Particle Tracks as from a cloud chamber

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been busy teaching particle physics to two very different populations. First I work with working with little kids through the Davidson Institute, going over the ins and outs of making atoms. Then I took on particles again with my physics for poets class at SIUE. Between the two, its forced me to do a lot of thinking, and has reminded me how annoying gravity can be.

Here’s the problem: Einstein taught us that gravity is a manifestation of the geometry of space and particle physics says gravity comes from the exchange of bosons called gravitons that communicate the force of gravity, which is related to mass which is mediated by the hitherto undiscovered Higgs.

These particles couple particles force us to stare at two rather different ways of understanding and visualizing one of the most fundamental things in our universe: gravity. To get to this problem though, I want to give a bit of history, so this is going to be in two parts: Particles and Einstein’s gravity.

Let’s start with particle physics 101.

The idea that our universe is made of several very fundamental particles isn’t very novel. During ancient history, the idea that everything was made of either 4 elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) or 5 elements (where they added void) cropped up in Greek, Buddhist, Hindi, Japanese, Tibetan, and Chinese history. The varying attributes of everything we interact with were attributed to the almost infinite variety of ways these 4 (or 5) elements could be mixed.

This idea that fundamental elements was rebranded under the concept of atoms (atomos in Greek): or indivisible. The idea was simple: at a certain point, you can’t break something apart any longer, and that smallest bit of stuff you get is the atom. (While this idea is often blamed on dead white greeks, it first appeared in ancient India and was related to Jainism.

Alchemists, philosophers, and all manner of other forms of pre-scientist thinkers and experimenters worked to find definitive ways to classify and categorize materials by these elements, but the more they burnt, mixed and evaporated, the more they realized that there were rather more than 4 or 5 elementary pieces of stuff.

Making a long story rather short, this all came to a head in 1869 when Dmitri Mendeleev (and the ever forgotten Julius Lothar Meyer) published their periodic tables. In both cases, they arranged the elements in rows ordered by increasing mass, with columns of elements sharing similar chemical properties. This arranging of elements was the organization needed to set all of modern physical chemistry and quantum mechanics on a path to understanding how atoms are made of something even more fundamental.

As early as 1815, Wiliam Prout hypothesized that all atoms were made from Hydrogen. One of the problems with this idea was the weights of atoms aren’t nice, consecutive multiples of Hydrogen. If you look at just the most common versions of the first few atoms, you have atomic masses (in multiples of Hydrogen’s mass) of 1, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12. This seemingly random pattern of particle particulars led to a long period of confusion.

It wasn’t until 1919 that Rutherford sorted out that when rather bad things are done to innocent atoms, you can force out protons (he didn’t know that word, he simply noted the expulsion of particles that were identical to hydrogen nuclei when Nitrogen gas was bombarded with alpha particles). But atomic masses still didn’t make a lot of sense.

But at least it gave us a world consisting of protons and electrons. (Electrons had come somewhat easier, and somewhat earlier, since they’re at the heart of electricity. Here’s that story. You can read about it here.)

Understanding atomic mass required playing with radiation and discovering neutrons. This is one of those moments in science that to me always falls into the category of “How did the even think to try that??” It was realized that if one has the radioactive material Polonium-210 (most famous for killing writers), it will emit alpha particles while it undergoes radioactive decay (alpha particles are really just Helium nuclei with 2 neutrons, but saying alpha particles is just cooler). If these alpha particles are then directed at Beryllium, the Beryllium will then give off a stream of neutral particles. So far, so good. It is very odd that someone tried this, but pretty cool. The next part is fabulous though.

Marie Curie’s daughter and son-in-law were both active scientists and they started working with these strange neutral particles (assumed to be gamma rays actually). For reasons that lead to a great discovery, they placed paraffin wax in front of the neutral particles. They noted that this caused protons to be ejected from the paraffin.

They were, in all reality, playing pool with protons. Since the neutron has essentially the same mass as the proton, when a neutron hits one of the very many hydrogen atoms in the paraffin wax it is wacked out of the way and sent flying. Just as pool balls bounce so nicely since they are all the same-ish mass, so too do protons bounce nicely when hit with neutrons.

With neutrons understood, particle math became a possibility! Suddenly, atomic masses were made up of combinations of protons and neutrons, with variations in individual particles coming from the variations in the numbers of neutrons.

Finding all these particles was all just a start. It was quickly (on the scale of human history) realized that particles come in a vast assortment of unstable versions as well as all the stable versions. As quantum mechanics and particle physics were born, scientists started building rule sets that allowed what boiled down to particle math to be done.

And few other things…

Trying to balance all these qualities led to speculation that other types of particle had to exist. Particularly problematic was the decay of neutrons.
n → p + e + ?
In this situation, we have for charge 0 = +1 – 1 (good), but the momentums and particle types are not conserved.

Particles are in general divided into sets of families. Protons and Neutrons are classified as Baryons. Electrons and the unstable Muon and Tau particles are all Leptons. In the above equation, the electrons leptoness is not cancelled out, and some sort of an anti-lepton is required. To fill that need for cancellation, the neutrino was first postulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930. Its mass was finally detected in 1998 (and it still isn’t accurately measured).

But then came the question of how exactly does a neutron become a proton? This in turn also led to the idea (eventually, in 1964 by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig) that Baryons are actually made of even more fundamental particles.

Today, after filing in all the blanks, we have a particle zoo of
Baryons: protons, neutrons, and a bunch of unstable stuff
Leptons: electrons, electron neutrinos, muons, muon neutrinos, and tau particles with their matching tau neutrinos
Quarks: Up and Down make stable things, and charm, strange, top and bottom contribute to making the world unstable at times.

But this chart leaves off all the little worker particles. The photons, with their ability to make the electromagnetic force happen has been left off. The gluons that ever so strongly glue together all the little baryons are messing. And then there are the W and Z, and their determination to decay nuclei, that are also not on the list.

Together, these force ferrying particles have been named Bosons, and have been given their own list.

The Basis of Everything

This something is a particle for conveying gravity. (And, if you’re in to thinking of mass as a directionless – scaler – not-quite-a-force, then we’re missing a particle for that too).

And this is where particle physics breaks me. In this particle physics zoo, my too much mass comes from the ability of my bodies atoms to ever so ably interact via the Higgs Boson with some scaler field that permeates all of space, giving me a quality that does require vector hat in math equations. It also means, that rather than seeing gravity as the side effect of things rolling down a hill through space and time toward high mass objects, we instead have little force carrying particles – gravitons – running back and forth at (we think) the speed of light, communicating “I’ve come from a mass, attract yourself this way now.”

Suddenly, all of space is being organized by so many particles that are zipping around dictating where the forces are forcing (or not).

Can’t you see it now, little yellow photons dressed as the universes traffic copes, forcing charged particles this way and that through all of space? Perhaps not, but this is still a very different way to imagine our universe than the gravity as geometry that that we were all spoon fed by Einstein.

And this is where I’m in an emotional bind: I liked relativity as geometry. I know how to work within that model. But the particle physics idea is harder for me, and there is a non-logical part of my brain going: Um, haven’t found the Higgs, haven’t found the graviton, haven’t really proven they are required. But that part of my brain (along with the rest of me) took only 1 semester of graduate quantum mechanics, and I have to admit, I haven’t ever tried to solve out for the hole in the math that requires the particles be made up. And as a scientist, I have to know, if evidence is presented, I have to believe it.

And with the Large Hadron Collider coming, I may be facing the discovering to the nemesis of my comfortable geometric way of thinking of the universe.

But, this is what makes me a scientist: Even if I don’t like a discovery because it forces me to change my world view (and in the case of Dark Energy, all my cosmological calculations), I still have to accept the theories I don’t like. The truth isn’t required to be likable.

Next stop – Gravity.

Galileo Painted on Ceiling of "Aula Magna of Palazzo Bo"

Sometimes it takes a bit longer than planned to get around to writing than expected. The second day of the IYA Closing ceremonies was filled with talks on history & vision – Who was Galileo and what was the real relationship between him and the Chrutch? How do we move forward to celebrate astronomy in years that aren’t 400 year anniversaries? How do we build on what we’ve done so that great new projects aren’t lost? And where does science go tomorrow?- Presented talks included talks from politicians, historians, and scientists.

Want to see what we saw? Full video coverage is available here.

In the past 400 years since Galileo turned a telescope toward the sky and reported what he was seeing, the technology has come a long ways. From hand ground lenses smaller than a palm that couldn’t quite resolve Saturns rings to 10 meter mirrors that allow us to see galaxies forming at the edge of the visible universe, we have not only grown our understanding, but we have also grown the universe.

Prior to Galileo and Kepler moving the Sun definitively to the center of solar system, the Earth-centered universe had been a tiny place, with all the stars hanging out where today we place the Kuiper-Belt. If we pretend they accurately knew distances back then (and they didn’t) the entire universe would have been ~ 0.0005 light years in diameter! Today we know the visible parts of the universe (which are probably less than 5% the size of the total universe!) are 93 billion light years in radius! That means the size of universe people learn in books (or on tablets), thanks to the telescope, has grown by a factor of a hundred-thousand billion! It’s not quite billions and billions, but still…

Along with growing the known size of the universe, the telescope has also populated the universe with objects that have forever been more fantastic than anything imagined in science fiction. From the discovery of galaxies, to black holes, to gamma ray bursts, at every turn and with every new technology the universe becomes more fantastic.

In someways, to me the most reusable legacy of the IYA is one simple phrase, “The Universe: Yours to discover.”

It is a true statement, and it is challenge. In the past couple years, thanks to citizen science, the world has seen comets discovered leaving their mark on Jupiter, new stars emerging from their home nebulae, and even entirely new classes of galaxies. Even today, in our world of giant telescopes and supercomputing, you – working from your sofa or your drive way – are capable of making tomorrow’s great new discovery.

The 2009 International Year of Astronomy is over. Long last the Beyond the International Year of Astronomy.

Galileo's House (credit: Travlr)

It is January 10, 2010, and IYA is coming to a close.

I’m am currently sitting in the Palazzo Bo in Padau (Padova), Italy. I am here for the IYA2009 closing ceremony. It has been a long journey getting here. The idea of the IYA2009 originated form Franco Pacini in 2002, and in 2003, at the Sydney General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a resolution was adopted to make 2009 our year to share astronomy with the world. It was to be fit within the UN Millennium goals, and we were to help educate the world in science. In 2005, our UNESCO endorsed our cause, and at the 2006 Prague General Assembly meeting of the IAU, in between sessions stripping Pluto of its Planethood, a group of determined individuals set about defining what the IYA2009 would look like. By March of 2007, a set of international goals – cornerstone projects and needed task groups – had been defined, and in December of that 2007, the United Nations endorsed an Italian lead resolution to for IYA2009, with Japan seconding the resolution.

My own involvement beginning in March 2007, when I was asked to chair the US New Media working group – a team that eventually grew into the international New Media Task Group. Scattered throughout this room are the chairs of cornerstone projects, the single points of contact (SPOCs) for many nations, and other project and task group leaders like myself. We’ve traveled from around the world to sit here, in this town Galileo lived in, so that we can celebrate what we’ve accomplished (and to perhaps sigh in relief that the hard parts are now behind us).

The timing of IYA – 2009 – was tied to the 400th anniversary of Galileo using the telescope to make astronomical observations. This town was Galileo’s home, and his house is still here waiting to be explored. I found it quite by accident this morning as I wandered a bit lost through the winding allies of the Padau city center. While trying to figure out where I was, I paused in an intersection of too many narrow roads and started reading signs in a language I don’t understand, hoping some set of words would match something somewhere on my map. While I wasn’t able to figure out where I was, I did find a lone sign reading “Casa Galileo Galilei” with an arrow. With a few hours to spare and no better indication of what direction to head in, I took off down the side street. Galileo’s house bares a rather unimpressive white facade and no street level plaque or other markings. I would have missed it entirely had a second little sign not pointed randomly at the side of this otherwise bland building. I guess in a country that seen so many millennia of history, one scientist’s house isn’t all that important to memorialize.

A bit more walking later I was able to find myself and find the opening ceremony, and now I am in the room where Galileo gave his lectures at Padau University for 8 years. The room is packed, and yet I can feel the electric heater still struggling to work to warm this high ceilinged space against the chill of this January day. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like 400 years ago. Smoke from candles and/or oil lamps would have filled the room and students would have sat bundled against the cold with no electric heaters to warm them. Like us, the students may have found themselves on wooden benches, looking up to a speaker at the podium. There is no chalk board. There are no little tables for taking notes. It would have been just the speaker’s voice communicating ideas to students who would have absorbed concepts attentively.

Today we are not too different a crowd. As near as I can see, my little netbook is the only laptop out, and only a few notes are being scribbled on note pads on knees. We are today’s attentive students, trying to absorb the moment we worked so hard to reach. In the first afternoon session, we are listening to a chain of speakers: the rector of the University, the Mayor of the city, the UNESCO Assistant Director General, and IAU and INAF Presidents. It is a long stream of welcomes and thankyous and acknowledgements often (but thankfully not always) issued in two or more languages and all leading toward the first major presentation: an overview of the IYA 2009 by Catherine Cesarsky.

A few key points came from these first speakers: UNESCO speaker Walter Erdelen made the important point that UNESCO is going to be funding an Astronomy in Developing Nations program that will help spread space science. They invite us to collaborate with them and bring space science to the world. For some reason, I had never realized until now that the world is filled with nations where astronomy isn’t even taught at the university level. There are no minor in astronomy, no classes in aeronautical engineering; there is no option to educationally chance a dream of going to the stars. Now, UNESCO seeks to change that, getting astronomy all the way down in to the children’s schools. They are specifically looking for ways to promote teacher training, and to work on building alliances between universities in developing nations and in industrialized nations. The IYA2009 was a start of achieving this work, and many nations adopted programs like “Universe Awareness” (UNAWE) for kids, an ongoing project to get the youngest school children interacting with space science concepts. The power the IYA2009 had to change nations in positive ways is a constant them, and the INAF president, Tommaso Maccacaro wants to see our work continue. In his talk, he called for the beginning of an International Century of Astronomy and this caused a collective murmur that bordered on a groan. His idea, a century spanning 2010-2110 that would than lead to a millennia of astronomy where at the end we will have “Given up on having closing ceremonies.”

(Side note: It is amusing to watch speakers try and cope with a computer that responds with menus in Italian when you click on things)

According to Catherine Cesarsky, the IYA2009 Vision was to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe. With the year behind us, we may not have reached the entire world, but we have come close. 148 nations have participated, each them in their own ways participating in cornerstone and major projects and creating projects of their own.

It is amazing to hear from the SPOCs of developing nations, and realizing how much some nations were able to do with so little. Claudio Moises Paulo, SPOC of Mozambique, detailed how they had held major events in the southern most proveniences of their southern African country, and then used TV and radio to share their ideas nationally. With just 1000euro in seed money they were able to get UNAWE in place, participate in the Moon for Mankind photo project, hold a star party for Galilean nights, and to locally put together a 50 student project called “The Night with the Planets” that got kids looking up and learning. The also have a traveling project that uses meteorites to promote astronomy and are setting up a major astronomy club – the first of its kind in their country. They’ve had some outside help – Brazil sent them a “From the Earth to the Universe” exhibit, and two of their teachers will be going to Portugal to receive “Galileo Teacher Training” – but for the most part this has been a small cadre of dedicated individuals changing a nation. They are now working toward getting astronomy into their universities, and they have a simple dream of getting a planetarium for their nation.

In addition to Claudio Moises Paulo, we also heard from the Egyptian, Honduran, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, and Indian SPOCs. What struck me most as I listened to them talk was how much of an impact UNAWE has had. This program is almost non-existent in the US where people are perhaps too concerned with teaching to national standards and national exams and have forgotten how to teach to inspire. UNAWE inspires. We’ve also heard over and over of projects to get telescopes into the hands of children. In some nations, where Galileoscope’s $15 was still too much, they came up with their own $2 plans and had kids building little spyglasses to explore the universe. And beyond educating, the IYA2009 has also brought the world stamps and even coins. The Ukraine produced an amazing coin that I think I’m just going to have to google a source for.

It has been a long few years, but I feel safe in saying that while we did not give everyone in the world an experience in astronomy, we did reach more people than have ever been reached before. I suspect, based on random Fermi calculations, that we may have provided in the past year more kids a chance to build a telescope that can used to look at the stars than have been given that opportunity ever before.

We have been busy, and Catherine acknowledges we are all exhausted and that it is with a mix of sadness and relief that we realize it is now over and now we can rest.

But first we have one more day of pomp and circumstance. Tonight, following a cocktail hour there is a celebratory concert, where I’m amused to note both Holst’s Jupiter and John Williams Star Wars Saga are set to be played. It all then starts over at 9am. And I will be here to share what I see.

July 8, 2009 Image of Charlie Bolden (credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA)

Charlie Bolden is giving the NASA Policy talk today. The last several of these that I’ve heard (excepting when Alan Stern spoke) have left me angry or discouraged. Griffin was not an astronomers’ NASA director. But it’s a new day and a new administration, and just 30 seconds into Charlie’s talk I can tell I’m going to leave with faith in his ability to communicate to my community and to support our dreams.

[Note: Bad Astronomer Phil Plait as coverage as well. Check it out?]

NASA Director Charlie Bolden is a grandfather (he talks about his grand kids all the time), an astronaut, a communicator who brings laughter, and a person willing to admit with humility that he’s not the smartest person in the room, and to admit with pride that he likes working with all the smart  -icists in the room.

As he speaks, he is looking forward to a great year of new launches and new science. He remembers the 1990’s discussions of how Hubble would change our understanding of the world we live in as it brings us understanding of the Big Bang and so much more (which it did). We live another new era of discovery.

• Kepler is finding planets (5 announced yesterday).
• Last month WISE was launched and it will bring a deeper, higher resolution survey of the sky in the Infrared. The mission is launched, the cover is off, and tomorrow we get to see the first images and see if it is in focus (Charlie points out each mission has three hurdles: Does it launch? Does it get first light? Is it in focus? Remember why we worry about that third one?)
• There is also SOFIA, which was resurrected from the desert and is now flying, door open, on the verge of having the telescope installed
• Fermi has revealed whole new classes of pulsars
• Spitzer found the largest ring around Saturn, and
• A combination of images from many of the great observatories has found the  the most distant clusters.

And then there was Hubble. Director Bolden was part of the Hubble in its first days, and as he brought up this most recent mission he teared up. He is telling us stories of his own work, and telling us of their struggles getting Hubble out of the cargo bay. These are stories I’ve never heard. The arm struggled with its weight and they had to read numbers off this that and the other things as they exceeding limits in unexpected ways. And it got worse. As Hubble was deployed, one of the Solar Panels got stuck and didn’t deploy. To protect the Hubble, hanging as it was on the robotic arm, they stopped stabilizing the shuttle (that would have put torque on the whole system as it got yanked around). Left to their own dynamics, the Shuttle and Hubble tumbled together as they orbited around the planet, with the whole team working to find a solution (It was found – there was a piece of software designed to make sure the solar panels didn’t get torqued too much. They disabled it and the Solar Panel deployed right away. It worked. It all worked. And he was part of that magical moment when Hubble floated away to take on the universe.

Transitioning  form his emotionally spoken story – his voice cracking more than once – back to policy, he declared the importance of partnering internationally, treating our partners as equals and with respect, and of building strong international collaborations.

He carries with him the message that during the White House Star Party, a cold clear night in D.C., President Obama and his wife and daughters spent nearly 45 minutes going from telescope to telescope. They were engaged, absorbing with interest the views through telescopes while hearing about the discoveries of high school astronomers – discovers of rare neutron stars, supernovae, and more, each student having their own science discovery behind their name . The Obama’s have their own interest in astronomy, and they value the importance of space and space education.

The White House Star Party is an example of one of the things we do right: Engaging people intellectually and passionately in astronomy observing and content.

He challenges us to go forth and communicate our work: Educating and sharing our results to increase understanding and passion for astronomy.

There is more coming: More launches of more missions.

And the Decadal Survey reports are forth coming and will be used to shape our future, making sure that NASA addresses with its missions the most compelling science of our time. And to succeed in these missions we need to create an educated work force ready to dream these missions, build these missions, and generate the science from these missions’ data.

To make this future real we need to both educate and do science while always always inspiring.

Closing his talk, Bolden gave us these words: “The future of manned space flight will not be paid for out of the hide of science. … Let’s embrace our future together.” He states that together we and are international partners will work on great things and do science while we educate a future generation. This is a partnership, and we will inspire together.

And now we are into questions… (Paraphrasing as close to quotes as I can)

Q: Will you be teaching anything?
A: I won’t enter the teaching profession on a formal basis, but I’m privledged to travel and communicate to people and through that get communicate in my own small way

Q: Will be have a manned space flieght before 2020
A: Yes. This will not be the president who precedes over the end of manned space flight. … We have incredible partners in terms of technology. [HUGE PARAPHRASE] The Japanese have the incredible HTV. We’re asking if they can work to make it capable of returning things to earth

Quote: I recently had a surgery with robots in my body – It was incredible! But I wouldn’t want to turn those robots loose!

If you had told me we would not be on the surface of the Moon today, I would have told you were smoking dope. We became risk adverse have Challenger. We have got to become willing to take risks.

Quotish: If you’d told me when I was training to be an astronaught that we would not be on the surface of the Moon today, I would have told you , you were smoking dope. Let me say that again: If you’d told me we wouldn’t be back on the moon today I would have told you that you were smoking some bad dope. I thought I was going up on the Shuttle and coming back to train to go to the moon.

We became risk adverse after the Space Shuttle Challenger. That has got to stop. We’re going to drop satellites into the ocean periodically. Human mistakes are going to happen. We don’t want to plan for this. We want to work to avoid this. But we can’t be afraid. We need to take risks to move forward.

…

We’re open to comment and to criticism. We’re not going to do things the way we used to do.

…

Audience Comment: I’m concerned about the emphasis on international collaboration. That seems to imply large missions. What about small missions?

A: (Summary of long response) International Collaboration doesn’t imply large missions. It implies opening doors for other countries by helping them doing things they can’t do on their own. Consider scientists in Nigeria who are working with researchers at the University of Alabama on small research missions. It is our duty to share what we can do.

My Words: I don’t think everyone can educate face to face, but I think all of us have something to give, and that as a community, if we create a culture of collaboration, of partner globally, and of working to find ways to decimate our results and value the communicators as highly as we value our top researchers we can create a new generation of people who understand science and understand how to love science.

I’ll be writing more on this later. Right now, all I know is I’ve seen a great speaker speak from the heart about my dreams and how we can work together to make them real. I’m in love, but, as Phil put it, this really was only a first date.

I want to believe.

Comparison of ground-based and space-based light curves for hot exoplanet HAT P7b (Image credit: NASA Ames Research Center)

This is the morning of Kepler. I’m currently sitting in a the Marriot Ballroom watching the speaker, William J Borucki (NASA/Ames) gear up to announcing planets.

This amazing mission has been imaging the same rich stellar field over and over looking for planetary transits: the slight dimming of light from a star that comes from an orbiting planet passing between us and that distance star.

After 20 minutes of gearing up, he announced 5 new planets with orbital periods between 3.2 and 4.9 days orbiting stars larger than the sun at orbital distances 4.31 to 18.8 times the size of the Earth’s orbit. Because the stars are bigger than the Sun (by an amount not shown in the table), this is hard to quantify – they could be very near the stellar surfaces! – He referred to them as icy giants, but their surfaces are all hotter than 1500 Kelvin, with surfaces in 2 cases hotter than molten lead! These are large hot planets.

4 of these planets are all more massive than Jupiter, and one is smaller but still larger than Earth. There is a great table coming in a paper on Astro-PH going up later today (link to come)

In addition to these stars, they have also discovered several neat variable stars: binaries, oscillating stars, pulsating variables, and more. This is one of the great things about this mission: While it was designed to find earth-sized planets orbiting other stars (given more time – they require data over more time than Jupiter-sized planets), it also collects data on variable stars in the field that is of amazing quality. This means that Kepler’s throw away data is somebody else’s science.

Okay he just said something weird I’m going to have to look up. They have found small – Jupiter-ish sized in radius – that are hotter than the star they are orbiting. These look like tiny hot stars orbiting cooler stars BUT the hot object is too big to be a white dwarf and too hot to be anything else. He said there are more than one in the field and no one knows what they are.

The Kepler Press conference is coming up soon, and hopefully we’ll get more info there.

Invited Talks

Press briefings are scheduled for following dates and times. You are invited to attend all events on the Astronomy Cast UStream Press Conference Channel. Please feel free to embed this channel on your own webpage!

• Mon., Jan. 4
  • 10:00 a.m. Battling Black Holes
  • 1:00 p.m. Kepler Early Science
  • 2:30 p.m. Exploding Stars

• Tues. Jan. 5
  • 9:00 a.m. Stellar Mysteries
  • 10:30 a.m. Galaxies Near & (Very) Far *See it in Second Life
  • 2:30 p.m. Pulsars *See it in Second Life

• Wed. Jan. 6
  • 10:00 a.m. Cosmology’s Dark Side
  • 1:00 a.m. Exoplanet Exotica *See it in Second Life
  • 2:30 p.m. TBA

• Thurs. Jan. 7
  • 9:00 a.m. Galaxies Stirred, Not Shaken
  • 10:30 a.m. Spicing up the Solar System

And…

Want to meet us in person? There will be a meet up Wednesday night at 7pm. Location TBA.

*ALL PRESS/AAS MEMBERS WHO WISH TO ATTEND THE EXPERIMENTAL SECOND LIFE SESSIONS, PLEASE EMAIL YOUR REAL LIFE NAME AND SECOND LIFE AVATAR NAME TO ADRIENNE (astronomy2009insl@aas.org) AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND NO LATER THAN 1 HR BEFORE THE SESSION START. Our press sessions will be CLOSED to the general public and you will need to be on our “entry list” in order to teleport to the ‘Astronomy 2009′ island and attend.

Invited Talks are scheduled for following dates and times (pending confirmation with all speakers!). You are invited to attend all events on the Astronomy Cast Public Events UStream Channel. Please feel free to embed this channel on your own webpage!

• Mon., Jan. 4
  • 8:00 a.m. Van Biesbroeck Prize and Welcoming Address
  • 8:30 p.m. Kepler Planet Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results
  • 11:40 p.m. Russell Lectureship: RR Lyrae Atmospheres: Wrinkles Old and New
  • 3:40 p.m. Pierce Prize: Finding Utility in the Diverse Origins of Gamma-Ray Bursts
  • 4:30 p.m. LeRoy Doggett Prize: History of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate Join us in Second Life [SLURL]
  • 6:30 p.m.  Gemant Prize: Science as Performance Join us in Second Life [SLURL]

• Tues. Jan. 5
  • 12:30 p.m. Policy Talk: Charles Bolden
  • 3:40 p.m. Warner Prize: The Demographics of Exoplanets
  • 4:30 p.m. Galaxy Clusters and Black Holes: Cooling Versus Heating

• Wed. Jan. 6
  • 8:30 a.m. Invited Talk: John Grunsfeld, Shuttle Atlantis Join us in Second Life [SLURL]
  • 11:40 a.m. Heinemann Prize: The High-redshift Galaxy Jigsaw Puzzle
  • 3:40 p.m. Cannon Award: A Holistic View of Catastrophic Cosmic Explosions
  • 4:30 p.m. Rossi Prize: Strong Gravity and the Masses of Stellar Black Holes

• Thurs. Jan. 7
  • 11:40 a.m. Formation of Massive Black Hole Seeds in the First Galaxies
  • 3:40 a.m. Reionization to Near Earth Objects: Scientific Results from the Spitzer Space Telescope

The Astronomy 2009 Island in Second Life(R)

I have the internets and I’m not afraid to use them! Today we premiered our new wireless rig – 2 wireless 3G verizon cards and 2 netgear 3G -> wireless routers, and while we have kinks left to work out, I feel okay saying we are going to stream our little hearts out at this meeting in hopes that you can consume the best of what this meeting has to offer. Specifically, my team – the self-named SIUE Collective (they decided I’m their Borg Queen – Eek!) – will be UStreaming (pending confirmation with all speakers!) along the side the Second Life casting of the wonderful Adrienne Gauthier of the University of Arizona.

The full plan can be found over on Astrosphere, but here are my “I can only see one thing a day” recommended high-lights:

• Mon., Jan. 4
  • 8:30 p.m. Kepler Planet Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results
  • 6:30 p.m.  Gemant Prize: Science as Performance Join us in Second Life [SLURL]

• Tues. Jan. 5
  • 12:30 p.m. Policy Talk: Charles Bolden

• Wed. Jan. 6
  • 8:30 a.m. Invited Talk: John Grunsfeld, Shuttle Atlantis Join us in Second Life [SLURL]

All your bandwidth are belong to us.

But we promise to treat it nicely…

If you’re in DC, come on by! Activities start at noon, and details can be found on the AstroZone website.

Now, for all of you cursing me for not giving you enough warning (and I do deserve it), you’re going to have a few more chances to consume astronomy at this meeting that anyone can attend for free (and in some cases online!)

On Monday night, at 6:30pm, Brian B. Schwartz will be talking on Science as Performance.

Wednesday night there will be a Tweetup / Meetup at a location to be announced.

And online we will have a slew of events on Second Life (public events, press conferences) and on UStream.tv (public events, press conferences, and random reporting). A complete detail list of events can be found here on Astrosphere.org/events

Will I see you online or in person?

A New Website for a New Non-Profit: Announcing Astrosphere

It’s December 25, Christmas day 2009. In 6 more days we’ll ring in 2010, and in 16 more days IYA will come to an official end. There are still pieces to tie up – the evaluations will all take place in South Africa in March, and there are a whole lot of websites that need ownerships transferred hither and yon, but the public side of IYA is this -><- close to wrapping up.

As part of my own wrapping up process I need to do three things: clean my desk and triage the past 16 months of anything that came to me in paper; clean my hard drive and triage the past 16 months of anything that came to me in photons; and get websites set up to move all our cool new media products Beyond IYA.

So, today I cleaned my desk (putting all the papers on the floor where I can ignore them). Today I also cleaned my Mac Desktop (shoving all the files in a folder labeled “SORTLATER,” where I can ignore them). Cleaning done (or at least procrastinated on), I settled in to work on setting up a website: Astrosphere.org

This story actually started over a year ago. In the summer of 2008 a small group of us set about setting up our own 510(c)(3) non-profit. The cast of characters  included: myself, Fraser Cain, Phil Plait, Chris Lintott, and Tom Foster. Our goal: to create a non-profit “dedicated to promoting science and skeptical thought through internet-based technologies and distribution.” We named our non-profit Astrosphere New Media Association and we filed our dream first with the State of Illinois and than with the US Government. A lot has happened since those 2008 summer days. Chris has left our project as a friend to go on to form the Citizen Science Alliance, and he’s been replaced by Doug Isbell. I’ve left the Physics department at SIUE to become part of the Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Research, Education Outreach (Center for STEM REO). Phil became the president of JREF and then left the JREF for undisclosed bigger and better things in television. Doug has moved from Tucson to Berkely. Only Fraser and Tom remain in the same place the started in 2008.

It has been a long time since we filed those papers on those 2008 summer days, and the group of us have lived a lot of life in the past 16 or so months, but we still have our dream, and on November 2, 2009, the IRS granted us our dream, as they granted us our tax exempt status.

Already, Astrosphere has a series of projects housed beneath its virtual roof: Astronomy Cast (which will continue to be done on collaboration with Universe Today and SIUE), 365 Days of Astronomy, and the IYA Astronomy 2009 Island in Second Life (TM) are all moving to Astrosphere. We will also host some of the IYA websites, including Galileoscope and an archive of the US IYA website. In addition to these on-going projects, we’re also building new things: On the docket for the beginning of 2010 is a new project called “We are Astronomers” that is the brain child of Alice of “Alice’s Astro Info,” and it will collect pictures and biographical information from astronomers of all backgrounds and career paths (amatuer and professional). Astrosphere promises to be an exciting place, with projects rich with content for you to consume.

But this new organization can’t exist without you. We have bills: A PO Box, online accounting software, webhosting, and salaries.  Can you help? Here is exactly what we need:

Can you sponsor 1 or more days of 365 Days of Astronomy? For your $30 donation, we’ll read a brief sponsorship message at the beginning of 1 episode on a date of your choice (subject to availability), and for a $100 donation, we’ll read a sponsorship message at the end of 1 week worth of shows anytime in 2010 (again, subject to availablity). (donate to 365 Days of Astronomy)

Does your company want to help promote astronomy? Astronomy Cast is looking for coorporate sponsors to help fund the return of our weekly questions shows. Individual donations also are vitaly needed to keep our show going. (donate to Astronomy Cast)

Want to get involved building an Island? The 2009 Astronomy Island in Second Life needs donations (Linden dollars or real dollars) to help pay for texture uploads, contests, evaluation, and developer time. (donate to the Astronomy 2009 Island)

Astrosphere itself needs money to pay for our Quickbooks online subscription and we need a computer (I’m using my Mac Mini Original (c. 2005). (donate to Astrosphere’s general fund)

We would also like to someday pay part of my salary. Here is the dirty little secret I’ve kept hidden: Due to funding cutbacks and other issues, I haven’t had a full time job in 2 years. I made it up to within a few percent of full time last semester, but I have two grants running out and effective Dec 31, and I’ll only have a ~half time appointment starting in January. This means I will have more time to blog (woot), more time to work on Astronomy Cast (woot), more time to work on Astrosphere (woot). In exchange for me investing 2 full days a week doing nothing but Astrosphere related work, I’m hoping that people like you will invest in Astrosphere and inturn invest in me working to make new media dreams a reality.

Will you help my dream a reality?

Real Science by Real People all from your keyboard

Here at dotAstronomy, each day of the conference is dedicated to a different topic: Citizen Science, Web-based Research, Visualization, and Outreach. Each topic is tangled with new media and web 2.0 technologies, and by the end of the week we hope to have made the web a little bit richer to explore.

Here on day 1, we’re starting in on what is perhaps the most overarching theme: Citizen Science. At its most fundamental level, citizen science is the act of every day people making contributions to science that produce a new understanding of the topic at hand: this is real research by real people. In astronomy, variable star observations are perhaps the oldest form of citizen science. For almost 100 years the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) has worked to organize amateur astronomers to make scientifically needed measurements of everything variable, with targets varying from supernovae to eclipsing binary stars. Over the years, amateur astronomers have added to their target lists gravitational lenses, transits of exoplanets, and measurements of the flickering of active galaxies.

As amateur astronomers have taken on more and more advanced science topics, the needed equipment has grown from requiring just a pair of eyes to often (but not always!) needing a personal 16-inch telescope with a full suite of filters and digital detectors. While I am forever amazed by the personal observatories these leisure time astronomers have built (amateur is the wrong word – they have professional skills and equipment), I recognize that the digitization of astronomy data acquisition is making it harder and harder for everyday people to get involved – the cost barrier and space barrier are just too high. This is where the internet can provide solutions. For those who have an observational bent, the Global Rent-A-Scope (GRAS) provides a low cost option.

The internet also opens doors to new ways for people to contribute beyond observing. There are now a whole range of possible ways to participate, including (but not limited to) data mining and data analysis.

Here at dotastronomy, where some of us are better known by our usernames than our real-world faces, we’re focusing on these internet based ways of doing citizen science.

Our first talk of the day is by Gijs Verdoes (Kapteyn Institute), from the Astro-WISE project. This is what I would call a data mining facility, but that description is perhaps far too narrow. The Astro-WISE system provides its users ways to access both final (reduced) and raw images from a variety of sky surveys and then gives users a suite of data processing and collaboration tools. Astro-WISE also allows users to build workflows using their own or already existing algorithms that facilitates the testing of ideas that can then easily be tried and then broadly applied using recorded (and sharable!) scripts. This is a scalable system using grid computing. It is all built on python, and one of the really neat side comments coming out of this talk is that today astronomers seem to streaming away from classic data reduction languages, such as IDL, to adopt python as their data reduction language of choice. If you are interested in learning how more about Astro-WISE, I encourage you to go out and explore their guided tour.

From Astro-WISE, a project designed for professional (paid) astronomers that also facilities public astronomy, we’ve moved on to Rob Hollow and Pulse@Parkes, a project designed to get kids doing observing for/with professional scientists (@pulseatparkes on twitter). This very straightforward project that uses a few hours of telescope time on the Parkes radio telescope each month to take needed observations of pulsars where the telescope is remotely controlled by school children. Helping the kids are a variety of scientists and educators who are with them every step of the way, working both face to face with them in the remote control room and via skype from the observatory. One of the early concerns in this project was that kids would get lost in the Parkes control system, and it was suggested that perhaps a special kids control system would be needed. The thing is, kids are a lot smarter than people give them credit for. Today, the Pulse@Parkes program has the kids doing everything the pros do using the same software in the same way and this is one of the small things that make the kids most proud. While this program primarily works with Australian schools, there are American schools who have taken part. Are you a teacher? Do you want to see how to get involved? All the info you need to be a part of this can be found here.

From data mining and data acquisition (and via a coffee break), we’ve moved onto Galaxy Zoo. I know I’ve talked a lot about Galaxy Zoo here, but there are a few new things you should all go check out. Specifically, there is a new Zoo. Often referred to as “Merger Zoo” the officially named Galaxy Zoo: Understanding Cosmic Mergers project. Each day a new merger is sent out to the users and we ask everyone to try and help us model what is going on. Have you merged a galaxy today?

With the morning sessions wrapping up, we’re getting ready for an Unconference afternoon. I think I might just go learn python…

Typing. Is there any other occupation? (from Sci-fi Laura)

This year I’ve flown nearly ninety-thousand miles as I’ve chased conferences and collaboration meetings and colleagues around the globe. Today I’m a quarter turn away from yesterday, transported from Edwardsville, Illinois, USA to Leiden, Holland, the Netherlands. My passport, unused until March of 2008, now only has 2 pages left. It will be replaced in April, but it has two more trips to go: Italy for the IYA closing ceremony and than South Africa to discuss the future at the Communicating Astronomy to the Public meeting.

For now though, I am in Leiden, in my hotel room just sitting for a moment, stealing a moment to write before I’m swept away by activity.

I’m here to attend the dotAstronomy meeting. This is a conference I’ve been looking forward to for an entire year. This is someplace I know I’ll learn new things (I don’t get to always do that), and where I know I’ll hang out with people going through the same funding nightmares I’m experiencing (not good, but misery loves company?), and in general this is a place where I’m among peers who I adore and respect and with whom I expect to build great things.

That is perhaps the coolest thing of all about this little 1 week meeting: we have a goal. This week, somehow, we’re going to try and turn out a citizen science project. We’re going to combine our science know-how, our tech know-how, and our communications know-how, and together we’re going to dream and build and the hopefully invite you to be a part of it all.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be posting the UStream for the conference, and you can follow all the activity through the hashtag #dotastro on twitter.

Come, be a part of this, and help us build something new.

(If only all conferences where this cool…)

Launch of STS-129 (from Sci-Fi Laura)

It feels like a lifetime has passed since the Shuttle Launch, but I need to finish telling that story before I can move onto something new. That November the shuttle Atlantis launched flawlessly.

It is all a mosaic of moments: the shuttle astronauts drove past and waved; we all piled out for a group picture; speakers came and went and media came and went and we listened and we didn’t and we were interviewed and we laughed. I paused in the middle to record Astronomy Cast – a 10 minute bit for 365 Days of Astronomy actually – and I paused in the middle to work on a grant. There is no escape from real life even when you stand at the edge of the looking glass.

At about 2:15pm we went out and staked out our places in the grass. We fussed with cameras and we laughed and we got lost in the sun, and the clouds, and the water, and we got lost in the moment.

And then we heard “We have Main Engine Ignition. 6! 5! 4! …”

We’d been sitting, Laura, Mark and I, in the grass in front of the tripods, in front of the crowds, in front of the clock. Nothing was between us and the Shuttle except water and wood. We missed the start of the count down to the noise of the crowd, and as we looked up from our cameras and iPhones, we saw the clouds of steam starting to billow up.

The countdown was counting down, and we screamed out with the NASA announcer, one voice blended from so many.

“3! 2! 1! We have launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis”

There was more he said, but we were lost; Mark and I were lost in our binoculars, and Laura watched and fliked photos with her amazing camera. Through my Nikons, the flames caused pain and I had to look away, but I could only take the lenses away for a moment because I wanted to see everything. We traced the Shuttle’s path skyward, watching it pivot belly up to the sky. It climbed, and through the eyepieces I saw the solid rocket boosters drop away as the Shuttle disappeared into the clouds.

And then it was over, the wind whiping away the clouds created by the engines’ combustion. It was over, and it was another day. But it was a day we’d seen the Shuttle launch.

We had seen something special as we watched those men launch themselves into space. The image is burned into my retinas and rumbled into my chest, not to be forgotten.The world moved on, and we moved on with it, but we were changed.

@MarkSands and I in front of Countdown Clock

We’re here. We’re actually here.

It is launch day for STS-129, the next to last launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. We settled into our seats at T-3 hours and holding, waiting for the crew to head out the vehicle and load up and get locked in (a new meaning for load & lock?)

It is a fair day here in Cape Canaveral, with partial clouds, 4-5 ft seas, and low wind. Chances of launch are currently 70%, but in this room of 101 people from 21 US states, and 4 additional nations (Morocco, New Zealand, UK, and Canada), we are going to keep on believing this-is-happening-right-now until someone makes us stop.

As a little girl, one of my earliest memories is watching the shuttle contrails from landings at Edwards Air Force base. From our California home, we could just make out this white dot in the sky, and I remember running back and force from the TV, where chase jet images showed the shuttle in detail, and the backyard, where I could only imagine what it was so high up in the sky.

Now, an adult who set aside my dreams of being part of NASA HSF (Human Space Flight) to instead focus on my NASA SMD (Space Mission Directorate) reality, it is amazing to still find my way to a launch, and to find myself so close – able to reach out and touch the launch clock. It is an odd way to bookend a life. I was 7-years old when Columbia first flew, and if the last launch goes as planned in September 2010, I’ll be 36 when the program ends.

A lifetime of dreaming of flying on the wings of great white bird must replaced with a reformulation of my parents and grandparents more encapsulated dreams. With Constellation, the next generation of astronauts – my generation turned astronaut – will buckle back in to capsules.

But while Constellation moves NASA in a new direction, the commercial space program is continuing to imagine new things never thought of in the days of Glenn and Aldrain. With SpaceShipTwo and Virgin Galactic, we’re looking at new ways fly white winged birds into the inky black of space.

We are at T minus less than 3 hours and counting. There are two more holds. And there are 101 hearts willing away the clouds and wishing for clear check lists and smooth skies.

We are at T minus less than 3 hours and counting, and if all goes well in 3 real hours we’ll be watching Space Shuttle Atlantis launch into a clear blue sky.

STS-129 Tweetup

It’s morning and none of us have had enough coffee, but the approximately 100 of us in a conference room in the Rocket part are wide awake. Jon Cowart, Ares 1X deputy mission director, is currently going from table to table asking us to identify mystery items in a run morning mixer.

Earlier this morning (which at 8:18am is a scary concept), after checking in and getting badges and goody bags (and taking the goody bags back to the car), we all invaded a large conference room that NASA has tricked out in perfect fashion for a room full of New Media Addicts. Ahead of time they had sent us the SSID and password for the private network. They set up a power strip on each table (with more outlets than chairs per table!). On the screens, they’re displaying the live feed (using the very cool http://www.twitterfall.com) of the #NASAtweetup tag, and slowly we’re trending and we can watch it and the speaker all at once while creating content on our own computers and phones. They got us all the little stuff we needed. And that really does matter. Thanks NASA (and remember – this was all done as a volunteer effort on top of normal job responsibilities. When I say thanks, I mean it!)

Tweetup Geekery

As we came in and plugged in, NASA folks walked around leaving random mission bits on every table. Our table has external tank foam (woohoo? Maybe, woohoo? Ok, not so much. It’s foam). Other tables have hydrazine sensors, compressor valves, aerogel, mysterious chunky substances, what look like vibration dampeners, and all sorts of wonderful random stuff which encouraged us to get out of our nice safe seats, and get out from behind our nice safe keyboards, and to wander around looking at the weird and wonderful bits on other tables.

And, they got the day going by talking about these random items, and using them to transition into a discussion by John Cowart (@Rocky_Sci) STS assembly, moving the Shuttle to the pad, and the moments leading up to the launch of the shuttle.

A lot of what was said is the standard schpell that anyone can read, but he peppered his story with pieces that aren’t usually mentioned and that center around Kennedy Space Center being a nature giant nature preserve. There are nests of Bald Eagles (I think he said 5 nests). Roughly 1/3 of Florida’s manatees live here at Kennedy. There are 4000-6000 alligators scattered around the facility (and I really want to see one). This last bit I had actually known because I went to Space Camp / Space Academy in high school, and back in the late 80’s / early 90s, the end of the simulation showed an alligator on the run way. In real life, NASA has a crew responsible for clearing the runway of sunning reptiles.

There are many weird jobs at NASA: There is the guy who drives the porta potty behind the crawler to the launch pad, their are gator wranglers, and for today at least their are twitter herders.

From @Rocky_Sci, the podium was handed over to Wayne Hale (strategic program planning manager), who explained a lot of the technical details in analogies suited for non-technical types. One thing that seriously surprised me is how this is clearly a room full of people who live online, but who aren’t in careers related to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Wayne had us do a quick show of hands – “Who works in…?” and my guess is less than 30% of the hands went up.

It was evidence that today’s world requires everyone to be techno literate.

From Wayne we transitioned to Mike Massimino (@Astro_Mike). It is all going to fast to type, so I’m going to sit back and enjoy.

And soon they’re releasing us to go play… (Join me on twitter @starstryder for picts in real time).

Kennedy Space Flight Center

A few weeks ago one of my students pointed out, OMG THE NASA TWEETUP PAGE WENT UP EARLY! While most of us in the room had alarms set off to go off at noon to register for this special event, it wasn’t yet noon, and in a rush of adrenaline and typing we went to the sign in page and used are various autocomplete software to fill out the sign up page as soon as possible. We were all chasing one thing: The chance to attend one of the last 6 scheduled space shuttle launches.

Now, I have to admit, I signed up without checking the launch date, without checking the cost of going, without checking with my husband (my poor husband). I just registered on instinct.

And now I’m here, sitting in a Holiday Inn, waiting to attend a special 2-day event NASA is hosting for folks who interact with NASA via twitter.

Originally, a whole group of us were selected for what was supposed to be a Sunday launch, but with a one day delay and exam season upon, in the end it turned out only Mark Sands and I could come. And I have to give massive Kudos (with a capital K) to the dean of engineering at SIUE for funding all of Mark’s trip. As some of you may have seen, our university (along with all other Illinois state schools) is experiencing a massive funding crisis. With all accounts frozen, approval for this trip had to come from the vice chancellor, and the chair of computer science and dean of engineering went to bat for us to make this happen.

We left Edwardsville this morning on separate flights (just how we kept costs down, oddly) and I spent my day flying (and working on grant – bleh) and then driving with Mark out to the Cape. We reached Cape Canaveral just as sunset hit on a glorious Florida fall day. It was an odd and wonderful experience.

Evacuate through the KSC?

Flamingos fly in Formation

Did you know the hurricane evacuation route goes past the visitor center?

And did you know Flamingoes fly in V shaped formations?

These were just two of the things I learned today.

Tomorrow I expect to learn more substantial information. The mission we are here to see lift off, STS-129, is the next to last flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. This is a bit stressful in the same way that starting a really long car ride 5000 miles after you should have had your oil changed is stressful. The Atlantis was due several years ago for a complete overhaul, and was scheduled to be pulled from service pulled from service in 2008. It’s now 2009 and the shuttle should get them there and back again, but it is showing its age. Specifically, the Composite Overwrap Pressure Vesselswere designed to last 10 years, recertified after the fact as good for 20 years, but have actually been in service for 22 years and there is concern they may randomly opt to leak or explode while under full pressure (see this Space.com story). Just like I have successfully driven the 5 hours to and from Chicago in a 10 year old car well past due for an oil change and been fine, I fully expect everything to go great this weekend, and I suspect that NASA will tell us about how they have learned to retrofit the shuttles and redesign around these age issues.

I also expect to learn more about the missions goals. This is one of the rare construction missions that also carries science. One of the experiments it is carrying, MISSE, will be exposing a bunch of different “building” materials to the rigors of space – UV radiation, cosmic radiation, x-rays, extremes of temperature, etc, etc – to see what of today’s new materials are best suited to construct tomorrow’s space vehicles and bases.

Also carried up are spare parts (otherwise known as ExPRESS Logistics Carriers 1 & 2), and two communications systems (S-Band Antenna Sub-Assembly (SASA) package and COTS UHF communication unit). The later of these two will be needed when SpaceX takes over carrying US supplies to the ISS after the shuttle retires.

For now though, it’s off to bed.

More to come from Kennedy Space Center.

I have an Erdos Number of no more than 6.

For certain:
Wheeler (3) -> Shetron -> Lambert->Me

(I suspect it’s actually 1 lower because Lamber published A LOT, but I haven’t found the path yet)

My Bacon number is no more than 4 3
Kevin Bacon -> Maud Winchester -> Edward Olmos ->Brad Dourif -> Kevin Grazier -> Me

Sooooo…

My Erdos-Bacon number is thus 10 9 (but probably 8).

This Week Only: White House Star Party and LCROSS Impact

As a 1 year long event, IYA2009 has worked hard to provide a steady stream of events. That said, some weeks are more interesting than others, and this week is shaping up to be one of those more interesting weeks. On October 7, Mr and Mrs Obama will host a star party at the US White House, and on the night of October 8/morning of October 9, the LCROSS mission will impact the Moon.

White House Star Party
There aren’t a lot of details, but here’s what I know. According to the White House Press Secratary, “the President and First Lady will host an event at the White
House for middle-school students to highlight the President’s commitment to science,
engineering and math education as the foundation of this nation’s global
technological and economic leadership and to express his support for astronomy in
particular – for its capacity to promote a greater awareness of our place in the
universe, expand human knowledge, and inspire the next generation by showing
them the beauty and mysteries of the night sky.” From what I’ve heard, around 200 middle school kids are going to be invited to participate. Helping these kids and the Obama’s celebrate the International Year of Astronomy will be a group of professional and amateur astronomers from all over the United States. According to the event organizer, “more than 20 telescopes [will be] set up on the White House lawn focused on Jupiter, the Moon and select stars; interactive dome presentations, and hands on activities including scale models of the Solar System, impact cratering, and investigating meteorites and Moon rocks.” An opening address and hopefully general coverage will be streamed on whitehouse.gov and on NASA TV.

LCROSS Impact
At about 4:30am Pacific time on October 9 NASA is going to drop an empty rocket segment into the Cabeus A crater near the moon’s south pole. Hot on the heels of this large chunk of metal will be the LCROSS space craft and its cameras. The rocket section should throw a large plume of material into space that LCROSS will fly through and (before itself crashing into the moon) probe for water. The impact is timed to allow it to sorta be dark across most of the US (or at least everyone west of the Mississippi), and most importantly, to allow the telescopes in Hawaii to see all the details about what’s going on. Want to watch it yourself? To see anything interesting, you’ll really need a telescope of some girth – 12″ at a minimum, and really 16″ or larger is probably a better bet. You can find everything you need here. Better yet, check out streamed video live from the Exploratorium.