Last week, I was part of a group of amateur astronomers who attempted to capture NASA’s LCROSS mission impact from Chaco Canyon. As I mentioned in an earlier post , I first tried my hand at astrophotography the weekend before the event.

The photograph below was taken just after the spacecraft impact early in the morning on October 7th. Unfortunately, the event was not visible from any of our telescopes. (You’ll have to visit NASA’s LCROSS site to see the effects of the impact.)

Chaco Culture National Historic Park is a great place for amateur astronomy. Its remote location, climate, altitude and facilities have made it a popular destination for night sky viewing. This weekend I was lucky enough to try my hand at astrophotography. Having (literally) photographed nearly every place in Chaco Canyon over the last decade (see Traditions of the Sun), it seemed natural to try to point my camera skyward.

The photograph below is my first attempt at astrophotography. Early Friday morning at 5AM, I’ll be trying again. I’m hoping to capture NASA’s LCROSS impact of the moon. This mission will measure the concentration of water ice in the permanently shadowed areas of the moon. Ideum developed an exhibit for NASA’s Lunar Robotics program, so we’ve been following this all along. (Update 9-5-09: NASA Just posted a viewing guide for the event.)

The photograph above was taken with a Canon 20D. Amateur astronomer Brad Hamlin set up the 18″ telescope. This image was shot with a 20mm eyepiece and 2x Barlow lens. And, yes, I did clean the image up a bit in Photoshop. Below are some other shots I took at Chaco Canyon earlier in day and the next morning.

The amazing architecture of the great house of Pueblo Bonito.

The beautiful sandstone veneer of Pueblo Bonito.

We saw elk on the way out of the park Sunday morning.  This view was from the dirt road (NM 57) in the southern part of Chaco Culture.

If you’re interested in seeing more photographs of Chaco Canyon. I’ve posted quite a few to the blog over the last few years. Check out the category “Chaco Culture National Historical Park.” You can see more photographs, including high-resolution versions of images that appear in this post, on Ideum’s Flickr photostream.

Update: October 28, 2009. See a new post with video and images of the 100″ table in action.

We’ve begun work on our most ambitious multitouch exhibit to date. We are building a 100″ table for Adventure Science Center’s Sudekum Planetarium in Nashville, Tennessee. The design is based on our MT2 multitouch table. For this custom installation, we are doubling the current form factor to create our largest multitouch surface to date. Of course, doubling the size involves a number of significant changes.

The 100″ multitouch table will use two high-resolution projectors, yielding a combined resolution of 2500 x 720. The two projected images will be blended together using a specialized video card producing a seamless 7:2 ratio, ultra-wide screen image.

The table design has been modified to include a contiguous glass surface with rounded edges and wrap around powder-coated black panels. Underneath, bright blue LED lights provide “ground effects.” We’ve been working with Adventure Science Center and our design partners at Ralph Applebaum and Associates to finalize the look of the 100″ table.

The exhibit will be multitouch and multiuser. The table will present a representation of the electromagnetic spectrum from Radio to Gamma-Rays. The visible spectrum appears in the center of the table.

Visitors (up to 8 or more simultaneously) will be able interact with images of terrestrial and celestial  objects that appear on the table surface. Visitors can rotate, scale and move the images across the table. As images pass from one wavelength to another, a new image is revealed showing the object as it appears in the new wavelength.  Contextual metadata will allow visitors to learn more about the image(s) they are interacting with.

The exhibit can be approached from either side.  Wavelength “drawers” can be popped-out revealing more information about the wavelength the visitor is exploring.

We’re using Natural User Interface’s Snowflake software for optical support and for “blob tracking.” The exhibit uses two computers.  One will do blob tracking, recognizing visitors finger tips on the table surface. The other computer will run the EM spectrum application, which we are developing in Adobe Flash. We’ll post more about this exhibit as we continue to make progress.

Back in 2005, we developed a video podcast for NASA’s Sun-Earth Education Forum (see Traditions of the Sun). Soon after we were invited to became part of listserv which included everyone who podcasts at NASA. A master list of all NASA podcasts has been compiled and floating around the group for sometime now but it has ever been published. I asked Bryan Walls who administers the group if we could publish it, knowing it would be of interest to some of you.

Here’s what should be a complete list of all NASA sponsored public podcasts.

1. Ask an Astronomer Videos from SIRTF/CalTech (XML | iTunes) Format: M4V (H.264, 320×240, AAC 44.1 Stereo, 650 kbps typical) Started: October ‘05 Average length: 2 minutes Active: Yes

2. Brain Bites Ask NASA from Johnson Space Center (XML) Format: M4V (H.264, 320×180, AAC 44.1) Started: November ‘05 Average Length: 1 minute Active: No

3. Chandra Podcasts from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (XML| iTunes) Format: M4V (H.264, 320×213, AAC 44.1, 680 kbps typical) Started: May ‘06 Average Length: 5 minutes Active: Yes

4. Ciencia @ NASA from Marshall Space Flight Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (32kbps mono) Started: Sept ‘05 Average Length: 6minutes Active: Yes

5. Hidden Universe of the Spitzer Space Telescope from SIRTF/CalTech (XML | iTunes) Format: MP4 (H.264, 320×234, AAC Stereo 44.1) Started: May ‘06 Average Length: 3.5 minutes Active: Yes

6. Hubblecast from ESA/Hubble Institute (XML | iTunes) Format: N/A Started: Feb ‘07 Average Length: 5.5 minutes Active: Yes

7. NASA Aeronautics Research Technical Seminars from Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s (ARMD) (RSS | iTunes) Format: MP4 (H.264, 320×234, AAC Stereo 44.1) Started: Nov ‘06 Average Length: 1.3 hours Active: Yes

8. NASA Astrobiology Magazine from Goddard Space Flight Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (32 kHz, 64.1 kbps, Mono) Started: June ‘05 Average Length: 7.5 minutes Active: No

9. NASA Digital Learning Network Podcast (XML | iTunes) Format: M4V (320×240 or 320×180, Stereo 44.1 kHz) Started: July ‘06 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

10. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Podcast (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (128 kbps Stereo) Started: Dec ‘05 Average Length: 8 minutes Active: No

11. NASA Edge Vodcast from Langely Research Center (RSS) Format: MP4 (320×180, 128kbps, AAC Stereo) Started: Mar ‘07 Average Length: 30 minutes Active: Yes

12. NASA Student Opportunities from NASA Education (RSS | iTunes) Format: MP3 (128 kpbs mono) Started: Feb ‘07 Average Length: 10 minutes Active: Yes

13. NASA’s Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum from Goddard Space Flight Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (96 kbps Stereo) or M4V (H.264 320×213, AAC 44.1) Started: Dec ‘05 Average Length: 3 minutes Active: Yes

14. NASACast from Headquarters (RSS | iTunes) Format: MP3 (128 kbps Stereo) Started: Sept ‘05 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

15. NASACast Video from Headquarters (RSS | iTunes) Format: mp4 (MPEG-4, 320×236, AAC 44.1 Stereo, 950 kbps typical) Started: Oct ‘05 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

16. PlanetQuest – the Search for Another Earth from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (44.1 kHz, 160 kbps) Started: Sept ‘05 Average Length: 2.5 minutes Active: Yes

17. Robotics Alliance Project F.I.R.S.T. Competition 2006 from Ames Research Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP4 (MPEG-4, 320×240, AAC 24, 590 kbps typical) Started: Mar ‘06 Average Length: 1 hour Active: No

18. Robotics Alliance Project F.I.R.S.T. Competition 2007 from Ames Research Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP4 (MPEG-4, 320×240, AAC 24, 590 kbps typical) Started: Mar ‘07 Average Length: 1 hour Active: Yes

19. The Rovercast from Stennis Space Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (44.1 kHz, 160 kbps) Started: July ‘06 Average Length: 1.5 minutes Active: Yes

20. Science @ NASA Feature Stories Podcast from Marshall Space Flight Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (44.1 kHz, 56 kbps, Mono) Started: Dec ‘04 Average Length: 1.5 minutes Active: Yes

21. Skywatch/Hubble Watch from STScI/NPR/WYPR 88.1 FM (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (22.05 kHz, 48 kbps, Stereo) Started: Sept ‘05 Average Length: 4 minutes Active: Yes

22. Space Place Musings from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (RSS | iTunes) Format: MP3 (48 kHz, 128 kbps, Stereo) Started: July ‘06 Average Length: 5 minutes Active: Yes

23. Spitzer Space Telescope Podcasts from SIRTF/IPAC/CalTech (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (22.05 kHz, 48 kbps, Stereo) Started: Aug ‘05 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

24. Traditions of the Sun from Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum (XML | iTunes) Format: M4V (H.264, 320×213, AAC 44.1, 560 kbps typical) Started: Aug ‘05 Average Length: 3 minutes Active: No

25. W. M. Keck Observatory from Keck/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (22.05 kHz, 56 kbps, Stereo) Started: Aug ‘05 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

We’ve just finished developing version 1.0 of the Solar Viewer widget this time as a Dashboard Widget for Mac OS X. Earlier in the year we developed a Yahoo! widget version that works with both Mac and Windows, although you’ll need the Yahoo! Widget Engine to make it go.
Both versions (Yahoo! and Mac Dashboard) show the latest images of the sun from NASA satellites and ground-based observatories. More information about the images and links to larger images are provided. We first collected all of the amazing solar images for the Sun Earth Viewer, a Flash-based interactive that we developed with NASA back in 2004.

If you’re interested we posted a how-to for Yahoo! Widgets when we developed the first version of the Solar Viewer. We hope to have some time in the next couple of weeks to do something similar for the Mac version.

The Dashboard widget should be available on the Apple site soon. In the meantime, you can download it from Solar Viewer Widget page in the Ideum portfolio.

This Sunday the third Mayan World Alive! event will be held, this time in San Rafael, California at the Pickleweed Community Center. The event is free. (The previous two openings were held at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco and the Governor’s palace in Merida, Mexico). This cultural event and exhibit will feature activities, music, dancing and a photographic exhibit showing some of the photographs we took for the Traditions of the Sun project last year. NASA’s website has more on the traveling photo exhibit.

Sunrise at Dzibilchaltun in the northen Yucatan. The building is known as the Sun Temple or the House of the Seven Dolls. This Late Classic building functioned as an observatory by marking the equinoxes, as well as the summer and winter solstices.

The Caracol, or Observatory at Chichen Itza served as an observatory for gathering astronomical data about the sun, moon, and planet Venus. Having the opportunity to shoot aerial photos was one of the highlights of the project. There is a slideshow with more aerial photograhs.

The Great Palace of Sayil is a beautiful and often overlooked struture. Sayil is located just a few kilometers from the more famous site of Uxmal.

El Castillo, or Castle, is the central pyramid of Chichen Itza. Notice the shadow on the right side of the pyramid. This appears as a great serpent which descends the staircase throughout the afternoon hours during the equinox. This photograph was taken in Spring of 2005. As you can see, huge crowds come to witness the event.