Solitude

Been surrounded by the variety of different aspects that Los Angeles holds, it never seems to surprise me when I find something new. As a young kid, I used to visit a family friend on Mulholland drive and always wondered what those big antennas were on the peak of the San Gabriel Mountains over looking all of L.A. Last week, I finally got to encounter these immense antennas that point straight up the sky, and the telescopes that neighbor them. Mount Wilson observatory is an astronomical observatory that was built in 1908. It holds two historical telescopes that we had the privilege to visit, The Hale telescope, which has a mirror blank of 60 inches, and the Hooker Telescope, which has a mirror blank of 100 inches. The whole compound sits 5710 feet high from ocean altitude level. As soon as we arrived at the sight, it was hard not to take a million photos and really take in the cool breeze and the fact that we were only 40 minutes away from Los Angeles. Only 40 minutes away from one of the busiest cities in the world, and one can still find a moment of peace and solitude, this is what intrigued me straight off the bat. As the sky got darker, one of the caretakers showed us around and gave the group some knowledge and history of the whole compound. Another amazing sight was the 150-foot high solar tower, its tall and outstanding structure for some reason reminded me of the Egyptian towers and how the peak of the monuments would connect with the sky and beyond. As the night went on, the experience got better and better, seeing the 60 in telescope move and point to different stars was already amazing, but then looking through the viewfinder was the icing on the cake. Our whole group took turns looking at the M82 nebula, Jupiter, a ghost planet, Mars and last but not least Saturn. Seeing Saturn so clear through the telescope was something else like I had never experienced. The beauty of its rings, and the clarity of its gas filled colors left me speechless and in aw. While all of this was going on, everyone had their cameras set and positioned around different areas of the telescope while doing long exposure astrophotography. In all, this experience was one that will not be forgotten, as a space nerd I hope to go back up there with more equipment to capture different ideas I developed as I was up there.

The Dawn Project

Blog Post, April 30, 2014

Dawn Project

At our last visit to NASA, we learned another mission called Dawn. Marc Rayman, the head engineer of the Dawn Mission, explained what the Dawn mission was about ? Dawn is a space probe launched on September 27, 2007 to study the two objects on the asteroid belt called Vesta and Ceres. The mission was designed to find the origins of the solar system and test the ion drive. If the mission succeeds, it will be the first spacecraft to orbit two separate extraterrestrial bodies. It is the first mission to use ion propulsion to enter into space.
Where did the concept of ion propulsion come from ?

 TIE Starfighter from Star Wars
The engine fueling the DAWN was mentioned in Star Wars when the Imperial first release them into the space, they look like eyeballs. TIE stands for Twin Ion Engine which fuels the space fighter. It’s fascinating how sci-fi fuels the NASA engineers to come up with a way to fuel DAWN for more than six years now. It shows how our imaginary is simply ahead of the most current technology. This dialogue between arts and science is rather fascinating because of this one idea, it allows the scientists and engineers at NASA to create more missions to explore the unknown.  If sci-fi allows us to make this amazing technology to allow us to go farther into space, it makes me wonder, what is impossible?

How does the propulsion system work for Dawn ?
          A typical system would use high pressure or temperature to push gas through a rocket nozzle. When the gas leaves the system is creates a reaction which pushes the craft away from the gas.  It is the same concept but the method to push the gas out is much different. The biggest benefit of using an ion thruster is it is much more effective because the source of energy does not burn out and it moves faster. The Dawn spacecraft uses three ion thruster, only one at a time, to push it in a long spiral. The ion drive is capable of accelerating from 0 to 60mph in 4 days only if it’s continuously firing.  Also another thing which is absolutely interesting about Dawn is how it thrust repeatedly to get gravity assistant from different planets. To get into orbit, a spacecraft has to match the speed, direction, and the location. With conventional propulsion, it attempt to get to the location and then use the planet gravity and the fuel system to match the speed and direction.
      But Dawn’s method to get into orbit is different because of the ion propulsion and it is gentle. Instead of using speed, the spacecraft will slowly adjust the location and realign with the orbit. In this slow process , the craft will slowly slip into the orbit. Dawn received gravity assistant from Earth, Mars, Vesta, and Ceres’ orbit.
    

Just about an hour outside of Los Angeles at the top of a windy rode sits several telescopes that have not only an impressive 60 inch and 100 inch telescope, but an even more impressive history. The 60 inch telescope, was first built in 1904 by George Ellery Hale under the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Fifteen years later the 100 inch telescope was constructed and the Snow Solar Telescope from Yerke’s Observatory was brought to Mt. Wilson creating the first astronomical research facility. This facility was where the term “astrophysics” was created, with telescopes that could give information on spectra that allowed astronomers to focus on physical properties of stars instead of just brightness and motion.  The top of Mt. Wilson had also been determined to have some of the best “atmospheric seeing” or the optical quality of Earth’s atmosphere. Since Mt. Wilson is located near the Pacific Ocean, the turbulence of the air is decreased which creates better seeing. This is often why observatories are located near oceans like in Hawaii.

Mt. Wilson Observatory is where the universe was discovered. It was in the 100 inch Hooker telescope that Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. Other breakthroughs in science occurred here with the Big Bang Theory and dark energy. Harlow Shapley discovered that the sun was not the center of the universe, but just another star in our galaxy.  The campus was also visited by the famous Albert Einstein.

My experience at Mt. Wilson Observatory was unlike any other. I'll admit, I've always been obsessed with the night sky. As a child I attended a week long astro camp, and growing up I loved using the family telescope to look at the moon, but nothing could come close in comparison to my experience here. While the 60 inch and 100 inch telescopes have long been surpassed by bigger and more high-tech telescopes, I was blown away the massive size of it. The mechanics of the structure designed over a century ago and are still used today when the dome opens and rotates around. While I've seen the incredible pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope in books and online, the experience of looking through the telescope with my own eye and seeing objects light years away is indescribable. It's as if these objects that I will never get to visit are brought right in front of me, connecting earth to outer space. 

While we each took turns looking through the telescope individually at Mars, Jupiter, the galaxy M82, a ghost planet, and Saturn with its amazing rings, we were also encouraged to experiment with astrophotography through long exposure. Everyone set their cameras and tripods up throughout the Mt. Wilson campus, using the trees and buildings as foreground and leaving the shutter open to record the star trails as the earth rotates. While I did experiment with this briefly, I had trouble with my infinity focus and many of my pictures of the night sky came out blurry. I was able to capture the big dipper constellation with a five minute exposure, but found myself too impatient, and my camera also dying, to leave it out for longer than that. Personally, I was more drawn to the interior and architecture of the 60 inch telescope. I experimented with leaving the shutter open while the dome rotated and the telescope moved to a new object. Overall I spent most of the night relaxing and enjoying the stars with my naked eye and through the telescope, and am hoping to return to experiment with more astrophotography now that I have had more practice.

Sources: 

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/01/science/sci-observatory1

http://www.mtwilson.edu/his/art/g1a1.php

FIRE / SOUND / WAVES

visual sound frequencies and fire ... this is pretty coooooool

watch:

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/amazing-2d-rubens%E2%80%99-tube-visualizes-sound-plane-fire

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

The natural history museum is a must see if one lives remotely close to Los Angeles. I am so surprised that is even has taken me 4 years to have finally visited the place. The first thing that caught my eye as soon as entering the premises was the beautiful architecture of the museum. The outside of the building reminded me of an Alfred Waterhouse architect project.  It almost has a Neo-gothic/Romanesque style to its look. The museum takes you back in time from the microscopic to the gigantic, and from the bizarre to the beautiful. What also interested me was the fascination that young kids had around the whole museum, their eyes wide open into creatures that ruled the world before our time. One my favorites was the fairy pink armadillo, a quite funny and cute looking animal. It is a nocturnal animal that can grow up to 5 inches; it feeds off of worms, and certain roots. Its hard shell top finishes on the end as a Trojan helmet, which I found quite amusing. The second animal that I found fascinating was the Capybara. It is the largest rodent in the world, followed by the beaver, porcupine, and mara. Its closest relatives are guinea pigs and rock cavies, and it is more distantly related to the agouti, chinchillas, and the coypu. Native to South America, the capybara inhabits savannas and dense forests and lives near bodies of water. Today the Museum has about 5 million viewers a year. What I found great was the fact that it isn’t just a museum that collects and displays ancient artifacts of prehistoric animals, but the fact that they have activities that engages the public to interact. 

SMAP 101

SMAP, which stands for Soil Moisture Active Passive, is a long and pricy satellite project that NASA and JPL have been working on. This satellite is a designed satellite with a total different objective than the satellites that we know of today. It is a piece of high-end technology that can help us understand more of the earth and soil that we live off every day, the ground that we stand on, and take advantage with out second thought. It is a satellite with intent on being able to map soil moisture and freeze/thaw state from space. If SMAP all goes to plan, the satellites measurements will be used to enhance understanding of process that link the water, energy, and carbon cycles, and mainly to enhance the predictive skill of weather and climate models.

Soil moisture strongly affects plant growth and hence agriculture and rangeland productivity, especially during conditions of water shortage drought. At this time, there is no in site network for soil moisture monitoring. Global estimates of soil moisture and plant water stress must be derived from models. These model descriptions can be greatly enhanced through assimilation of space based soil moisture observations.

When it comes to diverse climate, soil moisture variations affect the evolution of weather and climate over continental regions. The satellite will hopefully be able to initialize numerical weather predictions and climate models through out the seasons, giving accurate information that can help us predict and manage unorthodox weather patterns, water management, fires, agriculture, and other disastrous climate incidents that can happen.

One of my biggest problems with the planet that we live on today is the fact that people are not only destroying large terrains of soil, but poisoning the seeds that will never be able to change back to what they were. What I am talking about is Genetically modified foods. There are fields all around this planet that have now leached on to the root of the ground and producing foods bigger, and faster that supposed to. SMAP’ s intelligence will be able to provide information on water availability for estimating plant productivity and potential yield. It will enable significant improvements in operational crop and rangeland productivity and information systems providing realistic soil moisture observations, and my hope is that NASA will be able to restore organic farming as a whole, and maybe save fields that have not already been destroyed.

           

DAN GOODS

Dan Goods, the Visual Strategist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, sets out to translate the essence of scientific concepts into visual representations. Through his creation of artistic experiences, Goods allows people to understand concepts about the universe through a different light than usually presented. According to Goods, if he can create an opportunity for people to experience a moment of awe about the universe, then he has been successful.  Many of the scientists that work closely with him usually approach him about an issue if they are in need of viewing something from a different perspective.

Trained as a graphic designer, Goods has made many works that visualize the complex information provided by NASA scientists. For example, he created an installation called “The Hidden Light” (pictured below) which commented on the difficulty in locating planets around other stars in the universe.  He compared it to trying to locate a firefly in front of a spotlight in New York City, all the way from Los Angeles.  Scientists at NASA are attempting to discover earth like planets around other stars, yet it’s difficult because the stars are so much bigger and brighter than the planets, so the planets aren’t made visible. Commenting on this invisibility of things that exist yet aren’t able to be seen, Goods created a projection installation that allowed the viewers shadow to reveal a second set of moving images once they walked in front of the first projector.

Goods makes complex scientific concepts understandable to the everyday person.  He is also sure to ask a lot of questions until he is able to understand the concepts behind the science. Then he sets out to translate those concepts into a visual artistic production for the world to see.

The Integratron

              George Van Tassel built the Integratron with the claim it was capable of rejuvenation, anti-gravity and time travel. This structure was built in Landers, California supposedly following the instructions from visitors of Venus. After George Van Tassel’s death in 1978, it went through multiple ownerships and left in a horrible condition. But in the early 2000’s, the Karl sisters purchased it and restored the Integratron. The sisters now give tours and offer sound baths with quartz bowls in the Integratron.
               Now the most interesting part about the Integratron was Tassel believed this machine could rejuvenate living cells. He also considered it to be a time machine and an anti-gravity device. But yet there have been no evidence of time travel just yet. The most incredible part about the Integratron was the acoustic in the dome. Tassel did not use a single metal screw or nail to build the Integratron but only wood, fiberglass, and concrete. Now if you stood on one side of the dome and another person stood directly across you, the person will think you’re talking into their ears. If you stood in the middle and sang, you can hear your own voice in your ears.
             The Karl sisters now have open the Integratron to the public and offer regular tour with a Sound Bath. The sound bath was considered to be an hour long session where the visitors laid in a circle and just listen to the sound produced by quartz bowls traveling around the dome. It was weird to lay down on a blanket, looking up to the sky as the sound movement around you. The quartz player would use her instrument and gently make a circular motive on the quartz bowl. The sound would grow to be longer and longer and I felt like I could see the sound moving up toward the sky. It was like I was in a trance where the wood grain of the done ceiling started to move. It was a quite an experience where I repeatedly told myself this isn’t real, it can’t be happening. Maybe this is what time traveling was like. Maybe this is what looking at Earth from space looked like. Maybe aliens were taking over my body. Your mental state separated from your body as you listen to this out of the world experience. It’s a very personal experience where it’s nearly impossible to describe to another person what it felt like when I heard the sound through one ear and left through the other ear. My body unconsciously twitched and it was freaky because I couldn’t figure out why did my left feet moved all of a sudden.  When the sound bath came to an end, it did feel like I was rejuvenated and all the negative energy in me was gone.
          It’s an out of the world experience because you’re surrounded by nature with no technology and hear sounds which will refresh and energize our mind. My body did feel energized and rejuvenated after this sound bath. 

SMAP

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) is a mission that was initiated by NASA in February 2008, due to launch in November 2014.  It is an environmental research satellite that was developed in order to measure surface soil moisture and freeze-thaw state in order to provide for scientific advances and benefits regarding the water cycle.  This mission will globally enhance weather forecasts as well as climate changes/predictions, especially flood conditions and drought monitoring.  Although the amount of water on Earth remain the same, the SMAP mission will highlight water availability around the world.  In addition to the amount of useful information the satellite will present, it will also produce these measurements at a rather rapid pace: SMAP will provide global coverage within 3 days.  However, the research satellite will remain in orbit around the earth for a period of three years in order to acquire the most accurate environmental measurements.

I find this mission to be of great importance because it’s measuring one of the worlds most important and useful natural resources: soil.  Soil allows plants to grow and provides vegetation for all animals and human beings.  In addition, soil allows for trees to grow which provide us with oxygen to breathe.  Also, without trees, we wouldn’t have wood, which in turn would mean we would no longer be able to use wood as a resource for building necessary structures such as homes and buildings.  In addition, soil allows for storage of water that falls from the sky in the form of rain, which the plants then use in order to grow.  Also, the evaporation of soil helps cool down the earths surface as well as cool the lower atmosphere and provide water in order to form clouds.  SMAP will be able to measure the amount of water that is present in the soil (or soil moisture) all over the entire world.  Growing crops is necessary to sustain life on Earth, so through the use of SMAP, scientists will be able to measure the amount of soil moisture that is available to us in order to predict sustainability (whether the soil is frozen or thawed) as well as foresee and monitor future droughts and/or floods. The total amount of water on Earth isn’t necessarily changing, but the availability of soil moisture in certain regions may be changing, and SMAP will allow us to monitor that.  By studying soil moisture, SMAP will be able to present us with measurements that will benefit mankind and make Earth a better place to live.

SMAP will apply two microwave instruments that share a single antenna. The first instrument that they will be flying is a microwave radiometer and the second is a microwave radar.  The radar is restricted to functioning at the L-band frequency, which unfortunately can cause a lot of interference because of the large amount of cellphones present on Earth.  However, they can’t use a higher frequency because it can potentially harm the environment through such strong rays.  Nevertheless, the radar is still successful in transmitting a signal down to Earth to be received back in space, signaling a swath of 1,000 kilometers in diameter at a single time. SMAP’s ability to scan such a large circular swath is what allows us to measure the entire Earths surface in just 3 days. 

Integratron

You don't have to be a NASA astronaut to leave earth. A quick trip out to Joshua Tree will do the trick.

The Integratron has an interesting history, beginning in 1953 when creator George Van Tassel was practicing weekly meditation in the dessert when he claims to have been contacted by extraterrestrials from the planet Venus. Supposedly, he received directions from these creature for how to construct what George described as "a machine, a high-voltage electrostatic generator that would supply a broad range of frequencies to recharge cell structure." He began building the entirely wooden structure in 1957 with money he raised entirely from donations, and intended for it to rotate to create electricity to recharge the human body and conduct research on time travel. After his death, Emile Canning and Diane Cushing bought and preserved the Integratron in 1997 and in 2000, the Karl sisters purchased it and opened it up to the public for sound baths, meditation, and spiritual healing. While the building does not spin, it is an extremely special place that functions similarly to how George Van Tassel intended. Having experienced a sound bath for the first time inside the Integratron, I can admit that the experience is unlike any other.

It would be difficult to go into detail about my experience during the sound bath because I blacked out for much of it. As a class, we first layed down on mats inside of the perfectly architectured sound dome,  and I closed my eyes, relaxed by body and mind, and allowed myself to become vulnerable and accepting to whatever was about to come. The sound bath began as she used her tool to stroke around the rim of the crystal bowls, sending sound waves around the dome to circle back and forth, reacting and interfering with the architecture and other waves from the other bowls she was playing. While at first I was dismissive and unwilling to believe the hype about "leaving the body," what happened next was beyond my control. I closed my eyes while the vibrations bounced back and forth between my ears, transferring through the membranes of my brain and merging my left and right brain. Blues and yellows appeared, with changing geometric patterns, and reds and purples then became prevalent. While the colors and patterns were enticing, I felt myself falling into deep meditation, unable to control my own thoughts. At the end of playing each bowl, she would tap it three times to signal a shift to the next, but I lost track of the experience after the third bowl and my memory of the experience becomes hazy. I remember the sounds kept repeating over and over again and began to sound like words that kept being repeating, I'm assuming as the waves continued to circle around the dome. I regained consciousness as my left leg jerked up from the ground, similarly to when a doctor hits the nerve on your knee and you involuntarily kick. I'm unsure why this happened, if it was the sound waves controlling my nerves, or if my spirit left my body while I was unconscious and returned at that moment. I am still trying to wrap my mind around the experience and justify what I felt from what may or may not have actually happened, but I am eager to return and try another sound bath with my eyes open or with a different mindset.