Why we need better science education in Washington state

From the Peninsula Daily News:

The Clallam County Sheriff's Office responded to a call early Thursday morning from a Blue Mountain Road resident who was concerned about an unidentified flying object spotted on the horizon, said Undersheriff Ron Peregrin.

“We took a look at it through our binoculars,” he said, and determined that it was Jupiter, the largest plant in the solar system.

Peregrin said dispatchers received several more calls that morning from people mistaking Jupiter for a UFO, although he didn't know how many.

Jupiter last week was the closest it has gotten to the Earth in decades, said John Gallagher, who heads Port Angeles High School's astronomy club. It passed 368 million miles away, its closest pass since 1963.

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Full Moon Photos

We had a full moon last week with unusually clear skies.  At about 2:00 AM, I headed out to the roof with the zoom lens to take some pictures.

Why 2:00 AM?  For one thing, I wanted to get it done before it got too late.  For another, I had to wait for the moon to come out from behind the buildings.  And I wanted to get out there at a time when the neighbors were less likely to call the cops about the guy with the zoom lens.

I set up the tripod and set the timer on the camera (Pentax K10D with Tamron 70-300mm).  Since I was shooting at night, I started out with a long exposure.  It seems like common sense that shooting the sky should require a slow shutter speed.  This was the result I got:

It's a pretty poor image.  It's a 30 second exposure at f/45.  The problem is that even with the tripod, there is still subtle vibration that blurs the image.  Plus, when shooting the moon at night, instead of in Hearts, you have to content with the atmosphere.  Even a clear night still has water vapor and atmospheric disturbances.  Plus, it is 240,000 miles away.  All of that impacts a long exposure.

The other issue is the fundamental flaw in my approach.  I assumed since it was night, and I was shooting in the dark, I needed to do a long exposure due to the lack of light.  And if I was shooting something on the Earth, that would likely be the case.

But the moon isn't a dark object on the street.  It's a giant mirror reflecting massive amounts of sunlight back down to the Earth.

I played around with the shutter speed some more and it turns out the shorter exposures gave me better results.

This is 1/3000 of a second at f/5.6.  It's dark, but it's crisp.  In this images you can start to see more of the craters and scars on the surface.

I went up the shutter speed scale, taking pictures as each step, from 1/3000 of a second to 2 seconds.

This is one of the sharpest (though tomorrow I may prefer the one before or after it).  This image is is 1/250 of a second at f/5.6.

You can see more of the images here, along with larger versions.  It was a fun exercise

ISS Pettiness

You can't put too many people in the International Space Station. Despite the ongoing construction, size is too limited. So what the best way to decide who eats what food and who uses which toilet?

Let an Earth based committee make up rules for it.

This article appeared in the Seattle Times:

Gennady Padalka told the Novaya Gazeta newspaper as saying space officials from Russia, the United States and other countries require cosmonauts and astronauts to eat their own food and follow stringent rules on access to other facilities, like toilets.
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Padalka, who will be the station's next commander, said the arguments date back to 2003, when Russia started charging other space agencies for the resources used by their astronauts. Other partners in space station responded in kind.
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He said he had inquired before the current mission whether he could use an American gym machine to stay fit.

"They told me: 'Yes, you can.' Then they said no," he was quoted as saying. "Then they hold consultations and they approve it again. And now, right before the flight, it turns out again that the answer is negative."

While sharing food in the past helped the crew feel like a team, the new rules oblige Russian cosmonauts and U.S. and other astronauts to eat their own food, Padalka said, according to the report.

"They also recommend us to only use national toilets," he was quoted as saying.

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SpaceX Reaches Orbit

The coolest thing to happen to you US government and a US corporations this week had nothing to do with the Treasurey Department.

It had nothing to do with the FDIC.
It had nothing to do with the SEC.
It had nothing to do with the bailout.
It had nothing to do with the Jim Lehrer hosted debate between Obama and McCain.

It didn't happen in Washington or New York.

On a sunny island on the Pacific Ocean, SpaceX made history on 2008-09-28. It became the first private company in the history of the world to put a vehicle in orbit around the Earth.

This is a game changer.

A successful private space industry has the potential to lower costs and make space more accessible to people and corporations. It has the potential to help NASA bridge the gap between the retirement of the space shuttle and the launch of its successor. It has the potential to free NASA from the business of taking short trips to Earth orbit and enable it to dream big with planetary and deep space exploration.

A new era in space travel starts...now.

From Wired:

SpaceX has made history. Its privately developed rocket has made it into space.

After three failed launches, the company founded by Elon Musk worked all of the bugs out of their Falcon 1 launch vehicles.

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Eight minutes after leaving the ground, Falcon 1 reached a speed of 5200 meters per second and passed above the International Space Station.
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With Flight 4 under its belt, SpaceX is gearing up for additional launches in 2009. Flight 5 could fly as soon as January, Flight 6 parts are on order and Flight 7 production will begin in early 2009.

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In addition to Falcon 1, SpaceX is planning a second model two-stage, Merlin-powered rocket known as Falcon 9. It is expected to cost $35 million USD, and is designed to boost 9,900 kg to low earth orbit, and 4,900 kg to geostationary transfer orbit. SpaceX is also planning a Falcon 9 Heavy model capable of carrying bigger payloads, and also a space craft with a pressurized cabin unit known as Dragon.

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Ten things you don’t know about the Earth

I stumbled across this link from Discover.com on Fark.com.

There are a few too many exclamation points in the article, but it's quite interesting.

So the Earth is smooth enough, but not round enough, to qualify as a billiard ball.

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Most people think the Earth has one natural moon, which is why we call it the Moon. These people are right. But there are four other objects — at least — that stick near the Earth in the solar system. They’re not really moons, but they’re cool.

The biggest is called Cruithne (pronounced MRPH-mmmph-glug, or something similar)
.

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I didn't know about these other moon-like-but-not-quite objects. It looks like I have some reading to do.

Private space stations today

Did you know there were already private space station prototypes in orbit? I had no idea.

What has long be the province of governments is now in the hands of private enterprise. In this article, Wired Magazine tells the story of Robert Bigelow, founder of the Budget Suites hotel chain.

He's a billionaire and, he's nuts. He's obsessive about privacy and security. He's funding his own quests to identify UFOs and potentially real extraterrestrials.

And he is building a space station. The prototypes are currently orbiting the planet.

It's easy to snicker at the James Bond theatrics at the headquarters of Bigelow's eight-year-old company, Bigelow Aerospace. It's even easier when you find out he's trying to build his very own space station. An inflatable space station, to be precise — a massive bouncy castle meant to expand when it gets into orbit. It will be the first privately owned destination in space, and Bigelow proposes to rent it out as an orbital research lab, a training facility, or even a tourist hotel. Sure, have a chuckle. But here's the thing: He's actually doing it.

In the past 16 months, BA has successfully shot two Hummer-sized prototypes of the station into orbit. Dubbed Genesis I and II, they're circling the globe as you read this. The last one went up in June, blasting out of Earth's atmosphere on the back of a modified Soviet-era SS-18 missile. It was launched from a space complex in central Russia, ISC Kosmotras, the rocket-for-hire venture run by Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.

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It's a fascinating story. I wondered how someone get to the point where they start with little money, become a billionaire, decide to build a space station, and then actually build it.

As it turns out, he's from Vegas.

NASA Picture of the Day

Every day, NASA posts a different astronomy picture. You can find each day's picture here.

They even offer an RSS Feed.

20 Things You Didn't Know About Living In Space

Discovery Magazine on line has a regular feature called 20 Things You Didn't Know About...

Here is the 20 Things You Didn't Know About Living In Space. Well, LDK probably know them...

This is my favorite:

But some long-duration cosmonauts report that the hardest thing to readjust to about life on Earth is that when you let go of objects, they fall.

How do you move a space Shuttle across the country?

When the space shuttle lands in CA, NASA flys it back to Florida on the back of a 747.

Attaching one vehicle to another is a complex process. They have to consider aerodynamics, wind resistance, weight, fuel consumption, maximum safe speed and a variety of other factors.

How do the engineers ensure this goes well? Simple. They follow the instructions.