We all share the same sky

Most amateur astronomy clubs have made public outreach a primary goal, as members seek to share their passion for the stars with others. Such associations typically focus on work in their own home towns, but Mike Simmons, founder and president of Astronomers Without Borders (AWB), has turned the notion of “think globally, act locally” upside down.

“Think about what it is you do here and act on a global scale,” Simmons advised members of the Seattle Astronomical Society at its annual banquet earlier this month. “That’s what we’re doing. That’s possible now because of the technology we have. It has become a global village; we’ve created that through astronomy.”

The author, left, and Astronomers Without Borders founder
Mike Simmons showed off their snazzy astronomy neckties
before Simmons spoke at the Seattle Astronomical
Society’s annual banquet Jan. 19. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

AWB has an ambitious portfolio of projects centered on an online community that allows members to share tips and experiences, do tutoring, and share materials, resources, and gear with other astronomy amateurs all over the world. For all that technology helps happen, it’s the personal human contact that makes AWB special.

Simmons made his first trip to the Northwest in 1979 to view a total eclipse of the Sun, the last one to be visible from the U.S. He’s seen a half-dozen other total eclipses, and it was his travel to do so that sparked his interest in doing astronomical outreach around the world. He is arguably the hobby’s top international ambassador. Simmons particularly likes to visit Iran, a nation whose people shattered a public perception that many westerners likely share.

“Iran is perhaps the most pro-American country I’ve ever been to,” Simmons said. “The governments don’t get along, but people-to-people we do.”

Sometimes astronomy proves to be the great diplomat. Simmons described a star party in Iran that brought together friends from both sides of the border between Iran and Iraq.

“Iranians and Iraquis generally won’t talk to each other,” Simmons explained. But in this case, a mutual friend and mutual interests erased the line in the sand and helped create new friendships.

“Astronomy did this,” Simmons said. “It ended up happening because they realized they were doing the same thing and were only a few miles apart.”

That’s the “wow” factor amateur astronomers are looking
for when sharing celestial delights with others. This young
man was using a solar telescope at an event in
Romania. Photo: Astronomers Without Borders.

Simmons viewed the 2004 transit of Venus from Iran, setting up in the town of Pasargad near the tomb of Cyrus the Great. Americans with telescopes were such a draw that the event attracted news media coverage. Simmons said the television satellite uplink station was an interesting contrast to the 2,500-year-old monument in the background.

Simmons said there is tremendous interest in amateur astronomy in Iran, but they just don’t have the gear. Telescopes are very expensive, and many amateurs cannot afford them. Simmons said that AWB would love to help, but that U.S. government restrictions prevent any sort of aid to Iran.

“I can’t give them a toothbrush,” he said.

During his presentation Simmons showed numerous photos from The World at Night, an AWB-affiliated effort through which expert landscape photographers share their images of the night sky paired with landmarks from around the globe. These images have often made it onto the popular Astronomy Picture of the Day site.

“It is the best demonstration that you could possibly have that we share the same sky,” Simmons said. “Often you don’t know what that foreground is, or you recognize it as being a church or a mosque or a synagogue. It could be anything, but the sky is the same. We’re just looking at the same sky from different places on this world, like having different windows that the universe passes by.”

Simmons said that’s the main point behind Astronomers Without Borders, whose motto is “One People—One Sky.” Astronomy is a universal interest.

“It’s been in every culture throughout time,” he said. “We all share the same sky. We’re sharing what we do when we look out at the rest of the universe.”

Remembering fallen astronauts

By odd coincidence the three tragedies that have befallen the United States space program have occurred at this time of year.

The space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds
after being launched Jan. 28, 1986. Photo: NASA.

Today is the 46th anniversary of the first—the Apollo 1 cabin fire that killed the three-man crew during a launch pad test. Tomorrow marks the 27th anniversary of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger a minute and 13 seconds after STS-51-L was launched from the Kennedy Space Center, killing all seven crewmembers. And Friday, Feb. 1 will be the tenth anniversary of the deaths of seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated during the re-entry of STS-107.

The Challenger disaster is especially vivid in my memory, even though I didn’t actually see it happen. I was a cub reporter at KJR radio in Seattle at the time, and was working the late-night shift, so I’d slept late that day as usual. By late morning or early afternoon I wandered out to get a haircut. My barber immediately struck up a conversation about the space shuttle that blew up. I had no idea, and remember thinking he must be joking. The whole idea was unthinkable and too horrible to imagine. But later I saw the video of the launch on television, and the photos of the smoke plume of the launch and explosion are certainly iconic images.

The crew of that  final mission included schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, who was one of the astronauts killed in the explosion. McAuliffe was chosen for the flight from among thousands of applicants to NASA’s teacher in space program. As a side note, at the time there also was a journalist-in-space program, and I was all set to apply, even given the long odds that an unknown radio news producer from Seattle would beat out Tom Brokaw for the seat. The program was scrapped after Challenger. Strangely, there was apparently some consideration of starting the program back up a decade ago when the Columbia disaster happened. It may be bad luck to even consider letting a journalist near a spacecraft!

L-R: Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee
were killed in a cabin fire during a launchpad test of Apollo 1
on Jan. 27, 1967. Photo: NASA.

I don’t really remember the Apollo 1 fire or watching any news coverage of it. I was nine years old at the time, and already a space nut. I kept a scrapbook of news clippings about the Gemini missions and space walks and the exciting adventures of the astronauts. What I do remember is the big, bold headline announcing the tragic deaths of the astronauts. Again, it was unthinkable. I imagine those scrapbooks are still over at the old homestead.

When NASA looks back on these anniversaries it is in celebration. Earlier this month NASA Administrator Charles Bolden talked about the upcoming day of commemoration while on a tour of the shuttle Full Fuselage Trainer at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

“We go out to Arlington [National Cemetery] and we honor the memory of all three crews that were lost over the history of human spaceflight,” Bolden said. “We think about it every day, but we take those particular times and set them aside when we can let everyone else join us and help celebrate.”

Bolden is in Israel right now helping to celebrate the life of Ilan Ramon, an Israeli astronaut who was aboard Columbia when it was lost in 2003.

“We lost some really valiant people,” Bolden said, “but what their sacrifice brought is what we should really be thinking about. The fact is that they dared to challenge and do things differently. Because of what they did we’re well on the cusp of going deeper into space than we’ve ever done before.”

NASA administrator Charlie Bolden during a February 2011 event at
 the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Photo: Ted Heutter, Museum of Flight.

Bolden said it’s important for museums to tell the story of space travel as we look at the International Space Station, watch the growing involvement of private, commercial companies in space travel, and consider the possibilities for mining of asteroids or of human missions to other planets.

“None of that stuff would have been possible had it not been for the sacrifices of those in the shuttle program,” said Bolden, himself a four-time shuttle astronaut.

The Museum of Flight has a special event planned for next Saturday, Feb. 2, which will remember the astronauts as part of its Michael P. Anderson Memorial Aerospace Program. Anderson is a Spokane native and astronaut who also died aboard Columbia. Former astronaut Robert L. Curbeam, Jr., who was a member of Anderson’s astronaut class, will keynote the event, which also will include a panel discussion by local African Americans who are pursuing successful careers in aerospace. The event begins at 2 p.m. and is free with museum admission.

Neil Shubin and the Universe Within

Dr. Neil Shubin says we humans are walking fossil repositories.

“Written inside our bodies is the history that extends from the Big Bang over 13.7 billion years ago, to the formation of the Earth and the Earth-Moon system and the solar system,” Shubin said at a talk Thursday evening at Town Hall Seattle. “We have interactions with the solar system embedded within ourselves.”

Shubin, a University of Chicago paleontologist, is the author of The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People. He is best known for the discovery of Tiktaalik roseae, a so-called “fishapod” that was something of missing link, one of the first fish to sport limbs and start crawling around on land, bridging the gap between fish and other early tetrapods. Shubin began writing about science for popular audiences because he saw that many in the general public view as bizarre things that most scientists have accepted as fact for more than a century. He said it is important for us to understand science and history because it changes how we see the world.

“When you see history what you see is connections that exist among yourself and the rest of the living world and the physical world. Indeed, when you look at our own bodies with the lens of history, what you see is that in every organ, cell, and gene of our bodies we have history,” he said. “The point is seeing the history inside of us that begins with the shared history that we have with the rest of life on our planet, and then the history of the cosmos beyond.”

Shubin pointed to his own discovery as an example of our connection to other living creatures. He said Tiktaalik and the transition from fish to tetrapod wasn’t just some oddball event 375 million years ago.

Dr. Neil Shubin with the fossil skeleton
of Tiktaalik and a model re-creation of
the fishapod. Photo: U. of Chicago.

“That wrist that appeared for the first time in Tiktaalik and its cousins is something that’s become our own wrist,” he said. “That neck that we see for the first time in Tiktaalik and its cousins is something that’s become our own neck. So every time you bend your wrist and every time you shake your head you can thank these guys and you can thank the fish-to-tetrapod transition.”

“We know that because we can trace this transition from individual bones all the way from fish to us,” Shubin continued. “We can do it with comparative anatomy with living creatures, we can do it genetically and developmentally with living creatures, and we have the fossils to bridge these gaps.”

Our connections to the universe are just as profound, Shubin said. The elements of which we are made were created during the Big Bang and heavier elements were fused in the cores of stars and spread by novae and supernovae.

“Our atoms are derived from shared connections and shared history with the cosmos, with the universe. Our molecules and proteins are derived from a shared history with the solar system and the planet, and the shaping and working of our organs come about from interactions with the biosphere, other living creatures, as well as the planet and solar system itself,” Shubin said.

The most fascinating connection between the solar system and us is the biological clock discovered in the early 1960s by French geologist Michel Siffre, who went deep into a cave for several months. He couldn’t see the Sun or feel the turning of the Earth. He had no sense of night or day. Yet his rest, activity, and biological functions all clicked along on a 24-hour cycle.

“DNA and protein activity rises and falls during the day, and it does so as a kind of a pendulum, like a clock has,” Shubin explained. “There’s a negative feedback loop of activities between genes and proteins that causes it to rise and fall in a set period.” Each of our two trillion cells is a little time clock, set to the spinning of the Earth.

It’s a wonder we’re ever late for anything.

The Earth’s climate also has left its mark, according to Shubin. Changes in our planet’s orbit and its wobble around its axis created a cycle of ice ages that had a profound impact. Ice changed East Africa from woodland into open savannah; it was in that habitat, Shubin noted, that our ancient ancestors really began to flourish as bipeds.

“Glaciation has been a major factor in human history, human evolution, and in much of the distribution and diversity of life that we have on the planet today,” Shubin said.

Shubin concluded his talk by noting that science, from Copernicus to Darwin, has blown up the human notion of itself as the center of the universe and shown us to be just another interconnected member in the tree of life.

“As science has removed us from this special perch, I believe it’s given us something different, it has connected us in the deepest ways,” he said. “It’s connected us to the rest of living creatures, its connected us to the planet, it’s connected us to the solar system, and it’s connected us to the universe beyond. I believe that’s a very profound gift.”

NASA administrator tours shuttle trainer exhibit at Museum of Flight

NASA Adminstrator Charles Bolden says Seattle’s Museum of Flight scored big when it landed the space agency’s Space Shuttle Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT) for permanent exhibit.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in front of the Space Shuttle
Full Fuselage Trainer at the Museum of Flight in Seattle Jan. 15,
2013. Bolden flew four shuttle missions and trained in the FFT, as
did all shuttle astronauts. Photo: NASA/Carla Cioffi.

“I think the Museum of Flight won the prize when it comes to education,” Bolden said during a tour of the exhibit this week at the museum’s Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. “No other place with an orbiter can do what is done here. No other place can have somebody essentially walk in the same footsteps that John Glenn, John Young, other people walked when they go through the payload bay or they go up on the flight deck or the mid-deck. That’s actually where we trained.”

When NASA announced at the end of the shuttle program that it would award the retired orbiters to museums around the country, it set off an intense competition between some two dozen institutions that all wanted one of the prized artifacts. The Museum of Flight went all-in and built the $12 million, 15,500 square-foot space gallery with no guarantee that it would receive a shuttle. When Bolden announced two years ago that the shuttles would go elsewhere, Museum of Flight President and CEO Doug King recognized that being able to go into the FFT would be a great draw for visitors. Sure enough, it’s been very busy since the exhibit opened in November.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden
speaks to reporters at the Museum of Flight
Jan. 15, 2013. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“It’s been huge,” King said. “We had record attendance all through the holidays and on into this year.” He added that a special education program, though which a small number of visitors actually visit the crew cabin, has sold out every weekend.

The exhibit is truly impressive. For one thing, the FFT is gigantic. I attended several events in the space gallery before the trainer arrived, and the room is enormous. The FFT virtually fills it. The gallery includes a half-scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope, perhaps the most famous payload ever carried by a shuttle, and a mockup of the Boeing-built Inertial Upper Stage that was used to launch satellites into space from the shuttle. There’s also a Soyuz capsule, a Charon Test Vehicle from Blue Origin, and information about many of the commercial spaceflight efforts in the works. These may well be the source for future additions to the exhibit; King already has his eye on one of the Dragon vehicles being flown by SpaceX, and envisions an “arrivals” board for the gallery that identifies what is flying in next. Bolden added that exhibits about the commercial space ventures are important to inspire kids who are the next generation of engineers, space adventurers, and dreamers.

King says he expects the museums with the flown orbiters also will create fantastic exhibits.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden emerges from the hatch of the
Space Shuttle Full Fuselage Trainer, now on exhibit at the Museum
of Flight in Seattle, during a tour Jan. 15, 2013. Every shuttle
astronaut used that hatch and trained in the FFT.
Photo: NASA/Carla Cioffi.

“The one in Los Angeles already looks great, and the building they’re eventually going to put it in will be spectacular,” he said. “We’ll encourage everybody to go see it, then come here and go inside.”

Bolden flew on four shuttle missions and spent countless hours training in the FFT, so for him the museum’s exhibit brings on fond memories, and some painful ones. He joked about using the trainer to practice emergency escapes from the shuttle, and said every astronaut had just one thought in mind during the exercises.

“Do not fall off the rope. You don’t want to look bad,” he laughed, noting that there were always cameras recording the training. “You did not want to be memorialized as one who slipped and fell and looked like an idiot laying down there on the mat.”

The FFT is a most interesting exhibit. Go walk in the footsteps of the astronauts and check it out at the Museum of Flight.