Category: Space

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After a failed attempt yesterday, I was even more determined to try to spot comet Pan-STARRS tonight when it would appear near the moon. Naturally, the morning was fogged in, and the fog bank remained on the western horizon all day. I looked on Google Earth for a nearby hill with a western view and public access, and I found Fred Hesse, Jr. Park in Rancho Palos Verdes.

I arrived just minutes before sunset, and found thirty or so people lined up along the western edge of the hill with telescopes, binoculars, and cameras on tripods. It reminded me a lot of the eclipse I watched last May (also in Palos Verdes, though at a different park).

Hesse Park has a clear view to the west and southwest, with open space below, then houses, then the tops of the clouds. (I’m not sure what’s usually visible below the cloud layer). Off to the southwest you can see the northwestern section of Catalina Island. To the north you can see Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains. Way off to the northwest you can see some of the channel islands.

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View 1: Jupiter is visible, but the moon oversaturates the camera. In the other: The moon is clear, but Jupiter is too dim to see.

I walked out to get the laundry tonight, looked up and saw the moon and Jupiter practically next to each other. I took a quick shot with the phone, then went back in to get a better camera. (Unfortunately, the best camera I have is in the shop right now.) The phone picture is at upper left, the camera picture at lower right.

Nothing makes you appreciate how bright the moon really is like trying to avoid overexposing it without making the second brightest planet disappear.

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Space Shuttle Endeavour in a parking lot, seen from the front.

Last month I had the good fortune to watch Endeavour’s landing at LAX from the office building where I work. Today I had the opportunity to see the space shuttle up close while it stopped at a parking lot in Westchester.

When I got to work this morning, the shuttle had already left the airport hangar where it had spent the last month, and was sitting in a parking lot a mile or so away. I didn’t have time to go look at it, but I did have time to climb up to the top of the parking structure and look for it.

Space Shuttle in a STAPLES parking lot, seen from a ways off.

The first thing I spotted was the distinctive tail, and I walked along the top floor until I could see as much of the shuttle as possible. It looked out of place surrounded by trees and a Staples sign, though I couldn’t help thinking, “Space shuttle? Yeah, we’ve got that.” I took a few zoomed pictures with my camera, then one really grainy with my phone for the “now” impact, then headed into the office. Continue reading →

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Update: If you’re looking for photos from Endeavour’s trip through the LA streets in October, I’ve got those too.

And that’s it. The final flight of the space shuttle has come to an end.

The last shuttle landing I saw was Discovery in 1988. My family went out to Edwards Air Force Base to watch it land. I posted a photo essay on the event last summer when the shuttle flights stopped.

The 1988 landing was a normal Shuttle landing. It landed under its own power, from orbit, and it was all business. We civilians camped out all night on a dry lake bed, kept outside a fence so far away from the landing strip we could barely see the shuttle without binoculars.

This time it was being carried by an airplane, from another airport. Safety wasn’t any more of an issue than a normal flight, so they landed at a regular airport. (Though it was escorted by military aircraft.) And since it was the last-ever shuttle flight, there was a bit of showmanship to the flight plan: Continue reading →

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We attended Planetfest in Pasadena yesterday. It’s still going on now, a two-day event by the Planetary Society timed to match tonight’s landing of NASA’s Curiosity space probe on Mars.

Inflatable mockup of the Curiosity Mars rover.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but it was basically a bunch of space enthusiasts and people in the industry. SpaceX has a mock-up of their crew capsule, and other sponsors had exhibits with things like space plane mock-ups or geological drills. There was a life-size inflatable model of the Curiosity rover. There was a single track of programming with speakers on topics from the actual science of Martian exploration to the question of just why we explore space in the first place. Katie caught the Sally Ride tribute while I walked J around the exhibits, and we both watched Bill Nye’s talk about “Our Place in Space,” which he finished up with a fun science demonstration featuring liquid nitrogen marshmallows, gas toruses, a candle, and Robert Picardo.

SpaceX crew capsule mock-up.

The exhibits for “kids of all ages” turned out to be for kids from 4 on up. J wasn’t really interested in the Martian soil uplift demo, or the dirty snowball CO2 comet demo, but he liked watching the Xbox Mars Lander game, and he was fascinated by the robot that picked up and tossed basketballs. He had fun hanging out with grandma and grandpa, at least, and playing with a magnetic meteorite. (The tiny fragment of verified Martian meteorite was carefully mounted on a slab with plastic wrap to protect it from skin oils, but they had a couple of non-valuable rocks that you could pick up and hold.)

A robot that plays basketball.

A family friend invited us to the after party at the mall across the street. It was divided into two main areas: the sci-fi-themed dance floor out on the plaza, and a set of tables on the terrace above for the sit-and-talk crowd, where the main event was a participatory art project: A group had set up one blank postcard for each day of Curiosity’s journey from Earth to Mars, and was asking attendees to draw what they imagined the probe would write home about.

Planetfest party at Paseo Colorado in Pasadena