Near and Far

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team, Veil Nebula, the debris of one of the best-known supernova remnants

TAKING AIM: Exciting news from the Hubble Telescope Facebook feed today. "Always wanted to be an astrophotographer?" it asked.  

Why yes, please!

Fortunately, it's easy to become an astrophotographer for a day. Specifically, on Monday, October 19, when the White House is hosting White House Astronomy Night. Participants need not be in DC or own a telescope to participate. 

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, in collaboration with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, invite the public to use the online MicroObservatory Network to capture space images through a network of telescopes via the Internet.

Per the Hubble post, once people download an image, they can use free image-processing software to enhance and colorize it "just like professional astronomers do."

Afterwards, users can try to find an image of the same space object they've taken and compare it to one taken by one of NASA’s space telescopes. 

More information is available at http://mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/OWN/news.html

PARKING: While making our rounds today, we happened to drive by a pocket sized park we'd never seen before. Of course we stopped, if just for four minutes. 

It looked so inviting, how could we not stop?!

CJ provides a few more details of our short visit. 

On October 14th, 2015, we went to the Ballard Corners Park, a park that, according to the park's website, is located on two lots between NW 62nd and 63rd streets along the west side of 17 Ave NW.

One particular thing we noticed about this park when we drove by it is the juxtaposition of a chair, sofa, and lamp (all of which are hard and fake) against the outdoor environment of the park. According to the City of Seattle official website, the Ballard Corners Park construction went through three phases. "Phase One" was completed in October of 2008, "Phase Two" was completed in 2009, and "Phase Three" was completed in Fall of 2009. According to the City of Seattle's website, the "living room" art installation, or the one with the couch and lamp, was made during the second phase. According to the website, the art installation was created by Nathan Arnold.

Annabelle weighs in, as well ... 

Ballard Corners Park started construction in 2008. It is dedicated to the corner stores of (old) Ballard. According to a PDF from ballardcornerspark.org, the land was originally a house, and was conceived as land for a park in 1996. There is a small display with two columns that have some history of the area, along with a small counter with spinning stools. The construction of the park was divided into three parts. Part 1 was comprised of constructing the portion of the park inside the sidewalks. Part 2 was creating the sidewalks and the stone furniture in the corner, which was built by Nathan Arnold. Part 3 was the “corner store” where the stools and columns were. The park certainly has an interesting history and it was fun to learn about it. Who knew such a small park could have such a story?

MORE ON MARS:  We're fresh from seeing "The Martian," and today discovered more NASA resources that a great movie tie-in.

For instance, there's the "Mars Survival Kit," a Web page that features Surviving and Thriving on Mars Activities (Grades K-5) . There, young explorers can take a trip to Mars with fun activities that share NASA’s journey to the Red Planet. Mars for Kids, targeted for grades 3-5, has games, crafts and exploration projects; Red Planet Read, Write and Explore incorporates science into elementary school literacy activities); NASA Imagine Mars challenges students to design a sustainable community, considering criteria and constraints in an engineering and design process. A Make Your Own Mars Rover activity encourages people to build their own rover with materials found around most any household (paper tubes, cardboard boxes, chop sticks, craft sticks, foil, and so on). And the Gaining Traction on Mars challenge is about building a better wheel. Check out its promo ...

https://youtu.be/4ug-e4QIPEE

Martian Minded

MARS MOBILE PROTOTYPE: Like the human and cargo carrying rover featured in "The Martian" (scene immediately above), NASA is currently working to on a vehicle that will be able to navigate tough terrain with the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) (top photo). Credits: Giles Keyte/NASA

MARTIAN MOVIE: Yesterday we finally made it out to see "The Martian," the number one movie in the world right now, based on Andrew Weir's novel.

Seeing NASA's logo and locations so prominently featured on the big screen was a big thrill! 

While the movie certainly took artistic license in many instances, there were a number of things throughout that had definite ties to NASA science. In fact, a couple of months back, NASA published an article listing nine real NASA technologies used in "The Martian" movie. They include an artificial landing habitat (hab), an off-Earth plant farm, water recovery, oxygen generation, a Mars-ready spacesuit, ion propulsion, solar panels, Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, extended spaceflight, and a Mars rover.

And today, we checked out a NASA article about the Acidalia Planitia part of Mars, where much of main character Mark Watney's time is spend on the Red Planet during "The Martian."

We can see what that area actually looks like thanks to this Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) photograph taken with the orbiter's  High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona 

Per NASA, much of the area is covered by dense fields of boulders up to several meters high that would be difficult to drive around (unlike Mark Watney's experience in the movie). And it turns out there are fissures associated with giant polygons, with steep rocky slopes that would be impassable. That would have been a big bummer in the movie, that's for sure!

Following is what CJ chose to share about "The Martian" ...

On October 12th, 2015, we went to the Historic Admiral Theater to see "The Martian," a science fiction movie that just came out about Mark Watney, an astronaut who gets left for dead on Mars after being presumed killed. On the Ares 3 mission, the crew (Mark Watney, Melissa Lewis, Rick Martinez, Beth Johanssen, Chris Beck, and Alex Vogel) are on the surface of Mars, outside of their "hab," or their artificial habitat. Unexpectedly, a dust storm appears, and the crew has to get into their MAV, or Mars Ascent Vehicle.

However, Mark Watney is hit with a piece of debris, and gets lost in the storm. Commander Lewis looks for Watney, but is unable to find him, and is forced to evacuate with the rest of the crew, believing him to be dead. However, Mark Watney is still alive, and he has to find a way to stay alive for four years before the Ares 4 crew arrives in Schiparelli, a long distance from where he is in Acidalia Plantitia. Watney uses his botany skills, with the potatoes he has with him (intended for Thanksgiving), so that he can generate a food supply (unfortunately, one with almost nothing other than potatoes).

Overall, I enjoyed "The Martian," both the book and the movie, but 010101100010000001100110011001110111011001111001011110010010000001100011011001010111001001110011011100100110010100100000011001110111010101110010001000000110111101100010011000100111100000101110.

By the way, if you want to know what all that binary at the end of his write up means, you first have to translate the binary to text, and then you have to plug that into a ROT13 translator.

Here is Annabelle's take on the movie. ... 

“The Martian” is a movie about a team of 6 astronauts on the Ares III crew that have arrived on Mars. However, a dust storm appears, which forces them to evacuate and leave early. One of the astronauts is struck down during the storm, and is believed to be dead. After the team has left, however, he is still alive and stranded alone. The first thing he does is head to the “HAB”, where he has to plan how to survive until the next mission, Ares IV, arrives on mars. This means he has to not only survive years on mars, he has to find the Ares IV mission site and get there. The movie does use some real science and it’s very entertaining, and I feel like I may have felt more suspense had I not read the book already. I thought the special effects were well done as well as the acting. Overall it was a very good movie, and I would definitely recommend it, whether you’ve read the book or not.                          

Here are a few more links to Martian-movie related Web sites for entertainment and, in some cases, education.
Meet the Ares 3 Crew: http://fox.co/Ares3
See what it takes to #JourneyToMars: http://fox.co/TheRightStuff
Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses Our Greatest Adventure: http://fox.co/OurGreatestAdventure 
Watch Astronaut Mark Watney prepare for his #JourneyToMars: http://fox.co/LeaveYourMark
The world unites to save one man: http://fox.co/BringHimHome
Watch Astronaut Mark Watney continue his research for the Ares 3 mission. #JourneyToMars: http://fox.co/AresChemCam

DEBATABLE:  For our social studies education today, we watched the Democratic National Party's debate among presidential candidates. Topics touched upon covered current global conflicts, climate change, the domestic economy, the world economy, history, the future, and more. Overall, it was certainly a more comprehensive social studies lesson than reading a chapter in the average text book.

Star Wars Forever

FORCEFUL: Saturday was big fun, Star Wars being the focus of most of our doings. Oct. 10 was international Star Wars Reads day and, lucky for us, The Museum of Flight just south of Seattle, was host to a day's worth of activities and adventures.

We reported to The Museum of Flight bright and early for Death Star Ground School at 10 a.m. sharp. 

The kids sat through an entertaining briefing about the Death Star. At one point, the schematics on the screen looked very familiar to CJ. He raised his hand and asked, "Excuse me, sir, but aren't those the graphics from the Star Wars arcade game from 1983?" 

He earned his squadron an extra 10 points for his superior geek knowledge. ;)

After the ground school, the kids partook of Star Wars-themed craft activities. That included making some cool fingertip sized light sabers!

 They also visited a station where they got to try their hand at some programming. 

Pushing the directional buttons on a little unit could make it navigate a route - or not!

 It was super cute how they made Star Wars themed masks to ride atop the robots. 

Princess Leia nailed the program on the first try. :)

In the early afternoon, we reported the museum's main theater for the awards ceremony for the "Empire Writes Back" contest. CJ and Annabelle were each winners in their age categories, and had the opportunity to read their stories on stage. 

Here's a video of Annabelle reading her story ..,. 
https://youtu.be/-Mxf05s7Pg4


And here is CJ reading his creation ...
https://youtu.be/rZV1-fzsc7w


Here is CJ's brief regarding his Saturday. ... 

On October 10th, 2015, we went to The Museum of Flight, a place we frequently visit, for their Star Wars Reads event. Star Wars Reads Day is an international event about Star Wars fanfiction that is often celebrated a libraries and bookstores, according to the official Star Wars website. Both my sister and I had submitted stories for our grade categories. My sister wrote "Chewie Makes His Mark," a story about how Chewbacca became a pilot, and I wrote "Modal Nodes: The Untold Story," a tale about the iconic cantina band.

That day, we went to the "Death Star Ground School,, a 30-minute class about the specs of the Death Star, and how to take it down. During the class, our instructor showed us "what it looked like inside the capsule", which was a screen cap from a 1983 Star Wars arcade game. After the class, our instructor had us take slap-rocket toys, and we aimed them at something that looked like a hole in the Death Star.

After that, it was time to read our stories to an audience at the Museum of Flight's theater. Other winning stories read at the presentation included "The Three Ewok Friends," which is exactly what it says, "The Attack on Tatooine," a survivor of an attack on Tatooine and the events from his point of view, and "Gray Area." I enjoyed reading my story to the audience.

Overall, I enjoyed this year's Star Wars Reads Day at The Museum of Flight.

Here's Annabelle's version. ...

 On October 10, I went to an awards ceremony for the “Empire Writes Back” contest at The Museum of Flight, where I was one of the 6 winners in the Seattle area. There are thousands of these ceremonies going on around the country. The story I wrote that won was “Chewie Makes his Mark,” the tale of how Chewbacca became a pilot. I was inspired to write this book because I wondered how a wookiee of all things became the pilot of a rocket ship, or what a younger wookiee would look like. My brother also wrote a winning story, called “The Modal Nodes: the Untold Story,” which was about the cantina band. He was inspired by listening to the cantina music on a 10 hour loop on May 4^th (also known as "Star Wars Day"). We both got certificates and other prizes like cool Star Wars pencils and gift certificates. I am looking forward to participating in the contest next year, too! 

All of the winning stories were so different and so impressive in their own way. What a fun weekend! It's so great to see the Star Wars universe alive and well in the minds of today's youth!

Empire Building

JEDI READY: Today was all about getting ready for tomorrow, tomorrow being the fourth international Star Wars Reads Day.

On Saturday, Oct. 10, bookstores, libraries, and retailers will host readings, signings, parties, and more. 

Here in Seattle, the biggest Star Wars Reads event is at The Museum of Flight. There, they're hosting Death Star Ground School (of course we're signed up!), Wookiee's Workshop activities, Storytime with Ewoks, a Star Wars trivia contest, and an Empire Writes Back fan fiction contest for elementary through middle school aged students. 

CJ and Annabelle each entered a story, and earlier this week we found out that they each won their age category. Cool! So they'll be reading their stories in costume in the museum's theater Saturday afternoon. 

They had already planned on being Star Wars characters for Halloween, but this event meant expediting the costumes' readiness.

Fortunately, we already had Annabelle's old school Princess Leia (with the cinnamon roll hair, ha ha) dialed in.

CJ is going to be the old school Luke. When we found out he was a contest winner, we started scrambling to get his costume together. We scored great boots and pants and a belt at thrift stores earlier this week, and we had a light saber in stock. The only piece left to get was his tunic. It occurred to me that Luke's shirt looked a *whole* lot like a karate uniform top, so we ordered one off Amazon. However, Luke lives on dusty Tatooine, and his shirt isn't pure white, for sure.

Like true Seattlites, we decided to antique the fabric using a couple of strong pots of coffee!

We pre-washed the garment, and then submerged it in a pot of coffee (plus a little hot water).

 We weren't quite happy with its color after one bath, so we gave it a second go, with a little stronger brew.

That did the trick! The garment looks Tatooine authentic!

We also printed out copies of the kids' stories on card stock, and pulled out an old comb-binding machine from the basement. They had fun punching holes in their books' pages ...

 and then binding them with the big plastic combs. 

Tomorrow should be big fun! 

STILL PRODUCE-ING: Our garden continues to provide. 

There are peppers aplenty. Today, we harvested our first Carolina Reapers, a mash up of a ghost pepper and a red habanero. The peppers average 1,569,300 on the Scoville scale, which is frightening. They are the second hottest peppers in the world (topped only by HP56, 'Death Strain'). Oh my. 

Beautiful little cherry tomatoes continue to ripen. I made some amazing spaghetti sauce a couple of days ago, slow cooking it for 10 hours just so we could enjoy that aroma all darn day. 

Near and Far

LIFELINE:  We spent our morning at the Food Lifeline warehouse, as part of a small group of students (and parents) in a community service project. 

Obviously, a few hours helping hungry neighbors is time well spent. 

Food Lifeline is a non profit organization in Shoreline, just north of Seattle city limits. It's not a food bank. It's a warehouse, where tons and tons of food collected, sorted and routed. 

Food Lifeline works with a network of 275 member food banks and meal programs. In doing so, it provides 82,000 meals every day across Western Washington. Awesome.

CJ and Annabelle attend a twice weekly class all about social issues, with the current emphasis being hunger. 

CJ shares a couple of food-related facts ...

1 in 4 calories intended for consumption is never actually eaten. Volunteers for organizations like Food Lifeline are some of the most important for making sure that the hungry are fed. Volunteering for organizations like Food Lifeline is not hard and helps thousands of people. I believe that campaigns need to be started to raise awareness for food waste.

Today, our task was taking hundreds and hundreds of individual cracker packs, affixing an ingredients label (since they were not originally intended for individual consumption/distribution) and repackaging them. 

I'm not gonna lie, a big part of me was disappointed that all we were doing was putting stickers on cracker packs that have almost zero nutritional value. That said, I realize that if you're hungry, crackers help. And they're tasty. And it's MUCH better that the thousands of packets our group's hands touched today are redirected to hungry people rather than having the food wind up in the landfill. 

CJ, Annabelle and I packaged 1560 cracker packs today. Not bad for a couple hours' worth of work. I would love to return to Food Lifeline and help out again. They seem like an extremely organized  operation and make volunteering easy. 

NEW HORIZONS NEWS: The science from #NASA's New Horizons' probe continues to come in. Today's big news? There are blue skies on Pluto! How 'bout that?!

More specifically, the first color images of Pluto’s atmospheric hazes reveal that those hazes are blue.

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado said in today's press release.

NASA science team researcher Carly Howett, said, “A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles we call tholins.”

Oh, and another kind of big deal: New Horizons has detected numerous small, exposed regions of water ice on Pluto. 

                Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The discovery was made from data collected by the Ralph spectral composition mapper on New Horizons. 

Regions with exposed water ice are highlighted in blue in the composite image (above) from New Horizons' Ralph instrument.

Right now, New Horizons is around 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth and, per NASA, has all systems healthy and operating normally.

Something's Fishy

WATER WONDERS: Tuesday afternoon, we headed down to the waterfront to the Seattle Aquarium. We were lucky enough to score some free passes from the Seattle Public Library's museum pass program, saving us a whopping $77.80 in admission fees (yikes). Thank you, SPL!

 The main attraction upon entering is the wall of water. 

We made our way through the petting zoo, er aquarium, back to the tropical creatures, like this lion fish.

 I was a big fan of this black and white and yellow lovely. 

And the sea pens are always a hit. So pretty!

 We ogled sturgeon, sharks and more in the Underwater Dome. This guy (or gal) really wanted us to take its picture the most, it seemed.

The jellyfish were mesmerizing as always. 

In further proof #NASA is everywhere, there was a display at the aquarium explaining how NASA satellites track seals and other ocean life.

 NASA is so much more than 'just' space science!

In the Birds and Shores section of the aquarium, we appreciated the lovely beak on this black oystercatcher.

 The seals and otters always generate smiles. We watched this river otter play with rubber chew toys for several minutes.

If you want to visit the Seattle Aquarium virtually, check out one of their live cams. Links are here: http://www.seattleaquarium.org/live-cams

Outside of the aquarium, there are some signs along the seawall explaining the garbage floating in Puget Sound.

 Pretty sad to see a mylar Happy Birthday balloon among the floating trash. How many years do you think it will take for that to break down? 

Speaking of birthdays, today was Rick's #30. We took treats to his classroom - some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle apples. (A healthy alternative compared to cupcakes, cookies or cake!). They're just upside down Granny Smith apples, some edible candy eyes, all natural fruit roll ups for the ninja masks and a tiny bit of royal icing for the noses and mouths. 

I hope his students (third graders) enjoyed them. 

It's kind of funny still taking treats to school for Rick's class when he's 30, but at least he's the teacher now. :)

GeekWire Afterglow

We've posted about our field trip to the GeekWire Summit last week. The reason we had the great fortune to find ourselves there was based on an interview Annabelle had at GeekWire HQ a few weeks back, earning an invite to the conference.

At the summit, they showed some of the interview questions and answers, edited together in some pretty entertaining clips. Today, GeekWire posted some of those videos to their Web site. 

They're also on YouTube, and you can view them via the embeds below ...

Kids say the geekiest things

https://youtu.be/JriAyvxEXTI

Do you want to travel to space?

https://youtu.be/H3KMl0QMvwo

If you could invent anything, what would it be?

https://youtu.be/BIRx25PT4G4

STAR WARS STARS:  Super good news came MPA's way today - both CJ and Annabelle were selected as winners for their age group in The Museum of Flight's "Empire Writes Back" story contest. How 'bout that?!

The museum's contest is just part of a worldwide "Star Wars Reads" day by Disney Publishing Worldwide and its publishing partners. There will be over 2,000 Star Wars Reads Day events across North America, including one at the Museum.

CJ and Annabelle will be among those taking place in a ceremony at the museum this Saturday, Oct. 10, from 2 to 3:30 p.m., during which time they'll read their story to the audience.

SOCIAL IN SEATTLE: More than a couple of my space geek friends sent me links to some big NASA news today. Our favorite space agency is host a #NASASocial here in Seattle. w00t!

It offers an opportunity to tour NASA's Extreme Weather Research Work, which includes the first-time ever 3-D views of rain and snow. 

Up to 40 lucky social media users will get to go inside NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory Nov. 11 at the University of Washington in Seattle, to learn about the science behind NASA's 3-D views of hurricanes, storms, falling rain and snow. 

photo: NASA

On display will also be NASA's OLYMPEX campaign, which focuses on tracking precipitation over mountainous terrain that is difficult to measure, per today's press release.

Registration for the #NASASocial is open now through 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Oct. 13. Here's a link to toss your name into the ring! APPLY NOW