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Thor's Helmet
by astrodeb＠charter.net 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Here is a good picture of Thor's Helmet. If I have the chance, I may try to image this object this month. http://panther-observatory.com/gallery/deepsky/doc/NGC2359_cass.htm Debbie

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Saturday Night Observing
by Olhomorto＠aol.com 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Last year Tom Watson and I drove past the rock art panel in the buckhorn wash and on for about another 5 miles to an open area that was SUPER FOR OBSERVING. If a bunch of students are at the campground, and if they would potentially interfere with our observing due to drinking, etc., we could utilize this other site. The drive is only about an additional twenty minutes as I recall. During the night Tom and I could here traffic going past on the nearby main road, but we couldn't see headlights--so there was no interference with our observing. If anyone is interested, I'll tell you more about it. Mike Bailey

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] fodder for the list
by Olhomorto＠aol.com 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Hi Don, I threw scrabble pieces up into the air and when they came down randomly there were a few words in English. I wonder what would happen if I could throw a billion sets of scrabble pieces up into the air? I was wondering, too, whether it is simply species with the most fertile offspring that succeed, or whether being best-suited to their environment has something to do with their success? Mike

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] fodder for the list
by Olhomorto＠aol.com 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

I wonder what to make of it when the parrot makes sounds that other parrots can interpret, but not the "higher intelligence" that wanted to teach it to say "Hello you son of a b---h". Mike

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Observing report from Rush Valley (Saturday 5 March)
by Richard Tenney 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

There were about a half-dozen of us that braved the cold Saturday night in Rush Valley ("Pit-n-pole") for fairly good skies (good enough, since any late Winter / early Spring opportunities are rare it seems) and good company. It was a productive night for me -- I managed to observe 21 more objects on my Herschel-400 list, getting all of the open clusters in Canis Major and Monoceros, including the cone and rosette nebulas, 4 galaxies in Leo, and one in Cancer. The "problem" with finding open clusters in Monoceros is like trying to find needles in a haystack -- most of it is rich milky-way starfields that make it difficult to tell where a cluster begins and where it ends. Thank goodness for setting circles! A couple of noteworthy clusters to look for are NGC 2506 in Monoceros, 2204 in Canis Major (looks like the constellation Perseus in miniature), and NGC 2360 in Canis Major, a real beauty in a very rich starfield that fills the eyepiece, visible even in my 9x60 finderscope. One highlight of the evening was having Tyler Allred along with his Tak-90 and CCD camera imaging the cone nebula (NGC 2264); the result was impressive (I'm encouraging him to join the list and post that and some of his other very nice images in the gallery). Dew/Frost pretty much shut us all down about 11:30. I suspect we will try again this coming Saturday, if the weather cooperates. Rich __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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RE: RE: [Utah-astronomy] fodder for the list
by Dale Hooper 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

If I consider the strong anthropic principle as part of this...it probably depends on who is walking by. <G> -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces+dale.hooper=sdl.usu.edu(a)mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces+dale.hooper=sdl.usu.edu@mailman.xmission. com] On Behalf Of astrodeb(a)charter.net Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 2:09 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: Re: RE: [Utah-astronomy] fodder for the list I heard about a parrot that would say "Hello you son of a b---h" as people walked by. What is the probability of it saying that on it's own without help from a higher form intelligence? Pretty slim I would say. Debbie

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Re: RE: [Utah-astronomy] fodder for the list
by astrodeb＠charter.net 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

I heard about a parrot that would say "Hello you son of a b---h" as people walked by. What is the probability of it saying that on it's own without help from a higher form intelligence? Pretty slim I would say. Debbie > > From: "Don J. Colton" <djcolton(a)piol.com> > Date: 2005/03/07 Mon PM 01:31:12 MST > To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com> > Subject: RE: [Utah-astronomy] fodder for the list > > One final thought for those who don't want to read the Berlinski article. > His major thesis is that natural selection without intelligent input is just > pure dumb luck. The species that succeed are those with the most fertile > offspring. His criticism of Dawkins, Denton and others is that they have > essentially given natural selection intelligence; i.e. they don't realize it > but they are using intelligent design to prove their point. The Dawkins > monkey analogy is a great example. Berlinski is quoted below: > > IT IS Richard Dawkins's grand intention in The Blind Watchmaker to > demonstrate, as one reviewer enthusiastically remarked, "how natural > selection allows biologists to dispense with such notions as purpose and > design." This he does by exhibiting a process in which the random > exploration of certain possibilities, a blind stab here, another there, is > followed by the filtering effects of natural selection, some of those stabs > saved, others discarded. But could a process so conceived -- a Darwinian > process -- discover a simple English sentence: a target, say, chosen from > Shakespeare? The question is by no means academic. If natural selection > cannot discern a simple English sentence, what chance is there that it might > have discovered the mammalian eye or the system by which glucose is > regulated by the liver? A thought experiment in The Blind Watchmaker now > follows. Randomness in the experiment is conveyed by the metaphor of the > monkeys, perennial favorites in the theory of probability. There they sit, > simian hands curved over the keyboards of a thousand typewriters, their long > agile fingers striking keys at random. It is an image of some poignancy, > those otherwise intelligent apes banging away at a machine they cannot > fathom; and what makes the poignancy pointed is the fact that the system of > rewards by which the apes have been induced to strike the typewriter's keys > is from the first rigged against them. > > The probability that a monkey will strike a given letter is one in 26. The > typewriter has 26 keys: the monkey, one working finger. But a letter is not > a word. Should Dawkins demand that the monkey get two English letters right, > the odds against success rise with terrible inexorability from one in 26 to > one in 676. The Shakespearean target chosen by Dawkins -- "Methinks it is > like a weasel"-is a six-word sentence containing 28 English letters > (including the spaces). It occupies an isolated point in a space of 10,000 > million, million, million, million, million, million possibilities. This is > a very large number; combinatorial inflation is at work. And these are very > long odds. And a six-word sentence consisting of 28 English letters is a > very short, very simple English sentence. > > Such are the fatal facts. The problem confronting the monkeys is, of course, > a double one: they must, to be sure, find the right letters, but they cannot > lose the right letters once they have found them. A random search in a space > of this size is an exercise in irrelevance. This is something the monkeys > appear to know. What more, then, is expected; what more required? Cumulative > selection, Dawkins argues- the answer offered as well by Stephen Jay Gould, > Manfred Eigen, and Daniel Dennett. The experiment now proceeds in stages. > The monkeys type randomly. After a time, they are allowed to survey what > they have typed in order to choose the result "which however slightly most > resembles the target phrase." It is a computer that in Dawkins's experiment > performs the crucial assessments, but I prefer to imagine its role assigned > to a scrutinizing monkey-the Head Monkey of the experiment. The process > under way is one in which stray successes are spotted and then saved. This > process is iterated and iterated again. Variations close to the target are > conserved because they are close to the target, the Head Monkey equably > surveying the scene until, with the appearance of a miracle in progress, > randomly derived sentences do begin to converge on the target sentence > itself. > > The contrast between schemes and scenarios is striking. Acting on their own, > the monkeys are adrift in fathomless possibilities, any accidental success-a > pair of English-like letters-lost at once, those successes seeming like > faint untraceable lights flickering over a wine-dark sea. The advent of the > Head Monkey changes things entirely. Successes are conserved and then > conserved again. The light that formerly flickered uncertainly now stays > lit, a beacon burning steadily, a point of illumination. By the light of > that light, other lights are lit, until the isolated successes converge, > bringing order out of nothingness. > > The entire exercise is, however, an achievement in self-deception. A target > phrase? Iterations that most resemble the target? A Head Monkey that > measures the distance between failure and success? If things are sightless, > how is the target represented, and how is the distance between randomly > generated phrases and the targets assessed? And by whom? And the Head > Monkey? What of him? The mechanism of deliberate design, purged by Darwinian > theory on the level of the organism, has reappeared in the description of > natural selection itself, a vivid example of what Freud meant by the return > of the repressed. > > This is a point that Dawkins accepts without quite acknowledging, rather > like a man adroitly separating his doctor's diagnosis from his own > disease.(6) > > The same pattern of intellectual displacement is especially vivid in Daniel > Dennett's description of natural selection as a force subordinate to what he > calls "the principle of the accumulation of design." Sifting through the > debris of chance, natural selection, he writes, occupies itself by > "thriftily conserving the design work . . . accomplished at each stage." But > there is no such principle. Dennett has simply assumed that a sequence of > conserved advantages will converge to an improvement in design; the > assumption expresses a non sequitur. > > Nature presents life with no targets. Life shambles forward, surging here, > shuffling there, the small advantages accumulating on their own until > something novel appears on the broad evolutionary screen-an arch or an eye, > an intricate pattern of behavior, the complexity characteristic of life. May > we, then, see this process at work, by seeing it simulated? > > "Unfortunately," Dawkins writes, "I think it may be beyond my powers as a > programmer to set up such a counterfeit world."(7) > > It is absurdly easy to set up a sentence-searching algorithm obeying purely > Darwinian constraints. The result, however, is always the same -- gibberish. > > This is the authentic voice of contemporary Darwinian theory. What may be > illustrated by the theory does not involve a Darwinian mechanism; what > involves a Darwinian mechanism cannot be illustrated by the theory. (End > Quote) > > Berlinski is (or was, I am not sure if he has retired) a professor of > mathematics at Princeton University. > > I'll not beat a dead horse, so back to observing. I just wanted to stir up > a little interest in the list. > > Clear Skies > Don Colton > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Utah-Astronomy mailing list > Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com > http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy > Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com >

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Observing report from Rush Valley (Saturday 5 March)
by Jim Gibson 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Mike You were right about those bright spots in M33 being forground stars. I just looked at a picture of M33 and saw the same patern. Couldn't have been NGC604. Jim diveboss(a)xmission.com wrote: Quoting Richard Tenney : > The "problem" with finding open clusters in Monoceros > is like trying to find needles in a haystack -- most > of it is rich milky-way starfields that make it > difficult to tell where a cluster begins and where it > ends. Thank goodness for setting circles! Rich, That's what I like about smaller scopes. The view is not nearly as cluttered. They are also not as bright to look through. I accidentally looked at the Milky Way one night through Daniels 17.5 scope. It was like looking at the sun, no matter where I looked for the rest of the night, all I seen was stars. Completely ruined my night vision. Had to close my eyes for a half hour so I could see to drive home... ;) _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy(a)mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com --------------------------------- Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web

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Re: [Utah-astronomy] Observing report from Rush Valley (Saturday 5 March)
by daniel turner 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

Well next time try not to bang your forhead on the eyepiece, then you won't be seeing so many stars. DT That's what I like about smaller scopes. The view is not nearly as cluttered. They are also not as bright to look through. I accidentally looked at the Milky Way one night through Daniels 17.5 scope. It was like looking at the sun, no matter where I looked for the rest of the night, all I seen was stars. Completely ruined my night vision. Had to close my eyes for a half hour so I could see to drive home... ;) --------------------------------- Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web

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Saturday Night Observing
by Olhomorto＠aol.com 07 Mar '05

07 Mar '05

I, too, had a blast out at Rush Valley on Saturday night. But a glance at this week's forcast doesn't look good for the weekend. Or am I just prematurely panicking? Anyway, the forcast looks good for places like the St George area. Does anyone have plans or know about possibilities for Messier Marathons in parts farther south than Salt Lake-Utah counties? Mike Bailey

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