Tuesday Favorites: Reflections + My new favorite star

My love affair with all things celestial and astronomical started in 9th grade. I'm pretty sure that's when the film adaptation of Carl Sagan's devastatingly gorgeous novel arrived in theaters. Contact.

I can't remember the details about the actual screening. I know I went to see it more than once. Like Carl, the film captures this beautiful tension between the unexplainable and mystical qualities of life with the security of objective science. I remember enjoying this concept of science and mathematics being the only true universal language... the language that would quite likely bridge the difference between us and an alien race.

I received good grades in science... but not because I was a natural scientist. I knew the system. I knew how to play the game of "the good student" and succeed. I struggled in Chemistry with the numbers and ions and such. I had a pretty rotten teacher (to explain this, I'll just say that we actually drew up a petition signed by students and their parents to have this woman fired... it didn't happen, but there was a lot of dissatisfaction with her method of teaching). Aside from that, numbers have never been my strong suit.

It was the work of Carl Sagan that made me mourn this fact. A couple years after Contact, Daddy introduced me to Sagan's television mini-series Cosmos.

Daddy recorded so many programs from the 70s through the 90s (the last program we taped on VHS pretty devoutly was The Dinosaurs, but he recorded all my educational programs, Fraggle Rock, Brain Games, etc.). The house in which I was raised has a closet full of our bizarre VHS collection which is virtually all recorded television rather than cassettes bought in the store. Daddy also had one of those 20 pound rocks of a video camera with which he captured countless family golden moments and classic nightmares. His collection is a valuable treasure trove of resources and memorabilia. Cosmos, though, was the one program during my turbulent adolescence that gave us a space in which to bond, to have some interest in common.

Seeing as how Sagan wrote and narrated Cosmos, I had the chance to really experience the way he worked. Sagan has one of the most distinctly amazing talents that I've ever witnessed in an intelligent person. While Sagan had obvious gifts for mathematics and science, he simultaneously wielded the power of words with such compassionate mastery. He managed not to demean, but he made things that would be dizzying and confusing in science class crystal clear. I remember kicking myself at moments while watching that I hadn't done so sooner... might have helped me with my Chemistry issues.

There is a poetry to Sagan's science that enchants me. He paints Astronomy as the Father Science of all other sciences... this led to my desire to study the subject. I could learn about all other sciences if I start here... and perhaps Sagan could lead me.

So, on to my new favorite star!

Though we have left the time of Libra in terms of the zodiac calendar, I was curious lately about the actual stars that make up the constellation. The star set that make up the scales of Libra look a little like this:

(from www.scienceandart.com)

Now, it was in the Middle East that the constellation was identified as a balancing scale measuring out the details of the universe high in the sky. The Greeks, on the other hand, saw a chariot for Pluto (All the better to steal your daughters with, my dear). They also saw the claws of the following sign in the zodiac, the Scorpion.

Either way, there are individual stars that make up this constellation. I'm sure I'll talk about them all at one point or another, but for now, I'm rather enamored with Gliese 581.

(from www.calacademy.org)

Named for Wilhelm Gliese and his Catalogue of Nearby Stars, Gliese 581 is red dwarf (spectral type M3V) and approximately 20.3 light years away from Earth. Its mass is measured to be about a third of that of the sun. It is located about two degrees north of the brightest star in the Libra constellation known as Beta Librae.

What's really fascinating about this star is the ruckus is caused recently in astronomical news. This star has about four planets orbiting it light. Gliese c. was discovered in 2007 and exists well within the habitable zone of its parent star. It makes a complete orbit in 13 days. Gliese is now considered to be the most Earth-like exoplanet about which we currently know (this is a mass issue, not a livability topic). It is believed that this planet is rocky with a mass approximately five times that of Earth. However, it also exhibits evidence of having a runaway greenhouse effect similar to what we can observe on Venus. The chances of anything living there at the moment are slim...

Gliese c. has a brother, Gliese d., that also exists within the habitable zone and might be the best candidate to support life. Its orbit around Gliese takes about 66.8 Earth days with a mass roughly the same as half of the mass of Uranus. There is little else to know about it at this point as we are still studying what surrounds Gliese. We only just discovered in April of this year yet another planet, Gliese e., orbiting Gliese outside the habitable zone.

The mere concept excites me... In the constellation of my birth sign, there exists a star that strives for something extraordinary. It burns and gazes upon the rocks that orbit it as though it alone believes in their potential. Aside from the obvious, wanting to think we could either contact the life currently on the third planet or observe the life that might evolve from it, I think of it as a potential home for future generations if we do the unthinkable but seemingly inevitable and blow this precious planet of ours to kingdom come. May we not be so foolish on Gliese d. should this day ever come...

(from www.daviddarling.info)