11 Planets

11 Planets. David Aguilar, National Geographic Children's Books, 2008.

It's a geeky thing to admit, but I totally have a soft spot for the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Maybe it's because one of my college astronomy professors is married to a researcher there, and she took her students to visit the labs. Whatever the reason, I thought it was pretty cool that David Aguilar, a director at the CfA, is both the writer and illustrator of 11 Planets.

For a man who probably gets most of his images off the pixels of a CCD, Aguilar creates some beautiful drawings. He covers the eleven planets of the title, along with some other highlights of this solar system and a look at the solar systems that have only recently been discovered.

If the title count seems off to you, there's a good chance you went through science class before the International Astronomical Union decided to make everyone's mnemonics obsolete. There are now, according to the IAU, which gets to make the rules for this sort of thing, eight full-fledged planets and three minor ones. The minor planets include the now-demoted Pluto, the large asteroid Ceres, and Eris, which had the even cooler name Xena until the official body decided to weigh in. The name they chose is hardly inappropriate, though: in Greek mythology, Eris' domain is discord.

11 Planets is a Cybils Middle Grade/YA Non-Fiction finalist.

Why we put lots of money into professional telescopes

Image of M33 taken by two astronomy minors using Wellesley's 24-inch telescope:
Image of M83 taken by real astronomers using a 2.2-meter telescope:
It was a lot of fun, though, and gave me a real reason to appreciate the good ones.

Additional procrastination, because I didn't want Kelly and her bad baby names to get all the credit tonight. She's right about allowing enough time - once you start it's very hard to look away.

Women in astronomy

Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science is one of those books that makes me think, "wow, someone other than me finds this stuff interesting?"

Renée Berglund's post at Beacon Broadside makes me want to read the book even more. I sense an upcoming Non-Fiction Monday post here.

"On one hand, it’s exciting to realize that there was a time (not that long ago) when a girl like the young Maria Mitchell grew up believing that there was nothing preventing her from achieving scientific greatness. On the other hand, it’s a bit discouraging to realize that when I was born in New York City in the late twentieth century, the odds were worse for girls in astronomy than they had been when Mitchell was born on Nantucket more than a hundred and fifty years before.
...
There’s a problem with stories of triumph against all odds. As long as we cling to the belief that truly great and heroic figures don’t need encouragement or good opportunities, we’re giving our society permission not to create opportunities. The realization that Mitchell was encouraged by her family and by a community that was willing to support her efforts to achieve scientific greatness shouldn’t be depressing at all. To the contrary, it should push us to create similar opportunities today."

All kinds of links, mostly science-related

Tom's Astronomy Blog points out that the NASA Mars Rover team is now all-female. As an alum of an all-female astronomy department, can I just say how freaking awesome it is that this can just happen?

(There were some male professors, but even the observatory computers were female: Caroline, Maria, Annie, Henrietta)

And on top of that, Google has released a new time-waster: Google Sky. (via FishBowlNY)

Jenny Davidson links to an explanation of why novelists should learn statistics. I've mentioned before that my stats classes mostly taught me to put no faith in survey data, but I learned the math too.

Interesting tidbit, via Maud Newton: Henry David Thoreau's notebooks are serving as evidence of global warming.