Cepheid variables

I read a little astronomy and spent most of the night outside stargazing with my binoculars. I was mostly interested in theConstellation Cepheus and the surrounding stars. One star is Delta Cephei a variable star that has a constant change in brightness every five and a third days. This star lends its name to the class of Cepheid variables that were important in determining the size of our galaxy and the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy by Edwin Hubble in 1924 who found cepheids in that galaxy and ended the planetary nebula vs. island universe debate; before Hubble it was believed that these galaxies were where solar systems were being formed in our own Milky Way Galaxy and Hubble showed that the Andromeda Galaxy was two million light years away; I believe Astronomers have refined that to 2.4 million light years. I think I’ll keep an eye on Delta Cephei for the next few night!

I thought to myself a few months ago that maybe Red Dwarfs would be a good place to search for intelligent life. One idea would be that they were transplants from another star system whose sun had started on it way off the HR scale and wanted someplace more stable; and Red Dwarfs are very stable after the first billion years (also life could form there after that time)and that Red Dwarfs lasts trillions of years. Anyways I did a few searches and found that SETI is just now considering them.

M Dwarfs: The Search for Life is On

Coronal mass ejection (CME) activity of low mass M stars

ISS and Shuttle Flyby

I sat outside waiting for the ISS and Shuttle flyby that would take place at 7:44pm and come out of the southwest with a magnitude of -3.1 which would rival Venus! I called Mac and Ron Dehart up to let them know. Kevin called just before they flew over. He wouldn’t see them from Tucson because of rain clouds. There they were in the sky right on time! It looked to me as if the Shuttle had departed the ISS and the separation grew as they came overhead. Wow what a sight! I had them in the telescope for a bit but decided to just use the binoculars. As I described the flyby to Kevin I thought to myself that there are bags of water just like me aboard enclosed in cylinders under pressure in orbit around our planet! The night wasn’t done yet! As I was looking out towards Cygnus in the Milky Way I saw seven satellites within an hour until the Moon popped up to wash away the stars. That was more than I’ve ever seen in one sitting. Some nights I only see one or maybe two, and sometimes not a one. This was a magical night for me!