Holding up the Goldstone Radio Telescope

Yep! That's Christine (Ms. Poling) and Eileen (Mrs. Poling) holding up the telescope! Bet you didn't think we were that strong.
We arrived home this evening after a fantastic training. We learned so much and have already been planning how we're going to implement these activities so our students will be taking data from a telescope in California.
The fall colors in West Virginia are spectacular right now. We noticed it from the plane and it was also a gorgeous view the entire trip home. After spending many days on the Atlantic coast in pouring rain and in the California high desert, there is no doubt that West Virginia is the most beautiful place in the world.

Starry Night

We were able to get on the radio telescope again this morning. It's a lot of fun. We also heard a lot from Dr. Steve Levin. He's a scientist with JPL and really knows his stuff! He'll be working with the Juno program with NASA. Juno is the only NASA mission that isn't an acronym.
After class, we all went to an Italian restaurant for dinner and then went to the Victor Valley College Planetarium. The planetarium director set the telescope so that we each could see Jupiter (and four of the moons!), Neptune, Uranus, the Andromeda galaxy, Barnard's star, Double Double (a binary star where the two stars actually orbit each other), M13 galaxy, and several other starry wonders. It was amazing! He also takes pictures by attaching his digital camera to the telescope lens and setting shutter speed. He then stacks the images he takes in Photo Shop to make the pictures. He had so many incredible pictures, including the horsehead nebula. I'd only seen that nebula in a Hubble image. We also think we saw the ISS going across the night sky.
Tomorrow, we learn about QVS (quasars), Spitzer, LCROSS, and Uranus.
This entire workshop has been absolutely incredible. Some of the stuff has been way over my head, but I'm sure it will all come together eventually. It's a lot of fun and it's not like anything I've done before. It'll really be fun for students, too.

Trip to Goldstone

We took a field trip today to Goldstone, the home of the telescope(s) that GAVRT uses. Goldstone was a gold mining town in the 1800's. Burros hauled the water, goods, and were the transportation for the town. There are still burros in the area that are descendants of the original animals. We saw many radio telescopes today. Of course, none were as big as the Byrd telescope at Greenbank, WV. The area here is high desert and the telescopes are spread across many miles of land. Each cluster of telescopes is named after the planetary missions that they gathered data for over the years. We made trips to Venus, Mars, and Mercury today!

Monday's Fantastic sessions!

Sorry there are no pictures today. I was so busy doing and learning all sorts of great stuff that there were no "Kodak moments" available. Our sessions today were at the Lewis Center for Educational Research. It is a part of a public charter school. It's a K-12 school with 1,300 students and a waiting list of 2,500 students.
We were in Mission Control for the telescope. We learned all about the telescope and how it came to be used for education. A scientist, Dr. Steve Levin, was a part of our learning sessions today, too. He looks like a scientist and was very interesting in what he told us. You may get to talk to him, too, via teleconference at some point.
We learned about right ascension and declination, cross scans, x-band and s-band frequencies, and how to do minicalibrations. We learned about quasars and about Jupiter. THEN, we got to actually make the telescope work and move so we could gather data and record it. There were technicians at the computer that helped do the correct things and to answer questions that we had. When you do the research using the telescope, you, too will have help from them. It was all pretty exciting and fun!
We also did some fun hands-on activities to help us to understand more about the concepts we were working with today. It was a really great day.
This evening, Christine (Ms. Poling) and I went to my friend, Julie's home for dinner. Julie was my partner when I did the internship at the Space Telescope Science Institute in 1999 and we've kept in touch since. It was a wonderful evening. I got to meet her 12-year-old grandson this evening.
Tomorrow is a field trip to the actual telescope we will be using.
Wednesday morning (very early) will be the Orionids metor shower. The moon should cooperate as long as the skies are clear. If you go and look early on Wednesday and don't see meteors, you can see a red Mars, a brilliant Venus, and very bright stars in Orion.
Hopefully, I'll have more pictures and less talk tomorrow! Have a great Tuesday!

Arrival in California!

Christine(Ms. Poling) and I made it without a hitch today. We got up at 3:30 AM and we were flying out of Charleston by 5:20. All flights were eventless and two were even early. We have a 2009 Chevy Malibu as a rental car. The motel is very nice. The weather is in the high 70's with sunshine and blue skies. After last week on the eastern shore, with soggy, cold, rainy, and miserable weather, I was beginning to wonder if the sun actually could still shine!

We drove to the Lewis Education Center on our way to eat dinner tonight to make sure we knew where we were going in the morning. Then, we ate dinner at Chili's and we were entertained by these two little boys who were too cute to describe. One had four dimples on his face and he smiled constantly! The other little guy was a dancing fool and he was eating ranch dressing with his French fry! Lots of fun.

Here's a picture of us as we arrived at the Ontario, California airport this afternoon.

Gathering phytoplankton and zooplankton from the waters near Chincoteague.
A picture of me in Mission Control at the Wallops Space Flight facility.
Birds in the waters near Chincoteague.
View from the viewer in the visitor center of the wildlife center.

Monsoon season

I had no idea that we were in the middle of monsoon season here! Our cruise this morning was cancelled because of the horrendous weather. We went to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. Some people ventured out in the pouring rain to explore. I looked through the exhibits. My carful then ventured on the road down towards the ocean and back. We ate lunch in the van and then they were going on the afternoon cruise on a flat bottomed boat with no place to sit and no cover. I don't think so! I brought two other teachers back who preferred to stay dry and then went back to pick up the rest. They were completely drenched. They're drying out and then we're going out to dinner.

The weather doesn't sound good for Saturday for my travel back to Charleston. If I didn't have to go through Philadelphia and Charlotte, NC to get back to Charleston, it might be better! Oh, well. I'm sure it will work out fine.