Tsoying Toastmasters Club conducted a Youth Leadership Program for Tsoying High School Students during the first semester of School Year 2010-2011. And the close ceremony was held on January 29.
Please visit the following links for the Video and photos:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150091956489828&comments
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=100000177978123&aid=60977
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=100000177978123&aid=60977#!/album.php?
id=612194827&aid=282600
Deeply thanks to Wen-hung, Angela, Amber, Kevin, Nina, Fu-mei, Mike, Grace, Tsoying High's principal, Tsoying Club members and who all supported this program.
Feb 1, 2011
Jan 11, 2011
Rome in a Day: Virtual Reality Maps
Rebuilding the world one pixel at a time.
Who says Rome wasn't built in a day?
With the muscle of about 500 computers and 150,000 still images, Steve Seitz, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington's Seattle campus, and his colleagues have reconstructed many of Rome's famous landmarks in just 21 hours.
"The idea behind "Rome in a Day"' is that we wanted to see how big of a city or model we could build from photos on the internet," says Steve Seitz from the university's graphics and imaging laboratory. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), they're rebuilding Rome pixel by pixel rather than brick by brick.
Calculations that once took months now take hours. "This is the largest 3-D reconstruction that anyone has ever tried," explains Seitz. "It's completely organic; it works just from any image set."
The project starts with a trip to the photo-sharing site Flickr to search for images of the real thing. Once pictures are identified, the computer starts the process of making 3-D objects from 2-D stills. Sameer Agarwal, a former postdoctoral scholar, at the university is mostly responsible for creating the algorithm that makes 3-D objects in virtual space from thousands of 2-D images.
"If I am a sculpture and there were three photographs of me, we would try to find three points in each photograph that point to my nose. From that we know that there are three points in these images that correspond to a single point in the 3-D world," explains Agarwal. "We would be able to say where in a particular image corresponding to that camera, the image of my nose should show up. This statement can be written as an equation involving the position and orientation of the camera, the position of my nose and where in the image my nose shows up. And you can connect all of these equations together and solve them to, in one shot, obtain both the positions of the cameras as well as the position of my nose in the 3-D world relative to those cameras."
Computers map huge clusters of points in 3-D space creating ghost-like images called "Point Clouds."
Seitz says the imaging is very accurate. "For the buildings, I think we can get accuracy to within a few centimeters. We've measured this. For individual objects that are photographed closer, we can potentially do a lot better, like millimeter accuracy."
Finally, color and texture are added. What Seitz and his colleagues have gotten are virtual 3-D tours of cities like Dubrovnik, Croatia or Venice, Italy.
"What excites me is the ability to capture the real world; to be able to reconstruct the experience of being somewhere without actually being there," says Seitz.
In the future this "next generation" technology may show up in places online like mapping sites, video games or real estate sites--it's a virtual guarantee.
From Science Nation
Who says Rome wasn't built in a day?
With the muscle of about 500 computers and 150,000 still images, Steve Seitz, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington's Seattle campus, and his colleagues have reconstructed many of Rome's famous landmarks in just 21 hours.
"The idea behind "Rome in a Day"' is that we wanted to see how big of a city or model we could build from photos on the internet," says Steve Seitz from the university's graphics and imaging laboratory. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), they're rebuilding Rome pixel by pixel rather than brick by brick.
Calculations that once took months now take hours. "This is the largest 3-D reconstruction that anyone has ever tried," explains Seitz. "It's completely organic; it works just from any image set."
The project starts with a trip to the photo-sharing site Flickr to search for images of the real thing. Once pictures are identified, the computer starts the process of making 3-D objects from 2-D stills. Sameer Agarwal, a former postdoctoral scholar, at the university is mostly responsible for creating the algorithm that makes 3-D objects in virtual space from thousands of 2-D images.
"If I am a sculpture and there were three photographs of me, we would try to find three points in each photograph that point to my nose. From that we know that there are three points in these images that correspond to a single point in the 3-D world," explains Agarwal. "We would be able to say where in a particular image corresponding to that camera, the image of my nose should show up. This statement can be written as an equation involving the position and orientation of the camera, the position of my nose and where in the image my nose shows up. And you can connect all of these equations together and solve them to, in one shot, obtain both the positions of the cameras as well as the position of my nose in the 3-D world relative to those cameras."
Computers map huge clusters of points in 3-D space creating ghost-like images called "Point Clouds."
Seitz says the imaging is very accurate. "For the buildings, I think we can get accuracy to within a few centimeters. We've measured this. For individual objects that are photographed closer, we can potentially do a lot better, like millimeter accuracy."
Finally, color and texture are added. What Seitz and his colleagues have gotten are virtual 3-D tours of cities like Dubrovnik, Croatia or Venice, Italy.
"What excites me is the ability to capture the real world; to be able to reconstruct the experience of being somewhere without actually being there," says Seitz.
In the future this "next generation" technology may show up in places online like mapping sites, video games or real estate sites--it's a virtual guarantee.
From Science Nation
Nov 10, 2010
An Excellent Tool for Learning English
Are you looking for an online free dictionary?
Here is an easy-to-use English and multilingual dictionary, WordInn Dictionary 2010. It will definitely make your online reading hassle free just by double clicking the mouse left button on the word you don't know.
For better understanding and downloading, please visit the following link:
http://wordinn.com/?shr=13738
Nov 7, 2010
The Discovery Files: Tell and Show
Cognitive psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania and University of California have shown that an image displayed too quickly to be seen by an observer can be detected if the participant first hears the name of the object.
Credit: NSF/Karson Productions
Audio Transcript:
Say It -- See It.
I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.
The results of a study led by cognitive psychologists from the University of Pennsylvania say we're more likely to see and recognize an object flashed on the screen -- if we first hear what that object is. Even if it is only on the screen for a virtually invisible 50 milliseconds! That's half as long as the blink of an eye.
In some of the tests, participants were asked to detect the presence or absence of large capital letters that flashed on the screen. In other experiments researchers showed the object ahead of time instead of verbalizing but that didn't seem to help. Only the correct verbal cues consistently led to the most positive IDs; those verbal cues worked even if the object appeared in an unexpected part of the screen.
The study is part of a larger effort to understand how high-level expectations can affect low-level sensory processing. It's like a reverse game of show-and-tell -- if we tell first, the object is more likely to show. Perception being shaped by language.
There can be many factors that influence the way we see things. One of the strongest may be the power of the spoken word -- which -- I'm out of right now.
"The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.
Play audio
For the original, please visit:
The Discovery Files
Credit: NSF/Karson Productions
Audio Transcript:
Say It -- See It.
I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.
The results of a study led by cognitive psychologists from the University of Pennsylvania say we're more likely to see and recognize an object flashed on the screen -- if we first hear what that object is. Even if it is only on the screen for a virtually invisible 50 milliseconds! That's half as long as the blink of an eye.
In some of the tests, participants were asked to detect the presence or absence of large capital letters that flashed on the screen. In other experiments researchers showed the object ahead of time instead of verbalizing but that didn't seem to help. Only the correct verbal cues consistently led to the most positive IDs; those verbal cues worked even if the object appeared in an unexpected part of the screen.
The study is part of a larger effort to understand how high-level expectations can affect low-level sensory processing. It's like a reverse game of show-and-tell -- if we tell first, the object is more likely to show. Perception being shaped by language.
There can be many factors that influence the way we see things. One of the strongest may be the power of the spoken word -- which -- I'm out of right now.
"The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.
Play audioFor the original, please visit:
The Discovery Files
Nov 1, 2010
What's Up for November, 2010:
Crescent Venus, Brilliant Jupiter, and Shower Meteors
What's Up for November?
Venus in the morning, gas giants in the evening and meteors after midnight.
Transcript:
Hello and welcome! I'm Jane Houston Jones at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. If your skies are clear this month, you're in for some real treats!
Venus is up first ... literally. Start looking for our nearest planetary neighbor just before dawn. You'll be treated to a very slender crescent. On the fifth, two crescents rise 35 minutes before dawn: first Venus and then the Moon. By the 15th, the crescent Venus widens to 10% of the planet's disk. And by month end, it's 25 percent lit. Galileo captured sketches of the changes in the appearance of Venus 400 years ago.
Jupiter reigns supreme again in November. You can really see the light and dark bands of clouds on the planet.
Uranus and Neptune are both easy to see through a telescope, too.
Comets are storytellers, preserving the stuff from which our solar system's family was born. November 4 marks the EPOXI spacecraft's flyby of comet Hartley 2. Last month offered the best time to view this comet.
The bright and slow Taurid meteor shower peaks the first two weeks of November. You'll only see about 5 of the distinctive Taurids per hour.
November's more famous shower is the Leonids. The faint and swift Leonids peak on the 17th and 18th. Wait until the moon sets in the hours before dawn for your best chance of seeing them.
NASA's Year of the Solar System missions will shed light on our solar system family's birth story. The Cassini Solstice mission is making new discoveries about the mini-solar system at Saturn, complete with a disk of rings and moons orbiting the dynamic gas giant. JUNO launches in 2011 and will seek to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter.
Learn more about this month's Year of the Solar System resources at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/yss
And you can learn all about NASA's missions at www.nasa.gov
That's all for this month. I'm Jane Houston Jones.
Venus in the morning, gas giants in the evening and meteors after midnight.
Transcript:
Hello and welcome! I'm Jane Houston Jones at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. If your skies are clear this month, you're in for some real treats!
Venus is up first ... literally. Start looking for our nearest planetary neighbor just before dawn. You'll be treated to a very slender crescent. On the fifth, two crescents rise 35 minutes before dawn: first Venus and then the Moon. By the 15th, the crescent Venus widens to 10% of the planet's disk. And by month end, it's 25 percent lit. Galileo captured sketches of the changes in the appearance of Venus 400 years ago.
Jupiter reigns supreme again in November. You can really see the light and dark bands of clouds on the planet.
Uranus and Neptune are both easy to see through a telescope, too.
Comets are storytellers, preserving the stuff from which our solar system's family was born. November 4 marks the EPOXI spacecraft's flyby of comet Hartley 2. Last month offered the best time to view this comet.
The bright and slow Taurid meteor shower peaks the first two weeks of November. You'll only see about 5 of the distinctive Taurids per hour.
November's more famous shower is the Leonids. The faint and swift Leonids peak on the 17th and 18th. Wait until the moon sets in the hours before dawn for your best chance of seeing them.
NASA's Year of the Solar System missions will shed light on our solar system family's birth story. The Cassini Solstice mission is making new discoveries about the mini-solar system at Saturn, complete with a disk of rings and moons orbiting the dynamic gas giant. JUNO launches in 2011 and will seek to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter.
Learn more about this month's Year of the Solar System resources at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/yss
And you can learn all about NASA's missions at www.nasa.gov
That's all for this month. I'm Jane Houston Jones.
Sep 21, 2010
Hidden Oil and Gas Plumes in the Gulf
Below the surface, thousands of marine creatures are still in danger from Gulf oil disaster.
Transcript:
University of Georgia oceanographer Samantha Joye, like most scientists, always has a plan. Especially when it involves complex, expensive research cruises.
But the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout [1], and the enormous environmental destruction it is causing, forced her to change the way she works.
"As an oceanographer, you are trained to make these detailed cruise plans," notes Joye. "Everything is just so, 'I'm going to be here on day one and here on day ten'."
Days after the BP [2] oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people, Joye got the wheels in motion [3] to submit a proposal for a "Grant for Rapid Response Research" from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Her goal was to investigate underwater oil and gas plumes, and determine how this disaster was impacting deepwater organisms.
Within a week, NSF approved the grant. Joye and her team from the University of Georgia, along with researchers from several other universities, spent May 24 through June 6, 2010 aboard the University of Miami research vessel, Walton Smith, departing from Gulfport, Miss.
"I don't think I've ever flown by the seat of my pants [4] the way we were flying there. But these are dynamic features, changing every single day," says Joye.
One complication of this trip: the smells of the huge amount of hydrocarbons that started spewing on April 20th. It could sometimes be overpowering.
"It was nauseating," says Joye. She described the intense smell as something like a cross between diesel fuel, creosote, and gasoline.
"Just wretched, wretched, dense air and it's hot, it's humid, and the air is just saturated with these very uncomfortable smells," she explains.
The scientists and the ship's crew had to wear respirators and protective suits at times, especially near "ground zero" [5] where the blowout occurred.
Joye is a biogeochemist, who studies the natural seepage of oil and gas from the floor of the Gulf. At the time, the natural seepage rate in the Gulf of Mexico was on the order of 1,000 barrels a day, over the entire Gulf. But in a 20-mile-long, 3-mile-wide oil and gas plume Joye tracked, the amount of oil and gas was off the charts.
"The gas concentrations are outrageously high. We have measured concentrations up to 100,000 times what we typically see in the Gulf of Mexico," says Joye.
Some deepwater creatures in the Gulf process tiny amounts of oil and gas that occur normally in the water.
"There is a whole slew of organisms that depend on these natural seeps, and in these ecosystems, the one thing that these organisms need that can be taken away by this oil spill is oxygen," explains Joye. "That's because they eat oil and gas but the bacteria that sustain them are oxygen-requiring bacteria. So without oxygen, they can't survive."
Joye says that methane gas could create more zones of low oxygen in the Gulf, possibly choking off these deep water ecosystems.
To give a human equivalent, Joye says, "It would be like having your Thanksgiving dinner, but suddenly the living room is filled with argon or CO2 instead of oxygen. There's all this food around you, but you can't eat it because you are suffocating."
Joye says this prolonged environmental tragedy has had a profound impact on those who study life in the Gulf.
"I would characterize it as a transformative event because it changed the way I approached what I was doing. It was a disaster response instead of just a research cruise. There was this sense of urgency that I can't describe in words," says Joye.
Two of her students also were motivated to work as hard, and for as long as they possibly could, each day on the ship.
Microbiologist Melitza Crespo-Medina is a University of Georgia postdoctoral student.
"We started working at 9 a.m. until 1 or 2 in the morning. It was really intensive," says Crespo-Medina. "And I really remember this water looked clear, absolutely clear, but I remember the smell of it, I can't believe this water that looks clear smells so much like gas, like diesel. And that sticks in my mind."
The research cruise was the first-ever for undergraduate ecology student Chassidy Mann.
"So the experience wasn't just collecting the data, the experience wasn't just being amidst other people, it was science exploration, and for me, it was unparalleled to anything I have ever experienced," says Chassidy.
One night, the rescue of a single, oil-soaked bird had an impact on everyone on the ship.
"He was exhausted. His wings were covered in oil, his eyes, [and] his mouth. It was just gut-wrenching and everyone was in tears, myself included. You see this innocent animal, doing the same thing that it had done for all of its life. And instantly, he is coated in this stuff that weighs down his wings. And there's just this look of desperation and fear in his eyes," says Joye. "Animals like that bird, whales, and sea turtles, and fish, and every organism that inhabits the Gulf of Mexico are being exposed to an atrocity."
What has frustrated Joye and many other scientists since this disaster began is the lack of information about the precise amount of oil and gas that has spewed from the well site.
"It took two months to nail down the magnitude of this spill. I'm still not convinced that it's an accurate number; 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil per day, that doesn't even include gas flux. The gas flux is probably another 30 percent on top of that," she says.
Shortly after she returned from this research cruise, Joye testified before Congress about some of her initial findings, and the very long road ahead for the recovery of the Gulf.
"In my congressional testimony, one of the biggest things I hammered again and again was the need to document the size of this spill," she says. "You can't even begin to fathom the environmental implications if you don't know how much gas and oil have come out of this wellhead."
Since this NSF cruise, the Deepwater Horizon well has been capped. But Joye wants to make sure the public knows that just because the oil is no longer gushing out, the problems are far from over. She is especially concerned about the dispersants used to break up the oil and gas, to try to keep it from reaching shore.
The dispersant has not been widely tested on marine organisms, according to Joye. And it makes locating plumes of oil and gas much more difficult, even impossible, with satellite imagery.
"The volume, the sheer magnitude of dispersant application is mind-boggling. The fact is that we have no idea what this could do to the system. The dispersant is a complex chemical milieu of who knows what," explains Joye. "It [the use of dispersants] does one thing really well. It masks the magnitude of the spill, and it potentially does many, many things badly."
Joye wants a closer look at safety issues in offshore drilling. She also sees this horrible incident as a wakeup call for everyone when it comes to energy use.
"The impact of this is big, and it's wide, and it's bad, and it's ugly. The global appetite for oil and gas is driven by each one of us," says Joye. "And until each one of us changes our attitude, it's not going to get any better."
From Science Nation
--------------------------
Notes:
[1] Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout
Please refer to the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
[2]BP
BP is summed up by two words 'beyond petroleum'. It’s one of the world’s largest energy companies.
[3]get the wheels in motion
Get something started; To cause a series of actions to start that will help you achieve what you want.
[4] Fly by the seat of one’s pants
Decide a course of action as you go along, using your own initiative and perceptions rather than a pre-determined plan or mechanical aids.
[5] Ground zero
The point on the Earth's surface where an explosion occurs. For more detail visit at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_zero
Transcript:
University of Georgia oceanographer Samantha Joye, like most scientists, always has a plan. Especially when it involves complex, expensive research cruises.
But the Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout [1], and the enormous environmental destruction it is causing, forced her to change the way she works.
"As an oceanographer, you are trained to make these detailed cruise plans," notes Joye. "Everything is just so, 'I'm going to be here on day one and here on day ten'."
Days after the BP [2] oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people, Joye got the wheels in motion [3] to submit a proposal for a "Grant for Rapid Response Research" from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Her goal was to investigate underwater oil and gas plumes, and determine how this disaster was impacting deepwater organisms.
Within a week, NSF approved the grant. Joye and her team from the University of Georgia, along with researchers from several other universities, spent May 24 through June 6, 2010 aboard the University of Miami research vessel, Walton Smith, departing from Gulfport, Miss.
"I don't think I've ever flown by the seat of my pants [4] the way we were flying there. But these are dynamic features, changing every single day," says Joye.
One complication of this trip: the smells of the huge amount of hydrocarbons that started spewing on April 20th. It could sometimes be overpowering.
"It was nauseating," says Joye. She described the intense smell as something like a cross between diesel fuel, creosote, and gasoline.
"Just wretched, wretched, dense air and it's hot, it's humid, and the air is just saturated with these very uncomfortable smells," she explains.
The scientists and the ship's crew had to wear respirators and protective suits at times, especially near "ground zero" [5] where the blowout occurred.
Joye is a biogeochemist, who studies the natural seepage of oil and gas from the floor of the Gulf. At the time, the natural seepage rate in the Gulf of Mexico was on the order of 1,000 barrels a day, over the entire Gulf. But in a 20-mile-long, 3-mile-wide oil and gas plume Joye tracked, the amount of oil and gas was off the charts.
"The gas concentrations are outrageously high. We have measured concentrations up to 100,000 times what we typically see in the Gulf of Mexico," says Joye.
Some deepwater creatures in the Gulf process tiny amounts of oil and gas that occur normally in the water.
"There is a whole slew of organisms that depend on these natural seeps, and in these ecosystems, the one thing that these organisms need that can be taken away by this oil spill is oxygen," explains Joye. "That's because they eat oil and gas but the bacteria that sustain them are oxygen-requiring bacteria. So without oxygen, they can't survive."
Joye says that methane gas could create more zones of low oxygen in the Gulf, possibly choking off these deep water ecosystems.
To give a human equivalent, Joye says, "It would be like having your Thanksgiving dinner, but suddenly the living room is filled with argon or CO2 instead of oxygen. There's all this food around you, but you can't eat it because you are suffocating."
Joye says this prolonged environmental tragedy has had a profound impact on those who study life in the Gulf.
"I would characterize it as a transformative event because it changed the way I approached what I was doing. It was a disaster response instead of just a research cruise. There was this sense of urgency that I can't describe in words," says Joye.
Two of her students also were motivated to work as hard, and for as long as they possibly could, each day on the ship.
Microbiologist Melitza Crespo-Medina is a University of Georgia postdoctoral student.
"We started working at 9 a.m. until 1 or 2 in the morning. It was really intensive," says Crespo-Medina. "And I really remember this water looked clear, absolutely clear, but I remember the smell of it, I can't believe this water that looks clear smells so much like gas, like diesel. And that sticks in my mind."
The research cruise was the first-ever for undergraduate ecology student Chassidy Mann.
"So the experience wasn't just collecting the data, the experience wasn't just being amidst other people, it was science exploration, and for me, it was unparalleled to anything I have ever experienced," says Chassidy.
One night, the rescue of a single, oil-soaked bird had an impact on everyone on the ship.
"He was exhausted. His wings were covered in oil, his eyes, [and] his mouth. It was just gut-wrenching and everyone was in tears, myself included. You see this innocent animal, doing the same thing that it had done for all of its life. And instantly, he is coated in this stuff that weighs down his wings. And there's just this look of desperation and fear in his eyes," says Joye. "Animals like that bird, whales, and sea turtles, and fish, and every organism that inhabits the Gulf of Mexico are being exposed to an atrocity."
What has frustrated Joye and many other scientists since this disaster began is the lack of information about the precise amount of oil and gas that has spewed from the well site.
"It took two months to nail down the magnitude of this spill. I'm still not convinced that it's an accurate number; 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil per day, that doesn't even include gas flux. The gas flux is probably another 30 percent on top of that," she says.
Shortly after she returned from this research cruise, Joye testified before Congress about some of her initial findings, and the very long road ahead for the recovery of the Gulf.
"In my congressional testimony, one of the biggest things I hammered again and again was the need to document the size of this spill," she says. "You can't even begin to fathom the environmental implications if you don't know how much gas and oil have come out of this wellhead."
Since this NSF cruise, the Deepwater Horizon well has been capped. But Joye wants to make sure the public knows that just because the oil is no longer gushing out, the problems are far from over. She is especially concerned about the dispersants used to break up the oil and gas, to try to keep it from reaching shore.
The dispersant has not been widely tested on marine organisms, according to Joye. And it makes locating plumes of oil and gas much more difficult, even impossible, with satellite imagery.
"The volume, the sheer magnitude of dispersant application is mind-boggling. The fact is that we have no idea what this could do to the system. The dispersant is a complex chemical milieu of who knows what," explains Joye. "It [the use of dispersants] does one thing really well. It masks the magnitude of the spill, and it potentially does many, many things badly."
Joye wants a closer look at safety issues in offshore drilling. She also sees this horrible incident as a wakeup call for everyone when it comes to energy use.
"The impact of this is big, and it's wide, and it's bad, and it's ugly. The global appetite for oil and gas is driven by each one of us," says Joye. "And until each one of us changes our attitude, it's not going to get any better."
From Science Nation
--------------------------
Notes:
[1] Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout
Please refer to the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
[2]BP
BP is summed up by two words 'beyond petroleum'. It’s one of the world’s largest energy companies.
[3]get the wheels in motion
Get something started; To cause a series of actions to start that will help you achieve what you want.
[4] Fly by the seat of one’s pants
Decide a course of action as you go along, using your own initiative and perceptions rather than a pre-determined plan or mechanical aids.
[5] Ground zero
The point on the Earth's surface where an explosion occurs. For more detail visit at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_zero
Sep 3, 2010
What’s Up for September 2010: The moon
What’s Up for September?
The moon
Transcript:
Hello and welcome. I’m Jane Houston Jones at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
September 18 is International Observe the Moon Night.
This annual event is inspired by last year’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s journey to and orbit insertion around our moon. Images from its first year include all six manned lunar landing sites and close-ups of the lunar surface.
You can join astronomers around the world at lunar observing events and observe the ten-day-old moon. This is a night when many of the most recognizable lunar features are visible. Or you can even hold your own Observe the Moon event. And you don’t even need a telescope.
The moon takes about 29 days to go around the Earth once. And it also takes the moon about 29 days to spin once on its axis. This causes the same side of the moon to always face the Earth.
We can see the moon’s far side only from spacecraft.
Sometimes the moon’s far side is referred to as the dark side of the moon in poetry and songs. But this isn’t accurate.
As the moon orbits Earth, the portion we see illuminated changes. The first phase, called the new moon, is just a sliver. It’s difficult to see at first, but each night it gets bigger and brighter.
The next phase is called the first quarter, because the moon has traveled one quarter of its 29-day orbit around Earth.
International Observe the Moon Night falls halfway between the first quarter and the full moon.
A full moon is the next phase, on the 14th day of the lunar cycle. Don’t miss the full moon of September, called the Harvest Moon[1]. It rises in the east just before Jupiter on September 23rd.
Then the illuminated portion visible to us shrinks to the last quarter.
Use this moon observing journal[2] to record the lunar phases for yourself.
Be sure to check out the International Observe the Moon Night website[3] and join me, along with thousands of other amateur astronomers on September 18 sharing the moon views with your community.
That’s all for this month. I’m Jane Houston Jones.
Notes:
----------------------------------------------
[1] Harvest moon
The full moon that appears nearest to the autumnal equinox (秋分).
For more information, please visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_moon
[2]Moon Observing Journal
Download the moon observing journal at
http://observethemoonnight.org/downloads/MoonObservationJournal.pdf
[3]International Observe the Moon Night
For the event of "International Observe the Moon Night", please visit
http://observethemoonnight.org/
[4]Moon Map
Download the Moon Map at
http://observethemoonnight.org/downloads/moonmapIOMN_v2.2.pdf
[5]Star Chart
Download the Star Chart at
http://observethemoonnight.org/downloads/starchart_largeformat_north_4email.pdf
or
http://observethemoonnight.org/downloads/starchart_smallformat_north_OMN_4email.pdf (Use for September 18, 2010 only.)
The moon
Transcript:
Hello and welcome. I’m Jane Houston Jones at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
September 18 is International Observe the Moon Night.
This annual event is inspired by last year’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s journey to and orbit insertion around our moon. Images from its first year include all six manned lunar landing sites and close-ups of the lunar surface.
You can join astronomers around the world at lunar observing events and observe the ten-day-old moon. This is a night when many of the most recognizable lunar features are visible. Or you can even hold your own Observe the Moon event. And you don’t even need a telescope.
The moon takes about 29 days to go around the Earth once. And it also takes the moon about 29 days to spin once on its axis. This causes the same side of the moon to always face the Earth.
We can see the moon’s far side only from spacecraft.
Sometimes the moon’s far side is referred to as the dark side of the moon in poetry and songs. But this isn’t accurate.
As the moon orbits Earth, the portion we see illuminated changes. The first phase, called the new moon, is just a sliver. It’s difficult to see at first, but each night it gets bigger and brighter.
The next phase is called the first quarter, because the moon has traveled one quarter of its 29-day orbit around Earth.
International Observe the Moon Night falls halfway between the first quarter and the full moon.
A full moon is the next phase, on the 14th day of the lunar cycle. Don’t miss the full moon of September, called the Harvest Moon[1]. It rises in the east just before Jupiter on September 23rd.
Then the illuminated portion visible to us shrinks to the last quarter.
Use this moon observing journal[2] to record the lunar phases for yourself.
Be sure to check out the International Observe the Moon Night website[3] and join me, along with thousands of other amateur astronomers on September 18 sharing the moon views with your community.
That’s all for this month. I’m Jane Houston Jones.
Notes:
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[1] Harvest moon
The full moon that appears nearest to the autumnal equinox (秋分).
For more information, please visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvest_moon
[2]Moon Observing Journal
Download the moon observing journal at
http://observethemoonnight.org/downloads/MoonObservationJournal.pdf
[3]International Observe the Moon Night
For the event of "International Observe the Moon Night", please visit
http://observethemoonnight.org/
[4]Moon Map
Download the Moon Map at
http://observethemoonnight.org/downloads/moonmapIOMN_v2.2.pdf
[5]Star Chart
Download the Star Chart at
http://observethemoonnight.org/downloads/starchart_largeformat_north_4email.pdf
or
http://observethemoonnight.org/downloads/starchart_smallformat_north_OMN_4email.pdf (Use for September 18, 2010 only.)
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