Monday, September 30, 2008
The Mission Begins
Whoa, Colorado is amazing; today was absolutely amazing! The University of Colorado campus was beautiful, and it was so much better then seeing the everyday landscape that I see in Virginia. Every moment I was accompanied by my fellow Argonauts who made every moment of the day fun.
The first thing we did was wake up early in the morning so we could go eat breakfast at the only teahouse in America, The Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. Awesome! I have to say that it was one of the best breakfasts I have ever had in my life. We also bought some tea there too. I can't wait to drink it.
After we went back for some food we got our briefing from one of our new guides Michael DiSpezio or Spez. He was really cool and he helped us bring out our thinking power because we were going to need it for our meeting with Dr. Janet Green. He also gave us some beads that change colors because they react to UV light and a piece of a meteorite, I really hope I don't lose them.
When we were getting ready for our video shoot with Dr. Green I was excited and nervous but it was all a part of the fun. When we went down to the presentation room, we were greeted by the film crew. We were also greeted by our host researcher Dr. Janet Green. We met with her and asked her many questions about her line of work: space weather.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Field Day
Today is our first day at our mission site: NOAA. It took us a while to get in though, mainly because we had to record us going in like seven times. When we finally did get into NOAA, we were greeted by Dr. Green, off-camera, but then we had to be greeted by her again on-camera. Ah the fun of being an Argo, always on film. If I have learned anything, it is to never do anything important off-camera.
After a greeting we got to meet some of her co-workers and see their place of operation. It was pretty amazing. In their place of operation they explained to us their line of work: space weather. They study solar activity that affects not just Earth but space. The interesting thing was that it's the sun that causes space weather.
After learning more from a space weather presentation/tour, we did an experiment on UV (ultraviolet) radiation. It was so fun! If you think about it, I just did an experiment that tons of people will see. The experiment tested the affects of obstacles on ultraviolet light produced by the sun. We used those beads that react to UV light. Spez was there to help us, and even though I may not have looked like it, I think I might have needed help the most, otherwise I would have been lost.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Satellites!
Well today we went to LASP, Laboratory for Astronomy and Space Physics, to see how satellites are built for their outer space adventures. It was pretty cool and so was the researcher, Bill. We really got a lot of questions asked there and it was an overall productive shoot.
Satellites are more complex then you think. Well I didn't really think about them much, but I will now. Whenever the word satellite comes up I'll probably start to think about my day at LASP. We saw some authentic satellites there and we saw some of the devices that go inside the satellite. It is so awesome. Did I mention that one of the satellites we saw there seemed as big an elephant? Whenever I look at a picture of them they look so small, so when I think of satellites they're actually as big as a car or desktop computer. I think that the coolest room there was the clean room. I have always heard of clean rooms but I had never seen one in my life, it was pretty sweet.
After we got our tour done we got to do our experiment for the day. The experiment was a magnetic field creating experiment. So basically we got balloons and we rubbed them against our head in order to charge the balloon in order for it to attract pieces of sugar to it. For some reason Argo Joey's wouldn't work… we still don't know why. Lindsay also got to wear the gear needed to enter the clean room, she looked like a ninja!
Later we had dinner at this Mexican place, and the rest of the night was working on our puppets for our puppet show, it was enormous fun. I hope all you future Argos can see the videos we made while doing all this. I'm going to miss these guys.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Last Day Filming
Last day of filming was today. We went into NOAA-Boulder for our last time. We got some filming done in order to take us out for the week, but all was not sad today. We filmed the puppet show! It was amazingly funny and I think everyone loved it. The only problem we had was that it was on a time crunch so we had to kind of rush the event, but hey it got finished and it was done right. Dr. Green was a big help towards the show; she was great for her part of Dr. Janet Green or in other words "The Chief."
After the puppet show was filmed we did our journal readings for the cameras, I was really nervous, but I think it went well. I really love this project. It has given me opportunities that, alone, I might never have gotten. I met Dr. Janet Green, the National Geographic film crew, the JASON crew, and the Argonauts. I am very lucky to be here.