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U P D A T E # 10 PART 1: Online
from Jupiter is essential Government work
The Online from Jupiter project has been reclassified as "essential government work." Since Galileo is in its "Prime Mission" phase and Online from Jupiter is an important part of Galileo outreach, we are back in business. Yeah! I feel lucky to be considered "essential", since most of my colleagues are still idled, waiting for our leaders to agree. An example of that is Live From the Stratosphere; there will be nothing new in that "non-essential" project until we are unfurloughed. So a few journals have built up and we'll get back into catch-up mode over the next few days. Dave Atkinson November 14, 1995 It is 6:30 A.M. on Tuesday morning, November 14. I am sitting in my motel room at the Spokane airport Ramada and trying to decide whether to get on my 8:00 A.M. flight to San Francisco or to go home. We have a Probe Science Conference scheduled for 10:30 A.M. tomorrow (Wednesday, November 15) at NASA's Ames Research Center. Unfortunately, as I was sitting here last night watching TV I learned that the government's continuing resolution has not been extended and, as of this morning, the government is beginning to shut down. Including NASA. Including Ames. Including the press conference that I am supposed to participate in. So here is the dilemma - the press conference is still scheduled, and will be until tomorrow (I assume). Therefore, I could get on my flight, go to Ames and take the chance that in the meantime the mess in Washington will be resolved. If not, then I get on another flight and come home. The real problem for me is that my travel money is severely limited, and with post-probe mission science meetings scheduled for January and February, conferences in March, May, and into the summer, I really can't afford the luxury of taking a trip without any guarantees that it will be productive. So, I guess I will head back home and listen to the radio, check email, and call the Ames hotline for updates. If something positive happens maybe I can head back to Spokane (about 1.5 hours from Moscow) and catch a flight later today. November 15, 1995 Apparently I made the right choice. Except for Marcie Smith and Charlie Sobeck working on Galileo, most of Ames is closed. As I understand it, JPL is still open, but I'm not sure for how long. They are not furloughed like the rest of NASA because JPL is not officially NASA. So, as long as the stalemate in Washington continues things will be fairly quiet. That includes Online from Jupiter, originating from Ames (a joint project with JPL, but Online from Jupiter's computers are at Ames). So, since you are reading this, the President, Gingrich, and the rest of the gang in Washington (trust me, other names besides "gang" popped into my head) must have gotten their act together. [Editor's note: the government is still shutdown - see PART 1] Hopefully by the time December 7 rolls around this will be nothing more than a minor nuisance and distant memory on the road to Jupiter. It is unfortunate that with our hearts and thoughts halfway across the solar system, we are reminded that we still live in a real world with real politics. Nothing seems easy! Marc Siegel November 17 Geez, what a weird few days it has been with the Ames Research Center closed. We are not supposed to be working at all. And if we are caught on-center, we will be fined. For some folks, this is either a paid or unpaid holiday. But for Project Managers with real deadlines, this is a nightmare. Although folks started planning for a shutdown the week before it happened, I think nobody really believed it would come to be. But by Monday (No 13), things looked bad. We were told to report to work Tuesday for four hours of orderly shutdown. When I got in at 9:00am, I was told that the Center would close at 11:00am and that I had better be off-site by then. So my four hours evaporated into 2 hours. About 30 minutes was wasted trying to do the right thing with timecards (nobody quite knew what the right thing to do was) to insure that the students who work for me would be paid. We were instructed to take our potted-plants and fish home and to empty the refrigerator. Folks were acting like this was a big deal; I still couldn't believe we would be out more than one day....hah! NASA Civil Servants were advised to file for unemployment. The situation for NASA contractors was more muddled. My company (Sterling Software) was very generous in offering to pay us for 40 hours of work, although they won't be reimbursed from the government. Employees of some contractors would get just 4 hours paid, and the rest of the time is unpaid. I scrambled to finish my critical daily tasks, but it was soon 11:00am and time for me to leave. It finally started to sink in that this furlough was real and my project was going to have to wait. I felt sick and angry and worse. To top it off, there was a big traffic jam leaving Ames (that never happens) and I sat in traffic for 25 minutes cooling my heels. By Wednesday, I was getting a bit concerned. I am wired for telecommuting at home (ISDN, good work area, fax, laser printer), so I wound up getting a lot of work done. But some things weren't working. For example, we are in the final stages of a more interesting graphic design for Online from Jupiter. The samples were supposed to be placed online to allow Jo at JPL the chance to provide input. But because of the scramble on Tuesday, the graphics didn't make it online. Although I had a hard copy in my office, I wasn't allowed to my office. Watching the news that day led me to conclude that the furlough might last a while. And it was bugging me that our graphics schedule was slipping because I couldn't get a copy of the design to JPL. Finally I couldn't stand the thought of that hardcopy going to waste on my desk. So I mustered the courage and drove on base to retrieve it. The whole while I was terrified that I would be caught and prosecuted for "trying to work.". How bizarre. Anyway, I did get the hardcopy and I FedExed it to JPL. So that process is again moving. Thursday was hard to stomach. It was the day that more than 300 Bay Area educators had signed up for a half-day Jupiter workshop. This was to have helped them find ways to engage their students in Galileo's exciting mission. 300 teachers is a lot of teachers. The Ames Education Office had done a great job in organizing a vibrant experience for the teachers to take back to share with their students. I was looking forward to demonstrating what was available online. Anyway, it was "non-essential" so the program was canceled. Friday was a bit better because I got the joyous news that Online from Jupiter was indeed considered "essential" (my mother will be so proud). So I am allowed to work on it now. Almost nobody else at Ames can join me. But maybe soon our leaders will find a way to unshutter Ames. Glenn Orton
1995 November 5
I'm in Hawaii now, but I urge you to drop any mental images of palm
trees, high surf and flower leis.
I'm at the 13,800 foot summit of Mauna Kea, working at the NASA
Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), trying to get a glimpse of Jupiter. Since
the Project adapted a very conservative policy regarding data, so am I.
I'll consider that any image of Jupiter I get may be the last one before the
Probe entry on Dec. 7. This is not so rabid as you might expect, as winter
storms here have been known to drop several feet of snow on the summit
and effectively close it down for weeks at a time.
Unfortunately, this is not a good observing run to enforce that policy.
Since Nov. 2, we've been under the outer edge of a mid-Pacific stationary
low system, characterized by cirrus/stratus clouds of various thicknesses.
Worse yet, the air around us is much wetter than usual, so when afternoon
winds push by Mauna Kea, they upwell moist air which forms a cloud right
over the summit! Nov. 2 we watched snow fall in the first winter major
storm. Yesterday afternoon (our scheduled observing time is 3 - 8 PM: you
can observe in the infrared in the daytime) was the first time we had any
chance to observe anything at Jupiter, and that was simply through
relatively thin cirrus. We finally got Jupiter above the horizon at 3
airmasses (where one airmass is what you look through
straight overhead). Seeing was awful; we could recognize that Jupiter was
round and may have banded structure - and that was IT! We also couldn't
see anything near wavelengths of 7.9 microns and 17-23 microns which
are important to us as we use them to determine the temperatures across
the planet: they are unfortunately also close to spectral regions of water
absorption.
When things get cooler, after the sun sets (with Jupiter soon following),
much of the cloud cover dissipates and it becomes thinner - nature is
perverse sometimes. But this has let us get some near-infrared images on
Nov. 3 and thermal (mid-infrared) images on Nov. 4 of Saturn.
As I write this, the clouds are as thick as ever, but with occasional holes.
We call them "sucker holes", because we get so desperate that we get
suckered into trying to grab something really fast through them...but
they're always here and gone too fast for much meaningful work.
Nov. 5 (later the same day), Nov. 6 (UT)
We got up to the summit today by about 2 PM, driving through some thick
cumulus clouds on the way. When we got to the top, half the sky was blue!
Unfortunately, Jupiter was in the wrong half!
By 3 PM, however, winds had moved all the clouds below Jupiter. After
some momentary problems setting up the equipment, we moved on
rapidly. We moved around trying to find a very bright infrared star, Spica
(alpha Scorpii, "alpha Sco"). After a few minutes we found it, and moved to
the correct beam (note that, while we can see during the day in the
infrared, the guide camera is in the visual range and has the same
problems your eyes do finding any star during the daytime).
The small infrared signal of Jupiter is added to the top of the infrared heat
emitted by the atmosphere itself. We detect that small signal by:
(1) 'chopping' the telescope secondary mirror on and off the object, as
often as several times a second,
(2) 'nodding' the telescope onto and off the object once every several
seconds, and
(3) all of the above.
By working with the complicated option (3), we obtained the most stable
image and compensated for variations of the sky emission on a couple of
different time scales. To our great delight, we found light beaming through
all those heretofore awful wavelength regions filled with gaseous water
absorption in our own atmosphere. The humidity had dropped to 70% and
was still falling, the wind also dropped to 10 mph so the atmosphere was
relatively calm and the images quite steady.
We moved to Jupiter.
Alleluia!
Alleluia!
Alleluia!
(Hey, it was Sunday, so permit me some genuflectual exaltation! :) )
Jupiter was nothing less than wonderful! Belts, zones and lots of detail
we had give up for lost. We centered on the planet while keeping the filter
at 8.57 microns, a wavelength relatively free from the effects of our
terrestrial atmosphere absorption and sensitive to variations of Jupiter's
cloud thicknesses. Absolutely fabulous!
We moved to the water-sensitive but important 7.85 microns where we
could map methane (CH4) emission and Jupiter's stratospheric
temperatures. Double fabulous!! This is not a region in Jupiter's spectrum
where one can get a great deal of "signal," but we could tell from even one
of the 20 or so images we'd later process that we could see waves in
Jupiter's atmosphere, other features we didn't previously suspect were
there, and two warm bands on either side of the equator (by some 10 - 15
degrees latitude).
Then the VERY water sensitive 17- to 20-micron region which was also
important to determine Jupiter's tropospheric temperatures. Triple
fabulous!!!!!!
We went back to the star alpha Sco, after working on Jupiter for 40
minutes through a variety of wavelengths. We measured alpha Sco as it
got closer and closer to the horizon so that we could use this behavior to
determine how Jupiter's own infrared brightness was dropping as it was
seen at various angles in the sky. We also took a little time to focus VERY
carefully, then went back to Jupiter.
Quadruple fabulous!!!!! We were picking up such a huge wealth of detail,
that this was going to become one of our very best observing nights (uh,
days ??) However, we realized, that the Probe entry site had already
rotated out of view. Well, it would just have to be fabulous to triple
fabulous. The higher spatial resolution (allowing us to see small details in
Jupiter's atmosphere), however, was showing us that we had lots of wave
structure in the temperature field near the equator, and that might just
show up as waves in the vertical temperature structure that the Probe
Atmospheric Structure Instrument (ASI) would detect. This would also be
true further from the equator with the determination of the temperature
structure in the stratosphere from the radio occultation experiment.
Jupiter was now lower in the sky (at 2.5 air masses) and sinking fast. I
gambled on changing instruments to try to get our last glimpse of this
region in reflected sunlight and very high spatial resolution at a
wavelength of 5 microns, which is sensitive to deep cloud structure. We
made the change in 15 minutes, got back to Jupiter, now even lower (at 3.5
airmasses), and got further observations using three different
wavelengths, each one showing us Jupiter's cloud structure at different
heights. All the observations were between 3.8 and 4.4 airmasses - not all
were great, but we would select the best of many repeated images. We
stopped when the telescope hit the limits of its ability to track low in the
sky. We had an interesting time then; the triggering of the limit switch set
off a newly installed high-tech fire alarm. We went off searching for bogus
fires in about 5 different places simultaneously ... just in case!
Back to the mid-infrared camera, we completed calibrations using a star,
gamma Aquillae ("gamma Aql") which is used as a standard flux reference,
so we could later reference Jupiter's emission to the known flux of this star
(flux is how much energy of a given wavelength hits an area over a given
time; this can be measured, for example, as watts per square meter).
With a gap between then and when we wanted to make observations of
gamma Aql again at a somewhat lower airmass, we moved around to
Saturn. We had focused with great care on gamma Aql, and discovered that
Saturn was splendid. Just as we got images at 12.2 microns, where ethane
(C2H6) is emitting radiation from Saturn's stratosphere. Gorgeous sight! No
rings (they were just edge-on to the Sun recently, and so were quite cold),
but lots of banded structure, and east-west variations: a dark equator and
a hot south pole. Looking on at that time were Dr. Don Hall, the head of the
University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, who oversees many of the
managerial operations at ALL the Mauna Kea telescopes. With him were
four Asian men whom I first through might be visiting Japanese, as Japan
is building a large telescope barely 1/4 mile from the IRTF. But, no, they
were members of Hawaii's legislature, taking a tour! Sometimes nature
isn't that perverse, after all!
By 7:52 PM, we wrapped up what we would do and handed the telescope
over to the next observer. I and my colleague, Dr. Jose Luis Ortiz, were
delighted. It was a time for champagne, which you might rightly guess is
strictly forbidden (as is any other alcoholic drink) at the summit. It was his
first good quality night at the summit of Mauna Kea.
So I started transferring the data to JPL electronically and went into the
"day room" to have my cold supper: the mircowave was on the fritz.
November 6
Blue sky everywhere. Dare I hope?
I talked to the crew managing operations at the telescope this morning and
early in the afternoon; we had to figure out how (if we can) make
observations in the near-infrared when we're very close to the sun at the
time of the Probe entry next December.
A series of tests showed that near-infrared observations will be
impossible: the sun always shines on the center of the IRTF's primary
mirror, right at the spot where the aperture (circular opening) which
allows light to pass through the primary to the instruments seated beneath
it. But the IRTF Chief, Dr. Robert Joseph, is there and we discuss the
alternative plans for covering the telescope primary: instead of putting the
polypropylene cover right over the primary, deep in the telescope (where
light will have to make three passes through it), we can put it up at the
front of the telescope and cover the sides with black polyethlyene.
So we cover the front of the telescope with potato chips bags and the sides
with trash bags (almost literally - it's the very same types of plastic
material). Bob is still worried about the health of the instruments.
We start observing in the afternoon. The quality of the images is not so
good, as the spectacular ones in the yesterday's late afternoon, but we've
avoided huge cumulus clouds pushed up the side of the mountain by 3 PM,
so we're getting something. This is an area of Jupiter which we didn't
observe yesterday for the most part. We finished a little later, after
crashing the computer system which runs the camera - by trying to save
an immediately viewable file - I won't do THAT again! We got a bit of data
in the near-infrared with another instrument. Then, we were changing
instruments back again to view Jupiter on the one side we didn't get, when
the wind picked up and blew clouds right in over the summit. Freezing fog
that didn't let up at all until just after midnight (so we were told later).
November 7
We packed up, glad to get some data, but unhappy that we were unable to
measure Jupiter's temperatures and clouds all the way around the planet
at the Probe entry site latitude, just north of the equator. We could
estimate, based on the wave structures we saw, but there is nothing to
substitute for real data to get the most accurate count of the number of
waves around the circumference of the planet as a means to measure the
power they are delivering to the atmosphere.
At 5 AM, we left the mid-level facility, which we call by the old name of
"Hale Pohaku" (stone house) which is now officially called the Onizuka
Center for International Astronomy at 5 AM. Ellison Onizuka was a native
of the Big Island and died in the 1986 space shuttle Challenger launch
explosion. We drove down from cold, freezing dry conditions to warm and
soggy Hilo on the eastern (windward) coast at 6:40 AM. Jose Luis and I
were seated adjacent to one another on the flight home and made up an
organizational plan for everything we want to try to do (together with
colleagues Jim Friedson, Padma Yanamandra-Fisher, and Kevin Baines, with
the possibility of Sarah Stewart - a first-year graduate student at Caltech -
signing on).
We got into LAX (Los Angeles International) just after the peak of rush-
hour traffic, but still an awful drive! I dropped Jose Luis off in Pasadena
and drove home to meet my wife and kids coming home from a rare trip to
the Golden Arches for supper. They've squeezed it in between the late
afternoon piano lesson and the impending Cub Scout Pack meeting. My 9-
year-old son, Gregg, dressed into uniform (it was his first pack meeting as
a Webelos Cub Scout). I kissed everyone and give my wife a consoling
bouquet of Hawaiian antheriums. I managed to stay awake at the Pack
meeting somehow (going on 19 hours without sleep); after they took
attendance (awards go to the den with the best scout and family
attendance) Linda - my wife - took Sarah, our 7-year-old daughter home,
and I stayed on through the uniform inspection, the skits, the Sees candy
sale announcements, etc. I got home to a grateful wife, helped put the kids
to bed and make lunches and got to bed by 11 PM. Zzzzz. Talk about
the grateful dead! (at least temporarily)
November 8 and 9
The next two days were catchup with mountains of mail and phone
messages. I finally started real work on Wed. (Nov. 8) by about 2 PM, but I
was able to make a few arrangements for other observatories to be on line
for Galileo support. Padma disappeared on Wednesday afternoon with the
news that her mother, back in Maryland had been taken to the hospital in
critical condition with some sort of heart condition; she didn't appear on
Thursday. I hope things work out all right.
I find a message from Pierre Drossart, Paris Observatory, that he and
colleagues - using the Pic-du-Midi Observatory in the French Pyrenees -
had begun their support of the Galileo atmospheric mission by CCD imaging
and they had their latest pictures on the World Wide Web (WWW).
Now, I DO wish I had a Web page myself, but even if it weren't such a
Godawful pain to set one up through JPL's ubiquitous security awareness,
I'd have a real problem getting anything done except "curating" the WWW
site. I'll have to find out how to get our images over to a public access site.
This one appears to have one of the best chances for public exposure, in
fact.
I worked with John Martonchik, another colleague, who is a real expert in
radiative transfer. He's long since gone from planetary science and is
working on MIZER, one of JPL's experiments which will be flown on the
Earth Orbiting Satellite (EOS) system. He is the primary author of the
"Matrix Operator" radiative transfer code that I'm using for "full-up"
scattering problems, that is those problems dealing with not only
absorption by atmospheric gases but scattering by atmospheric particles,
as well. We're modifying the code to account more accurately for the
behavior of radiation in the deep and optically thick parts of planetary
atmospheres where it's increasingly hard to synthesize the behavior of
radiation in a continuously varying inhomogenous atmosphere with a finite
number of thin, homogeneous layers.
I also had an ear-nose-throat specialist appointment to monitor the
progress (or lack thereof!) of an edema (medicalese for a piece of junk!)
which I managed to propel into my left inner ear after developing a bad
head cold at the summit during the summer of 1992 and descending to sea
level. It's left me with a constant (but low-level) high-frequency ringing in
that ear, but neither medication nor an ear shunt have managed to remove
or reduce. In fact, a test showed that my hearing in BOTH ears was a little
worse off than the last test a year ago. There is a little hereditary
component to this at work, as well, I suspect! Anyway, he referred me to
have an MRI of my left audial canal to remove some possibilities.
Friday, November 10
Today our whole family went to visit my mother in Oceanside, about 30
miles north of San Diego and about a two-hours drive from Arcadia. She's
been widowed now for a little over a year and a half. The kids had no
school on Veterans Day, and - although I hardly can afford the time off
work - it gave us the chance to repay numerous visits she's made to us.
I'd feel more guilty if we hadn't taken her to Hawaii with us, of course. On
the way, we visited Frances Brown, my wife's mother, in the hospital,
where she's trying to get rid of pneumonia while deep in the midst of
Alzheimers' symptoms (her dementia could be the result of true
Alzheimers or a series of continuous cerebral strokes, no way to tell).
This is hard to watch, although Linda's gotten a little used to it, as this
late-in-life college graduate who became a schoolteacher had deteriorated
mentally to the point where she is incontinent and unable to feed herself,
unable to recognize us, and is incapable of uttering anything that is
meaningful. Mrs. Brown's doctor confided in Linda that he didn't think
she'd come out of the hospital alive, as her IV's were failing because her
veins were collapsing around them. But an arterial chest entry later, she
seems to be doing better in fighting the pneumonia at least, and she could
say 'applesauce' when asked whether she'd like her pills in applesauce.
It's the first thing she's said in 4 weeks, and Linda was happy to hear her.
What we miss by going down are two parties: (a) one for the launch of the
European Space Agency (ESA) Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), on which
I'm associated via the Long-Wavelength Spectrometer team, and (b) one
for Linda's group working on the Spacelab's Atmospheric Trace Molecular
Occultation Spectroscopy (ATMOS) instrument. Still, Linda was quite happy
to go, and so were the kids! Mom had never lived alone in her life - she
moved from a family of eleven to a "ready-made" family of 5 when she
married my once-divorced father.
I like to take the time to do things with the kids when we go on trips like
this - not just Hawaii (and a contemplated trip to Paris next July), but short
days not at home, where they are not always off playing with the
neighbors. Gregg is intellectually talented and it's a joy to hear him read;
we're working together on reading Michael Crichton's newest, "The Lost
World", a sequel to Jurassic Park. We also helped him with one of his
history assignments, making sand paintings, in the traditional style of the
southwest Indians. This involved glue, coloring sand with food coloring,
and was a really enjoyable mess! Sarah has a harder time struggling with
reading and math, but loved the art projects, and she liked painting rocks
with acryllic paints my mother supplied her. My father had done this and
probably sold more of them than canvas paintings, a late-in-life pastime
which provided a little income and a lot of pleasure up to a few months of
his operation for stomach cancer early in 1993.
On Thursday, I had a surprise - a free volume of Jackie Mitton's book on
the Shoemaker-Levy 9 collision, which another colleague - John Spencer, at
Lowell Observatory - helped put together in record time. Jose Luis' picture
is in it, and he autographed it for me. I supplied a number of the pictures
and commentary in it, which is how I got the free copy, I suppose. I left it
with Mom for a few days to read; she can return in for Thanksgiving. My
one regret is that Dad, who spent most of the time carting me off to
astronomy club meetings and cold nights timing Jupiter's satellite eclipses
when I was in high school, didn't live to see the Shoemaker-Levy 9 event,
or his youngest son on CNN Headline News (for all 5 seconds!) or on the
Discover Channel (this Dec. 4, or on the editing room floor!). At least he
knew I was lucky enough to be doing pretty much all I ever wanted to do
since I was about seven years old.
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