Dr. Pamela L. Gay is an astronomer, technologist, and creative focused on using new media to engage people in learning and doing science. Join her as we map our Solar System in unprecedented detail through citizen science projects at CosmoQuest.org, and learn astronomy through media productions like Astronomy Cast & EVSN.tv.
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Conflicted by Light
As an Astronomer, I am very pro-dark sky. As a person in favor of migrating birds, baby sea turtles, and general good health, I’m anti-light pollution. As a human who wants to see our planet’s environmental crash slow down and reverse, I’m in favor of energy conservation. Generally, these three sets of opinionated voices in my head work in tandem to encourage people to use down-pointed lights that contain orange-ish low-pressure sodium lamps. When those don’t work, I turn to the web site of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) where they list lighting, even Antique Street Lamps that would match my historic neighborhood’s idea of good landscaping. Unfortunately, a new light on the block is going to bring conflict to the normally collaborative voices. That new light is the ulta-luminous white LED. Taking 63 watts to produce 8500 lux, and lasting roughly 30 years, these brand new lights are every energy savers dream come true. Municipalities are considering switching to this new new tech toy to save city resources. Unfortunately, white LEDs (see image left, credit: CREE lighting) are every dark sky dreamer’s worst nightmare.
The Detritus of Travel
As a professional person, I have both the pain and pleasure of getting to travel semi-regularly. There are professional conferences to attend, public talks to be given, business meetings in far off cities, and sometimes there are just vacations to see friends and family. Tonight I’m getting ready to fly to Boston to attend a meeting at the AAVSO. As I’m packing, I’m going through all my bag’s pockets trying to find things to remove to lighten by load. Its amazing the things we travel with. My “never leave home with out” stash of dayquil and nightquil fills one pocket, and a stash of pens fills another. I keep finding the dead batteries I refused to throw out, and have carried home from hither and yon to recycle. There are business cards I’ve collected and flash drives and CDs littered with backups of talks and copies off presentations. As I empty my bag, I seem to be building the skeleton of a conference past as I prepare for a conference future. There is a lot that you can learn from the garbage of a person. My clutter of not-needed-now cables, connectors and cameras screams, “Watch out, this one just might record your image, your voice, your data,” while the scraps of paper portray a pack rat not quite organized enough to record everything in my digital address book.
The Sky *was* Falling
On Monday, March 26, a Chilean flight to New Zealand was almost struck by falling bits of space something. The pilot of the flight noted he could see burning up materials both in front and behind the flight. (Information obtained from numerous news sources). Some reports attributed the falling carnage to a Progress M-58 burning up through the atmosphere as it returned from the International Space Station, or at least insinuated as much. In fact, there had been an alert that such a re-entry would be occurring. According to US space officials, however, at the time of the incident the Progress was still attached to the ISS, and no set of calculations can make a Progress be in two places at once. The US Space Surveillance Network had no reports of other re-entering space junk. With all known space junk ruled out, it looks like that airplane was almost almost hit by an asteroid.
That silly little kid in me wishes I had been on that airplane. They could actually hear the fragments burning up.
Should I worry about meteors when I fly? Nope. And doing stats can be fun.