Star Points for October, 2003; by Curtis Roelle Sprirals Near and Far Now that a couple of weeks have passed since Tropical Storm Isabel churned through our region like a whirling buzz saw, everyone who was without electrical power has hopefully had their service resumed. At our house we lost power for at least 60 hours. But in a way, it was a relief. With no power we no longer watched the endless loops of satellite images showing the cyclone's counter-clockwise rotation and predicted path on the television and the web. It allowed us to concentrate on the important things in life: Living as though we were on a family camp out. Amateur astronomy can help one prepare for "roughing it" in the wild at home. Astronomers are used to working in the dark and in locations where A.C. power is not available. It's not necessary to dash out and purchase last minute items including a hand-crank flashlight, camp stove, or battery-powered radio. Then there was the battery powered television. The cable was out, but the rabbit ears still worked like new. The clear and dry night skies we typically enjoy in our area during September were rare last month. Now we are in the Fall season and for telescope owners who are "deep sky" hunters this means galaxy season is back. There are several types of galaxies. However, the most beautiful and most frequently photographed are the spirals. The arms of just a few of the brightest spiral galaxies are visible in medium sized amateur telescopes. And then, they are best seen only when the observer drives several hours away from the light polluted pools of humanity, or metropolitan areas. In skies like ours that are moderately to highly light polluted only the central bulges of galaxies may be seen, if anything. The light from their delicate arms, which has spent the past tens of millions of years crossing through space on its way to our eyes, is no match for the knock-out punch from the local neighborhood yard light or the reduced contrast of a sky brightened by over- illuminated car lots and improperly lit school yards where the light goes up and out into the sky instead of down and around on the ground where needed. In stunning images you have seen spiral galaxies as beautiful cloud-like pinwheels consisting of thousands of millions of stars. Their spiral shape is not unlike the cloudy spiral patterns of tropical storms in photographs captured in satellite images. Some differences exist. Galaxies have central bulges while the tropical storm sports a cycloptic hollow eye. Still, both shapes share a spiral pattern as the spiral is a surprisingly common shape when it comes to nature. Thanks to the coriolis effect tropical storms and hurricanes rotate counter clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern. Galaxies rotate in any direction because in space there is no up or down, north or south. Baltimore Astrophysicist Mario Livio has noted the similarities in shape between tropical storms and spiral galaxies. In a recent interview at he spoke about his new book, "The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number" (Broadway Books, 2002) . In the interview Livio talks about the "Golden Ratio" known as Phi (as opposed to Pi), a number whose value is approximately 1.618. This number is used to define the "logarithmic spiral" which is not to be confused with the kind of spiral one finds in a wire spiral notebook. The ratio has some interesting properties. For instance, take a rectangle whose length to width is the Golden Ratio. Now, cut a square off from the end. The remaining small rectangle has the same Golden Ratio. The Golden Ratio also plays a key role in logarithmic spiral patterns. For example, Harvard's Hsiao-Yun Chu points to the interior of the Nautilus pompilius shell with its elegant structure of spiraling flotation chambers. The pattern is a logarithmic spiral. Plants also sport spiral patterns. "Florets in the center of a daisy blossom, seeds from a sunflower, pineapples, and pine cones all reveal spiral growth patterns," according to Chu. "The florets or seeds are arranged in opposite sets of logarithmic spirals which share a common center. These spirals are often related by the Fibonacci sequence..." Fibonacci - what's is that, a toothy sequined, over-jeweled piano player? No, it's simply a sequence of numbers in which each number is the sum of the previous two (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89...) The florets form multiple spiral patterns in the same flower which are both clockwise and counterclockwise. For daisies, the ratio of clockwise to counterclockwise floret patterns is 21:34. Notice that the ratio's numbers are adjacent Fibonacci numbers. In addition, pine cones have a ratio is 5:8. For pineapples it is 8:13. Other patterns in nature follow the logarithmic spiral. The falcon uses a spiral pattern when swooping toward its prey. This permits the falcon to keep it's eyes at the same angle and is a good example of a three-dimensional spiral, while galaxies and hurricanes are basically planar, or flat. The spiral is a beautiful shape and one that nature keeps using again and again. It appears in things as small as a daisy's bloom and as large as an entire galaxy more than 100,000 light-years across. It is truly a versatile shape that arises from the Golden Ratio.