Windy City

MENU ART:  Some (most?) of our best art comes from the back of menus. Case in point: here's Annabelle's art tonight. A pretzel dances with a mustard bottle, a corn dog dances with a roma tomato, and meanwhile, poor little liver has no friends. :(

RAIN PAIN: What a difference a day makes. I think just yesterday I posted in the blog how this winter has been The Most Boring weather-wise in Seattle history. Well, Mother Nature must have caught wind of that declaration, and she decided to do something about. As in, kick our ass.

We live in the PacNW and we're totally used to rain. What we're totally NOT used to is rain that slaps so hard against your scalp that it HURTS. That would be today. It was so freaking rainy and windy that the freaking puddles had white caps, I'll kid you not. 

HOWDY, NEIGHBOR: Our planetary neighbor Mars seems to get most of the press, but just two doors down the other direction, Mercury is worthy of some attention, too. 

Check out this amazing video of the planet closest our sun.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.

It's a compilation of nearly 90,000 images of the surface of Mercury obtained by the MESSENGER Wide Angle Camera (WAC).  The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit fiery Mercury. 

We're all taught in school that Mercury is a little fireball, and honestly I've never thought of it as more than a molten planet. How amazing to see its surface, craters and all. Per NASA, "The colors shown int he video are related to real variations in the spectral reflectance across the planet. ... Young crater rays, arrayed radially around fresh impact craters, appear light blue or white. Medium- and dark-blue areas are a geologic unit of Mercury's crust known as the "low-reflectance material", thought to be rich in a dark, opaque mineral. Tan areas are plains formed by eruption of highly fluid lavas. The color base map shown here consists of MDIS images taken through eight different color filters."

What we see is a super duper accurate version of Mercury's surface; the photos used in the composite cover more than 99% of Mercury's surface with an average resolution of about 1 kilometer per pixel. 

From Dragons to Finland

DRAGON ATTACK: We took some time today to tackle a fun art project, cartooning a dragon along with a Bruce Blitz tutorial via ActivityTV and our Comcast OnDemand.

It was a little more complicated than some of his tutorials we've followed before, but the kids are veterans now, and found their way.

Here's an in-progress shot from Bee. She'd already done her outlining, and was using her oil pastels to add color.

And here's an in-progress shot from CJ, as well as his final dragon! 

Super cute! Wait, no, I mean ferocious! 

SAY CHEESE: We finally got around to using a super neat-o Christmas gift - a mozzarella cheese making kit (thanks, Nonnie!)

There was math and science (measuring, temperature monitoring, etc.) involved in the process, which we loved, naturally.

They added an enzyme tablet to distilled water ....

 And farm fresh whole milk straight from a glass jar.

They heated it on the stove, carefully monitoring the temperature. Pretty soon something resembling a cross between a coral reef and brains began to form.

That cooked away for a few minutes, then it was time to strain it. 

That was followed by smooshing ...

  and stretching. It was a little ooey-gooey, but they got used to it.:)

In the end, they made a half dozen mozzarella cheese sticks (like you might buy in the grocery store). 

So how did it taste? Well, let's just say we're not putting Beecher's out of business anytime soon. We think we might have cooked or stretched it just a tad too long. And next time, we'd use more salt. But for a first attempt, it was fun and edible. 

ONE FOR THE BOOKS: CJ and Annabelle are big into the Guinness Book of World Records, so I let them know about an article I read today announcing that NASA's Landsat 5 recently landed a listing in the book as the longest-operating Earth observation satellite.

NASA: Artist's rendition of Landsat 5, credit USGS

Launched on Mar. 1, 1984, Landsat 5 was originally slated for a 3 year mission. Now, nearly 29 years later, it's still orbiting the globe, sending back images of the Earth from on high. It's circled our planet more than 150,000 times, capturing more than 2.5 million images of our Big Blue Marble. Things have not always been easy for the workhorse. Over the years, it has had battery and star tracking failures  lost onboard data recording capabilities. However, the crack technical team has always been able to find workarounds. 

On Feb. 11, we watched (via NASA TV), the live launch of the newest generation of Landsat satellites, the Landsat 7, from Vanderberg Air Force Base. 

FINLAND: In an effort to try to read down our stack of stockpiled "Time for Kids" mini magazines, today I had the kids read the issue all about Finland, from cover to cover.

Afterward, I asked them to write a report about Finland for me. Before they started, we reviewed what kind of information might be in a report (who, what, when, where stuff), the one a report is written in (rather than a review), and touched upon a couple of grammatical points.
Here's what CJ came up with.

The Republic of Finland is a place where more then 70% of its land is covered by forests. Also, it is mostly flat, where there are more then 50,000 lakes. It is also small.

During the 12^th century, Finland was a part of Sweden. King Erik of Sweden also introduced Christianity to Finnish settlers. During 1809, Czar Alexander I conquered The Republic of Finland, turning it into a self governing part of The Russian Empire. In 1919, Kaarlo Stahlberg became the first president of the Republic of Finland.

The Republic of Finland is west of the Russian Empire, where there is a border between them. To the north of Finland, there is Norway, where there is also a border. And to the west of Finland, there is Sweden.  

I thought his was a little short, but it's an OK report.

Here's Annabelle's report.

Finland is a snowy country with lush green forests that cover more 70% of it's land, and more than 50,000 lakes. The schools in Finland all serve free meals at lunchtime, and their language is called Finnish. Some of the words are olkka hyva (ol-kah hee-vah), which means please, kiitos (kee-tohs),which means thank you, hei (hay), which means hello, and nakemiin (nah-keh-meen), which means goodbye, and Finland in Finnish: Suomi. They make a snow castle each winter in Kemi, northern Finland. Their flag is white with a blue “plus” shape. The blue representing the lakes scattered across the land, and the white representing the snow. Their Coat of arms is a (king) lion with a sword like this. There are lots of  reindeer in Finland.
 Finland is in Europe, which is very close to the Arctic, which explains why it is so cold. Finland is in the Northern Hemisphere,
 Linus Torvalds is the Finnish software engineer famous for making the operating system Linux, And the stuents do very well on tests, though they have less homework. How do they do this? They arrange sticks and stones on the ground and tell their friends what geometrical shapes are where an how many there are.
 In the 12^th and 13^th centuries “Finland” referred to the area around Åbo, which later became Finland Proper, and other parts of Finland were called Tavastia and Karelia, but were also called Österland. In the 15^th century the whole land was commonly called Finland. This was only the beginning.

I loved her explanation of why Finnish students do so well. I think we should send American students out to the playgrounds with stick and stones!

Imagine my surprise this evening when we were leaving yoga and out of nowhere CJ pipes up with, "Hey, there's the flag of Finland!"

Sure enough, on a pole in the back parking lot of the Norse Hall, it waved along with other Scandinavian and the U.S. flag. So how 'bout that? They actually learned and retained something today!

FIRE AND RAIN: Our skies were gray and boring here in Seattle today. So what else is new? (In fact, the preeminent weather authority in the city has deemed this winter the most boring in Seattle's history!)

While there's nothing remarkable going on here, our sun is a source of endless eye candy, with its dynamic solar "weather."

Case in point: Right now there's a "monster" sunspot growing fast. NASA's keeping an eye on it, as solar storms and flares are possible. 

And check out this amazing footage from last July of fiery rain on Ol' Sol. In it, you'll see an eruption on the sun that has solar flres, a coronal mass ejection (CMEs) and then a dazzling display caused by changes in magnetic field lines, resulting in coronal rain.  

The video is a compilation of single frames, one taken every 12 seconds. The video shows 30 real time frames per second. The actual events shown above took place over nearly 10 hours on July 19, 2012. 

As pretty as CMEs are, they can be dangerous for we humans and our equipment. CMEs are the biggest explosions in the universe, and the X-rays and charged particles they produce reach Earth (or pilots or astronauts), bad things can happen, like power and radio outages, and radiation illness.

After watching the pretty video, the kids and I learned more about solar weather on a "SciJinks" page. (The site looks to be a cooperative effort of NASA and NOAA.)  And we took a "How Well Do you Know our Sun?" quiz on Space.com. We didn't score quite well enough to earn the  title 'solar scholars,' but we were told we're 'plenty bright.'

Space-y Wednesday

Courtesy: NASA

FRIENDSHIP:  Today marks the  51st anniversary of Colonel John H. Glenn Jr.'s orbit around our planet in the spacecraft he called Friendship 7.

The kids and I discussed how it was a Really Big Deal, since Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth. But we also talked about how at that point the U.S. was still viewed as playing catch up to the Soviet Union, as Yuri Garagin had orbited the Earth 10 months earlier. 

Glenn's flight was different than Garagin's, in that the NASA launch was pre-announced, live coverage was widely broadcast, and all the world was watching. At his highest, Glenn was 160 miles above Earth. He made three orbits, traveling about 17,500 miles per hour, traveling 81,000 miles in all.

One thing we learned from the newsreel was that after landing and the capsule was plucked out of the ocean, Glenn actually had to exit through the escape hatch, as the primary door wouldn't open properly. You can see it for yourself here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY87RTXzA04

EXO-LENT: In week 4 of our astrobiology class through Coursera, we've been learning all about exoplanets, or planets outside of our solar system. Yesterday, we listened to two short lectures and took a quiz, and pretty much bombed it on the first taking. :/ Fortunately, by do-over time, we had reviewed and compared notes enough to score a B+, but we still felt somewhat defeated. It was the first time we'd each gotten anything less than an A. 

Today, we were determined to get back on track. We listened to three lectures all about exoplanets, with much of the discussion being about biosignatures, or any substance used to prove past or present life. Astrobiologists use telescopes to search for biosignatures as a tool to remotely detect the spectra of planetary atmospheres. For instance, scientists study the infrared spectra being radiated by an exoplanet and look for absorption troughs or dips caused by particular gases (carbon dioxide, oxygen, ozone, etc.) . For obvious reasons, it can be hard to detect the light spectra being given off by exoplanets given they are so distant, and if they're close to their star, the star's light can overcome the planet's biosignature spectrum. And the smaller the planet is, the tougher it is to spot.

The last of three lectures we watched today covered missions to search for biosignatures. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered the first exoplanet in 2001. In 2003, the Spitzer Space Telescope found its first exoplanet.

In 2006, the French/European Space Agency mission COROT used the transit method to find am exoplanet (COROT 7B)

The Kepler has found the most exoplanets - more then 50 additional ones. It was big news in 2001 when it found two Earth sized planets orbiting a star like our own. In January of this year, NASA announced Kepler had spotted 461 new planet candidates. 

Upcoming missions are GAIA (ESA), the James Webb Space Telescope, and EChO (ESA).  

Fortunately, we each scored 100 percent on today's quiz. That's more like it!

Right after we took the quiz, I showed the kids a NASA press release I'd received via email earlier in the day. it was all about Kepler and exoplanets!

Today's big news was that Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. 

Per the release, "The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of Earth. It is smaller than Mercury, which made its detection a challenge. The moon-size planet and its two companion planets were found by scientists with NASA's Kepler mission, which is designed to find Earth-sized planets in or near the 'habitable zone,' the region in a planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of an orbiting planet."

While Kepler-37b is intriguing to be sure, astronomers don't believe it to have an atmosphere capable of supporting life as we know it. In the NASA graphic above, Kepler-37c is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring almost three-quarters the size of Earth. Kepler-37d, the farther planet, is twice the size of Earth. 

The star around which Kepler-37b, c, and d orbit is in the same class as our sun, but it's slightly cooler and smaller. However, since the three Kepler planets shown above all orbit that star at less than the distance Mercury is to our sun, it's a safe assumption that each in the Kepler trio is a hot, inhospitable worlds. 

So today was yet another example of how our astrobiology course has immediately helped us understand news we encounter in our daily 'travels.'

BIG DIG: At noon, we listened in on a JPL teleconference all about the latest, greatest news from Mars Science Laboratory. NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has relayed new images that confirm it has successfully obtained the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet. It's a ground breaking announcement literally, as no rover has ever has drilled into a rock beyond Earth and collected a sample from its interior.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The image (taken on Mars, today!) above shows the sample, now in the rover's scoop, which was extracted by the drill. Next up: the sample will be sieved, and portions of it delivered to the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.

West Seattle Way

SEATTLE CENTER: This was one of those rare moments when the sun was with us from the get go. Naturally, that just meant we were itching to get out into it all day long.

This afternoon, a bit before 2 p.m., we finally headed out. We decided to go down to West Seattle, and stroll/scoot along the waterfront pathway there. It was a good decision. :)

Above, you can see Seattle Center from the red key sign above Key Arena on the left to the iconic Space Needle on the right. In between are the white Pacific Science Center arches. Below the arches, you can see an orange sculpture, "Eagle," that's part of the Olympic Sculpture Park collection.

Here's more panoramic view of the city from our West Seattle walk today, from the Needle to downtown. Blue skies and blue Sound.

There were several points of interest along our walk. For instance, signs at and just northeast of this pier (pictured below) let us know that once upon a time, popular Luna Park stood in the area.

I can't believe we'd never heard about it before today! Built on pilings, the 12-acre park extended over Elliott Bay and was heralded as the "Greatest Amusement Park on the West Coast."

Founded in t1907, he park was only open six short years. It had a sterling pedigree, designed by famed carousel carver Charles I.D. Looff, who carved and installed Coney Island’s first carousel. The park had a carousel, of course, as well as a wooden figure-8 roller coaster. It was the era of Vaudeville, so Luna Park had two theaters. There was even a live bear pit! Here's a photo of Luna Park circa 1910.

One of the most distinctive features of the park was its Natatorium, which housed saltwater and freshwater swimming pools.

Sadly, by 1913, the park was a mess. In reading about it online, it sounds like it was a victim of mismanagement and political folly.  The rides were dismantled and shipped out. (The carousel is apparently still in operation, at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. It's now known as Zeum Carousel.)

All that remained of the amusement park was the Natatorium, which drew swimmers for the next two decades. But on the night of April 14, 1931, an arsonist's match lit the last chapter to Luna Park. The Natatorium gone, it closed forever. 

All that's left of the bright lights and big thrills are some piers only visible when the tide of Elliott Bay goes way out.

Another 'point of interest' signs we saw today told us we were standing in a spot that would have served as a vantage point to tragedy on Nov. 18, . On that evening, two miles out into the Sound from the shoreline, the steamer Dix, on its way from Seattle to Port Blakely, collided with an Alaska steamer, Jeanie.

The Tacoma-built Dix only operated for two years (1904-1906) before going down. The top heavy boat was built for one specific purpose/run - across Elliott Bay, from Seattle to Alki Point, a recreation hub for the Emerald City. Reportedly the Dix was built too narrowly - only 20.5 feet wide - which made her very unstable. During initial vessel testing, the ship was discovered to be so top heavy, 30 tons of ballast were added to help keep her upright.

On the night she went down,  Dix was serving as a relief boat for the Monticello on the Seattle-Port Blakeley run. The first mate was at the wheel. By all accounts it was a clear, calm night when Dix was inexplicably turned directly into the path of the 10x larger Jeanie, a three-masted schooner. 

As a result, 'Forty two people were carried to an early, watery grave," the sign we saw today reported. To date, that disaster remains the highest casualty count of any shipwreck in the area. None of the bodies of the victims were recovered, according to reports I read tonight. They went down with the ship.

This photo, below is taken not far from the POI sign.

The wreckage of Dix is believed to have been located in 2011. It sits at a depth of 500 feet, about one mile north of Alki Point. You can find some photos of the wreckage here: http://www.boydski.com/diving/photos/wrecks/dix/DixWreck.htm

We saw nothing but mildly choppy waters and smooth sailing (or barging) during our jaunt today.

 Here's a shot across to our hill (to the left), Magnolia.

 And here we are headed back to our car. Queen Anne Hill is in the distance.

Busy Weekend

TREKKING: We scored a bike rack off Craigslist for $40 which fits nicely on our Honda's spare tire, so we gave the new rack a go and took the bikes down to the path that runs along the eastern edge of Puget Sound nearest to the west slope of Queen Anne hill.

It was a bit chillier than we were dressed for, but the scenery sure made up for it.

Along the way we encountered a waterfront exercise course. CJ gave the parallel bars a whirl.

While Annabelle enjoyed an excellent view while doing some sit ups. 

We also stopped so the kids could climb on a large art installation. Here, CJ tried to carry the old Seattle PI ball. 

And today, next to a huge grain elevator, we saw our first cherry blossoms!

CONEHEADS: Poor little pups. Kirby and Laika both went under the knife today. We took them to the vet before 9 this morning for their appointments to be spayed. When we picked them up 7.5 hours later, they were both drugged out of their heads and wearing big ol' cones, poor things.

When we brought them home, we put them on the floor on blankets. Within seconds Annabelle cooed, "Oooh, look, how cuuute! They're touching cones."

ROAD TRIP: Saturday, we made about a 350-mile round trip to Vancouver and back. Our primary reason for heading south was to visit a dear family member who was just out of the hospital. It was very good to see her, and definitely worth the drive!

While down south, we took a few minutes to visit the park that used to be in our backyard. It's the first and foremost playground CJ and Annabelle frequented for the earliest years of their lives. As we watched them clamber on, over and under the equipment with ease, it was hard to remember the days when they could barely even walk around it.

SUNDAY MATINEE:  We headed up to the good ol' Crest theater in Shoreline where you can see a 3D movie for just $4.50 (instead of $14!), and have the best popcorn in town (they use REAL butter). We went to see "Wreck It Ralph," which we had seen last fall in a sneak preview. We all loved it and were waiting for it to come to the Crest so we could go see it again. This time Rick went with us. It was a full house and there was lots of laughter and applause from the audience.

Sunday night, we started playing a new-to-us game called "Primordial Soup." It's a board game where each player is in charge of a team of amoeba. On each turn you're given biological points and your amoeba move, eat and procreate. Ultimately, you're trying to accumulate enough biological points to evolve.

It's a bit complicated, but we managed to work our way through an hour or so of it. We probably have another hour or so to go to complete it.

THREE FIFTHS: We took our second Week 3 astrobiology quizzes on Sunday. The subject matter was mostly about Europa, Enceladus, and other icy bodies in our solar system which might harbor life.

Europa, one of the four moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo, is a candidate for life because scientists believe that below its icy, crusty surface, there is an ocean of liquid water with salinity. Scientists wonder if Europa's oceans have vents in them, like our oceans, and what the chemistry of those oceans is.

This false color image of Eurpoa was taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft Sept. 1996-Feb 1997 at a distance of 417,489 miles. Per NASA, "The reddish-brown areas represent non-ice material resulting from geologic activity. White areas are rays of material ejected during the formation of the Pwyll impact crater. Icy plains are shown in blue tones to distinguish possibly coarse-grained ice (dark blue) from fine-grained ice (light blue). Long, dark lines are ridges and fractures in the crust, some of which are more than 1,850 miles long."  Photo courtesy - NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Enceladus, a moon a Saturn, near its E-ring, was discovered by Hershel in 1789. Its surface appears young and reflective. When NASA's Cassini probe flew by in 2004, it captured high resolution images of plumes ejecting from the moon's south polar region. From Cassini, we know that the plumes contain water, ice, salt, methane, carbon dioxide, acetylene, propane and complex organic compounds (too complex for Cassini to sort out).

 This photo, captured on Nov. 27, 2005, shows discrete plumes of a variety of apparent sizes above the edge of the backlit moon Enceladus. This image was acquired on Nov. 27, 2005.

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

We also learned about other icy bodies, such as Neptune's moon Triton; Jupiter's Ganymeade, which is also believed to have salty water ocean beneath its icy crust; Pluto's largest satellite, Cheron; and Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. It has rivers of liquid methane. Titan is intriguing because perhaps it is an example of an environment where life is using a solvent other than water.

Image of Titan captured by Cassini spacecraft on May 6, 2012

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute