Winging It

RALLY TIME:  Today was a "Blue Friday" - the day before a big Seahawks' playoffs game on Saturday. 

We typically wear our Seahawks gear every Friday during the season, but today, we went the distance, which meant Annabelle donned her blue wings. :)

The official rally was at Renton City Hall (the Seahawks' training facility is in Renton). We arrived about 11:20, right before its 11:30 a.m. start.

We hadn't even made it up the steps yet when a reporter from KOMO asked the kids to stop so she could get a photo. :)

The rally was upstairs, on a plaza.

Up on the plaza, we got some free stuff, including signs and hotdogs. Hooray! 

At the rally, there were things you'd expect, like the Seahawks cheerleaders, and the team mascot, Blitz.

There were special guests, like former UW Huskies and Seahawks quarterback Brock Huard exhorting to crowd to chant and cheer.

There were hundreds of fans in all sorts of Seahawks gear, some custom made.

On our way out, believe it or not, we saw a real live Seahawks pony. 

I think maybe now I've seen everything!

The guys who had the best view of the goings on were these firemen.

But they had to walk a whole lot of steps, so they earned it!

If you happen to need a little motivation for this weekend's game, this should work ... 

Post by Seattle Seahawks.

Crafting and Cooking

MODEL CITIZENS:  Yesterday the kids were supposed to be up north, at their weekly classes in Shoreline. However, the entire district was closed down due to a police action, so we went with Plan B, which turned out to be spending several hours putting together a rather complicated papercraft project.

Specifically, the kids built a model of NASA's NuSTAR telescope. (The kids had received the kits the day before, at the American Astronomical Society conference we had the pleasure of attending.) Right now NuSTAR is using telescopes to focus light in the high energy X-ray region of the electromagnetic spectrum. During its two-year mission, it will map selected regions of the sky, taking a census of collapsed stars and black holes, map material in young supernovas, probe cosmic ray origins, and more.

The kit's instructions warned us it was for ages 11 and up, and should take 3 hours-plus to complete. They weren't kidding!

The first step involved cutting out four long, thin strips and 11 pieces that would help connect them.

It involved lots and lots of cutting and folding. That would become the pattern for the rest of the project. So. Much. Cutting. And. Folding.

We took a couple of quick breaks (for instance, to clean the fish tank and to walk the dogs), but mostly the kids worked it right up until dinner time. 

There were some frustrations along the way, but we only had to resort to praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster (as drawn by Annabelle) once, when trying to insert six tabs on the bottom of a cylinder through the top housing of the Spacecraft Bus.

Fortunately, just before dinner time, the kids finished, and were quite proud of their hard work and final products.

The telescope looks pretty darn impressive with its mast deployed.

BIRTHDAY BOYS:  January 8 is always a bit of a Deal in our house, as it's the birthday of David Bowie, Stephen Hawking, and Elvis Presley. (It's also the birthday of Kim Jong Un, but let's not talk about that. ... )

This morning, we watched a short video about how Stephen Hawking has given voice to the great heights humanity can achieve. Remarkable, considering Hawking must rely on a computer to speak. 

In a NASA video, Eddie Redmayne, who plays Professor Hawking in the film “The Theory of Everything,” explains the inspirational relationship between Professor Hawking and NASA’s mission and programs.


Every Jan. 8, the kids look forward to me breaking out the Elvis-centric cookbook, "Are You Hungry Tonight?"

We decided on a favorite, peanut butter and banana sandwiches for lunch.

The kids did most of the work (and Annabelle has a little frying pan burn to prove it). But I think she'd say it was worth it.

I think CJ was a little nervous The King was going to try to steal his sandwich.

They each got to pick out something out of the cookbook for dinner, too. CJ wanted Elvis' homemade mac and cheese, while Annabelle was more adventurous, opting to try Chicken a la King, the latter served with toast points, because that's what the recipe called for. It cracked me up. Much nostalgia. :)

The food was actually quite delicious and definitely not very good for us.  The cookbook suggested we listen to "King of the Whole Wide World" (from "Kid Galahad") while eating the Chicken a la King, so we did. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBicfhWxiAQ

One thing led to another, and of course we would up listening to several Elvis songs. I stopped after this one, because I don't think it gets any better.

Written by Walter Earl Brown, the song was made famous by Elvis Presley, who recorded it in June of 1968, two months after Martin Luther King's assassination. It was an amazing end to Elvis' 1968 'comeback special.'

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN: Big news from Mars today: The littler rover that could has climbed a mountain.

No, we're not talking about MSL/Curiosity, we're talking about Opportunity, launched 11 years ago, with an anticipated mission length of three months. Talk about an over achiever!

Here's a panoramic photo Opportunity took atop the peak named Summit Lithology, where it sits at an elevation of 1380 meters overlooking the Endeavour crater, which is about 14 miles in diameter. 

How cool is that?

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.

Believe it or Not

POP ART: Annabelle probably spends two hours (or six) a day drawing. Her default is My Little Pony related characters, but in order to stretch her, I'll throw out ideas once in awhile.

Saturday, I asked her to draw me a Tootsie Pop attempting to escape its fate.  I loved her answer to the challenge! :)

BELIEVE IT, OR NOT:  This weekend, right before it skedaddled from Seattle, we managed to squeeze in a visit to "The Science of Ripley's Believe it or Not" exhibit at the Pacific Science Center.

One of the first things that greeted us was a burned toast installation.

 Dontcha just love it? Why doesn't my burnt toast look this way!?

There were a number of interesting pieces of art in the display, including this portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. made from postage stamps.

And here's Barack Obama carved out of a phone book!

And isn't this portrait of Ben Franklin made from computer keys cool?

One treasure (oddly tucked away inside a drawer in one part of the exhibit) was a letter from Gen. Patton to Ripley. In it, Patton was recounting what sounds like a stellar shooting session during the Olympics in 1912. (I had no idea Patton was an Olympian.)

And what appeared to be Ripley's passport was tucked into another drawer.

Honestly, I'd forgotten the man behind the "Believe it or Not.'  To me, in recent years, all thing Ripley related to annual books with wild colorful photos of oddities aplenty. I'd nearly forgotten everything about the genesis of the franchise, Mr. Robert Ripley.

He was an excellent athlete, but when a professional baseball career didn't pan out, he turned to journalism. He was also an excellent cartoonist, and on a slow news day (I can relate!) he resorted to writing a column about something fanciful - a 'believe it or not.'

The rest, is, as they say, is history.

They had posters on display of Ripley's first and last comics side by side.

We worked our way though oddities aplenty. I honestly don't even know what this orange suit was supposed to represent. I didn't see a sign explaining it.

The kids both took a moment to feel a meteorite.

There were a number of casts of interesting animals and/or their parts, including this enormous shark jaw!

I think my favorite attraction was the animatronic of Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man ever. At age 22, when he died (unfortunately from an infection caused by a leg brace), he was 8-feet, 11-inches tall.

There was a captive audience in a quiet corner of the exhibit where a video showed how shrunken heads were made. A sign in the exhibit encouraged visitors to respect the dead. Hopefully this photo is a testament to the person it represented a century plus ago. It's certainly not meant to sensationalize shrunken heads.

There were a number of interactive, tech-driven exhibits. Here, the kids did well on a quiz about adaptations.

NOT QUITE YET: I hoped to get up this morning and watch video of the SpaceX resupply mission blasting off to the International Space Station, *and* watch its first stage make history by landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. 

              Photo: SpaceX
BTW, I love the name of the barge: "Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship." :)

Unfortunately, today's launch was scrubbed at the last second, when "engineers observed drift on one of the two thrust vector actuators on the second stage that would likely have caused an automatic abort," per a SpaceX Tweet earlier today.

It's now slated for Friday, super early, or late, depending on how you look at it - 2:09 a.m. Pacific Coast time.