Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Amateur Astronomers Work to Save the Planet

Episode Date: September 27, 2004

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Amateur astronomers protect the planet, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, I'm Matt Kaplan with Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the solar system and beyond. Nowhere else in science are talented, dedicated amateurs so appreciated as in astronomy. We'll meet two of them, both active in the search for near-Earth objects, those big rocks that cross the path of our vulnerable planet. Later, Bruce Betts will drop by with his What's Up report on the sky and a new space trivia contest. We'll start with a quick look at some of what's going on in our corner of the Milky Way.

Did someone mention near-Earth objects? Depending on when you hear this, a two-mile rock named Teutonis will either have just missed our home planet or is about to miss us. Luckily, Teutonis passes safely about a million miles from Earth on September 29. Mars has emerged from spending 12 days behind the sun. Scientists were pretty much out of touch with spirit and opportunity during that time. Both Mars exploration rovers have now phoned home, letting mom and dad know they are healthy and ready to continue their explorations.

Meanwhile, high above the red planet, Mars Express has just returned some very intriguing data. The European orbiter found overlapping concentrations of water vapor and methane in the Martian atmosphere. Scientists caution that we aren't even close to knowing why, so don't go jumping to any conclusions about microbial life. You can learn more about these and other stories on the web at planetary.org. I'll be back with the first of our amateur neo-hunters right after this Q&A from Emily about the not-so-dark

side of the moon. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. Last week, I talked about some of the consequences of synchronous rotation when a moon keeps the same face pointed toward its planet all the time. An apparently obvious consequence of synchronous rotation is that one side of the moon was never seen from the Earth until 1959, when the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft traveled around to the far side.

The lunar far side is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the dark side of the Moon, when in fact the far side of the Moon goes through phases the same way that the near side does. You would think that only 50% of the lunar surface would have been visible to human observers before we first flew to the far side, but we can actually see almost 60% of the lunar surface would have been visible to human observers before we first flew to the far side. But we can actually see almost 60% of the moon's surface from the surface of the Earth. How does that work? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. Good astronomy doesn't always require a giant telescope and a budget of millions.

Around the globe, thousands of professional astronomers at smaller observatories and still more thousands of amateur astronomers are making important discoveries every day. The Planetary Society wanted to make it easier for them to find and track NEOs, or Near Earth Objects. So in 1997, it awarded the first and track NEOs, or Near Earth Objects. So in 1997, it awarded the first Shoemaker NEO grants. Over $120,000 have gone out to 17 recipients so far, with another round now underway. We thought we'd check in with a couple of the past recipients to learn about their work and how the grants have helped out. Roy Tucker ran the world's eighth most productive asteroid tracking station in 2003,

and he did it all from the little observatory he built in his Arizona backyard, right next to the chicken coop. Roy Tucker, welcome to Planetary Radio. Thank you, Matt. Pleasure to be here. Is this going to be another observation night at the, now I hope I pronounce this correctly, the Goodrick-Pigot Observatory? Goodrick-Pigot Observatory. Pigot, okay, I should have known, British.

English name. And this is this observatory that you've actually created in your backyard. Yep, it's been kind of a labor of love, something I've tinkered together over a few years. I started out with a Celestron 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain and built a CCD camera. And with that, I began to image asteroids and comets. Back in 1996, I started doing asteroid astrometry and sending in information to the Minor Planet Center. I've known the folks at SpaceWatch Camera, the asteroid search operation of the University of Arizona for some time. I'd seen how efficient scan mode imaging is. That's where you turn off the telescope drive and just let the sky drift past the field of view. But the idea is that it's a continuous imaging process. With the regular stair mode imaging, you point the telescope somewhere, turn on the clock drive, adjust the guider,

and get things all set up for a few minutes. Then you open up the shutter and you record the photons for a few minutes. Then you close the shutter and read out the image and store it in the computer. Now, the time that the shutter is closed, you're not collecting photons. You're wasting things. You're wasting the information. It would be highly desirable to keep the shutter open all night, constantly collecting photons and constantly reading out the CCD and constantly moving to the next

field of view, which is just exactly what scan mode imaging does. So it's a very highly efficient astronomical imaging mode. Now, clearly you've been very successful at this. In the first year that you started looking for near-Earth objects, 1997, you found one. Oh, yeah. I will say it's the most remarkable stroke of a beginner's luck. After just a few weeks of looking, I actually found a near-Earth asteroid, and it was a rather rare sort of near-Earth asteroid, an

Otten-class asteroid. It was actually the first Otten-class asteroid discovered by an amateur. Seems like I continue to have a wee bit of luck. I've now discovered three Otten asteroids. So I guess something about Ottens like me, I guess. You discovered another one, this Apollo 2004 MP7. And interestingly, it was, I guess, observed for only the second time that confirmed your work by another recipient of one of the Shoemaker-Neo grants. Yeah, John Broughton down in Australia.

He was the first fellow to follow up on it. It was a difficult recovery. It was going so nearly south and moving so fast, there was a lot of discussion is this an Earth orbiting satellite or is this a real near-Earth asteroid or what? Anyway, there was some discussion with the Minor Planet Center for a little bit and

finally it was posted on the near-Earth object confirmation page and it was by John Broughton's hard work and imaging efforts that he actually recovered it. So it was by John Broughton's hard work and imaging efforts that he actually recovered it. So it was a good success story for a couple of the maker grant recipients. Now, you've picked up a comet, too.

And I've got to ask, before we talk about what the grant was able to do to help your work, is this a case where you may get to name this comet? Well, let's see here. The way the usual conventions work is that if you discover an asteroid, you're entitled to propose a name for it. But if you discover a comet, the comet is named for you.

It's already named Comet Tucker. Comet 2004 Q1 Tucker. No kidding. Well, congratulations. Thank you. Let's do, in just the couple of minutes we have left, talk about how this Shoemaker-Neo grant that you received in 2002 was able to help your work. Well, this whole operation was put together on a bit of a shoestring.

I'm just a mere mortal engineer and putting a wife through veterinary school, and so the budget's kind of tight here. But I was able to get the system tinkered together with a lot of sweat equity. I taught myself how to weld. I did a lot of the machining myself. Put the system together, it was quite initially a very labor-intensive operation

because the software that I used for looking for the objects, the asteroids, called Pinpoint, was sort of an early version at that time, and to go through a night's images to look for all the asteroids would take anywhere from 10 to 12 hours. It was really a labor of love. When the competition for the grants was announced, I sort of asked myself, what would be very helpful

to streamline this operation? And fundamentally, it just boiled down to, it'd be nice to have some volunteers help me out, which would involve making copies of CD-ROMs. It takes about three CD-ROMs per night to store the data. A lot of data. Oh, yeah. So I want to make two copies just to make sure that the data. A lot of data. Oh yeah. So I want to make two copies just to make sure that the data is safe. So I fundamentally have to make six CDs per day just to archive the data. And then if I have a volunteer helping me, I need to make another three CDs to send off to the person who's helping me. Not only do I need the CDs, it'd be highly desirable to have a CD copier so I don't tie up the computer making nine CD- CV ROMs every day.

The Shoemaker grant permitted me to purchase copies of the Pinpoint software for those people who were assisting me. It would be kind of highly desirable to keep the optics clean, to keep the photons going through with as little loss as possible. I imagine.

The way the telescopes are constructed, you really get in there and do the usual sort of cleaning with detergent water. That's the sort of thing you'd only be able to do once a year. And so it was highly desirable to get a device called a CO2 snow gun. This is an apparatus that takes liquid carbon dioxide from a tank under high pressure and converts it to a high pressure stream of dry ice particles. When the particles of CO2 snow hit the surface, they're moving almost the speed of sound. Wow.

But when they contact the surface, the pressure at that point of contact is sufficient to liquefy the CO2 snow so that there's no actual grinding or anything to damage the surface. You can clean extraordinarily delicate things with the CO2 snow. You've put an enormous amount of work into this and a fairly good-sized investment as well. Why do you keep after this? I enjoy looking at the sky. It's such a privilege, really, to be able to just look at the sky. I can look at over 100 square degrees per night down to magnitude 20.5 or so.

And you look out into the universe, you see all these faint gold galaxies, clusters of galaxies, asteroids and comets moving along. It's a window into the universe. And as I sit there, you know, it's a lot of work going through all those images. But I sit there and I feel just absolutely privileged to be able to do this sort of thing. Roy, we are out of time. I'll just say thank you for all of this good work you're doing. And as you keep observing and enjoying the sky, keep looking for those rocks that might come our way. I'll do that.

Thanks very much. Roy Tucker has been our first guest, a past winner of a Shoemaker-Neo grant. After we take this quick break, we're going to visit with yet another one of those past Shoemaker-Neo grant winners. We'll be right back. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets.

We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in the Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits. You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org.

The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. To visit with our next amateur astronomer and Shoemaker-Neo grant winner, we go to tiny Luxembourg in Europe. That's where Matt Dawson spends long nights watching the skies. Matt Dawson, thank you for taking a few minutes out to talk to us on Planetary Radio. I guess it's late afternoon there, early morning here, so I guess you wouldn't be out observing right now anyway.

Well, not right now. It's five o'clock in the afternoon, and it's just been pouring with rain, but the weather looks a little better, so maybe I'll get out tonight. And I should say that in the PowerPoint presentation you sent me, there is a picture of the most important resource for any astronomer, and that is? Coffee, and lots of it. As we said, we're speaking to you at your home in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. You're British-born, but you've lived there for a long time, and I wonder if astronomy has anything to do with that decision.

Well, actually, astronomy doesn't for the simple reason that the weather's bad in England, and it's pretty bad in Luxembourg, too. But I came here from England 25 years ago, and when people ask, I always tell them I'm still saving up for the ticket home. Well, you do have your family there, and you have a life other than astronomy, apparently in finance, although you're also an accomplished musician. But this seems at least to be your nighttime passion. The music's pretty much a hobby these days,

but astronomy has been really my whole life. It's been an absolute passion, really, since I was about 10 years old. Actually, I got into astronomy, I think, it must have been about 1969 or something, when I was 10, and my dad took me out to see Comet Bennett. And I was knocked out. And so you got a telescope, I'll bet, soon after that. And now you build your own. In fact, the telescope that you have, I assume it's in your backyard there,

is a 20-inch scope that you built yourself. That's right. Actually, my very first telescope I built myself with the help from my dad. And really, all the way down the line, I've just been into doing things as cheaply as possible in order to have the maximum resources available for software and that kind of thing. And I enjoy building telescopes. And you can customize them just the way you want them to be. for software and that kind of thing. And I enjoy building telescopes, and you can customize them just the way you want them to be.

The telescope I use, I think I'm the only person doing asteroid work that uses this kind of telescope, but it's what they call a Dobsonian telescope on a platform, an equatorial platform that tracks the stars. It works manually in many ways. I mean, it's not computerized. But I've had fun because a friend of mine has a super-duper computerized telescope that you just plug in the object you want to find and it whizzes over there. And I've had races with him, and I've won because, yeah, for years,

I was a very avid observer of galaxies and deep-sky objects. So one advantage I've had is that being an amateur astronomer for so long, I know the sky very well. So I can just look at where an asteroid is going to be and find it just with my eye, quicker than my colleagues can do with their computer eye scopes. Well, I envy you that. I wish I knew the sky better.

I have to depend on the computer, I'm afraid. You were also involved in building an even bigger telescope, a 33-inch scope in France. That's right. About three years ago, I discovered that there were some people who had an observatory in France. We teamed up because we were both interested in astronomy, and we became very close friends. And they have built this enormous telescope. As you said, it's 33 inches, and with the help of the CCD camera that we got from the Planetary Society grant, Schumacher

grant, we're able to get to magnitude 21, which means we're able to see very, very, very faint objects, and it's now the biggest amateur-run telescope in France. That is a big telescope, and I only wish we could show people a picture of it. You don't have a website at the moment. I will have a website within 10 days. Oh, excellent. Can I give you the URL? Please do that, and then we'll do it again at the end of our conversation.

Go ahead. Okay, that's www.dawson.lu. That's Dawson, D-A-W-S-O-N, dot L-U. Excellent. Pretty simple. And we will repeat that. I will bet that you had a fairly proud day back in 1999 when you heard from the International Astronomical Union.

Well, yeah, because I got into this asteroid work. I got very interested after reading an article in CCD Astronomy. By that time, I had a CCD camera. And in order to get accepted by the International Astronomical Union as an official asteroid hunter, you have to prove that you can do very, very accurate observations. So we just started doing it. And we sent in our observations. We had no idea if they were accurate or not. And they were, and we got accepted. And when I say accurate, you have to be very accurate, because the level of accuracy is about like a dime at about two kilometers,

and that's the thickness of a dime, not the width of a dime. The actual thickness of a dime at two kilometers is a quarter of an arc second, which is the kind of accuracy we're aiming for. We don't always hit it, but that's what we try for. Now, this accuracy is extremely important in this work you're doing, astrometric work. It has to do also with the fact that you're not necessarily discovering these objects, but following up on them and providing other vital data. That's it. The thing is that these objects are discovered by the big surveys

in America and elsewhere. It's too expensive for them to take the time to follow up every single object that they find. They find hundreds of objects, thousands of objects. So their job is to find them and they leave it to a network of amateurs like myself who, just for the pleasure of it and to contribute to the science, measure the positions of these asteroids in the coming days very, very accurately. And these measurements are sent into the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And they take all these measurements from all over the world,

and they can calculate the orbits by using these measurements. And they can tell if an asteroid is going to come near Earth, or if it's not going to come anywhere near the Earth, or if it presents a risk, because there is an ever-present risk that an asteroid could be discovered that could at some point in the future hit the Earth. And is that why you do this? I mean, other than the fact that you love to look at the sky. But is part of it the thought that you might be contributing to saving the planet someday?

Well, I wouldn't go so far to say that I see my contribution in terms of saving the planet, but I do think it's very, very important work. Considering the risk, there's very, very few people in the world engaged full-time in this work. I mean, asteroids have hit in the past, and they're going to hit again, and we need to know where these things are. So what could be more important than that? You said it's a small community, but it is very much a community of you amateur astronomers. Do you have a good sense of that, that you're in this with a sort of family of other observers around the world?

Oh, absolutely. If I have a question, I could email it to a mailing list, and I'm going to get an answer from some of the greatest minds engaged in this work. These people are at the very pinnacle of this science, and humble old me gets an email from them answering a question. It's great. And humble old me gets an email from them answering a question. It's great.

Well, we know that your findings are being utilized worldwide, as are those of your colleagues around the world. We certainly hope that you're planning to keep up this work as you continue to enjoy observing the sky as well. Oh, absolutely. I'm going to be doing this into retirement, which I hope is a long way off. But I love doing this work. It's very, very rewarding, and I love being out under the night sky. It's not just for the science.

I love actually being there with my telescope doing this work, and it just gives you a sense of perspective. I mean, these tiny objects are just so far away. It's unimaginable how distant these objects are, and they're even in our local solar system. You get a real picture of how enormous the universe really is doing this stuff. Matt, give us that website once again, which you said would be available in probably less than 10 days

after people hear this conversation. Right. That's www.dawson.lu. Please watch that coffee. Don't overdo it. Thank you. And thank you again very much for taking a few minutes to talk to us from uh from your home there in the grand duchy of luxembourg it's been a pleasure matt thank you and we'll be right back with bruce betts and this week's what's up after this return visit from emily from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A.

How can we see 59% of the lunar surface from the Earth if it keeps the same face pointed toward us at all times? A phenomenon called libration makes the moon's far side visible in three ways. First is the effect of parallax. When the moon rises in the east, we can see a little bit more around its eastern edge, and after it has crossed the sky and sets in the west, our viewpoint has shifted so we can see a little bit more around its western edge. Second is the effect of the moon's elliptical orbit. According to Kepler's second law, when the moon is closer to the earth, it moves faster than when it is farther from the Earth,

but it rotates at a constant rate. So when the moon is moving fast, we can peek around its trailing edge, and when the moon is moving slowly, we can peek around its leading edge. Finally, the moon's rotation axis is tilted with respect to the plane of its orbit around the Earth. This gives us a peek at the polar regions that would otherwise be invisible. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org.

And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. We are joined by Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Bruce, welcome back. Thank you very much. And what's up on Planetary Radio? We are joined by Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Bruce, welcome back. Thank you very much. And what's up? We've got planets in that pre-dawn sky still.

Venus looking incredibly bright in the east before dawn, like the brightest star-like object up there. No problem finding it. Saturn is above it by a little ways. You can also see the star Regulus moving closer and closer to Venus until October 3rd. Really, the other way around. Venus moving in the sky relative to Regulus. On October 3rd, they are less than 0.3 degrees apart. Extremely close. Get out some binoculars. Check it out. Kind of cool. And then after October 3rd, they will grow apart in the pre-dawn sky as well. Sad when they grow apart.

It is, it is. But they'll be growing closer for the next few days. So two star-like objects crossing in the night. Anyway, on to this week in space history. On October 1st, 1958, NASA was founded. Wow. Happy birthday, NASA. Happy birthday, NASA.

Cakes in the mail. We actually mailed it on the founding in 1958. Random Space Fact! Whereas Jupiter's Great Red Spot has persisted for as long as humans have seen it, which is 400 years or so, Neptune's Great Dark Spot, found by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, actually vanished within the years following that when we were able to see Neptune well enough again using the Hubble Space Telescope. So there you go. There's a random space fact for you.

Disappeared? What? Windex? Well, usually I just resort to aliens, but yeah, Windex. Aliens with Windex. No. Big, big bottles. Big, big giant bottles. You don't use Windex onex. Aliens with Windex. Big, big bottles. Big, big giant bottles.

You don't use Windex on Neptune. You use spot remover. Okay, I'm sorry. You're right. They shouted it out. Silly me. What were you thinking? You know, if you use Windex, you're liable to bleach it, and then you'll have a great

white spot. That's right. Which it did have some white spots. I wonder if that's where they came from. Oh, my God. We'll look into it. That's right. Which it did have some white spots. I wonder if that's where they came from. Oh, my God. We'll look into it. What's next? In the meantime, on to our trivia contest.

Last time around, a couple times around, we asked you, what do you call organisms that live within rocks? And there was kind of a variety of answers one could give for this. I was, in my mind, had endoliths is what we were looking for. We got some other permutations, many of which were also correct, since it was a general question. Before you get into the answers, let me tell people why we care, which is that endoliths are significant in understanding how hardy life is on Earth for understanding how hardy it might be in living places, say, like Mars. If you can have stuff live literally inside rocks, then it's a lot easier to protect them from space badness.

Now, I'm relieved because I thought the question was, what kinds of life forms live in Iraq? And all these answers weren't making any sense to me at all. But it turns out it's in A-Rock. Totally different. Yeah. In A-Rock, not Iraq. You probably want to know how the listeners did. No, not really.

I mean, yeah. Yeah, sure I do. Of course you do. That'd be great. I'm excited. Well, they did well. We had fewer answers this week. This must have stumped some people.

And we had a lot of variety in the answers. But the one that you were looking for was endolith. An endolith is an organism that lives inside rocks. And we have randomly chosen this week Kathy Preby. Kathy Preby of Lancaster, California, a longtime listener to the show. And someday we have to find out if her sister Bonnie is, well, if they are sisters. We have no idea whether they even know each other. So maybe we can find out sometime.

But Kathy, congratulations. And Bonnie would be another regular entrant. Yes, find out sometime. But Kathy, congratulations. And Bonnie would be another regular entrant. Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. Hence the confusion, the excitement here at Planned Society headquarters as we ponder these profound questions of the universe.

I want to know, are they twins? Is one the evil one? And which one do we give shirts to? Anyway. Anyway, other people gave us some other stuff like cryptoendoliths, hidden things inside rocks. Also would have been valid, but not randomly chosen. Yeah, I'll tell you. Here's one.

Anaerobic subsurface lithoautotropic microbial ecosystems. Microbial ecosystems. How's that? That's easy for you to say. Not really. No, no, apparently not. There's a lot of rightness in there, but not quite as focused as the answer we were looking for. What do you have for us next week?

For this next week, we'll go a different direction. Who are the first people to go into space without pressurized spacesuits on? The first people to go into space without pressurized spacesuits not let me be more clear they were inside a spacecraft when they went to space and so they you know they were wrapped in a spacecraft but they were not wrapped in a pressure suit spacesuit was hanging on the hook in the back it could have. They left it in the closet at home. They decided it didn't go with their socks. I don't know.

That'll be the trivia contest the following week. I hate it when that happens. How do people enter? Go to planetary.org slash radio, and it'll tell you how to send us an email with your brilliant answer to win the glorious Planetary Radio t-shirt. Dave Bowman is not eligible for this contest. That's it.

And the deadline for this will be the 4th. That is October 4, 2004. Get it to us by that Monday at noon Pacific time, if you possibly can, and we'll make sure that you are entered in the contest this week. Bruce, I think we're done. All righty, everyone. Go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about where the great dark spot might have gone and whether you've seen it.

Thank you. Good night. That was Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He is here every week with What's Up. That's all the time we have for this week. But we'll be back next time with another brand new Planetary Radio. Have a great week.