Archive - Jun 29, 2009

Heh.  

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Suh-weet. 

SYDNEY – Radio hams and amateur astronomers around the world spent the weekend bouncing radio conversations off the Moon to one another in commemoration of the Apollo 11 landings 40 years ago, organizers in Australia said Sunday.

Although they had some clear and extensive conversations, they had to be patient. It takes around 2.5 seconds for a radio signal to reach the Moon and bounce back to another part of the Earth, so it took around five seconds to get a reply.

Initiated a few months ago by science buffs in Australia and the United States, 'Moonbounce' was just winding up on Sunday Australian time after a 24-hour special event that organizers hope will become annual.

It brought together hundreds of amateur radio hams around the world, event co-founder Robert Brand told Reuters, some armed with their own radio dishes.

It was timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary next month of the Apollo 11 landings on July 20, 1969. But as the Moon does not orbit directly around the Earth's equator, this was the nearest weekend organizers could arrange for practical reasons.

{...}While most were amateurs, institutions lent equipment to the event, including a 26-meter dish at Mount Pleasant in Tasmania and a 45-meter dish at Stanford University in the United States.

"The signals go up from these dishes in a tight beam to the Moon. They actually hit the ground and at an atomic level 'shake' all the atoms on the surface of the Moon," said Brand.{...}

Now that's a moonbounce. 

Saturday night, the husband and I were driving down I-94 in a westerly direction, returning from a smoker over in St. Paul that the husband had wanted to attend.  After thunderstorms had rumbled through during the wee hours of Saturday morning, the weather had been a little on the weird side all day long.  Huge gusts of wind, storms threatining, but, by midafternoon, the atmosphere had nicened up considerably.  The heat and humidity which had been a staple for the past week, were blown right out of town by the wind, and though wind isn't necessarily the thing you want when smoking cigars, it meant the outside event, despite the smoke in your face, was enjoyable.  (And, of course, it was outside, given this state's draconian smoking ban.)  So, we enjoyed the cigars (or at least the husband did), the bands, and the pig they'd so thoughtfully roasted on a spit starting at seven that morning. 

As we headed home, we thought all the weather had passed through.  Not so.  I-94 heads pretty much in a straight east-west line between Minneapolis and St. Paul (which generally means heavy sunglasses and sun visor usage in rush hour traffic, because the sun is ALWAYS in your eyes, or so it seems), and when we approached Minneapolis, we could see that yet another front was heading through.  The sky was incredible.  The photograph the husband took with his phone doesn't really do it justice, but it's still fairly cool, hence I'm sharing it with you, my devoted Cake Eater readers. 

And who said living in the Midwest was boring?