Summer flashback–DC

So, I’m sitting here with Pixie draped across my battered arms. Certain animals needed to go see the doctor today and had objections to being put in their crates for the short trip. I swear… I’d give anything to know what it was we did, so many years ago, to teach our old cats Misty and Ramses to get in and out of their crates so easily. It’s not like they did anything fun in them. Ramses was even dumped down the luggage carousel in Atlanta by the Delta baggage handlers once. Those two always got in and out of the crate just easy peasy. These new cats … I could probably bathe them easier than to box them up! Well, we won, and they got their vet visit in fine. Pixie has been snuggly too, so I guess that I am forgiven.

Anyway, here are some photos from our trip to the National Air and Space Museum in Virginia this summer. We only has a short weekend in DC, and we visited with a bunch of good friends too, but didn’t take a lot of photos of anyone! We highly recommend the museum though. We thoroughly enjoyed it, and included an Imax movie of the Hubble Space telescope as part of our tour. Tonight, Honor and I were scanning through photos from the Andromeda Galaxy looking for star clusters and galaxies – part of the Andromeda Project – and her comment? “The Hubble Telescope is COOL!” I love having science loving kids!!

”Star clusters are collections of hundreds to millions of stars that were born at the same time from the same cloud of gas. This shared origin makes star clusters unique tools for understanding how stars form and evolve. Additionally, they are useful for studying the major chapters in the history of galaxies. But before Andromeda's star clusters can unlock these secrets, we need the help of Citizen Scientists to find the clusters. Not just the big bright ones, but the small faint ones as well. This is the goal of the Andromeda Project.

Star clusters vary greatly in terms of mass, size, age, and local environment. As a result, star clusters can appear quite different from one another depending on the properties of the clusters and where they are located in the galaxy. This makes the process of identifying clusters tricky and difficult to automate.”

When we arrived in DC, it was RAINING! Such a relief after hot Kuwaiti summer weather, It’s cooled off here, but still no rain in the desert.

First thing that we found at the museum, was Honor’s wall. She loves to find her name on things!

And we stopped to appreciate the sculpture.

Inside was amazing! You do not have to be knowledgeable about aircraft to be blown away by the history contained in this exhibit.

This is one of Honor’s favorite.

And Brian’s favorite too. Yea… I agree. Totally cool!

Wooden propellers!

The Enola Gay – which of course, led to a discussion about it’s part in WWII. As a total coincidence, we also watched the movie “The Wolverine” over this R&R which included this part of history.

Lufthansa! How cool is this?

There were at least three levels of aircraft displayed here.

The Concorde!

and the Blackbird.

And the main reason why I wanted to visit. I wanted to meet a space shuttle!

Hello Discovery!

Honor wants a jetpack!

My awesome family!

We highly recommend a visit to this museum!