HGS Guest Night 2008 took place Saturday Night June 14 at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
The sellout crowd of 400 members and guests had a fantastic time. Our featured speaker, Dr. Jim Reilly, NASA astronaut, and veteran of several shuttle missions to the International Space station, spoke to the audience in the IMAX theatre for 45 minutes. Reilly was introduced by his friend, and HGS member, Dave Reynolds of Fairfield Seismic and Processing.
Reilly told the story of how he was accepted into the astronaut training program in 1986, while working in the oil and gas industry as a geologist for SantaFe/Ensearch in Dallas, after many years of applying to NASA. He showed video clips of the space shuttle launching into space and onboard photos of the earth as seen from the space station. Reilly dramatically recounted his personal experience flying through the arctic “Northern Lights,” while in on a space mission, and the coping styles astronauts use to sleep and eat aboard the station. Reilly shared his vision of what scientists will learn from Mars and future Moon landing missions, which included knowledge of Earth first billion years of evolution, which can’t be studied on earth due to lack of ancient rocks. The evening was capped by a IMAX 3D movie presentation of “Grand Canyon: River at Risk” which emphasized the need to conserve water in the western states.
HGS President Linda Sternbach, and Guest Night chairman Bill Osten, hosted the presentation. On behalf of the HGS, Sternbach introduced HISD teacher Francisca Ehih as the “HGS Teacher of the Year” which included a globe award and a check of $1500. Four students from local junior and senior high schools accepted awards for their outstanding science poster projects from the spring ECH Science Fair. They were: Heming Bai (Clear Lake High school )topic “Environmental science: effects of concrete lining on bayous”, Victoria Baldwin (Conroe ISD), topic Environmental Science “New water Treatment “Plants”. Junior Team Division winner swere a team of two students, Katarina Brown and Emily Hansen, (Seabrook Intermediate School, Clear Creek ISD,) in the category of Botany, Environmental Science, Zoology, topic: “Reflecting Ra: A Study of Affecting Earth's Temperatures.” The happy students posed for photos with astronaut Jim Reilly, and got autographs during the evening to save as souveners.
HGS awarded plaques and thanked Guest Night sponsors. BHP Billiton, TGS Nopec, SMT, Fairfield who contributed financial support to the event. Their sponsorship keeps the cost affordable, so families can enjoy all the geo-fun at our HGS yearly Guest Night.
Jim Reilly with the four students who attended and received awards.
To see more photos, click here.
You can download a copy of Jim Reilly's slides below.
His presentation is made up of a powerpoint file, mpg and wmv files. To view the entire presentation download all the files below and put them in the same directory on your PC.
- The intro movie before the presentation is the file named: "Cities at Night World Tour 720X480 edit. wmv" (78 Mg). Credit for this file goes to: Dr. Don Pettit NASA.
- The main powerpoint file is named: "ExploreShortHGS6-08n.ppt" (12.4 Mg). This powerpoint file calls three (movie) files: "launchtest.mpg" (20.3 Mg), "InsideTheSpaceStation.wmv" (6.6 Mg), and "WorseThanLockingKeysin Car.wmv" (0.9 Mg).