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Written by Frank Summers
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Thursday, 20 August 2009 06:02 |
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It's the third week of August and already some of my friends on Facebook are talking about their kids going back to school. It struck me as weird because I don't have my summer vacation until next next week. My kids start school the following week. Seems those times of school starting after Labor Day (3 weeks away) are long gone.
Here at Space Telescope, August has been a month for getting back to work with Hubble. Servicing Mission Observatory Verification (SMOV) has been progressing all summer long with very good results. We even got a bonus: NICMOS is back to cool!
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Written by Frank Summers
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Tuesday, 19 May 2009 06:35 |
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 On May 13, 2009, the space shuttle Atlantis slowly approached the Hubble Space Telescope. Hundreds of my colleagues and I were packed into the auditorium at the Space Telescope Science Institute, watching the live feed on NASA TV. I was posting to twitter (I am @franksummers) and following the live feed of other folks' postings (called tweets) about NASA and Hubble.
During the rendezvous with Hubble, the tweet stream became a flood. More than one tweet per second flowed across my laptop screen. People were not just watching the event, they were enthralled by it. Post after post was filled with excitement and declared their newfound addiction to this unfolding real-time real-life drama.
Could it be that the Hubble Servicing Misison was the ultimate reality show?
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Written by Frank Summers
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Saturday, 25 April 2009 17:54 |
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On April 25, 2009, I participated in a global webcast for about 400 boy scouts at Camp Durant in North Carolina. What made it a "global webcast" is that they included speakers from not just the USA, but also the Netherlands, Canada, and Australia.
My talk was entitled "Visions of Orion: from Galileo to Hubble". My slides are posted below.
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Written by Frank Summers
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Thursday, 09 April 2009 14:01 |
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 I was searching today for directions to one of my daughter's friend's house. Of course, I just typed the address into the search bar and up it came in Google Maps. However, the hybrid view, with major streets identified on top of satellite imagery, showed discrepancies. The overlay drawing of the streets at one important intersection did not line up with the roads in the picture. Which was correct? Naturally, I would just assume that the picture is out-of-date, as it is easier to update a map than a satellite image. But, as a geek, I wanted to prove which was correct.
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Written by Frank Summers
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Saturday, 04 April 2009 07:11 |
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 Yesterday's post about twitter as a source of breaking news got me thinking about misuses of twitter. After all, two uses of all communication media are advertising and porn. Both are almost guaranteed to be part of the present and/or future twitter.
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Written by Frank Summers
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Friday, 03 April 2009 10:02 |
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I have been playing with Twiiter for several weeks now (I am known as @franksummers in twitter-speak). If you haven't played with it, twitter is a way to broadcast short (140 character) messages. Other people follow your twitter feeds and can see what you have to say with enforced brevity.
On the face of it, twitter seems like yet another internet distraction. Another way for an already over-stimulated generation to waste time.
However, today I saw a truly useful side of twitter. Twitter became a source for breaking news.
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