Labelling Astronomical Objects

The direction of objects in the sky is determined by two angles, declination and right ascension. If we imagine all the objects projected onto the surface of a sphere ("the celestial sphere") then these two angles are analogous to latitude and longitude, which determine position on the Earth's surface. The celestial sphere is divided into constellations ("con-stellations"), which are analogous to countries on the Earth. Constellations contain prominent groupings of stars such as the Great Bear (Ursa Major) or Orion; these stars may have no real dynamical connection with one another, in that their distances from us may differ enormously.

Within constellations, objects are labelled with a Greek letter [alpha, beta...] roughly according to their brightness, and for fainter objects, by a number 1, 2,... . Thus " 61 Cygni" means "Object number 61 in the constellation Cygnus (the swan)". Galaxies, and other objects of non-stellar appearance such as nebulae (gas clouds) within our own galaxy, have a separate nomenclauture: thus the closest galaxy to ours, in the constellation of Andromeda is "M31" -- the 31st object in the old catalogue of Messier -- or, alternatively, "NGC224" -- the 224th object in the New General Catalogue. In the catalogues all these objects are of course precisely located by their "map reference", that is, by their right ascension and declination.

Principles of Cosmology and Gravitation, Appendix A. By M.V. Berry, Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol and Philadelphia, 1993.

In a nutshell, if you are a user of the popular "Thomas Guides" available, at the very least, here on the west coast of the USA, when you go to find out where Buttonwillow, California, is, you look up in your Thomas Guide the page and grid location -- say, 224 E-5 -- and flip to page 224 and look where the rows and columns E and 5 intersect. Now you know where Buttonwillow is. If you were looking for the Lesser Magellenic Cloud, you'd look in your New General Catalogue to find the right ascension and declination, after which point you could identify the LMC on any photo that has right ascension and declination marked on it. Row, column, intersect on the pretty picture.

Just be glad the next Shell station isn't "one galaxy over".

Monkey On My Back

Hi, my name's Sidra, and I'm newly addicted to spinning yarn.

I'm so new to it I still SUCK ROCKS THROUGH SWIZZLE STICKS, but it's like crack -- one hit and you're toast, standing in the middle of the local crafts store asking people if they can hook you up, man.

It's like this -- you take this fluffy hair that came off a sheep/llama/rabbit/goat and a stick with a weight at one end and then --

LOOK!

twist twist twist

You have a single strand of yarn.

Fluff....yarn. Do it again!

Fluff...yarn. Oh my god, that's a strand of yarn. Do it again!

Fluff...yarn. Wow!

and so on, and so forth. You see?

"Hi, everyone, my name's Sidra, and I'm an addict."

"Hi, Sidra!"

Culture, Ahoy!

I got cultured™ this weekend. (so, now I'm yogurt, is that it?)

My folks came down to visit and we went to the San Diego Museum of Art. We had the good fortune to run into a Renoir [and related styles] exhibition, and each of us fell in love with several different paintings [oddly, often side-by-side] . My dad and I both fell for Renoir's The Letter, and we both loved a couple other portraits. Stupid me, not having a way to take notes at the time. One was Griselda, the other...Mrs. Clark-something.

There was a South Asian art display in one of the smaller upstairs galleries [Shiva, Destroyer of Time], and another much larger Asian art display that we did not see all of -- mostly statuary [Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, primarily] from Thailand, China [I think] and Cambodia, and some beautiful prints from Japan. One of the prints made Janis and myself share a laugh -- tamano-no-mae revealing herself and becoming a fox, which we looked at literally seconds after remarking on Yoshitaka Amano's illustrations in Neil Gaiman's The Dream Hunters.

Overall I had 2 or three favorites in every gallery we stepped into, which was over 15. I like portraiture and still lifes and my favorite artist is probably Jan Vermeer [Johannes Van der Meer], simply for the light [simply! she said, of course for the light!], but I adore Chinese and Japanese art.

One thing that was fascinating was a restored painting of David with the Head of Goliath. It's a very vibrant yet dark painting by Massimo Stanzione that appears to have been partially painted over at a later date to remove the head. The truly intriguing thing about the restored work was the photo series displaying the modified version, an x-ray where the head is visible, and other steps along the way to complete restoration. Very, very neat.

Latest Book Review

The Tending Instinct: How Nurturing is Essential to Who We Are and How We Live,

by Shelley E. Taylor, 2002.

review by moi. Read now.

Khoisan

Who? What? Where?

I read an article today on the BBC website, describing how a Khoisan native woman, who had been "paraded" around Europe in the 19th century was finally buried today in Cape Town. Khoisan are traditionally hunter-gatherers native to the southern tip of Africa. The Khoisan woman was treated as an oddity by Europeans, with her extra fat storage in her buttocks, and displayed as a freak.

[This is where the back of my brain mutters "Typical 19-century Europeans". Sigh.]


Interesting folks, Khoisan.

• Read more about Khoisan peoples
• Their languages
• Read More at Iziko, the Museums of Cape Town
  

Good Quote

"If you have come here to help me,
You are wasting your time...
But if you have come because
Your liberation is bound up with mine,
Then let us work together."

- Aboriginal Woman

thanks to Chris, for passing it along

Deadlines

Why do people need deadlines? Why is it once I promised someone a book review on Aug 10 2002, that made me actually sit down and read the book? Is it a compulsion to keep one's promises?

See? I'm almost done.

Oldtimer, New Blog

Hey, Faz has a blog. Absolutely beautiful design, just beautiful.

faziarizvi.net

eMusic

Chris recommended eMusic to me as a great site for downloading legit mp3's. It's subscriber based, and I signed up last night for a trial membership. After one CD download, I'm pretty sure I'll stick around. Download was easy, though to get a whole CD at once [instead of personally clicking one song at a time] I had to download and install Zinf, a FreeAmp player that works in Win and linux [yaaaaay]. Sure, the download of the CD took forever, but that's because I was dialed in using a 56K modem. What'd you expect?

Taking the downloaded mp3's and burning them to a minidisc was a piece of cake, once I looked up where the playlist was.

Oh, what CD? Liona Boyd, The Spanish Album. I love 'latin' music but never buy it because I just don't know the genre.

Wedded Bliss

I stood up with my parents this past Saturday as they tied the knot -- literally, as a handfasting was part of the ceremony. The immediate family gathered together [meaning direct offspring and their families, basically] and sent our parents off on the Cruise Ship O' Marriage. [The LOOOOOOOOOVE BOAT, dee dee de de de da da duh dum...]

It was great. I can't believe they're married! It's so cute!

Everyone mostly managed to hold it together, weepy-wise, which is good, because every last one of us forgot tissues.

All That

I was watching "She's All That" on TV last night (why? because I can't read and knit at the same time, that's why), and there was just a fabulously funny line early on in the film.

To explain, The Most Popular Guy In School (and Smart, Too) for reasons I shan't go into, tries to become friends with the Angry Unpopular Secretly Beautiful Arty Girl (Mourning Her Lost Mother), and at one point, AUSBAG(MHLM) turns around as TMPGIS(aST) is, from her perspective, basically stalking her, and asks,

What is this, some sort of Dork Outreach Program?

Just one of those little throwaway cinematic moments you treasure for a lifetime.

Rancho Lotsa Cats

I just got a plea for money from Evelyn Gray, who I know because of past WebGrrls affiliations. She's been doing animal rescue for some time and has just finished a big project that involved saving 200 cats, many of whom are feral.

70 of them have been placed at a volunteer facility called "Rancho Lotsa Cats", which is in Valley Center in San Deigo County, California, USA.

RLC was full before they agreed to take this new batch, and being volunteer-run they need money and supplies. I know it's tight for some of us and more tight for others, but any amount would help. Those donating in international funds, please contact me to get in touch with Evelyn. I'm sure we can work something out.

Checks for any amount in US funds can be made payable to "Rancho Lotsa Cats" -- please note "Monterey Park Cats" somewhere in or with the check -- and sent to RLC directly at

Rancho Lotsa Cats
27932 Valley Center Rd.
Valley Center, CA 92082

for those in the area, their phone number is (760)749-1710.

From Evelyn:

This may piss you off. Write me off, but please send money anyway. You may have your own animals to support. Please send money anyway. You may know that I have been involved in cat rescue and helping feral cats since 2000.

For the past few weeks I have been working 24/7 with a small group of people to help an 86 year-old woman keep her home and save close to 200 cats. The cats were going to be killed if we could not place them. The rescue community rallied and we got them all out, but one sanctuary, Rancho Lotsa Cats saved 70 of the feral cats. This was a very generous act on the part of this sanctuary because they are full, they knew these cats cannot be placed in private homes and they would have been killed. The cats will live their lives out naturally in a safe environment with caring people.

I am now asking for your generosity. I need to keep my promise to Rancho Lotsa Cats and send them some much-needed money to support these cats we rescued. I am not going to sugar-coat it --- I would like at least a $25 check made payable to "Rancho Lotsa Cats" (tax-deductible) but please give more, forego Starbucks or Jamba today and send $5 or $10, but please send something.

Rancho Lotsa Cats
27932 Valley Center Rd.
Valley Center, CA 92082

(760)749-1710

don't forget to mark your checks "Monterey Park Cats".

We Have Come A Long Way After All

For those days when you feel like feminism has made no advances:

• Wives
• Another Woman
• Play House
• Your Mother

Doesn't mean we're done -- no evolutionary process is -- just pointing out that my, yes, the world has changed in many ways, hasn't it?

From This Modern World.

A Good Idea

"I find empathy a much better foundation for morality than faith."


Unknown

Only In America

I'd like to suggest to every citizen that we spam the TIPS program. Call in everything. "My neighbor's dog looks at me funny, it must be a terrorist." "My apartment got trashed, it must have been terrorists". And the ever-popular "He/She looks Middle Eastern, they must be a terrorist."

'Cause that's really what it's all about, kids. Irrational fear, especially of things we don't understand, like cultures whose immigrants resist assimilation while still striving for the American dream. Oh, the horror.

Let's just get it over with and illustrate the sheer stupidity and logistic impossibility of a program encouraging half the nation to snitch on the other half.

This is America, dammit, the land of the free and home of the brave. Show some frickin' backbone.

You want to do something to make the world a better place? Safer for you, your family, your community? Join the Peace Corps. Join Habitat for Humanity. Work to end hunger, educate and improve the lives of others. Strive for racial equality. Stop terrorism from even starting by easing the burdens that lead so many to hate. Add hope to the world, and that hope will be delivered back to you tenfold.