Schenectady resident Richard Monda, an astronomy instructor who has written The Daily Gazette’s \u201cStar Talk\u201d column for 30 years, stands next to the Carragan telescope, a reflecting telescope owned by the Albany Area Amateur Astronomers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSunny days are OK \u2014 but Richard Monda prefers starry nights.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just the beauty of the night sky, the beauty of natural phenomenon and the fact we don\u2019t need any specialized equipment to see the night sky,\u201d said Monda, who has been writing The Daily Gazette\u2019s astronomy column \u201cStar Talk\u201d for 30 years now. \u201cWe just need to go outside and look up and become familiar with it. Astronomy is accessible to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Halley\u2019s Comet was preparing for its return to earth in 1986 when Monda proposed a column devoted to stars, planets, constellations and other celestial issues. Newspaper editors bought the idea, and the first \u201cStar Talk\u201d was published on Saturday, Oct. 5, 1985. The feature appears in the Life & Arts section of the newspaper on the last Sunday of the month.<\/p>\n
Monda, 58, who lives in Schenectady and is a physics and astronomy instructor at Hudson Valley Community College, celebrated the anniversary by talking about the sun, comets, mind-bending numbers and the possibility of other life in the universe during a cosmic question-and-answer session.<\/p>\n
Q: What have been your topics over the last 30 years?<\/p>\n
A: It\u2019s a gamut of things, from space program topics to what\u2019s in the current sky, the planets. I try to write about what\u2019s current, what would interest people. I also try to write about space program events that happen. In the popular press, you don\u2019t hear any more about it, so I try to do follow-ups on those kinds of things. Current events, I\u2019ve written about the results of the Pluto fly-by, the lunar eclipse. I\u2019m thinking about for my next one: On July 14, when the New Horizons probe flew by Pluto, it was 50 years to the day that Mariner 4 flew by the planet Mars, the first successful NASA mission to Mars, so NASA\u2019s been at Mars for 50 years this year.<\/p>\n
Q: It seems like people are not as interested in the space program, not like they were during the Gemini and Apollo programs of the 1960s. Have we, as a nation, become jaded over space events?<\/p>\n
A: Those were manned missions, and there is always a bigger interest in manned missions, people going out into space. We had a great impetus in the \u201960s to reach the moon, and it was really politically driven. Some will claim it was really the very last mission to the moon, Apollo 17, which was really the true scientific mission to the moon.<\/p>\n
Q: What things can be easily seen in the night sky?<\/p>\n
A: Of course, the planets. They appear to our eyes as bright, star-like objects, but through a small amateur telescope, they\u2019ll take on shape and you can see some of the obvious details of the planets. The moon is a good object to observe with binoculars. Visually, we can\u2019t see any craters, but with binoculars, you can. With binoculars, you can even see the moons of Jupiter if you hold them steady enough.<\/p>\n
Q: People know you\u2019re an astronomy guy. What do they ask you about?<\/p>\n
A: They ask me what\u2019s going on in the sky and about some of the misunderstandings they have. One popular topic with the New Horizons fly-by of Pluto is about the Pluto planet controversy. Some professional astronomers think it should be considered a planet. It\u2019s been re-defined as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union, so there\u2019s adamant feelings about that even at the professional level. They ask me about eclipses, comets, planets.<\/p>\n
Q: What are your favorite topics?<\/p>\n
A: I\u2019m a stellar astronomer, so I like observing what are called deep sky objects. When I was in graduate school, my research area was star-forming regions in the galaxy, so that\u2019s where my primary interest is. I teach general overview astronomy courses, which are about basic physical principles, the planets, the motions in the night sky and stellar evolution.<\/p>\n
Q: What\u2019s the neatest thing you\u2019ve ever seen through a telescope?<\/p>\n
A: One of the most fascinating things I\u2019ve ever seen, one of the most beautiful things I\u2019ve ever seen was something that wasn\u2019t through a telescope, and that was the auroral display, the Northern Lights display of March 13, 1989, because that was a very intense, very colorful Northern Lights display. Even from the city, you could see the intensity of the colors.<\/p>\n
Q: How many unknowns are there in the universe?<\/p>\n
A: How many unknowns … is unknown. Some of the modern-day topics in astrophysics are what\u2019s called dark matter and dark energy. We don\u2019t know what it is, they\u2019re just names we give to what we see the evidence for. In the case for dark matter, how galaxies rotate, suggests there\u2019s something out beyond the galaxies that we don\u2019t know what it is. The name for it is dark matter. Hubble, in the early 1990s, found that the expansion of the universe over time is accelerating and nobody knows what that is. It\u2019s gone by a number of names, but the accepted name is dark energy. Some call it negative pressure; there have been different names for it. These are the real hot topics in modern-day astrophysical research.<\/p>\n
Q: Occasionally, we\u2019ll read about comets or asteroids passing close to the planet. How come some giant object hasn\u2019t knocked out Earth yet?<\/p>\n
A: It may have happened in the past, we\u2019ve been fortunate. The cratering rate of the solar system has decreased since the solar system has formed .\u2009.\u2009. but there is something out there marked for Earth delivery, and given enough time, it isn\u2019t a question of if it will happen, it\u2019s a question of when.<\/p>\n
Q: We\u2019ve seen this scenario in science fiction movies. What would happen on Earth if something was on a collision course?<\/p>\n
A: It all depends on how far out we detect it and the size of the object. Hopefully, we\u2019ll have the technology by then to just nudge its path so it will miss the Earth.<\/p>\n
Q: The sheer high numbers in astronomy, like the sun\u2019s age, must knock you out.<\/p>\n
A: The accepted age for the sun in the solar system is 41\u20442 billion years. We say the average lifetime of the sun is 10 billion years, but the sun is slowly getting hotter as the eons go by. So it will be long before 5 billion years that this planet won\u2019t be habitable. It will be global warming on steroids.<\/p>\n
Q: What will happen when the sun cashes out for good?<\/p>\n
A: There are already discussions of moving out into the solar system. People look to the moon of Jupiter called Europa because there\u2019s been speculations and now just recently there\u2019s been some real strong evidence that it does have an underground ocean and of course, the eventual colonization of Mars.<\/p>\n
Right now, for the first humans to go to Mars, NASA\u2019s talking about the 2030s. There are some substantial problems to be overcome, like radiation in space, long-term zero gravity conditions and what that does to muscles or bones.<\/p>\n
Q: How about some other mind-numbing numerical facts?<\/p>\n
A: We say an average galaxy has 100 billion stars and it\u2019s estimated there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe. So that means there\u2019s 100 billion times 100 billion stars in the universe. Something much closer, the nearest star to us is 4.3 light years away. A light year is 6 trillion miles, so that\u2019s 4.3 times 6 trillion miles away, which is roughly 25 trillion miles away and that\u2019s the nearest star.<\/p>\n
Q: People wonder if we\u2019re alone. What do you think?<\/p>\n
A: We\u2019ve discovered, since the \u201990s, objects around other stars have been found, most of them indirectly, but a few are what people believe are images of objects around other stars. We know about exo planets now, planets around other stars. There are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, we\u2019re including planets just around the stars in our relative vicinity of the Milky Way. Statistically, it would seem there\u2019s life elsewhere. The feeling in the astronomical community is that primitive life forms are probably prevalent. Intelligent life is rare.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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