Check Out The Makeshift Pinhole-camera Results From 99% Totality! Leaves And My Own Hands Work Quite
Check out the makeshift pinhole-camera results from 99% totality! Leaves and my own hands work quite nicely to get an image of the little sliver of sunlight that was left. I had eclipse glasses but don't have any pictures from them: 99% is still not enough to reduce the sun's light very much. It got a little gloomier and I talked about it on Twitter but otherwise it was pretty uneventful! I'm glad I'm not on the road home from eclipsing. It would be cool to see totality one day, though.
More Posts from Fillthevoid-with-space and Others
What's Made in a Thunderstorm and Faster Than Lightning? Gamma Rays!
A flash of lightning. A roll of thunder. These are normal stormy sights and sounds. But sometimes, up above the clouds, stranger things happen. Our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has spotted bursts of gamma rays - some of the highest-energy forms of light in the universe - coming from thunderstorms. Gamma rays are usually found coming from objects with crazy extreme physics like neutron stars and black holes.
So why is Fermi seeing them come from thunderstorms?
Thunderstorms form when warm, damp air near the ground starts to rise and encounters colder air. As the warm air rises, moisture condenses into water droplets. The upward-moving water droplets bump into downward-moving ice crystals, stripping off electrons and creating a static charge in the cloud.
The top of the storm becomes positively charged, and the bottom becomes negatively charged, like two ends of a battery. Eventually the opposite charges build enough to overcome the insulating properties of the surrounding air - and zap! You get lightning.
Scientists suspect that lightning reconfigures the cloud’s electrical field. In some cases this allows electrons to rush toward the upper part of the storm at nearly the speed of light. That makes thunderstorms the most powerful natural particle accelerators on Earth!
When those electrons run into air molecules, they emit a terrestrial gamma-ray flash, which means that thunderstorms are creating some of the highest energy forms of light in the universe. But that’s not all - thunderstorms can also produce antimatter! Yep, you read that correctly! Sometimes, a gamma ray will run into an atom and produce an electron and a positron, which is an electron’s antimatter opposite!
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope can spot terrestrial gamma-ray flashes within 500 miles of the location directly below the spacecraft. It does this using an instrument called the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor which is primarily used to watch for spectacular flashes of gamma rays coming from the universe.
There are an estimated 1,800 thunderstorms occurring on Earth at any given moment. Over the 10 years that Fermi has been in space, it has spotted about 5,000 terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. But scientists estimate that there are 1,000 of these flashes every day - we’re just seeing the ones that are within 500 miles of Fermi’s regular orbits, which don’t cover the U.S. or Europe.
The map above shows all the flashes Fermi has seen since 2008. (Notice there’s a blob missing over the lower part of South America. That’s the South Atlantic Anomaly, a portion of the sky where radiation affects spacecraft and causes data glitches.)
Fermi has also spotted terrestrial gamma-ray flashes coming from individual tropical weather systems. The most productive system we’ve seen was Tropical Storm Julio in 2014, which later became a hurricane. It produced four flashes in just 100 minutes!
Learn more about what Fermi’s discovered about gamma rays over the last 10 years and how we’re celebrating its accomplishments.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
One-year countdown to solar eclipse, August 21, 2017: path of totality overlaid on U.S. population density and interstate map.
What are the most important skills an astronaut should have m?
First of all, the basic requirement is a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field, and 3 years of experience (which can also be substituted for by an advanced degree). Other than that, operational experience (things with a technical/active/hands on nature like flying airplanes, SCUBA diving, taking things apart and putting them back together, basic fix-it skills, etc. etc.) is very important, as this is an integral aspect of every day of a space mission. What we call “expeditionary skills” are also essential, basically the types of things you try to instill in your children, like how to play nicely with others, self care, team care, etc. I like to think about this on the lines of a camping trip and who you would like to have along with you …someone that is competent and can take good care of themselves and their equipment, someone that contributes to the team and helps with group tasks, someone that is good natured and pleasant to be around, etc., someone fun! These things are increasingly important now that we are regularly doing long duration missions (typical International Space Station mission is 6 months). Experience living in extreme/remote/isolated environments with small teams is also useful, as it is similar to what we experience as astronauts.
People can’t anticipate how much they’ll miss the natural world until they are deprived of it. I have read about submarine crewmen who haunt the sonar room, listening to whale songs and colonies of snapping shrimp. Submarine captains dispense “periscope liberty” - a chance to gaze at clouds and birds and coastlines - and remind themselves that the natural world still exists. I once met a man who told me that after landing in Christchurch, New Zealand, after a winter at the South Pole research station, he and his companions spent a couple of days just wandering around staring in awe at flowers and trees. At one point, one of them spotted a woman pushing a stroller. “A baby!” he shouted, and they all rushed across the street to see. The woman turned the stroller and ran. Nothing tops space as a barren, unnatural environment. Astronauts who had no prior interest in gardening spend hours tending experimental greenhouses. “They are our love,” said cosmonaut Vladislav Volkov of the tiny flax plants - with which they shared the confines of Salyut 1, the first Soviet space station. At least in orbit, you can look out the window and see the natural world below. On a Mars mission, once astronauts lose sight of Earth, they’ll be nothing to see outside the window. “You’ll be bathed in permanent sunlight, so you won’t eve see any stars,” astronaut Andy Thomas explained to me. “All you’ll see is black.”
Mary Roach. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (via coneyislands)
It’s a long ways down. This is a view from the vantage point of astronaut Shane Kimbrough during his spacewalk last Friday outside the International Space Station. Shane posted this photo and wrote, “ View of our spectacular planet (and my boots) during the #spacewalk yesterday with @Thom_astro.” During the spacewalk with Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet of ESA, which lasted just over six-and-a-half hours, the two astronauts successfully disconnected cables and electrical connections to prepare for its robotic move Sunday, March 26.
Two astronauts will venture outside the space station again this Thursday, March 30 for the second of three spacewalks. Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson will begin spacewalk preparation live on NASA Television starting at 6:30 a.m. EST, with activities beginning around 8 a.m. Watch live online here.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Where to look, and when.
We’re getting theoretical here, and not just astronomy theory but particle theory. That’s right, it’s a dark matter podcast! Learn what some astronomers think it is and why other astronomers think there are better explanations for certain nutty galactic phenomena. Hear about MACHOs and WIMPs! Also learn what dark matter is too hot, too cold, too medium, or just right!
Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a vocab list, a timeline of the scientists I mention, and the transcript of this episode. Tell me what you think I should research next by messaging me here, tweeting at me at @HDandtheVoid, or asking me to my face if you know me in real life. And please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, rate it and maybe review it, and tell friends if you think they’d like to listen!
(There’s a lot of ever-evolving info about dark matter and I was not able to cover all of it in just one episode, so get excited to hear about dark matter’s friend, dark energy, on November 6th. My thoughts on the episode after that are still the Voyager golden records, space race history, the transit of Venus, the Moon landing, or Edmond Halley. Let me know what you think!)
Glossary
astroparticle physics - the interface between astrophysics and particle physics.
baryons - heaviest particles. Ex. Protons, neutrons. In astroparticle physics, electrons are included in baryonic matter.
bosons - particles that can exist in the same state at the same location at the same time. Ex. Photons, Higgs boson.
cosmic microwave background radiation - the electromagnetic radiation left over from the time of recombination in Big Bang cosmology.
dark matter - a theoretical mass made up of unknown particles that have not been created on Earth. It is used to explain why galaxy clusters have 10x the mass that their light output suggests they would have; why distant stars on the edges of spiral galaxies orbit at the same speed as stars near the center of the galaxy; and the accretion of gases that created galaxies at the beginning of the universe.
fermions - particles that cannot exist in the same state at the same location at the same time. Ex. Protons, neutrons, electrons, leptons.
gravitational lensing - when light from more distant sources passes near a massive star, galaxy, or galaxy cluster and the object’s gravity bends the light like a lens to provide a warped angle view of space.
leptons - lightest particles. Ex. Electrons, neutrinos, tau particles, muons.
MACHO - acronym for MAssive Compact Halo Object. Made of baryonic matter, these objects are a theoretical explanation that takes the place of dark matter and include neutron stars, black holes, or brown dwarfs.
mesons - medium-weight particles. Ex. Pions, kaons.
Planck satellite - a spacecraft that operated from 2009 to 2012. It measured the dark matter content of the universe by looking at the cosmic microwave background radiation and seeing how dark matter clumped and drew the regular matter together to form galaxies.
WIMP - acronym for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. Theoretical particles that can pass through ordinary matter without affecting it.
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe - a spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 which measured temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background radiation leftover from the Big Bang.
Transcript
Sources
Fritz Zwicky via the Swedish Morphological Society
Fritz Zwicky via the American Museum of Natural History
Zwicky: “Astronomers are spherical bastards. No matter how you look at them they are just bastards“
Vera Rubin via the American Museum of Natural History
Vera Rubin via Astronomy Magazine
Morton Roberts’ 2007 article on dark matter via Harvard
Particle classifications via PhysicsNet.co.uk
Leptons via Georgia State University, copyright 2001 and all written by Carl “Rod” Nave, who has a teaching award named after him at GSU. Go Rod!
Fermions and bosons via The Particle Adventure
MOND theory by Mordehai Milgrom, published in Scientific American Aug. 2002
Newton’s Second Law of Motion via NASA
MACHOs and WIMPs via NASA
MACHOs and WIMPs via the Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Bertone, Gianfranco. Behind the Scenes of the Universe: From the Higgs to Dark Matter. Oxford U P: Oxford, 2013.
Tucker, Wallace H. Chandra’s Cosmos: Dark Matter, Black Holes, and Other Wonders Revealed by NASA’s Premier X-Ray Observatory. Smithsonian Books: Washington, D.C, 2017.
“a mysterious force that causes the observed accelerating expansion of the universe” (3).
“sterile neutrinos, axions, asymmetric dark matter, mirror dark matters, and extradimensional dark matter” (23).
“the concentration of dark matter is leveling off, rather than peaking sharply, in the central regions of this cluster” (31).
Timeline
Albert Einstein, German/Austrian (1879-1955)
Edwin Hubble, American (1889-1953)
Walter Baade, German (1893-1960)
Fritz Zwicky, Swiss (1898-1974)
Enrico Fermi, Italian (1901-1954)
Morton S. Roberts, American (1926- )
Vera Rubin, American (1928-2016)
Peter Higgs, English (1929- )
Kent Ford, American (1931- )
Mordehai Milgrom, Israeli (1946- )
Romeel Dave
Rachel Somerville
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Darkmatter’ by Andrew Bird off his album Fingerlings 3
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
I imagine most people wanted to be astronauts when they learned it was a job they could have - I certainly did! And then I thought about it and realized podcasting about outer space was much less scary and much more achievable than becoming an astronaut, with the bonus of not having to wonder how hard I’d panic in an enclosed-yet-surrounded-by-vastness space. There have been a lot of people braver than me who went to space, and some of them went to space on long-term missions lasting months or a year, living on the International Space Station (or the historical equivalent, depending on when in history this happened). Learn what resources are available to ISS astronauts, and what risks there are out there (apart from the obvious ones).
Sorry I missed last week, but it was New Year’s and I don’t feel very guilty. Get excited about more space podcasts in 2018, though! Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a vocab list, and the transcript of this episode. I bolded any videos or sources that I mentioned in the podcast, if you’re looking for those specifically. Go ahead and suggest what you think I should research next by messaging me here, tweeting at me at @HDandtheVoid, or asking me to my face if you know me. Please subscribe on iTunes, rate it and maybe review it, and tell friends if you think they’d like to hear it!
(My thoughts on the next episode are more about astronauts, or I could go into the transit of Venus. I have a couple books about space I should really get into reading… The next episode will go up January 22nd.)
Glossary
free fall - the downward movement of an object that is due to the force of gravity alone.
gravity - the phenomenon which causes all things with mass to move towards each other. On the universal scale, this is caused by the warping of spacetime by objects with large mass, e.g. stars and planets, and is explained through Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
microgravity - the state of perpetual free fall in a gravity field.
orbit - the gravitationally curved trajectory of an object, e.g. the trajectory of a satellite around a planet.
Script/Transcript
Sources
Yuri Gagarin via NASA
Microgravity via NASA (Feb 2012)
The history of astronaut life via the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
Menstruation in space via National Geographic (Apr 2016)
The Air We Breathe via the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Breathing Easy on the Space Station via NASA (Nov 2000)
Jay Perry: “the chemical-mechanical systems are much more compact, less labor intensive, and more reliable than a plant-based system.”
Astronaut’s Home Videos Show How to Cook in Space via Space.com (Mar 2013)
Astronaut Hygiene: How to Wash Your Hair In Space (Video) via Space.com (July 2013)
Interview with former astronaut Prof. Jeremy Hoffman via the University of Leicester
A day in the life aboard the International Space Station via NASA (2015)
Zvezda Module Overview via NASA
Food for Space Flight via Nasa (Feb 2004)
John Glenn via NASA (Feb 2012)
Crew From U.S., Russia and Japan Expands Space Population to Six via NASA (Dec 2017)
ISS blog with experiment updates via NASA
Astronaut daily life via ESA (Nov 2012)
The Skylab 4 Mutiny, 1973 via libcom.org (Apr 2004)
Carr: “On the ground, I don’t think we would be expected to work a 16-hour day for 85 days, and so I really don’t see why we should even try to do it up here.”
‘Space Oddity’ by Chris Hadfield via YouTube
Interview with astronaut Chris Hadfield via NPR (Oct 2013)
Col. Chris Hadfield: “The contrast of your body and your mind inside … essentially a one-person spaceship, which is your spacesuit, where you’re holding on for dear life to the shuttle or the station with one hand, and you are inexplicably in between what is just a pouring glory of the world roaring by, silently next to you — just the kaleidoscope of it, it takes up your whole mind. It’s like the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen just screaming at you on the right side, and when you look left, it’s the whole bottomless black of the universe and it goes in all directions. It’s like a huge yawning endlessness on your left side and you’re in between those two things and trying to rationalize it to yourself and trying to get some work done.”
Excerpt from memoir by former astronaut Scott Kelly via the Sunday Morning Herald (Oct 2017)
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Major Tom’ by Shiny Toy Guns off their album Major Tom.
Background Music: ‘Leaves’ by Patients aka Ben Cooper, who primarily releases music as Radical Face but also has at least three other bands or band names he’s working with/has released music as.
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
Space Station Crew Members Walk In Space to Connect Docking Adapter Component
Outside the International Space Station, Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson of NASA conducted a spacewalk March 30 to connect the newly relocated Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 (PMA-3) to the Harmony module in preparation for the delivery of an International Docking Adapter to PMA-3 to which U.S. commercial crew spacecraft will link up to in the years ahead. The mating adapter was robotically relocated from the port side of the Tranquility module to Harmony March 26 by ground controllers. Kimbrough and Whitson also installed the second of two upgraded computer relay boxes on the station’s truss and installed shields and covers over PMA-3 and the vacant port on Tranquility to which the PMA had been attached. It was the 199th spacewalk in support of space station assembly and maintenance, the sixth in Kimbrough’s career and the eighth for Whitson, who surpassed NASA’s Suni Williams for most spacewalks and most aggregate spacewalking time by a female.
A podcast project to fill the space in my heart and my time that used to be filled with academic research. In 2018, that space gets filled with... MORE SPACE! Cheerfully researched, painstakingly edited, informal as hell, definitely worth everyone's time.
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