Good Morning Internet

Early this morn­ing, I crawled out of bed and went to the front of my apart­ment to watch the win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipse. Thank­fully, I had the per­fect angle through my win­dow to watch the Earth’s shadow move across the face of the Moon with­out hav­ing to bun­dle up and face the cold like so many of my brave friends on Twitter.

I tried tak­ing some pho­tos, but the kit lens on my Canon T2i just wasn’t cut­ting it. My iPhone just laughed at me and spit out some blurry images. But I wasn’t wor­ried. I knew that the Internet’s bril­liant astropho­tog­ra­phers were snap­ping pho­tos with cam­era rigs far more impres­sive than mine. I decided to relax, put down the cam­era, and pick up the binoculars.

I think it was the most spec­tac­u­lar lunar eclipse I ever saw. The sky over Bal­ti­more was com­pletely clear, and the Moon turned a deep rusty orange that was stag­ger­ingly beau­ti­ful, even from the mid­dle of the city. Before we had sci­ence, peo­ple must have freaked right out when this kind of thing hap­pened. (Or slept through it.)

I was right about the tal­ented Inter­net pho­tog­ra­phers. Check out this time-lapse video of the eclipse by William Castle­man.

Win­ter Sol­stice Lunar Eclipse from William Castle­man on Vimeo.

[Win­ter Sol­stice Lunar Eclipse via Giz­modo]

Related Posts:

• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• Per­seid Fail
• The Per­seid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight

(Photo credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers)

I started writ­ing about the NASA Tweetup nearly a dozen times now. I’m hav­ing trou­ble encap­su­lat­ing exactly how pro­found of an expe­ri­ence it was, maybe because I’m still wrap­ping my head around it.

In the weeks lead­ing up, a group of very orga­nized peo­ple coor­di­nated the rental of a vaca­tion house, which we dubbed the Big House. The enthu­si­asm peo­ple had in the Google group and on Twit­ter was infec­tious. I didn’t know any­one, but I was excited to dive in and meet them. Within a mat­ter of hours of arriv­ing, we were fam­ily. These are new friends I will keep for the rest of my life.

At Kennedy Space Cen­ter, we saw things that aren’t nor­mally avail­able to the pub­lic. The launch was delayed mul­ti­ple times, and then even­tu­ally scrubbed, but Stephanie Schier­holz, the tweetup orga­nizer and our per­sonal superhero/rockstar, coor­di­nated extra activ­i­ties and more unfor­get­table moments than we could have dreamed. What was orig­i­nally a three-day trip was extended into a week-long expe­ri­ence that, for lack of a bet­ter term, changed my life. We saw the inside of the Vehi­cle Assem­bly Build­ing. We vis­ited the launch­pad at sun­set. We explored the Kennedy Space Cen­ter vis­i­tor cen­ter at leisure and rode the Shut­tle Launch Expe­ri­ence mul­ti­ple times. At the Big House, we stayed up late, forged new rela­tion­ships, played music, laughed harder than any of us had laughed in a long time, ate, drank, and basked in the pres­ence of some of the most cre­ative, smart, fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple I had ever met.

I am work­ing on a much longer post about the whole week, but in the mean­time, my friends Raam and Tal­lu­lah both wrote incred­i­bly stir­ring pieces that express the spirit of the expe­ri­ence much bet­ter than I can right now. It’s absolutely required read­ing. We also had no short­age of pho­tog­ra­phers on hand, so be sure to check out my Flickr set as well as the tweetup group.

As of right now, NASA plans to launch Dis­cov­ery no ear­lier than 2:52 a.m. on Decem­ber 3. Stephanie informed us that our badges will allow us into the press area dur­ing this new launch win­dow. (See? She’s still our super­hero.) So, pre­sented with this aston­ish­ing oppor­tu­nity, I will head back down to the Space Coast next week. There’s no way I could miss this.

Related Posts:

• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup
• The year of adven­ture continues
• Video of this morning’s win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipse
• Per­seid Fail

I owe a lot of my inter­est in sci­ence and space explo­ration to my par­ents. Grow­ing up, my Dad took me on field trips to explore plan­ets and stars through tele­scopes in the dead of win­ter. My first up-close look at the Moon knocked my socks off. We put down blan­kets in the back­yard and counted mete­ors dur­ing show­ers. My par­ents bought sub­scrip­tions for me to kids’ sci­ence and space mag­a­zines, and I once got to spend a sum­mer at the the Mary­land Sci­ence Center’s plan­e­tar­ium in Baltimore.

A few years ago, when Mars and the Earth were closer to each other than they’d ever be in our life­times, my dad and I gazed at the Mar­t­ian polar ice caps through his tele­scope. It was stunning.

Just this past May, I was lucky enough to road trip down to Florida with my sis­ter and father to watch my first-ever space shut­tle launch, the launch of Space Shut­tle Atlantis, STS-132. Right now, I’m beside myself with excite­ment for the NASA Tweetup this weekend.

I’m so thank­ful that my par­ents intro­duced me to space at a young age. Just a few min­utes ago, I got this email from my dad:

The date for the next launch draws near and I’m excited even tho I’m not going! So I thought you might like to see this pic of your space shut­tle toy that I found clean­ing up today. Still in great work­ing con­di­tion!
0:-)

I totally remem­ber this toy. It was one of my favorites. Right now, I kind of want to go home and play with it.

Related Posts:

• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup
• Video of this morning’s win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipse
• Seag­ull Cen­tury 2010
• The year of adven­ture continues

This after­noon, NASA issued a press release about the tweetup. This just got real! Here’s an excerpt:

Par­tic­i­pants at the NASA Tweetup on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 will tour Kennedy and meet with shut­tle tech­ni­cians, man­agers, engi­neers and astro­nauts. They also will get a demon­stra­tion of Robo­naut, a human-like robot sim­i­lar to the one that will be deliv­ered to the space sta­tion with this mis­sion. The Tweetup cul­mi­nates with the view­ing of the shut­tle launch.

Robo­naut is seri­ously cool. It looks like the miss­ing mem­ber of Daft Punk.

As you can imag­ine, my Twit­ter and Flickr streams will be filled with all the NASA and shut­tle launch good­ness your poor eyes can stand. With a lit­tle luck, I’ll pick up that shiny new cam­era I’ve had my eye on (or maybe a rich bene­fac­tor will anony­mously gift it to me!) and cap­ture some slick video of the event.

Of course, no mat­ter how I cap­ture or doc­u­ment this expe­ri­ence, all the best stuff will end up right here on this blog, too.

13 days! I’m so excited!

Related Posts:

• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• The year of adven­ture continues

After a line of thun­der­storms blew through the area, it seemed like we’d have a nice clear view of the sky for the Per­seid meteor shower last night.

Then a bunch of stu­pid clouds and haze rolled in and blocked every­thing, even­tu­ally turn­ing into rain. I know because I woke up almost every hour, ran to the win­dow, then went back to bed dis­ap­pointed yet stu­pidly hope­ful that, if I checked back an hour later, the clouds would move out and reveal a spec­tac­u­lar pre-dawn display.

Well that never hap­pened. In fact, the stu­pid, jerky clouds are still hid­ing the sky as I write this, and I’m exhausted from tak­ing a series of one-hour naps. I’m still irra­tionally hope­ful that the weather will clear tonight, despite all weather fore­casts to the contrary. The rest of me wants to make other plans and wait for the Ori­on­ids in October.

Stu­pid clouds.

Related Posts:

• The Per­seid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight
• Video of this morning’s win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipse
• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space

The Per­seids, an annual meteor shower, will peak tonight in the north­ern hemi­sphere. Each year, the Earth passes through the debris trail left behind by the Swift-Tuttle comet as it makes its 130-year trip around the sun. At the shower’s peak, there can be as many as 60 mete­ors per hour, so if you have a clear view of the sky tonight, all you need to do is look up. Plus, as an added bonus, there will be a thin cres­cent moon tonight, so that means less moon­light to inter­fere with the meteors.

You’ll see the most mete­ors between mid­night and dawn, since that’s the time of day you’ll be star­ing up through the atmos­phere on the lead­ing side of the Earth as it we pass through and burn up bits of comet dust, but there should be a good show all night. If you’ve never stayed up (or woken up early) to watch a meteor shower, you owe yourself.

I hoped to get a glimpse of some mete­ors this morn­ing, but mother nature decided to bring a line of thun­der­storms through the Bal­ti­more area. Hope­fully the weather will coop­er­ate tonight and early tomor­row morn­ing. If not, I’ll have to wait for the Ori­onid meteor shower in October.

Related Posts:

• Per­seid Fail
• Video of this morning’s win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipse
• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space

On the way home from cel­e­brat­ing my mom’s birth­day on Tues­day, we were treated to a gor­geous sun­set, cour­tesy a series of thun­der­storms that moved through the area. As it got dark, this tow­er­ing thun­der­head put on a breath­tak­ing dis­play of cloud-to-cloud light­ning. It reminded me a lit­tle of a human brain, lit up in dif­fer­ent sec­tions as elec­tric­ity coursed through it. It seemed very much alive.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

I took this photo dur­ing the STS-132 launch yes­ter­day. I just lis­tened to audio I recorded at the launch, and it’s fan­tas­tic. Look for that in an upcom­ing podcast.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

See you at the launch tomorrow.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

We made it to our motel in Titusville, Florida, and we’re stay­ing in the “Atlantis” sec­tion. On the door, our room num­ber is flanked by two Space Shut­tles. In fact, there are lit­tle details like this all over the motel, and it’s turned me into a super-excited ver­sion of my ten-year-old self.

A few min­utes ago, I re-watched the episode of When We Left Earth about the Space Shut­tle pro­gram, and it’s finally hit­ting me: I’m going to see my first launch tomorrow!

Par­don me while I go bounce off the walls for a while.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts