spacecrafts

Hubble is down :( It is not sending its signals back to Earth. There was a launch planned October 14th to add new instruments and replace/repair other parts. Now they are planning to fix this new problem at the same time, which will delay the mission until next year.

Herschel was also supposed to be launched this year, but it is now set to launch in March '09, if we're lucky. Not to mention $5mil went to MSL - Mars Science Laboratory, the next mars rover. By the way, here's the video that I saw at JPL when I got to see it's capsule being built. Cool project, poor Herschel.

Speaking of Mars, it snowed. What a pretty awesome breakthrough in human technology.

I also snagged a picture today of a full scale model of Pheonix, the lander that detected the snow.

oh brother

I've never been heckled at more in 24 hours than on Saturday. Me and Rachael took the Metro to downtown LA during the day and explored. Every group of guys we passed had to make annoying comments that we were in no way asking for. That night we went to club Bang again with our new friend Ozzy, but that didn't keep scumbags from pestering us. At least we enjoyed ourselves a little bit. I bought a distraught mexican man a happy meal on our way home. I'm not ready for another work week.

Stolen pictures from Rachael cause I forgot my camera:

Waiting for the train

Some cute girl

Some buildings

Club Bang with Ozzy

website

I started making a website today. Conjuring up my old HTML skills. My mentor told me to use Emacs for my text editing, but I think it's more complicated than just using a normal text editor. Lookin good though!

Info overload

I've been trying to put way too much into my brain lately and it's not a very good storage device.

I learned a little how radio telescope arrays work: You have multiple telescopes and move them around to create a circular patch of information in the sky. In most situations they use the earth's rotation to move one and keep one stationary (for a two telescope setup). That does some of the work, but they have to move it afterwords to get a bigger patch of the sky.

I learned that JPL (Jet Propultion Laboratory) doesn't do anything with jets or propultion. The name originated from it originally being used for these purposes around the 50's, but now it is really just full of labs, research, and spacecraft assembly.

I got to see the mission control center today. It's not as big as Houston's, but it's still pretty cool. It is the control center for a lot of things, but the only one I remember is Voyager. I had heard before, but didn't really grasp it, how Voyager has a record on it for any intelligence that may intercept it. It is a gold record encased in gold too. The case has instructions in binary on it about how to play the record. The timing is in relation to the spin of an electron in hydrogen... or something like that, I don't remember, nor do I know much about hydrogen atoms. But apparently an intelligent civilization could figure this out. If they found it. If they have eyes. If they see in visible wavelengths. It's still cool anyway, to have an artifact, from our species and planet, flying into the depths of space. It has people talking in many languages, songs from all over the world, and pictures that I guess you can somehow exctract.

It's the end of my second week and I already feel like I've learned so much... and so little at the same time. I've learned a lot more than I previously knew, but I also know I have a lot more to learn. It's really an amazing experience, I don't think this blog is doing it enough justice.

Marssss

Got to see some men in white body suits working on the landing capsule for the next Mars rover. Pretty amazing. There was a video there of what the rover will do and how it will land. It is very realistic and had cool sound effects, but I couldn't tell you what it was actually doing. Something about God's fingerprints is what Rachael said.

Star Formation

Astronomy Picture of the Day:


Explanation: How do stars form? A study of star forming region W5 by the sun-orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope provides clear clues by recording that massive stars near the center of empty cavities are older than stars near the edges. A likely reason for this is that the older stars in the center are actually triggering the formation of the younger edge stars. The triggered star formation occurs when hot outflowing gas compresses cooler gas into knots dense enough to gravitationally contract into stars. Spectacular pillars, left slowly evaporating from the hot outflowing gas, provide further visual clues. In the above scientifically-colored infrared image, red indicates heated dust, while white and green indicate particularly dense gas clouds. W5 is also known as IC 1848, and together with IC 1805 form a complex region of star formation popularly dubbed the Heart and Soul Nebulas. The above image highlights a part of W5 spanning about 2,000 light years that is rich in star forming pillars. W5 lies about 6,500 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia.

This is the kind of stuff I am studying. Right now I have to read a textbook and some previous surveys about what is currently known about star formation. It all happens in clouds of interstellar medium that become cold and dense enough to collapse into a star. Here is the wikipedia link for a basic overview. My project will help to understand the intermediate steps of star formation by tracing CI spectra, which has not yet been done because you need a telescope that is in space and that can detect far infrared wavelengths.

No pictures up yet from the club :( I can't believe it's only Tuesday ughhh, I just wanna dance again!

FTW

[for the win]




We had a great time last night! First we found $8 parking, aka CHEAP for Hollywood Blvd. The first place we went by was $2/15min. WTF? Then we ate at some cool computerized restaurant that wasn't even pricey. The club itself had 3 dancefloors (said 4 online, but 3 is good enough). There was an 80's room, a electro-hipster room, and a pop-hip-hop room. The hip-hop room was kinda way too packed and filled with bump-n-grinders, but we switched back and forth between 80's and hipster. I kinda thought hipsters liked 80's music, but all the people that were in there were older and danced slower, which made me feel out of place. I couldn't help it though, when we first got in there they played new order followed by joy division followed by the smiths.

There were some sights to see on the dance floor, including many moons, tounges in multiple mouths at once, fingers up short skirts... everything. We definitely got creeped on a few times, but managed to fend them off. We finally started talking to some cool people towards the end of the night: people that actually wanted to dance and not get in our pants. We got numbers from some locals so hopefully we'll have dance partners next time. Two girls dancing alone is too much of a neon sign.

Overall a great, successful night. I hope there are more to come.

**Pictures are FINALLY up: