My Constellation
My Constellation
I was born with stars in my eyes.
I mean this in a very literal sense! I was born in an island village that didn’t have any electricity, on a clear moonless night when millions of bright stars unfurled across the dark sky. And (according to my baby pictures) my hospital cradle was right next to the window which afforded a wide view of the ocean waves and – yep, that’s right – the stars. One of my earliest memories is that of the stars, though I’m not sure if that is from when I was a baby, or when I was slightly older.
Nevertheless, the night sky and its bright inhabitants have been constants in my life for as long as I can remember. From as early as my toddling years, I would always make it a point to my parents to let me stay outside long enough to stargaze. I didn’t know why I was so fascinated with the night sky – it was just instinctive to look up and be in wonder. My love for the stars became so apparent that my grandparents, aunts, and uncles decided to save enough money to buy me a secondhand telescope, a gift that I cherished until I had to move to the United States and leave it behind to my younger relatives.
That telescope opened up a new world for me, one where I only had to look through a pair of simple lens to excitedly meet my nighttime friends face-to-face. While the telescope wasn’t very advanced, it was strong enough to show me the faint outlines of neighboring planets, the tail-ends of occasional comets, and the blurry but beautiful glows of twinkling stars. “There’s stuff out there! STUFF!” I remember saying to my family after my first time looking through the telescope, “there’s a bunch of stuff! So much stuff!”
From there, it was inevitably easy to fall in love with outer space and all of its complications and mysteries. My curiosity and questions about the “stuff” I saw grew in leaps and bounds, propelling me to – in essence – attack our local library to get my hands on anything related to space. I was overjoyed to see an entire shelf dedicated to space science and astronomy. But when I finished devouring the texts there a few weeks later, I was devastated. Surely there was more to read, more to learn more out there?
Can you imagine, then, how I reacted when I was told that my parents and I were moving to America? The America that had sent people to the moon, built incredible spacecrafts and satellites that were currently circling the globe in low orbit, and helped found the International Space Station? I was ecstatic, and my hopes for the future far outweighed my reservations about leaving the only home I had ever known.
If there were any reservations, though, they disappeared the moment I woke up at some point during the 22-hour flight, looked out my tiny plane window, and saw with wide eyes…
… the stars – right there – right in front of me – right within my reach. At eight years old, I genuinely thought the plane was flying in a sea of stars, and kept my face mushed against the glass until a plane attendant asked me to close the window (I did close the window, but I opened it again after she left.)
It’s funny, looking back at that starry-eyed eight-year-old. I want to tell her that there’s only so much more to look forward to. I want to tell her that when she’s ten, she’s going to visit a place called Kennedy Space Center and firmly declare to everyone in the tour group that she will become an astronaut one day. I want to tell her that when she’s thirteen, she’ll visit another place called the Orlando Science Center and peek through an enormous telescope that will show her the distant planet of Saturn in color, and she’ll be so shocked that she’ll ask if the picture was a sticker on the lens. I want to tell her that when she’s eighteen, she’ll gain two mentors who will encourage her to pursue her love for the stars, and help her get started on the path to getting there… I want to tell her that the next eleven years won’t be easy, and there will be times when she’ll feel as if the stars could never be more far away or unreachable.
But I think she’ll end up just fine. She was born with stars in her eyes, after all.
More Posts from Catchconstellations-blog and Others
Beautiful! Would like to visit all of these places someday <3
World’s largest salt flat: Salar de Uyini, Bolivia
List of Online Resources
Over the past week I’ve been compiling a short list of online resources I often use when I’m doing anything space-related online, whether it be writing summaries of news updates or trying to understand some complicated science topic. Hope these are useful!
On getting up-to-date news:
ScienceDaily
Space.com
Science Mag
On understanding scientific topics:
Crash Course
Khan Academy
Space Exploratorium
Of course, there are many resources out there, but these are the ones I use most often.
The beautiful Milky Way taken in one of the most darkest skies in the world over Boa Vista in the Cape Verde Islands. photo by James Atkinson
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A 2015 documentary on the history of space, the current progress of space exploration, and where we might go in the future.
If you have around an hour to spare, and a space itch to scratch, this is an awesome documentary to watch! It has very good scientific support, fantastic HD visuals, and exciting narration. It really opens your eyes to how much we’ve discovered only recently, and also how much we still don’t know. Great documentary!
Hey Dianne. I love love love this theme! It is sooo cool. I have no idea how you did it (was it witchcraft?!?!). I love that you have this calming music playing as well. everything is just awesome --Jennifer Holden
Hi Jennifer, thank you so much for visiting my blog! The theme took forever to edit and format, but I think it’s totally worth it :D
Origins is one of my favorite documentaries of all time. Neil deGrasse Tyson does a marvelous job of narrating a story interwoven with strong scientific evidence, great artistic visuals, and immersive story-telling. While Origins is an old documentary (first shown in 2004), many of its content is still applicable today.
One of my favorite aspects of Origins is its ability to explain to the viewer why understanding the start of our universe is important. Often times, the answer to “How did life start?” is filled with complex scientific concepts and theories. Origins breaks down these complicated explanations into points that anyone can digest. I highly recommend it to any space enthusiast out there.
Exploration is wired into our brains. If we can see the horizon, we want to know what’s beyond.
Buzz Aldrin
Thoughts on the ISS Water Systems
Recently, I was asked by my research mentor to conduct a literature review on the drinking water systems aboard the International Space Station. Let me say this: the technology and the people aboard the ISS really know how to recycle water!
Here are some cool facts I discovered while doing this research:
- Sweat, pee, and tears are all recycled through intensive chemical and physical processes
- There is no way to recycle/reuse solid waste like brine yet, so it is packaged and sent back down to Earth through payloads
- The ISS has a motherboard-like program called the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) that basically outlines in detail all the processes that need to be in order to sustain life aboard the spacecraft
- The ISS is currently able to support six living crewmembers aboard, but it is not 100% sustainable because chemical resources (oxygen, water, etc.) are invariably lost over time
Just some things I found interesting. I was glad to do this kind of literature review because it gives me an outlook on how much progress we still need to make in trying to achieve long-term space travel and habitation.
2. Equating statistical significance with real-world significance
We often hear generalisations about how two groups differ in some way, such as that women are more nurturing while men are physically stronger.
These differences often draw on stereotypes and folk wisdom but often ignore the similarities in people between the two groups, and the variation in people within the groups.
If you pick two men at random, there is likely to be quite a lot of difference in their physical strength. And if you pick one man and one woman, they may end up being very similar in terms of nurturing, or the man may be more nurturing than the woman.
You can avoid this error by asking for the “effect size” of the differences between groups. This is a measure of how much the average of one group differs from the average of another.
If the effect size is small, then the two groups are very similar. Even if the effect size is large, the two groups will still likely have a great deal of variation within them, so not all members of one group will be different from all members of another group. [full list]
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catchconstellations-blog reblogged this · 8 years ago
CONSTELLATION: (noun) Group of stars that form a recognizable pattern to which a mythological or earth-based name is assigned Pattern of stars whose name or is associated with different stories and meanings Story told by stars connected across the infinite night sky, overlapping with countless other stories that have unfolded from ancient supernovas, whose imaginary lines urge our eyes up from the chaos of the world around us to the unknown vastness in which we are but a speck of dust -------- Hi! I’m a starry-eyed astrogeek named Dianne who loves absolutely everything that has to do with the stars and outer space. When I’m not studying or preparing to take over NASA one day, you can find me trying to stargaze despite city lights or happily planning my next road trip.
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