Observation Log 8/12/06: The Perseid Meteor Shower

Between the 11th, 12th, and tonight (the 13th) I’ll probably have 6 hours of observing time. Each time out, thanks to the nearly-full moon, I see only the brightest meteors. Even so, I’ve seen on average 3 per hour, and I’ve enjoyed each one. My favorites are the meteors with the sparkly golden tails that linger a few seconds. About 1/3 of my sightings have been like that, with the rest divided between bright blue/white, quick-moving meteors, and the rest a mix of yellowish meteors with no tail to speak of. Even with the relative paucity of events, it’s been fun.

To my delight and surprise, Jan joined me for an hour last night. She brought out my green pointing laser so I could show her a passing polar-orbit satellite, a few constellations, and talk about the circumpolar constellations and the Summer triangle.

Ride #11 19.4 miles, 220.7 total

I had hoped to make this a little longer ride, perhaps 25-30 miles, but a few factors were against me. First, my usual ride, the Bacchetta Corsa, was on the fritz with another bottom bracket problem, and falling back to my old BikeE RX was much harder than I thought! Not only do the extra 20 pounds make hills seem much steeper, but my left knee just wasn’t ready for the large difference in body position. I had two sharp, stabbing pains in my left knee, within a minute of each other about 2/3 of the way through the ride, and each time I thought it was time to call it a day. Fortunately, a good stretch or two loosened up my leg, and I was able to keep going at a pretty fair pace.

This will not be the >1500 mile year i’ve hoped for since 1999, but at least Dad & I are still out there, enjoying the rides and the outdoors, and of course the company.

Link: Beautiful pictures of lightning strikes

I’ve always enjoyed lightning storms, and wished I had the camera gear and patience to have recorded some of the strikingly (sorry for the pun) gorgeous lightning displays I’ve seen. During one very violent storm in the 1980s, I saw a bolt that must have started out of sight, above the thick clouds, and it came through the bottoms and spread out in slow motion, looking like the petals of a flower. The whole display seemed to last 3-4 seconds, and I still remember it 20+ years later.

Anyway, here is a link to Knuttz’s Stuff – Lightnings. Thankfully he or she does have the gear and patience, and there are some stunning shots to enjoy. Here is another page of lightning photography by Michael Bath. There are many more pictures, and a stylistic difference, too: Bath’s pictures artfully capture the stark, ominous skies as well as the lightning. Very nice indeed.

The 2006 Perseid Meteor shower is here!

I just spent a pleasant hour outside watching a few beautiful meteors. Two long, slow ones with golden sparkly trails, and one faster blue/white one without a trail Read Sky and Telescope’s Guide to The Perseids! Here’s Astronomy Magazine’s coverage, this from New Scientist, from Space.About.com… and, of course, NASA.

To quote Jack Horkheimer, “Keep looking up!”

2006- Ride #10 19.4 miles, 201.3 total

Dad and I rode to Concord & back, and finally broke the 200 mile mark for the year! Whee!

Stardust@home: How you can help NASA locate comet particles returned by the Stardust mission.

This “@home” project is a little different than the others. Instead of donating spare CPU cycles, you’ll be looking at movies of the Aerogel taken through a microscope, finding and reporting the presence of particles from Comet Wild 2. Click here to learn more about Stardust@home, and even sign up to help.

UPDATE 8/5/06: The Project has gone live, and is now in progress!
UPDATE 3/31/08: The Project is still in progress!

Link: “Spirit of the Lone Eagle”: an audacious program for a manned Mars landing

Jim McLane, a writer and 20-year veteran of NASA’s manned space programs, has written a thought-provoking and compelling essay on near-future manned missions to Mars. He suggests a novel approach, one I’d never considered: “One man, one way.”

On reading this phrase, I misinterpreted it to mean “let’s send an astronaut to Mars, watch him or her do some science there, and when the air or food runs out, the astronaut will die.” That isn’t McLane’s idea at all. Quite the opposite, he envisions an Earth-born Martian as a long-lived, iconic figure with the ability to inspire and unite the disparate peoples of the Earth. Further, he wants to send more one-way astronauts over time, to form a colony on Mars. He believes that, given the right astronauts, there will be no need or desire to return to Earth.

Risky? You bet. Even here, McLane manages to evoke an unexpected reaction: the acceptance that humankind, from prehistoric times to the recent past, have relied on individuals or small groups to take huge risks for huge benefits. Imagine early hominids choosing a scout to leave the tribe for months or years in search of the tribe’s next home. Or early seafarers, leaving their families in search of new lands or riches, or to prove that the Earth wasn’t flat, knowing they could be gone for years or forever. Consider the many test pilots who willingly gave their lives to advance the science of aeronautics, so that air travel, with all its world-altering ramifications, could be routine and safe today.

Regardless of your initial reaction based on my limited summary, Jim McLane’s essay is a must-read for anyone with an opinion about space exploration.

The sad Landis saga, and other doping casualties, continued

It’s too hot and/or rainy for an amateur like me to get out for a ride, so I continue with more musings on the most recent cycling debacle, namely poor Floyd Landis, and the cycling regulatory organizations that appear to go out of their way to sully their own sport.