Monday, November 16, 2009

Giant Blobs of Doom

I've always liked jellyfish—at least to look at. Whenever I'm at an aquarium, especially the fantastic one at Monterey Bay, I seek out the jellyfish and proceed to stare at them for as long as I can. They move in such interesting ways and come in so many different shapes and sizes. Now, I know they can be dangerous and there are numerous horror stories of beach goers being stung by them, but they are also popular as a food item.

After reading this AP article today, however, I'm starting to move them more into the bad/dangerous category and less in the good/pretty/edible category. Certainly we've all heard about the effects global warming is having on the oceans, but until now I'd not heard about the damage ever-increasing jellyfish territories are having on fisheries. I also didn't know that the Nomura, which is the largest and most poisonous species, can get up to 6 feet in diameter!

I guess this might also explain the hundreds (thousands?) of dead jellyfish I found here at the beach last week. Fortunately, they were only about 1/60th the size of the Nomura.

Have you had any memorable encounters with jellyfish? Eaten them? Been stung by them?

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Orion's back

I've always loved the constellation Orion and I can't tell you how happy I was to find it in the sky last night. I remember learning a bit about it in eighth grade when we did an astronomy unit, but I decided to learn more about this figure.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant that's very bright and very close to the end of its life. According to Wikipedia, when it dies, the supernova will be visible from Earth during the day! In the constellation, this is the star at the top left, or what would be Orion's right shoulder.

I basically knew all that about Betelgeuse, but I certainly didn't know/remember that Rigel, Orion's left foot, is even brighter—it's the sixth brightest star in the night sky (Bet. is 12th). It's a blue supergiant and is also at the end of its life.




I think my favorite fact about Orion is that you can see M42 (the Orion nebula) without the aid of a telescope. If you find Orion's belt, there are a few bright spots that appear to hang down from it; the middle one is M42. When I learned this at age 13 I thought this was so cool—and I've never gotten over that.

Finally, I just learned that the stars that make up Orion have been in this configuration for 1.5 million years and will likely be there for another 1-2 million years more. This makes it one of the longest observable constellations.