An Afternoon with the American Astronomical Society

STARRY EYED:  Tuesday, we had the pleasure of attending a super special event - the American Astronomical Society meeting. Lucky for us, it was being held in the Washington State Convention Center, and part of their program included a public outreach to area students.  We learned about it via a post on a homeschool-related list, and jumped at the opportunity to attend.

The event started out with a wonderful lecture by the remarkable Aomawa Shields. She has her PhD in from the University of Washington, along with an MFA from UCLA. Talk about a well rounded person!

After her presentation, Aomawa would up touring around the exhibit hall with our little group for a bit. Lucky us!

I'll let the kids tell you a little bit about what they saw, heard and learned. 

Here's Annabelle's account. ...

On January 6, 2015, I went to the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Instead of taking part in the meeting, we got to see an astronomer and astrobiologist Aomawa Shield's presentation of "How I became an Astronomer and Astrobiologist".

Aomawa (pronounced ae-oh-muh-wa) studies exo-planets and searches for habitable ones. Her name is actually made up of vowel sounds and doesn't mean anything. Her parents actually used to be musicians, with her mom having a P.H.D. in music theory and her dad being a travelling saxophone player. Her grandma was also interested in math. The thing that inspired her to become involved with space was the movie "SpaceCamp," which is about some school children being launched into space (on accident).

Shields talked about exo-planets, dark matter, ETC. After that, we went with a team to see exhibits out in the exhibition hall. There were many exhibits such as make-your-own pulsar (model magic, battery, and LEDs), a model of the James Webb telescope, and an inflatable planetarium. There were 18 exhibits, but we didn't see all of them. We also got bags of stuff at the end including water bottles, stickers, pins, souvenir coins, and many more. Overall, the visit was very fun and I learned plenty of things!

And this is what CJ has to say. ... 

On January 6th, 2015, I went to the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. Meetings of the American Astronomical Society happen two times each year, both in a different city. Once we were inside the center, the first presentation we saw was called "How I Became an Astronomer and Astrobiologist," which was by Aomawa Shields, an astronomer, astrobiologist and actor.

Shields showed us some different important people in her life, including her grandmother, who always liked math and even was a math major at Tennessee State University in the 1930s, her mother, who was a music professor, and her father, who was a performer. Both her mother and her father used to be in a band called The Pyramids.

Aomawa told us that she became interested in astronomy after she was shown "SpaceCamp," a 1986 space adventure film in her 7th grade classroom, and she told us that after school, she ran back home and looked in her encyclopedia for the word "Astronomy" and apparently read every single entry on astronomy in her encyclopedia.

After Aomawa's presentation, every member of the audience was sorted into color-themed groups (I wound up in Team Purple) and we were all given stickers featuring out team's name and color on it, so we could easily stick together. Afterwards, I went with my team into the exhibit hall where we were given different talks about different information in astronomy. One exhibit I found particularly interesting was a stand where a man from JPL told us about a prototype device NASA has been making called a star shade that would be used to identify planets in extraterrestrial solar systems like this: The star-shield would be be placed in front of our view of a star so that is there were any planets orbiting around the shield, they could be more easily identified. The most peculiar part about the shield would be that it would have "petals" on its perimeter. These petals, according to the man there, would take any light still visible to us from the star and shoot it away. At one point, he said that if there was any life on those planets, the problem would be that they are thousands of light years away from Earth, saying we could never go there, but him saying that reminded me of theoretical engines such as the Bussard Ramjet and the Alcubbierre drive, with the former allowing for almost-as-fast-as-light travel, and with the latter allowing for faster-than-light travel.

Another interesting part of the exhibit was an inflatable dome that, once we got inside, we could see a projection of the night sky and stars on the roof. Right before we left, we were given goodie bags with stuff inside such as a souvenir coin and a NASA pin, and based on the contents of my sister's bag compared to my bag, it looks like the contents varied between bags. Overall, I had fun at the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society at the Convention Center.

As we entered the exhibition hall, we were given a list of booths to visit. Here's what was on our hit parade. 

Our first top was the booth of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

There, we learned about the network of radio telescopes they operate, including the Very Large Array, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA).

At the Genesis Engineering Solutions booth, we saw a small (but moving!) model of the James Webb Space Telescope. The real big one is set to be launched in October of 2018.

We learned that the mylar (silver) looking part of the telescope is used as a sun shield so that the combination of mirrors (the gold part), which function as one large mirror, can get a better look at faraway stars. Genesis Engineering Solutions is contracted to develop the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) Electronics Compartment (IEC) also knows of the Webb telescope.

The folks from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Arizona brought along some telescopes styled like the one Galileo used (with great success!) back in the day. 

And here's a photo of a gentleman from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory explaining the prototypical starshade CJ wrote about.

I found a JPL animation of the starshade in action. 

At yet another NASA-sponsored booth, the kids both got a chance to test drive Microsoft's remarkable WorldWide Telescope program.

 Such a powerful tool, and free!

Next up, the kids made some pulsars with people from the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech. How cool is that? Not every day you get to make a pulsar! (And, of course, during the process, they learned lots more about pulsars than they knew before.)

Their pulsars are still pulsing, by the way!

From there, it was off to fun with M&Ms and some interesting information about the color spectrum with a representative from the Canada-France-Hawai-i Telescope.

There, they learned about the different colors' temperatures and wavelengths.

At the booth staffed by the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, we were introduced to the game "Messier bingo."  http://lcogt.net/messierbingo/

Its inspiration is Charles Messier, who was born in 1730 in France. When he was 14, Messier spotted a spectacular, six-tailed comet, which sparked a lifelong interest in astronomy. For years after, he used a telescope to scan the skies, searching for other comets. During this process, Messier often spotted certain celestial objects repeatedly, which were not comets. It rather annoyed him, and he cataloged them - 110 in all - as a list of things to ignore, in effect. Ironically, Messier's now famous for his list of (remarkable) things he was trying to ignore!

We didn't have time to play the complete game at the show, so we checked it out again, at home this morning.

The activities I've outlined above really just scratch the surface. There is so much more to show and tell. The kids both came home with great goody bags, which we're just starting to work through.

Overall, obviously, attending the AAS event was amazingly enriching. We were given tremendous access to dozens and dozens of scientists, all of whom were enthusiastic, engaging, and generous with their time and knowledge. We are very grateful to the AAS for the opportunity. 

BEWARE OF DYSENTERY!: A story on Time.com gave us some great news today! 

The Internet Archive, which is best known for running theInternet's time capsule, The Wayback Machine, has just posted a treasure trove of classic MS-DOS games that can be played in today's browsers - for free! Hits include The Oregon Trail (hence the dysentery reference), DOOM, Duke Nukem, Street Fighter, Burger Blaster, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Lion King, Prince of Persia, Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer and nearly 2,400 other MS-DOS games - w00t!

Of course, as pleased as we are, we can't help but wonder about licensing and legal stuff regarding these games being put online like that. CJ speculated "a wild swarm of lawyers (would) appear."

NEW NEW LAUNCH DATE: The fifth official SpaceX cargo mission(you know, the one with the rocket that's going to land itself on a barge after launch) has been rescheduled for 4:47 a.m. EST Saturday, Jan. 10, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA Television coverage of the launch will begin at 3:30 a.m., or just after midnight for we West Coasters.