Tough Bananas

So I have been a big fan of astronomy as long as I can remember. I ran across a program a year or so ago called Celestia. It’s a desktop application that allows you to ‘fly’ around the universe and see the sights. It was the first of it’s kind, so the fact that all stars looked identical and there were no nebulae wasn’t a big trade-off. Fast forward to today, where I decide to play around in Google Earth. On load, I was notified that as of version 4.2, you could go to View > Switch to Sky. Here is where Google Earth far surpasses Celestia. The images used are from Hubble Telescope images (along with others like Chandra I’m sure), nebulae are clear as day, and every star is unique. I remember running across a great video depicting the scale of stars in our galaxy on YouTube. I’ve posted it below:

YouTube
EDIT: WordPress broke with embedded Flash. Here’s the link for now.

This got me to wondering where all of these stars are. Most are ‘free-floating’ without being part of a constellation. Rigel and Betelgeuse though are both part of the constellation Orion. As I made my way to the bigger stars, I noticed that Google Earth did not seem to have information on the two largest presented in the video: My Cephei and \/\/ Cephei. I decided to search for the KML file that would add them to the collection. Sadly, most hits were in other languages and, quite possibly, irrelevant.

Regardless, if you have any interest in astronomy, I highly recommend checking out Google Earth’s new addition. If anyone has found where the Cephei stars are located, please leave a comment and link.

I’ve decided to share some of my favorite ‘geek’ books.

• Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
• Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
• Infinity in Your Pocket by Mike Flynn
• The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio
• Euclid in the Rainforest by Joseph Mazur
• Code by Charles Petzold
• Two Zen Classics: Gateless Gate and Blue Cliff Records by Katsuki Sekida
• The Story of i by Paul J Nahin
• Chatter by Patrick Radden Keefe
• Body of Secrets by James Bamford
• Pocket Ref 3rd Edition by Thomas J Glover

So I have noticed that around 5pm at the State/Lake station, I am waiting for a good ten minutes or so for my Orange Line train down to Midway. Every day I wait and see two Pink Line trains go by before another Orange Line. Of course, the lack of a frequent train causes everyone to be crammed in like sardines. The CTA needs to either add another train run, or make an express route to Western, Kedzie, Pulaski and Midway.