Tripping

Voyager 40th Anniversary disco poster. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

THE CELEBRATION CONTINUES:  This summer, we've been reading lots about the Voyager mission, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2017.

We've marked Tuesday, Sept. 5 on our calendar, as NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum will have a public event televised at 9:30 a.m. PDT (12:30 p.m. EDT), 

The observance will take place at the Smithsonian's museum located at Independence Avenue at 6th street SW in Washington D.C., but fortunately it will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on NASA's website.

Per a press release we received today, "Activities will include panel discussions about the Voyagers' creation and mission history, their unprecedented science findings and imagery, impact on Earth's culture and how the spacecraft inspired countless scientists, engineers and the next generation of explorers. The event also will include a galactic message transmitted toward the Voyager 1 spacecraft by a celebrity guest." Hmm. Wonder who that will be? ... 

While the Voyagers' original mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn, they've loooong since surpassed those goals. The twin spacecraft are both far beyond our solar system's planets, and NASA continues to communicate with them daily as they pioneer humankind's way into interstellar space.

NASA is offering commemorative posters for the mission, including the cool 70s-disco inspired one above. You can find them on NASA's JPL website: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/downloads/

HEY, RENE: This afternoon we started to get more serious about algebra. We're going to work our way through the Khan Academy lectures and quizzes on the topic. Today, we stared with one that was an introduction to the coordinate plane. French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, Rene Descartes was a key figure. Most famous for "I think, therefore I am," Descartes is also the guy for whom Cartesian coordinates (marking points on a graph by how far along and up or down they are) are named.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4nrdf0yYfM



After watching the Descartes video and a coupe of other lectures, the kids took a couple of quizzes and requested to do the extra credit problems and some extra practice problems. I'd consider that a win!

TRIP PLANNERS: At the end of September we'll be taking a field trip abroad. Last night we made plans for the White Cliffs of Dover and Dunkirk (we need to see the movie before we go!).

Today, while we were driving, I had the kids use smart phones to check out spots of interest in Belgium, which is also on our itinerary. There are market squares and forts, canals and cathedrals. But when Annabelle mentioned something about a statue of Elvis on a sea turtle, it got our immediate attention.
"A Search of Utopia," the work is by Belgian artist Jan Fabre . It's on display in Nieuwport, Belgium.

We were ready to book lodging in Nieuport, when we got a text from Christian telling us, sadly, it's actually not modeled after Elvis. Rather, it's the artist as a younger man. Darn! Back to the drawing board for a Belgium destination.

Put a Ring on It

Awesome photo of Saturn's moon Enceladus: NASA

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN: In just a couple of weeks, a spacecraft's amazing mission to Saturn will end. 

Cassini is going to go down for the count. 

CJ tells you a bit more about the mission and what's on its short horizon.

According to NASA's website, NASA will soon end the long-running (from 15 October 1997) Cassini mission, planning for the spacecraft to plunge into Saturn's atmosphere on 15 September this year (exactly 1 month before the mission's 20th anniversary). Apparently, the primary motivation for ending the mission at this time is the spacecraft running out of fuel.

In this awesome NASA/JPL/Caltech photo above, Cassini is heading for the gap between Saturn and its rings during one of 22 such dives of the mission's finale.

By all measures, Cassini has been a tremendous success.  

In a NASA press release, Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker explains the missions final moments. "The Cassini mission has been packed full of scientific firsts, and our unique planetary revelations will continue to the very end of the mission as Cassini becomes Saturn’s first planetary probe, sampling Saturn's atmosphere up until the last second," said Spilker, "We'll be sending data in near real time as we rush headlong into the atmosphere -- it's truly a first-of-its-kind event at Saturn."
Here's a short video with reflections about the monumental mission.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHaaIX-iSqM


ART INSTALLATION: This afternoon, Annabelle assembled a welcome back bulletin board in the entryway of the learning center she'll be attending twice a week this year. 

It's really meant to be a birthday bulletin board, but every month, we have used a different theme to make it a little more fun. This month, I was thinking football, but I didn't want to be one team specific (although shouldn't everyone be a Seahawks' fan? ha ha). My mind quickly went to Charlie Brown and Lucy and their never-ending football 'scrimmage.'

So, Annabelle adapted that, drawing and coloring the likeness of some of Charles M. Schultz's most famous Peanuts. We put the kids' birthdays on pennants the characters were holding. 

The Breakfast Club

PARTY PEOPLE: No blog post last night. We were too busy making scrambled eggs for 30 (in muffin tins, super easy and yummy), gluten-free vegan banana and oatmeal muffins (with coconut sugar), heart shaped bacon (yes, really) and more for a breakfast buffet this morning at the kids' learning center. 

Yesterday afternoon, we set the tables, on the cheap. Pink napkins folded into placemat shapes. A paper plate, with a folded lime napkin and compostable cutlery. The centerpiece decorations were cheap and easy - sticking pencils in spray-painted Styrofoam balls. They actually made for cool, atomic looking centerpieces of a nice scale.  

A friend brought bananas to the feast. She asked me what she should do with them. I told her to write on them. She looked at me like I was crazy, but then she immediately came up with a series of amazing puns (potassi-yum! might have been my favorite)!

In addition to eggs, bacon and vegetarian sausages, we had a yogurt bar. There were a couple kinds of yogurt, about four kinds of granola, fresh fruit, almonds, chia seeds, Cheerios, fruity loops and more. And we had a made-to-order espresso stand operating. Not too shabby!

We also had a few other decorations about the room, including this sign, which garnered a few chuckles!

 It was a fair amount of work, but a lot of fun, and the diners were super appreciative.

We also had an hour's worth of music playing, songs about summer ending ("Summer Nights," "Boys of Summer," "See You in September," "Theme from a Summer Place"), plus songs about September ("September Morn," "Wake Me Up When September Ends," and Earth Wind & Fire's "September). There were also songs about not wanting to work, like "Everybody's Working for the Weekend," by Loverboy; "Vacation" by the Go-Gos, and the Todd Rundgren classic, "Bang on the Drum All Day."
https://youtu.be/ZclddLcOYYA

On a Voyage

FAR FROM HOME: A new PBS program, "The Farthest," aired last night. We gathered 'round the telly to watch. It was a captivating documentary about humanity's greatest expedition, the Voyager mission.

Two amazing spacecrafts, which had memory 240,000 times less than today's average smart phone, but they are boldly going where no man has gone before. 

Here's a trailer for the show: https://youtu.be/znTdk_de_K8

Following is CJ's review of the program.

Last night, KCTS9, our local PBS station, aired "The Farthest", a documentary about the Voyager mission, a NASA project to send information about humans to potential extraterrestrial life. According to its page on PBS' website, The Farthest tells the captivating tales of the people and events behind one of humanity’s greatest achievements in exploration: NASA’s Voyager mission, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this August. The twin spacecraft—each with less computing power than a cell phone—used slingshot trajectories to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They sent back unprecedented images and data that revolutionized our understanding of the spectacular outer planets and their many peculiar moons.

The most well known (not necessarily the most important) aspect of both of the Voyagers is the "Golden record". The Golden Record contains pictures and sound (in particular music and speech clips) designed to give an idea to aliens as to what our planet is like. The sources used in the Golden Record came from many different places and periods (from ancient Greek greetings to modern English, and classical music to Johnny B. Goode, for example).

In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to exit the solar system.

PBS has many video clips - and the entire program - on its website. Check it out here: http://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/video/

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Stars, Moons and Flying Machines

STAR GAZERS: I love this photo of MPA's intrepid totality eclipse seekers. CJ, Annabelle, Christian and our great friend Glenn traveled down to Madras, Oregon, to be in the blackout zone of the Great American Eclipse of 2017.

A fellow eclipse hunter took the shot for the gang. 

Following is CJ's (too brief) recap of his eclipse experience. 

On 21 August 2017, people all over the contiguous United States watched a total solar eclipse happen, in which the moon briefly entirely covered the sun (it was less than three minutes, but I don't remember the exact time).

In preparation for the eclipse, two days prior, I went down (along with my dad and my sister) to see my paternal grandparents in Bend, Oregon. Bend is the county seat of Deschutes County, and the largest city in central Oregon.

On the 20th, Nonnie, my sister, dad, and Glenn (a family friend) went on a hike to a nearby hill. I stayed in bed for that portion of the morning, due to being sleepy. Later that day, my dad, sister, and I went to the Juniper Swim & Fitness Center, where we spent a couple hours swimming in the pools and going down a slide.

On the 21st, the three of us and Glenn got up early in the morning to head further down south, to park our car close to a camp full of people who were also eager to see the eclipse. After over an hour of waiting, for just a little over two minutes, the moon was completely blocking the sun. It was very cold, as well as very dark.

PLANE SPOTTING: One of the reasons we love the new MPA campus is that we're right between Boeing Field (to the west) and the Renton Municipal Airport (to the east). Flying machines everywhere!

Today, we drove east, and pulled off into a parking lot on the west side of the Renton airport for the first time ever. What an interesting 10 minutes it was!

Straight off, I took a photo of this brand new Southwest airlines plane, because I have a friend who just loves Southwest planes.

One of the things the kids and I noticed was the plane's interesting split wing tips. We'd never seen that before!

My mind immediately went to another friend, James. An aviation junkie. James was my go-to guy for anything aviation. I could take the worst photo and send it to him and ask, "What the heck is this?" and he'd know.

Sadly, James died last year. My aviation Google is gone. :( But today, I posted the photo above to his Facebook page for old time's sake, saying I missed him and his knowledge.

Within moments, one of his aviation geek friends chimed right in, letting me know what we were looking at. He wrote, "The split winglets are a standard piece of equipment on the new 737MAX, the one you saw is probably one of the first 5 ever built and should be delivered in the next couple months."

So neat-o. We saw a relatively rare bird, one of the first of its kind!

The Southwest painted plane wasn't the only split-winged specimen we spied.

There was also this one, below.

Our new aviation friend noted, "That's another 737 MAX8 that's in a test livery, however it's testing life is done and it'll be repainted and delivered to southwest soon."

I love planes, but know so little about them. I asked if 'livery' was the word for the structure around the plane. From that we learned " livery is a fancy word for paint scheme on the plane, so notice it doesn't have an airline livery on it, it's what's called Boeing "house colors".....the Steel cage I think you're referring to is the jet blast wall to prevent any damage behind it during engine runs and reduce noise for the community."

I also shared a photo of this eye-popping plane. It actually made our new aviation friend flip out a little.

"Oh wow!!!! Just saw the Japan transocean picture Now that is a hell of a catch," he said, adding that he was thinking about driving 3+ hours from where he lives just to see it. 

The paint job is an homage to a whale shark. Annabelle loved the eye and nose of the plane.

A real whale shark looks like this, in case you're wondering.

Turns out the plane we saw is the only one of its kind in the world, painted in the blue Jinbei livery (look at me throwing around aviation terms). This article fills in all the details: 
https://www.knaviation.net/jta-announces-jinbei-737-800

The place we saw today is expected to enter into service around November of this year, per the article on KN Aviation we saw today. 

Watery Grave Discovered

     USS Indianapolis, 1945 - US Navy photo

DAY OF DISCOVERY: With all of the eclipse hubbub yesterday, I held off on posting about the *amazing* recent discovery by Paul Allen and his team. They found the wreckage of the USS Indianapolis. It was lost on 30 July 1945, the greatest single loss of life at sea in the history of the U.S. Navy. 

The 35 on the hull was their sure indication it was the long-sought after battleship. The Indianapolis was found 5,500 meters below the surface, resting on the floor of the North Pacific Ocean.

When I saw the exciting news from a post on Paul Allen's personal Facebook page on Sunday, one of the first comments I saw was, "Why were they looking for it?"

Dude, do the Google! Or at least watch "Jaws"!

The first time I heard about the Indianapolis tragedy was in a movie theater at Jantzen Beach, Ore., in the summer of 1975. The movie was "Jaws" and there is an EPIC scene in the movie when Captain Quint (as portrayed by a reportedly intoxicated Robert Shaw).

Captain Quint talked about his fear of sharks and how it dated back to his experience being on the Indianapolis back in 1945, when it was sunk by being torpedoed by the Japanese.

The Indianapolis had made a high-speed trip to deliver parts for Little Boy, the first atomic bomb used in combat. It was a highest level, super secret mission. During this mission, the Indianapolis was carrying parts and enriched uranium, about half of the world's supply of Uranium-235 at the time, or the atomic bomb Little Boy, which would later be dropped on Hiroshima.[

Here's the Indianapolis in 1939 ...

And here it is a few years later, with a "dazzle camouflage" paint job. 

After delivering its super secret cargo, the Indianapolis was torpedoed by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58 while on her way to the Philippines.

The ship reportedly sunk rapidly, in 12 minutes. There were 1,196 crewmen aboard, approximately 300 went down with the ship.  The remaining 900 or so faced exposure, dehydration, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks. The ship went down so fast there were few life boats deployed, and almost no food or water. 

Crew men bobbed in the Atlantic as the sharks circled. And because the mission was so secret, no one knew. A routine patrol passing overhead four days later spied some of the surviving crew. There were heroic efforts to save the remaining, including strapping soldiers to the wings of the aircraft and flying them to safety.

Of the 1,196 sailors and Marines on board, only 317 survived.

This passage from Wikipedia gives just a glimpse of the situation:

Lieutenant R. Adrian Marks was dispatched to lend assistance and report.[16] En route to the scene, Marks overflew USS Cecil J. Doyle and alerted her captain, future U.S. Secretary of the Navy W. Graham Claytor, Jr., of the emergency. On his own authority, Claytor decided to divert to the scene.
Arriving hours ahead of Cecil J. Doyle, Marks' crew began dropping rubber rafts and supplies. Having seen men being attacked by sharks, Marks disobeyed standing orders and landed on the open sea.[17] He began taxiing to pick up the stragglers and lone swimmers who were at the greatest risk of shark attack.[16] Learning the men were the crew of Indianapolis, he radioed the news, requesting immediate assistance. Doyle responded while en route. When Marks' plane was full, survivors were tied to the wings with parachute cord, damaging the wings so that the plane would never fly again and had to be sunk.[16] Marks and his crew rescued 56 men that day, more than one-sixth of the 317 survivors.[16]

Can you imagine? Survivors strapped to the airplane's wings?! Amazing.

Back to the present: Paul Allen and his team recently acquired and retrofitted the 250-foot R/V Petrel with state-of-the-art sub-sea equipment capable of diving to 6,000 meters (or three and a half miles). These are some of the photos they have shared so far. 

Read more at https://www.paulallen.com/wreckage-from-uss-indianapolis-located-in-philippine-sea/#tAAJUvQdJIkcXL39.99

BASEBALL CONNECTION: Wouldn't you know, yesterday's eclipse had a baseball tie in? I was watching NASA-TV and learned that two minor league baseball stadiums, Volcanoes Stadium in Keizer, Ore., and the Charleston River Dog Stadium, were both in the path of totality. 

Each park had a special eclipse ballgame, and halted play during the eclipse. The Salem-Keizer game was the first professional baseball game ever delayed by a solar eclipse, and the ball that will be used for the ceremonial first pitch will be sent to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

I sure wish I had been in Salem for the Volcanoes' game! :/  The team had awesome uniforms for the occasion!

Black Hole Sun

The last glimmer of the sun is seen as the moon makes its final move over the sun during the total solar eclipse on Monday, August 21, 2017 above Madras, Oregon. A total solar eclipse swept across a narrow portion of the contiguous United States from Lincoln Beach, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. A partial solar eclipse was visible across the entire North American continent along with parts of South America, Africa, and Europe. Photo Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

LIGHT'S OUT: Today was the day. The day we'd been waiting for for years now. The Great American Eclipse. 

Christian and the kids were down south, in the totality zone (lucky dogs). Meanwhile I was home with the dogs. :/ (Me = unlucky dog.)

The southern contingent rose before the sun, and headed from Bend to Madras, 'ground zero' of the eclipse in Oregon.

Christian and I spent a lot of time strategizing about where they should go try to go view the eclipse. We had a short list of public properties, and Christian decided upon the water department as their target.

As wonderful luck would have it, they were the only ones there. Score!

Meanwhile, back here at MPA. I cued up the Science Channel and NASA TV coverage of the event.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=130&v=g0dz8TpV9RY


I'm without a good camera right now, so I had to bust out the 15 year old point and shoot/fixed lens camera for the event. This was the best I could do.

CJ and Annabelle will be home tomorrow, so stay tuned for first person reports from them about experiencing totality!