Tiny Mantras

The Carnival of Space #81

2008-11-27T20:55:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to the Carnival of Space!

It's fitting that Tiny Mantras was given the chance to host this weekly collection of cosmological articles on this holiday, because I am definitely thankful for the wealth of astronomy blogs and sites out there. You see, you've reached what some would call a "mommy blog," but one in which I do a lot of reflecting on how to keep up with and nurture my son's intense passion for space and other scientific interests. Between this carnival and the blogs in my reader, we always have something new to talk about.

I am also thankful to him for requiring that I learn so much about space every day. When you get into this parenting gig, you expect some profound and life-changing experiences, but inspiring me to learn vastly more about my place in the universe wasn't one I saw coming. It is an awesome gift.

To start the holiday shopping season, I put together a round-up of my favorite space books for kids (the ones we actually read over and over). What's Up Astronomy is also ready to help you get in gear with ten tips for buying a telescope.

Now on to the reason most of you are here - gobs of great new posts about space:

From Collect Space, a video of Dr. Don Petit as he demonstrates how to improve the coffee drinking experience in a weightless environment.

Alan Dyer was in the hot seat last week, handling news media calls about about the big meteor that exploded over western Canada on November 20: Tracking the Big Fall.

News and photos from the current space shuttle mission, STS-126, courtesy of Universe Today's Nancy Atkinson.

Mars has large, buried glaciers near its equator, detected by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Spacecraft this week. (The Meridiani Journal)

Phoenix Pictures Gallery heralds the beauty of NASA technology in "The Day I Met Phoenix."

For the first time this week, it was reported that carbon dioxide has been detected in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star.

With Barack Obama announcing new cabinet and staff appointments daily, several folks are weighing in on the future of U.S. space policy. Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy makes a case for the funding for NASA, as well as its need for greater oversight.

At Music of the Spheres, FlyingSinger shares a letter he sent to Obama's transition team (via change.gov) about the future of NASA and private space ventures.

The Moon is Not Enough! says Bruce Cordell of 21st Century Waves, as he considers the strengths and potential pitfalls of The Planetary Society's road map for space exploration in the 21st century.

Ian O'Neill of astroEngine ponders the reasons that so many robotic missions into space are constructed around the search for life, and whether or not they are worth the effort.

Ethan Siegel of Starts With a Bang poses the question "what happens when we move at the speed of light?" He warns that it "isn't pretty."

At Centauri Dreams, two stories look at recent findings of strong cosmic ray sources, an anomalous situation since it has been assumed until recently that cosmic rays arrived at the Earth without any clear direction of origin. Are there astrophysical objects near the Earth that are accelerating these particles, or is this evidence for dark matter? The jury is out, but the data keeps coming in.

At Colony Worlds, "Uranus: One Planetary System to Fuel Them All?" posits that though the blueish-green giant may lack large lunar children like Titan and Triton (not to mention a set of dazzling rings), Uranus may be the key that enables humanity to not only conquer the outer limits of our own solar system, but perhaps enable us to reach the next one as well.

If measures are not taken to address the effects of the greenhouse gases produced by our civilization, extreme climate changes will occur: droughts, heat waves, and floods. Understanding the behavior of greenhouse gases is critical for developing effective measures to fight climate change. The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) is the first satellite to observe greenhouse gases from space. Check out GOSAT a.k.a. IBUKI Scheduled for Launch at OrbitalHub.

Sean Welton explains why Saturn's rings will look closed from Earth's vantage point by the end of the year at Visual Astronomy.

Amanda Bauer of Astropixie describes those two bright lights currently shining in the westerly evening sky: Venus and Jupiter. They are approaching each other quickly this week as they move in opposite directions along the ecliptic. My Dark Sky also has a post about this pair, and how to get the most out of looking at them.

Looking for stars that host exoplanets can be a pain, says Ian Musgrave of Astroblog, but two of the most recent stars hosting exoplanets can be easily seen from your backyard.

Form the annals of space history, Altair VI's David Portree has written a two-part post about Philip Bono's 1960 plans for a delta-winged glider that could make it to Mars, replete with scans of several of Bono's original drawings.

At One Astronomer's Noise, Nicole looks at evidence of an ancient asteroid impact near present-day New York City.

The Space Video of the Week looks at how a very old technology - balloons - is being used to accomplish space science.

From A Babe in the Universe: On November 20, 1998 the first module of the International Space Station was orbited. Read about the tenth anniversary/ISS Birthday Party at Space Center Houston.

On the lighter side, when marketers get involved with astronomy the results can be a bit strange, see Tipsy Orion.

Finally, at the Planetary Society, read Solar Conjunction: Holiday for Mars Missions, and an Opportunity Update.

If you're interested in perusing the archives of the Carnival of Space, submitting something for a future carnival or hosting it yourself, you can find all of the details at Universe Today.

Well that was intimidating, but fun. If you catch any errors, let me know and I will fix them pronto. Thanks to Fraser for letting me host this week.

Dreaming his way into literacy

2008-11-26T11:06:00.003-05:00

Declan slept long and hard a couple of nights ago. A blissfully quiet and unusual 13 hours, but his brain was still working hard.

Somewhere after midnight, he yelled "A! P! O! MOMMY, WHAT DOES THAT SPELL!?" Followed by several other letters. He does this during the day a lot - not the yelling part, but the calling out random letters to see if they make a word or a sound. He heralds the familiar letters of his name when he finds them on signs, and recognizes several three-letter words, especially the common and cosmic ones like sun or star.

When he was a baby, his developmental leaps were like this. Deep in sleep, he would work on sitting up or crawling or walking, usually a day or two before he began to truly master them. Reading and writing are a longer road with milestones that are harder to gauge, like hearing the clicks through as stethoscope as you try and break into a combination safe.

Space books that we love (for children... mostly)

2008-11-25T08:49:00.006-05:00

One of the nice things about having a child fixated on space is that it's an easy obsession to feed. The discount shelves of most bookstore chains are loaded with gorgeous picture books full of astronomical phenomena, courtesy of Hubble and other high-powered telescopes.

A few fellow parents hoping to foster or develop their child's interest in space have asked me for book recommendations. We've checked dozens out of the library and received several as gifts, but there are only a handful that I would heartily recommend.

Rhyming & scientifically accurate books
There are still certain facts and concepts that I remember vividly simply because I learned a rhyme or poem or song about them when I was a child. I think these are handy and fun introductory books for kids, but I learned quite a few things from them too:

Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings
"The Universe is every place, including all the e m p t y space..."

I love the images in this book, as well as the rhymes that describe some characteristics of each planet, black holes, galaxies and more. You can crack the book open to one page and get your fill of Saturn and a few of its moons, or read the whole thing in one setting.

Planets: A Solar System Stickerbook
"First comes Mercury, catching sun's rays/It has hot, hot nights and cold, cold days."

A quick read with graduated pages that take you, in quick two-line rhymes, from the sun out to Pluto. This book and Goodnight, Moon were the first two books that my son memorized. He hasn't forgotten that Mercury is both burning and fridgid, or that Uranus is lopsided.

There's No Place Like Space: All About Our Solar System
"On Venus the weather is always the same/Hot dry and windy with no chance of rain."

I don't find the Seuss Learning Library books nearly as charming as any of the things written by their namesake. Still, this is a decent volume, written in highly Seuss-ian rhyme.

Fantasy/adventure space books
There is plenty of allure in the danger and mystery of the exotic locales that space has to offer, but I think that the latitude to imagine the completely off-the-wall is important too. Just look at your flip phone and consider how much Star Trek has influenced real science. I expect (and hope) that this list will grow substantially over time.

Space Boy
This is the story of Nicholas, who climbs into a his backyard rocket ship and takes a trip to the moon to get away from all of the noise in his house (because there is no noise in space). It's a sweet and simple story, with bonus zero-gravity tomato slices.

Moongirl: The Collector's Edition Book and DVD Gift Set
If you like collecting fireflies, and think that it makes perfect sense that children, romance and amusement park rides, not some man or dairy product, are responsible for the moon's glow, then I can't recommend this enough. The book, and the brief animated version of the story on the DVD (it's under five minutes long), are both quality.

Books we want
There are a couple of new titles that I'm really looking forward to reading, but that we might enjoy more once my boy is able to sit still a bit longer.

Icarus at the Edge of Time
We really love Brian Greene around here. For several months, his NOVA - The Elegant Universe was our Sesame Street. So I'm thrilled that he's decided to recast the myth of Icarus as as a trip to a black hole in this giant board book. Just remember: when you've crossed the event horizon, there is no going back!

George's Secret Key to the Universe
We haven't graduated to chapter books yet, but when we do, this one, penned by scientist Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy, will be at the top of my list. Apparently, the bones of the story are deeper concepts of physics and time, wrapped in an adventure's skin.

For more technical scientific information, including great photos, illustrations and conceptual explanations, I can't recommend the various DK Books about Astronomy and the Universe enough, but they're a pretty dry read on their own. Periodically, you can find one that has suggestions for cool, hands-on experiments, like reproducing the stormy clouds of Jupiter with food coloring and milk.

Happy space reading! If you have a book that you and/or your kids love about space, please tell me about it in the comments.

Noodling

2008-11-23T21:59:00.002-05:00

Please pardon me while I rearrange the place.

Love hurts

2008-11-18T21:42:00.003-05:00

There is a girl in Declan's class that he clashed with for the first couple of weeks. They both had strong ideas about which imaginary places were best, and this led to conflict between them more than once. A couple of teachers joked that they'll probably end up married.

Then one day, during snacktime, he told her that her dress was sparkly. And she said that she liked his shirt. And he told her she was pretty. Now their greetings are dramatically joyful. They squeeze each other tight. Sometimes she kisses him and tells him she loves him. Four different times, they have hugged each other so hard, they've tumbled to the ground. Today, Declan hit his head when they fell, stood up, rubbed his noggin and retreated into a little shyness.

A couple of minutes later, he recovered enough to dole out hugs to a couple other, less exuberantly affectionate classmates.

Boy, does he love other kids. Boy, does he love preschool.

My brain hurts

2008-11-17T17:47:00.004-05:00

Last night, Dan and I went out to see Citizen Cope. Since we were told (on what we thought was good authority) when the show would start, we thought we had everything taken care of for our first time out alone together to see live music in ages.

We arrived to a nightclub door still sealed over an hour after it was supposed to be opened, froze in line a for several minutes behind a smoking guy and a spitting guy. (What gives, spitting guy? You didn't seem to be chewing tobacco, just spitting every 45 seconds.) We got in and looked around at the crowd. Five years ago, at a show like this, we would have known gobs of people. This time, it was two people. We just stared at boys in knit hats and the $70(!) sweatshirts for sale and the malingering guy with the Lowe's race car jacket. We leaned on the embossed, cracked, gold-painted plaster behind us and shaded our eyes from the illuminated advertisements all over the room.

About an hour and forty minutes later than we were told the show would start, it started. So we stayed for about forty-five minutes and left, having heard several songs we like, save one (sun is misspelled on the playlist - it's meant to be son):

The bass was too loud. The neighbors were nice enough to babysit, but they have jobs & can't stay up all night on a Sunday. I know there are people who could tell us stories about the times that shows didn't start when they expected at my old man's old live music joint, but he would have apologized. Mostly, I'm old.

Sunday inquiry

2008-11-16T19:32:00.002-05:00

Have you ever presented yourself as anyone other than yourself on the Internet?

If so, who and why? How detailed were you?

Wipe it away

2008-11-15T21:15:00.003-05:00

Declan stirred in the wee hours this morning, fearful and clearly upset about something.
I asked him what was wrong and he wouldn't say, only crying "it's only a dream, right mommy? It's only a dream? I want it to go away."

I held him and told him yes, it was only a dream, that we could imagine something else and wipe it away. We thought of outer space and flowers and playgrounds.

He grabbed my hand and wiped it across his forehead three times, anxious to rid himself of whatever was haunting him. Then he recovered and fell back asleep quickly.

He had no memory of it later today.

I wonder what was going on in there.

Weird Barack Obama art

2008-11-14T21:05:00.000-05:00

Growing up in a Catholic household the 1960s, my husband says that most of the living rooms he visited as a child had pictures of Jesus and JFK hanging on the wall.

As a child of the 1970s, I don't remember any presidential administration that inspired that kind of iconic reproduction. Things have changed. The stream of Barack Obama faces printed on clothing and hats since early summer festivals this year has been steady to overflowing, many using design elements that intentionally evoke Bob Marley, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X. Apparently, we like wearing our new leader, putting forward our faith his abilities.

Meanwhile, weird art has been emerging from all corners of the Internet, putting forward its own agenda:
A lot of pundits claim that voters have unrealistic, Jesus (or Fabio)-like expectations of our new President. On first view, this illustration seems to underscore that idea. It was actually intended to poke fun at Obama supporters in Portland, Oregon this past May.
This one comes from Dan Lacey, Painter of Pancakes, who mostly paints political and celebrity figures with pancakes on their heads, although he also has some of famous figures donning jock straps, carrots and"Minnesota" toast" on their noggins. If you poke around his site, you'll find that there are a couple of other nude Obama with unicorn paintings, including a revision of this one with a leaner president-elect.
An Indiana man who calls himself the "Taco Werewolf" created a series of "Obama Taco Underwear" paintings. Over the summer, when he finished his shifts at a Mexican restaurant, Mr. Werewolf would nosh on free tacos in his underwear and watch Obama speeches, which filled him with such inspiration he was moved to make these paintings.
Last but not least, here's a camptastic one (pointed out to me by my mom), from local artist Paul Richmond. It is available as a Giclee Print on Etsy.

More pieces, strange and mainsteam, have been dutifully catalogued on a couple of blogs: the Art of Obama and The Obama Art Report.

Germs

2008-11-13T23:25:00.002-05:00

We went to the book store a few days ago, and allowed Declan to pick out one item. He chose a stuffed white blood cell that he sleeps with now. He loves white blood cells.

Today his teacher told me that he recently explained the reason soap is good o his classmates : "it just gobbles up all of the germs."

With our fuzzy white blood cells and our new hand-washing routines, I hope this winter goes well. Since he started preschool, I've been sick three times.

School Funding Awareness Week

2008-11-12T22:13:00.000-05:00

Back when Ohio's system of funding education was ruled unconstitutional in the mid-1990s, I wrote about it for a local alternative weekly. There were astonishing stories about what poverty meant to education statewide — like the one about a rural school building that sat on a hillside, its foundation slowly slipping over a gas main. Many other country schools were dangerous, some with less dramatic-sounding health risks like peeling paint and bad plumbing. Resources like libraries were woefully out of date, often housed in bookmobiles or on-site trailers with little or no new material.

In our cities, structures were falling apart and creating potential health problems for their students. It was going to take billions of dollars just to bring the buildings in our poorest districts up to code, let alone begin to improve the quality of education to help students in those areas succeed.

In the time since, the ruling was upheld through appeals and lawmakers have wrangled with new funding structures, but the system remains broken. Our Governor Ted Strickland, who has made education reform one of his signature issues, is preparing to unveil his own plan early next year. I'm anxious to find out what he's set to overhaul, especially when it comes to this long-standing, fundamental problem.

This is school funding awareness week, so School Funding Matters is promoting a letter-writing campaign to the media and state representatives. They have lots of good background information about school funding's history and current conditions on the web site, so check them out.

(This initiative comes from KnowledgeWorks Foundation, which recently published a lengthy piece I wrote about education reform at Brookhaven High School that you can download here - more to come on that later.)

Mean moments in boyhood

2008-11-11T21:58:00.004-05:00

On most days when school is over, I let Declan play on the playground for a while. He's come to really love a couple of boys from an older class, particularly one who shares his love of science. Today, his best buddy wasn't at school, and since it was cold, only a few other die-hards showed up.

He was the lone three-year-old, and while that's rarely been an issue, today, without his older friend, it was. He was running around happily one moment, then barreling toward me, bawling, the next.

"They said mean things! They said I can't play because I'm little," he told me. "I want you to make them play with me!"

"I don't think I can make them play with you, honey."

The other little boys approached me, worried that they might get in trouble, telling me that they are five and that they aren't used to playing with little kids (even though they've played with Declan virtually every other day when they've all been there). I said "well, Declan, maybe you can tell him how that makes you feel?"

"That makes me feel SAD!" he said, and wept some more.

"Well, we can pretend you're five even though you're not as big as us and can't do all the things we can and you cry like a baby," the boy told him. Ugh.

That he was accepted, even though the terms were pretty stinky, seemed to be enough. He stopped crying, played with them for thirty seconds, asked me to help him swing on a tire for a few moments then easily surrendered to my suggestion that we go get a hot dog.

No justice, no peach

2008-11-10T11:04:00.005-05:00

An artist friend of ours sent out an email saying that he had taken down the handmade "Impeach Bush" sign from his front porch, and replaced it with a new one that says, simply: "PEACH!"

I think that's the right disposition for this time. In between every cataclysmic financial headline I read, there is another about the way our country will change in January that fills me with hope and relief. Today I see plans for the closing of Guantanamo being made. What wrongs will we begin to right tomorrow? And what will we begin to aim for that is about building anew, not just fixing broken things?

I am honored to be among those included in the October Just Posts today. In a time of real change, the nurturing of these ideas becomes more important than ever. Go on over and click on a few of the inspiring posts. You won't regret it.

The boy building

2008-11-09T21:24:00.007-05:00

Almost every time his feelings overwhelm him now, I try to remember to pull out a pen and write them down for him, like they do at school.

"I'm sad. I wanted to go to the gas station. I wanted to put gas in the car," he told me tonight. He wants to help with everything, this boy. We put these words, these longings, on paper and the sobs, which seemed to come out of nowhere — out of the denial of a strange and random request — subside.

"What's inside cauliflower? What's inside a brain? What begins with P? What does one plus seven make?"

He wants dominoes and a marble maze and Legos for Christmas. Every object his heart desires involves building, connecting, taking things apart and making things work. He breaks apart and reassembles floor puzzles and likes to serve me play coffee. I'm racking up the invites for play dates because so many moms from his class tell me that their kids talk about him all the time at home. He talks about all of the kids in his class.

He is thrilled when babies smile at him. He's adding things on an abacus and always, always recounting what happened "yesterday," which is his word for any day in the past.

Today we were pulling onto the freeway and he said "you don't drive on grass, you drive on the road... but, remember yesterday, when we went to the apple picking farm? We drove on grass." Apple picking was a month ago.

Paint it purple

2008-11-08T10:39:00.005-05:00

Another thing that made me weepy as any this week was watching people I disagree with politically — be they John McCain, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove and even the current president — weighing in on the historical significance of the moment, complimenting Obama on running such a positive campaign and expressing their pride in our country for crossing this threshhold. It made me hopeful that this really could be another chance for the unity that we seemed so open to, but failed to achieve in 2001.

Given a few days, there's certainly been plenty of vitriol as well, but here's a site about healing from zefrank. They are messages from the 52 percent of the country that voted for Obama, addressed to the 48 percent that voted McCain:

From 52 to 48

If you're looking for a laugh

2008-11-07T16:09:00.005-05:00

And now for some blogosphere bloggy goodness.

Jessica of Oh, the Joys and Tania of Chicky Chicky Baby have revived this award, for purveyors of blog humor:

I may be mostly stodgy or ranty or sentimental here on my own blog, but I do know a couple of reallt funny people. Hence, I nominated my real-world colleague Meg, for her blue rap, "What Woman Want," which I've heard live a couple of times and is always a hoot.

She started blogging this past spring, at the urging of a few of us, and is an extremely funny woman. So go check out her post, as well as all of the others at Oh, the Joys for a little old-fashioned, mostly estrogen-fueled humor.

A blue state of mind

2008-11-06T09:37:00.003-05:00

I'm a staunch defender of Ohio. In my early twenties, I outgrew the need to see it as a geographic space somehow culturally inferior to others, or too stodgy for real ideas. But I still hear the echoes of that opinion from many who live here, and certainly from many who do not - who have formed their opinions driving across I-70 or the two-dimensional way we're often cast by the media.

They see strip malls and corn fields and aw shucks values and test marketing opportunities. I see those things too. But I also see the home of the underground railroad and the one of the first colleges to admit women and African Americans. I see the state where the first women's rights conferences were held and Sojourner Truth delivered her famous Ain't I A Woman speech.

I see the Kent State shootings and the untold stories of massive anti-war protests at Ohio State. I see Toni Morrison, an author able to bring us to a new consciousness about how we understand history and race and ethnicity.

In my own town, I see James Thurber standing up to McCarthyism. I see many radical feminist collectives that thrived here in the late 1960s. I see the Yippies' Blacklisted News and hear the songs of Phil Ochs. I see how we've preserved the work of visual poets and cherished the wild sounds of Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

For every perception that this is merely a conservative or bellwether state that twists in the wind, that change and progress are something a place like Ohio can't possibly understand, I know an alternate story. I know what's in the roots of the buckeye tree, and there is much more than a love of sports and a fear of God.

The chance to be blue again, to think about everything that means and to remember that this, too, is who we are, is another gift this remarkable week has given us.

------
Sorry to those who got an unfinished version of this in their feed readers last night - this was part of my last post, until I realized it would be better on its own, went to save it for later and accidentally hit publish.

The world weeply news

2008-11-05T20:05:00.001-05:00

I'm so overwhelmed by this new political landscape that I've been mostly speechless today. Not silent, just speechless.

I was three months pregnant with Declan on election day in 2004, and I spent the next two days in bed, not believing what had happened, not believing that no one in the media seemed to consider the obscenely long lines the equivalent of a poll tax. In the strange hormonal haze of pregnancy, I gave up my news junkie ways for a while.

I'm usually an obsessively informed citizen, but I had to insulate myself from a cultural climate that seemed to consider someone with my views unAmerican. A lot of headlines simply made me cry, so I looked at them through my fingers, often ignoring them altogether, and reverting into the safety of obsessing about becoming a mom.

Today, the news has made me weepy again, but that's only made me more greedy for every headline or perspective I can get my hands on. I've cried at images of the world's reaction to our new president. I've gone weepy every time I watch someone get choked up over the historical significance of yesterday. I cry when I consider last night's speech, when I consider Barack Obama's tremendous handle on history, and his clear understanding of and love for U.S. Constitution. I even get choked up when I watch how many Republican figures seem to want to share in the national pride of the moment.

I cry when I think about how disillusioned by the voting process I felt four years ago, and how relieved that everyone's right to vote now seems to matter to Ohio's newer government officials.

Jennifer Brunner has gotten a lot of threats. We should be sending her flowers and thank you cards.

We counted.

I like the two Americans

2008-11-04T10:11:00.003-05:00

Declan's a fan of Barack Obama. But he also asks about John McCain, aware that he's the other face we see the most on television these days. I've tried to explain what the president of the USA does, that some people like one man and some the other, and how elections work.

He came back at me with "I like Barack Obama. I like John McCain. I like the two Americans."

You know, if I could only bottle that and put it in the water supply.

I think what that tells me is that I've been acting more measured about this election than I feel. In 2004, I liked Kerry, but my negative feelings about Bush were overwhelming. We have our reasons for voting Obama here, but disdain for John McCain isn't chief among them. In fact, I know I dislike the policies and the ugliness of the campaign strategies, while there is still plenty I admire about the man.

I really hope that if Obama wins today, one of the big lessons is that character assassination campaigns are not only uninspired, their results are limited. (The anti-Obama Reverend Wright commercials just made me ill last night. Seeing them in contrast with news coverage about Obama's grandmother's death just highlighted their tackiness.)

I've explained to my son that he's not allowed to vote until he's 18 several times in the past week. This morning, knowing that his daddy still had to vote today, he told me: "I'm 18." (His dad worked for ACORN when he was a young man, but we didn't try to register our three-year-old, I swear.) Declan got dressed enthusiastically and they went to the polls. He's not angry or scared or even apprehensive about the results - he's just purely and beautifully excited to participate in this world, in our country, in democracy. He wants to vote for his preferred candidate of the two Americans.

I just got a call that their voting trip was successful, that the wait wasn't too bad, and that Declan got to press the button for Barack Obama and cast his daddy's vote.

Here's a song for my voting Irishmen: O'Bama.

Good luck to those of you voting today.

If you have any problems at the polls, call one of these hotlines:

1-866-MYVOTE1 (866-698-6831)
1-866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683)
1-888-VE-Y-VOTA (en Español)