December 19, 2008
Library of Congress
Monumental Jaguar Sculpture
600-900 AD
The red-orange sculpture of the jaguar, made of painted ceramic, reminded me immediately of a gothic-style gargoyle. It was wearing a dark scarf around its neck and had three decent sized holes on one side of its muzzle. The jaguar was sculpted in such a way that it looked as though it was growling, with its mouth wide open and teeth bared. Gargoyles, guardians of the castle, would have been sculpted to have the same intimidating presence. Jaguars, in the ancient Mayan civilization, were believed to be important in cosmology, primarily as deities that represented the sun. The Mayan people also believed that jaguars were guardians protecting the king. Mayan kings tended to assume the royal name “Balam”, which means “jaguar”, possibly to beseech the gods. The Monumental Jaguar Sculpture may have once flanked the throne of a Mayan king.
Ceremonial Wooden Stool
1000–1500 AD
This wooden stool is a pre-Columbian Duhos from the Caribbean. It sits very low to the ground and is horizontal. The stool has a concave seat and four short legs that resemble those of a turtle. The stool even has a tiny head at the front of the stool that has large eyes and an aggressively opened mouth. These stools are very rare and are only found in dry caves in the highlands. There are two types of stools. There are those that resemble the one found in the museum, and there is another with backrests that are long and curved. These stools are believed to be seats for authority figures as well as possibly serving as altars for offerings. The Taino people of the Caribbean may have also used these stools as ceremonial trays for making Cohoba, a hallucinogenic drug. The Taino people of the Bahamian Island of Guanahani, now San Salvador, were skilled farmers and navigators. They were also most abundant of the indigenous people of the Caribbean.
Portolan of the Pacific Coast
Mid-Sixteenth Century
This sailing chart, called a portolan, is a guide to the Pacific Coast of Central and South America. It shows the region spanning from Guatemala to northern Peru. Hand drawn on parchment paper, this map has lines pointing in seemingly every direction with little pictures and diagrams showing what could be found at each location. At first, it seemed like something out of the Golden Compass movie. This portolan was able to be dated back to the mid 1500s due to the names of coastal towns used on the map being written in two different styles. It may have been the first ever to show the Galapagos Islands, shown in red on the map. This portolan was found in the museum’s section focusing on Francisco Pizarro, an explorer who found his way to northern Peru in 1531. Pizarro arrived with 180 men and 30 horses, and by 1532 he had conquered the ruler of the Incan people, Atahualpa. He then suppressed several Incan rebellions attempting to regain control. Pizarro was assassinated in 1541 in the same city that he had founded in 1535, Lima.
Interior of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
National Air and Space Museum
Ares: Back to the Moon
It is NASA’s goal to send American astronauts back into space by no later than 2014 and back to the moon no later than 2020. They would like to build an outpost on the moon in hopes of supporting long-term human existence on the moon. NASA’s constellation program plans to accomplish this by producing a new line of rockets and spacecraft based upon the Apollo space shuttle missions. Ares, the new generation of Apollo, will succeed Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor when they retire in 2010. Ares I will transport the crew into orbit around the Earth, while Ares V will be the cargo rocket that will send the departure equipment and the Altair lunar module, which will carry people to the moon.
Scope in the Sky
SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) is a 44,100 lbs., or 20,000 kg, telescope that has been designed to study stars from a 747 airliner. The plane will have to cruise at around 45,000 feet for the telescope to capture the infrared light projected by stars. It is hoped that SOFIA will be useful in studying the formation of new solar systems, as well as identifying the complex molecules in comets, asteroids, planets, space, and other things found in our solar system. It will also be used to identify what nebulae and dust in the galaxies, as well as black holes at the middle of galaxies, are composed of. SOFIA will fly for the next twenty years capturing clear pictures and data.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)
The LRO is a robotic spacecraft that is intended to orbit the moon after being launched late in 2008. The LRO will map and collect data on the Moon’s surface features and resources that would contribute to the design needs of an outpost. Polar regions where water is stored in ice and areas that receive nearly continuous sunlight will be focused on, as well as landing sites, identification of resources on the moon, and how lunar radiation will affect humans. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will be carried to the moon on the LRO and will search for water and anything more that may be found in the moon’s craters.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed the exhibits at the Library of Congress and especially at the National Air and Space Museum. I have been to both in the past, but never looked at exhibits other than those that really sparked my interest. The exhibits I have merely skimmed through in the past were actually really interesting. The Library of Congress has to be one of the most beautiful buildings in all of Washington, D.C.! The architecture and artwork is so exquisite! The exhibit we went to in the Library of Congress was really easy to navigate and seemed to focus on an audience composed of those who have a knowledge and interest in history. The paintings and artifacts were truly one of a kind! The National Air and Space Museum, very different from the Library of Congress but still just as amazing, was focused on audiences of all ages and interests. There are plenty of exhibits that you can literally interact with! There were exhibits geared towards young children and those that did not have the one-of-a-kind artifacts that can be found in the Library of Congress, but they are nonetheless educational and enjoyable! Overall, both exhibits from both museums were wonderfully presented and thoroughly addressed their target audience.
Exploration began as a primarily land-based endeavor. Travel on the seas was far too dangerous. Then, as ships began to be built to endure, exploration across the seas exploded. When Columbus accidentally found his way to the Americas, he inadvertently inspired others to search for new worlds far from home. Now, it is not our goal to find new worlds across the oceans, but across the solar system. Rockets and shuttles travel past the stars to find new worlds, this time being other planets and even galaxies. Scientific discoveries have gone so far beyond anything ever dreamed possible by those like Galileo. Both of the exhibits we visited show how these explorations, both across oceans and across space, are the result of human curiosity. Human curiosity that drives us to find new worlds, on this planet and beyond, and to be able to use those worlds for human purposes. The differences in the exhibits show how far humans have come in the past few centuries and how much further we can go.
Library of Congress National Air and Space Museum
Mini-model of ARES I