Late last night I returned from Washington, DC. I was up there for the weekend to help out with a Family Science Overnight that was happening at the visitor’s center. It was quite a lot of fun. I got up there Friday afternoon and took a tour of some of the facilities. I got to see the clean room for the Solar Dynamics Observatory, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as the clean room for the Hubble Space Telescope. The HST clean room had the instruments which will be going up on the 4th servicing mission later this year. There were several engineers in the clean room working on the instruments.
On Saturday, we went to the visitor’s center and set up for the overnight. The focus of the 24 hour event was rocketry and scientific methods. The families built and launched a variety of rockets, ranging from water powered ones through estes model rockets. I was in charge of the “star party” which would take place after it’d gotten dark. Sadly, it was quite cloudy and we were unable to see many stars. My other job was as photographer, and I took several hundred pictures over the course of the event. Once I’ve edited them, I’ll put a few up here and give a better description of the event.
Goddard’s website has more information on the Family Science Night Program.
The 26″ at McCormick Observatory. Observatory Hill, Charlottesville, VA.
Chris’s graduation present last year was a trip to NYC. We went and saw some broadway shows, visited some museums, and had an all around good time. Most of my pictures have been online for a while, but I recently developed, scanned, and uploaded black and white (film!) pictures I took on the trip. They’ve been scattered throughout the set linked below, corresponding to their location in time.
NYC – (03-10 June 2007) – a set on Flickr
Yesterday, several grad students from the astronomy department (and a few others) headed up to Skyline Drive to do some hiking in Shenandoah National Park. We arrived at the trailhead to Bearfence Mountain around 10am and began hiking. It was a very nice, although short hike, with some rock scrambling and a nice 360 view of the mountains.
The loop hike spent a small bit of time on the Appalachian Trail, which was cool.
After finishing that loop, we opted to do another scenic hike, this time down to South River Falls, which the guidebook says is the 3rd highest waterfall in the park. It was a bit more strenuous hike, as there was a decent vertical drop to get to the waterfall. We at lunch at the base of the waterfall, and Ryan even got in the chilly water. Just as we were getting ready to leave, the threatening clouds let loose for a few minutes, and we were treated to the cool sight of rain at a waterfall, just as the sun began to poke through the clouds again.
After the rain tapered off, we booked it back to the car, while hearing thunder rumbling in the distance. Again, we spent a brief amount of time walking along the AT. As we reached the car, we started to see lightning strikes off in the distance.. perfect timing.
It was a great day out in the park. It was my first time in Shenandoah and I’ll definitely be going back. The rest of the pictures from the day are available at the link below:
Shenandoah National Park – 14 June 2008 – on Flickr
I was at Charlottesville’s “Fridays After Five” again today, shooting random photographs. It’s cooled off a bit since last week, so there were lots of people out and about. Also, the “Festival of the Photograph” is under way, so there are lots of cameras out and about.
I thought this shot of a little girl was one of the more interesting ones from the evening. She was running around all over the place, quite happy and excited.
The rest of the pictures from the evening have been added to the Fridays After Five set on Flickr.
