Resonant Constellation

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?

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, view this video:
Captain Picard Day

Now, a bunch of geeks have computed from the stardate in the episode that Captain Picard Day actually takes place on June 16, meaning yesterday! This is yet another amazing day in my ever-growing list of geek holidays. To recap:

• Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th)-also a religious holiday for the church of the FSM.
• Pi Day (March 14th) (not to be confused with pi approximation day, July 22)-also Einstien’s Birthday AND also Steak and a BJ day.
• Gravmas/Apple Day (December 25th)-Newton’s Birthday (in the pre-Gregorian calendar)
• Towel Day (May 25th)- Always have your towel, so people know what a hoopy frood you are.
• Star Wars Day (May 4th)-May the Fourth be with you.
• Hobbit Day (September 22nd)-Frodo and Bilbo’s Birthday
• Evolution Day (November 24th)-Date of publication of On the Origin of Species
• National Dark Sky Week (First Week in April with a New Moon)
• International Dadaism Month (in true Dadaist tradition: 4 February, 28 March, 1 April, 15 July, 2 August, 7 August, 16 August, 26 August, 18 September, 22 September, 1 October, 17 October, and 26 October)
• And now, Captain Picard Day (June 16th)

I suggest now that we set up a Commander Riker Day, as in the TNG clip. This day will be exactly one month after Captain Picard Day, July 16th. I know it’s a little late to celebrate Captain Picard Day, but here’s some youtube links to make up for that:
THAT Jean-Luc Picard
PicArt
Bridge Buffoonery
Goodnight, Sweet BEEP
Picard Sings
The Picard Song
Picard Goes Crazy
Picard’s Night at the Roxbury–Be warned, this last is incredibly surreal.
There are so many more at youtube, I recommend them all.

I have gmail for my personal email, and as such, I often get unobtrusive ads on the side of my email messages relating to the subject of the mail. Since I’m going observing this weekend, I was corresponding with my colleagues about certain technical details of our impending observations. I saw a link on the side near the bottom-one I’m sure most people out there have come across once or twice-a service claiming to be able to sell you the ‘rights’ to “name a star!” Oh boy.

Since I had just discussed how idiotic just such a practice is with my friend Pete a few hours ago, I decided to click the link to remind myself of the idiocy. They claim that there is only one star registry which is copywrite protected with the US patent office (theirs, of course). The go on to further claim that the International Star Registry has allowed thousands of people to name their own stars. The price they charge for this is between $50 and $500. What do you get for this? A certificate and a star chart. The different framing options make up the order of magnitude price difference.

Okay, first of all, I hope I don’t have to tell you that this so-called ’star registry’ is completely bogus. It is entirely meaningless and certainly not worth $50 (much less $500). Secondly, there are only a few thousand stars which are visible to the human eye. Most of these have popular names, and all of them are named in more than one catalog (names like GL 436, LHS 310, 2MASS J11421096+2642251, etcetera. By the way, those are all the same star, which has at least 30 different catalog designations). I’ve got to assume that they’re going just a bit deeper into the magnitude scale and assigning people stars that they can’t actually see. Fair enough, I can see no fault with that, but most people (especially ones gullible enough to fall for this) will probably be expecting to be able to look up and point at “their” star.

My favorite part of this idiocy, however, was their last sentence:

There are still a few stars left to be named but you must act quickly to secure a good one before they run out.

(emphasis in original)

They run out. Nevermind that there are more stars in just our galaxy than there have been humans who ever lived, more stars than you could possibly imagine-roughly a hundred billion. Clearly, stars are a limited commodity. Sometimes, I feel like time spent educating people might be better spent banging the instructor’s head on the wall. At least they’d have a big bruise to show for it.

If you REALLY want to name your own stars, do what my friend Dave did before he learned the names of the stars and constellations. He went outside, looked up, and made it all up himself. If you really want, you could make your own certificate and draw a star chart of what you see to remind yourself of where the stars you named are. In all honesty, though, I’d simply suggest leaving out the naming stuff and just stargazing. To paraphrase Feynmann, names don’t tell you anything useful about the object, they sometimes just get in the way.

I haven’t been a Penguins fan long-only since I heard about defenseman Rob Scuderi (who shares my last name) a few years ago-so to be able to watch my team win the Stanley Cup as a newly-minted hockey fan has been a great experience.

Just around the corner in the sports world, however, is a world I am eminently familiar with. That’s right, it’s NBA Finals time, and lucky for me, my team is also in the finals here. I’ve been a Lakers fan since before birth (this is a hereditary thing), and watching the NBA Playoffs is an annual must for me. With the Lakers just one game from the title, I am understandably excited. If they do win, this year will pretty much have turned out to be the exact opposite of last year in terms of my sports teams victories. Unfortunately, it looks like the Clare inter-county hurling team aren’t doing so great this year, though. Oh well, I guess you can’t win ‘em all.

I believe I have discovered a project for the summer: making different types of bread. Last night, I had a great time making a rosemary bread (this was a yeast-intensive recipe that allowed me to get my hands dirty kneading), which turned out surprisingly well for my first attempt. Emboldened, I am now baking something called “Beer Bread.” With a name like that, how can I resist? I used Sam Adams Black Lager-we’ll see how it turns out. It already smells AMAZING and it has about 30 minutes left to go in the oven. If you are interested, here’s a link to the recipe:

BEER BREAD!

Om nom nom.

UPDATE: The bread is delicious beyond all expectations. I highly recommend it.

I ride the bus often-especially during the hot Tucson summer. This means that I am eminently familiar with the ability of public transportation to completely not work. This is especially frustrating when I’ve gotten up early in the morning to get to work and discover that the bus driver has decided that even though he is already seven minutes early, he will just blow right by my stop. This usually leaves me waiting at the stop, not knowing if I actually missed the bus, or if it is incredibly late (I have known busses to be as late as 17 minutes before). Usually, it is the former. This gives me a lot of time to become familiar with my surroundings, and it was thus that one day last year I noticed a few words stenciled into the concrete on the sidewalk in front of my usual stop:

Life
Could
Be
Worse

I have found this sage advice oddly comforting at times when I am unbelievably pissed off at Tucson public transportation. If only somebody had thought to write that on the chalkboards in the physics classrooms, maybe life wouldn’t seem so bad.

Well, it could be worse.

My most recent adventure has just concluded. It all began on Thursday morning, when I received a letter on my door from my landlord asking to confirm that I was indeed moving out of my apartment on the 31st. As this was not supposed to be the case, I quickly went to the office to correct this misconception. I found out in due time that my landlord had mixed me up with another tenant (the guys living below me) and that she had already scheduled a married couple with a baby on the way within the next week or so to move in right after me. This precipitated four days of me running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

I first asked my new landlords if the apartment could be ready in time-thankfully it could. Next, I had to get a cashier’s check from the bank to pay the first month’s rent and move-in-expenses. This involved me walking nearly two miles before giving up and calling a friend Trevor to come pick me up in his car. Trevor was the first person this weekend to save me from my own stupidity. When this idiocy was over, I began packing and moving my things.

On Saturday, I began the day by moving one box at a time, with a ton of stuff in my large backpacking pack. Since the apartments are close to each other, this was not too hard, but it does take a lot of time this way. My friend Chris arrived in due time, however, and brought his truck, which considerably speeded things up. By the end of the day, we had about 2/3 of my stuff moved and all of the heavy things done.

I awoke early Sunday morning to go pack and prepare for Chris’ arrival at 10. We spent an hour moving things, but then had to leave for an appointment. Chris was back by 5, and we made a few last trips for the big stuff, and Chris left by 6. At this point, it was back to me lugging my stuff by myself. There turned out to be a lot more stuff than I had thought, so I took a break at 10 to order a pizza. This was finished by 10:40, and I resumed my lugging.

At this time, the stars were out, and I could look up at the familiar constellations as I hulked things back and forth. This was a great comfort to me for some reason, and it kept me going for quite a while. I finally brought in the last things just before midnight. I then took a shower.

So I’m done. Now what do I do? What is that thing you do when you’re exhausted and feel like you can’t walk another step? Go get more boxes?

Oh, yeah, sleep.