the sleppys

Watch the decent rate as the orbiter approaches the flight deck.

STS-51C

STS-1

Dad: [Coming in from running errands on a hot, humid, late spring morning.] Have they been outside yet?

Mom: [What an odd question. He's never asked that before.] Yea, they went out about an hour ago.

Dad: [Walks into the home office. Comes back to the living room.] It doesn’t look like they’ve been outside.

Mom: They were. I washed their feet when they came back because they got dirty from running through the soil where the weeds have been plucked out.

Dad: Not them. The astronauts! Have they been for a space walk yet?

Mom: How the heck should I know? I’ve been reading “Frog and Toad are Friends” with the five year old.

Ty commented that the Earth was really big and asked where the Earth lived.

“In the Solar System.”

“Where’s the Solar System?”

“It goes around the sun. ‘Solar’ means Sun.”

“And what is at the bottom, way down down down down?”

“Are you asking what holds the Earth up?”

“Yea.”

“There’s no ground under the Earth. At least, no one has ever seen the bottom. The Earth just spins space, like in the air. All that spinning helps to keep it floating.”

“Oh. That’s weird!”

I laughed. “Yes, it’s a little weird, but it works.”

It’s weird that it never occurred to him that the Earth spun in space. We’ve finger painted the solar system several times. We’ve seen pictures of Earth and the planets in books, floating in space against a black background. He has seen Saturn through the telescope… I suppose it is a bit overwhelming to realize that Earth is a pale blue dot that floats and spins in black nothingness.

The Sidewalk Astronomers

Dad and I awoke at dawn on Friday to see the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, which were less than a degree apart. Dad brought the telescope to the front yard and called his friend to come over and take a look. The three of us took turns looking through the telescope at the planets. We clearly saw the bands of Jupiter and four of its moons. Venus, close as it is to Earth, looked like a star. And the fact that they were less than a degree apart from one another, they were in the same field of view.
A neighbor was taking a morning walk, and we invited him to come over, “Come look at Jupiter and Venus.” He was a little surprised but came over anyway. Everyone who looks through the telescope has the same reaction: “Wow!” He looked at the sky and again through the telescope. Still amazed by the sight, he thanked us and continued his walk.

So we were like John Dobson, the original Sidewalk Astronomer.

Down the Drain and Into the Brain

Ty first learned that “all drains lead to the ocean” while watching Finding Nemo. He stated that this pertained to toilets. He pointed to the bends under the tank. “Where does the water go next?” he asked.

“Into the pipes in the wall, down to the ground pipes and into the street to the treatment facility,” I answered.

A few hours later, he was asking Dad to show him the pipes under the bathroom sink. Dad started to explain the trap (which I call the U-bend), and Ty had to see if all the pipes had the same thing. They walked to the kitchen sink where Dad explained the garbage disposal and the water’s route to the street and facility. He asked Ty where the trap was. I remembered seeing an illustration in the Highlights magazine of a sink, its U-bend, and where the water settles, so I showed it to them. Dad explained it clearly. The walked to the Master bathroom and went through the same motions.
Talk about a home schooling lesson… on a Saturday!

While little children all over the eastern seaboard were getting their good night’s rest for a busy Monday morning, Ty was up and about, home schooling as if he needed to catch up on some work.

I wanted to get some knitting done, so I pulled out my yarn stash and went through the unfinished projects. Ty recognized some of the yarn and showed me the gingerbread man and mermaid that I had made last year. I asked him if he wanted to learn to knit, but he didn’t want to hold the needles. So I started fingerknitting (which is more like fingercrochet), and he was interested. He fingerknitted eight rows all by himself. When I pulled the end of it, it tightened and became a rope. “Wow! It’s like magic!” exclaimed Ty. “That’s knitting.” I responded.

Dad was outside, looking for Messier objects in space through the binoculars. Ty went with him while I nursed Taylor. Dad showed Ty how to find Orion’s belt, Cassiopeia, and Mars, which are not Messier objects but easily seen with the naked eye. They came back inside, and Ty described to me what he had learned.

After putting Taylor down, Ty and I went outside again. I hadn’t seen the stars in a few nights, so I sat in a patio chair and gazed Orion and Taurus. “Look, Mommy. That’s Mars. And we live on EARTH!” And he jumped in the air.

“Cool. Where’s Cassiopeia?”
“Uhm….” tapping his chin, “Right there! The big ‘M.’”
“When I look at it, it’s a ‘W.’”
He looked at it upside down, “Oh yea!”
“Yea, I usually don’t go outside this late at night. It’s usually in the northeast when I see it.”

Kyle was asleep through all this.

The morning of All Saint’s Day, we went outside to feel the crisp, cool air. We played with our shadows and took the plastic mini-skulls off the of the rose bush. There was a foggy dew that hovered in the air and diffused the lights of the houses down the street.

This morning, we, Dad, Mom, and Kyle, woke up earlier than usual for different reasons. Dad enjoys keeping track of the International Space Station. He wakes me up to go see it. Kyle awoke just before dawn as he usually does, but since the time change to Standard, dawn comes just before 6am. So the three of us went outside to see the ISS, which had recently been separated from the space shuttle Discovery, so it looked a little different through the binoculars. The air was so cool that we wore socks. Socks! I hadn’t worn socks since February and had a hard time finding them. Haha!

After watching the ISS/Discovery float across the sky, we stayed to watch the Iriduim (satellite) flares. After looking up for a few minutes, we saw a small, yellow light to the right of the moon. It brightened and brightened some more… then it withered into nothing. It lasted only a few seconds. We also stayed to catch the Hubble telescope pass through the sky, but we didn’t see it. The sun was rising too quickly.

Birds were waking, scuttling about. The peafowl pair rustled the leaves in the neighbor’s tree. It was time to go inside for coffee.

NASA plans to launch Shuttle Atlantis on June 8. We are so looking forward to a new Shuttle mission, or at least Dad is. He loves the way those NASA engineers think. Like Disney creates magic, so do these guys. Anyway, it looks to be evening/dusk launch ocurring at 7:38 p.m. EDT. You can read the press release here.

Hopefully, the skies are clear. It is always amazing to see the shuttle launch. We’ll be watching it on NASA-TV.

Note from Author: This post was lost in the shuffle of drafts and whatnot. I’m glad that I found it because I thought that it was deleted forever. Here it is…

Since around Christmastime, we have been looking at the night sky through binoculars. It is quite a sight for me as I’ve never – or can’t remember ever having – seen a magnified night sky. Because it is not the sight of a strong telescope, id est, at the astronomy tower or the planetarium, one can understand what one is seeing through the 15x strength of the binoculars. That said, the entirety of the full moon is in the field of view.

The full moon was beautiful, crystal-like. Last week’s lunar eclipse was something I will not forget for a long, long time. We went outside, I’m not sure at what time, but it was almost time for the kids to go to bed. There was some cloud cover, so it was sad to think that we were going to miss the lunar eclipse. But then Dad went outside again, and it was nice and clear. The moon was blood red, like a setting of the stories of Merlin. It could only have been more magical if we were standing inside Stonehenge.

We saw the last half. Our planet’s shadow creeped away slowly; I really couldn’t see it moving,, but after a few minutes, one really noticed the difference. And through the binoculars, it was even… well, like Ty said, “Hey, it’s closer!” The kids went to sleep, and the lunar eclipse ended.

An hour later, Dad and I sat in the backyard, on a towel, under the mackerel sky, which diffused the moonshine… or made it brighter, depending on the blood-alcohol level. And we talked about, well, I forget. But the cool, moist air and the misty grey color that shone on the shrubs and his face… it was so peaceful.

If the International Astronomical Union decide to label Pluto a “dwarf planet”, that’s fine with me. They are the scientists with the doctorate-level educations. I’ll change my homeschooling curriculum so that we cover the three dwarf planets of the solar system. But. BUT. BUT!!! I really liked the name “Xena” for the planet formerly known as Planet X.
History was made. Xena and Gabrielle were so much cooler.

But after reading more on how planets were named and the traditions of space and mythology, I think I like Eris and Dysnomia. I’m glad that they finally decided on a name. Teaching the solar system to children is a difficult task when the planets have names like 2003 UB313, 2003 EL61 and whatnot.