Worth Noting
Fly me to the moon ...
Just a few items of note this week:
November is a big month for star-gazers.
The super moon that rose just after sunset on Wednesday was spectacular, and it’s still quite bright. A super moon — this one is called the Beaver Moon, a name taken from the Native American tradition of marking time by when beavers begin to build lodges for winter — is when the the moon reaches its full phase at its closest point to Earth. This is the third one this year and the biggest, appearing 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than usual because it’s about 16,800 miles closer to us than on average. That’s galactically minuscule, but equals about three round-trips from New York to LA.
There are four meteor showers this month:
The Taurids peak on November 12, with about five per hour.
The Leonids peak on November 17 and 18 at a rate of 15 or so per hour.
The Monocerotids on November 21 provide a handful each hour.
And, the Orionids, peaking on November 28, provide just three or four hourly.
As always, the best viewing is away from city lights.
Jupiter and Saturn are both visible in the night sky this month. They can be seen with the naked eye, but a telescope is necessary for a true view of the planets.
More sky-gazing info is here.
Speaking of the moon, Daichi Fujii, the curator of a museum in Japan who is also an astronomy enthusiast, captured video of two separate asteroids smashing into the moon last week. The video itself isn’t as impressive as the fact that he captured the collisions on the surface of our moon, some 221,000 miles away (this week). Here’s the link to a New York Times story on the event along with the two videos.
This past week the International Space Station (ISS) marked 25 years of continuous occupancy. Nearly 300 Earthlings from 26 countries — primarily the United States and Russia — have served on station. NASA’s Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts were the first three inhabitants beginning on November 2, 2000. Shepherd now serves on an ISS advisory committee and told The Associated Press that while the governmental relationship between the U.S. and Russia is “quite bad, person to person and even space agency to space agency, they’re actually quite good.” One of my career highlights at Notre Dame was conducting a live interview with ND alumni astronaut Kevin Ford as he was passing 250 miles over South Bend at 17,500 miles per hour as commander of the space station.
And, one more moon note: As you may have seen, the noted astrophysicist Kim Kardashian informed us all last week that the 1969 moon landing was fake. Good thing we have an expert like her weighing in on one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Her Space Cowboy conspiracy theories have been debunked many times, and NASA made sure to quickly knock down this latest tall tale. She had no comment on whether the moon is made of green cheese.
A few non-astronomy/space notes:
Now that a scintillating World Series is over, we have 106 days until the first spring training games in Arizona and Florida. Can’t wait! In the meantime, the American and National League MVPs, Cy Young Award winners, Managers of the Year, and Rookies of the Year will be announced in the next week or so. I was happy to see our friend Pat Murphy of the Milwaukee Brewers is a finalist for NL Manager of Year. There should be no doubt that he’ll win it — for a second straight year — after leading the team to the best record in baseball. And, it was great to see Brewers’ third-baseman Caleb Durbin is one of three finalists for NL Rookie of the Year. As some of you know, he played second base at Washington University in St. Louis … just 45 years after me. I had a chance to meet and chat with him a bit before a Cactus League game last March. Good guy. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure Atlanta Braves catcher Drake Baldwin will probably — and deservedly — win the award.
If you haven’t seen the comedian Nate Bargatze on TV or in person, do so. He’s tremendously funny and, along with Jim Gaffigan, one of the great clean comics who has become a sensation. To give an idea of his popularity, I saw him recently in Chicago, where he sold out two nights at the United Center — that would be more than 42,000 in attendance. He’s been selling out in similar venues across the country and around the world. To give you a taste, here’s the link to one of his two George Washington sketches on Saturday Night Live, and here’s the link to the other.
Like many, I’m very concerned about the state of journalism in this country — the attacks on the media, the news deserts, the continuing demise of print, the acquiescence of several networks. To that end, I recently saw a quote from Thomas Jefferson that is worth noting and remembering. In a letter from Paris to Edward Carrington, who Jefferson sent as a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1786 to 1788, he wrote that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
A jury on Thursday found the man who threw a sandwich in August at a federal agent to protest against federal troops in Washington, D.C. to be not guilty of misdemeanor assault. I thought from the beginning that this case was full of baloney.
Dennis Brown is the retired spokesman and assistant vice president for issues management at the University of Notre Dame. His weekly Worth Noting column is a compilation of notes, quotes, and anecdotes on “stuff” happening in his bubble and around the nation and world.
Good choice by Thomas Jefferson!
It is great watching Caleb Durbin. Astounding really.