It’s the planet Venus, the brightest celestial object in the night sky excepting the moon.

Venus is sometimes referred to as the evening star but its steady glow gives away its identity as a planet. Stars twinkle but planets do not. Twinkling, which scientists refer to as “stellar scintillation” because their mothers never taught them nursery rhymes, is the end result of the light from far away stars being battered about by our planet’s atmosphere. As the light passes through the different densities found in the upper atmosphere it distorts in a way that we perceive as twinkling. Planets do not twinkle because the light, while much less intense than that emitted by a star, is far closer to us. Think of a planet being like your neighbour’s porch light and a star like the headlights on a jet cruising overhead. The jet’s lights are considerably brighter but the dinky little 40-watt porch light will appear much more stable to you.

So a distinct inability to twinkle is a good sign you are looking at a planet. If it doesn’t twinkle and looks a little orange it’s probably Mars. Speaking of Mars, there’s an email that makes the rounds every year or so proclaiming that Mars will soon look as large as the moon in the night sky. It’s not true. Ain’t gonna happen. And that’s a good thing because the only time Mars would ever appear to be that large is right before it smashed into us.

Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are the only planets that are really visible to the naked eye and Saturn is just barely there. I once saw Mars, Jupiter and Saturn in the same part of the sky while camped out beside a lake far from civilization and the light pollution that comes with it. Venus and Jupiter were both easy to spot, as was the slightly reddish light from Mars. It took four of us about half an hour to come to a consensus that the tiny little pin prick of light that we could kind of see if we didn’t really look straight at it was Saturn. And that was with a diagram telling us where to look.

So if you’ve always wanted to know what a planet looks like or just want to impress your friends with your astrophysical expertise, look for the first star-like object to appear in the sky. It’ll be right near where the sun is setting. If you live in Rutland or the Mission, just look towards the bridge. You can’t miss it. If you really want to impress your friends you can point out that it was Copernicus’ study of the phases of Venus that led to his theory of heliocentricity – the notion that the planets orbit the sun. Galileo later used a new gadget called the telescope to prove the theory.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Okanagan Centre often set up telescopes at public spots in and around Kelowna. I got a terrific glimpse of Jupiter and several of it’s moons last summer. You can check their web page at http://www.ocrasc.ca/ for upcoming viewing events.

The significance is not actually that it meets the conditions necessary to support life – Mars fits that description – but that it’s a planet orbiting another star. Not only that, it’s a star that is about as far away from Earth as Westbank is from Kelowna, astronomically speaking. It’s a mere 20.5 light years, or 120 trillion miles away. The planet has been given the catchy name of “581 c” because it orbits the red dwarf star called Gliese 581.

Gliese 581 is one of the hundred closest stars to us. It’s called a red dwarf because it’s, well, small and red. Because it’s so small, the planet 581 c is much, much closer to it’s star than we are to the Sun. Like Earth, however, it’s located in the thermal sweet spot where it’s warm enough to have liquid water, but not hot enough for the water to all evaporate as steam. The real kicker is the potential for other life-sustaining planets in the universe. If we’ve found one this close, odds are there are many, many, many more of them out there.

Let me try to put this in perspective for you. The star we orbit, the Sun, is located in the Milky Way galaxy, which contains about 10,000,000,000,000 (ten trillion) stars, give or take a trillion. But we ten trillion stars are not alone out here – there are about ten trillion other galaxies in our universe, all containing trillions of stars. The best current guesses, based on data from the Hubble telescope, is that there are a whole lot of stars out there. How many? So many I won’t even type out the number. Google doesn’t even have a name for a number that large. Picture a 10 with 24 zeros following it. That’s how many stars are out there. So think about the fact that we’ve found a planet with seemingly good conditions for life less than a hundred stars away from here. Now think about, if you can possibly wrap your mind around the immensity of it all, how many other planets might exist in that 10-with-24-zeros-following-it group of stars. Probably a whole lot. Do any of them contain Vulcans or Wookies or little green men? I don’t know, but I think the odds of there being some kind of life out there just got a whole lot better.

Bear in mind that “life” could simply be some kind of microscopic single-celled organism. But if we find one single-celled organism on one planet, there could be 10-with . . . Tell you what, you can do the math on that one. My head hurts.

Turbidity is defined as “muddiness created by stirring up sediment or having foreign particles suspended”. Why do we care about this? Anybody who lived in Kelowna in 1996 will recall that many people fell ill due to ingesting a parasite called Cryptosporidium. Little beasties like Cryptosporidium, and Giardia (more popularly known as beaver fever) can cling to the suspended particles in turbid water like a tick on an unprotected ankle. The parasites then use the particles as a shield to avoid being killed by the disinfectants that are added to drinking water, usually chlorine. Some water districts, such as the City of Kelowna’s water utility, Turbidity is much more of an issue if your drinking water is sourced from water found above ground like rivers, lakes and creeks. This is because (especially at this time of year with spring runoff turning normally placid streams into raging muddy torrents) clay, silt and various kinds of organic and inorganic matter get tossed around like margarita mix and tequila in a blender. A margarita should be well blended, your drinking water . . . not so much. So if your water comes from a well, underground spring or a large lake you will probably never have to worry about turbidity.

Why has turbidity become such a talked-about phenomena lately? Because the provincial government redefined the standards that govern when the general public is informed of turbidity levels making boil-water advisories much more common than they used to be. Any time the level rises above 1 NTU a boil-water advisory is now issued. What’s an NTU you ask? It’s a nephelometric turbidity unit. Simply put, it’s a measurement of how much light gets scattered and absorbed by water by bouncing off sediments instead of traveling in a straight line. More simply put, it tells you how muddy your water is. I’d like to make a joke referencing blues legend Muddy Waters at this point but we’re having a serious chat about drinking water so I won’t. I will give you a frame of reference – you can’t see any difference in water that has a turbidity rating of 1 or 2 NTU’s. AT 5 NTU’s you will notice cloudiness in the water and at 25 NTU’s you would think twice about filling your dog’s dish with it, let alone drinking it yourself. A government-defined turbidity rating of Good, which is less than 1 NTU means newborns or anybody with a compromised immune system should boil their water. A Fair rating (1-5 NTU’s) means that children, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems should boil their water. Poor (greater than 5 NTU’s) indicates that everyone should boil their water for at least a minute. How closely should we pay attention to water quality advisories? Hard to say. Two million people in the Vancouver area were under a boil water advisory and there were no reported incidences of drinking water-related illnesses. My tap water was recently under a water quality advisory. My immune system is fine and, while I may occasionally be accused of being immature, I am far from newborn. Nevertheless, I erred on the side of caution and only used my tap water for coffee, showers and brushing my teeth.

There are currently two water districts in the Kelowna area that have recently issued water quality advisories. You can check their web pages for updates on the turbidity of your drinking water. The South East Kelowna Irrigation District’s page is http://www.sekid.ca/ and the Black Mountain Irrigation District has a very detailed, regularly updated report at http://www.bmid.ca. If you’re not sure where your water comes from you can check the Kelowna Joint Water Committee web page at http://www.kjwc.org.

After patting myself on the back I got to wondering just what the purpose of the aerator was. By definition it adds air to the water but why? It’s not like Rutland Waterworks is piping Perrier through my taps.

Turns out aerators can reduce your water usage by anywhere from13% to 50%. Those air bubbles makes the stream of water coming from your tap feel like it has more volume than it actually does. In other words, it reduces the flow of water from your tap without reducing the water pressure. Some water utility companies will hand out aerators for free because the savings in water usage more than pays for them.

Aerators actually serve a few handy purposes. They help your dish soap foam up. The air bubbles get trapped in the soapy water and help form suds. If your tap water has a sulphurous odor to it an aerator can reduce that rotten-egg smell by essentially letting the sulfur attach itself to air bubbles and escape.

An aerator also softens the stream of water and reduces splashing. I can attest to this because I made the mistake of turning my kitchen tap on after I had removed the clogged aerator and gave myself a bit of a shower in the process from the backsplash from the sink.

There’s also a type of aerator called a Laminar flow aerator that actually does the opposite – it ensures that the water flow is solid and has no air trapped in it. This type of aeration is used in hospitals to prevent airborne bacteria from entering the water. This is the type of tap you see Dr. McDreamy washing his hands under before performing surgery and then bedding a co-star.

If you have any taps in your home that don’t have aerators on them you should pony up the few bucks and grab the pliers. What else can save you water, help you wash your dishes and keep your water odor-free and be installed by almost anyone quickly and cheaply? Who knew that little thing could do so much?