GSFC: Introducing the A-Train

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GSFC: Introducing the A-Train

Post by bystander » Wed Oct 27, 2010 12:45 am

Introducing the A-Train
NASA GSFC | 26 Oct 2010
Mention the "A-Train" and most people probably think of the jazz legend Billy Strayhorn or perhaps New York City subway trains — not climate change. However, it turns out that a convoy of "A-Train" satellites has emerged as one of the most powerful tools scientists have for understanding our planet’s changing climate.

The formation of satellites — which currently includes Aqua, CloudSat, Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) and Aura satellites — barrels across the equator each day at around 1:30 p.m. local time each afternoon, giving the constellation its name; the "A" stands for "afternoon."

Together, these four satellites contain 15 separate scientific instruments that observe the same path of Earth's atmosphere and surface at a broad swath of wavelengths. At the front of the train, Aqua carries instruments that produce measurements of temperature, water vapor, and rainfall. Next in line, CloudSat, a cooperative effort between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and CALIPSO, a joint effort of the French space agency Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and NASA, have high-tech laser and radar instruments that offer three-dimensional views of clouds and airborne particles called aerosols. And the caboose, Aura, has a suite of instruments that produce high-resolution vertical maps of greenhouse gases, among many other atmospheric constituents.

In coming months, the A-Train will expand with the launch of NASA's aerosol-sensing Glory satellite and the carbon-tracking Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) satellite. In 2010, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch the Global Change Observation Mission-Water (GCOM-W1), which will monitor ocean circulation. Meanwhile, a fifth satellite, France’s Polarization and Anistropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar (PARASOL), which studies aerosols, is easing out of an A-Train orbit as its fuel supplies dwindles.

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Re: GSFC: Introducing the A-Train

Post by neufer » Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:32 am

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Last edited by neufer on Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: GSFC: Introducing the A-Train

Post by bystander » Wed Oct 27, 2010 1:40 am

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
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Re: GSFC: Introducing the A-Train

Post by neufer » Wed Oct 27, 2010 4:56 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_the_%22A%22_Train wrote:
<<"Take the 'A' Train" is a jazz standard by Billy Strayhorn that was the signature tune of the Duke Ellington orchestra. The title refers to the A subway service that runs through New York City, going at that time from eastern Brooklyn up into Harlem and northern Manhattan, using the express tracks in Manhattan. "Take the 'A' Train" was composed in 1938, after Ellington offered Strayhorn a job in his organization and gave him money to travel from Pittsburgh to New York City. Ellington wrote directions for Strayhorn to get to his house by subway, directions that began, "Take the A Train." Strayhorn was a great fan of Fletcher Henderson's arrangements. "One day, I was thinking about his style, the way he wrote for trumpets, trombones and saxophones, and I thought I would try something like that," Strayhorn recalled in Stanley Dance's The World Of Duke Ellington.

When ASCAP (American Society of Composers and Publishers) raised its licensing fees for broadcast use, many ASCAP members, including Ellington, could no longer play their compositions over radio, as most music was played live on radio in those days. Ellington turned to Billy Strayhorn and son Mercer Ellington, who were registered with ASCAP competitor BMI to "write a whole new book for the band," Mercer recalled." 'A' Train" was one of many songs written by Strayhorn, and was picked to replace "Sepia Panorama" as the band's signature song. Mercer recalled that he found the song in a trash can after Strayhorn discarded a draft of it because it sounded too much like a Fletcher Henderson arrangement. The song was first recorded on January 15, 1941 as a standard transcription for radio broadcast.

The lyrics used by the Ellington band were added by Joya Sherrill, who was 17 at the time (1944). She made up the words at her home in Detroit, while the song played on the radio. Her father, a noted Detroit Black Activist, set up a meeting with Ellington. Due to Joya's remarkable poise and singing ability and her unique take on the song, Ellington hired her as a vocalist and adopted her lyrics. The vocalist who most often performed the song with the Ellington band was trumpeter Ray Nance, who enhanced the lyrics with numerous choruses of scat singing. Nance is also responsible for the trumpet solo on the first recording, which was so well suited for the song that it has often been duplicated note for note by others.

In 2009, the PBS series History Detectives aired an episode revealing that an original set of publishing plates for the song were in the possession by Garfield Gillings of Brooklyn, NY. Gillings stated that that he found the plates at least twenty years earlier in a dumpster. Reporter Tukufu Zuberi brought the plates to the Smithsonian Institution, where curator John Hasse, who oversees the Duke Ellington collection, certified that the plates were most likely used for the first publications for Ellington's Tempo Publishing Company. Archived copies of the published sheet music were nearly identical to prints that had been made from the publishing plates.>>
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Re: GSFC: Introducing the A-Train

Post by owlice » Wed Oct 27, 2010 6:50 am

The title refers to the A subway service that runs through New York City, going at that time from eastern Brooklyn up into Harlem and northern Manhattan, using the express tracks in Manhattan.
It still runs from eastern Brooklyn up into Harlem and northern Manhattan, and still uses the express tracks through Manhattan.

I have Ella singing this; she's (of course) fabulous.
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Re: GSFC: Introducing the A-Train

Post by bystander » Wed Oct 27, 2010 7:46 am

owlice wrote:I have Ella singing this; she's (of course) fabulous.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.

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Re: GSFC: Introducing the A-Train

Post by owlice » Wed Oct 27, 2010 11:58 am

That's the one!
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