Monthly Archives: August 2016

August 31, 2016 · 23:02

August’s Passing – Farewell “Space Station Live”

Not only referring to the passing of the month of August, but to a passing that coincides with the end of August.

NASA-TV is a network which I have on as “background noise” a lot of the time and on which I watch certain shows regularly. One such show, which has been on for years and years, was “Space Station Live.” Originally an hour-long show airing Monday through Friday (for the most part) at 11:00 ET and 08:00 PT, it would get repeated two or three times during each day. About two years ago it was cut to a half hour show. (In retrospect, this should have been a sign, I guess.)

“Space Station Live” would have little features about experiments being carried out on ISS, notices about upcoming “dynamic events” such as launches, landings, EVAs, news conferences, and so on. It also would often just have five or ten minutes at a time of just watching the Earth go by underneath the ISS or watching the crew work inside. Each show would be hosted by one of a crew of NASA public information officers, including Rob Navias, Nicole Cloutier, Josh Byerly, Brandi Dean, and Amiko Kauderer.

“Space Station Live” wasn’t always gripping, action packed, or awe inspiring, but it was dependable. It was a fixture, at least in my life. Maybe that’s because it came on at just the right time for me to have it on while I was getting ready for work in the morning. Look at the morning news any day and see if watching people working in space isn’t less stressful and annoying.

A few weeks ago it was announced that “Space Station Live” would be phased out in August and end at the beginning of September. Its last episode was this morning.

I haven’t heard it said outright, but a part of the justification seems to be that work on the ISS has gotten, dare we say it, a tiny little bit routine. I know that the men and women who are flying to space and all of those who support them on the ground know exactly how dangerous an endeavor space travel can be. Saying that the daily activities of life and work on ISS is “routine” doesn’t downplay the hazards. But the fact is that there are lots of professions and activities that are hazardous and can turn disastrous in a heartbeat yet are done routinely. Mining. Oil rig workers. Police and firemen. Loggers. The list goes on and on.

Note that NASA-TV is NOT turning off its cameras or shutting down. There are still weekly summary shows of activities on ISS (“Earth To Ground”) as well as dozens of other educational and documentary shows. NASA-TV will continue to provide live coverage of those aforementioned “dynamic events” as well as news conferences, educational and media events from ISS, NASA Socials (yeah!!) and so on. Just no more “Space Station Live.”

Contrary to all of the bullshit and nonsense you’ll see from the conspiracy nuts and whackadoodles out there, this isn’t being done to cover up a steady stream of UFOs that they claim to see on video from the ISS. In addition to all of the ongoing coverage from the ISS, there are live feeds from ISS on Ustream and YouTube which are available 24/7 when the ISS is in range of one of their communications satellites. I may have to set up a spare computer or something to stream that feed into the television for my new default background eye candy.

So, farewell to “Space Station Live,” a show that kept me company a great many hours. Congratulations and thank you to Brandi, Josh, Amiko, Rob, Nicole, and all of the other hostesses and hosts. I hope I’ll be seeing you all soon in other programming events.

Finally, if any of you are reading this early enough, tonight there’s one of those dynamic events which will be carried live for several hours. Starting at 06:30 ET and 03:30 PT two American astronauts, Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins, go outside the ISS to make some repairs and install new high definition television cameras. If you don’t get NASA-TV on your cable or satellite system, you can watch it on your computer.

I’ll be keeping an eye on it while I’m getting ready for work tomorrow morning.

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Filed under Space

August 30, 2016 · 22:38

Props Where Props Are Due

As one who has on occasion attempted to find rhyme and scansion in words coming out of my brain, I have a great deal of admiration that those that can do the strange and unusual with that art form.

One classic example just ran across my SiriusXM feed – “Nemesis” by Shriekback. Anyone who can use “parthenogenesis” in the chorus and make it not just fit, but fit well, is hitting on all cylinders.

A similar gem from the country music gengre is Luke Bryan’s “Country Man.” The use of “Hoobastank” is not only good for a double word score, but its context in a country song is priceless. The fact that it’s a really funny sounding word is gravy.

Any other suggestions for this highly specialized genre?

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August 29, 2016 · 23:22

No Context For You – August 29th

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No, this is not Cherenkov radiation leaking off of the edge of the edge of the Schwarszwschild radius after the dishes in the dishwasher collapsed into a singularity.

No dishes or kitchen appliances were harmed in the making of this photo.

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August 28, 2016 · 23:19

An Empty Nest?

No, not us. We already know that we’re empty nesters.

No, I’m talking about Rocky and Raquel, the raccoons that live in our neighborhood, often on our roof under the eaves from the garage.

You’ll recall that Raquel has been cruising about (pictures here, here, and here) for the last couple of months with at least three kits. But ever since we got back from our New York City vacation about two weeks ago, I haven’t heard any of them gallivanting around on the roof.

Tonight when I went to take the trash out, I spooked something large on the roof right outside the door. It was well after dark so I could only see an outline for a second when it was silhouetted against the sky, but there wasn’t much doubt that it was a large raccoon. Later, I’ve heard some movement on the roof, both over by their garage hidey-hole and by where they drink the water that condensates and runs off from the air conditioner.

But I’ve only heard one animal, not three or four.

I’m speculating wildly, but I think it’s probably Raquel and that the kits are grown enough to all be off on their own.

The question is where “off on their own” is. Given that we’ve had this cycle going on for years here, you would think that almost every house would have their own raccoon tenant. But while we do see a lot more than I ever expected to see in the LA suburbs, it’s not exactly a crowd of trash bandits.

I suspect the other half of the circle of life is at work here. We have some big hawks that could easily pick off a cat or a small, young raccoon. We have dogs in almost every back yard and while most of them are just, well, dogs, one of them has got to get lucky and catch a critter every now and then. We have our share of coyotes who roam the area from time to time and they could take down a full-sized raccoon, although it might be a pretty equal battle.

But I think that the biggest “predator” is probably the automobile. One will occasionally spot a raccoon carcass out there among the other suburban road kill. I don’t know what the average life span of a suburban raccoon is, but I’ll bet it would be a lot longer if they learned to stay out of the streets.

Time to put the TrailCam back out there.

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Filed under Critters, Los Angeles

August 27, 2016 · 22:26

That Moment, August 27th Version

That moment when you’re gently sliding the dish washer racks in and out to see if there’s anything actually jamming the tracks or blocking the spinning sprayers because you’ve got it so full it probably is in danger of growing its own event horizon but you have that one last little dish that you’re sure you can get in if you just Tetrisificate the contents and move that little bit just a millimeter here and that other plate just a micron there…

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…only to recognize (after succeeding, of course) that you spent ten minutes trying to fit in a single small dish that you could have washed by hand in thirty seconds.

It’s not about that kind of efficiency, it’s about this kind of efficiency!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Paul

August 26, 2016 · 23:29

Fade To Indigo

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So many billions of shades of color. Not to mention the infrared, ultraviolet, radio, and gamma rays.

Is someone on Proxima Centauri B looking up a their sky with the same sense of wonder and awe at the beauty of it?

Not to be a buzzkill, but probably not. There’s an excellent Twitter thread by Dr. Kathryn J Mack (@AstroKatie) which you can read here even if you don’t have a Twitter account. The short version is that because there are so many hundreds and thousands of variables that we have no data on, the odds are massively stacked against Proxima B actually being inhabited or actually “habitable” by anything resembling us.

Proxima Centauri is a dim, red star. Proxima B is orbiting in its “habitable zone,” which is defined as the region around the star where it would be warm enough to have water on the surface not freeze solid, and cool enough so that it doesn’t boil away. For obvious reasons, this is also commonly referred to as “The Goldilocks Zone.”

Being in the “habitable zone” doesn’t make a planet actually be “habitable.” To hold life similar to ours, it would still need an atmosphere, water that is busy being neither frozen nor boiled, and probably a magnetic field to protect the planet from solar flares. We can’t tell if Proxima B has any of those things.

But the odds are against it. Because Proxima Centauri is such a dim, cool, red star, its habitable zone is much closer in than the Sun’s is. This has a couple of likely scenarios, mostly bad for life as we know it.

First, the planet is likely to be in tidal lock with one side always facing the sun and one side always in darkness. (This is very similar to the way Earth’s moon is tidally locked, with one face always turned toward the Earth.) With a sun and a planet, you’ll get one hemisphere boiling and the other freezing. You might have a strip along that terminator that would be tolerable, but that combination of heat on one side and cold on the other would drive hellacious straight-line winds, quite possibly hundreds of miles an hour.

Assuming you have an atmosphere. The atmosphere on Mars, for example, is thin and getting thinner by the millennium due to the planet’s lack of a magnetic field. The magnetic field blocks all or most of the worst effects of the solar winds. Left unabated, the solar wind over time will carry away the atmosphere and leave a planet looking like the moon or Mercury.

Can we tell if Proxima B has an atmosphere or a magnetic field? Not at the moment – but we’re close. The James Webb Space Telescope (which I saw being assembled here last year) could directly image the atmosphere, and radio telescopes or other instruments in the next decade could determine if there’s a magnetic field. Also, if there is an atmosphere and a magnetic field there should be aurora, which the JWST could look for.

Should we say it’s too hard and give up? Of course not, don’t be ridiculous.

Should we have newspaper and website headlines screaming about “Earth’s twin” being “right next door” and “habitable?” Of course not, don’t be ridiculous.

How about if we stay cool, breathe a bit, get excited about the prospect, work to get some actual data – and in the meantime rest assured that even if there isn’t someone on Proxima B looking at their sunset (probably through a 200 mph wind!), it’s an unbelievable huge universe and even with the long odds that life faces, there are almost certainly some things some where (and probably billions of some things on billions of some where planets) staring in awe at their sunsets.

They just might not be 4.25 light years away.

Or they might!

Let’s find out.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space

August 25, 2016 · 23:19

Jackson Browne Said It Best

“Running On Empty” – yep, that’s about it. I remember listening to that song and knowing EXACTLY how it felt, back when I was in college, taking a full load of courses as a physics major and working a full-time graveyard shift job to pay for it, plus a second part-time job in the summers.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. But now, while my brain might still think I’m twenty years old, my cells aren’t always jumping onto that particular bandwagon.

It’s not fair.

On the other hand, Jackson Browne also wrote “The Load Out,” so that can make everything better real fast.

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August 24, 2016 · 22:20

Like Sauron’s All-Seeing Eye

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First use a five-year drought to turn everything to tinder. Next toss in any random spark in order to fill the sky to the west of us with megatons of smoke.

Repeat as necessary so there are so many fires burning across the state that they can’t possibly fight them all as aggressively as they would like. This leaves fires like this one that are out in the middle of nowhere in the mountains to just be allowed to burn for the most part while the bulk of the firefighters and planes are trying to save tens of thousands of homes elsewhere.

Sort of a brute force way to get spectacular sunsets, but it seems to be working well!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

August 23, 2016 · 21:45

Slacker!!

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Look at that pathetic performance on the 6th, 7th, and 8th! What the hell was I doing all day?!

Oh, yeah, I was chained to a series of desks trying to get enough done so I could go off to The Big Apple for eight days.

Without looking back at the panoramas for that week, can you guess which days I:

a) walked all over Central Park for hours, only to realize that I had still only seen maybe 20% of it?

b) walked all over Liberty Island, Ellis Island, the 9/11 Memorial Museum, and did the Bataan Death March through a huge chunk of Lower Manhattan?

c) started the day by walking the Brooklyn Bridge?

Sure. I knew you could.

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Filed under Health, Running, Travel

August 22, 2016 · 22:48

No Context For You – August 22nd

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Hint: Neither the surface of Pluto nor Enceladus

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