St. Lawrence's Tears, aka Perseid Meteor Shower

The Perseids occur when the Earth's orbit crosses the path of debris thrown off by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The annual Perseid meteor shower usually peaks around August 12th. As the cosmic debris, many pieces as small as a grain of sand, enters the atmosphere, it burns up in a flash, appearing as "shooting stars" across the sky. (That much I already knew.)

The Perseids are named after the constellation from which they appear to originate, Perseus. (I knew that, too)

(This next part I learned only a few years ago...) The Perseids are also known as the “Tears of Saint Lawrence”, after the third-century archdeacon of Rome and defender of the poor and disabled, on whose behalf he was martyred.

Ever since his execution, meteors have been seen streaking through the night sky every year around Saint Lawrence’s feast day (August 10th); believers interpreted the meteor showers as his fiery tears, raining from the heavens on the anniversary of his death.


Even as these horrific killings go, Saint Lawrence's martyrdom was particularly gruesome; he was grilled alive!

St. Lawrence, depicted holding a small "gridiron", a hinged metal grate used for grilling meat or fish. The actual gridiron upon which Saint Lawrence was supposedly cooked on is shown below, although it's hard to see, behind the decorative grate.

The shrine in Rome containing the gridiron said to have been used to grill Lawrence to death.

A Star with a GIANT Tail that Spreads Star Seeds

This is so cool. Not only was it news to me, but it was news to NASA, big news, literally and scientifically. 

Mira! (click to enlarge)

NASA got a new view of a (supposedly) well-known star, "Mira", and found that it has a tail - and I mean a mindblowingly massive tail with almost magical properties about which someone will surely write a children's book.

"Mira appears as a small white dot in the bulb-shaped structure at right, and is moving from left to right in this view. The shed material can be seen in light blue. The dots in the picture are stars and distant galaxies. The large blue dot at left is a star that is closer to us than Mira. 
 

I'm going to let NASA explain it, as it would only lose in translation through me...
From NASA Science News for August 15, 2007:

A Star with a Comet's Tail
"Astronomers have discovered something they've never seen before: a star with a tail like a comet. Even more amazing is the fact that the new-found tail is attached to one of the most popular stars in the sky, a red giant named Mira. Amateur and professional astronomers have been watching Mira for 400 years and only recently has a NASA space telescope spotted its massive tail."


FULL STORY: August 15, 2007:
"Astronomers using a NASA space telescope, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, have spotted an amazingly long comet-like tail behind a star streaking through space. The star, named Mira after the Latin word for "wonderful," has been a favorite of astronomers for about 400 years, yet this is the first time the tail has been seen.

"Galaxy Evolution Explorer--"GALEX" for short--scanned the popular star during its ongoing survey of the entire sky in ultraviolet light. Astronomers then noticed what looked like a comet with a gargantuan tail. In fact, material blowing off Mira is forming a wake 13 light-years long, or about 20,000 times the average distance of Pluto from the sun. Nothing like this has ever been seen before around a star.

Click to see NASA's animated version

"'I was shocked when I first saw this completely unexpected, humongous tail trailing behind a well-known star,' says Christopher Martin of the California Institute of Technology. 'It was amazing how Mira's tail echoed on vast, interstellar scales the familiar phenomena of a jet's contrail or a speedboat's turbulent wake.' Martin is the principal investigator for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, and lead author of a Nature paper appearing today to announce the discovery.


"Astronomers say Mira's tail offers a unique opportunity to study how stars like our sun die and ultimately seed new solar systems. Mira is an older star called a red giant that is losing massive amounts of surface material. As Mira hurtles along, its tail sheds carbon, oxygen and other important elements needed for new stars, planets, and possibly even life to form. This tail material, visible now for the first time, has been released over the past 30,000 years.


"'This is an utterly new phenomenon to us, and we are still in the process of understanding the physics involved,' says co-author Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena. 'We hope to be able to read Mira's tail like a ticker tape to learn about the star's life.'


"Billions of years ago, Mira was similar to our sun. Over time, it began to swell into what's called a variable red giant - a pulsating, puffed-up star that periodically grows bright enough to see with the naked eye. Mira will eventually eject all of its remaining gas into space, forming a colorful shell called a planetary nebula. The nebula will fade with time, leaving only the burnt-out core of the original star, which will then be called a white dwarf.


"Compared to other red giants, Mira is traveling unusually fast, possibly due to gravitational boosts from other passing stars over time. It now plows along at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour. Racing along with Mira is a small, distant companion thought to be a white dwarf. The pair, also known as Mira A (the red giant) and Mira B (the white dwarf), orbit slowly around each other as they travel together through the constellation Cetus, 350 light-years from Earth.


"In addition to Mira's tail, GALEX also discovered a bow shock, a type of buildup of hot gas, in front of the star, and two sinuous streams of material coming out of the star's front and back. 

Astronomers think hot gas in the bow shock is heating up the gas blowing off the star, causing it to fluoresce with ultraviolet light. This glowing material then swirls around behind the star, creating a turbulent, tail-like wake. The process is similar to a speeding boat leaving a choppy wake, or a steam train producing a trail of smoke.


"The fact that Mira's tail only glows with ultraviolet light might explain why other telescopes have missed it. GALEX is very sensitive to ultraviolet light and also has an extremely wide field of view, allowing it to scan the sky for unusual ultraviolet activity.

"'It's amazing to discover such a startlingly large and important feature of an object that has been known and studied for over 400 years,' says James D. Neill of Caltech. 'This is exactly the kind of surprise that comes from a survey mission like the Galaxy Evolution Explorer.'


More on Mira:

"A new ultraviolet mosaic* from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star that is leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. The star, "Mira" (pronounced "my-rah"), after the Latin word for "wonderful," is shedding material that will be recycled into new stars, planets and possibly even life as it hurls through our galaxy.


"The Galaxy Evolution Explorer discovered Mira's strange comet-like tail during part of its routine survey of the entire sky at ultraviolet wavelengths.


"When astronomers first saw the picture, they were shocked because Mira has been studied for over 400 years yet nothing like this has ever been documented before.


"Mira's comet-like tail stretches a startling 13 light-years across the sky. For comparison, the nearest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri, is only about 4 light-years away.


"Mira's tail also tells a tale of its history – the material making it up has been slowly blown off over time, with the oldest material at the end of the tail having been released about 30,000 years ago. 

"Mira is a highly evolved, "red giant" star near the end of its life. Technically, it is called an "asymptotic giant branch star". It is red in color and bloated; for example, if a red giant were to replace our sun, it would engulf everything out to the orbit of Mars.


"Our sun will mature into a red giant in about 5 billion years.


"Like other red giants, Mira will lose a large fraction of its mass in the form of gas and dust. In fact, Mira ejects the equivalent of the Earth's mass every 10 years. It has released enough material over the past 30,000 years to seed at least 3,000 Earth-sized planets or 9 Jupiter-sized ones.


"While most stars travel along together around the disk of our Milky Way, Mira is charging through it. Because Mira is not moving with the "pack," it is moving much faster relative to the ambient gas in our section of the Milky Way. 

"Mira's breakneck speed together with its outflow of material are responsible for its unique glowing tail.


"Images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer show a large build-up of gas, or bow shock, in front of the star, similar to water piling up in front of a speeding boat. Scientists now know that hot gas in this bow shock mixes with the cooler, hydrogen gas being shed from Mira, causing it to heat up as it swirls back into a turbulent wake. As the hydrogen gas loses energy, it fluoresces with ultraviolet light, which the Galaxy Evolution Explorer can detect. 

"Mira, also known as Mira A, is not alone in its travels through space. It has a distant companion star called Mira B that is thought to be the burnt-out, dead core of a star, called a white dwarf. Mira A and B circle around each other slowly, making one orbit about every 500 years. Astronomers believe that Mira B has no effect on Mira's tail. 

"Mira is also what's called a pulsating variable star; it dims and brightens by a factor of 1,500 every 332 days, and will become bright enough to see with the naked eye in mid-November 2007. Because it was the first variable star with a regular period ever discovered, other stars of this type are often referred to as "Miras."


"Mira is located 350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus, otherwise known as the whale. Coincidentally, Mira and its "whale of a tail" can be found in the tail of the whale constellation.
 
"*This mosaic is made up of individual images taken by the far-ultraviolet detector on the Galaxy Evolution Explorer between November 18 and December 15, 2006."


Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips Credit: Science@NASA

Sources:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20070815/v.html

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/15aug_mira.htm?list1031480

Ethel Barrymore's Last Words

 









"Is everybody happy?

I want everybody 

to be happy!

I know I'm happy."

Lightning Bugs are NOT Strictly Nocturnal

No kidding. Turns out in terms of circadian categories, there's more than just "nocturnal" and "diurnal"; there's also "crepuscular", which refers to animals that are most active at twilight. Most of the world's 200 species of lightning bugs are actually crepuscular, not nocturnal.

The more you learn about lightning bugs, the more magical they seem. 

First of all, their bio-luminescence is among the most efficient light production on the planet; 96% of the energy goes to making light.
Plus they don't bite, sting, or pinch, don't carry disease, are in no way toxic, and are actually useful to science and medicine, bless their little blinking bottoms.


Another cool thing- lightning bugs sometimes flash in unison, which must be a sight to behold. 

Occasionally a clap of thunder will set them all off. And some South American species always flash in unison. (Maybe they could get work at raves!)

Generally, lightning bugs flash about every 5.5 seconds, but more frequently in warmer weather.


There are about 50 male beetles for every one female. And the much sought-after females are flightless; they just climb up to the tips of blades of grass and blink seductively, waiting for a mate and/or a meal*. (*Often after mating, the femme fatale beetle insists on having him for dinner, literally...)


But it's not easy getting to be a lightning bug in the first place, even for the females; they must all spend years as larvae (in this case, glow worms), living just under the top layer of soil (or sometimes under loose tree bark). These larvae are especially voracious eaters, sucking the insides out of snails and efficiently devouring other larvae dwelling in the subsoil as well as pollen and whatever. They crawl in the mud and feast like this for years, until it's time to make a round mudball for the pupate stage, which is relatively brief, about 2 weeks.


And after all that (after the larval and pupate stages are completed), the newly emerged adult flying beetles we recognize as lightning bugs only live from a few days to a few weeks at the most.


So basically those tiny lights you see strobing gently on summer evenings each had to endure years in the mud for the brief privilege of flying around, blinking, and making baby lightning bugs. So please let's not be encouraging our kids to catch them in jars; they're on a strict schedule, so let 'em be. 

Admire them from afar, not in a jar....

The Mother of Mother's Day Renounced Mother's Day!

I have a distinct cynicism regarding uber-merchandised "Hallmark occasions" like Mother's Day...all I see is the commercial exploitation of the easily-led.

Well, it turns out that Anna Jarvis, the woman who invented Mother's Day in the United States (back in 1908) felt the same way! All she had in mind was a heartfelt, hand-written letter and a white carnation for Mom, and never intended that people spend money, much less MAKE a bunch of money, on the occasion. Naturally, as it evolved into a mostly a reason for businesses to expect a rise in sales that day, she lived to regret the whole idea. Jarvis  Mother's Day had turned into...even got arrested once for protesting what

Mother's Day Celebration Reaches 100th Anniversary By APRIL VITELLO AP Writer

GRAFTON, W.Va. — On this 100th anniversary of Mother's Day, the woman credited with creating one of the world's most celebrated holidays probably wouldn't be pleased with all the flowers, candy or gift$.

Anna Jarvis would want us to give mothers a white carnation — she felt it signified the purity of a mother's love.

Anna Jarvis in 1907

Jarvis, who never married and never had children, got the Mother's Day idea after her mother said it would be nice if someone created a memorial to mothers.

Three years after her mother died in 1905, she organized the first official mother's day service at a church where her mother had spent more than 20 years teaching Sunday school.

Today, the former Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church is the official shrine to mothers around the world. On Sunday, the shrine will celebrate the 100th anniversary, giving each mother attending a special service a white carnation.

The shrine also serves as a "reminder to the accomplishments of these women and to the issues mothers still deal with today, trying to do the balancing act of being everything to everyone," said Cindi Mason, the shrine's director.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 83 million mothers in the United States. More mothers now work out of the home and the number of single-mother households has tripled to more than 10 million since 1970.

What has allowed Mother's Day to become celebrated on the second Sunday in May in 52 countries is "everyone has a mother," said Sally Thayer, a trustee of the International Mother's Day Shrine in Grafton. "It's a wonderful thing to celebrate."

Jarvis' devotion to and her fierce defense of Mother's Day could be tied to the feeling that "a certain era was passing and mothers like her mother were becoming fewer," said Laura Prieto, an associate professor of history and women's studies at Simmons College in Boston.

By all accounts, Jarvis' mother Ann was a community activist who worked to heal the divisions in north-central West Virginia following the Civil War, and to promote improved sanitation by creating Mothers Friendship Clubs.

"I would love to be like Mrs. Jarvis," said Olive Dadisman, who operates the Anna Jarvis Birthplace Museum in nearby Webster. "She was a soft-spoken, gentle woman, but she could convince the devil to give up his pitch fork."

West Virginia became the first state to recognize Mother's Day in 1910. President Woodrow Wilson approved a resolution in 1914 marking the second Sunday in May a nationwide observance.

"Mother's Day was meant to be — and still is — a celebration of a nineteenth-century ideal of motherhood, when mothers were supposed to dedicate themselves completely to nurturing their children and making a cozy, safe home," Prieto said.

Yet, Jarvis became increasingly disturbed as the celebration turned into an excuse to sell greeting cards, candy, flowers and other items.

Jarvis became known for scathing letters in which she would berate people who purchased greeting cards, saying they were too lazy to write personal letters "to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world."

Before she died in 1948, she protested at a Mother's Day celebration in New York, and was arrested for disturbing the peace.

The National Retail Federation estimates that Americans will spend $15 billion this year honoring their mothers. Dining out is expected to be the No. 1 expense.

In the end, Mason said Jarvis was bitter about what the observance had become and "wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control ..."

"But when you look at Mother's Day as being her baby of sorts, you can understand her protectiveness of it."

On the Net: International Mother's Day Shrine: http://www.mothersdayshrine.com
Anna Jarvis Museum: http://www.annajarvishouse.com
Copyright 2008, The Associated Press. This information wasn't supposed to be published, broadcast or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Too bad.

Naming Storms and Remembering Hurricane Carla

Someone asked me recently when the tradition of naming tropical storms began, the kind of Cliff Clavenesque trivia at which I usually excel, but I didn't know.

Turns out that the current naming format began in 1953, but more about that later.

All I knew for sure before I looked it up was that they didn't have names in 1900 when the killer Galveston Hurricane hit, and they did have official names by 1961 because I remember Hurricane Carla, vividly.

Carla made landfall on September 11th, 1961, the second most powerful storm ever to strike the Texas coast, and even 150 miles inland in San Antonio, it was a big deal. I was in 6th grade at Cambridge Elementary School there where school had just started for the year a week before.
But late the morning of the 11th, the weather became such a big deal that our teacher led us all to the school library, where we were to wait for our parents to pick us up. This was mildly exciting because we were going home already and we hadn't even had lunch! I remember it was so dark that the street lights were on. We'd never seen it so dark in the daytime.

Until that morning, all I knew about weather I'd overheard from grownups, mostly talking about drought, especially throughout the 50's....weather sometimes kept us from being able to play outside, but like most city kids, that was about the extent of my interest in weather. After Carla, I caught the weather bug and tried to set up a little weather station in the front yard.

Anyway, I looked up the subject of "hurricane names" because this month seems to be all about hurricanes; Hurricane Earl was just last week, and today Tropical Storm Hermine may become a Category 1 Hurricane before it comes ashore, probably near Brownsville, Texas, probably tonight. We do need the rain, but the businesses on the coast have enough challenges.

So here's the straight dope on hurricane names...

To help in their identification, the practice of systematically naming tropical storms and hurricanes was initiated in 1953 by the United States National Hurricane Center. Naming is now maintained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Thanks to Wikipedia for the info; as always, I hope it's correct!

When you come to the edge