Astronomy Cast: Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens was a truly frightening intellect that basically got curious and just did stuff. So, he did advanced mathematics, where the only thing that seemed to limit him — he’s doing a lot of his mathematics work just a few years before Calculus was invented, so he tried to do things like calculate what is the shape of the hanging rope, and he couldn’t quite get there because you need Calculus. He did astronomy where he actually built all of his own lenses, and he devised new and better ways to grind and polish lenses. He was a physicist working to try and solve all sorts of interesting mechanics problems. He was also one of the people who worked on designing early clocks, where he didn’t build the clocks himself, he hired other people to do that, but he was the person who came up with the idea for the pendulum clock, and thought maybe that would be one of the ways to solve the latitude problem. He had the benefit of being the son of a mathematician who was friends with Rene Descartes, so growing up he had all of these amazing people constantly in and out of his life. He was also from a wealthy enough family that he had private tutors until he was sixteen. And he transitioned from private tutoring, which included Descartes looking over his shoulder, to then attending the University of Leiden, and then going on to the College of Orange in Breda. He studied mathematics, he studied Law — he was your quintessential “Renaissance man” in time and education. So he was born in 1629, went to university young, got involved on politics side of things before he actually turned to doing science actively. It was in 1657 that he did his first publication, which was in astronomy; it was in probability theory. In his life, he was mostly tied to different royal societies, so he kind of had royal backing. So back in the 1650s, he was grinding his own lenses; he was making his own telescopes, and as he’s making his observations, documenting day by day the changing alignment of the rings of Saturn…this is one of the most amazing things, is when Galileo looked at Saturn, he saw at one point it looked at one points like Saturn had a pair of handles.

Astronomy Cast: Giovanni Cassini

Giovanni Cassini



The Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini is best known for discovering Saturn’s moons,
and the biggest division in Saturn’s rings. Cassini made many other important discoveries in the solar system, and in the fields of physics and astronomy. He grew up thinking that the Earth was the center of the universe, and had to re-find his place in the universe as an adult. He grew up believing in astrology, and as an adult became a hard-core, science-focused astrophysicist in the earliest days of that field.

He was born in 1625, and so he was growing up learning about all these things going on, but he got to follow far enough behind them that he had much better optics to play with. Cassini got his PhD at age 25, and he had this interesting joint career where he was working in Bologna, and he was both a fortress builder, and an astronomer. He was both grounded and had his head in the clouds. He was the person who discovered Iapetus, the little white and black, completely funky-colored moon that kind of looks like it ran head-first into something. He was the one who while observing the Saturn’s rings, realized “wait, there’s a gap in those rings,” and that gap now bears his name. It’s the Cassini Division. Cassini also determined the rotation rate of Jupiter, which has features unlike Saturn -- which is kind of beige -- and I think one of the neatest things he did was he was a very careful observer, and he was tied up in trying to understand how to measure time, he was tied up into trying to accurately measure longitude.

APOD 2.3-Waterfall, Moonbow and Aurora from Iceland

This picture has multiple breathtaking areas of interest, including the captivating waterfall, the gorgeous moonbow and the scintillating aurora. This particular waterfall, Skogarfoss, is eyecatching in this image. To the left in this picture is a chromatic bow NOT a rainbow, since the waterdrops did not orginate in rainfall or they are reflecting light from the Sun. Instead, the drops were lifted off the waterfall and are illuminated by the nearly full moon! In the background of this picture you will notice the Big Dipper and Ursa Minor.

APOD 2.2-Historical Supernova Remnant

In the year 185 AD the appearance of a new star, Nanmen asterism, was noted by some Chinese astronomers. This star was visible for months and is believed to be the earliest recorded supernova in history. This picture is a false-color view that shows interstellar gas heated by the expanding supernova. This supernova, RCW 86, is understood to be the remnant of a stellar explosion. This is a Type Ia supernova which means there are thermal explosions that destroy a white dwarf star as it accreates material from a companion in a binary star system, whatever that means. ert. RCW 86 is about 8,200 light-years away and has an estimated radius of 50 light-years!

APOD 2.1-Ghost of the Cepheus Flare

In the constellation Cepheus, the 'Ghost of Cepheus Flare' seems to have spooky shapes in the galaxy. Of course, these shapes are just cosmic dust clouds that are faintly visible in dimly reflected starlight, duh. This picture shows are pretty clear astronomical object called Cepheus Flare, which contains several star forming regions. It is located in the northern Milky Way, and like mentioned before in the constellation Cepheus. This molecular clous is located 1,200 light years away. About 2 light years across this ghostly nebula lies a relatively isolated Bok globule is near the center of the field. The core of this dark cloud on the right of this picture is collapsing and resembles a binary star in the early stages. If this creepy/spooky shape could talk it would probably say how chait halloween was.