Space Center hosting "Shuttlebration"

:Space Center Houston invites you to attend “Shuttlebration Weekend” in honor of the arrival of the full-size Space Shuttle replica, arriving on Friday, June 1  by barge at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) dock located at 3000 NASA Parkway on Clear Lake near the Houston Hilton NASA Clear Lake hotel. 


Following the replica’s arrival, which is estimated between 3 and 5 p.m., there will be a free celebration for the public between the dock and the hotel. The event area will open at 2 p.m.  for viewing as the replica arrives at the dock to the welcoming fanfare of a fire boat water arch. The event will include space exploration exhibits and activities, food, entertainment and a fireworks show to end the evening at 9 p.m.  Note: There will be no pets, coolers or outside food/beverages allowed in the event area. 


Public parking will be provided on NASA’s Johnson Space Center property using Gate 3 for entrance/exit located off of Space Center Blvd. with tram transportation to and from the event location. No public parking is available at the event.
On Saturday, June 2, the Space Shuttle replica will be loaded onto a mobile transfer vehicle for transport to Space Center Houston. The lakeside load-out will take a full day to complete.? There are no public events planned for this day.
On Sunday, June 3, the replica will make an estimated three-hour trek down NASA Parkway from the Hilton to its permanent home at Space Center Houston. Once on Space Center Houston property, the replica will be welcomed by JSC’s prototype planetary rovers for future solar system exploration, local scout troops and marching bands as it is rolled to its location. Following the arrival, there will be a free family-oriented public celebration in the Space Center Houston parking lot from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., offering viewing opportunities of the replica, NASA space exploration exhibits, fun activities for the entire family and much more.

For detailed “Shuttlebration Weekend” information and traffic advisories, visit http://www.spacecenter.org/shuttlebration.html

Venus to transit Sun - don't look at it.

click to enlarge

On June 5th, 2012, Venus will pass across the face of the sun, producing a silhouette that no one alive today will likely see again.

Transits of Venus are very rare, coming in pairs separated by more than a hundred years. This June's transit, the bookend of a 2004-2012 pair, won't be repeated until the year 2117. Fortunately, the event is widely visible. Observers on seven continents, even a sliver of Antarctica, will be in position to see it. 

The nearly 7-hour transit begins at 3:09 pm Pacific Daylight Time (22:09 UT) on June 5th. The timing favors observers in the mid-Pacific where the sun is high overhead during the crossing. In the USA, the transit will be at its best around sunset. That's good, too. Creative photographers will have a field day imaging the swollen red sun "punctured" by the circular disk of Venus.

Observing tip: Do not stare at the sun. Venus covers too little of the solar disk to block the blinding glare. Instead, use some type of projection technique or a solar filter. A #14 welder's glass is a good choice. Many astronomy clubs will have solar telescopes set up to observe the event; contact your local club for details.

Transits of Venus first gained worldwide attention in the 18th century. In those days, the size of the solar system was one of the biggest mysteries of science. The relative spacing of planets was known, but not their absolute distances. How many miles would you have to travel to reach another world? The answer was as mysterious then as the nature of dark energy is now.

Venus was the key, according to astronomer Edmund Halley. He realized that by observing transits from widely-spaced locations on Earth it should be possible to triangulate the distance to Venus using the principles of parallax.

The idea galvanized scientists who set off on expeditions around the world to view a pair of transits in the 1760s. The great explorer James Cook himself was dispatched to observe one from Tahiti, a place as alien to 18th-century Europeans as the Moon or Mars might seem to us now. Some historians have called the international effort the "the Apollo program of the 18th century."

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A double transit: the International Space Station and Venus on June 8, 2004. Photo courtesy of Tomas Maruska.In retrospect, the experiment falls into the category of things that sound better than they actually are. Bad weather, primitive optics, and the natural "fuzziness" of Venus’s atmosphere and other factors prevented those early observers from gathering the data they needed. Proper timing of a transit would have to wait for the invention of photography in the century after Cook’s voyage. In the late 1800s, astronomers armed with cameras finally measured the size of the Solar System as Edmund Halley had suggested.

This year’s transit is the second of an 8-year pair. Anticipation was high in June 2004 as Venus approached the sun. No one alive at the time had seen a Transit of Venus with their own eyes, and the hand-drawn sketches and grainy photos of previous centuries scarcely prepared them for what was about to happen. Modern solar telescopes captured unprecedented view of Venus’s atmosphere backlit by solar fire. They saw Venus transiting the sun’s ghostly corona, and gliding past magnetic filaments big enough to swallow the planet whole.

2012 should be even better as cameras and solar telescopes have improved. Moreover, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is going to be watching too. SDO will produce Hubble-quality images of this rare event.

Naked unicyclist gets ticketed

KEMAH, Texas — Police say a man arrested in a Southeast Texas city for riding his unicycle in the nude was distracting drivers and creating a hazard.

Kemah (KEE’-muh) police Chief Greg Rikard (RY’-kurd) says 45-year-old Joseph Glynn Farley was not intoxicated or impaired when he was arrested Wednesday on a bridge in the city 20 miles southeast of Houston.

Rikard says Farley had been falling off the unicycle and into traffic.

Farley told officers that he liked the feeling of riding without his clothes, which were found at the base of the bridge.

Police charged Farley, of Clear Lake, with misdemeanor indecent exposure. Bond is set at $1,500.

Online jail records did not list an attorney for Farley.

By Hannah Winston
Correspondent

Published: Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 8:20 p.m.

Last Modified: Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 8:20 p.m.

Robert Oehl grew up with astronauts for neighbors. In Clear Lake City, Texas, during the Apollo space mission years, Oehl was surrounded by what he calls the pinnacle of human achievement: space flight.

“To say Neil Armstrong lived here and Buzz Aldrin lived there is amazing,” he said, remembering walking down his block as a teen.

Or even passing Jim Lovell, the Apollo 13 commander, when he walked around town, to this day tickles him.

“It was an exciting time when America was on top of the world,” Oehl said.

His father, Don Oehl, worked for Grumman Aircraft as a senior field representative in the lunar module program. He also worked on the fuel cells for the Apollo 13 mission.

The infamous flight nearly didn't make it home after an oxygen tank exploded and two of the three fuel cells lost power almost 200,000 miles from Earth in 1970, according to NASA.gov.

His father, along with others in the team, sat in the Apollo simulator to figure out the problem and eventually get the three astronauts home alive.

“Those are the real national heroes,” Robert Oehl said of those in the NASA program.

Now, Oehl, co-founder and director of the Wings of Dreams Aviation Museum, gets to sit in his own simulator and teach the next generation to appreciate and understand the final frontier.

Red the rest of the story HERE.
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