Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - An Eye on the Sun (In the Middle of a Lake)

Episode Date: August 2, 2017

The world’s most powerful solar telescope has just been renamed for the man responsible for its creation. We’ll meet astrophysicist and helioseismologist Phil Goode, and we’ll enjoy a tour of the Goode Solar Telescope.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The world's most powerful solar telescope, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. We'll climb into the mountains of Southern California to visit a telescope that sits in the middle of a lake. And we'll meet the man whose name is now on that great instrument. Bill Nye is back with lots to cover in our brief conversation. The same goes for Bruce Betts, who wishes Curiosity a happy fifth anniversary on Mars in this week's What's Up segment. Speaking of the sun, senior editor Emily Lackdawalla is ready to throw a little light on a big event coming later this month.

Emily, a little eclipse gift from you to your many readers at planetary.org, where you have posted this blog about a really simple and, most important, a very safe way for people to view the Great American Eclipse coming August 21st. Or any eclipse, for that matter. I was motivated to write this post because I've seen so much emphasis on being in a place in the United States where you can see totality and on buying the right eclipse glasses and equipment and filters and whatnot. And for me, I'm more interested in educating as many people as I can. And not everybody's going to be able

to travel so that most people will be seeing a partial eclipse and not everybody will have planned ahead and bought eclipse safe eclipse sunglasses so i like this activity because it is incredibly cheap most people have the materials necessary materials on hand and it's safe for even the youngest children so tell us about this it is a pretty famous way of viewing indirectly viewing eclipses all you need is a pin and a couple of cards. You punch a hole, a very small hole, in one of the cards with a pin, and you make yourself a pinhole projector. And what looks like just a dot,

an image of the hole on your second card, is actually an inverted image of the sun. And so during eclipses, little holes punched in things or holes made by tree leaves overlapping each other, all of those things will become projections of the shape of the sun and they'll all turn into little crescents. It's quite magical. And you have this step-by-step guide for how to create these. It even includes some examples of some wonderful artwork, a little gallery of eclipse pinhole projectors by some people you know.

Yes. Well, I'm a teacher first, and so I want to make sure that this activity is one that can be done by teachers and that it's a good classroom activity. And a good classroom activity is not just to punch one hole in a card. So I thought about what else could we do, and I said, oh, we can make some artwork.

So kids can draw designs and then punch out holes around the edges of the designs, and their little designs turn into artworks with projected eclipses during the eclipse. It's a really fun activity, good for manual dexterity for little hands, really fun to do with kids and teachers. Lots of photos in this blog post and artwork from your daughters, we should say, and their cousins, I think. Yes. And also a link to a video by our friend and colleague, Kalisa, a junior ranger, but she also shows how to do this pretty graphically. In fact, we're going to end with the close of that video. One more warning about the safety concerns here.

concerns here. There have been stories about these cheap cardboard-based glasses that say they're okay for viewing eclipses, but apparently there are some out there that are not fully certified. You want to look for that ISO certification or make a pinhole projector, as Emily has suggested. Then you will be completely safe because you're not looking directly at the sun. I also want to remind folks that I will be at Southern Illinois University Carbondale for their multi-day celebration of the Great American Eclipse, right smack dab in the center of the path of totality. Emily, where are you going to be? Are you going to be at home?

I will be at home, actually. I will be conducting eclipse, partial eclipse viewing for about 500 kids at my local elementary school, hopefully with a lot of help from their teachers. Fantastic. Have a great time. Let's get dark together. Yeah, that's right. That's Emily Locke de Walla.

You can check out all of the Planetary Society's activities and guidelines for viewing the eclipse wherever you might be at planetary.org slash eclipse. Emily, thanks very much and happy viewing. Thanks, I look forward to it. Be sure to try this very inexpensive trick on August 21st during the solar eclipse. To learn more about eclipses, go to planetary.org slash eclipse. It's going to be a totally awesome total eclipse.

Bill Nye is back. He's the CEO of the Planetary Society. He's been a little busy lately making a TV show, but we're glad you still care about radio. Radio is the most visual medium, Matt. It's all in your mind. Speaking of which, what's on your mind? There were some great stories in the first up column from Space News on Monday, the 31st of July. Well, there's always something, Matt. But there are a couple of things. First of all, you know, good old vinyl cyanide. I know, I know. What are you talking about?

So astrobiologists have given a deep thought, and they believe if your world is methane, as is Saturn's moon, your cell wall would not be made of lipid proteins, as we might have here on Earth, but our good friend vinyl cyanide. Cyanide? With living things? Bill, that's crazy. No, no, these guys, these people rather, have given it deep thought and they think it's possible. So when you detect vinyl cyanide, chemically with their telescopes on another planet that'd be our planet uh you think

well maybe there's something alive there it really is another just fantastic and intriguing possibility and it's one more thing matt we guarantee you that what's really going on in the solar system is stranger and more remarkable than you might have thought. I'm saying that right now. What is it, 2017? When life is found elsewhere in our solar system, it will astonish us. Which is one of the things that makes it so thrilling to talk about this kind of stuff with you. As you said, there's much more. I guess NASA has explained why we're not going to put people on the first big space launch system rocket. Well, Matt, as you know, I am not a middle manager at NASA.

Lucky you. They're telling everybody that it would cost anywhere from $600 to $900 million to put people on the first space launch system. Now, the space launch system has some engines that were used on the space shuttle, so people think it's generally reliable. But would you be the guy to get on the first space launch system? Go beyond the moon, maybe? Let's try it first. The whole thing is, if you want to do this, U.S. Congress, you have to fund it. NASA's asked to do a great many things, and this is one more thing there. I believe, as an outsider, they're just pointing out if you want to put people on the first rocket, you got to pay for it. Stand by. It's only 2017. This launch will be scheduled

for two and a half years from now. We'll see what happens. Stand by or sit. and speaking of rocket engines yeah rocket engines russia the country of russia supplies the legendary rd 180 engine which is used on the mythic atlas 5 what's the importance of the atlas 5 matt that's what lightsail one launched on man a reliable very good rocket the russian company makes these things they've made them for years and apparently they really had great engineers designing the the bell the nozzle and so it's a great engine but with all the tension that's going on between the united states and russia right now one might wonder are they gonna keep making engines well according to the story they will for now and it just shows you that commerce binds people together. When you're doing business with people, you're just much less likely to fight

about other stuff. It's a life lesson there, doggone it. Face brings out the best in us, Matt. That's a lot to cover in just a few minutes, Bill. I look forward to doing it again with you soon. You are off to, you told me, the last day of shooting for the second season of Bill Nye Saves the World. Yeah, yeah. So we did 12 more shows. And I got to tell you, they're cooler than the first season because we spread it out more. We didn't shoot two shows a day, which is what we did last time. And the props department, the writers, the camera crew, everybody had more time to prepare, including the host, as you may hear here.

Everything's a little cooler. I'm very proud of these shows. And we are just trying in all 30 minutes, Matt, to save the world. Do you know when this is going to premiere? When are we going to see the second season? Well, November. November. This is Netflix.

You know, these guys, they are diligent with their data. And they're very secretive. They don't tell you exactly what they're doing. But it will air for the holidays or air. It will go on the service, as the phrase goes, on the service. We still like air here on this podcast, whether it's the air of Earth or the air of Titan. Thank you very much, Bill. Thank you, Matt. Carry on.

He's the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye, the science and planetary guy. A long-lasting recognition of Phil's contributions to BBSO, to the university, and to the solar community. Thank you. Thank you. That little celebration was held in the middle of a lake, which you might think is an odd place to put a telescope. might think is an odd place to put a telescope. Okay, the Big Bear Solar Observatory is not quite in the middle of Big Bear Lake, but you do have to walk out a few hundred feet along a rocky causeway to reach it. When I was a kid camping on the shore of that lake, I longed to visit that observatory. Well, in mid-July, I finally got my chance. The telescope under the dome was to be rededicated as the Goody Solar so appropriate. First, though, I was invited

to join Claude Plymate for a tour of the dome. Claude and his wife Teresa, both astronomers, live in Big Bear. Claude helped build the goody and serves as its operator, or as he says, telescope driver. Going all the way up to the top of the dome. That's good. I need the exercise. Yeah, I'm used to that as a kid coming up here and wondering why I was so out of breath after running around with my brothers. Wow. Okay, so this is the main dome for the now the goodie solar telescope as of this morning. You can see that to get a 1.6 meter telescope shoehorned into a facility that was originally designed for far, far smaller telescopes,

a pair of 10 inch telescopes back in 69, a lot of work had to go into first of all making a very compact, very short off-axis Gregorian Cascadine telescope, as well as going from the classic hemispherical dome to this 5 8 sphere that we have now, which is a modified radar dome made out of plastic to keep it light. That's about two square meters of collecting area. Solar constant at the Earth's surface, somewhere around a kilowatt per square meter. We're collecting two kilowatts of power. A lot of heat.

That's a lot of power. That's a lot of heat. And the primary focus of this telescope, F2.4 as I recall, the primary focus image is about 36 millimeters across. Two kilowatts and 36 millimeters. That will melt metal. So the way we deal with it on a solar telescope, you have to have some kind of a heat dump. So at the primary focus of the telescope, we have an aluminum aluminum polished aluminum surface that reflects almost all of that two kilowatts away but with a small aperture in the center that limits our field to three arc minutes about a tenth of the diameter of the Sun and a tenth of

diameter the Sun that's about hundred hundredth the power going through. So it's about 20 watts of power going on to the downstream optics. That we can deal with. For the people who are not as into this, when you say off-axis, now we've heard that talked about as recently as when we visited the big telescope at McDonald Observatory, the coming giant Magellan telescope, all but one of those mirrors is off-axis. It means that the secondary mirror, the one that the big primaries shine their light up to, it's not in the center above the primary mirror, right?

That's exactly right. And that's somewhat critical for solar observing in particular, And that's somewhat critical for solar observing in particular because, of course, we've all seen nice on-axis telescopes like Hubble telescope images that have those beautiful star images with those beautiful diffraction spikes off of there. In solar observing, we're looking at a very bright but low-contrast object. All that diffraction would decrease our contrast. object, all that diffraction would decrease our contrast. So by going with an off-axis telescope, you remove that diffraction, you increase your contrast. And you said that you could resolve, not resolve, but you have a field of view that's about, did you say a tenth of the surface of the sun? Yeah, the heat stop limits us to three arc minutes. Then further down, we have a second field stop that takes us down to 90 arc seconds. So that's really as much of the sun as we can see, which is more a 20th of the diameter of the sun.

But the resolution of what you're able to resolve on the surface of the sun, I heard a pretty amazing figure given in one of the talks we just heard. surface of the sun. I heard a pretty amazing figure given in one of the talks we just heard. In the visible wavelength, we are resolving about 50 kilometers across the sun. 93 million miles away. Yes, and that may be the actual resolving limit of the sun, because keep in mind, the sun is not solid. It is nebulous, and so there is some limit to the structure size on the sun we may be hitting that now in the visible but that really is we won't know for sure until the four meter telescope being built by the national solar observatory goes into operation in a few years from now whether maybe there maybe there is more to. I won't put my bets on that.

But in the infrared, they will be able to hit the same resolving limit we have in the visible out to the infrared. So that's another partnership that is an obvious one between this telescope, which is a pathfinder to the 4-meter telescope, and on to the science that they'll be doing in the future. And this scope, until that one comes online, this is the largest solar telescope? It is tied for the largest solar telescope. I spent 26 years working with the National Solar Observatory at their previous flagship telescope,

the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope on Kip Peak. It also has a 1.6-meter aperture. previous flagship telescope, the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope on Kip Peak. It also has a 1.6 meter aperture. However, that came online in 1962. This one came online in 2009. We've learned a few things about resolving power. You have heard a lot about adaptive optics and now going into multi-conjugate adaptive optics that allows us to really take advantage of the resolving power

of these large telescopes here on the Earth's surface. We heard over and over this morning, basically, location, location, location. Why is it so special that this is in the middle of a lake? All your listeners know about the great history of the Southern California observatories. Mount Wilson was built here. Palomar was built here. You get that wonderful laminar flow coming off the Pacific coast with our standard westerly wind. And these mountain ranges are the first ones to interrupt that flow.

So most large observatories you'll see in some setup very similar to that. Of course, Mauna Kea, Hawaii, out in the middle of an ocean. The wonderful observatories down in Chile, same thing. Canary Islands, et cetera, et cetera. Well, Caltech, when they built this facility, were looking for a facility or a

location that had that good astronomical scene inherently but we are a solar observatory we look at the Sun during the day and of course the Sun heats the ground you get those thermals rising up around your telescope ruining your daytime scene the thought was and turned out to be correct, that the lake will mitigate those thermals, preserving the natural good scene during the daytime. Ironically, although we have this wonderful scene during the day, the opposite should occur at night. The lake should be too warm, creating thermals when the mountain air here cools overnight, destroying our scene. So although Big Bear in general has great astronomical scene, come on up

on dark moon nights and the local astronomy club here will love to have you up here. But right out here in the lake, it's not the best place to observe at night. So this is a dedicated solar telescope. How long have you been up here doing this? I left the National Solar Observatory in 2011 to take a position here. So I've been here now, oh my gosh, six years. How is it living on the mountain and looking at the sun all day? Oh, well, looking at the sun all day is nothing new to me. I've made a career of this.

And to be a part of this staff that pulled this coup of being able to develop a world-class, highest-resolution solar telescope in, as you heard, in about five years in a $25 million budget, about 4% of the DCIS budget, and get that online in five years in a 25 million dollar budget about four percent of the dkis budget and get that online in five years that is a group i wanted to be a part of four percent of what is that the budget for the one in hawaii yeah the the budget keeps going up on that the dkis four meter sorry the daniel k in a way solar telescope going in Maui, a four meter solar telescope. So about three times the size of this one, hands down, will be the world leading solar telescope when it comes online. But the number I just heard in the talks this morning is it's up to about a 400 million dollar project, 0.4 billion dollars. Third to scale, third to size, but total budget, Phil quoted 25 million dollars. That's a bargain. And for the time being anyway, still one of the two largest in the world. And hands down the highest resolving power solar telescope. We heard also references to sort

of a sense of family here. Has that been your experience? Oh, absolutely. It's a small group. Astronomy is a small, tight-knit community. Solar community, out and out, incestuous. Everybody in this field knows everybody. And you worked with Phil Goody. Yeah, Phil and Roy Coulter are the ones that recruited me out here.

That was so interesting hearing from this guy who was given so much credit. Audacity, tenacity, were all talked about. Is that your judgment of what he was able to accomplish here and how he did it? Oh, absolutely. The idea of, let's face it, a university few of us had even heard of up until fairly recently, New Jersey Institute of Technology deciding to build the world-leading solar telescope and to pull it off as a coup to get that online after Gregor, the 1.5-meter German telescope, had already been started. But to get this started, funded, funded built and online before Gregor was online

probably at least a decade after the the NSO four meter project started to start this one and have it online in five years that that's just mind-boggling so this is a pathfinder a path maker in in more than one way oh absolutely, absolutely. It's a pathfinder. Some people refer to this as a baby dekist. It is optically very similar to the four-meter telescope that's going online. So this is a demonstrator for the concept of this as a solar telescope. Obviously, extremely successful. The adaptive optics that we are doing has been a joint project between BBSO and the National Solar Observatory as a pathfinder, of course, for their 4-meter.

Our instrumentation, same thing. Time constantly goes on, and everybody builds on the shoulders of others. If we've seen further, it's because we're standing on the shoulders of giants. If you've got to quote somebody, quote Isaac Newton, I guess. Why not? I'm keeping you and Teresa, you too, from lunch. Thank you for finally getting me up here under the dome that I've been looking at ever since I was a little kid and wanting to stand right where I am now. Well, we'll have to have you back any time.

I've been trying to get you out here for several years as a hardcore Planetary Radio listener. It's an honor to have you here. Thank you, Claude. It's a pleasure to be here. Claude Plymate, operator of the Goody Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory. When we return, we'll meet Phil Goody

and a couple of his colleagues. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, Planetary Radio listeners. The Planetary Radio. Visit planetly.com to learn more. That's planet.ly.com. Hi, I'm Kalisa with the Planetary Society. We've joined with the U.S. National Park Service to make sure everyone is ready for the 2017 North American Total Solar Eclipse. Together, we've created the new Junior Ranger Eclipse Explorer Activity Book. It helps kids learn about the science, history, and fun of eclipses.

Call your nearest national park and ask if they have the Eclipse Explorer Book, or you can download it from mps.gov slash kids or at planetary.org slash eclipse. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan, taking you back up to the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California's San Bernardino Mountains. I've been invited to join a celebration of astronomer, astrophysicist, and helioseismologist Phil Goody. Don't worry, Phil himself will soon tell us what a helioseismologist is. First, though, a couple of minutes with two of Phil's colleagues at the New Jersey Institute of Technology,

owner and operator of the BBSO, and the university for which Phil took on the upgrade of the observatory. Fadi Deek is NJIT's provost and executive vice president. Professor of physics Andrew Girard directs the Center for Solar Terrestrial Research, which oversees the observatory and trying to forecast it. But we also, on the other end, look at how those events impact the Earth, impact the Earth's atmosphere, impact the Earth's technological structure, impact the Earth's biological systems. So we try to cover really from the surface of the sun right to the surface of the Earth

and looking at all of the aspects really of what's being known today as space weather. Now, personally, I'm on the Earth side of the equation, whereas, for example, the folks associated with BBSO or Owens Valley Solar Array are more on the solar side, looking at the generators of what eventually hits the Earth. This has become a pretty, if you'll pardon the pun, hot topic in recent years, solar weather, space weather, because it makes a big difference to us down here. Yeah, you bet. There's practical reasons. There's actually political reasons. We just passed through the last solar max. So there was a buildup, certainly, of infrastructure within the United States around the world for doing science, doing the physics, doing the forecasting of space weather

during this past solar max. And as we're in the declining stage now of the solar cycle, this is where we typically have these large coronal mass ejections. There was one that just hit us, for example, yesterday that created a fairly, it wasn't a massive storm, but it was enough that, yeah, it was registered by spacecraft and we saw practical effects of it. HF communication, for example, was disruption. High frequency. Yeah, exactly, exactly. A couple of years ago, through executive orders, through some legislation that

was introduced through the Congress, the role of space weather and the delineation of space weather as a national priority of something that the U.S. itself has not really invested enough time and concern about really started getting pushed to the forefront. And there were a number of different national space weather action plans and strategic directions that were enacted that are now just now here in 2017 coming to fruition. The center is really right on the on the precipice of leading those efforts. We are one of the few groups in the country if not the world that can look at everything from right the surface of the sun right to the surface of the earth and put the whole system together. For us and for many other universities, one can look back and point to few milestones, and this is one milestone for us, specifically in that it enabled NJIT to expand beyond its regional and national scope. NJIT

then became a global university. Not only is our campus in Newark, but also we have a facility here, the Big Bear Solar Observatory. Phil Goody started all that. And he himself today acknowledged that it will continue because of those that he has mentored. Andy just gave him credit for this. We've heard of others that went through the grinds with Phil. The current leader of BBSO, in fact, was a postdoc student of Phil and many, many, many more who are leaders in their own rights in those fields internationally. Anything to add to that, Andy? No, not at all. I think Fadi has it completely right.

I mean, Phil started this whole thing, and again, for a lot of reasons, including Phil's ability to, sounds like I'm tooting my horn here, but bringing in, recruiting very talented faculty. I'll agree with that. We were able to continue his legacy. I'll add that I too interviewed Andy as the dean of that college at the time. Nice work. Gentlemen, I'm glad you made it out here for this little celebration on the West Coast. Likewise. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. Fadi Deek and Andrew Gerard of

the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The Big Bear Solar Observatory belonged to the California Institute of Technology for many years. When NJIT took over, it was Phil Goody who saw the potential for creating our planet's most powerful solar telescope. Phil would become NJIT Distinguished Research Professor of Physics, founder of the Center for Solar Terrestrial Research, director of the BBSO, and leader of the tremendous effort to replace its telescope. Now this man, who started as a theoretical nuclear physicist, had seen his name given to that telescope. Uh, Hale, Keck, Hubble, now the Goody. That's a pretty nice community to be part of, to have a telescope facility named after you.

It's a real honor. It's a real honor. I'm in good company. So many people had so many nice things to say about you today, and they used a lot of words like tenacity, audacity, because apparently that's what it took. Once NJIT took over this facility and to replace the telescope there with this amazing instrument that I just got to climb up into the dome and take a look at. Quite an accomplishment. I always thought about myself as being tenacious. That's for sure.

Audacious, that's a new one for me, but tenacious, yes. Talk about how you came to be in charge at this facility and had the chance to achieve what's happened here. Well, I had this observing program. I knew I needed one because when I started doing astrophysics, I didn't have a background in astronomy. And I was doing theoretical work, which you can do in sort of a narrow way. But I had to learn some astrophysics. And the best way to do that is to have an observing program. It forces you to get the background that you needed. And I came to really like observational astronomy, and I had an observing program at Sacramento Peak Observatory. The opportunity came to transfer Big Bear Solar Observatory to NJIT, and I worked hard to make it happen.

It gave me the opportunity to do some things that I thought I could do without any background in doing them, but... You described yourself as a helioseismologist, which was not a term I'd heard before. Well, that's a field that started in the late 70s, and that's the study of the inside of the sun using the oscillations of the sun. It's analogous to the study of the inside of the earth using earthquake data to probe the inside of the Earth, except that the sunquakes are continuous and enable a seismic sounding of the interior of our star. How much better do we understand our star, the one that's easiest for us to study, in the time not just that this

telescope has been operating, but, oh, I don't know, in the last 30 or 40 years as we've been studying the sun. We understand how the sun rotates. It rotates on a single axis, not on multiple axes like people had postulated. We understand that there's not a deeply buried inclined magnetic field like people postulated. We understand how the magnetic field comes from the base of the convection zone to the surface. There are things that we don't understand so well about the solar cycle, but we do understand how small the change is in the size of the sun through the solar cycle and through time. We understand how small the change is in the size of the sun through the solar cycle and through time. We understand how small the change is in the temperature of the surface of the sun through the solar cycle.

So we've learned a lot. You were a nuclear physicist, a theorist. Suddenly you're an observational astronomer and also helping to create a new facility. Somebody said that they think you know every screw in that telescope. I'm not sure I know every screw in the telescope, but I do know the telescope pretty well. It wasn't fully inconsistent with my background. Even when I was doing theoretical nuclear physics, I still spent a good deal of my effort explaining experimental data. So when I started doing astrophysics, it was theoretical,

but I had an observational program, and the observational program grew. You have an observational program, you have to learn instrumentation. And then the instrumentation became so fantastically interesting. Things like adaptive optics are such a curiosity. You know, 40 years ago, these technologies didn't exist, so the field and the opportunities were wide open. No big new telescope had been built in the United States for observing the sun in a generation, but the technology certainly enabled it.

And so it was a matter of figuring out how to bring the technologies together, raise the money, and get the basic design to do it. And in the basic design, you have to decide what technology risk you want to take. Technology risks seem fairly obvious. In the basic design, you have to decide what technology risk you want to take. Technology risks seem fairly obvious. Make it off-axis because that way you have nothing in the path that obscures what you're trying to look at because the sun is a low-contrast object. Then how big does it have to be? Well, it has to be at least a meter and a half because that's what size you need to resolve the basic structures on the surface of the sun. All that's easy to say, but as people say, the devil's in the details.

And then you have all kinds of interesting adventures dealing with the devil. There wasn't a lot of experience around the world in creating a mirror that would basically focus, as you said, off-axis instead of having the secondary mirror directly above the primary mirror. In fact, our primary mirror was at the time the largest off-axis mirror that had ever been figured. That helped us in getting support from the mirror lab at the University of Arizona. On the other hand, it presented technological challenges for everybody involved. That made it interesting, that made it difficult, but everybody learned a lot and you do something that nobody else has done,

and you get something that's all the more valuable from it. We have talked about another telescope that is coming together, the Giant Magellan Telescope. Actually, they've started construction down in Chile, which uses a whole bunch of off-axis mirrors. Also figured at that University of Arizona mirror lab. Did they get better at doing that because they had your mirror to work with first? Well, in fact, our mirror was the prototype. It's not an accident that our piece of glass was actually 1.7 meters, Our piece of glass is actually 1.7 meters, and if you multiply that by 5, it's 8.4 meters, which is the exact size of each of their off-axis segments.

And so ours was the prototype. Ours was the proof of concept that an 8.4 off-axis piece of glass could be figured. So I hope they gave you a deal. Oh, absolutely. They had funding from the Air Force, so our argument to them was, look, you're going to polish a piece of borosilicate and put it in a closet. Why not polish a piece of zero-dur?

And you can claim credit, rightfully so, that from your mirror lab came the world's largest and most powerful solar telescope. They could and they did. You said you knew that you needed a mirror of this size, or larger I suppose, to resolve the features of the sun, down to what? What are you able to resolve to? And what kind of features are we talking about? 50 kilometers. Basically, on the surface of the sun, the photon mean free path is about 100 kilometers. So if you can resolve 50 kilometers, then you can resolve the basic dynamics. There were a lot of challenges along the way. You told an interesting story about the dome when it was in place,

but not really, I mean, not only was it not turning, but it wasn't sealed. Yeah, that was an interesting Christmas Eve with a storm that brought in sleet, basically horizontal to the lake, blew off the tarp that was covering the dome, and it was sleeting inside the dome, and so shoving towels and everything we could think of to keep the inside as dry as possible, and then after that making little dikes and things to guide the water down the stairs and out the front door. And then there were a series of problems after that to make the dome mobile. You know, our guys are really clever, and they figure out how to solve each problem as it comes up.

And that's what really smart people are good for. You give them a problem, and it's trivial to say that's what really smart people are good for. You give them a problem and it's, well, it's trivial to say that is an opportunity. I don't think they think of it as an opportunity, but it's an obstacle to overcome and they'll figure out how to do it. This reminds me of some advice you gave to your grandson who was in the audience today about what he should do to be successful in life. Find good, really smart people to work with. They'll make the journey much more enjoyable for you.

And speaking of smart people, you had a whole bunch of people who you were responsible for who are now all across this field of heliophysics, of examining and studying the sun. this field of heliophysics, of examining and studying the sun. Yeah, I'm really proud of the people who have passed through here, from Thomas Rimla, who's in charge of the project to build the most expensive telescope to date, Enric Pallet, who's in charge of the scientific program at the Institute of Astrophysics in the Canaries, the most important scientific astrophysical institution in Spain. A dozen other people, Guy Jung-Chul Choi from Seoul National University, leading solar physics efforts in South Korea. Peter Gallagher, who's a professor at Trinity University in Dublin, producing many outstanding PhD students and others.

So you have a lot more to your legacy than this mighty telescope out here under the dome. Yes, and I'm very proud of the people that I've helped train. I'm very proud of their success and proud of the fact that telescopes work. And also all these people who said that this couldn't be done or Goody couldn't do this. And it's true. It makes me feel a little better that I did it. And they said he couldn't do it. What do you hope will be the future for this facility, the Goody Solar Telescope, as we enter into a new era with this big new telescope in Hawaii, the DKIST, coming online? In the short run, there's a bright future for at least another decade with what's called

multi-conjugate adaptive optics. And that means that we'll be able to correct the atmospheric distortion over a wide field. And there are dynamical events that occur over a wide field in the sun, and they occur on a sub-second scale. We can't really probe those now. They are at the heart of the dynamics that happen on the sun. And so we will be able to probe those with the Goody Solar Telescope, and it will be the only instrument that can do that for some time to come. Also, the telescope has a good future in collaboration with NASA because we will be able to observe in campaigns day after day after day, looking at the same things, following the same targets that NASA

follows. The four-meter telescope in Hawaii will be committed to three days looking at this, three days looking at that. It will have a different mission. I see our 1.6-meter telescope as having a bright future for many years to come. I'm keeping you from a lot of people who are here to honor and celebrate with you, but I've got to ask you one other question I almost forgot. There is, under a small dome here next to the big one, there are really two telescopes, but the one I want to ask you about is for studying Earthshine. Tell us what you're doing with that. Well, we've been measuring the Earth's shine for 20 years.

You probably have noticed, if you look at a quarter moon, you can see the three-quarters of the moon in this sort of dim light. That's sunlight that's reflected from the day side of the Earth to the dark of the Moon and then back to the nighttime observer. It was first explained in 1510 by Leonardo da Vinci, and it gives you an instantaneous measure of the large-scale reflectance of the Earth. The reflectance of the Earth is a fundamental parameter of Earth's climate and Earth's climate change. After 20 years, we can see that the change in the Earth's reflectance or albedo is fairly small and probably not significant for climate change. That's really an important thing to know. Also, we've been looking at the spectrum of the Earth's shine. There's this

considerable effort to try to understand and find Earth-like planets around other stars. What's the signature of these Earth-like planets? You're not going to see some round object. What you're going to see is a spectrum. And what's the spectrum? The spectral signature is going to be a signature of greenery. If we could see just a little bit more into the red, plants would look red. It's called the red edge. So we tried to find the red edge by looking at the moon. In particular, what we wanted to see is if the Sun, when the Sun rises over the Amazon, could we discover Amazonia? And in fact, we could. So it tells you that there's a good opportunity for discovering

Earth-like planets around other stars, and this helps provide limits on that. So it's an interesting project. Absolutely fascinating. Looking to the moon to look back to the Earth to look out to other worlds that might have life. Yes, that's right. Thank you so much, Phil, for taking a few minutes. And congratulations on what has happened here today, this renaming of what is now the Goody Solar Telescope. Well, thank you very much. It's been a good day for the name Goody.

Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, welcoming you back to the show after our live show that we did at KPCC, Southern California Public Radio. So I'm not live? You're alive. I hope that'll do. Oh, that's good. Okay. No, that's really good. I'm good with that. Tell us, what's alive in the sky? A couple of special things coming up.

The yearly Perseid meteor shower peaks August 12th and 13th with increased activity that happens several days before and after. However, viewing will be somewhat hampered by gibbous moon, but you can still catch some bright meteors. If in a dark sky without that pesky moon you get 60 to 100 meteors per hour, that number will be reduced, but still probably quite worth going out and hanging out. And then, of course, there's an eclipse. Did you know that, Matt? You're joking. How could I have missed this? I know. August 21st, the great North American eclipse, a total solar eclipse, will cross the United States from Oregon to South Carolina. A partial eclipse will be visible from North America, northern South America, and the western edge of Europe.

Learn more at planetary.org slash eclipse. Also, our website, planetary.org, under blogs, under my blogs, you can find an overview of the eclipse and other eclipses. Yeah, almost everything you wanted to know about eclipses in general. All right, we moved on to this week in space history. It was a big week for recent Mars exploration. Ten years ago, the Phoenix mission launched, carrying, among other things, the Planetary Society's Visions of Mars mini-DVD with art and literature and greetings from famous people to future explorers on Mars.

And if you know where to look, you can see that very DVD with Martian dirt piled up all over it because of sloppy work by the scoop on Phoenix. I didn't say that. And then 2012, five years ago, hard to believe it's five years, Curiosity landed on Mars. Wow. And going strong, in spite of a few holes in the wheels. We move on to a random space fact. That was kind of cute.

Oh, thank you. So the first color picture from the surface of Mars from Viking 1 was processed quickly and released within hours with a blue sky. Further calibration showed the image actually should have had a reddish sky, and the image was re-released. I was a punk standing at JPL with hundreds of other people because I kind of, not exactly snuck in, but I got in. And that first image came out. I remember saying to people, a blue sky. Mars has blue skies.

Yeah, that's what a lot of people said, I think. And then, oops. Yeah, pink is nice, too. And it's different. It's charming in its own different kind of a way. Yeah, I kind of prefer it now. All right, we move on to the trivia contest. I asked you, by mass, what is the fourth most common element in the sun?

How'd we do, Matt? A terrific response. I thought this one would, you know, be held back a little bit, but a lot of people either knew or looked it up. And we got an entry from Robert Sartain of Wallingford, Pennsylvania, that was chosen by Random.org as our winner. He says carbon is the fourth most, what, present element in the sun. That is correct. After the very dominant hydrogen, quite a bit of helium, a little bit of oxygen, and then a little bit of carbon. And not much of anything else, huh?

No, it's all downhill from there. I mean, there's other stuff mixed in. Robert Sartain, congratulations. You are the big winner of the brand new Chop Shop Planetary Radio t-shirt. I am wearing it at this moment. Mine finally came. Everybody can... Dang it!

I've been telling everyone not to let you have it. We had people lit up in arms They were going to march on Chop Shop And the Planetary Society But I assured them that the shirt was on its way And I am a proud wearer of it now And we're going to give one away again

In this new contest That you're going to name in a moment Along with a 200 point itelescope.net Account The worldwide non-profit network of telescopes that Robert will now be able to use to observe the universe, and a cheap but effective pair of Bill Nye eclipse glasses. Of course, we got some other entertaining stuff. Clem Unger, who also responded with the

fourth most common element in the sun, he said that somehow that makes diamonds seem a lot less special to him. Clem, if you don't care about them anymore, you send them my way. It's okay. I'll take them off your hands. Diamonds are a radio host's best friend. That's what they say. You got it. Kendra Mullison

of Polson, Montana. She says she's proud to be carbon-based, and she's just grateful she's not one of those arsenic-based life forms that people thought they found a while back. Yeah, how lucky. Mel Powell, who we hear from a lot. He says, you know, if you separated the carbon out and combined it with pasta inside Earth's magnetic field, would you get spaghetti carbon aura? No.

I like that. I thought it was a pretty good pun. And count them, two poems this week. Well, sort of a limerick from Nathan Hunter in Portland, Oregon. First, yo-ho, it's hot. The sun is not a place where we could live. But here on Earth, there be no life without the light it gives. Oh. Thank you,

Nathan. Finally, Dave Fairchild, the poet laureate of Planetary Radio. The sun is made of hydrogen and helium, of course, with oxygen, the next in line. But Bruce asks, what is fourth? The element of graphite. It's the stuff of diamonds made. It's carbon, just another

proof of star stuff. We are made. So, that completes it. We got tons of other great entries. I could go on, but we've got other things to do, including the new contest. All right, I'm going to turn our focus over the coming weeks

to solar eclipses, not surprisingly. So, with a solar eclipse, just before totality, the sun is blocked except for sunlight streaming through lunar valleys along the limb. Who are these brief, bright beads

of light named after? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. And apparently my dog wants to know, right? Is that one of your dogs raising his paw to answer the question? It is. He's actually thumping his wants to know, right? Is that one of your dogs raising his paw to answer the question? It is. He's actually thumping his tail to say, hey, I know, I know, and now he'd lay back down. So his excitement was brief but passionate.

I am so hoping to see those beads, which will be named when we answer this contest. How do people enter, did you say? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You have until the 9th. That would be Wednesday, August 9th at 8 a.m. Pacific time to enter this one and get that same terrific package of prizes. And we're done.

All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, think about Max and other dogs and the weird noises they make. Hey, Max. Nobody eclipses Max. That's Bruce Betts, though, his sort of master. He's also the director of science and technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up. That's not Max. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California,

and is made possible by its sunny members. Daniel Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.