Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Amateur Astronomy: Do It Yourself Space Exploration

Episode Date: August 29, 2005

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Do-it-yourself space exploration, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. It's the hobby that lets you do real science as you wonder at the beauty of the universe. Amateur astronomy is our topic this week as we visit the Southern California Astronomy Expo. We'll talk with the two biggest makers of telescopes and get their suggestions for getting started in this dark art. Then we'll turn pro for another visit with Bruce Betts in our What's Up segment.

Our top news story this week is Opportunity sitting on top of Husband Hill. The Mars rover has finally reached the summit of the highest point in the Gusev crater region. Watch for a 360-degree color panorama to be released this week. Ooze and Oz are encouraged. As the world turns, it's so much more than your aunt's favorite soap. Watch the Earth spin as the messenger spacecraft sped by our planet a few days ago on its way to Mercury. You'll find the animation

and a great family portrait at planetary.org. Finally, congrats to Bill Dana, who got his astronaut's wings last week about 40 years late. Dana flew the world's first space plane, the X-15. Look it up, kids. You'll be amazed. Stick around as Emily answers another of your great questions.

I'll be back in a moment from Oceanside, California. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, Why do craters on some planets have central peaks and others don't? Impact craters in the solar system show a bewildering array of forms. On most planets, the smallest craters have simple bowl shapes, bigger ones have central peaks or peak rings, and even bigger ones have central peaks or peak rings, and even bigger ones have multiple

ring structures. The main physical property that affects the shape of a crater is the force of gravity. When an asteroid or comet hits a planet, a bowl-shaped crater always forms to begin with. This bowl-shaped crater has steep walls. If the material that the crater is made of can hold up against the force of gravity, the crater stays in that bowl shape. But if the force of gravity is stronger than the walls of the crater, the walls collapse, slumping down and inward, while material wells up from the floor of the cavity to form the final crater. All of this happens within seconds of the impact. If the crater is big enough,

the upwelling of the floor can create a central peak. But as you look across the worlds of the solar system, some bodies have only bowl-shaped craters, while other planets have mostly central peak craters. Why is that? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. I took a drive down California's Interstate 5 a couple of weekends ago, past some of the best surfing in the world, and through the Marine Corps' vast Camp Pendleton.

I got off the freeway in downtown Oceanside, home of Oceanside Photo and Telescope. One of OPT's parking lots was full of canopied booths, shielding scores of shiny, decidedly high-tech telescopes that Galileo would have killed to get his hands on. Hovering around these instruments, waiting for their chance to peer through an eyepiece, were a hundred or so astronomers of the amateur variety, and perhaps a hundred more individuals who were thinking about getting into this hardware-intensive hobby.

My first conversation was with Ben Houck, Chief of Operations for OPT. So what's going on out here today? This is the Southern California Astronomy Expo, and this is the second Saturday in a row where we've had large events here. The first Saturday was the Seminar Symposium. We had David Levy, who was the keynote speaker, and he gave two different talks. We've always had events here at the store, and we've always brought in various manufacturers,

you know, Mead, Celestron, Telview, SBIG, all the big guys. And this year we decided instead of having just a couple people down, we wanted to bring everybody down. You know, a lot of people have never looked through a scope before in their life, so being able to do this in a public area is a great way to bring people in and let them see it for the first time. It looks like this is a pretty popular thing. And I wonder what the mix is between those first-timers who've maybe never looked through a scope before and the guys who've been at this for 30 years and have sunk a lot of money into it.

It's about half and half. We have the diehards who are out here and come to all of our events. But we are seeing more and more people getting into the hobby. It's a really exciting hobby with some of the technology that's come out in the last few years especially. It's getting easier and easier for people to go out with the telescope, point up and find things in the nighttime sky. So it's not a hobby to where you have to train yourself and learn the nighttime sky. It's a hobby where you can go out there not knowing a whole lot

and see some amazing things that are out there. On the other hand, you do have these serious guys with the, you know, huge scopes that they take out to Anza Borrego, the California desert, periodically, and into total darkness and get very upset if you turn on a flashlight. There's a sort of gentle competition, competitive spirit to all this. Definitely. You'll see, especially friends, we'll always be one-upping each other on what size telescope they have. You know, one guy goes out and gets an 8-inch, next guy, his neighbor, goes out and gets a 10-inch, and next thing you know, 12-inch, 14-inch, and so on. Size matters. Size definitely matters. People get aperture fever, and next

thing you know, both people are going back and forth to 25, 30-inch scopes, and then it's a trailer to take it out to the observing site. Among all those exhibitors, two of the most popular were Celestron and Mead Instruments. Each company had sent sizable teams to this big event, along with some of their coolest new products. I sat down amongst all the hubbub with Scott Rogers, vice president of brand community for Mead Instruments, and Victor Aniceto, Celestron's Director of Sales. I don't know if you guys ever normally sit quite this close together,

but I appreciate you doing it here today. And it's not to talk about who's bigger or who's better, but this business that you're both in, and have been in for quite a while, supporting amateur astronomy. We've been making a lot of rounds this year. We've been to StarFest up in Canada, the Winter Star Party, Texas Star Party, Riverside Telescope Makers Conference. This is a hobby and a community.

I mean, Victor and I both know that it's the amateur astronomer that puts the food on our plate. And we try to give something back to the community and try to excite them about their hobby as much as possible. Victor, do you end up seeing each other at pretty much the same events all the time? A lot of times. It's our business and also the fact that we need to also give something back to this community where we earn our living. You do work with people who are so exacting in what they want from the stuff that you guys build for them. Right. Well, that's true.

And over the years, the amateur astronomers have gotten more and more sophisticated. They've gotten more advanced. They've learned how to test optics in a very sophisticated way. I now and then teach a little class that I'm not particularly qualified to teach, sort of a... You might be very well qualified to teach. Well, it's fun. It's fun. Sort of just a one-night, hey, let's look at the sky, and isn't the universe a great place?

And a woman showed up with her son, and they didn't know how to use their telescope. And one of the problems was that this telescope was, oh, God, a piece of junk. And really, what I wanted to say was, you know, spend another $100. What kind of guidance do you give to people who are thinking about, gee, I'd love to get into this. And, you know, I can go down to the local discount store and there's something for sale there for $60. to the local discount store and there's something for sale there for 60 bucks. If one of these people contacts the manufacturers, you know automatically that this person's a little bit more serious than the average person maybe going to a mass merchandiser just to buy a telescope.

They're not just buying a gift. This person's on fire about the hobby. They want to explore the sky and all the rest of it. So one of the first things that the manufacturers are going to talk about is the importance of aperture. And the more aperture you get, the more performance, the more light gathering you're going to get. That's where the real power of the telescope is. Because you still get people who are looking for magnification

and don't realize it's aperture that counts. It's aperture that counts. So we'll talk about the three powers, light gathering power, resolving power, which is the detail. So you want distance and detail. More light is going to get to the distance. More resolving power is going to give you the detail. And then magnification, which amateur astronomers aren't really concerned too much with magnification.

You'll never hear professional astronomers, one asks the other, what's the power of your telescope? They always talk about how big these scopes are, you know, and that's an aperture or diameter. I agree, and that's just basically we preach the same thing. You buy as much aperture as you can. All telescopes are described right now. The names of the telescopes are referred to in inches or millimeters. They say, I have a 100-inch telescope. 100-inch telescope.

100-inch? Mount Wilson. That's a big one. 100-millimeter telescope. Celestron. This is the C-100. You never know. Without getting into model numbers and model names, where would you tell somebody to start? Someone on a very limited budget, doesn't know if this is something they're going to want to stick with. What's the best kind of instrument for them to begin with, Victor?

I would say a good one that would have value and aperture, a good beginning scope would be a 4.5-inch telescope, 4.5-inch Newtonian telescope. A reflector. A reflector, because you get a lot of aperture for not a whole lot of money. And you will definitely get to have satisfaction with that type of telescope. Scott? Yeah, I would concur. But I always recommend, too, that if somebody is this interested, you know, to get out there and start observing. You know, because the instrumentation that's available today is absolutely amazing.

What kind of difference in your businesses has go-to technology made? Having a computer built into the telescope and people just punching in what they want to see. Oh, I think it's created a very big difference in that. In the past, you'd just be limited to somebody that has known a little bit about astronomy, has interest in it, and, you know, wanted to research, looked at the star names or coordinates and all that. Now you don't have to do that. And that's even increased that market exponentially. Oh, absolutely.

I talk to teachers. exponentially. Oh, absolutely. I talk to teachers. Often English teachers are suddenly told that next year or this year you're teaching science and astronomy and will get challenged with, you know, what kind of telescope should they get? These people can walk right in, align on a couple of bright stars, and they're finding thousands of objects in the sky. And so it really, it empowers people, but it also takes people who are advanced and takes them to the next level. These people that are someone that might be able to find several hundred objects in the sky can now actually just run through and do sky surveys, searching for supernovae and galaxies, that type of thing.

How's business, guys? Are things looking up for astronomy, if you'll pardon the pun? Yes, things are looking up in astronomy. Things are looking up in our business. I'm sure it's the same where Scott's at, too. There's the Mars opposition that's coming up soon. Our business is also driven by events, too. We remember two years ago, the last time Mars got closed.

Two years ago, it was incredible. It was absolutely huge. It's one of the biggest events ever. So we're looking forward to this next Mars event, of course. Thank you so much, gentlemen. We'll let you get back to being competitors on opposite sides of this place. It's got to be more fun than, I don't know, making shoes. Yeah, I definitely agree with that one. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. This is one of the most interesting and compelling things you can be involved in. In this hobby, you will meet astronauts, explorers, people who discover things. It is a very mind-expanding kind of thing.

It's something that you're continually learning and going to the next level. Scott and I were just talking about that a little bit earlier. You can't stay this long in this business without having fun. No, that's right. That's right. Thanks so much for taking a couple of minutes. We really appreciate this. It's great being on the Planetary Radio. Thank you.

Victor Aniceto of Celestron and Scott Roberts of Mead Instruments. We'll have more from the Southern California Astronomy Expo and Bruce Betts with What's Up right after this. 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. We didn't just build it. We attempted to put that first solar sail in orbit, and we're going to try again. You can read about all our exciting projects and get the latest space exploration news in depth at the Society's exciting and informative website, planetary.org.

You can also preview our full-color magazine, The Planetary Report. It's just one of our many member benefits. Want to learn more? Call us at 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. We'll bump it up to a gazillion power. Twilight was creeping over Oceanside, California. Nothing could have made the crowd at the Southern California Astronomy Expo happier. Well, being that we're looking at it over the ocean, through some haze here, you can see the banding.

I see certainly the equatorial bands, but also the polar bands. Yeah, I can start seeing a little bit of modeling on the surface, too, when the seeing is just right. That's not the red spot there, is it? Don't ask me about the red spot. I have a hard time seeing it. I pulled aside Jason Ware. Jason had started with a little 60-millimeter telescope, a gift from his wife. He loved what he saw and decided to turn his interest in

photography toward the night sky. Beginning with film, but eventually turning to advanced CCD, or electronic imagers, his astrophotography soon caught the attention of Mead Instruments. Mead now gives him access to some of the biggest and best available amateur equipment. Literally, I have about four different telescopes. I have a 12-inch Schmidt camera in an observatory in Oklahoma. I live in Dallas, but I drive up to Oklahoma to get into dark skies. So just as it has for professional astronomers, the appearance of electronic imagers, CCD cameras, has made a big difference for serious amateurs.

Absolutely. When they first came out, there were people who were cutting edge using these devices, but they just really weren't very good. They were very small chips. They were very noisy. The resolution wasn't there. The pixels were not very small. They were large.

And really, the images coming out were not very photogenic. But the people that were doing it were actually blazing new trails, right? I mean, the stuff they were doing was laying the groundwork for what we all take for granted now, dark frames and flat fields and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I used to kind of poke fun of them because they'd show me their work, and I'd say, that's neat, but look at this. And my film photograph would just just blow it away but it's finally gone the other direction now the the CCD cameras have surpassed film

pretty much in in terms of resolution and sensitivity as an amateur astronomer you've got serious equipment and you take a lot of images in, I was told that's what you're into, imaging. It certainly fits what you've described. But you're never going to do what the Keck can do. You're never going to do what Hubble can do. What draws you to this, to making these images and putting the work into these time exposures that have you sitting outside for probably hours at a time?

Do you own a camera? I own a camera, and I own a telescope. Well, okay, time. Do you own a camera? I own a camera and I own a telescope. Well, okay, so why do you own a camera? Ansel Adams did wonderful work years ago. So it's because you did it. It's something you did. It's something you can be proud of. You captured that.

And for one thing, you know, astrophotography is the ultimate techie hobby. I've always been into photography. I've always been into science and astronomy and this is a blending of the two and it's it's a it's the challenge of it and like i said it's the ultimate techie i mean you get to work with really cool stuff and you produce beautiful beautiful images i sell my images i have a website galaxyphoto.com where i show my images and if people want to buy prints, I offer them for sale. And so it's, you know, to deal with, tinker around with electronics and mechanics and all this stuff,

and then the end result is a beautiful picture that tells a story of, you know, in some cases back to the beginning of time in the universe. It's the one field in science where apparently amateurs can make real contributions to cutting-edge science. They do. I have not really explored that side of it, but there are people, you know, amateurs that look for minor planets, you know, look for comets. They've found supernovas, things like that, often long before the professionals do. There's people now doing remote imaging where they have telescopes in New Mexico where they're sitting in their living room in New York or something. And that's great, but I still like to go out under a dark sky,

and while the telescope is taking image, I like to sit back in a lawn chair with a pair of binoculars and look up and listen to some New Age music and just take it all in and enjoy it. Thank you very much, Jason. Keep watching the sky. I will. Thank you. Amateur astronomer Jason Ware. The cool, moist air was rolling up from the seaside now.

OPT turned out the lights in the store. The better to see the objects twinkling in the night sky above us. Marilyn Saeed and her husband Sam were wandering from telescope to telescope. Some of the women in attendance seemed to be along for the ride, but Marilyn has taken a real interest in amateur astronomy. Well, when I first heard that my husband was interested in this and that it was a nighttime activity and that camping may be involved, I'm an avid camper. And so I thought, since I work nights anyway, this would be a perfect thing for both of us to do. And so I've

been drawn into that. What attracts you to it now? Well, I just love, well, I love looking at the nebulas and the, you know, just creation and being out at night. And it's very friendly, all the people that are involved and we really enjoy their company, and it's just very interesting. Would you say that you're a serious amateur, or is it really just going out to enjoy the sky? I'm not as serious as he is, but he did buy me a telescope, and what we like to do, he has one that he sets up, and then he sets one up for me. His and her scopes that's right and then we compare looking through each one at the same object and so I run one and he runs one it's

a lot of fun that way what's what's the most impressive thing you've ever seen the biggest item you've ever seen through a telescope well I do enjoy looking at the star clusters but I love the nebulas and the deep sky objects I love seeing the different contrast of the gases and that sort of thing. So any nebulas and that that we can see on a good night is what I like to look at. How often do you get out to do this? Well, we are members of the Orange County Astronomers Club, and so we go down to Anza Borrego at least once a month. And like I said, since I work nights, it's easy for us to stay up nights and stay up all night.

And so we like to go down at least once a month if we can. So you recommend this to other couples? Oh, absolutely. It's very enjoyable and you can't live without it. That's right. It's a good pastime. Even when I'm working nights, he's out in our backyard with his telescope staying up all night anyway. So we enjoy it a lot.

Marilyn and Sam Saeed at the Southern California Astronomy Expo. Our thanks to the Expo's organizer, Oceanside Photo and Telescope. Bruce Betts joins us for What's Up right after this return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. Why do some worlds in the solar system have only bowl-shaped craters, while others have mostly central peak craters? Again, it's all about gravity. The bigger the body, the greater the force of gravity on that body.

The greater the force of gravity, the more likely that an initial bowl-shaped crater will collapse to become a central peak crater. On Earth, craters only a few kilometers across may undergo wall collapse and floor uplift. On the Moon, the crater size would have to be more like 10 or 20 kilometers for that to occur. On smaller bodies, the transition size is even bigger. Look at Saturn's moon Mimas, which has only one crater large enough to have a central peak. On the smaller asteroids, or Mars' moon Phobos, we see no central peaks at all. An impact large enough

to create a crater with a central peak would smash the whole body. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary dot org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio.

We're joined by Dr. Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society and astronomer. I was going to say amateur astronomer, but more astronomer. So, you know, this must be kind of fun for you to hear about these people with their telescopes. And, of course, the Planetary Society does some supportive amateur astronomy. We do, and it is fun, and it's amazing what amateur astronomers are able to do these days. And we support the Shoemaker Near-Earth Object Grant Program. We have actually just recently awarded grants to five astronomers, most of them amateurs, in five different countries around the world to study near-Earth objects. So we really

should talk to some of those people again, as we have with the last two rounds. You should. There's some very cool updates also from our past winners from around the world. You can find some of the written updates on our website, planetary.org, in the Near Earth Objects section. And we'll get some of them on here again, like you've done before. Very good. What's up? Jupiter and Venus. Can't say it enough. Jupiter and Venus, last chance. Well, okay, not really. But close to the last chance. Jupiter's going to get tough to see by the end of September. But September 1st they will be closest in the western sky after sunset. They're the two really bright-looking star-like objects.

And Venus is the brighter. They get closer and closer with Jupiter above until September 1st. And then after that, Jupiter gets lower, Venus gets higher. And it should be stunning. Pull out the binoculars, but you don't need them. You can just look over with your naked eyes and go, hey, that's so cool. We learned about that on What's Up. My neighbors were doing exactly that yesterday, and they said, Matt, which one of those is Jupiter and which one is Saturn?

I said, well, it's Venus, but you're close enough. And they said, now where's Mars? And I said, you know what? I can't remember when it rises, but I'm going to be talking to a guy who knows. Let me tell you, Mars is going to rise about between 11 and midnight and coming up in the east, looking orangish and bright. And it will be very high up in the sky, nearly overhead in the south or north, depending on which hemisphere you're living in. We'll be getting brighter and brighter through the end of October.

So we'll keep you posted on Mars's progress. It will also be rising earlier and earlier in the evening until when it is at opposition, opposite the Earth from the Sun, it will be rising at sunset and setting at sunrise, as things at opposition tend to do. Excellent.

This week in space history, 1979, when Disco was king, Pioneer 11 was the first spacecraft to fly past Saturn. And thankfully, since then, we've had the Voyager spacecraft fly by and disco going away for a while. And then coming back in 1976, I'll stop with the musical references.

This is pointless. In 1976, Viking Lander 2 landed on the surface of Mars successfully, joining its cousin, Viking Lander 1, that had landed a couple months prior to that. On to random space fact! Nereid, moon of Neptune, has the most elliptical orbit of any moon, or at least any decent-sized moon in the solar system, zooming in to 1 million kilometers away from the planet, zooming out to 9 million kilometers away from the planet.

Very non-circular orbit. One of those wacky Neptunian satellites. Wow. What's next? All right. Another trivia contest. Trivia, yeah. We asked you, well, we have our out there still with you, the question about the crew

exploration vehicle and finding a new name. And we're still looking for that. We'll talk about that in next week's show. Yes. We asked you also about the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and how many hexagonal mirror segments each of those telescopes had. The answer being 36. How did we do in terms of the listener response there? Lots of people found that out. And we got entries, as we often do, from all over the world.

And we did, now I have to assure people, we did randomly select this week's winner. I can attest to this. I was shocked and appalled, as I'm sure you all will be at the results. Man, I was giddy when you chose the one I was hoping you'd choose because it would make for such a great story. His name is Dan Kaplan. Yes, that's right. The same spelling as our host, Matt Kaplan. He swears there's no relation.

Well, now, he lives in Arlington, Virginia. I have a lot of family on my father's side in Norfolk, Virginia, which is not how they pronounce it, but we can't pronounce it the way they do because we'd probably get in trouble. Who knows? Maybe he is a relative. But I swear to you folks, chosen randomly, I was hoping this would be the one. It's true. I was the process of randomness.

Not only that, but he is a member of the society, and he found the show recently and has listened to every one of our past shows, the entire archive. Haven't all of our listeners? You know, I haven't asked. But we do choose randomly, so it won't help you to get a prize, even if you say you have, folks. But it'll make us happy. Anyway, Dan, congratulations. You're going to get that Planetary Radio t-shirt.

On to the next trivia contest for some other member of the Kaplan family to win. Who are the first two astronauts to work with the Hubble Space Telescope in space? The first two astronauts to do a spacewalk where they played around with the Hubble Space Telescope. On a repair mission. You can send us your entry and be eligible for one of those Planetary Radio t-shirts. No, tell them. Do you have anything else to tell them? I do. I want to tell them to go to planetary.org slash radio if they want to find out how to enter if they've never entered before.

What an excellent suggestion. Thank you for that. That's why I thought they can also listen to the entire two and a half year archive. And it's well worth it, I might add. Yeah, you can listen to the stuff when we really didn't know what we were doing early on. That must be a horrifying concept to people. You think we're bad now. All right, say goodnight, Bruce. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about crayons.

Thank you, and goodnight. He's Bruce Batts, that guy. He is the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and he is here every week with What's Up. Oh, yeah, the deadline for that new trivia contest, it's Monday, September 5th at 2 p.m. Pacific. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

Thanks for joining us. Have a great weekend, everyone.