Dear Me,

International Space Station transit of the Moon taken by Quinn Groessl on January 31 2023.

The ISS orbits the Earth at a typical velocity of 28000 km/h (very fast) and at a typical altitude of 400 km. Gravitational forces keep the ISS in constant freefall, but with the forward velocity of the ISS, the overall distance to Earth and velocity stays pretty much the same.

These transits are pretty infrequent. The angle of the moon from the orbital plane can vary over time, and any small changes in the ISS orbit can have major effects on its path. In the sky, they are both fairly small objects, leading to smaller probabilities as well.

An important factor that allows these events to occur is that the ISS is traveling much faster relative to our perspective on Earth compared to the moon. The ISS orbits the Earth around 16 times a day, while the moon takes around a month (27.3 days).

You can see the video of it at this link. It's incredible how precise astronomers have to be with how short of a timespan there is to record this.

Messy notes are so nice to make! The diagrams just hit different. Reading back through it is a pain though.

I love aesthetic notes but its not realistic for a lot of people. If it is for you, that is amazing! But this is an appreciation post for messy/near-unreadable notes, notes that still work as notes and help you get good marks but don't look pretty "like they should"

(These are my revision notes for C7 Chemistry)

47/100 days of productivity!

I need to have a difficult conversation today... scared but let's see...change is always scary

to-do: 20.1.25

Morning yoga session

book _the western intellectual tradition

Textbook session_2P

Matlab _1P

Class_2P

call home

Journal_ mental health check

Digital Declutter challenge

Today was not a good day for me unfortunately!

I think I’m emotionally exhausted! I’ll be taking a break soon u guys ! My eyes won’t literally stop twitching from stress..

homemade strawb matchas & cozy nights studying 🍓🍵

pretty colors~

i LOVE doing titration labs. i used methyl orange since my lab station was in charge of finding the first equivalence point of a diprotic acid. it was kind of hard to tell if the acid was red, orange, or yellow at times though... but the data is good!

the problem with this coffee shop is that it’s too cute and too expensive and my wallet cannot keep going here every other week

it's okay not to be productive some weeks.

i feel like i got so little done this week. i had to ask for an extension on my physics work and my essay in english. i barely managed to finish the work i needed this week. but that's okay. sometimes its good to have mental breaks.

a good advice i was given was to separate the work from relaxation.

when you are studying, you are studying. less distractions when you are working, and good mental breaks (like going outside or grabbing a snack). but when you are relaxing, you are relaxing. don't let the guilt of not getting stuff done eat at you.

put it in your schedule to relax or something, but sometimes you need breaks. sometimes its difficult for me to get up and do work, and i feel horrible for not being able to do that. but at the same time, its a sign that my mind and my body needs the rest.

go to sleep <3

Milky Way & meteor at Yellowstone Park

physics feels so inaccessible.

like what do you mean the only information on this topic is a power point presentation from ten years ago with only half of the information on it?

or you tell me there's three ways to download the software i need for the calculations, but only one of the ways actually works and you don't even tell me how to do it!!!

never mind the sheer amount of prerequisites. i never struggled with math too much, but i also never took the opportunity to skip a level in math. when i was starting out, you can't do anything without trig. so then i went and learned trig on my own, but then i needed matrices. so i went and i learned matrices and vectors on my own, but now i need calculus. and holy shit is there a lot of stuff within calculus.

half the important papers are hidden behind paywalls and the diagrams are so confusing they take me forever to figure out. maybe i'm just inexperienced, but isn't the whole point of diagrams for the information to be more accessible?????

i might be wrong since i'm young and inexperienced, but it seems as if there's this tone of exclusivity in physics. why is it so hard to find mentors, and when i do, they have such trouble believing in me? i might be young, but i can still understand and help with something. why would you ignore all my emails and just tell me to take the easy way out? i'm in it for the long run.