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Ephemeris: 03/27/2026 – Finding life out there

March 27, 2026 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Friday, March 27th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 31 minutes, setting at 8:04, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:30. The Moon, 2 days past first quarter, will set at 5:39 tomorrow morning.

I have often been asked what I thought about life existing in the universe… besides the Earth of course. My answer is yes, I think there is life out there in the universe. There are more galaxies, stars and planets than we can possibly count, though when looking at exoplanets, we’re not finding much in the way of habitable planets. We have one example of life: the Earth and that’s what we look for. Our detection methods are too crude to be able to detect anything as small as the earth unless it’s orbiting a small red dwarf star. We seem to find a lot of large planets, that orbit extremely close to their stars because our detection methods depend on what they do to either block the light of a star or affect it gravitationally. The earth is almost too small to do either.

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; EST, UT – 5 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

The Kepler-62 stellar system, one of thousands of exoplanetary systems found in the last 31 years, These planets were discovered by the transit method, by passing in front of their star. The star itself is smaller and somewhat dimmer than the Sun, so the habitable zone is closer in. The planets are designated by lower case letters in order of their discovery. The time between transits determines their orbital distance, and the amount they decrease the star's light, their size. The two planets in the habitable zone, e and f, are considered super-earth's. They may or may not be rocky, depending on their density, which is related to their mass, which the transit method doesn't detect.
The Kepler-62 stellar system, one of thousands of exoplanetary systems found in the last 31 years, These planets were discovered by the transit method, by passing in front of their star. The star itself is smaller and somewhat dimmer than the Sun, so the habitable zone is closer in. The planets are designated by lower case letters in order of their discovery. The time between transits determines their orbital distance, and the amount they decrease the star’s light, their size. The two planets in the habitable zone, e and f, are considered super-earth’s. They may or may not be rocky, depending on their density, which is related to their mass, which the transit method doesn’t detect. Credit: JPL/NASA.
Categories: Ephemeris Program, Life in the universe Tags: ,

Ephemeris: 10/10/2025 – Could radio noisy galaxies harbor many advanced civilizations?

October 10, 2025 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Friday, October 10th. Today the Sun will be up for 11 hours and 14 minutes, setting at 7:06, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:53. The Moon, 3 days before last quarter, will rise at 9:00 this evening.

I ran across an article on the Universe Today website a few days ago about galaxies with high radio emissions, that could be home to many advanced civilizations. Some galaxies do emit a lot of radio emissions, mainly because they have a black hole in the center that it was, in the past, active throwing out material from the galaxy that didn’t make it into the black hole. But this would be emissions from the actual disk of the Galaxy, inside which would be the cacophony of many advanced civilizations and their normal transmissions of their version of I Love Lucy. When combined, it enhances the general radio noise, so it can be detected as being out of ordinary. And there are a few galaxies like that. It would make the universe less lonely.

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.

Addendum

Nearby Galaxy M33 in the constellation of Triangulum is 2.7 to 3 million light years away.
Nearby Galaxy M33 in the constellation of Triangulum is 2.7 to 3 million light years away, which makes it one of the closest galaxies to our Milky Way. It is about 70% the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. I don’t know the radio noisy status of this galaxy, but I needed a beautiful picture of a galaxy for this article. Credit: Daniel Dall’Olmo, member of the GTAS.

Here’s a link to the Universe Today article: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/galaxies-with-high-radio-emissions-could-be-home-to-many-advanced-civilizations

Categories: Ephemeris Program, Galaxies, Life in the universe Tags: