Category Archives: Space participation

Space Arts, Space participation

ISS crew member Karen Nyberg invites crafters to join in making a grand astronomical quilt

I’ve mentioned before that astronaut Karen Nyberg, currently an ISS crew member, likes to sew as a hobby. (See posts here and here.)  She is now joining with Quilts.com and challenging other sewing enthusiasts to combine their  star themed quilt squares with the one she has made on the station : Astronomical Quilts Block Challenge – Quilts.com (pdf).

She describes sewing in microgravity in this video. At the end she describes the astronomical quilt project:

Here is a NASA announcement about here challenge:

NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg Invites Quilters to Contribute a Star Block 

International Space Station Expedition 37 Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA, a lifelong lover of sewing, is inviting fellow crafters to join her in stitching together a global community space quilt.

Nyberg, who is in the final weeks of her mission aboard the orbiting laboratory, recently shared a star-themed quilt block she was able to complete during her limited free time in space.  She is now inviting quilters from the public to create their own star-themed quilt blocks to help celebrate her mission and passion for the quilting arts.

“Now that I’ve tried my hand sewing in space, I can say one thing with certainty: it’s tricky,” Nyberg said in a video sent down from the space station. “This is what I’ve made. It’s far from being a masterpiece, but it was made in space. I’m inviting all of you to create your own star-themed quilt block. We’ll be combining them with my block to create a quilt for next year’s 40th anniversary International Quilt Festival in Houston. I can’t wait to see what we make together.”

Nyberg’s complete video and other video clips of her quilting aboard the space station will be featured in a NASA exhibit at the 39th annual International Quilt Festival Thursday through Sunday, Nov. 3 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. Sewing and quilting include many of the principles and technical skills used in developing equipment for spaceflight missions. The exhibit will include sewn samples from spacesuits and parachutes, a cargo transfer bag and other soft goods from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The deadline for submitting a block for the quilt is Aug. 1, 2014. For more information about where to send your block, visit: http://www.quilts.com

Nyberg and The International Quilt Festival will collaborate on having the squares stitched together for display at the 40th annual International Quilt Festival in 2014 and at other public displays. The Houston festival is the largest annual quilt festival in the world, attracting more than 60,000 guests annually.

Nyberg arrived at the space station with Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency in May. The trio is scheduled to return to Earth Nov. 10.

For Nyberg’s complete biography, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/np5ICw

For more information about Nyberg’s personal sewing hobbies visit: http://go.nasa.gov/CraftyKaren

For more about the 39th annual International Quilt Festival, visit: http://www.quilts.com

For more information about the International Space Station, onboard research and crew members, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

Astronomy, Exoplanets, Space participation

Citizen scientists spot 14 exoplanet candidates – including 7th in first 7-planet system

The Planet Hunters citizen science project has submitted a paper to the Astronomical Journal reporting on their discovery of 14 planet candidates in the Kepler space observatory data: Seventh heaven with our sixth exoplanet paper – Planet Hunters.

See the outline here of how the Planet Hunters project takes advantage of human pattern recognition abilities to spot the changes in brightness of a star as a planet crosses in front of it.

In the Planet Hunters blog:

The most exciting result involves KOI-351, a system with six known planet candidates identified by the Kepler team, two of which had also been independently discovered by Planet Hunters before the Kepler identification.  We have identified a seventh candidate, marking KOI-351 as the first Kepler seven planet system.  While we cannot yet confirm the candidates in KOI-351, gravitational interactions between the planet candidates overwhelmingly point to their planetary nature.  It is also known that false positives in multiple candidate systems are extremely rare.

All of this together makes KOI-351 the strongest case for the first seven planet system known (apart from our own Solar System, of course!) The new planet is the fifth furthest from its parent star, orbiting with a period of nearly 125 days. With a radius of 2.8 times that of the Earth (+/- 1.1) it fits snugly into a family that now includes two roughly Earth sized worlds, three ‘super-Earths’ and two larger bodies.

In total, we announce the discovery of 14 planet candidates, all of which were identified by volunteers through the Planet Hunters Talk page.  Of these, eight reside in their host star’s habitable zone, but none of them approach Earth or super-Earth size.  Additionally, five of these new candidates met the requirements to have been detected by the Kepler team’s automated Transit Planet Search algorithm, but were undetected, including KOI-351.07, the newly discovered seventh candidate.

Here is the paper that they have submitted and its abstract: Planet Hunters VI: The First Kepler Seven Planet Candidate System and 13 Other Planet Candidates from the Kepler Archival Data – J.A. Schmitt et al

We report the discovery of 14 new transiting planet candidates in the Kepler field from the Planet Hunters citizen science program. None of these candidates overlap with Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs), and five of the candidates were missed by the Kepler Transit Planet Search (TPS) algorithm. The new candidates have periods ranging from 124-904 days, eight residing in their host star’s habitable zone (HZ) and two (now) in multiple planet systems. We report the discovery of one more addition to the six planet candidate system around KOI-351, marking the first seven planet candidate system from Kepler. Additionally, KOI-351 bears some resemblance to our own solar system, with the inner five planets ranging from Earth to mini-Neptune radii and the outer planets being gas giants; however, this system is very compact, with all seven planet candidates orbiting ≲1 AU from their host star. We perform a numerical integration of the orbits and show that the system remains stable for over 100 million years. A Hill stability test also confirms the feasibility for the dynamical stability of the KOI-351 system.

The paper will need to pass the peer review process before it can be published. There may be changes suggested by the reviewers as well. If accepted, this will be the sixth paper from Planet Hunters to be published.

Astronomy, Space participation

Amateur astronomers see a comet “explode” in brightness

SpaceWeather.com reports that amateur astronomers have observed a “comet explosion”:

Almost 450 million km from Earth, Comet C/2012 X1 (LINEAR) has exploded. Amateur astronomers are reporting a 100-fold increase in the comet’s brightness compared to predictions, and the comet’s atmosphere or “coma” now resembles that of exploding Comet 17P/Holmes in 2007. Using a remotely-controlled 0.5 meter telescope in New Mexico, European observers Ernesto Guido, Martino Nicolini and Nick Howes took this picture of the spherical explosion on Oct 21st:

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Image from Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Martino Nicolini

“The predicted magnitude of the comet on Oct. 20th was about +14,” says Guido. “Now it is close to +8.5.” This is below the threshold for naked-eye visibility, but bright enough for backyard telescopes equipped with digital cameras.

The comet may not have literally exploded but instead a vein of water ice or other volatile material may have become exposed and erupted, creating a cloud of material around the object.

Here is a video showing images of the comet:

>http://youtu.be/95wvUxUQqxo

Activism, Mars, Space participation

More on Mars analog mission

The Mars Society project to simulate a Mars base at their Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) in northern Canada for one year  (see earlier post) gets some attention in AvWeek: Year-Long Mars Mission Analog Seeks Volunteers – Aviation Week.

Activism, Space participation, The Moon

Kickstarting the Luna Project Medalet Program

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Christopher Carson, a fervent advocate of putting humans on the Moon and one of the “stars” of the documentary Lunarcy!, has opened a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Luna Project Medalet Program : Fire This Time — Luna City Mint 2013 by C.D. “publius” Carson — Kickstarter

Photo-main

The Luna Project stands for nothing less than the liberation of humanity, the transformation of mankind from a species tied to one planet, to one free and at home in the vastness and wonder of the Universe.  The first step — one which must and can be taken without further delay — is to establish a foothold on the Moon, as a first center of civilization beyond Earth, and a supply base for steps farther out.  And this step can and must be taken by those people, around the world, who care about it and understand its importance.  Nobody, whether governments, businesses, or millionaire patrons, will do for us what we are not willing to do for ourselves.

This message has to be spread far and wide to be effective.  So much the better if it spreads itself.  This can be helped along with promotional materials of the sort that people will show off to their friends and neighbours — bumper stickers, for example, and badges.

The best part of a thousand medalets, some in packaging
The best part of a thousand medalets, some in packaging

An especially distinctive and popular Luna Project promotion has been the medalet, a coin-like item about the size of a US quarter-dollar, typically put up in an attractive package with an informative insert card.  A thousand of these were made back in 2008, by a private mint which afterwards folded.  The intention was to release new types periodically, soliciting new designs (perhaps by way of contests) so as to engage artists, who are not as well represented in the space movement as they should be.

After many delays and diversions, the Medalet Program is moving forward.  A new pattern of medalets has been designed, but now it has to be committed to metal.  And that is where you come in.

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The means to the end of getting these new medalets struck is the Luna City Mint, and so this campaign has to — well, kickstart it.  Once it is operating, there is a clear way forward for the further development of the Medalet Program.  And, when its capabilities are not otherwise occupied, it can help pay for itself by taking on outside work.  Maybe that will include a project of yours.

Update: Speaking of Lunarcy! here’s a trailer for it: