Tag Archives: launchpad

Urg. I accidentally set my alarm for 8AM instead of 10AM, and when it went off, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I hate me.

We had a field trip to WIRO (U of Wyoming Infrared Observatory), about 25 miles away from Laramie, up a steep and bumpy mountain road, and stayed out very late. The WIRO (2.3-meter) telescope is huge. HUGE! Like plane hanger huge. But it’s only considered a medium-sized telescope.

They don’t actually look through the telescope, but get the image via computer monitor. So we saw the ring nebula and galaxies and star clusters in pixeleted glory. Quite cool, but y’know, the best viewing for me was simply walking outside and looking up and seeing the Milky Way and the night sky in the unpolluted mountain air. The stars were so bright, so beautiful. Oooo.

WIRO pix:

I couldn’t get the whole telescope in my frame. shaolingrrl provides a scale reference.

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Yesterday we went over stellar evolution–white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes–and using astronomy in fiction. We also visited the university’s computer lab and discussed how Hubble pictures like this one are derived:

We also saw the planetarium and had a field trip out to the Cavalryman for dinner before heading out to Red Buttes Observatory where, unfortunately, we couldn’t open the dome due to humidity levels. But we did get to see the large telescope they had there and talk with the graduate student camped out doing research there.

Jerry Oltion gazing at the mirror.

There was evidence of quite a bit of whimsy and a healthy sense of humor in the observatory. Sheep slippers by the door!

Vonda McIntyre pointing out “telermascope” on the white board in the control center.

And we stood outside for a long time gazing up while Jerry and Mike picked out constallations with their laser pointers.

After dinner, I flashy-thinged my fellow workshopers. Um, then I turned my flash off. Left to right: Jeff, Lori, Josepha, Tempest, Vonda, Scott, Jerry (W.), Jerry (O.), Alaya

While it was cloudy, we were still able to see some starry matter on the roof of the astronomy building. I viewed the Moon, Venus, Jupiter (and four moons), Andromeda, a couple sets of binary stars, and a nebula (whose name I’ve forgotten). The sky was achingly beautiful.

The roof was a gorgeous viewing area.

Even with the annoying sidewalk lights below glaring light pollution, which the university didn’t see fit to shade.

I turned my flash off so as not to annoy and blind my fellow workshopees, so my pictures are somewhat blurry. Trade-offs.

Yesterday, we reviewed the electromagnetic spectrum and made spectroscopes with which to gaze at various elements (mercury, neon, etc.) to observe their absorption line fingerprints. Astronomy is preeeetty. We also talked about telescopes, NASA missions, and amateur astronomy.

The schedule slated us to pop up to the roof of the astronomy building last night to use the university’s telescopes, but it was cloudy, so they swapped the free evening scheduled for today for last night and bumped the roof viewing for tonight. But I checked on weather.com, and it looks likely that it’ll be cloudy for the rest of the week. Pook. Hoping that Mother Nature is more obliging than weather.com says she’ll be.

Last night for our free evening, many of us sprawled/meandered between Michael Livingston’s room and ktempest‘s room for writing, chitchat, and booze. I camped out in Michael’s room with samhenderson, Vylar Kaftan, Josepha Sherman, Vonda McIntyre, and, of course, our host, Michael. Managed to get over 700 hundred words down, almost 500 of them due to a 15 minute challenge from Vylar. She also introduced me to Once Upon a Time, a storytelling card game. Vy, Sam, Jo, and I played two rounds, and it’s one of those lovely games where I’m more interested in the playing than the “winning” goal. From Vy’s comments, it sounds like the right players makes for the best gaming experience. If last night is anything to go by, four SF/F writers totally counts as “the right players.”

From left to right: samhenderson, Jerry Oltion, Josepha Sherman, Michael Livingston.

I couldn’t quite fit Vylar Kaftan into the above picture, so she gets her own.

This morning is the Vedauwoo Hike, and since three hours tramping around in the Wyoming sun in the rarefied air would likely perk my lupus/MCTD up and knock me flat, I thought the wiser course was to opt out. But I feel like that poor kid with asthma forced to sit in the back of the room watching all the other kids playing kickball. Sigh. But, as I remind myself, I’d be extremely bummed if I had to miss the rest of the workshop because of a flare up, not to mention furious with myself if it was one I could have prevented by being prudent.

This afternoon we’re talking about stars and the human element in space. Human element in space! *clamor clamor clamor*

Dear flist, Astronomy camp is a blast. Wish you were here . . .

The first day of the workshop has waxed and waned, and we discussed scales of the universe, seasons and lunar phases, common misconceptions thereof, and went over math; Jerry Oltion went over the Drake Equation and showed us how to do quick and dirty “back of the envelope” calculations. I have to admit that I wish they’d scheduled the math part earlier in the day. The benefits from the copious amount of caffeine I’d ingested in the AM had long passed by then, and I was having a hard time focusing on the numbers. But I got enough that I can do it if I need to . . . probably.

In closing, we had a sing-a-long of the “Galaxy Song” from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life before breaking for dinner. And that night, we reconvened to watch Armageddon in order to mock it mercilessly for it’s craptacular science. There will be more formal mocking this morning. (Jerry O. made up a two-page list of the things wrong with just the science as we watched, not even incorporating all the bad writing. Just the science, ma’am.)

During class, Vonda McIntyre crochets sea creatures (sea slugs? Marine flatworms?) out of yarn (see here for examples of their close relations made out of beads) which is fabulous to watch. Y’know, this is totally what happens when a brilliant science fiction writer crochets. You don’t get afghans or scarves, you get alien/marine critters. Hee!

They’re feeding us fabulously. When we broke for dinner, I wasn’t hungry at all from everything I’d eaten at breakfast and lunch (and we get snacks too!). A bunch of us hung out while Scott Humphries grilled hot dogs in the little courtyard behind the apartments and brought out his huge stash of booze to ply folks with. I didn’t partake of either the hot dogs (obviously) or the booze, but I did snarf down some potato chips. samhenderson spotted a bunny, and we admired it for quite a while. It was a very laid back bunny, not inclined to bolt away unless you approached it with a decent amount of determination. I think it might’ve been hoping for a handout.

In honor of Day 1 of the Launch Pad workshop, I give you Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song”:

In Laramie, WY, settled in my Launch Pad digs, piggybacking on some stranger’s WiFi. Each workshop participant has their own student apartment with their own kitchenettes, bedrooms, and living rooms. But I had to rethink my “hotel” expectations when packing, and change settings to “apartment.”

Jerry Weinberg arrived on Saturday and emailed the group with a “what to expect” and informed us that there are no hangers or paper towels. So I snagged some travel hangers; not enough as it turns out, but enough to make due. There’s also no television. Not a problem on the program-watching side, but a bit perplexing at bedtime. I’m accustomed to sleeping with the sound and light of a television playing, and I had a hard time getting to sleep without one. But, then I turned to my trusty laptop, set some Enya on repeat, and turned on the Windows Media Player visualizations. Voila, sleep.

The flight in was smooth. I was nestled between an elderly lady who was grumpy because she couldn’t get a pillow (they apparently don’t have those on AirTran) and a little girl flying alone, all three of us of different races (White, Asian, Black). Looking at the row of us, I had a moment’s thought of “crone matron maiden,” but I don’t like thinking of myself as “matron,” and the little girl was too young to be what I envision as “maiden.” Perhaps “grandma, grown-up, girl” would be more accurate.

We were stuck right behind business class, so there were only two tray tables for three of us, and I was curious to see how that would resolve itself. As it turns out, none of us used them. Neither grandma nor girl put theirs down when the complimentary drink service came around, and as they didn’t, I didn’t have to choose which one to use. Interesting that we all saw the peculiar little social puzzle and simply avoided it.

Caught a little bit of turbulence heading towards Denver, which I always enjoy (as long as it doesn’t go longer than a second or two), but it freaked the little girl, who gasped in dismay every time, and grandma didn’t seem thrilled either.

Met all my Launch Pad workshop mates and instructors. Finally got to meet folks who I’ve only known as online presences, like ktempest and samhenderson. Yay! We all went out for dinner at a brew pub, and I sat with Vonda McIntryre, Jerry Oltion, and Samantha Henderson. I felt rather wide-eyed at the company I was in, not only ’cause of their amazing writerly accomplishments (and yes, the first chance I got, despite my intentions not to gush and squee, I did indeed gush and squee at Vonda, who was very gracious and warm and didn’t go running in the other direction), but I just don’t have much opportunity to hang with other writers. And, y’know, I really lubs it. Like-minded folks, ooo. Can’t wait for the workshop to begin.

The syllabus lists a “pre-test” for this morning, which has me a bit anxious. Makes me twitchy about “should I have studied up”? I actually started to brush up on some Astronomy 101, but at around Venus, I figured I’d just let the woeful state of my astronomy knowledge flap free in all its shameful glory. After all, to help rectify that is the purpose of this workshop.