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[atomant]

From Aug 5th 2012, 9pm to Aug 6th, 2am, Adler Planetarium will host an after-hours event, the Curiosity Landing Party.
FREE ADMISSION

www.adlerplanetarium.org/experience/events

I plan to help setup scopes for the public to view Mars, as we wait for a successful landing at around 12:31am.

Note: anyone wearing "Mars themed" clothing during the event, gets a chance on winning a gift.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

I was thinking about working this.

Mars will have set by event time, but should be fun.

The Moon will be a good target about 11:30 pm or so, but most visitors will be less than impressed by the fainter DSOs. Even Mars, if caught early in the session, will be disappointing for those who expect a large globe with ice caps and surface markings.

I think the fun will be inside, with the live feeds and lectures.

If I do work it, I'll arrive about 11:00 pm.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Okays...

with a all too brief nap, I will head out to the Adler at 11:00 pm till 'bout 1am for some scope time and following along with the landing via my Tablet - sharing with the Adler visitors. I will use a Adler scope and bring along my 2" eyepieces.

I'll try to grab as many pics as I can for this event....should be fun.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Adler hosts a "Curiosity" Party

05/06 August 2012

Uncertain on my schedule/energy level, I did not count myself in as part of the Adler crew until a couple of days prior to the event. I did not network with other members to see who was going to work scopes and would be a surprise.

Arriving at 11:00 pm, (after a much needed nap), the parking lot was filled with eager visitors...and Adler Telescope facilitator/C.A. Bill was already on-site. As a matter of fact, while getting ready to leave, I saw a ABC Ch.7 news segment on this...

Prompting me to hurry up, I see Bill attending to his visitors and working his 6" reflector.

Fellow Adler crew member Puneet was there working a Dob. There was a 4' refractor and a Galileo long tube refractor of the Adler's that was put to use. Mars was long gone by this time, so the waning Moon was the target of the night...

I did not bring any scopes to the event, but toted along my 2" eyepiece case, as I intended to use the 10" Adler Meade SCT for some deep space targeting and more viewing comfort. But the museum wanted their scopes back in the building at midnight and no point in bring one out at this time.

Adler visitors were coming in in droves and filling up the main theater, feeds were piped in to classrooms of NASA mission control to handle the overflow. Bill and I decided to remain outside, keeping his scope working and showing our guests views of the Moon throughout our time there. I had my Android Tablet with me and we watched what was being shown inside the building, following along with the Curiosity team at NASA.

Audrey from the C.A.S and anti-light pollution advocate, stopped by with a blow-up Mars that we signed and was going to be sent to NASA...

Friends of the Chicago Astronomer also stopped by to catch the event at the Adler...

Mission control announced a nominal status 90 seconds before touch-down....and on time, we witnessed the successful landing procedure of the Curiosity via excited NASA crew specialists.

Very cool.

Visitors who were also outside with us, watched along with us, as we described what was going on and augmenting with tablet graphics. Now, we all knew that we were not going to get the HD pics from the surface of Mars right away, and explained this to our guests - that preliminary b/w test shots from the Navcam would be quickly captured by the rover. A common question was why the lack of Solar Panels. We explained that this is an atomic powered vehicle, similar to the Viking crafts of the 70's. Solar panels wouldn't provide enough power to move this adequately.

And the first crude pics started to come in, to the pleasure of all planetary explorers...

Soon after the first pics were shown inside, the show was over for most and the museum's visitors piled out en masse....to Bill's scope, which was the only instrument on-site

Bill, myself and Tony (from the C.A.S), attended to the lines, explaining about the lunar features they observed, astronomy and more of the Curiosity mission. I used the versatile tablet to display lunar maps and of the Curiosity mission...

We remained out, talking with visitors till about 1:30 am, after which, we went inside to catch some of the NASA Post-landing feed on the big screen, along with a handful of die-hard NASA visitors who were still there watching.

At 2:00 am, the museum closed and we concluded an exciting event in Mars exploration.....

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Oh,

This just in...

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Hmmmm.....

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

The Mission Control and integrated animation sequence is in...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti_yre6dsa4&feature=player_embedded

I think this timed work shows the excitement and success best...

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

1st Color pic from Curiosity...

The image is of the landscape to the north of Curiosity, and was acquired by MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) the first day after landing. The north wall and rim of Gale Crater is in the distance; the image is murky because the removable dust cover on MAHLI got coated with dust during the rover’s terminal descent. There are expected to be images taken without the dust cover once it has been opened, which should be a week after the landing.

The MAHLI is found on the turret at the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm, which was in its stowed position for this photograph (it has been stowed since it was packaged for its launch on November 26, 2011). With the robotic arm, the turret and the MAHLI stowed, the MAHLI is rotated 30 degrees relative to the rover deck. This MAHLI image has been rotated to account for this tilt so that the sky is up and the ground is down. The camera is capable of focussing on objects at distances as small as 2.1 centimetres.

Still got the dust cap on, but this was a good idea - to make the cap clear-ish.

(Skies are bluish on Mars. Good that NASA is not altering the tint.)

[erikruud]

This is a cool image. Curiosity was photographed during descent by the Mars Orbiter!

[Paulie pchris00]

One of the JPL engineers made "Best New Thing in the World Today" yesterday.

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#48541358

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Curiosity "Cast off" field...

Pretty cool.

[Paulie pchris00]

I want to see the sky crane, after the crash. Crash one multi-million dollar piece of equipment to save another multi-million dollar piece of equipment. Seems like they could have come up with a way to salvage it, and if not get any science out of it, at least get a few pretty pictures for our money.

[patrickm]

Oh! You want a sky crane for the sky crane!

Doing anything other than getting the delivery vehicle safely the frak out the way would have only added to the project's costs for something that was at best secondary to the mission's objectives. Get it out of the way and get on with it. It performed its function and died a valiant death.

[patrickm]

First, here's the "crime scene" photo showing where everything landed


Second, last fall I attended a Chicago Humanities Festival lecture called "Art on Mars." The panel was comprised of installation artist Tom Sachs, the unofficial artists for the Mars Science Laboratory decent and landing stage, and NASA/JPL scientists Gregg Vane and Adam Steltzner, who was in charge of landing the freaking thing.

Richard Gray Visual Art Series: Art on Mars
4–5 pm
Francis W. Parker School
Diane and David B Heller Auditorium
$10/5
511
Artist Tom Sachs is best known for elaborate re-creations of icons of modern American life. He has replicated toilets, guns, cameras— even a fully functioning McDonald’s restaurant—from scratch, using everyday materials, each one a masterpiece of design and engineering. In 2007, he upped the ante to a full-scale Apollo moon landing, complete with Mission Control, at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. Afterward, Gregg Vane, director of solar-system projects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, challenged Sachs to shift from past to future. Next year, Sachs and his team, in collaboration with JPL, will stage a full-scale Mars landing in New York’s Park Avenue Armory. CHF artistic director emeritus Lawrence Weschler engages Sachs, Vane, and Adam Steltzner, chief engineer for entry descent landing at JPL, in a conversation about art, technology, and the delights of inquiry.

The annual Richard Gray Visual Art Series recognizes a significant gift from founding CHF board member and distinguished art dealer Richard Gray.

It was a great talk. With the successful and slightly crazy landing, the strikingly handsome, surprisingly rockabilly Steltzner is now a minor celebrity, and he should be. The giant inflatable bags were his idea. Ditching the airbags for the sky crane, also his idea.

Steltzner said that after Spirit and Opportunity had been successfully landed, the NASA/JPL scientists were sent on a tour of schools around the country to talk about Mars and space flight. At one stop and to great wonder among the students, he described in detail how the sky crane would work. One elementary school kid raised her hand and asked, "What happens when the rovers run out of power? How do we get them back?" Steltzner said that they just stay there. "Isn't that littering?" Steltzner, thinking quickly on his feet, said, "I like to think of it as an art installation."

Unfortunately, CHF doesn't have a video posted for it, but I did find this nice write up on it.

www.ericbaskauskas.info/blog/?tag=art-on-mars

[atmtony]

Joe & Bill,
It was a fantastic night and the attendance at Adler was great. Joe thanks for posting the photos of the evening.
Regards,
Tony

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Hey Tony,

Great to have you there with us, bringing solid data and explanation to our visitors.

Hope to see you soon.

[erikruud]

I found this stunning picture of the Milky Way as seen from the surface of Mars.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

High Resolution pic of the decent chute and capsule....

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Curiosity's mysterious Mars photo stirs speculation

A photo of Mars taken by Curiosity shows what might be the NASA rover's spacecraft crash-landing in the distance. If so, it 'would be an insane coincidence,' one engineer says.

Did Curiosity capture the galactic equivalent of the Zapruder film when it landed on Mars?

Seconds after the NASA robot's landing Sunday night, Curiosity managed to squeeze off a handful of fuzzy, black-and-white photographs. One, taken with a device on its rear known as a Hazcam, captured the pebble-strewn ground beneath the rover and one of its wheels — and a blotch, faint but distinctive, on the horizon.

The images were relayed by a passing satellite. Two hours later, the satellite passed overhead again. This time, Curiosity sent home a new batch of higher-resolution photos. They showed the same horizon.

The blotch was gone.

The blotch did look like a billowing plume of some sort, erupting from the horizon. But the image "would be an insane coincidence," one engineer said. Most dismissed the chatter as wild-eyed speculation and a statistical impossibility. It was just dirt on the lens, some said — maybe a dust devil swirling in the distance, but nothing more than that.

Yet a pesky fact remained. In the first photo, the blotch is there. "And then it's not," said Sarah Milkovich, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge and a leader of the team responsible for delivering images documenting the mission.

The crime scene photo showed that the sky crane had crash-landed, as designed, about 2,000 feet away — and in the direction Curiosity's rear was pointed toward when it snapped the first photo showing the blotch. The new photo also showed that the sky crane, when it crash-landed, kicked up a violent wave of dirt that had scarred the surface of Mars.

The impossible, it seemed, was possible.

"I don't think you can rule it out," Curiosity mission manager Michael Watkins said Tuesday. "It bears looking into."

Full story here:

www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-0808-mars-curiosity-photo-crash-20120808,0,4063207,full.story

------------------

I don't know why NASA never puts a simple webcam/vidcam on their space crafts and just let it run...

[patrickm]

Aug 10, 2012 10:09:47 GMT -6 Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe said:

I don't know why NASA never puts a simple webcam/vidcam on their space crafts and just let it run...

I would guess bandwidth.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

[patrickm]

Aug 10, 2012 15:23:24 GMT -6 patrickm said:

Aug 10, 2012 10:09:47 GMT -6 Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe said:

I don't know why NASA never puts a simple webcam/vidcam on their space crafts and just let it run...

I would guess bandwidth.

And here's your answer from NBC. It was planned a long time ago AND the tech all has to be tested to survive liftoff, delivery, landing, Mars, & solar radiation:
Curious why Mars rover has such a dinky camera and computer?

The spacecraft’s dinky 2 megapixel camera and equally dinky PowerPC 750 computer chip?...

The spacecraft also has just 4.5 gigabytes of data storage...

*snip*

The problem is that the pace of technology moves so fast that what was relatively high-tech less than a decade ago looks comparatively lame today. Sure, any images whatsoever from the surface of Mars are super cool. But where’s the real-time streaming video?

In addition to the long-lead time for design and testing of components to fly on a mission to Mars (remember, there’s no Best Buy there to put that extended warranty to use should something break), transmitting the data from Mars to Earth is a tricky proposition. ExtremeTech notes:

The rover sends data to two satellites that orbit Mars, which then relay it back to Earth. This stream of data is quite limited, to something like 256 megabits (32MB) a day. And images aren’t the only thing that Curiosity is sending back — there are all sorts of other recordings and measurements that needs to be transmitted.

Read the whole Future of Tech blog post thing here:
www.futureoftech.msnbc.msn.com/technology/futureoftech/curious-why-mars-rover-has-such-dinky-camera-computer-934969

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

I want this....

nerdapproved.com/approved-products/hot-wheels-to-release-a-mars-rover-curiosity-toy/

[Paulie pchris00]

Aug 16, 2012 0:17:07 GMT -6 Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe said:

I want this....

nerdapproved.com/approved-products/hot-wheels-to-release-a-mars-rover-curiosity-toy/

I want one, too, but the odds don't look good.

At the top it says, "14/50," and at the bottom it says, "14/247." Not sure which is correct, but either way it looks like a very limited supply.

[patrickm]

Nah. Mass produced eventually:

www.space.com/16844-mars-rovers-hot-wheels-mattel-toys.html

I want too. Where's my orange track?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

NASA Rover vid and more funnies...

bcove.me/bmz61xkk