By now, you’ve probably seen news reports about the star Mira (pronounced my-rah), in the constellation Cetus. It’s barreling through the galactic medium at unusual speed and as a result is shedding a trail of starstuff. In the ultraviolet pictures from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, it looks like a comet:
The Star
Our cat
You might not have seen the cool animation NASA has online, though, along with explanation of how it is probably a bow-wave effect that’s causing the tail.
It finally happened, and we survived it. We took our older daughter Lexi to begin her college career. She was nervous, her mom bore up but not without traumatic pangs, her sister was quiet, and I was shell-shocked. (Well, what with one last-minute preparation thing and another, we managed to only get about an hour or so of sleep before getting up at 5:30 a.m. to hit the road. So once we were there, and she was moved in, and Allysen and I were attending presentations for the parents, a certain amount of nodding off was taking place.)
Anyway, she’s there and we’re home, and we hope all is rolling smoothly toward the beginning of a great college career. I have great faith in her, and my only concern is how we’re going to manage here without her. Here’s a picture she took of herself and me a couple of days before leaving:
“I’m scared all the time, which is always good. You have to be scared or you’re not working hard enough.” —Sue Grafton
I’m happy to report that Sunborn (Chaos Chronicles #4) finally is firmly in the Tor schedule. I’m less happy to report that it’s been pushed to Fall 2008! (As I recall, I went all-out to get it finished so it could make the 2007 schedule. However, revisions and delays and various back-and-forthing has resulted in its being pulled and reslotted several times. So, Fall 2008. To those of you who have been waiting so patiently and understandingly, thank you and please stick with me just a little longer. (Now, don’t mind me while I go off in the corner here and quietly scream: “Aaaaaiiiiiiieeeeee!”)
The good news is, there’s now more lead time to solicit quotes from influential voices—not so much, as you might think, to adorn the cover, but more to generate enthusiasm within the sales and marketing halls of the publisher. Yes, expectation is everything, and if those responsible for selling it are excited about it, chances for a successful promotion go way up. (Now, that’s all assuming it gets good quotes. Let’s not put the rocket before the nosecone.)
I was probably the last on my block to hear about it, but thank heavens I did. ABC premiered a new, not-quite-series called Masters of Science Fiction last Saturday evening. Fortunately, I saw something in the paper in time to set my DVR and catch it. It’s an anthology series (or not-quite series, since ABC hasn’t committed to continuing it beyond a few episodes) featuring adaptations of short stories by noted SF writers, including Kessel, Heinlein, Ellison, and others. Each story will be intro’d, and I guess outtro’d, by the voice of physicist Stephen Hawking, ala Rod Serling.
I quite enjoyed the first episode, “A Clean Escape,” based on a short story by John Kessel. Well written and acted, and pretty powerful.
Who knows how long this will last, so watch it and support it (Saturday evenings at 10, Eastern time). Maybe if it gains an following, ABC will see that there’s an audience for more than one intelligent SF show on TV! Wouldn’t that be great?
“The mere habit of writing, of constantly keeping at it, of never giving up, ultimately teaches you how to write.” —Gabriel Fielding
I went to see the movie Sunshine today with my family. Definitely a mixed bag. Lots of boneheaded science mistakes, of course (more on those below). The first half of the movie is pretty interesting psychological drama, reminiscent of Solaris. Unfortunately, it turns into dumb horror in the second half. All in all, it has some good moments and great visuals, but it would also be a good candidate for Mystery Science Theater 3000, if they ever revived it.
An article in today’s Sunday Boston Globe is fairly laudatory about the movie. I really had better things to do, but I couldn’t help myself, so I wrote the following letter to the editor:
“About the movie Sunshine, Tom Russo writes (in the Sunday movie section) that “there’s nothing as inscrutably mind-bending as 2001 here, but nothing that’s Armageddon obtuse, either.” Actually, there’s plenty of Armageddon-level obtuseness in the film, including the premise that dropping a huge bomb onto the sun would somehow jumpstart the fire if it had gone out. (Bad science! Sit! Stay!) But if you buy that for the sake of enjoying the movie (and I was willing), then Sunshine has a pretty good psycho-drama going for the first half, reminiscent of Solaris. But the cracks start showing when you notice that the spaceship has the obligatory rotating elements, presumably for artificial gravity–but it does not seem to be the living quarters that are rotating, so what’s the point? Then when fire strike the greenhouse, source of their oxygen, what do they do? Vent the air to put the fire out? No! Feed it more oxygen to make it burn hotter! (Very bad science! Go lie down!) I probably shouldn’t even mention the huge derelict spaceship full of floating sloughed-off human skin–dandruff from a crew of, what, seven people?
Quite apart from the science, the story eventually devolves into silly horror, redeemed somewhat by a nice philosophic moment at the end. It’s not that the movie has no good points, because it does–but a film that aspires to have “a very rigorous realism attached to it,” as the director is quoted as saying, really could do much better.”
Probably won’t get printed, but at least I’m trying to give NASA its money’s worth back from the astronomy workshop!
On the plus side, there were some projection glitches, and the theater gave us return visit passes on our way out. Maybe we’ll go to The Simpsons next, and see how they score on the science. 🙂
Somewhat relevant to the efforts of the filmmakers:
“I use exotic settings, but the settings are like the function of a Chinese stage. They are intended to lay bare the human mind, to throw torches over the underground lakes of the human soul, to show the chambers wherein the ageless dramas of self-respect, God, courage, sex, love, hope, envy, decency and power go on forever.” —Cordwainer Smith
Lori White from the Launchpad group pointed out an interesting article to us: guitarist Brian May from the rock band Queen is back in school, finishing his doctorate in astrophysics! Seems he was studying astrophysics in the first place, before he dropped out to form Queen. But he couldn’t get rid of the astronomy bug, and now he’s nearly completed the studies he began back in the 1970’s. (I’ll bet he had some catching up to do.)
As Vonda McIntyre pointed out, he’s a real-life Buckaroo Banzai!
One of the quirkier memories from last week is our group singalong of The Galaxy Song, from Monty Python:
(If this worked right, you should see a little menu showing some related videos. Check out the updated version of The Galaxy Song. It has a rough beginning, but once it gets going, it’s good.)
Me, I’ve got to get back to the writing board.
“When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” —Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve returned safe and sound from Laramie (two hours late due to our flight crew having been temporarily stranded in another city, but aside from that, a good flight). Great to be home, but I miss the group!
For more comments and other pictures, see Eugie Fosters’ blog. She’s been covering it, too, and some of her pictures are better than mine.
“I type in one place, but I write all over the house.” —Toni Morrison
The final observing night looked as though it would be a washout, or rather a cloud-out. We drove some distance to get to the WIRO Observatory in the mountains that from Laramie are a part of the horizon. Cloudy, cloudy. A drive up the winding, dirt mountain road made me think I was back at Cedar Point. When we finally reached the top, the conditions looked hopeless for even opening the observatory dome. So we looked at the telescope instead:
And gathered in the control room while our enterprising grad-student operators tried to get the aging computer system to cooperate:
And even posed for a group photo (shot by Jeremiah Tolbert):
Gradually, though, the sky began to clear—just a few stars, at first. Hoping for the best, we opened the dome. By the time the system was up and running, more of the sky was clearing—and within an hour or two, we had a spectacular view of the Milky Way overhead (for those of us who wandered outside to stand in the dark). In the meantime, the telescope was starting to pull in images.
It was instructive to watch the process. Telescopes take photos in black and white, not color. To achieve color images, successive pictures are taken in red, blue, and green, and combined on the computer to produce a final image. And that is exactly what we did in the end. Most of the group had left by midnight, but the few of us remaining watched images come in of the Pelican Nebula. We left with the gray and white images on a CD. In the morning, someone who knew how to do the computer wizardry combined them to produce the photo that we have adopted as our workshop badge: the Pelican Nebula, in glorious color:
We’re done with all the sessions now, with only our closing party to look forward to. It’s been a great week, and while I look forward to getting home, I’m also sorry to see it end.
I’m going to end with this quote that seems utterly appropriate to me.
“I believe that good questions are more important than answers, and the best children’s books ask questions, and make the readers ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.” —Madeleine L’Engle
Wednesday started with a hike in a nearby national park. Very cool big rocks, which look as if they were carefully set into place by giants, some rather precariously:
It was a surprisingly lush place, with aspen and junipers (I think) and various evergreens, and at least one beaver dam. Here’s another shot:
We hiked for an hour or two, which tested our adaptation to the 7000+ ft. elevation of the Laramie area.
The only time I really noticed the altitude was when a few of us ran, briefly, toward the end of the hike. Then, as I bent over gasping, I wondered why I had done that.
More astronomy during the day: stars and stellar evolution. In the evening we went onto the roof of the astronomy building and did some star-gazing. At home I have a small Meade telescope; here I found its much bigger brothers, a 10 inch reflector and a 16 inch reflector. Plus, Mike had night-vision goggles, which were surprisingly effective at helping us pick out star patterns that were hard to spot with the city lights and scattered clouds. Besides the Moon and Venus and Jupiter, we took in the Ring Nebula and a fuzzy image of the Andromeda Galaxy (which I had never seen in a scope before).
Thursday brought us more on stellar evolution, a visit to the small but charming planetarium in the same building (after looking at star patterns awhile, we watched some laser light shows). Then we learned a bit about the processing of raw astronomical data, and talked about using what we were learning in our writing (which, after all, is the purpose behind this workshop).
Finally we visited the somewhat larger Red Buttes Observatory outside the city. Conditions didn’t allow for opening the dome and viewing, but we got a tour of the telescope:
Then we just stood outside awhile, as the clouds cleared some, and enjoyed the dark sky and partial view of the Milky Way.
We’re learning a lot, and we’re enjoying a fine group camaraderie; it’s hard to believe the week is nearly over.
“Truth is a matter of the imagination.” —Ursula K. LeGuin
We’ve been covering some basic astronomy, most of it stuff I already know, but still interesting as a refresher. Three different people are presenting to us, Mike Brotherton covering the basic science, Jerry Oltion on amateur astronomy and simple calculation of orbits. Jim Verley has been covering educational issues, such as how to convey to the public, or to school kids, frequently misunderstood concepts such as the cause of the seasons and the phases of the moon. (Jim showed us a short video in which 23 brand new Harvard grads and faculty members were asked what causes the seasons. Out of 23, 21 answered that summer occurs when the Earth is closer to the sun, and winter when it was further away. Twenty-one students, including some who had studied science, stated this misconception with complete confidence! The correct answer, of course, is that the Earth is tilted on its axis, and when the northern hemisphere is tilted to receive more direct rays from the sun, it’s summer there; and when the southern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, it’s summer there. So we talked about why this is so commonly misunderstood, and why kids in school don’t get it even when it’s taught to them. One thing we learned is that hands-on and kinesthetic ways of showing the Earth’s tilt, or the phases of the moon, are much more effective at conveying the concepts than words or even diagrams.)
As a group, we watched the movie Armageddon, and laughed and cried at the astounding number of scientific errors foisted on the viewers by a movie about the Earth being endangered by an approaching asteroid. Tonight we were to be observing from the roof of the astronomy building, but the sky is cloudy, so we’ve put that off a day. Tomorrow, we hike in some of the local hills in the morning, and then get back to astronomy in the afternoon.
It’s a great group of people–some well-established writers like Vonda McIntyre and Josepha Sherman, and some folks whose names you might come to know in the future. (There’s a list on the Launchpad website. Click the prematurely-named link for “past attendees.”)
Internet access turns out to be iffy, at least for me. I can get online at the astro building, and can do things like post blog updates during breaks, but for some reason I can’t send email. I don’t know what that’s all about.
More in a day or two, I hope.
“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” —E. L. Doctorow
The Star
Our cat
