Until I Get This Show Rolling, I’m Going To Be Posting Some Of The Things I’ve Collected Over The

September 15

This one is technically not yet history, because at the time of posting, the little craft has about half an hour left to go.  That said, let’s proceed.

In 2017, NASA’s Cassini space probe ended its twenty-year mission at Saturn.  After a nearly-seven-year-long journey there, it orbited the ringed planet for 13 years and just over two months, gathering copious amounts of information about the planet, said rings, and many of its moons.  It landed an ESA probe called Huygens on Titan, the first-ever soft landing in the outer Solar System.  It discovered lakes, seas, and rivers of methane on Titan, geysers of water erupting from Enceladus (and passed within 50 miles of that moon’s surface), and found gigantic, raging hurricanes at both of Saturn’s poles.  

And the images it returned are beautiful enough to make you weep.

On this day in 2017, with the fuel for Cassini’s directional thrusters running low, the probe was de-orbited into the Saturnian atmosphere to prevent any possibility of any contamination of possible biotic environments on Titan or Enceladus.  The remaining thruster fuel was used to keep the radio dish pointed towards Earth so the probe could transmit information about the upper atmosphere of Saturn while it was burning up due to atmospheric friction.

This is us at our best.  We spent no small amount of money on a nuclear-powered robot, launched it into space, sent it a billion miles away, and worked with it for two decades just to learn about another planet.  And when the repeatedly-extended missions were through, we made the little craft sacrifice itself like a samurai, performing its duty as long as it could while it became a shooting star in the Saturnian sky.

Rhea occulting Saturn

Water geysers on Enceladus

Strange Iapetus

Look at this gorgeousness

A gigantic motherfucking storm in Saturn’s northern hemisphere

Tethys

This image is from the surface of a moon of a planet at least 746 million miles away.  Sweet lord

Mimas

Vertical structures in the rings.  Holy shit

Titan and Dione occulting Saturn, rings visible

Little Daphnis making gravitational ripples in the rings

That’s here.  That’s home.  That’s all of us that ever lived.

Saturn, backlit

A polar vortex on the gas giant

Icy Enceladus

(All images from NASA/JPL)

Peak Perseid mornings: August 11, 12, 13 | EarthSky.org

When is the peak of the Perseid meteor shower in 2020? The greatest number of meteors is most likely to fall in the predawn hours on August 12, yet under the light of a wide waning crescent moon.

Where to look, and when.

Ep. 25 Southern Stars - HD and the Void

I live in the Northern Hemisphere of Earth, which means I see some constellations and stars that people in the Southern Hemisphere don't see. The opposite is true as well, and it's more interesting for me to talk about the constellations I don't g...

I’m a Northern Hemisphere dweller, so I thought it would be fun to cover Southern Hemisphere stars and constellations in this episode! I also coulsnt’ resist talking about Aurora Australis and Steve, the hot new atmospheric phenomenon all the young people are talking about.

Below the cut, I have the glossary, transcript, sources, and music credits. I take topic suggestions from Tumblr messages, or you can tweet at me on Twitter at @HDandtheVoid, or you can ask me to my face if you know me. Please subscribe on iTunes, rate my podcast and maybe review it, and tell friends if you think they’d like to hear it!

(My thoughts on the next episode are Chuck Yeager, Stephen Hawking and his theories, the opposition of Mars, or famous comets. The next episode will go up May 14th or 21st!)

Glossary

Bayer designation - a way to classify stars based on their relative brightness within a constellation. A specific star is identified by a Greek letter, followed by the genitive form of the constellation's Latin name.

circumpolar - appearing to orbit one of the Earth’s poles. For stars and constellations, this means they are above the horizon at all times in certain latitudes.

irregular galaxy - an asymmetrical galaxy shape, where the galaxy lacks a central supermassive black hole.

Script/Transcript

Sources

Orion from the Southern Hemisphere via EarthSky (Mar 2017)

How to Spot Sky Landmarks: Big Dipper and Southern Cross via Space.com (Apr 2012)

Locate Cassiopeia the Queen via EarthSky (February 2018)

Small Magellanic Cloud orbits Milky Way via EarthSky (Oct 2017)

Nubecula via LatDict

Early star catalogues of the southern sky via Astronomy and Astrophysics (2011)

Catalog of Southern Stars via the University of Oklahoma

Edmond Halley via Royal Museums Greenwich

Finding south using the Southern Cross via Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Jan 2013)

List of 88 official constellations via the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa

Alpha Centauri system, closest to sun via EarthSky (May 2017)

Hadar is a southern pointer star via EarthSky (April 2017)

Aurora Australis forecast service

Video of aurora australis via Global News Canada (April 2018)

Aurora Steve via Global News Canada (March 2018)

Bagnall, Philip M. “Crux.” In The Star Atlas Companion: What You Need to Know About the Constellations. Springer Science+Business Media: New York, 2012 (183-7). Located in Google Books Preview [accessed May 1, 2018].

Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity

Filler Music: ‘Mace Spray’ by The Jezabels off their EP Dark Storm.

Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught

Here’s the nose scratching sponge I talked about in Episode 19!

‪This is how astronauts clear our ears (and scratch our noses!) during a spacewalk. ‬

Does an ecplispe cause any unusual effects on the Earth?

Yes, and this is one of the things we’re hoping to study more with this eclipse! If you are in totality, you’ll notice a significant temperature drop. We are also expecting to see changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and ionosphere. You can help us document these changes using the GLOBE Observer app https://www.globe.gov/globe-data/data-entry/globe-observer ! There are lots of great citizen science going on during this eclipse, and we’d love to have everyone here helping out! https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/citizen-explorers

Tampons were packed with their strings connecting them, like a strip of sausages, so they wouldn’t float away. Engineers asked Ride, “Is 100 the right number?” She would be in space for a week. “That would not be the right number,” she told them. At every turn, her difference was made clear to her. When it was announced Ride had been named to a space flight mission, her shuttle commander, Bob Crippen, who became a lifelong friend and colleague, introduced her as “undoubtedly the prettiest member of the crew.” At another press event, a reporter asked Ride how she would react to a problem on the shuttle: “Do you weep?”

Astronaut Sally Ride and the Burden of Being “The First” (via dinosaurparty)

HD and the Void by HD on Apple Podcasts

Download past episodes or subscribe to future episodes of HD and the Void by HD for free.

Haaaaaay I’m on iTunes now! Slightly more convenient to download maybe!

Will NASA send astronauts to the moon again or any other planet within the next ten years?

@nasaorion spacecraft will launch on the Space Launch system (the largest spacecraft every built, even bigger than the Saturn V rocket!).  Both are under construction @nasa currently, and this is the spacecraft that will take us beyond the low earth orbit of the International Space Station, whether that be the Moon, Mars, or beyond.  We will conduct test missions with astronauts on Orion in the early 2020s, and a first mission will take us 40,000 miles beyond the Moon!

ASTROGENOUS

[adjective]

producing or creating stars.

Etymology: from Greek, from astron “star” + -genēs “born”.

[J. R. Slattum - Star Maker]