“These are the pillars of creation,” he said to me today. “See? They look like a daddy, a mommy and a baby.”
They are inside of the Eagle Nebula – a stellar nursery.
I’m glad that he sees us among the stars.
Here’s a tour he loves to take:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUrAZnF3PD8]
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
It’s roughly a light hour (or 746 million miles) away, but when you look through a telescope it’s just right there, so clear with its rings and its many moons. I thought about Galileo seeing it for the first time 400 years ago, how he must have puzzled, the stir his telescope created.
I teared up a little after I looked at Saturn, wondering how I made it to my late 30s without looking so closely at the heavens before. It’s yet another gift my son has given me.
We also examined the surface of the moon and saw a distant galaxy (M105, I think). Then it clouded up and other people left, allowing Declan ample time to play with some computer program that let him fly through the universe, as well as to chat with an astronomer who also happens to clearly enjoy kids.
I got the last-minute notion to run us up to Perkins Observatory on Friday night (thanks to Ed for the reminder). I’d considered it last summer, but hadn’t gone because Declan was still just two, and three was the suggested youngest age, although I think they’d have made an exception if I’d just asked.
At any rate, I’m so glad we went – what a wonderful, family-friendly place, full of people who are just thrilled to tell you whatever they can about the skies. Dec was excited to see through the different telescopes, but he also could have spent hours looking at their book collection, examining globes of Mars and Venus, and trying out all of the different astronomy computer programs. (His mouse skills are so good, it’s a little bit freaky.) I think we’ll be making regular visits back, so that we can see more of the planets as they come into view. And celebrate the sun in July.
If you are in Central Ohio, I highly recommend visiting Perkins. They recently lost their major source of funding (OSU), because while they have the second-largest telescope in Ohio, there are more powerful ones out there nowadays that the university can lease to do its research. However, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more enthusiastic proponent of science than Director Tom Burns, and that makes the place a real local treasure. He seemed genuinely thrilled to be with people in the crowd who were about to undergo the life-changing experience of seeing Saturn through a telescope, and he was so, so kind to my son.
They are currently on a drive to increase their endowment and save the observatory, so bring plenty of change for the change vortex, money for a Moonpie and whatever else you can spare when you visit.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Declan and I ate at the dining room table tonight. He likes dinner best this way, and seemed particularly thrilled that we had exactly the same things on our plates.
Then he pointed his fork at me and made the following observation:
“You like broccoli, cauliflower and Carl Sagan.”
“And what do you like?” I asked him.
“I only like Venus.”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
It’s been said in recent years that NASA has lost its luster with Americans, or somehow doesn’t capture or inspire the public imagination the way that it used to. The kabillion** people who showed up for the open house at Plum Brook Station this weekend suggested otherwise. It was the first time the place had been opened to the public in 10 years or so, and likely the only time it will be for another 10 years.
We went, as part of our quest to connect Declan with a scientist or two in his beloved space field this summer. (Next year, I want to find a way to go to this.)
It was overwhelming.
Here he is, in the control room of one of the test facilities. The space shuttle had just lifted off for it’s mission to take a Japanese space lab to the International Space Station and rescue its toilet. We were able to watch it soar into the heavens on NASA TV. And Declan was able to pretend to fill a test tank with cryogenic liquid on the computer. (Or something like that.)
That is the lid to a nearly 200-foot deep chamber where they’ve tested rockets. It hasn’t been in use for a while, but it’s impressive. And kind of scary. (To me, more than to Declan).
Declan wore his “Galaxies fade away, all stars merge” shirt and carried a small space book around with him. His obvious interest drew a few smiles and comments from the very friendly staff. There were so many of them, he was a bit intimidated.
Here we are, in the world’s largest space environment simulation chamber, where a bunch of the components of Orion will be tested before they head moonward.
Given his longtime adulation of the liquid nitrogen geysers on Triton, this cryogenic demonstration was a particular thrill. Purple flowers were frozen and smashed, a balloon was deflated in the bucket that re-inflated as soon as it was taken out, and Declan got to touch a ball that was smoking cold from liquid nitrogen.
He also got to look inside of a manned maneuvering unit and took his own picture of a Robonaut. I have to hand it to the folks at NASA – there are a lot of places that purport to educate and entertain people of every age, but few succeed. The staff seemed genuinely interested in answering questions and offering information to its visitors, be they 3 or 73. (And I’m a tough critic.)
The whole Plum Creek site is so big, they bused us from one part of the facility to another. I wish that we had made arrangements to stay overnight and gone to the open house on both days. I didn’t realize how vast of a place it was, and how much there was to see. If we’d had more downtime, maybe Dec would have gotten comfortable enough to chat with a staff member or two. I suppose if space is still an interest of his when he’s (gasp) thirteen, we’ll know better next time… in 2018.
**Not an official NASA estimate.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
We spent a couple of days in New York’s Finger Lake region, where my youngest sibling (half-sister) graduated from college on a chilly, drizzly day.
The sky broke open as we drove home and made a quick detour into Niagara Falls, where Declan would only walk through the surprisingly lovely state park so long as we agreed to take a book on human anatomy and a little boxed solar system puzzle along with us. We clung to the road until midnight on Sunday, when our little boy officially became three years old, or, as he’s been telling me for weeks now, “not a baby anymore.”
Not wanting to spend too much of his birthday in the car, we subjected ourselves to federal inspection in Cleveland, which gave us a pass into a place that turned out to be the closest thing to heaven that Declan has experienced. (Thanks to Wendy for the tip.)
Oh, Hayden Planetarium, dear Air and Space Museum… you have no idea what you may do to my son’s mind, and I’m determined to bring him to you as soon as I can.
Sadly, we had no idea that the center had its big open house that weekend – not that we’d have been able to go – but I am disappointed that we weren’t able to connect him with any scientists – an adult who might appreciate how engaged he was in the place, with its model Hubble telescope and Mars rover and the pictures of galaxies and nebulae that he recognizes, the planets that he knows by surface, size and position. We watched a movie about the International Space station, where, he reminded me today, an astronaut mixed orange and red juice in zero-gravity drops.
We’ve arrived at a new place where his need for attention has grown immensely, and his thirst for knowledge, which has been intense, is even stronger. I try to make his life more varied than space, but space seems to help master everything else. Although he can’t read yet, he now recognizes the words “universe” and “astronomy” (and “NASA” of course). He mastered mouse skills in about an hour once I showed him the History Channel’s interactive universe, which he likes to visit daily, telling me “I need to work on the computer.” I tried to get him to play with a Trapelo puzzle with me last night, and once he decided that the designs could be like the “cracks of Europa,” he was ready to try. We’re still having issues with potty training, but when I’ve suggested that his poop will better resemble Proxima Centauri or The Pleiades in a toilet than his diaper, he seems to consider this seriously. (I am not joking at all.)
When he got overwhelmed and overtired in social situations this weekend, looking at space and human anatomy books balanced him. Once we start one, he insists on reading it thoroughly. We were able to sit through a long, rainy graduation ceremony with little incident, provided we could whisper about the billions of cells we have in our bodies, how eardrums work and what heartstrings actually are. We gave him a working stethoscope and a lion puppet for his birthday, so he pretended to tend to his furry patient in his car seat, and later checked our heartbeats.
And as intense as he can be, he’s still funny and fun, sing-song rhyming nonsense words to himself, dancing like a nut and flirting with girls.
We spend so much time in the mysteries of the micro-finite and the infinite here. I’m increasingly afraid about how little I know, how quickly I may lose the ability to engage him and increasingly impatient with people who know so little about astronomy and anatomy themselves, that they don’t know that his interests are more than a cute parlor trick.
My objective this summer is to find someone who he can talk to that loves and knows about at least one of the things that he does.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
“Here lies Arthur C Clarke. He never grew up and did not stop growing.”
— From BBC News. Apparently, this epitaph was the author’s request.
You can also watch him talk about the three wishes he had for humankind on the occasion of his 90th birthday here.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
“Mommy, I was born in the bulge of the Milky Way.”
Declan has been telling me this at random intervals for two or three months now.
Because human anatomy has become one of his secondary interests, after astronomy, he likes to snuggle up to my belly and talk about being born. And since he’s had a proclivity for saying things that make him seem like the great mystic baby from the distant planet of Zog for as long as he could speak, I chalked it up to some verbal conflation of bulging bellies and the latest galaxy wisdom from our bevy of space documentaries. (Oddly, as I was writing this, he was watching Unfolding Universe, his very first favorite space show, and we just took a computer-generated flight through the Milky Way’s “bulge” so there you have it.)
Yesterday, moment after waking, he thrust a book about constellations into my hands.
“We’re having a book about stars now,” he commanded.
I complied.
We got to Taurus, his birth sign, and he pointed at it between the eyes.
“I was born in the bulge,” he told me again. “See? It’s the bulge, where I belong.”
I used to think I knew where babies came from. I’m not so sure anymore.
And speaking of birthdays, happy 129th to the spirit of this person:
Also, to the considerably younger father of mine, as well as my dearest childhood friend, all born on this important (in my universe) day of the fishes.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
While out to eat tonight, Declan began to sidemouse the croutons from my salad plate, which I had shoved over to the side.
“Mmmm. Crunchy neutrons!” He said.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Hope your leap day was happy.
And speaking of leaps, here is a story about a miniature museum that was smuggled to the lunar surface.
What would you leave of yourself on the moon if you could?
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
The snowy skies cooperated and cleared to crystal, so naturally, we spent much of evening admiring the lunar eclipse. We crunched down the icy street but soon found there was no better view than the one through the bare Black Locust branches from our back deck.
Dan’s cell phone rang over and over with friends calling to make sure that Declan wouldn’t miss the orange-red sight in the sky. Dec helped me stir hot chocolate on the stove while his dad hooted at and applauded the moon. I ladeled some of the warm mixture into Dec’s orange mug, and he sipped it as he stood on his stepstool, looking up at me. Then, in a moment that was both celestial and Beatles-esque, he said “this world is the one thing money can’t buy.”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
