30 Minutes with Dinosaurs

I made time during my campus patrols to visit the Science and Natural History Museum at the University of Texas at Austin. The collection is impressive, far surpassing what I grew up with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and also what I have seen over the years at other museums. It is emblematic of Texas that the museum had to be closed because it ran out of state funding. I am happy that it is open again.

Clearly, not my field. Judging by the rocks revealed by excavations at
construction sites here in Austin, I thought that this all was underwater
for the last 500 million years. 

The specimen drawers are arranged to encourage exploring.

For a good picture, you really need to stand far enough back
that it could not get you.

Just saying "Dimetrodon" is half the fun.

Who knew? Xenophora clean and attach to themselves random
bits off the floor. 

We have a rule in the house against more bric-a-brac
but the Selenite was calling to me.
So, I bought two. I also got a coffee cup for myself.

Previously on Necessary Facts

The Unremarkable Origin of Species 

Epigenetics and Evolution 

The Origin of … (What?) 

The Philosophical Breakfast Club

The Map that Changed the World 

AFK: Parking Enforcement

Working as a University of Texas parking enforcement officer since 11 September has allowed me easy access to the libraries that I use most often, even though I have not been able to pry away time to visit more. (I did see the Gutenberg Bible at the Harry Ransom Center.) The morning drive to work takes one hour (40-50 minutes) and the commute home can take two (45 to 90 minutes). I am working tomorrow’s football game against Texas Tech from 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM. (The pay is great: with game day overtime and event bonus, it comes to the same as being a technical writer.) 

Some Saturdays have been devoted to the City of Kyle Public Library Astronomy Club and others to the Austin Astronomical Society and I still edit (and sometimes write) a monthly column for the Historical Astronomy Division of the AAS (here: https://had.aas.org/resources/astro-history). Something had to give. 

I try to find whatever personal rewards that I can for self-actualization and transcendence (from Maslow’s Hierarchy). It has been a very long time since I watched the clock and looked forward to Friday. The advantages include UT healthcare insurance, as much walking as I choose to do (and I love walking), along with the light physical challenges of wrestling 22 lbs. of iron around an SUV’s tires to immobilize a scofflaw.  

I also have the opportunity engage in
philosophical discussions about semantics.

 

At the snack bar here,
the food is not labeled correctly
and they do not give out receipts for purchases.

 

This is still my favorite.

 Waiting to be written are these researches.

Like the problem of the tree that falls in a forest when no one is around, the fact is that there is sound in space. Stellar events create shock waves that cause compressions and rarefactions in the particles that comprise what we too easily call empty space.

NGC 6231 is easy to see in the lower body of the Scorpion. It has not been easy for professionals to sort out which stars are bound in the open cluster, which are background and which are foreground. I sketched it several times.

IC 1296 is a barred spiral galaxy that often appears in amateur photographs of the more famous M57 Ring Nebula in Lyra. In fact, I believe that it is an easy claim that amateurs have produced more photographs than professionals. I ran a literature search on the Harvard NASA database of articles and found some references. 

Messier 30 appeared here in October. I would like to recast those as a single magazine article. The cluster is moving opposite to the inertial frame of the Milky Way. So, professional astronomers believe that it was captured in a collision with another galaxy.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

AFK: Away from the Keyboard

AFK: Hurricane Harvey

Minimizing the Likelihood of Bad Cops

Junk Criminology as Pseudo-Science