Solar Eclipse Trip

We were lucky enough to have to go see the total solar eclipse for work, as part of supporting the school trip down there. Was a pretty nice single long day trip. Our pictures on Flickr.

Given the anticipated traffic and the distance to the Roper Mountain Science Center in South Carolina, where we were going for the day of the eclipse, the bus chartered by the school left at 3:30AM sharp even though the eclipse itself wouldn't occur until mid-afternoon. Traffic wasn't as bad as anticipated, however, so we arrived mid-morning and had a few hours to see what the science center had to offer. They apparently wanted a bus to block traffic in a certain spot so we parked at the absolute front of the parking lot, which was nice.



The Science Center turned out to be pretty big, with numerous large buildings spread over the mountain and surrounding fields. We first went to the Planetarium, which was showing a movie about eclipses in general and this one in particular, and it was kind of funny because it had clearly been made some time ago to hype this particular eclipse.

After that we went to go peer through their rather large telescope at the sun (through a filter).

Despite the large telescope, it was hard to make out much detail - could see a sunspot or two but the view was not that impressive overall (I guess the 93 million intervening miles were not entirely cancelled out by the telescope). Among the many exhibits and activities, we also went to a lecture from a NASA researcher on eclipses and the solar corona, their butterfly garden (well I think they had about three of these, we went to several), and the stingray petting zoo. We didn't have time to see everything and there were attractions for all ages set up across the campus.

Felt like Jell-o to me.

We needed something to eat, and because the Science Center had both limited admission and solid planning there were several food trucks with lines that were long but not complete murder. We had four kinds of tacos from two different trucks, encompassing beef, pork, chicken, and shrimp - nothing life changing but eating tacos outdoors for a work trip works for us.

Shrimp tacos

Due to the aforementioned planning by the Science Center there was plenty of room to spread out blankets and so on in fields for eclipse viewing as time got close. We didn't have to fight for space in a grassy area - plenty to go around.

Requisite eclipse glasses selfie

As advertised, it did get quite dark and the temperature dropped a lot - which was lovely as it was fairly hot out.

Our camera is not the best at eclipses, even total eclipses, which this was taken during. Eyes worked a lot better and it was pretty otherworldly.

We did observe the crescent-shaped shadows between leaves characteristic of eclipses - sometimes you'd look at them and assume the leaves were curved like that and then look up and nope, not even close - feature of the light from the sun itself.

We didn't hang around long after the eclipse, anticipating bad traffic getting back out, which we definitely did find. However, it wasn't as bad as we'd originally predicted, since we got back at 11PM instead of midnight, which was the predicted return time. Very happy the bus driver was the one driving so we could sleep in the seats. Great day trip, glad we got to do it.

Florida Conference Trip

We had a conference to present at in Daytona Beach, Florida late this summer and had a little time around the edges of it for tourism and recreation. We didn't pick it for the location but it didn't hurt any! Pictures on Flickr as usual.

We flew down from Raleigh, almost got some airline vouchers after volunteering to get bumped to a flight all of three hours later, but they went back and forth on whether they needed us about three times and we ended up on the flight anyway. We drove from Orlando instead of Daytona because it was faster, cheaper, and resulted in us having a rental car. When we booked, we didn't know the exact time of the conference start so we flew in on Saturday, and after times were posted it turned out we had most of Sunday for tourism so that was a nice discovery.



It sure seemed like the conference hotel was one of the ritzier ones, as it was both on the actual beach of Daytona (though our room didn't face that way) and was quite nice inside. The restaurant in it was also very good and we ate there several times very enjoyably. Our view looked back at the water between the Daytona shores barrier island (where the hotel was) and the mainland.



With the mostly-free Sunday we obviously went to Kennedy Space Center, which was about an hour from the hotel and also a place where I (Lee) had not previously been, though Ana had once or twice.



We signed up for the early spaceflight special tour, so we got to tour the blockhouse that launched Alan Shepard into space and saw some seriously old-school technology, which for engineers was awesome in a few different ways.

This scale reported the weight of the rocket as they topped off the cryogenic fuel and oxidizer so they knew if they needed to add more (manually) - gloriously analogue technique, that.

The Air Force missile museum down there has one of two remaining V2 engines in the world - I honestly didn't know any remained in existence. Very pleased to see such a historically notable engine in person. Compared to the replica of Goddard's liquid fueled engine nearby it seemed like a lot more time had elapsed between them than actually did. 

This one is a replica of the one that shot Alan Shepard into space - they had a spare real one (original would not have survived use) but it blew over in a hurricane a couple years back.

Also had a whole spare Saturn V, and a building big enough to keep it in.

Touched a moon rock - that's not something you do every day.

Looking at the Saturn V from the front.

Not a huge Shuttle fan since I consider it an enormously compromised and over-complicated system, but I'd not seen a real one in person before (had seen the mock-up, Enterprise) and the real ones definitely have more gravitas. The museum around is was pretty amazing and I wish we'd have had more time to explore every little thing instead of heading back for the conference - but we were actually supposed to be there for the conference itself, so that took priority.

For the conference (the First Year Engineering Experience), we weren't presenting until the second full day, so we enjoyed the presentations and workshops until then. We had previously met a large percentage of the attendees at other events or at Purdue so it was nice to run into people. The presentation we were doing together; we generally try to work on different projects and had never written a paper together before, but this particular piece of research crossed both of our main areas and it only made sense to team up. The presentation went fine and got mentioned at the final wrap-up of the conference, so that was nice.

After the conference we went to a restaurant that was on a pier over the water - you expect that kind of place to be all view and no taste but it was pretty decent and not too expensive and it is hard to argue with the view from the table. While we were there a storm came through north of Daytona and there was lightning over the water as it got dark, which was fairly dramatic, but it didn't rain onto us.

Table view, blocked by two strange people.

One neat thing the hotel did was give each room a s'mores kit that could be used over the nightly fires out back in front of the ocean - was a nice touch and we enjoyed that and the hot tub nearby.



Last morning down there we got up to see the sunrise with our toes in the surf - nice end to the time in Florida. Apparently we were at the very end of the busy season because the beach was pretty empty the whole time we were there.

Photographic evidence of the surf-toes.

On the way out before our flight from Orlando we got a mediocre lunch at Disney Springs, which is kind of like a mall with a bit more dressing on it - just so that Ana couldn't say she'd been to Florida and not done a Disney thing. She located a quotation with high applicability to our work in the coming academic year. Time to hit the ground running!