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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Latest Posts by fillthevoid-with-space - Page 3
I was away at PodCon this weekend! It was a lovely time. Listening to people for 8 hours a day was exhausting, which I should have expected but I fully did not anticipate. I slept on a friend’s floor and passed out homemade business cards shaped like business bookmarks. It was a fun opportunity to use my typewriter! I reused some old cardstock that an office where I temped was going to throw away and I gave out 35 of 36, which is extremely successful in my book. I have some new podcasts to listen to and one or two that I want to contact about guesting on (I could go OFF about Tycho Brahe on Historical Hotties, if no one has already).
It was interesting trying to network and seeing what’s out there right now. It really is anyone’s game, podcasting. You just need time, motivation, and an idea. I shouldn’t be surprised, it was easy enough for me to do it. The hard part, of course, is getting folks to listen. There were tips I overheard about advertising yourselves and such but it still seems like it just depends on what market you tap into? I don’t know, I think the big thing is content and just persisting. I’ve seen it with podcasts I found that have a season or two and they’re gone. Sometimes it’s because they wrapped up and that’s great! Other times I wish there’d been more.
It was more fun than it was work, though! And it was so small for a con, I was relieved. The only other con I’ve gone to was Emerald City, which was also in the Washington State Convention Center, and that was Too Much. This one was a decent size. I hope it happens again! It was kind of inspiring to realize I’m part of a much, much, much larger movement of people who want to talk and made it happen.
Stargazing is a difficult task, especially under adverse weather conditions, but human beings have also made it much harder for ourselves with all these pesky electrical lights and such. Light pollution affects vast swathes of inhabited land, but the introduction of Dark Sky Reserves helps to improve observational conditions for amateur and professional astronomers. Today, you get to hear more about Dark Sky Reserves as well as the Bortle Scale, which is used to judge the amount of light pollution affecting stargazing within an area.
Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a vocab list, and the transcript of this episode. 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 space race history, the transit of Venus, Shen Kuo, or Walter Baade. The next episode will be up on December 18th.)
Glossary
airglow - a very faint, bluish, naturally occurring glow that hangs around the horizon on Earth, usually within about 15 degrees of the horizon line.
Bortle Scale - an objective scale to measure the clarity and effect of light pollution on a night’s stargazing. Black and grey zones are the best for stargazing, blue is for rural skies, green and yellow are the rural/suburban transition zone, orange is the suburban sky, red is bright suburbia, and white is for cities and inner cities.
deep-sky object - any cosmological object that isn’t individual stars or something from our Solar System. It’s a classification that includes nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters, and it has its roots in amateur astronomy.
ecliptic - the path of the Sun across the sky over the course of a year.
gegenschein - a faint brightening in the night sky directly opposite the Sun. Astronomers think it’s caused by the reflection of sunlight off of dust ejected by comets or resulting from asteroid destruction.
light pollution - the excessive, misdirected, or intrusive use of artificial, human-made lighting. There are several major types of light pollution:
glare - when too-bright and poorly directed lights blind people.
light trespass - when neighboring lights are so bright that their light spills over and illuminates others’ property.
overillumination - when excessive lights are used in a small area.
skyglow - the visible glow caused by light scattering and reflecting off of the droplets of atmospheric molecules.
lumen - a measurement of a light’s brightness.
magnitude - the measurement of a star’s brightness as seen from Earth. The brighter it is, the lower its magnitude value. Ex. the Sun has an apparent magnitude of -27.
Messier object - a deep-sky object included on a list of 103-110 deep-sky objects made by Charles Messier and his colleagues in the 18th century in an attempt to prevent fuzzy, bright objects from being confused with comets.
zodiacal light - a faint brightening in the night sky along the ecliptic that results from sunlight scattered forward off dust in the direction of the Sun.
Transcript
Sources
Sodium lamp light pollution reduction effects via Flagstaff Dark Skies Coalition
Types of light pollution via the British Astronomical Association’s Campaign for Dark Skies, 2009
Light pollution via Sky and Telescope, Dec 2008
The World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness via the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute
Lumens and watts via Lowes
UNESCO World Heritage Site list
Invention of the light bulb via SPS Industrial
Lightbulb components via CIO
Walter Baade bio via the Royal Astronomy Society of Canada
International Dark-Sky Association
“An IDA International Dark Sky Reserve is a public or private land possessing an exceptional or distinguished quality of starry nights and nocturnal environment that is specifically protected for its scientific, natural, educational, cultural, heritage and/or public enjoyment. Reserves consist of a core area meeting minimum criteria for sky quality and natural darkness, and a peripheral area that supports dark sky preservation in the core. Reserves are formed through a partnership of multiple land managers who have recognized the value of the natural nighttime environment through regulations and long-term planning.”
“The core area must provide an exceptional dark sky resource, relative to the communities and cities that surround it, where the night sky brightness is routinely equal to or darker than 20 magnitudes per square arc second.”
John Bortle’s article on his magnitude scale via Sky and Telescope, July 2006
“I have created a nine-level scale. It is based on nearly 50 years of observing experience. I hope it will prove both enlightening and useful to observers — though it may stun or even horrify some! Should it come into wide use, it would provide a consistent standard for comparing observations with light pollution.”
John E. Bortle receives the Leslie C. Peltier Award in 2013 via the Astronomical Society
Bortle dark sky scale via Big Sky Astronomy Club
Bortle dark sky scale via LSU
Gegenschein via Sky and Telescope, Oct 2015
Messier List via Fred Espenak’s website, Astropixels
Caldwell List via Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS)
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘New Son/Burnt Iron’ by Trampled by Turtles off their album Palomino
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
The process of making an audio and visual compilation to explain Earth and humanity to an alien species is an incredible undertaking, and Carl Sagan undertook it in 1977. The resulting record from his little team was sent out with the Voyager 1 and 2 probes and is now in interstellar space, but there was also a more personal result of this project. Learn about Sagan and his third wife’s meet-cute and also hear what is actually out there in the stars, conveying the best humanity had to offer in the 70s.
Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a vocab list, and the transcript of this episode. Vote on 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!
(My thoughts on the next episode are space race history, the transit of Venus, Edmond Halley, or Dark Sky Preserves. Next episode will be up on December 4th.)
Glossary
electroencephalography (EEG) - a recording that displays brainwave activity by measuring the electrical impulses of neurons firing in the brain
heliosheath - the outer region of the heliosphere. It is just beyond termination shock, the point where solar wind abruptly slows down and becomes denser and hotter as it presses outward against the approaching wind in interstellar space.
heliosphere - a huge wind sock-shaped bubble that extends beyond Pluto’s orbit and contains our solar system, solar wind, and the entire solar magnetic field.
Transcript
Sources
Drunk History episode transcript
Golden record via NASA
Carl Sagan via Smithsonian Magazine, March 2014
Carl Sagan via Biography.com
Carl Sagan via National Geographic
The Voyager project love story via NASA
Ann Druyen: “We know that EEG patterns register some changes in thought. Would it be possible, I wondered, for a highly advanced technology of several million years from now to actually decipher human thoughts?"
Ann Druyen: "a mental itinerary of the ideas and individuals of history whose memory I hoped to perpetuate."
Ann Druyen: "My feelings as a 27-year-old woman, madly fallen in love, they're on that record. It's forever. It'll be true 100 million years from now. For me, Voyager is a kind of joy so powerful, it robs you of your fear of death."
Arthur C. Clarke: "Please leave me alone; let me go on to the stars."
How 8-track tapes work via 8 Track Heaven
How vinyl records work via The Guardian, June 2010
Golden record via Smithsonian Magazine, April 2012
Golden record via the JPL at NASA
Golden record retrospective by Timothy Ferris via The New Yorker, August 2017
Voyager Golden Record - Greetings In 55 Languages via YouTube
The 116 images NASA wants aliens to see via YouTube
The Voyagers documentary by Penny Lane via Brain Pickings
Ann Druyen: “Carl and I knew we were the beneficiaries of chance, that pure chance could be so kind that we could find one another in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. We knew that every moment should be cherished as the precious and unlikely coincidence that it was.”
Article on Sagan’s divorce from Linda Salzman Sagan via People, December 1980
Article on Sagan’s divorce from Linda Salzman Sagan via The Cornell Daily Sun, March 1981
Voyager record available on Soundcloud via Cosmos Magazine
Golden record now available for purchase via The Atlantic, August 2017
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground’ by Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945) off the album Dark Was The Night ‘Carl Sagan’ by Loch Lomond off their album Paper The Walls
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
(I broke the last link, whoops)
Another week of theory, but no fun new particles. Instead, hear me try to say a lot of names of scientists or their eponymous equations as I talk about dark energy in the universe! Learn what some astronomers think it is and why other astronomers think there are better explanations for certain nutty galactic phenomena.
Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a vocab list, and the transcript of this episode. Let your voice be heard and 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!
(If anything about dark matter or dark energy or cosmic microwave background radiation confused you over the past few podcasts, for sure send me your questions so I can ask someone more qualified than me—my doctorate student friend! My thoughts on the next episode are still the Voyager golden records, space race history, the transit of Venus, the Moon landing, Edmond Halley, or Dark Sky Preserves and it will be up on November 20th.)
Glossary
baryons - heaviest particles. Ex. Protons, neutrons. In astroparticle physics, electrons are included in baryonic matter.
cosmic microwave background radiation - the electromagnetic radiation left over from the time of recombination in Big Bang cosmology.
dark energy - a theoretical force made up of unknown, undetectable energy. It is used to explain why the universe is expanding more rapidly over time instead of slowing its expansion.
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.
fundamental forces - four fundamental forces in our current model of the universe: the strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and gravity.
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.
Transcript
Sources
Dark energy via NASA
Dark energy via Hubble
“The strangeness of dark energy is thrilling.”
Fundamental forces via Georgia State University
Dark energy via Science Magazine (April 2017)
László Dobos: “We assume that every region of the universe determines its expansion rate itself.”
Dark energy and the South Pole Telescope via Smithsonian Magazine (April 2010)
“Knowing what dark matter is would help scientists think about how the structure of the universe forms. Knowing what dark energy does would help scientists think about how that structure has evolved over time—and how it will continue to evolve.”
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Even The Darkness Has Arms’ by The Barr Brothers off their album The Sleeping Operator
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
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
Oh my gosh this is incredibly exciting! Imagine combining them with a Star Wars LEGO set...
I talked about spaghettification but someone did one better and made a dang cute comic about it!
Starry Greetings!
This week’s comic: Spaghettification
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGn_w-3pjMc
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/what-if/what-if-fell-into-black-hole2.htm
The 10-billion-year life cycle of the Sun, illustrated by David Meltzer for National Geographic, May 1974.
Why do the Sun and Moon move the way they do? What’s up with that? Orbits? What? It’s a short but snug little episode here about the Sun and the Moon and how they look from Earth as they zoom across the sky.
Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a vocab list, the transcript of this episode, a composite image of the different phases of the Moon, and a list of the different names for the full moons through the course of a year. Let me know 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 or review it, and maybe tell your friends about it if you think they’d like to listen!
(My thoughts on the next episode, because I still haven’t found the time to cover them, are the Voyager golden records, space race history, the transit of Venus, the Moon landing, or Edmond Halley. Let me know by the 6th and I’ll hopefully have the next podcast up on October 16th.)
Glossary
blue moon - when you get two full moons in one calendar month. An older definition is when you get 4 full moons in a season, the third moon is called the ‘blue moon.’
ecliptic - the path of the Sun over the course of a year.
prograde - when a planet spins from east to west.
retrograde - when a planet spins from west to east.
spaghettification - when extreme tidal forces pull an object apart in space.
Script/Transcript
Sources
Rising and setting times of the Sun on Earth via Cornell University
Seasons on Earth via Cornell University
Lunar phases and the Moon’s relationship to the Sun via Harvard
Tides via Hyperphysics
Tidal forces equation via AstronomyOnline.org
Tidal forces and spaghettification via NASA handout
Lunar phases composite via Fred Espenak
Names of the different full moons throughout the year via EarthSky.org
Blue moons via EarthSky.org
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘See The Constellation’ by They Might Be Giants off their album Apollo 18
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
The hardest part of determining longitude was figuring out how sailors could find their longitudinal coordinates at sea. There were a lot of methods proposed but adding a ship into the equation makes precision difficult. Learn about the Longitude Act of 1714 and how, even though this podcast loves astronomy, the astronomical method might not always be the best option.
Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a timeline of the astronomers and engineers and clockmakers I mention, a vocab list, a really cool resource that lets you drag continents all over a flattened map of Earth to compare their sizes at different latitudes, and the transcript of this episode. Let me know 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 check out the podcast on iTunes, rate it or review it if you’d like, subscribe, and maybe tell your friends about it if you think they’d like to listen!
(My thoughts on the next episode were the Voyager golden records, space race history, the transit of Venus, or maybe something about the Moon landing. I’m loving Edmond Halley again these days, too. I’m prepping to interview a friend about her graduate-level research into the history of the universe and possibly dark matter, too. Let me know by the 20th and I’ll hopefully have the next podcast up on September 25th! If not then, I’ll push for October 2nd.)
Glossary
azimuth - a section of the horizon measured between a fixed point and the vertical circle passing through the center of an object. See example in the link.
equator - Earth’s zero line of latitude. It’s the place on Earth where the Sun is directly overhead at noon on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.
kamal - an Arabic navigation tool consisting of a knotted string and a piece of wood. A navigator would tie a knot in the string and, by holding it in their teeth, sight the North Star along the top of the wooden piece and the horizon along the bottom. To return home, the navigator would sail north or south to bring Polaris to the altitude they had observed in their home port, then turn left or right and sail down the latitude, keeping Polaris at a constant angle. Over time, Arab navigators started tying knots at regular intervals of a fingerwidth, called an issbah, that’s about 1 degree and 36 minutes.
magnetosphere - an invisible barrier that surrounds a celestial objet. It is often generated by the movement of the liquid metal core of the object. Around a planet, it deflects high-energy, charged particles called cosmic rays that can either come from the Sun or, less often, from interstellar space.
prime meridian - Earth’s zero degree of longitude. In current maps and time zones, this invisible, imaginary line runs through London, England.
sextant - a device used to determine an observer’s location based on the observation of a known celestial object and a lot of calculation. It is still in use by sailors.
tropic of cancer - a line of latitude that marks where the Sun will be at noon on the summer solstice.
tropic of capricorn - a line of latitude that marks where the Sun will be at noon on the winter solstice.
Script/Transcript
Sources
Longitude at Sea via The Galileo Project at Rice University
Vitamin C necessity via University of Maryland Medical Center
Scurvy via NHS
Scurvy via the Encyclopedia Britannica online
An interactive map that shows how our current map distorts land masses by letting you compare different countries’ sizes.
Sobel, Dava. Longitude. Walker & Co.; New York, 1995.
“anyone living below the Equator would melt into deformity from the horrible heat” (3).
“It simply urged Parliament to welcome potential solutions from any field of science or art, put forth by individuals or groups of any nationality, and to reward success handsomely” (53).
Timeline
Claudius Ptolemy, Greek (100-170 CE)
Johannes Werner (in Latin, Ioannis Vernerus), German (1468-1522)
Tycho Brahe, Danish (1541-1601)
Galileo Galilei, Italian (1564-1642)
Giovanni Cassini (in French, Jean-Dominique Cassini), Italian/French (1625-1712)
Christiaan Huygens, Dutch (1629-1695)
Sir Isaac Newton, English (1642-1726/7)
Ole Rømer, Danish (1644-1710)
John Flamsteed, English (1646-1719)
Edmond Halley, English (1656-1742)
John Hadley, English (1682-1744)
John Harrison, English (1693-1776)
Thomas Godfrey, American (1704-1749)
John Bird, English (1709-1776)
Larcum Kendall, English (1719-1790)
James Cook, English (1728-1779)
Nevil Maskelyne, English (1732-1811)
John Arnold, English (1736-1799)
Thomas Earnshaw, English (1749-1829)
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
Great detail of the famous crawler that transported the mighty Saturn V and all the space shuttles to the launch pads. An engineering feat in its own right.
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)
The last look before her descent in fire…
Happy Labor Day. Today I learned about probably the first strike to happen IN SPACE.
YO THAT SHIT BALLER AS FUCK HOLY SHIT
An episode late is better than none at all! Hear about satellites, space probes, orbiters, and landers through history.
Below the cut are sources, music credits, an awesome infographic showing all the satellites currently in orbit around Earth, a vocab list, and the transcript of this episode. Let me know 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 check out the podcast on iTunes, rate it or review it if you’d like, subscribe, and maybe tell your friends about it if you think they’d like to listen!
(My thoughts on the next episode were space race history, the transit of Venus, or maybe something about the Moon landing. I’m prepping to interview a friend about her graduate-level research into the history of the universe and possibly dark matter, too. Let me know by the 8th and I’ll hopefully have the next podcast up on September 18th!)
Glossary
Clarke Belt - an area of geostationary orbit in Earth’s atmosphere, 35,786 km directly above the equator, where a satellite orbits the Earth at the same speed the Earth is rotating.
geostationary orbit - when an object orbits directly above the equator and appears stationary to observers on Earth’s surface.
geosynchronous orbit - when an object orbits Earth at an orbital period that matches Earth's rotation on its axis. From the perspective of an observer on Earth's surface, the object would return to the exact same position in the sky after a period of one day.
gyroscopes - a device consisting of several rings that spin freely around different axes. The rapidly rotating wheel has a large moment of inertia and therefore resists change from the plane in which it is rotated. Large gyroscopes allow for steady navigation of ships, submarines, and space ships. See examples in the link.
heliosheath - the outer region of the heliosphere. It is just beyond termination shock, the point where solar wind abruptly slows down and becomes denser and hotter as it presses outward against the approaching wind in interstellar space.
heliosphere - a huge wind sock-shaped bubble that extends beyond Pluto’s orbit and contains our solar system, solar wind, and the entire solar magnetic field.
lander - a spacecraft launched with the intent to land it, unharmed and fully functioning, on the surface of an object that is astronomical in nature. It is aimed at a specific target that astronomers want to learn more about and investigates the object at the surface level. It can be manned or unmanned.
orbiter - an unmanned spacecraft launched with the intent to bring it into orbit around a larger body in order to study that body. It is similar to a satellite but does not orbit Earth.
probe - an unmanned machine sent into space to collect data. It is aimed at a specific target that astronomers want to learn more about.
spacecraft - a pilot-able vehicle used for traveling in space. It can be manned or unmanned.
Van Allen Belts - belts of radiation in Earth’s atmosphere.
Transcript
Sources
Timeline of space exploration to 2013 via the National Archives
Timeline of NASA, the space shuttle, and near-Earth space flights
Space exploration timeline via Sea and Sky
Gyroscope definition via USC
Infographic on satellites launched 1950-1978 via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
List of satellites via Wikipedia
A history of Sputnik via an excerpt from Paul Dickson’s book Sputnik: The Shock of the Century on PBS
“Instead of being concerned with winning the first round of the space race, Eisenhower and his National Security Council were much more interested in launching surveillance satellites that could tell American intelligence where every Soviet missile was located.”
Explorer 1 overview via NASA
Vanguard 1 overview via NASA
SCORE overview via the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Pioneer lunar mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Various probe/satellite mission overviews via NASA
Australian WRESAT mission via Australia’s Department of Defence
Pioneer expeditions via NASA
Mariner 10 mission overview via NASA
Magellan mission overview via NASA
Synthetic aperture radar overview via radartutorial.edu
MESSENGER mission overview via JHU Applied Physics Lab
Mariner missions to Venus overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Mariner missions to Mars overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
“The final Mariner to Mars, however, was the lab’s greatest planetary success to date.”
Mariner 9 via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Viking mission overview via NASA
Pathfinder/Sojourner mission overview via NASA
Opportunity mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Spirit mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Curiosity rover via NASA
Pioneer 10 mission overview via NASA
Pioneer 11 mission overview via NASA
Juno mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Cassini-Huygens mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Voyager mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
“The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.”
Voyager mission trackers via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Heliosphere definition via NASA
Heliosheath definition via NASA
New Horizons mission overview via NASA
Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory via NASA
Chandra X-Ray Observatory via NASA
Spitzer Space Telescope via CalTech
Einstein Observatory (HEAO-2) via NASA
International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) via NASA
International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) via ESA
Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) via NASA
Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA, formerly ASTRO-D) via NASA archives
Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) via JHU
Active space probe/observatory missions via NASA
Chandrayaan-1 via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Hayabusa 2 mission overview via NASA
Hayabusa-2’s twitter account
A map of every active satellite orbiting Earth via Quartz
Union of Concerned Scientists Satellite Database
Cul-de-Sac comic by Richard Thompson
“Well, there’s dust everywhere, and there’s all kinds of trash—food wrappers and broken parts of things and gloves and shoes. And gas giants and black holes and rocks and dirt. And there’s old TV shows and strange creatures and there’s unidentifiable stuff that no one can explain. And it’s expanding all the time. Toss in a few trillion stuffed toys and it’d be just like your room.”
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Satellite’ by Guster off their album Ganging Up On The Sun
Filler Music: ‘Sunn’ by Radical Face off his album Sunn Moonn Eclippse. Check out the video in the album link, it’s amazing.
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught.
Inner corona and prominences during Monday’s total solar eclipse
via reddit
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.
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
What is so special about the solar eclipse to you??
Huh, that’s a very good question and I probably answer it differently each time I get asked it. I love the fact that in totality you can see the solar atmosphere and get a chance to see the magnetic field structure of the Sun. This is something that you can’t normally do. I also love the idea that we’re going to be able to test a bunch of ionospheric models with the help of citizen scientist! This again is a very unique opportunity! But probably the thing that seems so special about this particular eclipse is seeing how excited everyone is about it! Most days I sit in my office working on my science (which I think is the best science and most interesting thing in the world- but I’m probably biased about that) and not too many other people in the world are all that excited about it. But with the eclipse, I get to share how cool this science is, and it’s amazing to see everyone get involved!
TELLURIAN
[adjective]
1. of or characteristic of the earth or its inhabitants; terrestrial.
[noun]
2. an inhabitant of the earth.
3. Tellurion: an apparatus for showing the manner in which the diurnal rotation and annual revolution of the earth and the obliquity of its axis produce the alternation of day and night and the changes of the seasons.
Etymology: from Latin tellūs, “the earth” + -ian, "of, relating to, or resembling".
[Frank Moth - We Used To Live There]
I’ve been dropping the word ‘spectroscopy’ with only minimal explanation for quite a few episodes now and it’s high time I expanded on this topic. Join me for the double-digit episode of this podcast to learn about the history of spectroscopes and spectroscopy, how it taught us about the Sun and stars, and what advancements were made to take spectroscopes into the 20th century.
Below the cut are sources, music credits, a vocabulary list, a timeline of all the astronomers and chemist and physicists I mention, and the transcript of this episode. Let me know 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 check out the podcast on iTunes, rate it or review it if you’d like, subscribe, and maybe tell your friends about it if you think they’d like to listen!
(My thoughts on the next episode were probes through the ages or the transit of Venus. I could also talk about more modern spectroscopy, and I’m planning to interview a friend after the eclipse next week about her graduate-level research into the history of the universe. Let me know by the 17th and I’ll have the next podcast up on August 28th, barring any new-job-related delays.)
Glossary
absorption lines - dark spectral lines that appear in a spectroscope when a gaseous or burned-up element has light shone through it.
angstrom - a unit of length—one hundred-millionth of a centimeter—that is usually used to express wavelengths and the distances in atoms.
emission lines - bright spectral lines that appear in a spectroscope when you burn an element up.
Fraunhofer lines - a standard set of spectral absorption lines observed by Joseph von Fraunhofer. He mapped 574 lines and designated them alphabetically from red to violet in the spectrum with the letters A through K, with weaker lines assigned other, lowercase letters.
incandescent - luminous or glowing due to intense heat.
spectroscopy - the study of light from an incandescent source (or, more recently, electromagnetic radiation and other radiative energy) that has its wavelength dispersed by a prism or other spectroscopic device that can disperse an object’s wavelength. The spectra of distant astronomical objects like the Sun, stars, or nebulae are patterns of absorption lines that correspond to elements that these objects are made up of. This area of study is the major source of the study of astrophysics as well as advancements in chemistry, astronomy, and quantum mechanics.
Script/Transcript
Sources
Prisms vs. diffraction gratings via CSIRO
Definition of ‘angstrom’ via Encyclopedia Brittanica
Definition of ‘incandescent’ via Merriam-Webster
Current uses of spectroscopy in astronomy
Some past and current satellites with spectroscopic capabilities via a John Hopkin’s professor’s old webpage
Spectral classification of stars via University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Common, A. A. “Astronomy.” In Popular Astronomy 8 (1900), 417-24. Located on Google Books preview.
Hirshfeld, Alan. Starlight Detectives. Bellevue Library Press: NY, 2014.
“the Fraunhofer lines, as they were soon to be called, originate in the sun itself, and are neither optical artifacts of the spectroscope nor the result of selective absorption of sunlight within earth’s atmosphere” (168-9).
“the flame’s radiance did not ‘fill in’ the dark D [sodium] lines , as [Kirchhoff] had expected, but reinforced the absorption of these wavelengths of light” (178).
Kirchhoff: “the dark lines of the solar spectrum … exist in the consequence of the presence, in the incandescent atmosphere of the sun, of those substances which in the spectrum of a flame produce bright lines in the same plane” (178).
“a body with a propensity to emit light at a given wavelength must have an equal propensity to absorb light at that wavelength” (178).
“expresses the wavelength of a spectral line, depending on its derivation angle and the density of grooves in the grating” (187).
“mosaic of the solar spectrum assembled from prints of twenty-eight negatives” (187).
“visual confirmation of the chemical unity of the Sun and stars” (203).
Doppler “claimed in 1842 that the perceived frequency of a wave is altered by one’s state of motion” (209).
“In Doppler’s schema, waves from a steadily approaching source are compressed: as their frequency is increased, their wavelength is shortened. Waves from a steadily receding source are stretched: as their frequency is reduced, their wavelength is elongated” (210).
“Yet history has shown that credit for an evolving theory or field, such as stellar spectrum photography, often goes not to individuals who are first to publish, but to those who most convincingly establish the validity and worth of their results” (223).
“Vogel confirmed that the Sun does not rotate as a solid body; Its rotation rate varies with solar latitude, fastest at the equator, progressively slower towards the poles” (231).
“The deviation of the star’s G line from its solar position revealed the star’s Doppler shift and, via a mathematical formula, its line-of-sight motion” (232).
“What Pickering had accomplished for stellar spectral classification with the Henry Draper project, Campbell had accomplished for stellar radial velocities with the Lick catalog” (233).
Johnson, George. Miss Leavitt’s Stars. Atlas Books: NY, 2005.
“When Kirchhoff and Bunsen made the discovery, the existence of atoms was still controversial. Once they were discovered, the effect could be simply understood: when an atom is energized, its electrons jump into higher orbits. When they fall back down they emit various frequencies of light. Every kind of atom is built a little differently, its electrons arrayed in a specific way, resulting in a characteristic pattern. For similar reasons, if you shine a light through a gaseous substance, like hydrogen or helium, certain colors will be filtered out. The result in this case is a characteristic pattern of black ‘absorption’ lines interrupting the spectrum—another unique chemical fingerprint. (The same colors marked by the absorption lines would appear as bright emission lines if the element was burned.)” (102-103).
Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. 2nd ed. Simon & Schuster: NY, 2012.
Timeline
William Herschel, German/English (1738-1822)
Thomas Melvill, American (1751-1832)
William Hyde Wollaston, English (1766-1828)
David Brewster, Scottish (1781-1868)
Françoise Arago, French (1786-1853)
Joseph von Fraunhofer, Bavarian (1787-1826)
William Henry Fox Talbot, English (1800–1877)
George Airy, English (1801-1892)
Christian Doppler, Austrian (1803-1853)
Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, German (1811-1899)
Anders Ångström, Swedish (1814-1874)
Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, American (1816-1892)
William Allen Miller, English (1817-1870)
Pietro Angelo Secchi, Italian (1818-1878)
Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau, French (1819-1896)
William Huggins, English (1824-1910)
Gustav Kirchhoff, German (1824-1887)
Giovanni Battista Donati, Italian (1826-1873)
James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish (1831-1879)
Henry Draper, American (1837–1882)
Mary Anna Palmer Draper, American (1839–1914)
Hermann Carl Vogel, German (1841-1907)
Edward Charles Pickering, American (1846–1919)
Margaret Lindsay Huggins, Irish/English (1848-1915)
Henry Augustus Rowland, American (1848-1901)
Williamina “Mina” Fleming, Scottish (1857–1911)
William Wallace Campbell, American (1862-1938)
Annie Jump Cannon, American (1863-1941)
Antonia Maury, American (1866-1952)
Vesto Melvin Slipher, American (1875-1969)
Edwin Hubble, American (1889-1953)
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
In the ancient world (and, honestly, today too) there’s nothing spookier than the sky doing something weird. Auroras, meteors, comets, and eclipses all fell under the category of scary, prophetic bad omens, but don’t worry! In this podcast I explain what they are! There are also some opportunities to see these astronomical events in action coming up. The annual Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak August 11-13 and there will be a total eclipse of the Sun (or a partial eclipse, depending where you’re viewing it from) across North America on August 21, 2017.
Below the cut are sources, music credits, vocabulary list, and the transcript of this episode. Check out the glossary, it’s a big one! There are also some cool eclipse-viewing resources I’ll highlight so you can view this phenomenon safely.
Let me know what you think I should research by messaging me here, tweeting at me at @HDandtheVoid, or asking me to my face if you know me in real life. And please check out the podcast on iTunes, rate it or review it if you’d like, subscribe, and maybe tell your friends about it if you think they’d like to listen!
(My thoughts on the next episode were spectroscopy, probes through the ages, and the transit of Venus. Let me know by the 2nd and I’ll have the next podcast up on August 14th, barring any delays due to trip fatigue!)
Glossary
auroras - a light display that occurs when a magnetosphere is sufficiently disturbed by solar wind that charged particles scatter into the upper atmosphere and lose their energy.
comet - a small, icy body that orbits the Sun. When its orbit takes it close to the Sun, the comet warms up and releases gases and debris that produce a visible atmosphere, sometimes called the comet’s tail.
corona - the hot outer atmosphere of the Sun.
eclipse - when three celestial bodies line up so that one obstructs the visibility of the other two. A solar eclipse can be partial (only part of the Sun is obscured by the Moon), total (all of the Sun is hidden by the Moon), or annular ( the Moon is close to Earth and appears too small to completely cover the Sun completely).
Exeligmos cycle - a cycle that is 3 times the saros cycle, or 669 months. It is more accurate means of predicting eclipses and additionally predicts eclipses that will be visible from a location close to the initial eclipse.
Inex cycle - a cycle of 28 years and 345 days long used to predict an eclipse that’s visible in the opposite hemisphere. For example, if an eclipse happens in the Northern hemisphere, one Inex cycle later there will be an eclipse visible in the Southern hemisphere. The Inex cycle does not ensure that both kinds of eclipses will be of the same type.
meteor - a small rocky or metallic body in space, smaller than asteroids. Contact with the Earth’s atmosphere causes a meteor to burn up in a streak of light. Many meteors entering the atmosphere within a few minutes of each other is called a meteor shower. If a meteor impacts on Earth’s surface without burning up, it is then classified as a meteorite.
penumbra - a region where only a portion of the light source is obscured. When the light source is completely blocked, this darkest part of a shadow is called the umbra.
perihelion - an object’s closest approach to the Sun in its orbit. Its greatest distance from the Sun is called its aphelion.
perigee - a satellite’s closest approach to the Earth in its orbit. Its greatest distance from Earth is called its apogee.
radiant - the point in the sky where objects appear to come from. For example, the Perseid meteor shower appears to come from the constellation Perseus.
Saros cycle - a cycle of 223 months that is used to predict eclipses.
solar prominence - a large, bright feature anchored to the Sun's surface and extend outwards into the Sun's corona. A prominence forms in about a day out of plasma, a hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. Stable prominences may last for several months, looping hundreds of thousands of miles into space as plasma flows along a structure of the Sun’s magnetic field that has burst outward, releasing the plasma.
syzygy - the straight-line alignment of three celestial bodies.
Script/Transcript
Sources
Perseids via EarthSky
Perseids via NASA
Meteor showers and viewing tips via StarDate
Comet Swift-Tuttle via NASA
My local library’s information and recommended reading list for learning about eclipses. Love you, Multnomah County!
Map of the Path of Totality across the United States
Solar eclipse map and calendar via the Exploratorium website
Free eclipse glasses at libraries via Lunar and Planetary Institute
Guide to making a pinhole camera to view the eclipse via NASA
Historical eclipses via NASA
Historical eclipses via Astronomy Magazine
“Even if the Moon, however, does sometimes cover the Sun entirely, the eclipse does not have duration or extension; but a kind of light is visible about the rim which keeps the shadow from being profound and absolute.”
Solar prominence via NASA
Solar flares via NASA
Fred Espenak’s guide to eclipses. He’s a former NASA astrophysicist who’s credited with all the eclipse predictions so I trust him.
Some good but confusing charts on solar eclipse Saros cycles via NASA
“Van den Bergh placed all 8,000 solar eclipses in von Oppolzer's Canon der Finsternisse (1887) into a large two-dimensional matrix. Each Saros series was arranged as a separate column containing every eclipse in chronological order. The individual Saros columns were then staggered so that the horizontal rows each corresponded to different Inex series.”
A Danish webpage on calculating eclipses
Hawks, Ellison. The Boy’s Book of Astronomy. Frederick A. Stokes Co: New York, 1914. Located in Google Books preview. (Heads up, this is a fairly racist source.)
Richard Cohen. Chasing the Sun. Random House: NY, 2010.
Robert A. Henning: “different forms, wavering, many colours diffusing and changing, sometimes far away, sometimes filling the heavens around and above, plunging great dropping spears and sheets of colour earthward towards your very head as though a great hand were dropping colour like burning oil” (43).
Ernest W. Hawkes: “whistling, crackling noise” (44).
Jeremy Belknap: “like running one’s thumb and forefinger down a silk scarf” (44).
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Eclippse’ by Radical Face off his album Sunn Moonn Eclippse. Check out the video in the album link, it’s amazing.
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
Five Famous Pulsars from the Past 50 Years
Early astronomers faced an obstacle: their technology. These great minds only had access to telescopes that revealed celestial bodies shining in visible light. Later, with the development of new detectors, scientists opened their eyes to other types of light like radio waves and X-rays. They realized cosmic objects look very different when viewed in these additional wavelengths. Pulsars — rapidly spinning stellar corpses that appear to pulse at us — are a perfect example.
The first pulsar was observed 50 years ago on August 6, 1967, using radio waves, but since then we have studied them in nearly all wavelengths of light, including X-rays and gamma rays.
Typical Pulsar
Most pulsars form when a star — between 8 and 20 times the mass of our sun — runs out of fuel and its core collapses into a super dense and compact object: a neutron star.
These neutron stars are about the size of a city and can rotate slowly or quite quickly, spinning anywhere from once every few hours to hundreds of times per second. As they whirl, they emit beams of light that appear to blink at us from space.
First Pulsar
One day five decades ago, a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, England, named Jocelyn Bell was poring over the data from her radio telescope - 120 meters of paper recordings.
Image Credit: Sumit Sijher
She noticed some unusual markings, which she called “scruff,” indicating a mysterious object (simulated above) that flashed without fail every 1.33730 seconds. This was the very first pulsar discovered, known today as PSR B1919+21.
Best Known Pulsar
Before long, we realized pulsars were far more complicated than first meets the eye — they produce many kinds of light, not only radio waves. Take our galaxy’s Crab Nebula, just 6,500 light years away and somewhat of a local celebrity. It formed after a supernova explosion, which crushed the parent star’s core into a neutron star.
The resulting pulsar, nestled inside the nebula that resulted from the supernova explosion, is among the most well-studied objects in our cosmos. It’s pictured above in X-ray light, but it shines across almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays.
Brightest Gamma-ray Pulsar
Speaking of gamma rays, in 2015 our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered the first pulsar beyond our own galaxy capable of producing such high-energy emissions.
Located in the Tarantula Nebula 163,000 light-years away, PSR J0540-6919 gleams nearly 20 times brighter in gamma-rays than the pulsar embedded in the Crab Nebula.
Dual Personality Pulsar
No two pulsars are exactly alike, and in 2013 an especially fast-spinning one had an identity crisis. A fleet of orbiting X-ray telescopes, including our Swift and Chandra observatories, caught IGR J18245-2452 as it alternated between generating X-rays and radio waves.
Scientists suspect these radical changes could be due to the rise and fall of gas streaming onto the pulsar from its companion star.
Transformer Pulsar
This just goes to show that pulsars are easily influenced by their surroundings. That same year, our Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope uncovered another pulsar, PSR J1023+0038, in the act of a major transformation — also under the influence of its nearby companion star.
The radio beacon disappeared and the pulsar brightened fivefold in gamma rays, as if someone had flipped a switch to increase the energy of the system.
NICER Mission
Our Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) mission, launched this past June, will study pulsars like those above using X-ray measurements.
With NICER’s help, scientists will be able to gaze even deeper into the cores of these dense and mysterious entities.
For more information about NICER, visit https://www.nasa.gov/nicer
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
The Cassini probe took a picture of Saturn that includes Earth in it!
Cassini has actually taken a ton of cool photos of Saturn if you want to check those out in the wake of last week’s planets podcast.
TODAY IN HISTORY: The first-ever color image of Mars, taken by NASA’s Viking 1 lander on July 21, 1976. (San Diego Air & Space Museum)
The Past, Present and Future of Exploration on Mars
Today, we’re celebrating the Red Planet! Since our first close-up picture of Mars in 1965, spacecraft voyages to the Red Planet have revealed a world strangely familiar, yet different enough to challenge our perceptions of what makes a planet work.
You’d think Mars would be easier to understand. Like Earth, Mars has polar ice caps and clouds in its atmosphere, seasonal weather patterns, volcanoes, canyons and other recognizable features. However, conditions on Mars vary wildly from what we know on our own planet.
Join us as we highlight some of the exploration on Mars from the past, present and future:
PAST
Viking Landers
Our Viking Project found a place in history when it became the first U.S. mission to land a spacecraft safely on the surface of Mars and return images of the surface. Two identical spacecraft, each consisting of a lander and an orbiter, were built. Each orbiter-lander pair flew together and entered Mars orbit; the landers then separated and descended to the planet’s surface.
Besides taking photographs and collecting other science data, the two landers conducted three biology experiments designed to look for possible signs of life.
Pathfinder Rover
In 1997, Pathfinder was the first-ever robotic rover to land on the surface of Mars. It was designed as a technology demonstration of a new way to deliver an instrumented lander to the surface of a planet. Mars Pathfinder used an innovative method of directly entering the Martian atmosphere, assisted by a parachute to slow its descent and a giant system of airbags to cushion the impact.
Pathfinder not only accomplished its goal but also returned an unprecedented amount of data and outlived its primary design life.
PRESENT
Spirit and Opportunity
In January 2004, two robotic geologists named Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of the Red Planet. With far greater mobility than the 1997 Mars Pathfinder rover, these robotic explorers have trekked for miles across the Martian surface, conducting field geology and making atmospheric observations. Carrying identical, sophisticated sets of science instruments, both rovers have found evidence of ancient Martian environments where intermittently wet and habitable conditions existed.
Both missions exceeded their planned 90-day mission lifetimes by many years. Spirit lasted 20 times longer than its original design until its final communication to Earth on March 22, 2010. Opportunity continues to operate more than a decade after launch.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter left Earth in 2005 on a search for evidence that water persisted on the surface of Mars for a long period of time. While other Mars missions have shown that water flowed across the surface in Mars’ history, it remained a mystery whether water was ever around long enough to provide a habitat for life.
In addition to using the rover to study Mars, we’re using data and imagery from this mission to survey possible future human landing sites on the Red Planet.
Curiosity
The Curiosity rover is the largest and most capable rover ever sent to Mars. It launched November 26, 2011 and landed on Mars on Aug. 5, 2012. Curiosity set out to answer the question: Did Mars ever have the right environmental conditions to support small life forms called microbes?
Early in its mission, Curiosity’s scientific tools found chemical and mineral evidence of past habitable environments on Mars. It continues to explore the rock record from a time when Mars could have been home to microbial life.
FUTURE
Space Launch System Rocket
We’re currently building the world’s most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). When completed, this rocket will enable astronauts to begin their journey to explore destinations far into the solar system, including Mars.
Orion Spacecraft
The Orion spacecraft will sit atop the Space Launch System rocket as it launches humans deeper into space than ever before. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.
Mars 2020
The Mars 2020 rover mission takes the next step in exploration of the Red Planet by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself.
The Mars 2020 rover introduces a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside in a “cache” on the surface of Mars. The mission will also test a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identify other resources (such as subsurface water), improve landing techniques and characterize weather, dust and other potential environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on the Red Planet.
For decades, we’ve sent orbiters, landers and rovers, dramatically increasing our knowledge about the Red Planet and paving the way for future human explorers. Mars is the next tangible frontier for human exploration, and it’s an achievable goal. There are challenges to pioneering Mars, but we know they are solvable.
To discover more about Mars exploration, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/journeytomars/index.html
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
I mention New Horizons in today’s podcast but here’s some more up-to-date info!
Solar System: Things to Know This Week
Time for a little reconnaissance.
Our New Horizons spacecraft won’t arrive at its next destination in the distant Kuiper Belt—an object known as 2014 MU69—until New Year’s Day 2019, but researchers are already starting to study its environment thanks to a few rare observational opportunities this summer, including one on July 17. This week, we’re sharing 10 things to know about this exciting mission to a vast region of ancient mini-worlds billions of miles away.
1. First, Some Background
New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006. It swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and conducted a six-month reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in summer 2015. The mission culminated with the closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015. Now, as part of an extended mission, the New Horizons spacecraft is heading farther into the Kuiper Belt.
2. A Kuiper Belt refresher
The Kuiper Belt is a region full of objects presumed to be remnants from the formation of our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. It includes dwarf planets such as Pluto and is populated with hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 62 miles (100 km) across and an estimated trillion or more comets. The first Kuiper Belt object was discovered in 1992.
3. That’s Pretty Far
When New Horizons flies by MU69 in 2019, it will be the most distant object ever explored by a spacecraft. This ancient Kuiper Belt object is not well understood because it is faint, small, and very far away, located approximately 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion km) from Earth.
4. Shadow Play
To study this distant object from Earth, the New Horizons team have used data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite to calculate where MU69 would cast a shadow on Earth’s surface as it passes in front of a star, an event known as an occultation.
5. An International Effort
One occultation occurred on June 3, 2017. More than 50 mission team members and collaborators set up telescopes across South Africa and Argentina, aiming to catch a two-second glimpse of the object’s shadow as it raced across the Earth. Joining in on the occultation observations were NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia, a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA).
6. Piecing Together the Puzzle
Combined, the pre-positioned mobile telescopes captured more than 100,000 images of the occultation star that can be used to assess the Kuiper Belt object’s environment. While MU69 itself eluded direct detection, the June 3 data provided valuable and surprising insights. “These data show that MU69 might not be as dark or as large as some expected,” said occultation team leader Marc Buie, a New Horizons science team member from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
7. One Major Missing Piece
Clear detection of MU69 remains elusive. “These [June 3 occultation] results are telling us something really interesting,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. “The fact that we accomplished the occultation observations from every planned observing site but didn’t detect the object itself likely means that either MU69 is highly reflective and smaller than some expected, or it may be a binary or even a swarm of smaller bodies left from the time when the planets in our solar system formed.”
8. Another Opportunity
On July 10, the SOFIA team positioned its aircraft in the center of the shadow, pointing its powerful 100-inch (2.5-meter) telescope at MU69 when the object passed in front of the background star. The mission team will now analyze that data over the next few weeks, looking in particular for rings or debris around MU69 that might present problems for New Horizons when the spacecraft flies by in 2019. “This was the most challenging occultation observation because MU69 is so small and so distant,” said Kimberly Ennico Smith, SOFIA project scientist.
9. The Latest
On July 17, the Hubble Space Telescope will check for debris around MU69 while team members set up another “fence line” of small mobile telescopes along the predicted ground track of the occultation shadow in southern Argentina.
10. Past to Present
New Horizons has had quite the journey. Check out some of these mission videos for a quick tour of its major accomplishments and what’s next for this impressive spacecraft.
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