Observatories and Instruments

Pluto System, Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (JPL/APL), A. Stern (SwRI), HST Pluto Companion Search Team

I’m the first to admit I don’t understand the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) model of education. I can’t figure out how companies like Coursera make money by offering free courses and I can’t see how anyone thinks they MOOCs can replace a four-year university education. I’m an advocate of online education for some courses, in some forms, but not for an entire college education. But no one asked me, and as long as the instructor gets paid and the student gets some intellectual benefit, I have no complaints. I’ve taken one MOOC (on Thomas Jefferson, because hey, UVa), learned a lot, and found it a pretty good use of my spare time.

The preceding paragraph was just a warm-up for the real purpose of this post: to remind you that you’re running out of time to register for Mike Brown‘s free online course, The Science of the Solar System. Judging only from the intro video, it looks like it’s going to be a fun class. I saw Mike give a talk at NEAF last year and enjoyed it. His material was pitched at a good level, assuming his audience had enough knowledge to follow him, but was not made up of astrophysicists.

Plus, he was nice enough to autograph a copy of his book for my wife.

Also coming up is a MOOC on the technology of astronomy (AstroTech: The Science and Technology behind Discovery). I think I’ll be enrolled in this one. My research deals with Early Modern “astrotech” and it might be fun to look at a more contemporary perspective.

Excerpt from ‘The Afronauts’, Cristina de Middel

I came across this exhibit review in a section of the New York Times that had been abandoned in the local coffee shop last week. Cristina de Middel, freelance photographer and photojournalist, has imagined a project—created a world, really—out of the traces left by Zambia’s space program. Initiated by Edward Makuka Nkoloso in 1964, the program foundered and failed in a matter of months. The Internet is a good source for mockery of Nkoloso’s ambitions (see this “forgotten space program” video, for instance), but de Middel appears to be doing something else. I can see the potential for laughter in some of her photographs, but she also manages to capture some of the intellectual brutality of the post-colonial experience. Who has the right to aspire to a new nation? To mobility? To colonize space?

Maybe we can laugh at Zambia’s misguided efforts in training astronauts, perhaps we can shake our heads over Nkoloso’s antics, but we’d only be making fun of ourselves. The instrument panel in the above photograph doesn’t look much different from those used to support the Apollo mission. The United States sent humans to the Moon with memos typed on manual typewriters and spacecraft operated with yes-no toggle switches. I mean, you can fly a Space Shuttle with a 386 microprocessor. Starting a space program with whatever resources are available…I don’t see the problem.

I don’t know what de Middel’s intent was, and I’m sure she was headed somewhere else creatively, but she’s left the viewer an opening to critique the hoarding of space exploration by a few privileged nations, always at the expense of others.

I’d like to link directly to de Middels’ ‘The Afronauts’ portfolio, but the design of her website makes that impossible. I’ll give these directions: after you arrive on her home page, click on the PROJECTS link at the bottom of the page. Currently, THE AFRONAUTS is at the top of the projects list.

Green Meteorite Could Be First To Come from Mercury.

Zarina, Stars (from Home is a Foreign Place, 1999)

I know, I know. One of the most exciting (and potentially tragic) earth-meteorite encounters in living history and I did nothing to keep you informed. In my defense, I was on the go all day, trying to coax just a few more minutes out that sorry excuse for a battery that powers my iPhone. I just didn’t have the time, mental space, or energy (phone energy) to connect you to videos and analysis. On the other hand, everyone else seems to have had plenty to say about it, so I doubt you missed my commentary.

While I was running around this weekend, supposedly ignoring science, I stopped in at the Guggenheim with a friend. We went for the Gutai exhibition, but I was more taken with the Zarina retrospective. Not only are her prints beautiful and striking as objects, she works on some of my favorite themes—location, memory, space, identity, architecture, environment, mobility, nation. Her personal geography coincided with mine in many places and I was captivated by her ability to pin a spatial memory to paper with ink. And you can see from the image above that her locative work isn’t just about house or city or continent, it’s about the sky and the universe as well.

Zarina, Santa Cruz, 1996

Zarina: Paper Like Skin is on view at the Guggenheim (New York) through April 21, after which time it moves to the Art Institute of Chicago. In the meantime, you can view some of her work in the online gallery at Luhring Augustine.