Fireworks Galaxy

It was back to galaxies for my next target.   I wanted to try to image the Fireworks Galaxy or NGC 6946.   It amazes me how these interstellar bodies were found so long ago.  William Herschel first documented this galaxy in 1798.  Wow!

The target is somewhat difficult for my set-up because you have to image it through some interstellar matter of the Milky Way.  It took approximately 1.4 hours of light gathering to finally get the final picture.  However the work was worth it.  The intermediate spiral galaxy is full of some beautiful color and really does look like a firework bursting in the sky.  This firework is only about one-third the size of our own Milky Way galaxy and is only 18 million light year away!   My brain has a hard time comprehending that distance. It has an even harder time realizing the light my scope is gathering from this galaxy took millions of years to reach the Earth.  We are literally looking back in time and it is beautiful sight to see.

.

The Firework galxy take with my Celestron 8 inch SCT

The details of the final picture of the Galaxy

Location of the Fireworks Galaxy in our sky

1783 GMO studies = ZERO Hazards

Are you looking for the facts to help convince you or other's that GMOs are safe?   Check out:

http://www.foodinsight.org/biotechnology-gmo-food-safe-who-infographic?utm_content=23166078&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter#sthash.SHtiPPZq.LMghjZZZ.dpbs


The main allure of the shot article on this website is the info graphic:

There is one thing to point out that is not always obvious with GMOs.  Some people chose not to eat GMOs, but up to 90% of the feed fed to farm animals in the US is derived from biotech crops.   So GMOs are being used extensively whether you know it or not.   The animal also provides scientists another population to study effects of GMOs.  Researchers at UC Davis looked at health trends of animals before and after biotech feed was introduced and found no significant differences in animal health.   With the thousands of animals being fed GMOs we would see effects if there were some.

There also have also been many other studies on GMOs over the years.  The University of Perugia has recently analysed 1783 studies on the safety and environmental effects of GMOs and so far there are ZERO hazards found.

Science is nothing more than the continual pursuit of new knowledge to challenge the current way of thinking.  Science cannot definitively prove that GMOs pose no threat at all.  And that is why people keep doing studies because science could  show the potential of health threats.  Even a couple of legitimate findings could really change the scientific dogmas associated with GMOs.  And science can get things wrong.  That is why in science. findings must be repeatable by multiple scientists. We are our own worst critics.  If s an experiment told you something, well it is not a real result unless I can repeat it and get the same results.   This is what makes science work.  We will eventually get to the truth.     Yet after 1783 studies showing no health effects isn't it time to start believing a little that  it is OK to eat them?  In the next 30-40 years we may not have any choice as the population continues to grow.

Let's teach our kids Science

We love to give tests and use those scores to make all kinds of comparisons.   That is a can of worms for another day.  But the fact is test scores are used globally to compare kids, schools, states, and even countries.  A fairly recent study took school tests and ranked countries on how kids are performing in science and math.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32608772?nl=nytnow&em_pos=large&emc=edit_nn_20150513

Notice the US doesn't even make the top 12 list.  They are ranked 28.  I have two kids in school and they are getting a good education.  However the fact remains that other countries are starting to really compete with the US.  Asia is becoming a power house in science and math scores.  So if you believe test scores are an indicator of sucess, the the US has some room for improvement.  

I bring this up because science can be fun, and I love to try and get kids involved in science.   I stumbled across a resource for teaching kids about a part of science I hold dear to my heart:  Biotechnology.  The PDF has many different lessons from DNA to GMOs and there are some cool hands-on activities like extracting DNA from a strawberry.  These are exercises you can do with your kids and even share this resource with your kid's teachers.  Let's get more science out to our kids while also making it fun.  

Bring Biotechnology to Life PDF (ages 7-10)

Photopsia

I apologize for the lack of blogging lately.  We are in the process of moving and selling and that process has kept me quite busy over the last few weeks. Hopefully by the end of the year we will be all settled in and things will be back to normal.

However I did have a story to share with a little science thrown in.   It all started on a camping trip with the boys.   Everything started like a normal trip. The boys were playing and having a good time.  We cooked supper, roasted marsh mellows and went to bed.  Everything we good until about 5:00 in the morning when the little one woke me up saying he was was seeing things in the tent.  I just thought he was having a bad dream and had him get a little closer to me in the tent.  That worked until about 5:30 when he woke me up again and said he was still seeing things.   I put him in the sleeping bag with me, but again that only worked until about 6 AM when things really went downhill.  He woke me up saying he was seeing red bugs and they were everywhere.  He said they were coming out of my skin and going into his skin.  He started swatting at them and freaking out.  I could not console him.  He stated to scream to get him out of the tent.   We were were camping on a lake, so at this point I picked him up and walked him down to the lake where I tried to console him for a while and after about 45 minutes had calmed him down.  The rest of the day he was fine and playing just like any other day.

I attributed these visions of "red bugs" to a really bad and vivid dream.   But then we came to night time and no sooner had he gone to bed than we heard crying.  He was seeing the bugs again.  And he was definitely seeing something.  He was shaking and would physically try to push them way from him.  The only thing to remotely calm him down was him sitting on the couch with me downstairs in the light.  At this point I was starting to get concerned.   I knew better than google hallucinations but dit it anyway and of course and it says things you don't really want to hear.   The next night ended up being the same.  We could only get him sleep by putting him in the bed with us.  We had him draw what he was seeing and once we did that, the drawings were very much in line with what a floater might look like.  This all started to make a little sense.  Floaters move and it could easily look like a bug coming out of your skin or going into someone.  Over the next couple nights he started to realize that even though he was seeing these things, they were not hurting him and he would at least go to sleep now.

We took him to the doctor to get his eyes checked out and sure enough he was seeing floaters which is called photopsia. There are different reasons to see these, with one of the most common being retinal detachment.  In his case, everything looked fine with his eyes.   But in some people, photopsia is caused from actually seeing the shadow of the blood vessels in your eyes.  They can appear as red, clear, purple floaters.  In some people they can be very bad especially against certain backgrounds and the person will need to stop what they are doing to focus on a different landscape or background.
He says he still sees the floaters but now that he can rationalize what is going on he lives with it wtih no problem.  The doctor says they may eventually go away or he may see the floaters off and on the rest of his life.  In either event, it is a harmless phenomenon, but one that gave us quite a scare.

Astrophotography: North American Nebula

The next target on the list is the North American Nebula.  This nebula is an emission nebula approximately 1600 light years away from Earth,  An emission nebula is basically just a big cloud of gas that is being excited by a nearby star and thus glowing.    The most prominent gas being ionized in this nebula is Hydrogen.  The nebula is huge, approximately four times the size of the moon, but its surface brightness is pretty low meaning you need binoculars or a low powered telescope to see a foggy patch in the sky.  That didn't stop William Herschel from discovering the nebula on Oct. 24, 1786.

The nebula is called the North American nebula because if you use your imagination you will see North America.  Canada is at the top with Florida jutting out as you follow the East coast.  Mexico rounds out the bottom of the nebula.  My photo is not the best out there and in the hands of more experience photographers the features of North America are even more prominent.

The location of the North American Nebula:

• 

The technical specs of the photo I took are:

A good story at the expense of GMOs

Its hard not to get frustrated with some of the journalism out in the world.  Here is one that I came across this weekend entitled "Genetically modified food: Worries outstrip science."   As a scientist this is the kind of article you read and can do nothing but just scratch your head.

This is a an emotional article and I don't want to take away from the worry and hardship these parents have gone through with an autistic son.  I have 3 kids and fully understand that you will do anything to protect them them even when it may not seem rationale to those looking on.  It is just what we as parents do.

However, I will not be as kind to journalism that uses a parents hardship to pursue an agenda of Anti-GMO sentiment.  The parents in this article as just much a victim as the public in that the story is just using them to further plant doubt and fear.  If you read this article you may easily link GMOs to causing autism.  Just like there are all kinds of articles that will link vaccines to autism even when science says the contrary.   How about this quote from the article:  "It’s just another change the Gioscias have accepted as they prioritize parental instincts and their children’s future over unclear science."  Really?  There is study after study showing the safety of GMOs and absolutely no evidence of GMOs as causing autism.  Even if you have gone to all organic, do you really think the crops you are eating have not gone through genetic modification?  Conventional breeding over years and years is rearranging genomes more than any GMO.  Just look at the pictures below.  Does corn look like that anymore?  The reason it or many other crops you eat on daily basis do no look this way anymore is because of a huge manipulation of the genome through genetic modification.   Yet he public is fine with the concept of conventional breeding even though in reality all our food is GMO whether from conventional breeding or using nature's on tools to insert genes into food quicker than conventional breeding can do.

Water on Mars!!

Lat week, NASA had an announcement and most of you probably heard it.  So even though this is not breaking news anymore, it is still an exciting discovery.   We have been studying Mars for years and it has seen like a desert planet.  There is evidence that there was water on Mars in the past and even that water could be hiding on Mars under the surface.  So who would have ever thought that a planet only 9 months away with current technology could harbor water.

The new evidence shows dark streaks on the planet's surface that come and go depending on the season.  The evidence suggests this is water on the surface.   Many of the headline may make you think water is flowing on Mars, but the truth is that there are probably still not any oceans or even ponds on the surface of Mars.  The water that is showing in these recent pictures is more of a seeping to surface and only when the temperature reaches a balmy negative 10 degrees Celsius.  The water is not flowing like you might imagine a stream, but just getting enough of the surface wet enough to darken it.  The water also appears to be a little salty.

Even though we are probably not going to go to Mars and drink water from a spring, I honestly never thought there was any liquid water near the surface of Mars.  The pictures we see looks like a barren desert of rocks.  Where there is water there could be life even if only microbial life.  The discoveries we are now seeing in space keep coming.   If we are just starting to uncover mysteries from one of the closest celestial objects to Earth, just imagine what else is out there!

Add captionhttps://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia19918/recurring-lineae-on-slopes-at-horowitz-crater

The GMO war

An article came out this summer that I had meant to post, but then I was rambling about other things and almost forgot about it.   I really think everyone should read this article no matter which side of the fence you are on about GMOs.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html

The article covers a gamut of things I have blogged about, but it is a  deep dive into GMOs and written very eloquently.

I often come across blind and uneducated opinions on GMOs.  That is fine.  I have some opinions that are founded on social trends or here say without truly knowing the true facts.  We are humans and assumptions are going to made.  However, when we can educate ourselves and find that facts it is a good thing for all of us.  This is a paper that does a nice job educating with facts and is a great one to share to people who just don't know the truth about GMOs and the fact they are safe.

The hardest battle is against those that have seen the facts, but still refuse to change their beliefs.  Hopefully those small groups will one day be outnumbered.  This quote from the paper summarizes my own view on those who have completely closed their minds.

"Some people, to this day, believe GE papayas are dangerous. They want more studies. They’ll always want more studies. They call themselves skeptics. But when you cling to an unsubstantiated belief, even after two decades of research and experience, that’s not skepticism. It’s dogma."

Pluto again!

In this case the pictures say everything.  Take a minute and go to NASA's website and see the new pictures coming in on Pluto.  The crazy part is that it will take a year to get all the data back on Pluto.  The New Horizons spacecraft is transmitting data back at almost old dial up modem speeds and then it takes 4 hours for the data to go 3 billion miles.  So it may be October of 2016 before we see everything, but that doesn't mean the new pictures that are here aren't dazzling.

Who would have ever though a "dwarf" planet could be so interesting. The pictures below show the beautiful dwarf planet and an even closer up picture shows 11,000 feet mountains beside flat plains.  I find it amazing that there is still so much we don't know about our own solar system.  And yet there are thousands if not millions of other solar systems out there.

We tend to think we are pretty smart, and as a race we are, but just think about the things we don't know.  Pluto puts it into perspective in a beautiful way!

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/perplexing-pluto-new-snakeskin-image-and-more-from-new-horizons

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-rich-color-variations-of-pluto

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/closer-look-majestic-mountains-and-frozen-plains

Moving Genes

Gene transfer is common place in our world.  When a baby is born there is DNA from both the mom and dad that made a unique human.  When the wind blows pollen from one plant to another there are new genes genes being incorporated with the outcome of a seed.  That seed and resulting plant will be different from its parent plants.  This is nothing new and we all know the basics of the birds and the bees.  Plant breeders do this for a living. By the simple means of  manually moving pollen from one plant to another they have turned the food crops into what they are today.

Most people are at ease with this process or at least take it for granted.  More unease comes when we take a gene from one organism and move it to another.  For example when we take a gene from bacteria (Bt) and move it into soybean.     I have talked in a past about agrobacterium which is a bacteria that transfers its DNA into another organism's genome (grapes, trees, shrubs, etc.) in order to form a crown gall or tumor.   There is  a study that shows that the sweet potatoes we eat today have genes from this bacteria.  So even in nature there is a mechanism by which genes are transferring from one organism to another and STAYING there from generation to generation.

The question really becomes how common is gene transfer from one organism to another in nature.  It may be more common than we though.  Another paper has come out that details the relationship of caterpillars and parasitic wasps.

In college I did a lot of research on tobacco and I remember seeing the tobacco hornworm for the first time.  What is that thing!   They get huge and will "click" at you when they get mad.  Then I remember seeing the the first horn worm with white things sticking all over it.  The guys in the field explained that a wasp comes, paralyzes the insect for a short amount of time,  and lays its eggs in the insect.   The larvae use the insect to feed and grow, usually killing it and then hatch out.  Wow. 
And kinda gross.  Just Google images of parasitic wasp and see what they can do insects. You might want to not have eaten yet though.

http://spalbert.wpengine.com/2012/06/parasitic-wasps-beneficial-insects/parasitic-wasp-eggs-on-hornworm/

The crazy thing is that when the wasp injects its eggs it also injects a virus called bracovirus.  Normally if you get a splinter in your finger your body knows something is not right and mounts an immune response to try to get it out or take care of it.  The caterpillars have mechanisms to mount their own immune response for something like an alien growing inside of them, but the bracovirus specializes in keeping the caterpillar from mounting that immune response so the wasp's eggs can grow and not be affected.  These wasps are pretty smart!

That brings us to the climax of the story.  When scientists have looked at the genome of these caterpillars they found genes in the caterpillars from the bracovirus.   In some cases when the caterpillar did not die, some of the virus genome was incorporated into the caterpillar genome and has been passed down from generation to generation.  The more astounding fact is that sometimes the virus picked up wasp genes and then once the virus passed into the caterpillar, they picked up both wasp genes and virus genes. 

What does this even mean?  The scientists found that the genes from the bracoviurs that are active and have been incorporated in the caterpillar actually inhibit another virus called baculovirus.  So the caterpillar still can have a nasty death from parasitic wasps.   But the silver lining is that through the generations they have become Genetically Modified Organisms (without any human help) with genes from other species and these genes actually help them against another pathogen.  It truly is a transgenic world.


Sources:

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/09/wasps-have-injected-new-genes-butterflies