon and will be getting a lot closer. On December 16th 2018 the Christmas Comet will make its closest approach at .0775 AU (That’s 7.7% the earth sun distance, 7.2 Million Miles, 39 light seconds, or 30 times the earth moon distance). It will be passing in the sky right between the Pleiades (the seven sisters) and Aldebaran (the red eye of Taurus the bull) when it makes closest approach on the 16th.

sky and telescope magazine has a good image of where the comet will be in the sky for the next few months here: https://s22380.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/Comet_46P_Dec18-Jan19.jpg

The Christmas Comet should be fairly visible reaching about the size of the full moon. A decent pair of binoculars will probably offer the best views as a telescope might zoom too much and it might be too dim to see easily with the unaided eye. It is hard to predict brightness of comets but the Smithsonian is saying about 8+ magnitude (about the brightness of Neptune, would require a small telescope or good binoculars to see), and sky and telescope magazine is more optimistic saying it should be about 3+ magnitude (just dimmer than the north star, would be able to see with the unaided eye).

The main factor working against the comet will be the moon right now it is a new moon meaning in the coming weeks the moon will be growing causing more and more natural light pollution and setting later and later. On the night of the 16th the moon will be 56% full and setting just after midnight making it highly likely to wash out the comet’s appearance to many viewers. On Christmas eve the moon will rise only 45 minuets after sunset giving a moonless evening to view the Christmas comet.

The word comet comes from Latin and means “long haired star” referring to the hair like tail, the most striking feature of a comet. The Christmas comet should appear with a faint cloud tail possibly with a green hue pointing away from the sun.

Comet 67P which was studied up close by the Rosetta mission

Comets are referred to as dirty snowballs as they are primarily made up of ice with some rock and dust mixed in. The tail of a comet always points away from the sun because the heat of the sun and the solar wind (a stream of charged particles the sun radiates) hits the comet with enough power to melt the ice and burn the dust. Watching the Christmas Comet between the 13th and the 19th the change in direction of the tail should be very apparent, flipping from pointing south to pointing north as the comet crosses the ecliptic.

Halley's Comet during its pass through the inner Solar System in 1986

Up to the 1700s Saturn was seen as the limit of our solar system. Comets of course were known of prior to the 1700s as they are quite striking when they appear, however comets were seen as foretelling a large event. So instead of studying them when they appear many focused mainly on what upcoming event is being foreshadowed. Aristotle and many others thought comets were phenomenon which occur in the Earth's atmosphere. Edmund Halley famously predicted a comet he had seen in 1682 to return in 1758 this was the first insight into what comets really were. Halley’s comet meant that the solar system was much larger than previously thought as, the orbit Halley predicted had his comet traveling just outside of the orbit of Neptune (which wasn’t discovered until 1846) meaning the comet traveled over 3.7 times as far as Saturn’s orbit. The Christmas comet's orbit is much smaller never traveling further away from the sun than Jupiter's orbit.

If you wish to see the Christmas comet up close in one of my large telescopes and learn more about it I will be offering 2 special tours for the comet, one on December 14th and one on December 16th. Contact me soon for booking.

Luke
- Nov 28, 2018
- 5 min read

Mars

In the south west sky there is a bright distinctly red spot of light that comes out fairly quickly in the twilight. I’m sure you’ve guessed already this is the planet Mars! This year Mars has been particularly bright red for a few reasons.

Mars takes 2 years to go around the Sun where it takes the Earth 1 year. This means about every 3 years we catch up with mars and pass by it. When this happens it is called ‘opposition’. Opposition means an alignment of the Sun the Earth and one of the outer planets (outer planets are planets that are further from the Sun than us: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune). You can see when this happens by watching the Sun set, because the Sun, Earth and another planet is in alignment the planet is on the opposite side of the of the sky from the Sun. After you watch the Sun set in the west, turn around and see the planet that is in opposition rise in the east, for that night that planet will be as above the eastern horizon as the Sun is below the western horizon (the same phenomenon can be seen at full moon too). This happened on July 27th 2018 for Mars so it is no longer rising as the Sun sets (you will see it fairly high in the sky during twilight). However because that happened this year that means we are still closer to mars then we will be for another ~3 years.

Mars was in opposition on July 27th of 2018.

In addition to being closer to Mars there has been a dust storm on Mars making it extra red for the passed few months. This dust storm is actually threatening the Opportunity rover by blocking out the sun so that the solar panels can not provide the power the rover needs to operate. Currently the dust storm is over but NASA still hasn’t been able to contact the Opportunity rover. NASA suspects that dust has accumulated on rover's solar panels during the storm preventing them from charging the rover. There's still hope that with some wind gust the solar panels might clear and power up the rover once again. We’re all pulling for the little rover which has been on mars for over 14 years and has broke many records and made some amazing discoveries in that time. The Curiosity rover however has been operational this entire time as it relies on a nuclear power source.

A penny the Curiosity rover uses to calibrate its camera. On the right is a photo from about a month after it landed and on the left is a picture 6 years from when it landed, just after the dust storm.

Mars has also been in the news lately thanks to the successful landing of NASA's InSight lander. the InSight lander will be placing instruments on the surface of mars using a robotic arm that will probe the interior of the planet and give us a better understanding of mars and the other terrestrial planets (Earth, Venus, and Mercury). InSight is also powered by solar panels so it will have to battle the martian dust.

It has long set now but but there is a star Anterries in the constellation Scorpio as the red heart of the scorpion. I bring Anterries up as Anterries is Arabic and means ‘rival to mars’, this is because like mars it too is red. The rivalry comes when comparing the brightness between Mars and Anterries Mars is truly winning the rivalry currently but this is not always true. Actually usually Mars loses the rivalry 2 years out of 3 (when mars is further away, or on the other side of the Sun, as Anterries is always the same brightness). People will often come to me and point to Anterries or Aldebaran (a red star that makes up the eye of Taurus the bull which should be appearing just above the eastern horizon in the evening) or Betealgeuse (the red star you might be familiar with in Orion, currently appearing in our sky late at night) and ask if it is mars and I have to tell them no… This year is different because we are passing close to mars and because the dust storm on mars, Mars is truly winning the rivalry and being the brightest red point on the ecliptic.

In a telescope or a good pair of binoculars mars appears as a red disk, where any of the red stars will still be just a point of light. If you have a good telescope you might be able to see the white ice cap (which is tented red after the dust storm). With a good telescope and trick called occulting where you block out the light of mars you might be able to see mars's two faint moons Phobos and Deimos. Phobos and Deimos are small and irregularly shaped leading us to think they are most likely captured asteroids.

Mars has captured our imaginations a lot in modern times by being the site of many scifi novels, movies, and arts. This is owed to a wealthy and influential astronomer Percival Lowell who in 1906 claimed to see canals on mars that were so straight they must of been engineered. Lowell wished to find life on mars so much that he started to. This hallucination was contagious and many other astronomers picked up on the canals. the story took off and inspired two generations of scifi writers and artist (Burroughs, Bradbury, Weinbaum, to name a few) who created works that went on to be inspirations for many artists to this day (Andy Weir, Kim Stanley Robinson, David Bowie and countless more). Lowell's observation was before photography when all astronomy was done by eye which leads many to say the canals were in the eye of the beholder as the drawings Lowel produced resemble retina of the human eye. We know now that there are no canals on mars but it wasn't until the Viking and Mariner probes of the 60s and 70s that hopes of canals on mars was finally put to rest.

Martian canals depicted by Percival Lowell.

Even without canals Mars is still an amazing place that captivates the imagination. Valles Marineris which is a system of naturally formed canyons that reaches 4 miles deep and would stretch across mainland United States if it was on earth. If human eyes ever see Valles Marineris up close I’m sure it will be a jaw dropping sight putting the grand canyon to shame. Mars is also home to Olympus Mons an extinct volcano reaching 72,000ft making it the largest mountain in our solar system (there is a case to be made for Rheasilvia a mountain on the asteroid Vela to be bigger). With science supporting the idea of frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) snow storms some have thought about skiing down Olympus Mons and getting lots of air with Mars’s low gravity (about a third of the gravitational force we have on earth). Along with volcanoes and canyons mars also has many impact craters that scar its surface. Mars is home to the greatest diversity of impact crater types of any planet in the Solar System.

Hope you enjoy observing Mars this evening. If you want to see it up close in my telescope I will be holding a tour on the 14th of December. Be sure to catch the special commit show I will hold on the week of the 16th (more details to come soon).