What We Saw (Among Other Things)

Two photos of Saturn from last night, combined in Photoshop

It was supposed to rain last night, but it didn't. Which was nice. It was humid enough that you might not have known it wasn't raining... but c'est la vie. The guys messaged around 10:30 to say they were going observing, and we headed up to the telescope to find 'em. We got a great look at Jupiter, which didn't photograph very well at all--you could see the bands, at least four, maybe more. The planet's reflected light washed them out, my cellphone camera wasn't quite sensitive enough. To see the three moons in the picture below, I still had to combine two photos in Photoshop.

There was a fourth moon visible as well, to the right, but the camera didn't catch it.

We got a really incredible look at the moon, which was also hard to photograph because the moon is nearly full... and it washed out about half the sky. It was so bright, that when the moon was in the eyepiece with a filter to block some of the light, you could tell because it lit up the person trying to look through the telescope like a flashlight. We did not, by the way, need flashlights; I'm surprised there wasn't enough ambient light for my camera to take pictures normally. Looking through the telescope totally thrashed your night vision and left several people who looked blinking frantically while trying to climb down the rolling stairs that we had to push up next to the eyepiece. 

Too bright to focus without ow ow ow my eyes

You'd almost think we were Apollo astronauts looking out our windows...

As for other things... because I am here to do a job, not just to look at pretty things...

I'm working my way more thoroughly through the STDN book. I learned already today, for instance, that the footage of Neil Armstrong getting out of the LEM was received by a telescope just like 26E and/or 26W. (The two are actually different, even though they're the same size--manufactured by different companies.) Not the footage of Buzz Aldrin: That was received by Honeysuckle Creek Observatory's larger 64 metre telescope, which was what the facility preferred to use due to its larger size and better ability to receive the TV signal. I think they switched to it about 8 minutes in. What can we do with this information?

Well, Honeysuckle Creek isn't there anymore. They shut it down and moved the telescopes after Apollo. What I'm coming to appreciate about PARI is that we're fairly unique out of the old tracking sites. Most were dismantled, moved, shut down, demolished, given back to their respective governments, etc. As far as I can tell, apart from Goldstone in California (which was part of the deep sky network) and one of the (many) Australian stations, we're almost unique in that we're still here.

(They switched to Honeysuckle Creek's 26m as Neil reaches the bottom of the ladder--although it's possible that this is all Honeysuckle in this recording--and away to the larger telescope at a different facility about 8, 9 minutes in--there's a slight jump in the footage and the contrast appears to improve.) 

I also found this tidbit: 

"As launch vehicles became steadily more reliable in the early 1960s and satellites were being launched into higher inclination orbits (the tilt of a satellite’s orbit measured with respect to the Equator), their ground tracks went well outside the ±35° latitude window that Minitrack had been designed to support." (Tsiao 34) 

We are one of the first facilities built above the ±35º latitude window to supplement the original Minitrack satellite tracking system. This quote illustrates why we were important.

 "The Minitrack approach gave way to far better equipped 12-meter (40-foot) and 26-meter (85-foot) dishes. The large 26-meter parabolic dish antennas, in particular, were designed to support the Nimbus meteorological satellite program with its flood of high data rate telemetry cloud cover photographs. In addition to receiving downlinked telemetry, these antennas could transmit satellite commands from a single disc-on-rod uplink antenna mounted on the side of the dish connected to a high power amplifier at the base of the antenna. At the same time, a somewhat scaled down, 12-meter version of the same antenna type was installed at a number of stations to circumvent the cost of the larger dishes." (Tsiao 36)

Well hello. What telescopes are we operating right now? Well, we as a facility--the 26-meters aren't powered on right now, but my roommate is currently operating the 12-meter dish. (They're determined to get the tracking as precise as possible.)  I can't say for sure PARI dealt with the Nimbus program without having another look-round the museum or doing more research, though.

It strikes me as possible, although I can't prove this without documentation similar to what we found for 26W for the 12 meter, that the 12 meter was installed as a supplement to 26E while 26W--or even as 26E-- was being built, such that the facility could be fully utilised as quickly as possible. I don't know how urgent the situation was, and probably couldn't without pawing through some very official archives which we don't have and that may or may not have existed since the 1980s. It does seem possible that we were involved with Explorer 35, a satellite that orbited the moon; the book mentions GRARR accuracy shortly after mentioning that Rosman was constructed as a GRARR facility--see my earlier post for a diagram of GRARR and more information on how it worked.

Actually, scratch that: I can confirm that Rosman tracked and received data from Explorer 35. How? NASA put the paper online.

Cue triumphant trumpets. 

Can I use this information? Only if I can make Explorer 35 really really cool.

So far, this is only cool to...well...me. 

Can I make this cool? If I make it cool, can I fit it into the story of Rosman Tracking Facility/Rosman Research Station/PARI? I just don't know. But I'll keep it in mind as something I can confirm we did, confirm was useful, and confirm provided real, scientific data--of...some kind. Some kind that is a bit difficult to understand. But we do get guests who appreciate specific examples of what happened and who don't want to read through our rather wordy displays, which I can hardly fault. 

Explorer 35 was really freaking weird looking

I got to thinking what I could do for some kind of STADAN exhibit--because that would be good, either as part of the timeline I've been wondering about, or as its own separate historical note, maybe on the other side of the "TALK TO SPACE!" thing I've been wondering about. Imagine, if you will, a nice, sturdy globe. Fairly large, maybe a foot and a half in diameter, it's mounted on a pedestal such that it sits just above the waist level for the average adult. The axis is tilted so that the equator is easily visible and the globe is also mounted so that it can be spun freely--adding the all important interactive element. Various sites around the globe are marked in brightly coloured, labeled dots that easily stand out on the map: Rosman, Gilmore Creek, Tanarive, Carnarvon, Madrid, Canary Islands, Honeysuckle Creek, Guayas, Hawaii. There is a nearby--no more than six inches away--placard that explains what these labels are: The former STADAN sites. The one labeled Rosman is marked with a star, which the placard includes in its key and claims, "YOU ARE HERE!" 

Then I got distracted on a graphic design tangent, because I was stuck sitting at the front desk (while the woman who's normally there was in a meeting) and looking for something productive to do... ahem. 

I want to do a gouache or oil rendering of this in full colour, but pencil gets the idea across.

I'm imagining a nice graphic, quite large, eye-catching. Extremely eye-catching, well rendered, so that when the graphic is part of the exhibit the satellite appears nearly as large as life--don't worry, it's a small satellite, not like the ATS-6 one we actually have.  The design also has that empty space that could be filled with a label, and nothing is going to be removed from the image if part of the satellite's bottom right solar panel isn't visible--due to, for example, some kind of display. Possibly of our three model satellites...

Explorer 35 with technicians for scale

The exhibit could also actually incorporate video--we have about six video screens that currently add literally nothing to the museum. I don't know why we have them, actually. A laptop sized wall-mounted screen, positioned nicely, could display a NASA graphic of satellite orbits or something. 

Like this! only hopefully less jumpy. I'll have to try and find something. I know it exists...somewhere.

So far, by the way, my idea of making our long line of windows into a timeline with history of the facility has been popular with everyone I've mentioned it to. I'm getting myself into a bit of a mess, since the history of this place with the kind of specifics some guests seem to want isn't exactly consolidated anywhere... but, whatever. It's interesting mess.


There is...actually....one thing that's a bit of a problem. Guests come up to us and ask if we know what kind of top secret things went on here.

I think they want juicy information about aliens... SETI... the stuff you see in scifi films, or Contact, or War Games. I don't even know. As far as I can tell, even in the Department of Defence days, Rosman did more or less the same darn thing it had always done--only, the people running the facility had much higher security clearances and tracked far more elusive satellites for somewhat more nefarious purposes.

Sean suggested throwing up a "Lore of PARI" display. Since this would save everyone a lot of bother, that's probably worth considering...and because it would give the conspiracy theory nuts an absolute field day.