CERES-LY: Big news from NASA today. Launched seven and a half years ago and traveling 3.1 billion miles using an ion propulsion system, Dawn is now orbiting a dwarf planet - a spaceflight first!
The photo above was taken on March 1, when Dawn was closing in on Ceres. (It's about 30,000 miles/48,000 kilometers away in the photo.) Dawn was captured by Ceres' gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST today.
We're looking forward to learning more about the dwarf, including what the heck those bright spots are that Dawn spotted on it back in February. You think it's E.T.s signaling us with mirrors?! ;)
The bright spots are "truly unexpected and still a mystery to us," Andreas Nathues, lead investigator for the framing camera team at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, said in a NASA press release.
QUICK TRIP: I didn't post last night because we were in the midst of a whirlwind road trip. Thursday, when the kids got out of class at noon, we hit I-5 southbound to Vancouver. There, we met up with some family (hi Nonnie and Bops!) for a nice evening of food, fun and games. This morning, we were back on the freeway at 9 a.m. in order to be back to Seattle by noon, to get Christian to work and the kids to their film making class.
I (rather stupidly) didn't take a single photo (!) during our trip, gosh darn it. We did, however, manage to use the time in the car to finish week 8 of our "Introduction to Classical Music" class. The lectures covered minimalism, modernism, and post modern classical music (think Philip Glass). We took all of our quizzes and have now officially finished that class. What a wonderful, worthwhile endeavor that was. I know we'll all miss it, and predict we listen to lots more classical music than we did before we took the course.
SPRING CLEANING:We stayed home 'most all of today by design. One HUGE magnet was the fact that the Mariners' first televised spring training game was on. How wonderful it was to see and hear baseball once again! Of course, Annabelle made a pony-themed cartoon to mark the occasion.
And we were absolutely spoiled by an extra-inning game with a Mariners' win today! Fantastic! We also worked our rears off cleaning out and reorganizing many cubic feet of storage space in the kitchen while the Ms played. In the process of doing so, we unearthed many treasures, including an origami kit.
Annabelle followed one pattern, but embellished the face details. Cute!
While cleaning, we also found some oversized, fake scissors. Because everyone should have a pair of those, right? They made Kirby a tad nervous as she was getting a bath and trim today.
SHAPELY: The kids' math as of late has been pretty simple algebra and now we're moving into working with solid shapes. An exercise in their book this morning asked them if the nets presented would fold up into cuboids. :0 After figuring out what the heck that meant, it was pretty straightforward (will this flat design fold
into this shape ...). Many they could tell they were a go or not just by looking at the drawings. Others were a bit trickier. For those, they made little templates and tried folding them.
Worked like a charm! CIRCLING: One year from today, we'd love to be in California. Why? Because NASA's next Mars lander, the InSight mission, will be launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base! In the photo below, you see the lander's arm being tested inside a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, last September.
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
InSight is an acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. Rather than roving all over and taking surface photos and measurements, like Spirit, Opportunity, and Mars Science Laboratory have, InSight is all about the Red Planet's deep interior and investigating how rocky planets like Earth evolved.
InSight will mark the first California launch of an interplanetary mission. It's sure a lot closer to Seattle than Florida is! InSight is expected to reach Mars on Sept. 28, 2016.
NO BONES ABOUT IT: This video is making its way 'round the Internet rapidly, with good reason. It had me tearing up over coffee this morning, darn it!
Set to one of our favorite Macklemore & Ryan Lewis songs, the PSA by the Ad Council aims to take on "implicit bias" or subconscious prejudice and its implications on how we view and interact with others who are different from us.
ANTIQUE FUTURE: A few weeks back, we took a tour of Seattle's lovely Paramount Theatre. During that tour, we learned that in March, the theater would be showing some silent films, including Metropolis, the first full-length feature sci-fi film. Of course, we simply had to go! And so, during rush hour yesterday, we set out for the confluence of Capitol Hill and downtown. Did I mention it was rush hour? Amazingly, traffic was downright light. I have no idea why, but we were amazed and overjoyed. :) The theater holds about 2,800 people, and it looked to be a pretty darn full house! I only saw one other kid there, though. I don't understand why more families wouldn't turn out to see "Metropolis" with a live orchestra. ... But I digress. As previously mentioned, "Metropolis," filmed in 1927 and set in 2026, is a silent movie. Over the years, multiple, varied soundtracks have accompanied the film. For last night's performance, we had the good fortune of hearing Degenerate Art Ensemble (DAE), a Seattle based performance company. DAE composed an original score for the film, which featured everything from lush, orchestral melodies to pounding, industrial riffs to super synth effects. The 17-piece ensemble's music was spot-on and captivating. I had to keep reminding myself that a live orchestra was performing, it was so seamlessly integrated. Here's Annabelle's review:
On March 2, 2015, I went to go see a presentation of Metropolis. Metropolis is a German silent film made in 1927. The film was actually broken apart and had to be salvaged over many years, but they have finally produced an almost complete version of the film, save a couple scenes.
The movie is about a city in the future that has a very lovely and livable above-ground section. Deep below the ground, however, there lies the Worker's City, a place where thousands of people are sent to feed the machines that run the city. One day, a privileged young man named Freder, the son of the mayor, Frederson, finds out about the poor working class and goes on a mission to help them be treated better. Along the way he meets a woman who tells the workers they will soon find a mediator that will allow them to be known as equal to the 'brains' of the city. He soon finds out he is the mediator, while his father sends a search for him. The father finds out about the woman encouraging the workers and asks an inventor named Rotwang to use a machine he has invented to create chaos between the workers and the woman. Little does Frederson know of the inventor's plan to overthrow him.
The movie is filled with suspense and action. It has a good story line and characters, and I personally find it amazing they were able to restore so much. The special effects were also great for its time. I would definitely recommend watching it.
CJ also had some thoughts to share:
Metropolis is a 1927 silent film directed by Fritz Lang, which was the most expensive silent film at the time. However, Metropolis was a box office bomb that lost 5,025,000 Reichsmark upon it's release in 1927. Since its original release, over a quarter of the film had been lost, with the most complete copy currently known missing 5 minutes of footage.
In 2026, Freder Fredersen, a wealthy man in the high class of Metropolis, discovers the Worker's City of Metropolis, which he had been previously unaware of, and the workers in the city being forced to perform hard manual labor with little to no pay.
After this, Freder finds a worker who he agrees to trade lives with, curious about what it is like being a worker in the Worker's City. It is a clock-like machine designed with two long boards that Freder has to turn to match up with certain lights.
The film is quite long, and you can probably find it on YouTube (make sure it's the 2010 restoration made from a copy recovered in Argentina) and in the end, Metropolis is a very interesting film.
You can read all about the newest release of the best to-date restoration of Metropolis on the official Web site: http://fwm-stiftung.de/projekt-metropolis. OK, so the page is in German, but that's what Google Translate is for. :) Now here's something CJ and Annabelle didn't write about ... the evening was 'presented' by Trader Joe's. Upon entering the theater, we were all given brown paper bags (think what you'd stick a loaf of French bread in) stuffed with TJ goodies. There was a bag of kettle corn, several individually wrapped chocolates, some trail mix, a fig bar. All good stuff BUT all stuffed individually factory wrapped, and sealed up by machines that apparently like vexing humans. Now, think about having 3,000 biggish, brown paper bags filled with multiple, hard-to-open items in foil-y type wrap, and pair that with a silent movie. AAAAAAAAAARGH. I honestly don't even like going to a regular (couple hundred seat) theater because people are so da*& loud eating regular popcorn out of a tub. Honestly, the sounds last night from people opening food and rustling their bags was SO LOUD. It sounded like hard rainfall, I kid you not.
And don't get me started on the guy to my left who took off his boots. And then his SOCKS, as well. People ... sigh.
CHARACTERS: The kids are now taking a movie making class once a week, on Friday afternoons. Their homework from last week was to develop characters for themselves that they would like to play in the film the class cooperatively makes over the next three months or so. Here's what Annabelle came up with for herself. ...
CJ fleshed out a character, as well. Annabelle's cartoon helps bring "Jonathan" to life.
TAKING A BREATHER: While we're all doing our thing down here on Earth, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) continues to toil away on the Red Planet. Check out this cool photo it took of itself, shortly after. It's a raw color view from its Mastcam, right after it finished drilling at Telegraph Peak on Feb. 24.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS However, on Feb. 27, MSL has had a little hiccough, it seems. A fault-protected action occurred while transferring the sample it drilled, and now the roving lab is on a bit of a break while scientists back on Earth do a little troubleshooting.
On February 28th, I went to the Pacific Science Center for the annual Polar Science Weekend event sponsored by the University of Washington.
One of the activities I took part in was a demonstration where I put a cardboard narwhal horn and learned about the fact that often times, to get food, narwhals have to dive the length of the Space Needle down below the arctic water just to get some food. During autumn, the narwhals have to dive the length of 5 Space Needles just to get the fish that they need to eat!
Another activity we took part in was a taste test where I would take different samples of different water and determine which were saltier than the others. The jars that I took samples from (not labeled in order of saltiness) were A, B, C, D, E, and F. They were all from natural lakes, and the saltiest (be glad you didn't taste it) was D, which was from the Red Sea, dividing Africa and Asia.
One other activity I took part in was where about 1000 wood toy boats would be set free in the Arctic Ocean and we could write messages on the wooden boats while they lasted. I don't know if the boats are on their way to the Arctic Ocean yet, but they will eventually be there.
Annabelle's boat was sporting a pony by the time she was done.
And here's Annabelle's report. ...
On March 1st, 2015, I went to an event at Pacific Science Center called Polar Science Weekend. The event includes many different activites from many different companies and researchers. There are so many things to do, and I can tell you 3 of them.
The first activity was about guessing the size of different waves in the oceans; they had options like the Atlantic and South before they got to the Arctic Ocean. The waves could get huge in hurricanes and storms in other place, but what about the Arctic? They told us that it depended on the ice. The ice melting could provide more open water for waves in the summer, or ice growing could leave less during the winter.
Next was the salinity taste test, where you got a cup and tried water from 6 jugs, labeled A-F. Some water was not salty at all where others made you want to spit it out. After you had tried the water you had to put the right percentage of salt on the right water jug. There were different options like freshwater, soup, blood, the red sea, and more.
Lastly was the narwhal mysteries stand. The stand has you put on a fake narwhal horn and go through the ocean as you learn a narwhal's feeding patterns. A fun fact I learned was that narwhals can dive 8 Space Needles deep on one breath just to get food. The stand was certainly my favorite out of all.
We also visited with folks from Point Defiance Zoo. They have a cool polar bear display there, and they brought a pelt for people to feel.
We also learned about how water (and whatever's in the water) flows up around Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago.
LAUNCH: Sunday afternoon, rockets on board, we headed out to 60-Acre Park, some 40 minutes north and east of home. It was our destination because that park is the only one in the greater Seattle area where it's legal to launch model rockets.
The Northwest Rocketry group was holding a rocket launching session when we arrived. They had a pretty sweet set up for launching rockets one after another.
We had our own launchpad, however, so we set that up.
We decided to launch an old red rocket we found at Goodwill years ago first.
Unfortunately, we had a few 3-2-1 countdowns with no lift offs. ...
Turns out the contacts in the remote weren't working well, so Christian did a like MacGyvering, as the saying goes. ...
Did I mention the local rocketry club even had a weather balloon? It was very helpful in determining where our rocket would wind up ... if the chute deployed.
Turns out wind was not a 'problem' with our launch of the red rocket, because the parachute didn't deploy. :/
Turns out parachutes don't deploy too well when they are melted together.
Bummer.
Next up was the rocket CJ built last weekend at The Museum of Flight.
It took off just fine, but it stuck the landing. ...
As in no-parachute, so it stuck into the ground after a rapid descent. Doh!
CJ ran across the field to fetch it. Fortunately, it absorbed the landing well and will live to see another launch.
Sensing a (not-good) parachute trend, Christian added more wadding on subsequent launches. That, and I asked them if they'd used talcum powder on the chutes. I remembered from rocketry class back when I was in fifth grade that's a good idea to help them deploy smoothly.
None of our chutes on Sunday had talcum on them, it turns out. Fortunately enough, I immediately through of a work around ...
my makeup compact!
Fortunately, the wadding and powder did the trick. Annabelle's parachute deployed nicely!
We saved the SpaceX rocket or last. It lifted off as expected, but we had too-puny a rocket motor on it, so I didn't exactly soar the clouds. Rather, it reached an Apex of about 25 feet before it started descending and its chutes popped. Oh well, next time we'll go bigger!
DATE WITH A DWARF: This Friday, NASA's Dawn spacecraft will make history when it reaches dwarf planet Ceres, some 257 million miles from Earth (about 100 million miles farther than Mars). Ceres is in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it's the largest unexplored world in our inner solar system.
During its travels to Ceres, Dawn spent a year orbiting Vesta, a giant asteroid, from 2011 to 2012.
This morning, we watched a live news conference from Jet Propulsion Laboratory's von Karman Auditorium. We learned about Dawn's interesting ion propulsion system, which Dawn project manager Robert Mase called "big science on a small budget." Here's a short, silent movie about Dawn's approach of Ceres: http://youtu.be/LP2zbGFXyk0
WE GROK SPOCK: Several days ago we heard the news that Leonard Nimoy, best known as the actor who played Spock on the original "Star Trek" series, had entered the hospital. It worried me greatly that we heard no updates. I knew Nimoy, 83, had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPS) for years, and I figured no news was bad news. :( Today, we learned that Nimoy's energy has transformed. Because, you know that physics dictate that energy can't disappear. It can only transform. Spock is back to stardust, at least for now. ;) Geeks that we are, we have enough Spock-related shirts 'round here to clothe us for days. As I snapped this picture I asked the kids to flash a Live Long and Prosper (#LLAP )sign. Annabelle asked, "Should we smile? It seems wrong to smile." I told her to smile broadly as we celebrate Leonard Nimoy's life! As his parting Twitter message to us, Leonard Nimoy reminded, "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP Together, we watched this video where Nimoy, a Jew, explained the genesis of the Vulcan salute that became so endemic to our society. It's a fascinating story (as Spock would say, with one eyebrow arched!). BUZZED: This afternoon, I had the distinct pleasure of sharing my love of space exploration with a rapt audience of six-or-seven year olds. :)
A LITTLE HELP: Annabelle is enjoying her newish (to her), twice-weekly art class. On Tuesday, the class made "quilt" squares, which were supposed to express ways to be nice to others. Apologies for the cruddy cell phone picture above. Hopefully you can tell it's a T-Rex who needs some help reaching something. Thankfully, a compassionate giraffe stuck his neck out to help (ha ha). BOOKISH: I've been doing a bad job of reporting which books the kids have had their noses in for the past few months!. Today, I caught Annabelle juggling two books on her lap, one she had just finished (Copper, which was based on a Web comic), and one she was just starting (Zita the Spacegirl, a graphic novel).
She reports Copper had "Calvin and Hobbes"-esque qualities to it. You can see a trailer for Zita here:
INSTRUMENTAL: With all the driving we had to do today, we managed to listen to the rest of our Week 7 lectures in our classical music course. Thank goodness for the Coursera app, which allows me to stream them on my phone, and an auxilary input lets us play them through our car's speakers. One of the topics covered today was the ever-expanding orchestra during the mid- and latter-part of the 19th century. One of the instruments added was the English horn to the mix. It has a lovely, distinctive, almost mournful sound. Once of the pieces of music we listened to today was Dvorak Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" 2nd Movement, which features the English horn (which, ironically, is not English, and not a horn. It's a woodwind, and it came from Silesia, a region in Central Europe which is now mostly within Poland's borders.
Dvorak's symphony featuring the English horn is simply beautiful.
GAME ON: We love board games in a big way here at MPA and today we test drove two new-to us ones.
First up was "The Case of the Missing Mummy," which we 'won' on the wonderful "Buy Nothing" Facebook group we're a part of. If you haven't heard of Buy Nothing, here's how it's described on the Buy Nothing Web site:
"The Buy Nothing Project began as an experimental hyper-local gift economy on Bainbridge Island, WA; in just 16 months, it has become a worldwide social movement, growing to over 80,000 members in 9 nations with 415 groups and 500 volunteers."
We're a part of a Buy Nothing group for the Magnolia and Queen Anne neighborhoods on Facebook. Basically, what people do is post things they're ready to be rid of, rather than taking them to Goodwill, trashing them, or posting them on Craigslist.
To date, we've donated books, toys and more. We've received games, household furnishings, and even a 40-inch television(!). It's an amazing giving community. We'd encourage you to join one in your area, or start one!
We have a practice of leaving a nice note when we pick up a Buy Nothing gift. Here's what we left today when we picked up "The Case of the Missing Mummy."
The game we played was a cooperative one, which we like, and we four beat the mummy with no trouble at all. Go us!
Next up, we played a science-based game the kids checked out from the library. Called "Power Surge," it has questions about electricity, machines, energy, and magnetism, combined with some "Sorry" game like aspects.
As we were playing it, I was glad we've taken a couple of physics-related classes. :)
ALL ABOUT OPERA: We powered through lecture after lecture today in our classical music course. We were neck deep in Verdi, Bellini, Wagner and Liszt. Speaking of the latter, what a guy, as it turns out.
Ever heard of Beatlemania? Of course you have. Well back before the Fab Four, there was a phenomenon called Lisztomania thanks to a "rock star" before there was rock. I'll let Annabelle tell you more. ...
Franz Liszt was a composer of many operatic performances. He was so popular he was considered a "rockstar of the 19th century" and had over 3000 people at some concerts, and even had his own "Lisztomania"! His operas included "Un sospiro" and "Die Walküre", from which his famous "Ride of the Valkyries" came. He also had many Etudes, which are pieces meant for those learning piano, even though his were not of much use for that.
Editor's notes: Liszt's etudes were not good practice pieces because they are almost impossible to play, even for virtuosos. Liszt was known as a 'three handed' pianist because what he played was beyond what the vast majority of two-handed mortals could manage. Apparently many of his concert goers were women, who threw bouquets at him and clamored for a lock of his hair.
One of the most interesting things we learned today was that Liszt was (purportedly) the first to turn his grand piano sideways during concerts. Reportedly he did this out of vanity, to hide a big mole on his left cheek. This photo of an elderly Liszt might help bolster that claim.
We also learned about Richard Wagner. Here are a few things that stuck in CJ's mind from the lectures. ...
Richard Wagner has more books written about him than Beethoven, Mozart, or Bach did, and lived in the same place that Bach did for 27 years. Wagner had to teach himself about music, and was most famous for his composition "The Flight of the Valkyries", which is one of the most iconic pieces of music from the Romantic period. Wagner designed the Bayreuth Festival Theatre, which has a hidden area for the orchestra to play in and had gasoline candles which could be dimmed or brightened for performances.
Turns out Wagner was a revolutionary. We have him to thank for many of the elements of our modern day theater going experiences, like, as CJ noted, theater lights dimming, the orchestra being hidden (like the audio in modern day movie theaters), not admitting people late to performances (yes! thank you Wagner!), and more.
Also, Wagner helped re-introduce the 'ring' to more modern storytelling. Unlike his contemporaries, who were enamored of Shakespeare and such, he based his operas on Nordic mythology, and the idea of prequels and rings in storytelling (think Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc.). Super interesting and educational
GRAY MATTER: Yesterday we mentioned Mars Science Laboratory's activities on the Red Planet. Today, NASA released a photo of a recent drilling site. Check it out!
Photo: NASA-JPL
Turns out Mars' red is only 'skin' deep. Not all that surprising, of course, but, still, it's fascinating and so cool to see!
