The advent of increasingly sophisticated, commercial-grade astronomical hardware and software is democratizing science in a profound way. Citizen scientists have helped find planets in other solar systems, classify galaxies, and spot supernovae. Closer to home, citizen scientists are helping unlock the mysteries of our own solar system through the science of occultations.
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Boise State Physics First Friday Astronomy Summer 2024 Line-Up
NEW LOCATION!
Lectures start 7:30p MT in the Liberal Arts Building (LART), room 106 (https://maps.boisestate.edu/?id=715#!m/89064)
Events are open to the public and donation-supported.
A total solar eclipse will cross the US mid-morning on Mon, Apr 8. This eclipse appears to be the last total solar eclipse that will cross the US until 2045. So when will the eclipse be visible from Idaho, what will it look like, and how best to observe it?
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Though worlds in our Solar System have been rocked by geological upheavals, mountain-shattering impacts, and climatic disasters throughout their histories, we think they have remained essentially intact. The planets we see today have been here since they first coalesced 4.5 billion years ago. But that long-lived stability may be the exception and not the rule. Indeed, astronomers now know many planets face destruction through what’s called tidal disruption, and recent searches have revealed direct evidence of the final moments for these doomed worlds.
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Join Boise State Physics for our First Friday Astronomy lecture series in Spring 2024. Lectures take place on the first Friday of the month (EXCEPT in April of this year when it will take place on the second Friday) at 7:30p MT on-campus and via live-stream at boi.st/astrobroncoslive. Visit https://www.boisestate.edu/physics/seminars-and-events/ for more information.
For Boise State Physics’ First Friday Astronomy event in January, we will host Leif Edmondson, president of the Boise Astronomical Society. Edmondson will talk about ancient Babylonian astronomy, so for this month’s blog post, rather than steal his thunder, I decided to talk about an astronomical tradition disconnected from Babylon: ancient Korean astronomy.
Korean astronomy goes back thousands of years and, aside from China, Korea has the longest history of astronomy in the world. Korea also hosts the oldest known astronomical observatory in east Asia, built by one of the earliest queens of the ancient world. And even today, Korean astronomers continue to innovate and discover, building on this deep past.
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Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, was discovered by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens in 1655, the same year courts in Virginia first ruled slavery was legal in the American colonies. It took another 350 years before humans visited Titan upclose, leaving this, the largest moon in the Solar System, an object of wonder and speculation. But even after many years of intimate study, Titan remains enshrouded, both figuratively and literally. Its secrets may persist until NASA’s Dragonfly mission visits the world again in 2034, and if history is any guide, probably long after too.
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