Mississippi River Lock & Dam 15

In 2016, we traveled to Scotland. A highlight of our trip was the week-long barge journey from Inverness to Banavie. It followed the route of the Caledonian Canal allowing us to traverse Lochs Dochfour, Ness, Lochy, and Oich from the North Sea to the Atlantic side of Scotland. The canal was finished in 1822. A fascinating part of the canal is the system of 29 locks used to raise and lower boats. The highest elevation reached is 106 ft above sea level. Our post is here about the lock system. Pictured below is one of the sets of lock gates viewed with Google Maps. The water level in the upper right is higher than at the lower left.

Last week, my friend David and I traveled to the Mississippi River at the Quad Cities to do a boat tour of Lock & Dam 15 conducted by two engineers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They explained much of the history of the river and early attempts to navigate boats through this region. They also described the maintenance of the dam and locks to further their useful life. They also discussed some of the history of the Rock Island Arsenal as we passed by.

The multiple gates of the dam are on the left in the next image. They control the river flow from upper right to lower left. There are two locks for river traffic just right of center. Our tour boat passed through the smaller of the two locks. Large tugboats and their barges pass through the larger lock.

Ingenuity Flights | Enhanced Views

See flights 2 and 3 at the end of this post.

The first video view of the flight of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was short and jerky. It lasted 13 sec. The initial video data omitted many frames in order to quickly confirm for scientists that the flight was successful. Since that time, the rest of the frames have been downloaded and compiled into this version of 57 sec. The camera used was on the Perseverance rover several meters away.

Things to watch for include spin-up of the rotors at 7 sec. Liftoff takes place at 15 sec. It reaches 3 meter altitude at 19 sec. It hovers and does a 90˚ turn at 24 sec. It holds that position for several seconds. During that time, notice how it drifts to the right and then left a little bit. The gentle Martian breeze that day caused the drift. Ingenuity regained its position correctly. It started to descend at 37 sec with touchdown 3 sec later.

Scientists at JPL used special video filtering to capture the faint dust cloud stirred up by the rotors of the helicopter.

“The Mastcam-Z imager aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover shot video of the helicopter’s flight. The video is presented here in side-by-side formats that have both been enhanced to show a dust plume swirling during takeoff and again on landing. The view on the left uses motion filtering to show where dust was detected during liftoff and landing and the view on the right is enhanced with the motion filtering. Scientists use this image processing to detect dust devils as they pass by Mars rovers.”

While Ingenuity hovered, the camera on the bottom aimed straight down captured this image of its shadow. Imagine looking straight down from the height of a basketball hoop. The fast shutter speed froze the positions of the two counter-rotating rotor blades spinning at about 2500 rpm. The 4 legs of the copter are visible.

UPDATE: Flight 2 and images taken by Ingenuity in this video.

UPDATE: Flight 3 starts at the lower left. Lift-off at 10 sec. Cruises off screen to the right. Returns to view at 49 sec and then to touchdown.

M87 Black Hole Revisited

In April 2019, astronomers with the Event Horizon Telescope EHT released the most detailed image of the region near a black hole in the large elliptical galaxy M87. This image was the first view inside the core of a galaxy showing the extremely energetic spinning disc, or donut, of material and radiation surrounding the invisible black hole at the center. Material falling into the black hole disappears within this horizon. Not even light can escape. This black hole is about 55 million light-years from us and has a mass 6.5 million times that of our Sun.

We are not seeing the black hole. We are aware of the absence of anything visible in the center. That is where the black hole is located. I invite you to read my previous non-technical post about this story.

Near M87 Black Hole | Event Horizon Telescope

In April 2021, new findings from multiple radio, optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray telescopes were shared revealing greater detail about the broader surroundings and processes taking place in the vicinity of galaxy M87. The telescopes are ground based and some are space based. They observed in wavelengths from long radio waves of many meters, the more familiar shorter waves of the optical spectrum, and in extremely short X-ray and gamma-ray wavelengths. Such broad coverage will give scientists greater insights into the dynamics near black holes and aid their understanding of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

Starlink 8 | Morning Pass

On 13 June 2020, SpaceX launched 58 Starlink and 3 Planet SkySats into orbit atop Falcon 9. Many photos and video of the launch are available here and satellite details here.

Early in the morning of 17 June, that same set of satellites passed directly over my location. It was 4:45 am. Twilight was beginning to brighten the sky. I set my iPad on a stable surface and started a long 200 sec exposure with the NightCap app in ISS mode. Within a minute the train of satellites appeared in the southwest (lower left) heading northeast (upper right). The constellation Cygnus was directly in their path. You might recognize Cygnus as a set of short star trails in the center of the image.

Starlink 8 | NightCap ISS mode | 200 sec | 1/2s shutter speed

In the weeks and months ahead, the Starlink satellites will use their ion engines to move apart to higher altitudes of 341 miles (550 km) and become part of the constellation of about 12,000 when all are launched and deployed. More are planned. Since May 2019, about 538 have been launched in sets of 60 at a time. Another 1000 are expected in multiple launches this year. Details of the plan to deliver internet service can be found in a Wikipedia article here.

This is Rocket Science | Factory Tour

I have been a fan of space travel and rocket science for about 60 yrs of my life. The technology is fascinating. Space flight is a dangerous thing to do. Success depends on reliability and small margins of error. This video published by Smarter Every Day is a tour inside the rocket factory of United Launch Alliance ULA in Alabama. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

A few more minutes from Tory Bruno about rocket science.