Resonant Constellation

Today would have been Carl Sagan’s 75th birthday. Celebrate with me by watching the first episode of Cosmos on youtube:
Part 1 of 6
Part 2 of 6
Part 3 of 6
Part 4 of 6
Part 5 of 6
Part 6 of 6

If you want to continue watching other episodes of cosmos, I believe there are a few on youtube.

Here’s two unrelated, but cool things.

First, from Phil Plait’s website, LRO has gotten a picture of the Apollo 17 landing area on the moon including the flag! Here’s a link to Phil’s post with the actual pictures. This is extra cool, because I have a friend who is a grad student in lunar geology who works with LRO data, and she knows a hell of a lot about the moon. Once, when a bunch of us physics/astro people had gathered around to imbibe some beer and partake of good company, we saw her skype status message was a physics problem about diffusion of gas from a thruster rocket hitting a certain object a certain distance away. We, being the huge nerds we are, immediately began working this problem out and arrived at a sensible answer, which we sent to her. Her reply? “Oh, God, please tell me you didn’t really do that, it was supposed to be a joke!” A few minutes later, our solution was sent to NASA. Keep in mind, by this point none of us was exactly 100% sober. If you hear about some moon satellite disaster, you may know who to blame…

Anyway, the other, unrelated cool thing I wanted to share was this, a periodic table table. That’s pretty neat.

Here’s two 3-color-images from the 61″, the first of Messier 74, and the second of NGC 1055. I hope you find them as awesome as I do (I like the first better than the second-the colors seem to have come out nicer).

Tonight started with some more lightning and rain which moved off some time before midnight. We didn’t get any data, but we got some pretty pictures. Here’s a few:

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For the second time in a row, we’ve been clouded/lightning’d out of our observing run. Our next run is a two night deal on Friday and Saturday. The weather still doesn’t look good for then. If we manage to loose those transits too, we will have lost a full third of our nights to weather. This is not happy.

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40 years ago today Apollo 11 lifted off at approximately 9:30 AM (local time) from Kennedy Space Center, headed for the moon. Just four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would become the first humans on the moon. I’ve read a lot about the Apollo program, the most recent book being the authorized biography of Neil Armstrong, First Man (which is a REALLY good book that I sincerely recommend everybody should read), and I generally find rocketry fascinating (see my previous post). Let us, then, take this opportunity to view a series of videos of the launch of Apollo 11 and other assorted Apollo videos:

A really cool, ultra-high-framerate video from one of the launch towers during launch with excellent narration.

Some really cool views of the launch.

The actual TV broadcast.

The docking of CM Colombia to LM Eagle in Earth orbit.

The first part in a three part series (on youtube, anyway) featuring some really great in-flight footage I’ve never seen before

Simply awesome in-flight footage of Buzz opening and entering the LM for the first time. Parts 2 and 3 are really cool as well.

Some really cool footage from Apollo 4.

And, for good measure, an Apollo 10 40th Anniversary video, which includes my favorite Astronaut ever, John Young.

Warning: be cautious; YouTube comments are well known to be absolutely full of stupidity and extreme idiocy. Do not be bothered by moon-landing-hoax people, they have no idea what they’re talking about. If you have ANY doubts about this, visit the Bad Astronomer’s (Phil Plait) old website here. For some more really cool recent posts on Apollo 11 with great pictures, visit his newer blog here.

Extra note: Super awesome photos from The Big Picture found here. I really can’t accurately describe how incredible some of these photos are.

My good friend and next-door neighbor, Pete, often asks me:

Are you going to use your powers for good, or for awesome?

The answer is obvious; as Dark Helmet says in Spaceballs, “Evil will always win, because good is dumb.” Now, I’m not saying that I’m evil–as I often state, the thing keeping most of my friends and I from becoming evil geniuses that you see in comic books is a general lack of motivation (”I want to rule the world…but it’s so much work!”) or apathy (”I could rule the world…but meh.”). You have nothing to worry about-we’re content just doing our science.

So why am I telling you this? Well, it is the perfect preface to why I like explosions so much. Are explosions good? Most of the time, I’d say no, they are not good. But they are awesome, this is an indisputable fact. At the moment, I am watching the spacevidcast for the launch of STS-127 (found here), which is basically a barely controlled explosion used to hurl people and machinery into space. Afterwards, I am going to watch the SpaceX Falcon 1 launch. These are both live feeds of vehicle launches into space. How cool is the world that we live in that I can be at work, writing my programs, processing images, and I can watch a live feed of these launches, one on the opposite side of the country, the other from the Kwajalein Atoll in Malaysia-almost on the other side of the world.

I am writing this entry from the control room of the University of Arizona’s 6.5 meter MMT (used to stand for Multiple Mirror Telescope, now stands for Monolithic Mirror Telescope). Of course, the fact that I’m writing this means that we’re not observing (there’s a big thunderstorm outside and there seems to be a puzzling problem with the adaptive secondary mirror), but in all honesty, I don’t mind. This place is so incredibly awesome, I don’t care what’s going on-just the fact that I’m up here is enough.

I began my journey at Steward Observatory on campus where I met Dr. Morag Hastie, one of the instrumentation specialists for the MMT facility. Since she needed a ride up, I had offered, and we set off at 2 PM heading South on I-19. We made the turn-off and drove up to the base camp of the Fred Whipple Observatory where we retrieved a radio to let other cars know we were coming up. This facility is amazing in and of itself-there are four 12-meter reflector telescopes used for gamma-ray astronomy (the VERITAS telescopes) right on the grounds in the open. These are incredibly big and very impressive to see.

We began up the mountain after this, radioing up to any cars coming down (since the road is rather narrow). While everybody I had spoken with maintained that this dirt road was horrible, I was pleasantly surpprised. In fact, I found it to be the best mountain road I have ever been on, which is saying quite a lot as I’ve driven on many mountain roads. The view on the way up was breathtaking, though there were worrying clouds all around.

We arrived at the dormitory, where I deposited my supplies and checked out the facility. I was instantly impressed by how much nicer this facility is than the Kuiper 61″ that I’m used to. The kitchen and dining area is enormous with an operating TV that even gets cable. The dormitory is basically a nice hotel. Every room has its own bathroom and shower. Compare this with the Kuiper telescope, which has one common bathroom for the entire dorm.

The telescope is clearly visible on almost the entire drive up, a giant metal box perched on the very top of Mt. Hopkins (which is an incredibly pointy mountain). It is a very short drive from the dorms to the telescope, though it involves what seems like a 45 degree uphill slope. With all of the clouds and rain shadows in the background, this scene is very picturesque.

We got up to the telescope just after 4 PM and my research advisor, Matt Kenworthy, showed me around the facility. I’d seen pictures of the telescope before and I’d even seen larger mirrors (at the mirror lab back on campus), but I was still blown away by how unbelievably enormous the MMT is. After a quick tour, we checked out the weather and decided to head down to the dorms to get some dinner.

This part of the night really surprised me. We talked, and I realized that these people, one of whom I’ve worked with for over a year, are actually a lot more like me than I ever thought. We considered the tragedy of the lack of beer at the telescope, we watched the Matrix on the TV (some cable channel was showing it), and we talked and exchanged anecdotes.

About halfway through the Matrix (right after Neo meets the Oracle), it started to rain. It literally went from totally calm to torrential rain in about three seconds. We then drove back up to the telescope to assess the weather situation and try to get some pictures of lightning (if we weren’t going to get science images, why not get some other images?). Unfortunately, I was unable to locate my camera charger and as such, my battery was horribly low. I was only able to get six pictures total on this trip, which was rather disappointing. I hope I can come back up some time, so that I can actually get some good pictures of the facility.

At this point, the real scientists are discussing some engineering problems which will determine if we will stay up on the mountain tonight, or go back down. In either case, I’m satisfied with my trip. I only hope I can come back to really see the telescope in action!

I spent last night at the 61″ Kuiper Telescope for the fifth and probably last time this summer. Monsoon season is fast approaching, and Steward Observatory telescopes will be practically inactive for the next month or two. Since this is my last real observing trip this season, my mood was pensive. Throughout the night our observations were dogged by clouds, oftentimes thick enough to completely obscure our target. We closed the telescope early and started on our way down the mountain at 5 AM.

This turned out to be a fortuitous choice. The sun had not yet risen, but it was light outside (thanks to Rayleigh Scattering), so that we could see. I’ve driven down in both pitch dark and brilliant sunlight and I must say, the pre-dawn blue glow that we experienced on our drive down was far preferable to either. I remarked to Jared (my co-operator for this current observing season) that the view seemed to be a lot nicer at this time of day for some reason. Perhaps it is the quality of the light, giving distant objects a majestic hazy blue cast, perhaps it was simply my reaction to being outdoors after being cooped up for quite a while.

On our way down we saw a young deer standing by the side of the road. Jared expressed a desire to see a huge bear, though I felt that this might not be the most fun experience ever. While we did not see any other wildlife, the views were simply incredible. I’ve been observing at this telescope about fifteen times and I’ve never been so impressed by the view on the way down as I was this morning.

About fifteen minutes into our drive, we rounded a bend headed east and were treated to an amazing sunrise. In the west, the sky was still a dark purple-blue, while over the ridge just to our right it changed gradually to pink, then to copper. The clouds were illuminated from below by golden light, and some of the higher clouds appeared steel-grey in the center with thin fringes of gold all the way around the edges.

It’s experiences like this that make me realize that, no matter how hard (or tiring, ridiculous, or mind-boggling) my job can be sometimes, there are certain little rewards that few people ever get to experience. I feel pretty lucky that I not only get to do this really cool work, but people also pay me to do it.  It seems ridiculous, right?