Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

This is Bob Moler with Ephemeris for Friday, August 21st. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 46 minutes, setting at 8:38, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:53. The Moon, 2 days past first quarter, will set at 12:56 tomorrow morning.

At the first conference for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence held at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank,West Virginia, astronomer Frank Drake presented an equation on the chances for the the number of civilizations we would be capable of detecting with radio telescopes in the Galaxy. The equation had seven factors such as the average rate of star formation in the Milky Way. The fraction of those that had planets in the habitrable zone, the fraction of those in the habitable zone that actually had developed life and thae fraction of those that have intelligent life and so on. It’s called the Drake equation. And the values have only been guessed at, but there could be many.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

The Drake Equation

N: = R_* x f_p x n_e x f_l x f_i x f_c x L