Medieval Arts & Sciences

Last week I was at Uprising War, an event of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) held in Firth, Idaho. On Wednesday evening, I taught a class on Norse Astronomy. It was a short class. For one thing, it was cloudy, so no stars were visible. For another, while the Vikings knew & had names for a number of stars, we can only identify a few of them. See Digitalis: Norse Constellations and Viking Answer Lady: Viking Age Star and Constellation Names for more information.

While at Uprising, a challenge was issued to create a complete outfit from any period or culture covered by the SCA. Basically, this means anything pre-1600. I will be creating a Viking apron-dress. My sister-in-law gifted me with 5 yards of hand-woven wool that's about 23 inches wide - a common width for period fabrics. She wanted to give me brooches for Christmas, but the mold didn't work, & I want to try to make some myself (with her teaching me, naturally). I also want to make a linen chemise, but I need to figure out how I'm going to get that linen as there is a $100 limit. And I will be making a coat, probably out of flannel that I already have. All of these are projects I have been planning for this summer, but now with the challenge I need to take pictures & finish them by New Year's Day. Wish me luck.

CONduit

This weekend is CONduit Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention in Salt Lake City, UT. I will be assisting with an electricity demo & another demo for kids, running the Star Party Friday evening (weather permitting), and will be on panels about space travel, costuming, and the interaction of fannish activities with professional life. Dan will be on a plant panel, environment panel, chainmail workshop, & one of the costuming panels. Oh, we also get to be judges for the Hall Costume Contest. If you can make it to CONduit, look us up, especially if you're wearing a costume!

Yuri's Night

Today was the 50th anniversary of the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin. It was also the 30th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle and the 10th anniversary of the first Yuri's Night. I wasn't at any of those, but I had been in Graz, Austria in 2000, when the UN Space Generation Advisory Council was formed, and Loretta Hidalgo (now Whitesides) had the idea for Yuri's Night. For the last ten years, I've tried to get something going in whatever town I was in for Yuri's Night. But I don't like huge parties, such as New York, Moscow, DC, and LA have, and really don't have the contacts to put on such a party. But this year I finally organized a Yuri's Night Cache Valley. It was not a huge party. In fact, it was only 6 of us at my in-laws house, and mostly we just rehashed a lot of what had been talked about at our last board meeting (although there were a few other topics of conversation). We had chips & dip & lemonade to snack on, and we finally got to meet the college student who has been working with David on grant proposals for a class this semester.

Spring Break

This week is Spring Break for both Utah school districts here in Cache Valley. I don't know about Idaho, but I haven't had any response from the Idaho schools at all this year. So no substitute teaching and no presentations.

The last two weeks, however, have been pretty busy. I've been to River Heights and Wellsville Elementary Schools for a whole days worth of presentations each, and North Park Elementary had their science fair. I did a very informal tour of the solar system for the science fair presentation, as people were coming in and out at different times. And then the biggie: My first middle school presentations using Stellarium was last Tuesday at Spring Creek Middle School in Providence. I spent the entire day giving 6th grade presentations. A student teacher at Spring Creek was actually the one who contacted me, so the presentations were all on constellations for her classes and her cooperating teacher's. Her advisor from Utah State University showed up, so I had a chance to talk to him.

The 6th grade constellation presentation is specifically designed to answer some questions for the kids that appear on the state exam. One of the questions shows a diagram of the Sun at noon, with the line art of a constellation behind it, another constellation at the eastern horizion, and a third on the western horizon. The kids are asked to identify which of the three constellations the Sun will be in when it sets. The correct answer is the same one as it is in at noon, but from working at the Clark Planetarium, I learned that this is not an easy question for 12-year-olds to understand. The other questions I try to answer have to do with the coordinate systems used in astronomy, and the relationship between star brightness and star distances. If anyone has a 6th grader, or knows a 6th grade teacher, please let them know about our programs, and direct them to our outreach website, Jr Science & Astronomy (http://starhousediscovery.org/jrsciastro.html)

LtUE 29

This weekend I was at Life, the Universe, and Everything XXIX, The Marion K. “Doc” Smith Symposium on Science Fiction & Fantasy. On Thursday morning, I was on a panel on Using the Scriptures for Story Ideas. Oh yeah, this symposium happens at Brigham Young University. Later, I was on a panel about Time Travel, Quantum Physics, and Parallel Universes. That one was a lot of fun. On Friday, my husband gave a presentation on When Plants go Bad. My final presentation was Using Stellarium in the Classroom. It was part of the Educators' Conference on Saturday, and not many people came. I think LtUE needs to improve advertising to teachers, 'cause even those who came to my presentation weren't school teachers but parents.

We had a lot of fun hanging out with all our ConFriends, and met several cool new people. Actually, we made it a point to meet new people, such as sitting next to unfamiliar faces during panels and at the banquet. We also bought XDM, & my husband is planning to run some games using it. I'm looking forward to that.

Letter From IRS

Today we had our monthly board meeting, and Arno came in with a sad look on his face & a sad tone in his voice. Earlier this week we had received a letter from the IRS. He starts reading it to us...

We got the 501(c)3 status! We are now officially a nonprofit organization! Now we can start going after lots of grants! YAY!!!

Can you tell I'm happy about this? This is a major milestone. We successfully jumped through the hoops, and now there's more paperwork to fill out. Well, there would have been more paperwork to fill out regardless, but having that official little number 501(c)3 and our code that goes with it, will help a lot.

Oh, yeah, the code - there were several strings of numbers, & we aren't sure which is the relevant one, but we'll figure it out, & we can give it to people and organizations who give us money. But most importantly, there are now organizations willing to consider giving us money which wouldn't even talk to us before.

*Happy Dance*, or as my husband said, "Party time!"

Guest Post - Lunar Eclipses

Today we have a guest post by Tom Miller, a member of the Cache Stargazers, an astronomy club in Cache Valley, UT & ID. The club meets on the 2nd Friday of each month in the Physics Conference Room at Utah State University. When the weather allows, they often get to use the USU Observatory after the meeting.

And now, Tom's Post:

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Why Total Lunar Eclipses look the totally awesome way they do

(Explanation of Lunar Eclipse Colors)

by, Tom Miller

To really understand and visualize the how and why of the sometimes vivid colors of the partially and especially totally eclipsed moon (which we'll hopefully see next week at December's full moon), just imagine yourself on the moon during the eclipse, watching that same eclipse from the lunar perspective, reversed from Earth. From the moon you would be watching a total solar eclipse with the sun going behind the Earth. Remember, the Earth appears 4 times larger across in the lunar sky than the moon appears in the Earth sky! But the sun still appears almost practically the same size as the sun and moon appear from Earth.

Relax and imagine what you would see, watching the sun disappear (or lets even say "set") behind the Earth in your jet-black lunar sky. Less and less of the sun lights up your lunar surroundings as the sun slides slowly behind the Earth in your alien sky. As the moment of totality approaches from where you relax on the moon, your surroundings grow darker grey with some slight yellowish and orange color now added to the moon-scape around you. If you block the glaring bit of remaining sun from your view you can see the rest of the Earth before totality, or at least a thin brightening ring of sunset defining where the dark Earth is.

As the sun finally and fully disappears (that part can take about an hour) behind the Earth in your lunar sky, you now clearly see that bright, full and very thin ring of sunset brightly surrounding whole darkened "New Earth" phase of the Earth. You would now be able to see some city lights doting the night side of the Earth which fully faces you. The sunset ring near the edge of the Earth where the sun just disappeared looks much brighter and more yellow because the sun just "set" there, while parts of the whole sunset ring around the Earth further from there look less and less bright and more orange and even reddish, much like a sunset looks on Earth, also depending on the amount of smoke, dust and other sunset reddening factors in Earth's atmosphere at the time, as you would expect to see on Earth at sunset as the sun slips a little further below the horizon of Earth.

And that's why the moon looks the very nice yellow to orange to even reddish colors it does during a total lunar eclipse, lit by a bright ring of Earth sunset as seen from the moon. From Earth you will watch this lunar eclipse cross part of the sky as the Earth turns from beginning to end of lunar eclipse. But, from the moon, the Earth would stay at a fairly stationary spot in your lunar sky while the sun appears to move behind the earth, making just over one 360 degree circle of the lunar sky per Earth month while the Earth remains fairly stationary while going through the same phases we are familiar with the moon going through as seen from Earth.

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Thanks! Tom.

If you have any questions, please e-mail Tom

Presenting, again & at last

The Thursday before Thanksgiving was the first school presentations in over a year. We have a new format now, since the Jr Engineering equipment all got sold to a school in Idaho. Now I am taking only a laptop to the schools. This laptop has on it an open-source program called Stellarium. "Stellarium is planetarium software that shows exactly what you see when you look up at the stars. It's easy to use, and free."1. I can control time, show artwork for multiple cultures star lore, and even travel to Mars in my presentations with Stellarium.

On the 18th of December, I gave presentations at Sunrise Elementary School in Smithfield, UT for grades K-5. They went very well. For Kindergarten, 1st, & 2nd grade, I tell the Greek & Iraquois stories of the Big Bear, and the story of Andromeda & the Sea Monster for late fall/early winter. For 3rd grade, I do a presentation on the planets, which includes zooming in on Jupiter & the Galilean Moons, Saturn, and Mars, then changing our location to the Spirit landing site and looking back at Earth. For 4th grade, I do a presentation on the Navajo Skies, matching their social studies curriculum rather than the science curriculum. For 5th grade, I give a general planetarium, introduction to the night sky presentation, what stars/constellations/planets are currently visible in the evening, how to find them, and a little bit of information about them.

Today, I gave a presentation at Wilson Elementary in Logan, UT. Wilson does things a little bit different than most other schools. During the last 30 minutes of the school day, a different grade has time for special presentations each day. The teachers get collaboration time, and the students meet with the Library, Music, PE, & Computer specialists, and often they will bring in people to do special presentations or do art projects. This week, I am doing the presentations, and today was 5th grade. It didn't go so well, though. We couldn't get the computer to talk to the projector. So I had to wing it. I talked to the students a bit about light pollution, and then drew the Dippers on the board, showing them how to find Polaris, and then connecting the dots for Ursa Major, and I even tried to draw Ursa Minor. The kids kept talking to their neighbors, or if I asked them to raise their hands to answer a question, a bunch of them just shouted it out. It was rather annoying, but I can't really blame them because the equipment was not working. After school, the Music specialist & I did manage to get the computer to talk to her classroom projector (which is portable), so when I get there tomorrow and the rest of the week, I will just go into her room & get her projector, and hopefully, it will be working for the rest of the presentations. But just in case, I'm going to look for all the various NASA pictures I have collected over the years and take those with me as a backup.

1. quote from the Stellarium.org website.

Getting the Word Out

Yesterday I was substituting at River Heights Elementary, one of the schools I had taken the Jr Engineering StarLab to in 2009. One of the teachers at lunch was talking about when to schedule taking his class down to the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake. I told him how we're working to get a planetarium here in Cache Valley, and about the Faraday's Holiday Event we are planning for December 28. That's right, we have a date. It will be at the Whittier Center once again, from 7pm - 8:30pm. I still have to take the check to the Whittier Center, but if everybody's schedules work out, I hope to be able to do that today. Then we start "officially" advertising it. I'll put it on Facebook, on both the StarHouse Discovery Center group page and my page. I'll also look into putting it as an event that people can RSVP to. I'll post it on Twitter, at the public library, look into getting it on the marquee at the Opera House in Downtown Logan, and of course update our website.

Last year, we had 80 people come to the event, and 7 booths of organizations presenting their work. This year, we hope to have more.

Lazy & Links

So I said I was going to write more. Yesterday, I worked on the StarHouse Discovery Center and Cote du Ciel websites, & got started writing grants. I should probably spend more time today writing grants, but I don't want to. Part of that is that Walmart requires a non-profit organization to already be on the IRS's published list of 501(c)3 organizations. We're not, yet, but our paperwork is in, & we've heard back from the IRS. Apparently, our application is in review, but one of three things will happen to it: 1] it will be approved, 2] it will be approved with changes, or 3] they will assign someone to work with us to get it to the point that it can be approved. This sounds to me like the IRS wants to approve 501(c)3 applications on a general principal, and understands that most people don't understand the tax code at all. If either of those were not true, then there would be no reason for them to work with us to get our application to the point that it can be approved.

Meanwhile, some cool links:

Women in Wetlands a few months ago posted a book review, about a young woman who loves chemistry, & uses it to solve a mystery.

a friend from the SCA, Ray Zentz got a job offer he couldn't refuse, but too far to commute every day. They didn't have time to find a new home, so they're camping in a yurt in another friend's backyard for the winter! In northern Utah!

another SCA friend is teaching astronomy in high school, but her degree is in biology & chemistry. I sent her to the Open High School Earth Systems course for a text book, and Stellarium, 'cause it's fun & free.