Division of Planetary Science Comes to Cornell

Well this is it, finally.  This weekend will mark the 40th Aniversary of the Division of Planetary Science (DPS) and I think it is quite appropriate that it is being held here at Cornell.  I myself am staying and volunteering at this fantastic event (after all what better could I do over fall break).  There will be a conference for interest parties (costs a registration fee) as well as several public events.

Among the public events, tonight at 7PMDr. David Grinspoon, Curator of Astrobiology, Denver Museum of Nature & Science, will speak on “Climate Catastrophes in the Solar System “.  Saturday evening from 8-10PM in Bailey Hall there will be a free concert in which Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” will be played in its entirity.   Sunday also in Bailey from 730-930 pm there will be a public lecture.  Also sometime over the weekend Bill Nye will be doing a planet walk down at the Commons.

All in all this looks to be a very promising event.

CAS Organizational Meeting

This Friday, September 5th at 6:30pm in the Fuertes Observatory Lecture Hall CAS officers and interested community members will be meeting to find out who is interested in working with us as well as determine who will give astronomy lectures over the first semester.

I hope we have a good turnout, after our clubfest outing I expect 4-5 freshman to be active at that meeting (we shall see).  As of right now it looks like it will be partly cloudy Friday evening with a poor seeing for after 8pm.  However, seeing as this is our first meeting and there will only be a few clouds we will probably get some observing in.  Hope to see everyone there.

Cornell Astronomical Society Clubfest

This past Sunday the Cornell Astronomical Society participated in clubfest and we had a very good turnout.  I am looking foward to working with many new freshman as well as a few students from other years.  We also had like 6/7 members from CAS show up and share their experiences up at Fuertes as well as other events we put on with those attending clubfest.

I am looking foward to this new observing season  with great anticipation.

Phoenix Mission to be Extended by 5 Weeks

Due to the good condition of the Phoenix lander NASA has decided to extend its mission5 weeks beyond its original 3 month assignment.  So the probe will run until September 30th.  With the recent discovery of water ice, the probe will certainly have a lot of data to collect during this time extension.

As for after its mission, Phoenix will shut down with a subroutine to wake it up in the spring if it lasts through the winter.  While having this extra time would be fantastic, Phoenix has already helped us understand Martian soil and weather better than we did before.

Over the next few days I will be working on a post gathering all of the scientific discoveries and the big steps taken by Phoenix so far.

Phoenix Finds Water on Mars

Well after much observing with telescopes and robotic camera systems and a great deal of speculation, the Phoenix lander has found water ice.  For more information see: NASA Phoenix Page.  This finding will obviously increase the speculation about past/present life on Mars and possible future manned life there as well.

Back to Astrophysics

Well I am currently working my way through the big orange book – An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Carroll and Ostlie.

Part I was a good review of planetary motion – see Feynamn’s Lost Lecture for a good guide on the topic, as well as introductory quantum mechanics.  The comparison between light waves in different mediums and barrier penetration of the wave function was interesting.  I also learned that placing a prism very close to another whose side is currently internally reflecting light through total internal reflection, due to the difference of refraction index between the prism and glass, causes the EM field that penetrates into the air and into part of the prism to tunnel photons across the prism – air – prism internal reflection barrier.  (see page 132 of BOB)

The chapter on telescopes was fun, the picture of the largest refracting telescope at Yerkes Observatory (built 1897: 40 inch lense) looked very similar to the Cornell Fuertes Observatory.  Must be a bit unnerving observing a target close to the horizon on such a telescope.  I wonder how difficult it must be to manually move the telescope as well – especially flipping it to the other part of the sky.  (see page 156 of BOB)

Anyway more interesting facts from BOB to appear here as I progress through the book.

Computer Computer

Well today I ordered several of the parts for the desktop I am planning on building and while it is not close to the performance of my desired one it does have many of the same elements.  All I will need to do is upgrade it.

Just briefly going over the specs of the part I should get from newegg:

Huge case, 4 GB (2×2GB) of 1600 Mhz DDR3 RAM, evga gaming motherboard, core 2 8500 (3.16 Ghz) and a huge case.  I did not get my desired cpu cooler the zvictor i think.  I also did not get a harddrive, dvd drive or power supply.  The latter of which i can salvage from an older computer for the time being.  The harddrive and dvd drive i thought i could salvage but then realized that the motherboard is SATA and not IDE so I will have to get both at some point.  I also got Vista Ultimate x64 for System Builders which wasnt too expensive and I have an interest in putting a 64 bit operating system on the computer – wonder how much trouble drivers will give me.

Anyway more on this project later.  Wish me luck.

2008 All Star Game

Well with the All-Star Game taking place two nights ago, and being one of the longest ones in history, I would like to make a few comments on the game.  For one, the National League lost yet again, without winning since 1996, and now that the All-Star game is a fight for home field advantage in the World Series, it seems that everything is stacked against the National League for yet another year.

Overall the night was fun, getting to see a lot of talents that I do not normally see as I follow the Mets.  Both sides had great pitching, keeping the score low.  And once again Billy Wagner blew a save – one which could have brought the game to the 9th inning with the National League on top.

However, while the game was great, the pregame was greater with so many Hall of Famer’s gathered.  I only wish this could have been at a different venue in Queens – Shea Stadium which is also having its last season this year.  While Yankee Stadium has a lot of history, as far as I care, Yankees fans in general are poor sports.

I do know some honorable fans, but let the All-Star Game speak for itself.  Everything Boston Red Sox player was booed.  While there is a big rivalry, the night was not about any of those things.  It was about the accomplishments of the players and the game itself and Yankees fans once again found ways to ruin it for viewers as well as several players.  May i note that had the game been held at Shea, the negativity would have been kept to a minimum (save for the few Yankees fans which would show up bringing their clouds of negativity with them.)

I know that they are bitter about not winning a world series since 2000, but the curse of the Mets will not be broken by such unsportman-like behavior.  To reiterate, the night was a testament to the strength and unity of the baseball community, not some rivalries that Yankees fans did not have the intelligence to see beyond.  The players were there because of their accomplishments, not to receive jeers.  While the game was good, the crowd was terrible, and the venue was even worse.  I hope Yankees fans will grow up and keep their negative feelings internal on a night for the whole baseball community.

Laptop Repaired

Well after dealing with my laptop acting up since feb/march I decided 2 weeks ago to initiate a repair with sony since my laptop was still under warrenty.  I was expecting a horrible experience with lots of stress and unclear instructions.  I ended up being greatly surprised.

I contacted sony support where they asked me basic informational questions as well as made sure i had followed their online procedure before initiating a repair to make sure it is really a hardware issue.  I added a flair of my own to appear a bit nerdier by even including the fact that I tried multiple operating systems, live cd’s, changing the ram, a memory test and searched forums for people with similar problems.  I am not sure of the value of all of making these claims, but after i said that the service rep was like ok, lets get this initiated.  They asked for a copy of the receipt to be faxed in – the guy actually asked for 2-3 copies so i sent 2 in.  This was the only bad thing about the whole process.  I called back the next day to get the work order started and they sent me a box – thursday the 3rd – so i wouldnt get it till the following monday because of the holliday.  During that weekend i got an email saying that they had not received the receipt and i was confused since i had received verbal confirmation from a service rep.

I called them that monday and found out that they had used each receipt and made a second event – and one did not have a receipt.  The service rep deleted the old event and made the one with a receipt the primary one and sent me another box.  The next day the box arrive and i sent it out.

Today I got it back and while i was complaining about a boot/freeze issue where the display would freeze or the comp wouldnt boot- both of which i think was a video card issue, they fixed a lot more.  For one, my lcd had a slight brightness issue and they replaced it.  Moreover, they replaced the missing rubber foot for the laptop and finally the motherboard.  They also put a couple heat removing tapes pieces into the case.  All in all, the process took about 2 weeks, didnt cost me any money because it was in warrenty and they fixed everything I found wrong with it.

I am extemely optimistic about seeing whether their fixes work – which it seems to be doing so far.

OMG a Post

Alright after getting bugged by Sam for weeks (ug.) i have given in to peer pressure and am going to write a post with more to follow over the next few days.

To put things gently, this summer has not turned out the way i expected it to.  I’ve been stuck at home which wouldnt be all that bad except for the severe lack of clear skies.  I did get one night about a week and a half ago which was very clear for buffalo, but fog rolled in around 1230.  Moreover, light pollution from toronto, buffalo and rochester is just terrible – i couldnt even see the andromeda galaxy without binoculars.  But i did see 4 moons of jupiter as well as a meteroite which streaked across about 1/3 of the sky.

As for work, ive been stuck doing web design, looking into content management systems, validating webpages, modifying css code and search engine optimization as well as looking into developing a gui in C for the nano version of linux.  The latter will probably be the most exciting thing i do this summer.

Perl is going well, im falling in love with it for text processing, didnt think that could actually happen.  Im also going through the big orange book of astrophysics as well as a book on linear programming and also another on shell programming.

I will post later on a few of the other things i have checked out and learned over the past month, some of which is kinda interesting but quite possibly useless – which makes it fun.