Live from NPF '09: Day Fourteen

Read yesterday’s post here.

Day Fourteen: Black Holes

(Yes, I’m home now, and yay! But for the purposes of keeping everything less confusing tense-wise, I’ll write this as if it’s happened just today)

mall So after the cruise to Mount Vernon yesterday I had an early night, packed up and chilled out by watching some TV. After checking out this morning, I took the train down to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It was a short walk from the Archives (and something or other) station, which meant crossing the midsection of the National Mall and looking down towards Capitol Hill in one direction, and the Washington Monument in the other. Very pretty. (More pics at Flickr)

I timed it well, and arrived at the museum just as they’d opened (even on weekdays they only open at 10am), and managed to beat most of the crowds; but even getting there at 10 meant lots of people. I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of time, as my shuttle was arriving at the B&B to pick me up at about 1pm; so I headed straight to the Albert Einstein Planetarium to buy tickets for my planned activity; a 30 minute filming on black holes. (I’ve been heavily into astronomy of late, and on my trip had been reading Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End . . . by Philip Plait, so black holes was not only fitting, but interesting too) I had some time to kill before the showing - all of 30 minutes - so I rushed through a couple of the exhibits on the second floor of the museum around where the planetarium is.

The museum is pretty big, and the first thing you see when you enter the doors are a whole bunch of hanging or standing models of various crafts: rovers and probes, shuttles and planes. On the lower level (there are two entrances, one on either side of the building, so saying right or left here is unhelpful) there’s: an exhibition on the beginnings of flight, including the Wright plane itself; jet planes; simulators; current airplane technology; Apollo models and info; something on the solar system… and probably something else. I only managed a ‘drive by’ viewing of this stuff before I had to leave. Oh, and there’s also a museum shop with lots of books, DVDs, Washington DC/Smithsonian (18 Smithsonian museums in all, this was just one of them) souvineers, space food, etc. There’s also the IMAX cinema on the first floor.

air and space On the second floor was more solar system stuff, a small shop, and a whole bunch of things I didn’t get to see. Fortunately, the Planetarium was the most awesomeist thing ever (yeah, I did just make up a word). You go into this small theatrette, with an arc of very laid back chairs - what you’d find in a cinema, only with really tilted backs, so when you sit, you naturally look towards the ceiling. The ceiling itself is a round white dome, onto which the show was projected.

The Black Holes film (scroll down to below the Youtube video at this link to see a blurb) itself was very good, although a little confusing at first (even though I knew most of the terms and explanations for black holes, etc. I’m not sure it would have made much sense to anyone who didn’t know anything about astronomy). But the graphics were awesome, and so much better than the 3D fish film at the Georgia Aquarium on day ten. They did all that stuff of moving through the stars, and going into a black hole, etc., that makes it feel 3D even if it isn’t. It combines computer graphics (based on real models/physics) and actual imagery of the universe, and we travelled from earth to our galaxy (Milky Way), through the universe. You really don’t get a proper sense of the scale of everything whilst reading a book, and it’s amazing how big everything is when you see it in a film. And even then it’s impossibly under-represented. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I was glad it was the last thing I got to do in America before leaving, and it was a great way to finish.

Well, I sped through the rest of the exhibits on my way out - if you ever get to go, do. Many of the exhibits are done up in the style of the era (ie. Vaudevillian for the early flight section, 50s futurama for the jet era) and there’s lots of fascinating stuff on what’s being discovered right now as well as historical or informational sections.

Anyway, from there I went back to the B&B, grabbed my stuff and went to Dulles airport. I got there a bit early, but that was fine; better to be early than late! Of course, my whole theory about one thing going wrong a day held true: in order to not pay extra for baggage, I stuffed my laptop into a rather large bag that I used as a carry on. Except the zips broke and so everything (passport, wallet, etc) could fall out. So I buy a new bag at the airport, and just as I’m doing so, the handle on my old bag breaks. Lucky? Maybe just good timing on that one. But I also nearly left behind my passport at security, whilst removing my laptop, liquids and shoes in a hurry… I’m so glad the person behind me saw it and handed it to me, because I really had my head screwed on upside-down and wouldn’t have realised until several hours later when I needed to board!

The trip itself was pretty uneventful except for feeling sick for most of it (I still do feel sick, hoping it’s nothing horrid), and being confused about the time differences: leaving LA at 10.30pm their time, and arriving in Sydney at 4am roughly our time, I managed to see the sun set, wait for 14 or so hours and not see the sun rise until a few hours after arriving in Sydney. And managed to still gain a day in the process… Weird.

Thankfully though, everything was fine and I came home to a house full of family and pets. It was also my mum’s birthday whilst I was on the plane, so we’ll be celebrating that at some point during the week.

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