We mourn the passing for Frances Townes, wife of Charles Townes, on her 102nd birthday. You can read her obituary Berkeleyside.
Author Archives: Samuel Silver
Bill Donakowski (1956-2017)
Bill Donakowski, mechanical engineer, runner and a quick wit…
Remembering Hall of Fame Distance Runner Bill Donakowski
The University of Michigan cross country and track and field programs are mourning the death of Hall of Famer Bill Donakowski, who passed away Sunday, Oct. 15, at the age of 61.
One of the finest distance runners in the nation and a model student-athlete during his Wolverine career from 1974-78, Donakowski was inducted into the program’s Hall of Fame in 2007.
The Flint native — who also went on to become a renowned aerospace engineer — was at the leading edge of a renaissance in Michigan’s distance running heritage that began in the mid-to-late 1970s, earning three Big Ten individual titles, four All-America awards and a school record at 10,000 meters that remains through the present day as the longest-standing in program history.
Read the complete article here
Cards and condolence can be send to:
William Donakowski
c/o Mark Donakowski
7897 S Valleyhead Way
Aurora, CO 80016
Eclipse Megamovie Movies
August 21st, 2017 was the astronomical event of a lifetime, a total solar eclipse. This eclipse would span the entire United States from Oregon to South Carolina with a 70 mile swath of totality for over two minutes.
The hype had been building for months. Reservations for lodging had been made years in advance for some while others waited to see what the weather would bring and made a last minute excursion toward totality. For some, the weather, the location did not cooperate and we had to settle for NASA Live Streaming, Local News or Social Media.
Social media made it possible for folks to see totality no matter where they were and we have compiled a series of video presentations of the 2017 Great Solar Eclipse.
Like a Premium Edition DVD or Blu-Ray, watch the “making of” the Google sponsored video, the Eclipse Megamovie
….Now that the preview is over watch the complete Eclipse Megamovie:
There were also other movies made by the The Crowd & The Cloud.
Video about the Eclipse Megamovie:
Here is a behind the scenes video of the Crowd and Cloud Eclipse Road trip, with interviews, insights and a generally fun time with Eclipse Megamovie volunteers:
Eclipse Megamovie – Thank You
We are no longer taking photographs for the Eclipse Megamovie project via our Google website. Scientists, Engineers, Educators, Science Communicators, and Members of the General Public took cool photographs of the total solar eclipse, August 21, 2017, like the one above. They then uploaded their collective 46,000 photographs to the Eclipse Megamovie Project to create the largest public database of a total solar eclipse photos that has ever been collected. Scientists at the Space Sciences Laboratory are currently analyzing the images from this dataset in anticipation of new solar discoveries.
Eclipse photos? Megamovie!
You have a some cool photos of the eclipse like the one above. Consider uploading to the SSL/Google project, Eclipse Megamovie Project.
The Eclipse Megamovie Project – Following a Tradition of Citizen Science Firsts
We’re crowdsourcing images of the total solar eclipse this August to create a continuous view of the eclipse as it crosses the United States—take your camera or your phone and become a citizen scientist!
Read about the Eclipse Megamovie
StarDustatHome on PBS
StarDustatHome and Stall Catchers are interactive ways for folks to help scientists analyze the vast amounts of data from their home computers. The software used for the Stall Catchers game, that is part of the EyesOnALZ is based on the StarDustatHome software.
EyesOnALZ is featured as part of the Crowd and Cloud airing tonight on many PBS stations.
EyesOnALZ is in part One, and airs about 28 minutes into the program. Check your local listings for air times.
COSI is a balloon-borne soft gamma-ray (0.2-10 MeV) telescope designed to study astrophysical sources of nuclear line emission and gamma-ray polarization. NASA successfully launched this super pressure balloon (SPB) from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, at 11:35 a.m. Tuesday, May 17, (7:35 p.m. EDT Monday, May 16) on a potentially record-breaking, around-the-world test flight.
See the video in Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfvMS76whEU
Live trajectory: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/newzealand/wanaka.htm
A post in the NASA-Wallops-Flight-Facility webpage: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/home
COSI official web-page: http://cosi.ssl.berkeley.edu
