Space: 1999 is now further in the past than it was set in the future

Space: 1999 first aired on October 17, 1975. Unusually for a science fiction show, it gave a quite precise date for when its events started unfolding.

The first episode, “Breakaway,” is set on September 13, 1999. (September 13 is now known as “Breakaway Day” among series fans.)

That means, according to a handy duration calculator, that the first episode of Space: 1999 was set 23 years, 10 months, 27 days in the future. Or 8,732 days, if you prefer.

Today marks 8,732 days since September 13, 1999. 

The show is now officially more retro than it was ever futuristic.

Man, I’m old. But I still love the Eagle transporters, though.

Destination Mars

You too can send your name to Mars!

A sad story about the first moon landing

(This post contains material that some may find distressing; specifically, suicide.)

I’m too young to remember the moon landing.

(Continues below the fold.)

Scientists’ unguarded moments

Earlier on Twitter, I shared an Instagram picture of Dr. Katie Bouman at work, imaging a black hole.

This has been a widely shared picture, and I was a little surprised when I saw a friend on Facebook question it. She said when there was scientific discoveries that showed images of men, the men looked more composed and professional. This made the imaging of a black hole look like an almost accidental “Did I do that?” moment.

Certainly Bouman’s picture was not the only one available. Here’s a picture of another one of the black hold team, Kazunori Akiyama.

Both Akiyama and Bouman are at computers, looking at the historic images they made. But Akiyama’s is almost certainly a staged, posed picture.

I asked what she thought of this picture of the New Horizons team, looking at images of Pluto close up for the first time. The man in the middle is project leader Alan Stern.

She replied that she thought it did a disservice to the science and to Stern if it had been widely reported. It had been seen quite widely, though probably not as much as the Bouman picture.

This interested me, because it spoke to the risks and rewards of scientists showing their unguarded moments.

On the one hand, these spontaneous moments capture something that is, I think, deeply human. Excitement. Joy. Achievement. Surprise.

But I also get that these are moments where people look undignified or vulnerable. It’s easy to mock people for looking goofy. Especially for big projects that have a lot of taxpayer money behind them, it might not be a good look. It can look like people just screwing around.

Personally, I think that sharing those spontaneous moments are worth it. My wife has been watching a lot of Brené Brown talks recently, and she talks a lot about the concept of vulnerability. And how vulnerability is one of the best predictors of courage.

I think scientists could use a lot more encouragement. And if that means looking in a way that surprises people, that’s all right by me.

Since I’m talking black holes, there was some discussion over who did what. Bouman got a lot of media attention, Sara Issaon pointed out that the image was not Bouman’s algorithms alone. Weirdly, this snowballed into some trying to undermine her contribution entirely. Andrew Chael ably tackled the trolls.

References

First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. IV. Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole

External links

Meet one of the first scientists to see the historic black hole image

Eclipse 2017

It’s eclipse day, 2017!

Here in South Texas, we only got a partial eclipse. I’ve seen a total solar eclipse (in 1979, the last one over North American before today). and a partial one pales in comparison. Seriously, if you ever get a chance to see a total solar eclipse, go. It’s stunning.

Today, the main thing I did was play around with making a pinhole with my hands. I was surprised at how easy it was to see the crescent of the sun, with a distinct “bite” take out of it. Here’s the image with a bit of processing:

And close-up, looking more like the moon at night than the sun in day.

Related posts

A gift

Meteor

I saw a meteor last night!

I was lucky. I was outside for just a few minutes, and turned around at just the right time.

Now, I’ve seen meteors before. Shooting stars, like the Perseid meteor shower. But this was a big ol’ bright fireball.

At first, I thought it was a firework or something man-made. It was bright, and moving slower than I’d seen shooting stars move. It had a long trail that changed colour as it fell, although it was mostly green.

And it looked like it was headed straight for the ground. I seriously wondered if it might have landed and made an impact.

Idiot that I am, I didn’t look at my watch to get the exact time. It was too fast for video. It lasted just a few seconds.

Of course, I did what anyone would do today when they want to catch up with real-time information: I hopped on Twitter. Sure enough, there were tweets about seeing a meteor at about the same time I did. Most people didn’t have where they lived, but the timing and description matched what I saw, so I was pretty sure this was real.

I tweeted if anyone knew where I could report this, since the trajectory led me to think it might, just might, have landed. Bad Astronomer and one-time UTPA presenter Phil Plait came through and told me about the American Meteor Society’s reporting website. It’s a very cool process; very easy to give a lot of information. If you ever see a meteor, report it! For science!

The phrase “once in a lifetime” gets overused a lot, but this probably was a true once in a lifetime event.

Additional: Here’s the report page of the American Meteor Society of last night’s fireball. Quite surprised by spread out the observers were!

Going on my second space mission (in name, at least)

Putting this here, so I don’t forget about this like I did last time, when my name went on the Stardust mission.

You have a few more days to sign up and put your name on the Insight mission!

Related posts

Something I totally forgot about...

External links

Insight mission

Dreaming of Mars

On today’s #scistuchat, Adam Taylor asked

Should we dream to go to Mars?

I have mixed feelings about this now.

A couple of years ago, I went to Hawaii for the annual meeting of The Crustacean Society. And I did get to walk around in Honolulu a little while I was there. And it’s beautiful there.

I started trying to imagine what would it have been like to be the very first person to arrive on Waikiki beach. Or maybe take a trip in the TARDIS back to a time before human settlement. No people, no hotels, no tide walls... just the waves hitting the beach, and the trees covering the land going up the hills and mountains.

Oh, but the first people on Hawaii were lucky, lucky people.

I couldn’t help feeling we kind of spoiled it. Not entirely. But I would liked Waikiki more if it had much less of a human presence on it.

I was talking to a friend about parks in my old stomping grounds, Alberta. Everyone knows Banff National Park. It is beautiful, but I don’t think has been well served by the amount of development there. I used to love Waterton Lakes National Park, because it had remained true to the spirit of being a park, with much less development.

So images of these holes drilled on Mars by Curiosity give me pause:

As we have explored, we have not always done a great job of thinking about preservation. There may be some places that humans should only go rarely. Mars, or at least some parts of Mars, might be among those places.

Curiosity picture from here.

Level 9

I spent yesterday at the Johnston Space Center in Houston, taking a behind the scenes tour they have tagged "Level 9."

So good.

Got to see the neutral buoyancy lab, where they train the astronauts for the International Space Station in water to simulate weightlessness.

Got to go on the floor of the Mission Control center for most of the Apollo missions, including Apollo 11.

Got to see the currently active Mission Control, and talk to one of the guys whose job is to drive the International Space Station.

And a big building where they have full size mock ups of the ISS and most of the other equipment in use, or is planned for use in the near future.

There was too much good stuff to try to type in with a tablet. Just great to see close up.