The Logical Lizard

The annual Leonid meteor shower is one of the night sky’s most exciting events. Our planet is currently passing through a debris trail left behind in space hundreds of years ago by Comet Tempel-Tuttle. As those small fragments of ice and stone hit our atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour they burn up, producing bright trails known as meteors or shooting stars. Fragments that make it to the surface of the Earth are meteorites, but the diminutive particles that generate the Leonids are too small and friable to survive their passage through our atmosphere.

Peak meteor activity is expected to occur between midnight and dawn tonight and into Tuesday morning. Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office stated: “We’re predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas.”

The Leonids take their name from Leo, due to an optical illusion that sometimes make it appear as if they emanate from that constellation.

Tucson’s dark skies are ideal viewing for meteor showers, especially for night owls who are happy to stay up into the wee hours. If you’re so inclined, turn off the house lights, mix up some hot chocolate or a favorite tipple, head outside after midnight, park yourself in a spot with an unobstructed view of the heavens and see what transpires. It may be a memorable celestial show.

Tucson is the astronomy capital of the world, I am told by Astronomy Coordinator Michael Terenzoni during a recent visit to the Flandrau Science Center. “People come here from all over the world to do astronomy; to build observatories.”

Michael also informs me that people identify a planetarium as a source of valid information and I, of course, agree with him. “When we have an event in the skies, people come here to find out about it.”

So what happens when they arrive at Tucson’s wonderful Flandrau to find it closed?

Author Grace Flandrau could informally be described as the Science Center’s mom. A successful novelist, columnist, radio show host, and frequent visitor to Tucson, she died in 1971, and a year later the University of Arizona used a bequest from her estate “to fund a facility that would increase public understanding and appreciation of science.” The official website goes on to say:

Originally known as The Grace H. Flandrau Planetarium, the facility was part of the UA Department of Astronomy. Its location on campus, near the Astronomy Department, Optical Sciences Center, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and historic Steward Observatory, reflects its continuing connections to the research community. The Planetarium was designed by Tucson architectural firm Blanton and Company and opened its door to the public in 1975.

Previous directors have included my friend, the late O. Richard Norton, a highly respected science writer and astronomer, and Richard R. Willey author of the short book The Tucson Meteorites: Their History from Frontier Arizona to the Smithsonian, which chronicles one of Tucson’s most enduring and mysterious legends. What the Flandrau website doesn’t mention is that the planetarium and mineral museum were almost forced to close their doors permanently earlier this year, and manage to maintain minimal opening hours due to the generosity of donors and supporters.

My initial plan was to conduct an interview with Alexis R. Faust, the current Excecutive Director of the Flandrau, then make a short visit to the superb U of A Mineral Museum, housed in the Flandrau’s basement. I thought I might get two interesting columns out of the one visit. I was late for my meeting and waited, briefly and comfortably in the conference room, for Alexis. I was graciously served good coffee, cold spring water and some snacks. My misguided belief that I would be satisfied by a short visit to these two astonishing resources was just that—misguided. I was there for half the day.

“The greatest economic value is the intelligence of people,” Alexis told me within the first couple of minutes. “Knowledge is the currency of the future.” And I was immediately and entirely captivated by her devotion to learning and her observations and predictions—both remarkable and numerous—about the future of education. “The mind is an amazing thing before we beat it to death with rote memorization, prejudice, and fear.”

To my surprise I did not hear any complaints or bitterness about budget cuts and the partial closing of the Science Center. Although the remaining staff have contracts that only run until December, the pervading view seems to be that when cuts need to be made, the money has to come from somewhere. But there is plenty of optimism among the few determined educators who walk through the quiet and nearly empty buildings.

“We’re not just sitting here,” Alexis elaborated. “We’re writing grants and raising funds so we can bridge this period of time. We are dedicated to finding it, and we are competing against the rest of the country for those funds, so we have to be as good as we can be.” With their their passion for education, their portable planetarium shows, a fine meteorite collection, and “the largest to-scale model of Mars anywhere in the world,” the Flandrau’s protectors are keeping it is as good as it can be, but the public gets to enjoy their best for only two days a week.

Alexis left me with this thought: “A lot of people still come by and knock on the door. They haven’t even heard about us closing. It’s not the university’s fault. I am incredibly grateful that we’re as alive as we are. Education is not getting funded the way it needs to be funded, and education is in the midst of a revolution. We need to keep up with it. That’s why institutions like this are so important.”

So, Alexis isn’t just hoping for better times ahead for the Flandrau, she intends to be part of a global change in not only how we teach, but how we learn. Tucson needs brilliant people like her, and Michael Terrenzoni, right here doing what they do best.

University of Arizona please take note: When times are tough, and we tighten our national belt, some will suffer, but Tucson’s venerable science center, with its international network of colleagues and collaborators, its long history of education and sharing the wonders of astronomy and the natural world, is too important, and too unique a resource to be one of those left to die in a wasteland of economic cutbacks.

Tonight is perhaps the biggest night of the year for astronomy fans, stargazers, and meteorite men, as the annual Perseids meteor shower is expected to peak sometime between now and dawn. A few astronomers have predicted better than average numbers of shooting stars this year, so we are hoping for clear skies.

It started off rather grey and overcast this morning, which reminded me of London though London was never so warm under its blanket of clouds. But the sky is clearing up and there is still a good chance of a spectacle tonight, so don’t give up yet.

The greatest number of shooting stars are expected to be between midnight and 4 am, so the dedicated sky watcher will want to stay up late, or get up very early. However, the darkest skies will be before 10:40 pm, when the Moon rises. Any dark area with good visibility will work; the darker the skies, the better your chances of seeing faint meteors, so don’t forget to turn off the kitchen light. For more information, please see last week’s article about the 2009 Perseid meteor shower.

For detailed viewing tips, please see astronomer Michael Terenzoni’s excellent Skywatcher’s Guide. And that reminds me: last week I spent a most enjoyable day at the Flandrau Planetarium, where I had the pleasure of interviewing Michael, the Astronomy Coordinator; Sven Bailey, Curatorial Specialist of the UA Mineral Museum; and the very brilliant Alexis Faust, Executive Director of the Flandrau. Look for a series of articles from me about the future of the Flandrau and the Mineral Museum, along with some intriguing ideas about what might be in store for the next generation of science education, courtesy of Ms. Faust.

Now please go outside and check the skies.

When I lived in New York it was always something of a production to catch one of the annual meteor showers. City lights and pollution drown out those wispy, fast-moving flashes, created when little particles of the cosmos incinerate in our atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour. Sometimes I’d travel far upstate to get away from the glaring illumination of the metro area. One year I drove out to Robert Moses State Park on Long Island, camped on the beach with friends, and gazed at meteor trails while trying to keep warm with hot toddys.

In 2002 I spent I spent a long November night, embalmed in multiple heavy wool blankets on a friend’s private lakeside dock waiting for the Leonids to appear. It was way below freezing and at around 1 am my buddies called it a night and hiked back to their cabin. I decided to tough it out, and perhaps thirty minutes later the sky exploded with a spectacular display of scores shooting stars, just for me. You have to really love stargazing to go to such lengths. These days it’s a lot easier. I just park a deck chair in my Arizona garden and mix a cocktail. Thank you Tucson Dark-Sky ordinance!

The known meteor showers take place at the same time every year, and what colorful names they have: Quadrantids, Kappa Serpentids, Lyrids, and Alpha Scorpiids, among others. The Leonids and the Perseids are the best known, as they typically produce the greatest numbers of shooting stars. The showers occur when our planet passes through trails of cometary debris. Every August we encounter a cloud of tiny fragments of ice and rock left drifting in space by Swift-Tuttle—a periodic comet that reappeared in the night sky in 1992 after an absence of 130 years.

Although the meteors we see every August originated from Comet Swift-Tuttle’s icy heart, they appear—as a result of an optical illusion—to emanate from the constellation Perseus, hence their name: the Perseids. The annual showers do not produce meteorites (any part of a meteor that survives and makes it to the earth) as the meteor-producing fragments burn up in the air. But don’t worry, somebody calls us every year to tell us they found one of the Perseids in their driveway and it’ll happen again this year, for sure.

Perseid meteors can be seen from early August well to the middle of the month. The period of maximum activity, or peak, is expected to occur during the night of August 11 and into the morning of August 12. Typically, the later it gets, the greater the number of visible meteors, with the largest number often occurring a few hours before dawn. If you are eager and dedicated enough to stay up into the wee hours, it should be possible to see one or more shooting stars per minute.

The Perseids hit our atmosphere at an extremely high speed—an incredible 130,000 miles per hour! The resulting trails are particularly bright, and sometimes vapor can be seen hanging in the air for a few seconds after a shooting star has burned up.

The best way to observe the Perseids is to find an area with dark skies and no distractions, and recline in a comfortable chair so you can view as much of the sky as possible. After midnight, the constellation of Perseus will be in the northeast for observers in Arizona. Turn off the lights, kick back, treat yourself to a favorite tipple, and watch the skies. It’s the greatest show not on this earth, it is absolutely free, and completely devoid of commercial interruption. Stellar.

NBC’s Meteor miniseries concluded this past Sunday night. Of course, being a meteorite specialist I absolutely had to watch it. Meteor is, in the loosest sense, a vague remake of the 1979 big budget disaster epic of the same name. The ’70s feature came in thin on science but big on human stars (not shooting stars), with a cast that included Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard and Henry Fonda.

The thing that surprised me most about the new NBC series was not the blatant disregard for scientific accuracy (I expect that from science fiction meteor/meteorite shows), but rather that it was just a lame made-for-TV-series with a few short bits of meteor mayhem thrown in from time to time. A number of tired sub plots including kidnapping, a rape attempt, evil cops, drug smugglers in Mexico, a collapsed hospital, missing family members, and the good-sheriff-battling-the-violent-hillbilly-guy took up most of the four hours of air time. Well, actually NBC is so awash with dismal commercials that the air time of the program itself was probably less than three hours.

Kooky Christopher Lloyd receives high billing, but he gets done away with early on, so don’t expect to see much of him. I think Jason Alexander is a terrific actor, but he is disappointing in this show as a stressed-out scientist trying help the US government and military destroy a shower of meteoric debris headed for Earth.

So, the show was bad, but what about the science? Well, let’s get something very clear: meteorites are not hot and smoking when they crash into the ground. As meteors blaze through our atmosphere they heat up and burn for a short period of time—at high altitude. After a few seconds, atmospheric pressure slows them down and the meteor’s flame goes out. This will happen several miles above our planet’s surface. The meteor then continues to fall in what is called dark flight, at a much slower speed. The air up there is cold, so meteors have plenty of time to cool down. When they land on Earth’s surface they are cold, or slightly warm to the touch. Not spitting flame “as seen on TV.”

In Meteor, when we see soldiers running onto rooftops to shoot down incoming smoking meteors with Stinger missiles, it is just nonsense. We also get to enjoy scenes where scientists periodically jump up in the command center and shriek something along the lines of: “Oh my god, the next small ones are going to land in Boise!” or wherever. A typical meteor might enter our atmosphere at about 17,000 miles per hour with no notice. You could not spot a small incoming meteor in advance, out there in space, with radar or telescope, and then predict where it is going to land. Too far away, too fast, too small a target, and then there is that pesky interference of atmosphere and wind as well.

Incredibly enough, Meteor is already slated for a DVD release. TVShowsOnDVD.com claims you should “Get ready for heart-pounding action, incredible special effects and edge-of-your-seat suspense!” Are writers still using those phrases “heart-pounding action,” and “edge-of-your-seat suspense”? Really? I don’t know which is a worse cliché, the miniseries or the review.

Anyway, I am spending far too much time on this. Meteor was useless except for a few excellent CGI shots of the meteor swarm approaching Earth, and I do get that it’s not always all about the science. I love a good story and am fine taking a few liberties with the facts if it makes for a better action movie. For example, in scientific terms Armageddon—another meteor/meteorite disaster flick—is so full of holes a colony of pack rats could happily live in it for decades, but it is a hugely entertaining film. Nonesuch with Meteor.

As soon as we get a really good meteorite epic, I promise to be the first to let you know about it. In the meantime, if you wish to truly experience the wonder and mystery of stones that have come to visit us from outer space, you must read Christopher Cokinos’ excellent new book: The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars. I shall be reviewing that for you in very short order.

In the meantime . . . watch the skies!

I do not have any children of my own, and the chances of me generating any are about the same as the human race developing a faster-than-light starship drive in my lifetime. That fact that I chose not to procreate doesn’t mean I don’t care about the younger generation.

When I was about six years old, a jolly and friendly geologist, built like a bull and named Wally Robbins, took me under his wing during one of our family vacations to the US. He gave me my first trilobite fossil (I went on to find some spectacular specimens in later life, but I still have that first little Elrathia kingii and still treasure it) and some lovely rocks and minerals. I watched him walk the beaches and rivers of New England at low tide, collecting rocks. His wife joked that the only exercise he ever got was when he bent down to pick up something of geological interest.

Were it not for Wally, I may never have followed my path into the world of scientific adventure and exploration. I remember how inspiring he was to me and—in my own small way—I try to pass it along.

Yesterday, I had the very great honor of participating in the Lunar and Planetary Lab’s Apollo 11 40th Anniversary celebration. My staff and I set up a display of rare and unusual meteorites, as did several of our professional colleagues. I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting astronomer Thomas Bopp, co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp “the most widely observed comet of the twentieth century.” I also got to spend time with John Terry White, an aerospace expert and president of White Eagle Aerospace, and a most charming and fascinating man. Scott Schneewels astounded me with his collection of genuine Apollo mission historic artifacts, including a control panel from an actual Lunar Module, hand-woven memory from one of the command modules, and tools designed to collect and transport moon rocks.

I was afraid that all of this “science stuff” might be a little dry for the scores of kids who were in attendance, and who were born more than thirty years after the Eagle touched down at Tranquility Base. There was no chance of that. We gave away small meteorites with identification cards, all day long, to wide-eyed children who were enthralled to hold something from outer space. And we distributed free DVDs, magazines, and postcards about meteorites and answered a million questions: “How does the Earth know there isn’t life on other planets?” (Well, that was a tough one)

If one of those kids decides to devote his or her life to aerospace, or meteoritics, or some other important scientific discipline, then we really are leaving something worthwhile behind. With budget cuts in research and education resulting in tragedies like the wonderful Flandrau Planetarium remaining closed for five days out of every seven, those of us who care about the future must take up the slack in other ways.

Photographs by Leigh Anne DelRay, Callisto Images © Leigh Anne DelRay, all rights reserved.

This coming Saturday, July 18, a host of astronomers, NASA engineers, and space program specialists and enthusiasts will convene in the Kuiper Space Sciences Building on the U of A campus to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The event is organized by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL), an outfit that was intimately involved with the planning and execution of the Apollo missions.

Activities include lectures, films about the Moon and the Apollo program, displays of telescopes, meteorites, moon rocks, and space program memorabilia. There will also be kids’ activities, question-and-answer sessions with senior researchers, planetarium tours and night sky viewing with telescopes (weather permitting).

My science company, Aerolite Meteorites, was kindly invited by LPL to participate in the event, and we will be bringing a spectacular display of genuine meteorites, along with photos, slideshows of our expeditions, and information about our work in recovering and studying rocks from space. Most of the specimens on display are from the Aerolite Meteorites private reference collection and have never been seen in public before.

The event is free and open to the public. Location: Kuiper Space Sciences Building, Rooms 308, 312, 330, and the atrium. Times: 2 to 8 pm, Saturday, July 18, 2009.

For more information about the Apollo 11 anniversary visit the LPL calendar

Now that it is hot and muggy outside this a great time to go on the offensive and enjoy some of Tucson’s weird and wonderful museums. Why? Because in July they are entirely snowbird-free. You can park anywhere and enjoy the displays at your own pace, with no waiting, no gawking, and no hassles. It’s almost like having the swimming pool to yourself.

Top of my list is the Pima Air & Space Museum, an aviation exhibit of truly staggering proportions. With about 300 aircraft on permanent display, the dedicated air and space fan will want to assign the better part of a long summer day to enjoy this vast museum — part indoor, part outdoor. Sure it’s hot, but that’s the price you pay for being able to stare reverently at President John F. Kennedy’s Air Force One without being distracted by scurrying kids demanding ice cream.

Better yet, go on one of the guided tours. I have a friend who is a volunteer docent and once had the great pleasure of accepting a private tour from him. And I thought I knew a lot about aviation history! These volunteers are full of fascinating and obscure knowledge related to the world of wings, and it adds a unique spin to spend part of a day in their company.

Some of the many highlights include World War II heavy bombers including a pristine B-17 and B-29, Cold War era weapons such as a B-52 and a collection of Russian Migs. Hanger 3 is my favorite, of course, as it is dedicated to WWII aircraft and features a Dakota transport with fancy D-Day markings, a B-24 Liberator and a B-25 Mitchell.

You always know museums have a lot to offer when their website says “9:00 AM – 5 PM Daily. Last admittance at 4:00 PM.” Do me a favor and don’t show up at 4. You won’t even get through the first building, and there are many. Bring some water, a floppy hat, a good camera, and a healthy respect for the daring men and women who pushed back the boundaries of flight.

The whole things is quite an experience and, as you can tell from these pictures, it is the details that I find most fascinating.

Photographs © Geoffrey Notkin. All rights reserved. No reproduction without written permission.

In just three short summer weeks’ time it will be forty years since the Apollo 11 lunar module rocked the world with that one brief and startling transmission: “Houston. Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

To say I am a space program nut is like saying polar bears enjoy snow. In 1969, when I was a wee lad, I coerced my long-suffering parents into writing notes to the doddering, gin-soaked headmaster of my brutal English school, announcing that I would be staying at home to watch the lunar landings. All of them. To my eternal gratitude, my mother and father realized that two men landing a tiny spaceship on the surface of our nearest celestial neighbor was a feat of such enduring consequence that it made school temporarily irrelevant (to me: entirely irrelevant).

Everyone remembers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin as the first humans who set foot on another world, but let’s not forget command module pilot Mike Collins who orbited the Moon in solitude while his buddies were making those famous first footprints. Collins went on to be an author, director of the National Air and Space Museum, and a great proponent of an ongoing vigorous American space program. His autobiography Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys is well worth a read.

I often wonder where we would be—literally—if we had continued space exploration with the same energy and dedication that President Kennedy inspired back in the early 1960s. So very much was achieved in such a short period of time: entirely new technologies devised and extraordinary devices conceived and constructed. Much of the equipment required for the Apollo missions simply did not exist and had to be invented. If the Apollo command and service modules made it to the Moon and back using a computer with a memory capacity of 72K, imagine what we could do with today’s technology, if such a thing was made a real priority.

Opponents of the space program complain that the money could have been better spent elsewhere, but they ignore the myriad advances and discoveries that led to all kinds of developments enjoyed today by the entire world. Not to mention the thousands of engineers and designers who were employed and—most importantly—the fact that humans journeyed out there, to the Moon, on the greatest adventure of all time.

For those of you who, like me, think back to the Apollo missions as one of the landmark achievements of the human race, make your own  journey through time and space to Tucson’s Lunar and Planetary Lab special event at the Kuiper Space Sciences Building on Saturday, July 18, when like-minded people—including noted scientists and Apollo engineers—will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Eagle gently coming to rest on the lunar surface. Admission is free and there will also be lectures and films, along with displays of  Moon rocks, meteorites, and Apollo memorabilia. I wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in China.

Every now and then you come across an art exhibition that is beautiful, moving, thoughtful, and inspiring. Linda Connor’s Odyssey, currently at Tucson’s Center for Creative Photography, is all of those things and then some.

In an age when high resolution digital cameras can be purchased at the supermarket for $99 and half the population seem to documenting their lives by taking photos with cheap cell phones it is refreshing and reassuring to see a photographer employing meticulous hands-on, one might even say “analog,” methods to create an important body of work.

Although the images in Odyssey were taken during the last thirty years or so, Ms. Connors’  prints have a classical, haunting and almost mythic feel, pleasantly reminiscent of Eugene Atget and Ansel Adams, but with a style all their own. Using a large format camera, and printing directly from 8 x 10 negatives Connors’ images are exposed to natural sunlight and then fixed with gold chloride.

Most of the prints are of a modest size, sepia-like, and mounted in unassuming matching frames that do not distract from the gentle and pensive content. Her subjects include stark, bold landscapes; portraits of native peoples; details of religious sites; petroglyphs and hieroglyphs; trees and boulders.

Ms. Connor is a world traveler. Many of her photographs were taken in India, Cambodia, Tibet, and Egypt, with some from Hawaii and the American Southwest. During the 1990s she became the de facto artist in residence at the Lick astronomical observatory in San Jose, California, where she explored a treasure trove of 18th Century glass negatives taken through what was, at the time, the world’s largest telescope. Prints made from some of those negatives—with mysterious titles such as October 13, 1893—are juxtaposed alongside her own landscapes, creating a strange but intriguing contrast of subjects.

My favorite piece is easily Petroglyphs, dated 1986 and taken at Puu Loa, Hawaii. Carvings on an ancient stone slab meld with a broad landscape, at once combining detail and distance. As an adventure traveler, photographer, and astronomer myself, I could not help but be fascinated by Odyssey. If you are interested in the craft of photography, or are inspired by images that seem to comment on the passage of time and the grandeur of the natural world, then Odyssey is for you as well.

Odyssey runs through June 21, 2009. The gallery is open daily and admission is free. Visit the Center for Creative Photography website for more information. A gorgeous hardback exhibition catalog, signed by the artist, is available for sale at the Center.