Busy Astro Weekend

Thursday, May18th I worked at Mt. Wilson Observatory. Friday I worked
my day job, and scrubbed attendance at at UC Irvine outreach in Irvine
Friday night.

Saturday, I drove over 112 miles out to Idlyllwild's city campground to
do an astronomy outreach for a small group of freinds. I set up my
telescope in the parking lot and the park rangers were kind enough to
turn off all of the streetlights for us.

I set up my telescope for Saturn viewing, and laid out NASA materials
for viewers to pick up. I counted 48 campers that viewed Saturn through
my telescope. They left and after 11 p.m, and I did some imaging of
Jupiter and then bagged the scope at 1:30 a.m. to go to sleep.

I rose Sunday morning at 5 a.m., and packed up the telescope and all of
the other gear. I drove over to my host's camp site and the lead gal
made me some breakfast. I left the camp and Idlyllwild at 8:45 a.m. and
drove straight to the Jet Propulsion lab in Pasadena to the Open House.
By the time I got there, the parking lot was almost full and I had to
park way out past the east gate. So I walked and walked until I got to
Mariner Road, and made a striaght beeline to the Cassini exhibit next
to the West Gate. I met with , Jane Jones, my SOC superviesor and we
had a nice short chat about outreach business.

I then made the long trek back to the East Gate, and on the way
craked jokes with the many JPL workers that I encountered on the way:

At one information booth, I asked the fellow what is the answer to
life, the universe and everything.. He got it right.

At the exit to the Microdevices lab: " Are you shrinking people in
there? It keeps the payload weight requirements down."

By the time I got back to my truck way way out in th elot, I was
bordering on total exhaustion. I drove straight home and went to bed at
1:00 in the afternoon, and woke at 5 p.m.

Hopefully by tonight's end I will have switched my sleep cycle back
over to a regular work week....

Matthew Ota