A weekend of fun October 8, 2008
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 1 comment so farI saw Orion this weekend. He was high in the southern sky, dominating over all of the heavens with his trusty dog, Canis Major, next to him.
“DUDE! It’s been so long since I’ve seen you! What the hell are you doing up? It’s the beginning of October!”
Orion: “dude! It’s 5 in the morning. Of course I am up. What the hell are you doing up?”
“um, It’s a long story”
Orion: “I’ve got time, I’m just hanging out”
“okay, well it started last night, or is it tonight? Damn, I can never remember. Anyway, Jay and I went to shoot some pool. Nice date night.”
Orion: “Who won?”
“well, the table sucked, the bounces weren’t true and frankly we had more fun laughing at how terrible the shots were instead of who cared who won. Except when Jay beat me at 9-ball without me even getting a chance to shoot!”
Orion: ” I hate when the tables are warped”
“Me, too. This is off topic! So we got home, got ready for bed and … my phone goes off. Not once, but twice! That’s usually a bad sign. And I was on call, so I climb out of bed and check. Sure enough, our instrument rebooted and was running the initial software.”
Orion: “Bummer, that’s a bad thing, right?”
“yeah, really bad. SO I call a telecon and it turns out the reboot happened during a target of opportunity, one of those observations where we STOP everything, replan the entire week around, and then observe it. This one was coordinated with several ground based telescopes. I was not pleased.”
Orion:”Is that pronounced T-O-O or “two”?”
” I don’t know, I use the letters. After much discussion, my co-worker R and I waited for the data from the last 8 hours to come down. Then we both processed it using different methods and checked what happened. Luckily, we got about 2 hours of the TOO. After the data reduction and emails, I took a 45 minute nap. I needed to be up to get in to the control center”
Orion: “Ah! So that’s why you are up now.So now what?”
“Well, if I could read the future, I would say that we will have our telecon in about 5 minutes. The flight director will have to be convinced to let us reboot and start the science again. We have a chance to reload the old software at midnight if we see something in the data when we are more coherent. Also, if I could read into the future, I would say that the coffee machine at the occ will have NO coffee and my 24 hours Dunkin’ donuts will be closed due to renovations. I would think that I would be working until 8 am and get home around 8:30. Then I would think to play with the girls and snuggle then pass out around 9:30am”
Orion:”wow, that’s a pretty detailed future. You must be good.”
“or crazy. I am talking to a constellation which is really just a random set of stars at different distances from the earth that project from a 3 dimensional space into a 2 dimensional picture.”
Orion: “no need to get snippy! “
“sorry, Have I mentioned I’ve gotten 45 minutes of sleep tonight? Anyway, my telecon is in 2 minutes, so I better call in”
Orion: “good luck. And don’t forget to stop and watch the stars sometime. We miss you too!”
“I promise, I will.”
