PanSTARRS peeks through Seattle clouds

Persistence in the face of clouds has paid off for a number of Seattle-area stargazers, including your faithful correspondent, who have managed to spot comet PanSTARRS over the last couple of days.
As sunset approached yesterday things were looking hopeful in the west from West Seattle, though there were clouds building on the horizon. Seattle Astronomy dashed down to the south end of Alki Beach Park, near the Charles Richey Sr. Viewpoint, to hunt for PanSTARRS. Binoculars in hand, I swept the areas between the clouds and–Eureka!–finally spotted the comet, probably around 8:10 p.m., as I posted this tweet at 8:17:

Success! PanSTARRS spotted from West Seattle!

— Seattle Astronomy (@SeattleAstro) March 17, 2013

I am still amazed at the little gasp of discovery I get whenever I spot a new celestial object, or even familiar ones. I probably had 10 minutes of viewing, maybe a little more, before PanSTARRS was swallowed up by a large black cloud, not to be seen again. It was a pretty sight, with a definite tail shooting up maybe a degree or two. I would rank it my second-best ever city comet, after the spectacular McNaught of 2007, which was spotted under similar circumstances between clouds that year.

I was not able to see PanSTARRS with the naked eye yesterday, though I expect had there been just a few more minutes for it to get a little darker, I could have. I may try again this evening; as I write this, a little after noon, the sky is mostly clear. But a lot can change between now and sunset, about six hours hence.

This Sky & Telescope diagram and article are a good guide
for viewing Comet PanSTARRS, at least for the next few days.

March 16 was the scheduled date for the Seattle Astronomical Society‘s monthly public star parties and, as often happens, both were officially canceled because of the weather. There were, however, reports on the club’s Google Group Through the Clouds that an ad hoc group ditched the usual star party site at Green Lake and spotted PanSTARRS from Sunset Hill Park. Other club members wrote in and reported sightings from Redondo Beach in Des Moines, the Des Moines Marina, Lowman Beach Park in West Seattle, and Hazlewood Elementary School in Newport Beach.

Sorin, the Soggy Astronomer, posted several photos from the evening on his Flickr stream. Jason Enevoldsen caught a photo the day before, posted by his spouse on her Alice’s Astro Info site. The Enevoldsens were planning to be down at Seattle’s Lincoln Park last night, though we’ve received no dispatches as of this moment.

So, keep hunting, Seattle comet seekers! It can be done. PanSTARRS is getting further from the Sun, and thus fainter, each day. But good views should be had for a while yet.

Hear and feel the Northern Lights Sunday in Seattle

We love it when science and art intersect, and so an event coming up tomorrow as part of Hollow Earth Radio‘s Magma Festival caught our attention. Attendees and Internet radio listeners will get to experience Space Weather Listening Booth, a sound installation representing the Northern Lights, created by Seattle composers Nat Evans and John Teske.

Evans said his inspiration for the piece came during a trip to present some of his music in Fairbanks. While there he observed the Aurora Borealis, which he called a “life-changing experience.”

“It’s a different kind of light that felt like it was enveloping me,” Evans said. “It was really intense, so I wanted to try to do something with that.”

He had created several site- and time-specific works based on light in the past, and met Teske when both presented shows at an event last summer. They decided a collaboration might be just the thing.

“I wanted to capture the vastness of the Aurora Borealis experience that I had and also the intimacy of the night,” Evans recalled. “John’s ideas are very much in play with that and have a nice intersection with mine.”

“We were hoping to capture that intimacy but also the immersive sound,” Teske added.

Much of the composition is driven by scientific observations. Evans and Teske collected the actual geomagnetic data, solar wind data, and other information from the day Evans observed the Aurora and turned it into music.

“We chose some sounds that we felt would go well with one another and then moved those sounds and manipulated them along those data points,” Evans explained.

Teske took the shapes of the data curves and made sound waves out of them, which he said gives the composition “a nice scientific grounding.” Since the Earth turns, so does the music, rotating among the speakers that surround the listeners.

Teske said their prerecorded electronic track is joined by live musicians who have room to improvise. Thus listeners hear and feel the sounds of the phenomena that combine to create the Aurora Borealis.

“It was interesting to find that balance of what’s data driven, what’s pure music, and what mixture of those makes a good match,” Teske said.

Evans felt that striking the balance helped the composers give the piece a life of its own.

“The decision to use data and engage with it is a similar experience to giving yourself over to just sit and observe anything, like the Aurora or waiting for the Aurora or watching a sunset,” he said.

The first presentation of Space Weather Listening Booth was at the ONN/OF Festival on Seattle’s Capitol Hill in January. The performance space was little more than a walk-in closet, with room for four speakers, one musician, and a listener or two, who would come in for a minute or two. For the Magma Fest installation they’ve got a larger, gallery-size space that will accommodate four musicians and many more listeners, who will be able to take in the full 50-minute composition. Teske said listeners can understand the piece even if they only hear a short segment of it.

“I’m excited to have the opportunity to do the whole presentation and see what that’s like,” he said.

Evans added that, while the festival atmosphere can be awesome, “it can also be like releasing a rhinoceros into a flower bed.”

“It will be nice to give space some space,” he quipped.

Both composers got started in music early. Evans was a percussionist in elementary school and wrote music in high school. He started college at Butler University as a performance major, but switched to composition. Teske was accepted to study physics at Cal Poly Tech, but decided music was his thing and majored in composition at the University of Washington. The two expect they will collaborate again.

The performance of Space Weather Listening Booth is scheduled for 8 p.m. Sunday, March 17 at Hollow Earth Radio, 2018A East Union Street in Seattle. There’s a suggested donation of $5–$15, cash only, at the door. It also will be streamed live on hollowearthradio.org. There will be a performance next Thursday, March 21, at a private residence in Portland. Contact the composers for more information.

Spacewalker Ross visits shuttle trainer in Seattle

Astronaut Jerry Ross flew on seven space
shuttle missions. He spoke March 1 at the
Museum of Flight in Seattle. Photo: NASA

Retired astronaut Jerry Ross figures he spent upwards of 1,200 hours in the NASA Full Fuselage Trainer preparing for his seven space shuttle flights. It was with mixed emotions that Ross spoke earlier this month at a dinner in his honor, held next to the trainer, which is now on exhibit at Seattle’s Musuem of Flight.

“It’s kind of sad to see it here, frankly,” Ross said of the trainer. “I’m glad that you have it; I’m glad that it didn’t go to a scrap heap somewhere. But I know that the fun years of the space shuttle program are behind us.”

Still, Ross acknowledged that the space shuttle, in use for more than 30 years, was getting a bit worse for wear.

“It was probably time to retire it and go on to something else,” he said. “Unfortunately, that something else hasn’t happened yet.”

Ross spent a couple of days at the museum promoting his new book, Spacewalker: My Journey in Space and Faith as NASA’s Record-Setting Frequent Flyer. He said that a main reason he wrote it was to encourage young people to chase their dreams.

“I wanted them to understand that I had a dream as a young person, and I felt that God had designed me to be an astronaut,” Ross explained. He kept scrapbooks about space as a kid in Indiana, and learned from the news articles that he clipped that engineers and scientists, especially  those from Indiana’s Purdue University, were playing an important role. Ross said his dream was crystallized when Sputnik went up.

“I was in fourth grade, and based upon what I knew I decided I was going to go to Purdue University, that I was going to become an engineer, and that I was going to become involved in our country’s space program,” he said. “I really didn’t know what an engineer did, but I knew it was engineers who were doing what I wanted to go do.”

He did it, and flew on as many space missions as anyone. Space runs in the family—his daughter is a Purdue engineering grad and works on space suit design, and his wife, who majored in home economics at Purdue, eventually headed up the program that made food for the shuttle flights.

“I’ve told people for many years the only time I got a home-cooked meal after she took that job was when I flew in space,” Ross joked.

Ross said that being launched into space aboard the space shuttle was an incredible experience.
“One-hundred-eight feet tall, weighed four-and-a-half million pounds,” he said of the shuttle. “We generated over six and a half million pounds of thrust at liftoff. And that’s a real kick in the pants. Disney would have had to get a double-E ticket for that!”

Ross said that he was well prepared for his first flight, but that it was really impossible to actually know how it would feel.

“About 15 seconds after lifting off, I thought to myself, ‘Ross, what are you doing here?’ There was much more shaking and vibration, there was much more noise as the wind was just screaming by the windows of the orbiter, it was much more exciting than I expected.”

He said he wasn’t exactly afraid, but added, “You can’t strap on six and a half million pounds of thrust and not be a little bit apprehensive about it. If you aren’t, then you really don’t understand what’s happening.”

“I went back six more times, so it wasn’t too bad,” he added.

Ross said the only time he came close to quitting was after the Challenger disaster. He had a young family to support, and they discussed it at length.

“It took some serious thought and prayer,” he said, but they decided not to quit. “If we did we would let down our friends who we lost on the Challenger. To allow them to die and not pursue with even more vigor and dedication what they had done would have been a mistake.”

The Museum of Flight held the dinner next to the shuttle trainer in homage to a similar event NASA hosted for Queen Elizabeth II in Houston in 1991. The dinner with Ross was well-attended, and indications are that the museum will host more such events to allow some low-key and more personal conversation with celebrity aviation visitors.

Digital billboard proposal unplugged

It appears that a pair of proposals that would have allowed the spread of digital electronic billboards in the State of Washington have been tabled for this year. Both proposals—House Bill 1408 and Senate Bill 5304—received hearings in their respective chambers’ transportation committees Feb. 5. However neither committee took action on the bills by the Legislature’s self-imposed deadline this week, and thus the measures are not technically eligible for further consideration.

There are some billboards like these along Washington highways,
 notably on tribal land along I-5 in Fife. A proposal in the state
 Legislature to allow further use of the signs appears dead
for this year’s session.

The story is not necessarily over. Ideas that don’t survive the committee process can be added as amendments to other bills later in the session, parliamentary maneuvering can sometimes revive a bill that is considered dead, and those “necessary to implement the budget” are typically exempt from these cutoff dates. If they don’t resurface during this year’s legislative session, which runs through April 28, both bills could be considered again when the Legislature reconvenes next January. It should be noted that similar legislation was considered but never enacted last year. Outdoor advertising companies are likely to continue to push for the signs.

The astronomy community stepped up in opposition to these measures on the grounds that they would contribute to increases in light pollution. Others made the points that the signs can distract motorists and are generally unsightly. David Ingram of Dark Skies Northwest,  the regional chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association, testified at the hearings. Many astronomy clubs urged their members to send messages in opposition to the bills on their own or through the advocacy site Keep Washington Beautiful.org.

Seattle Astronomy will keep an eye out for further activity on these proposals.