The Dutch Cowboy

This year I felt I was challenged to dress up for Halloween. I normally do not particularly enjoy dressing up for Halloween, but after going to the great concert by the Austin Wind Symphony and seeing some spectacular star-trek themed outfits, I decided that it would be only fair for me to dress up this year.

As it happened, my parents had sent me an item for my birthday from the Netherlands, which made me laugh out loud when I unwrapped the package. They were fuzzy "wooden" shoes, colored brightly orange which is the national color of the Netherlands. So the plan was hatched: I will be the Dutch Cowboy.

So, for all the people that dared me to post this. Here are the pictures:





The only thing that is missing is a large Saturn shaped belt buckle. OK maybe next year.

UFO has landed

Breaking News:

UFO over Austin has landed and Alien talks with the Austin Planetarium crew. Irrefutable proof below.


And he (she?) even wears an Austin Planetarium T-shirt

UFO sighting over Austin

Today I received an interesting phone call from Mary Lee at KXAN: was I willing to show up at the studio and look at UFO footage that was shot over Austin and give my opinion? That sounded like fun, so off I went.

The video was very interesting... and it is still an UFO, meaning that I was not able to identify what was caught on camera. The mistake most people make is thinking that UFO equals little green men from Mars. But all UFO means is an Unidentified Flying Object. If you see something in the sky and you can't place it, by definition it's a UFO.

So... the video. It starts with three lights which possibly could be stars (the bottom of the constellation Cassiopeia?) but that part was rather unclear. The lights are motionless, not too interesting, but then in the end all of the sudden a light is moving and makes big zig-zag movements. The filmers got lucky, because in the background you can see power lines which give a frame of reference. At least we know the camera was not being zig-zagged; the light itself is moving. It was obvious that it was not a movement an airplane or helicopter could have made. The other interesting thing was that at one point the object resolves into multiple dots of light (two possibly three).

So, what was it? Well, the short answer is: I do not know. To me, it did not look like a regular airplane or helicopter, and if it was I feel sorry for the passengers, because that did not look like comfortable flying to me. There is always a possibility of a meteorite, because as I have seen for myself, they can do pretty cool things while flying through the atmosphere. They can change directions when a piece breaks off, they can rotate making it look like small zig-zag movement, and they can also bounce off the atmosphere giving the impression that they move from left to right. However, again, to me it did not seem that would explain this video.

Of course there is always another possibility, which is a prank where the neighbor flies a small radio operated plane with some lights attached.

However, maybe, just maybe we're getting some extraterrestrial help in keeping Austin weird.

KXAN posted a small article about it here. When they upload the interview and the footage I will update this posting.

Congratulations Austin!

It took some scheduling and rescheduling, but I was finally able to meet the winner of the $500 telescope we raffled off at last Pecan Street festival. Quite appropriately the winner's name is "Austin".

Austin is six years old and has a keen interest in space and astronomy. Needless to say he was incredibly excited to receive this wonderful telescope, and we're sure he will be using this for many years to come.



I want to thank the more the 200 people that entered in the raffle. Your donation is greatly appreciated and together we will make the dream of a planetarium a reality. We just sent in the paperwork for the spring Pecan street, and we'll be sure to once again have a raffle. If everything works out, we might be raffling off more then one telescope!

We're a winner!

Two days ago I received an invitation to a party hosted by the Austin Chronicle, to celebrate all the "Best of Austin" winners of 2008. Quite frankly I had no clue what this event was (bad me!), but hey, a party with a chance to network and handout some brochures and T-shirts seemed like a fun and valuable time to me.

So, together with Lary Cotten who serves as secretary on our board, we ventured down to the Long Center last night. At the registration table I came to the shocking realization that we were actually winners of a Best Of Austin award! We won the "Best Starry-Eyed Dream" award. Their write up of our project is also very nice. I remember talking to a photographer from the Chronicle at the Pecan Street, and I guess he was impressed with what he saw.

Needless to say I am incredibly pleased. We have a new logo and are working on a new look and feel of the website, have an incredible looking new brochure, new T-shirts and mugs and now we have a Best Of Austin award too! Kudos to the entire Austin Planetarium team!

In addition we met Mayor Will Wynn at the party. He was glowing all over, because he had just gotten off the "phone" with Richard Garriott who is floating around in space as we speak. Thankfully the Mayor had indeed heard about the Austin Planetarium project and was positive about meeting with us in the near future.

An award and a meeting with the Mayor of Austin... what a great evening!

On Planetariums and Politics

It took me a while to gather my thoughts and courage to blog about this, but given that I have heard from quite a few of readers about this, I decided it was about time. If you have been keeping up with the presidential campaign rhetoric you will have noticed that we (the planetarium subject) have broken through on the national political scene.

Let me first start on a cautionary word... for myself that is. The thing is: I need to stay neutral. As Executive Director I am trying to achieve this grand plan of building a planetarium and science museum for Austin, and I will be talking to a lot of people. Actually, that should be phrased as: A LOT OF PEOPLE: staggering numbers, of all walks of life and with a vast variety of backgrounds and opinions, and somehow I need to keep them all happy and pleased. This is Texas y'all, and Texans are not necessarily famous for keeping their opinions to themselves. But hey, I love a challenge, so…bring it on! Now again; I am not complaining; but needless to say, I better stay away from discussing politics.

This used to be quite easy, until last week when the second presidential debate took place, and Senator McCain blamed Senator Obama for introducing an earmark of three million dollars for a planetarium overhead projector for the Adler planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.

As it happened, I was at the Adler planetarium earlier this year and even blogged about it. The Adler planetarium is a great facility, which is not too surprising given its history and location. Dang, can you imagine the Austin Planetarium being built on a 1000 ft pier into Lake Travis? (I for one would give my eye-teeth for that (imaginary) location) But I digress...

Checking the facts after the debate, Senator McCain was indeed correct that there was a three million earmark proposed for the Adler planetarium. However not for an overhead projector, but a whole overhead system, more commonly referred to as a full-dome system by planetarium insiders. Needless to say, the Chicago media jumped on this as well and interviewed my colleague at the Adler planetarium Dr. Paul Knappenburger about this issue.

So... now the difficult part of this blog. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Austin Planetarium were to receive three million dollars of taxpayers’ money to build this great educational facility? Do we deserve that? Do we deserve it more than, for example, Chicago, IL, which has already such a fantastic facility?

Well in my opinion, the short answer is: yes, that would be wonderful.

But the rub for me is that I am shocked that a city like Chicago, and a facility like the Adler Planetarium, would need a federal earmark like that. If they cannot raise money with an existing facility to prove what they can do with that money, and with a population more then four times the population of Austin proper... boy are we in trouble or what!?

So, although I selfishly support the earmark, I question it as well. I am sure there are many other planetarium facilities in the US that are in more dire need for funding then the Adler. Given that Austin is the largest city in the US without a planetarium, I think we, most of all, would need (federal) help... Right?

The core of the issue though is whether or not there is enough support. If the Adler is unable to raise the needed three million, there is something wrong. Either their project does not warrant the cost, or they have not done their leg-work to see if things can be raised locally. I cannot come to any other conclusion.

So, the last thing I would like to ask of you when you read this is to make a statement: show your support for our project! Together we can make the Austin Planetarium happen, and a lot of small donations is going a long way. Please consider signing up for a $25 per month donation, or even a $10 a month! Let's show that the Austin Planetarium is supported by us all!



PS Dear President McCain/Obama (alphabetical order if you were wondering) please ignore any and all statements above and please approve a three million dollar earmark for the Austin Planetarium. Thank you.

Pecan Street Post Mortem

What a difference six months makes!

Six months ago we decided to rent a space at the Pecan Street festival. This turned out to be a big success and we had a lot of people in our booth, but we lacked some signage, and we were very surprised to find that the location given to us had two sides. But taken the fact we had not planned for that and did not have enough tables, we decided to be just open on one side.

But this time around we were fully prepared, and boy did it show. In addition, before the event, I was also invited by News 8 Austin for an interview, which also steered a lot of extra people to our booth. Our new logo was a *hit*. We received many positive comments and people bought a T-shirt with the logo without knowing who we were or why we were there; they just wanted the cool shirt!



We earned more than double what we earned last time, and informed hundreds of people of our project. Also our newsletter mailing list grew by a whopping 50%! This is very important, because we want to make our mailing list our primary tool for outreach and project updates. So, if you receive our newsletter, make sure to forward it to your friends and family who may be interested in our project.

We also have a winner of the $500 telescope: Austin Engelhardt, from Austin TX. Austin is 6 years old and is very much interested in astronomy. Hopefully he (and his mom) will pick up the scope this week. So make sure to check back to this blog to see some pictures of a very happy boy with his new scope!