Astronaut Harris talks about the dream of space

Dr. Bernard Harris is like many of us who grew up in the 1960s, with dreams and interests inspired by the space race and the Apollo 11 Moon landing. It was a little different for Harris, an African American who was 13 when Neil Armstrong took that one small step.

Dr. Bernard Harris, retired astronaut and
founder of the Harris Foundation, spoke
Feb. 4 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

“It was not only a giant leap for them, but for this little boy to look at that little back and white television and say that he wanted to follow in their footsteps was powerful, because for someone like me, it had never been done before,” Harris explained. “As I looked at who America chose as their right stuff, as you recall there were seven white guys that started that program. There were no minorities, certainly no African Americans, none that I could see out front, and there were no women in the program. Thank God things have changed since that time.”

Harris, who in 1995 became the first African American to walk in space, spoke Feb. 4 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle as part of the museum’s observation of Black History Month and in connection with its Michael P. Anderson Memorial Aerospace Program. Harris told the audience at the museum that he didn’t let the all-white nature of the early space program deter him.

“The lesson for the young folks is that if you have a dream, don’t let what you might see around you that you might think of as an obstacle,” he said. “I would say reverse it and think of it as a challenge. Don’t let that interfere with you accomplishing your dream.”

Harris is big on dreams. He has written a book titled Dream Walker, and he calls dreams the “reality of the future.”

“In order to have a future, you must have a dream,” Harris said. “In order to have a future you must have the ability to see yourself doing whatever it is that you want to do in life.”

Harris is not just a retired astronaut, he’s a scientist and a doctor and a businessman who heads a venture capital firm and established the Harris Foundation to support science, technology, engineering, and math education. Given that background, and the fact that the Anderson program also is focused on education, it wasn’t surprising to hear Harris build a close tie between dreams and education.

“Education is the way to fulfill dreams,” he said. “I see education as the value proposition for human achievement.”

Anderson was a Spokane native who died in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia wrecked. Harris said astronauts know the danger they’re getting into, but carry on.

“At the heart of all of this is this notion that we would rather die doing what we want to do in life and accomplishing a dream than sit around and let life pass us by,” he said.

Harris gets a little agitated when he hears talk about the “end” of the space program.

“We still have the mandate as an agency to go forward; to put people on the Moon, to put people on near earth asteroids, and perhaps put people on Mars,” Harris said. “All of that work is still being done. The only significant change is that the next generation vehicle is going to be done by private industry.”

“The space program is not going away, it’s just beginning,” he added. “I think it’s going to allow us to do things that have not been done before, and we won’t be held hostage by government restraints and budgets.”

Let's get Pluto and New Horizons on a postage stamp

Postage doubled between the time of Project Mercury
and the Moon landing. And airmail was all the way up
to a dime. Stamps from the Greg Scheiderer collection.

I find it fascinating how often my interest in space and astronomy sends me off on a mental trip to another place and time. Beyond the notion that my eyeball often captures photons that left their point of origin before the dawn of human civilization, I sometimes find that the hobby moves me around even within my own lifetime.

It happened again today. I learned during my morning reading about the newly launched effort to get the U.S. Postal Service to issue a commemorative stamp depicting the New Horizons mission to Pluto. This leads me to a confession: I’m a former philatelist.

This is a deep, dark secret that not even my wife knew about. I hadn’t had the stamp album out of the box in probably 40 years. Yet the thing kept following me through nine moves, and probably even more efforts to jettison junk. Somehow, this morning, I found the box, opened it up, and went in search of some of those space stamps I remember so well. As the collected works spread out to take up most of the dining room table, my wife walked in and, with a puzzled look, asked “What’s all that stuff.” Well, its the stamp collection, of course. (It had been in that box she kept asking me to move to another spot after the latest move, back into the house after last year’s remodeling project.)

Many nations issued stamps commemorating space heroes. Here
is a stamp from Mongolia depicting Yuri Gagarin, a Qatar stamp
 of Neil Armstrong, one from Romania with Wally Schirra, and
a Hungarian stamp of John Glenn. From the Greg Scheiderer collection.

Among the valued items in my stamp box are my stamp collecting merit badge pamphlet and my handwritten notes, on 3×5 cards, for the presentation I made to earn the badge. In the notes I listed three reasons for stamp collecting: money, fun, and learning about other countries. At least one of those is true; stamp collecting is the only reason I know where Qatar is. The Middle-Eastern country issued some gorgeous stamps in the day. Though, now that I think about it, I’m having fun with it today, too! As for the money part, I don’t expect that the stamps a 12-year-old could buy in 1969 for 50 cents per bag amount to much cash value, but if you’re an appraiser who found this post by Googling “million-dollar space stamps” please let me know. (I’ll find a way to monetize this blog yet!)

I wonder if my interest in space had something to do with my interest in stamp collecting. As a kid growing up in the 1960s I was fascinated by the space race, and the stamps of many countries depicted the achievements of space adventures. This wasn’t limited to the United States and the Soviet Union. Many countries issued space commemoratives. Soviet-bloc nations were big on what the Russians were doing, but even tiny places like Dominica, Togo, and Rwanda issued space stamps. Space exploration and the Moon landing captured the imagination of the entire world, not just little space dreamers like me. Somehow my stamp collection languished for four decades. But today I’m glad I have it.

Concept art by Dan Durda for a postage stamp commemorating
the New Horizons mission to Pluto. The New Horizons team is
pushing for the stamp through an online petition to the
U.S. Postal Service.

I’m a big fan of Pluto and think the stamp idea is a worthy one. If we’re going to stick with busting Pluto down to dwarf status, the least we can do is to remind snail-mail users and stamp collectors that the first space mission out that way is due to arrive in July 2015. Organizers say we’ve got to start now in order to have the stamp ready for sticking in three years. It can take that long to navigate the red tape!

So go here and sign the online petition to request a Pluto and New Horizons stamp. The aim is to collect 100,000 signatures to send to the USPS, and they’ve got 4,300 of them as of this writing. That’s not much progress, but the effort is just under way, and getting a boost from the likes of the Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society, Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log, Space.com, Sky & Telescope, and a host of others. Boyle is a big Pluto fan and is the author of The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference.

Let’s show our love for space nuts, stamp collectors, and dwarf planets. Power to Pluto!

Enjoying Jupiter through new eyes

After a couple of weeks of wild weather, including snow, ice storms, high wind, and heavy rain, the greater Seattle area is enjoying something most unusual: a clear, calm winter night.

Jupiter doesn't look quite like this through my backyard telescope,
but a Tele Vue Radian eyepiece is giving better views than
I've ever had before. Cassini snapped this one on its way to
Saturn in 2000. Photo: NASA.

The timing is both right on and a bit off for astronomy buffs in the area. At nightfall the Moon was pleasantly centered between Venus and Jupiter, making for a picture postcard view. However several area astronomy clubs have their monthly public star parties scheduled for Saturday evening, and the forecast is for the clouds to move back in after our brief respite from precipitation.

I took advantage of the clear night to haul my telescope out of the basement and take a look. I had a peek at the gibbous Venus, and looked at the crescent Moon for a bit. But I have been watching Jupiter for most of the evening. I find the clockwork of old Jove’s moons endlessly fascinating. Io was in transit across the giant planet’s disk between about 7 p.m. and 9:15. Io’s shadow is following about an hour and 15 minutes behind, and will complete its transit of Jupiter at around 10:30.

I’ve got to throw in a plug for a relatively new eyepiece in my case. Last year right after Christmas I used some gift cash (thanks, Mom!) to buy a 10mm Tele Vue Radian. Using it to look at Jupiter this evening made me feel as though the scales had fallen from my eyes and I was seeing the planet for the first time!

I have an 8-inch “Intelliscope” from Orion, and it’s pretty much as it came out of the box (though my aching neck convinced me to replace the straight-through finderscope with a right-angle model, and I added a Telrad finder, which is pretty useless from my West Seattle backyard observing location, given the few bright objects that can be seen through the thing.) My high-power eyepiece had always been the 10mm Sirius Plossl that came with the scope. It’s OK, but has minimal eye relief. I typically found that I got much better views from a 17mm Plossl and a 2x Barlow.

Then I sprung for the Radian. Wow. I got some eye-popping views of Saturn through it earlier this year, but looking at Jupiter with its detailed bands, zones, and clouds, the difference a top-quality eyepiece can make is readily apparent. Even in transit, Io was easy to spot. The Red Spot stood out clearly, and though seeing has not been all that transparent this evening, in moments of clarity I’ve seen detail on Jupiter tonight that I’ve never seen under the best of conditions before. The Radian set me back about $235.

By the way, Tele Vue has discontinued the 10mm Radian and some are speculating they’ll drop the line entirely in favor of the new Delos line that came out in the middle of last year. They have the same eye relief but a wider field of view. I’m really impressed with the Radian. I have one other Tele Vue eyepiece, a 24mm Panoptic, and it, too, is marvelous, offering tremendous, wide-field views. They’re on the pricey side, but well worth it for the quality views they deliver.

What are your favorite eyepieces?

Alas, as I’m wrapping up this post at about 11 p.m. Friday the clouds have indeed rolled in. I had planned to get back out there. I’m working on the Astronomical League Urban Observing program, and one of the last items I need to spot is NGC 3242—The Ghost of Jupiter. It’s a planetary nebula that’s only visible around here from about now until early spring. We don’t get enough clear nights this, or any, time of year. NGC 3242 transits a little after 2 a.m. Saturday. It looks like it will do so behind the clouds and the quest will have to wait for yet another night.

Let’s hope for some clearing for a peek at the Ghost of Jupiter, and for all of those clubs planning star parties for Saturday evening. Check our calendar for details about one near you.

Beyond pretty pictures; amateurs contributing to astronomical science

Ralph Megna is an amateur astronomer only in the sense that he doesn’t get paid for his work. But he’s making some major contributions to the science and working with the big guys.

Megna is a co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Solar System Studies, an amateur organization that is building several observatories in Landers, California, in the Mojave Desert east of Riverside. He’s a long-time astronomy enthusiast, but a real estate developer by daytime profession. He and several colleagues at the Center, CS3 for short, recently wrapped up a project to provide some critical data for NASA’s DAWN mission to Vesta and Ceres. This is somewhat akin to a hobbyist who is pretty good at softball suddenly being asked to play second base for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Ralph Megna of the Center for Solar System
 Studies is an amateur astronomer, but he and CS3
colleagues are doing real work with NASA.
Megna spoke Sunday at the annual banquet
of the Seattle Astronomical Society.
Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

Megna talked about the experience Sunday night as the keynote speaker at the annual banquet of the Seattle Astronomical Society. The involvement with NASA came because, as DAWN approached Vesta, it couldn’t make much sense out of data collected by a framing camera, a key part of the craft’s navigation.

“Their own stuff turned out to be crap,” Megna said of NASA’s data on Vesta. They knew of the work being done at CS3 and turned to them get better information about Ceres.

“We were recruited by NASA to collect some specialized photometric data,” Megna said. CS3’s Earth-based telescopes and cameras made precise observations of Ceres and its phase angle, rotation, albedo, and the like. They imaged the asteroid between last September and earlier this month. The data will help DAWN better navigate its way when it leaves Vesta and heads for Ceres this summer.

“We were told by NASA that this was the first time in NASA history that it had turned to amateurs to provide it with mission-critical data in order to guide an interplanetary spacecraft,” Megna said. “We were pretty proud to be asked to do that.”

Megna’s talk was titled “Beyond Pretty Pictures: How Amateur Astronomers are Making Discoveries & Changing Solar System Science.” He noted there’s been an explosion in interest in astrophotography in recent years.

“We’ve now probably passed the one billionth picture of M42,” Megna joked about the Orion Nebula, one of the most photographed celestial objects. Part of their mission at CS3 is to push the envelope.

“We’re exploring some new territory with respect to the contributions that amateur astronomers can make to real science in astronomy,” he said, adding that the main thing that makes those contributions possible is relatively inexpensive and readily available technology, especially scientific-quality CCD cameras.

“That single thing has really leveled the playing field between us and professionals and has made it possible for us to make real contributions to real science,” Megna said. Amateurs are making amazingly precise observations of variable stars, finding supernovas, monitoring planets, tracking exoplanet transits, and doing his thing—asteroid photometry.

“All of these things are now possible because, frankly, the technology has become accessible and affordable to amateur astronomers,” he said. “The kind of information that amateurs are collecting gets sucked up by the computer models that are being created by professional astronomers and astrophysicists. This has led to some exciting new theories on the evolution of the solar system.”

Chief among these is the Nice model of solar system evolution, which proposes that the gas giant planets were once much closer to the Sun, but migrated out, flinging lots of material clean out of the solar system in the process. Megna said much of the data that the model crunched was collected by amateurs.

Discoveries of binary asteroid systems and measurements of asteroid shapes and orbital dynamics are cool and important, but Megna said that’s not really what drives him.

“I can’t tell you what a rush it is to watch that light curve get composed by the computer on the screen and know that I am the first person in human history to know what the length of a day is on another celestial body,” he explained. “This may be a footnote to a footnote to a footnote in science, but it is a moment of discovery.

“This moment of personal discovery is an incredibly important motivator to what I do,” Megna added. “It hearkens to the notion of being an amateur astronomer. The origin of the word amateur is to love; I do this because I love to do it.”

He’s pretty good at it, too.

Enceladus and the platinum age of planetary exploration

Ours is a great time to be alive if you have an interest in learning about other worlds, at least according to Ron Hobbs, a NASA Solar System Ambassador and museum educator and public programs assistant at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

“For most of us the golden age of planetary exploration was the ‘70s and early ‘80s,” Hobbs said. “The time of the Apollo Moon missions—particularly those that did a lot of science—the Viking missions to Mars, and of course Voyager.”

At least four distinct plumes of water ice spew out from the
south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus in this dramatically
illuminated image, shot on Christmas Day 2009 by Cassini.
Light reflected off Saturn is illuminating the surface of the moon
while the Sun, almost directly behind Enceladus, is backlighting
the plumes. Photo: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

After that, things slowed down a lot, but in recent years there’s been something of a renaissance in the solar system.

“The first decade of the 21st Century has been as good as, if not better than, the golden age,” Hobbs believes. “Some people have called it the platinum age of planetary exploration. And if there’s a flagship of that platinum age of planetary exploration it’s got to be the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft.”

Hobbs gave a talk about Cassini, titled “Seven Years in the Saturn System,” last month at the museum. The presentation featured lots of the spectacular photography from the mission, including the discovery of seasonal colors on the second-largest planet in the solar system. Hobbs also discussed discoveries about Saturn’s rings and the intense study of the huge moon Titan. But the most fascinating part of the talk centered on the moon Enceladus, which Hobbs says has joined the astrobiologists’ short list, along with Mars and Europa, for further study.

That’s largely because of the discovery of enormous geysers at the south pole of Enceladus, which spew out ice crystals that form Saturn’s E-ring and cover Enceladus with fresh snow, making it one of the brightest objects in the solar system. The interesting thing about the E-ring is that it contains salt.

“The salt had to come from somewhere,” Hobbs explained, “so somewhere down in Enceladus there must be water in association with hot rocks. So you’ve got an energy source, you’ve got water. We don’t know yet, but maybe we have organic chemicals. If we do, this becomes one of the likeliest places we could find life in the solar system.

“Enceladus has rapidly become one of the most important bodies for us to study,” he added.

Cassini’s work in the Saturn system is planned to continue until the summer of 2017, when it will make a handful of spectacular proximal orbits very close to Saturn’s cloud tops before it runs out of fuel and is crashed into the ringed planet.

That’s presuming Cassini keeps working. Hobbs notes that while the warranty has long since expired, the school bus-sized craft hasn’t missed a beat since it was launched in 1997.

“Space is a harsh environment, particularly when you go a billion miles from the Sun,” Hobbs noted. “It gets cold out there, and every time you go into the shadow of Saturn or one of the moons, it drops dramatically. So given our experience with technical things, it is kind of a surprise” that Cassini is still functioning, he said. “On the other hand, we in America seem to be building some really good stuff these days.”

It will be fascinating to see what wonders Cassini finds before the mission ends five years from September.