stanley pickle

here is a very interesting short film (11 min).   the technique is interesting and the story is surprising.  nicely done!

Stanley Pickle - FULL FILM ONLINE from Vicky Mather on Vimeo.

AAO planning day

i'm up at siding spring observatory for a quick two-night data collection frenzy.   unfortunately, we're under a thick blanket of clouds, so not much data has actually been collected :(  instead, i'll show you some photos from the australian astronomical observatory's "planning day" that was held up here a couple weeks ago. 

the big 4m telescope lives in there.

several people from the astronomy side and from the engineering side of the operation gave short talks to highlight their work, science, and upgrades to all the facilities.  it was cool to sit on the dome floor next to the beast while listening to everyone speak.

a few instruments that manipulate the light collected by the telescope mirror live in a cage under the telescope at the cassegrain focus.

it was there that i found this note, in permanent market on metal: good luck :)

this black thing is the 2df instrument that usually sits way atop the prime focus cage at the end of the telescope when i'm observing.  (you can watch a beautiful video of 2df at work here)

there are many other telescopes at siding spring observatory.   this building is where the 2.3m telescope lives.  the entire building rotates around so that the opening on the top faces the same direction as the telescope points.  astronomers have to be careful though, because the bathroom is located outside the dome, and they can easily get disoriented if the dome spins while they are doing their business in the middle of the night!

this is the 2.3-meter telescope that lives within the square building.

and this is the ancient little computer that one uses to change filters for one of the instruments. 

for dinner at the AAO planning day, we traveled ~15 minutes north of coonabarabran to an aboslutely gorgeous winery.  

of course we set up some small telescopes, and enjoyed looking at the sun through solar filters.

unfortunately, thick clouds covered the night sky.  we enjoyed a wine tasting after the meal, and watched as a spectacular lightning storm performed all around us. 

mote of dust

carl sagan is an author i often go back and reread.  his COSMOS series, written with ann druyan and steven soter, has made an impact on many people i know.   his "pale blue dot" monologue provides a chilling perspective on our special place in the universe.  

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

pythagorean visualization

remember learning that relation about a triangle with a right angle: A squared plus B squared equals C squared?  i think a lot of people can rattle that off off right behind E equals M c squared.  

the relation actually refers to the area inside the squares whose sides are the lengths of the edges of a right triangle. 

a little visualization goes a long way to understanding the popular phrase, eh?!

spotted by orbiting frog

NASA johnson style

this gangnam style parody is equal parts embarrassing, entertaining, and awesome. it was made by the student's of NASA's johnson space center, as an educational outreach tool. 

also note that the woman and two men wearing blue body suits are actual astronauts:  Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Mike Massimino and Clay Anderson.   

the gift

during the build up of the holiday season, it doent get much sweeter than this :)

a SUPERnova

another member of the super team!  ;)

i got this among the gems regularly posted by the i fucking love science facebook account.

the future belongs to us

the winners have been announced for the science, it's your thing video contest.  the australian video i previously posted took 3rd place!   

a great effort was made by all the entrants.   i really enjoyed watching these videos! 

here is the winning 1-minute video:




2nd place goes to an animated video called science, it's your thing:



congratulations to all involved!

a long week

this nicely illustrates my week. 

link

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty........ but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is  wrong.”
 
- buckminster fuller 



i'm happy for the weekend!