Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Celebrating the International Year of Astronomy With Pamela Gay

Episode Date: January 11, 2010

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Celebrating the International Year of Astronomy with Pamela Gay, 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 of the Planetary Society. The International Astronomy community has just marked the end of a very special year. We'll talk with astronomer and astronomy cast co-host Pamela Gay about the IYA and how it lives on in 2010. Bill Nye, the science and planetary guy, is back and he'll somehow go from the search for extraterrestrial

intelligence to buying your own space shuttle, in his commentary. Bruce Betts includes news of an eclipse in his What's Up review of the night sky. And we'll get all this underway with Emily Lakdawalla's look back at highlights from the Planetary Society blog. Emily, welcome back. We're going to get to a very significant anniversary in the history of solar system exploration. But first, you pointed out in the blog last week that news of the, not demise of Spirit, but the immobility of Spirit may have been somewhat exaggerated. Yeah, by me, and I apologize for that. I was under the mistaken impression that JPL had halted extrication efforts. That is not true. They are still working on getting Spirit out, at least as of this conversation. And they may yet decide to quit extrication efforts for the winter, but that hasn't happened yet.

All right. Well, we'll wish them luck. And you have continuing coverage on the blog, even a little movie of one of these attempts, ongoing attempts for Spirit. All right. On to that anniversary now. In particular, the work of a fellow who I guess you've been following for some time, who has a website that sounds like the latest Terry Gilliam movie, Dr. Schenck's 3D House of Satellites. That's right. Dr. Schenck is a character in a community of characters. He typically gives his science talks wearing leather pants, which is

something I find quite amusing. In any case, he's been working on the Galilean satellites of Jupiter since the 80s. He specializes in understanding their topography, and the videos that he's got on his website that show the topography of all of these moons are just astounding. There's a beautiful one. Actually, there are several, but one in particular, I guess, was your favorite, was a flyover of Callisto that you posted in the blog. Yeah, Callisto has such a strange landscape with these sharply peaky white mountains and these really gungy, ugly, dark, low valleys. It would be an interesting landscape to explore.

So do we have all the data that's needed? I mean, people have been mining the treasure trove from the Galileo probe for a long time now. Is that pretty well panned out? It is. It's been my impression from attending conferences that although there are people still publishing on the Galilean moons of Jupiter, that it's time to get some new data. There will be a new spacecraft headed to the Jupiter system. It's called Juno, but it's intended primarily to study the internal workings of the planet and understand how it's built. It's not really going to produce a whole lot of science on the satellites.

We need another mission that's going to go there and study, do for the Galilean satellites of Jupiter what Cassini's done for the moons of Saturn. And yet I guess there's enough data that Dr. Schenck is continuing his quest to put together an atlas. That's right, and it's going to be published shortly. Emily, thanks for joining us again. We will once again refer people to the blog for all the very latest going on in planetary science, and I look forward to visiting with you again next week. Thanks for having me, Matt. Emily is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society.

Up next, here's Bill. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy here, Vice President of the Planetary Society. Happy New Year. Let's talk about money. That's right. The federal government in the United States is considering providing funds for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. And you as a voter and taxpayer could be jumping out of your chair. This is an outrage. What a waste of time. You've been searching and searching for 50 years and you've not found anything. Oh, but my friends, if we found a signal, it would change the world. So providing a little money to a program like that, sort of

indefinitely, I think is one outstanding use of our treasure as a wealthy society leading the world in technology. Now, speaking of money, the space shuttle is going to retire. And when it retires, if you have your own museum of flight or something like that, you can buy one for $42 million. And that includes $6 million in shipping and handling. That's right. So you're only going to spend $36 million for a beat-up used spacecraft that had a 1 in 60 chance of blowing up. But maybe somebody will want it. Maybe science museums will want it and people will examine it.

And they will see what we tried one time when we cut a lot of corners and sold to the lowest bidder. Let's go ahead and retire the space shuttle. Don't lose your nerve, everybody. Sell them to the science museums, and let's move on. Meanwhile, everybody, support space exploration as the next budget comes along. Call your congressman, your senator. We've got a lot of problems.

We've got a mortgage crisis. We've got international financial crisis. We've got health care concerns. We've got global climate change. We've got healthcare concerns. We've got global climate change. We've got a lot of things. But we have to keep funding space exploration all the time so that we can make these astonishing discoveries that will, dare I say it, change the world. Thanks for listening. I can fly. Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. The International Year of Astronomy closed last weekend with a conference and celebration in Padua, Italy.

There was much to celebrate. Scores of projects, hundreds of astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts, and millions of lives touched around the world. Few were more involved than Pamela Gay. Dr. Gay is an astronomer at Southern Illinois University, but she is more famous as co-host of AstronomyCast, one of the NET's most popular podcasts. Yet AstronomyCast is just one of many outreach projects she is involved with. You can read about her work at StarStrider.com.

That's Star Strider with a Y. I found Pamela on her cell phone late last Saturday evening in Padua. She had just left a concert honoring the IYA. Ciao, Pamela. How has it gone there, the closing ceremonies for the International Year of Astronomy? Well, so far we're in our first day, and it's been a pretty amazing day. We started in the afternoon with summaries from all the major political forces that brought this to be through UNESCO, through the United Nations, through the International Astronomical Union. And

then we heard summaries from six of the single points of contacts from countries you don't normally get to hear about, like Mozambique, where for $1,000 they ran their entire International Year of Astronomy program. It's been a lot to take in. And of course, this truly was an international event. Did you have people attending the ceremony, or do you have from all over the world? Well, with 148 nations, we couldn't quite fit everyone in all at once, sadly. But we do have representatives as near as I can tell from all of the continents except for Antarctica. I've met people from the Ukraine, from Moscow, from several different nations in Africa,

from Vietnam. It is a very international room, and most remarkably, in some ways, it looks like it's about 30 to 40 percent women, which is always exciting in astronomy. Absolutely. Now, this is something, of course, that we have talked about several times over the course of 2009. I'm very proud to say that I've contributed two or three segments to the 365 years, years, maybe, maybe we'll get that far. 365 days of astronomy, but something to look forward to.

And, of course, my colleague Emily Lakdawalla played a big role in pulling off the webcast with you and others. I mean, how big a part of IYA was the 365 Days podcast? It actually made me really proud to see it get mentioned twice today during the summaries. It was considered not one of the official major projects, but one of the major outcomes of the task groups. I had the pleasure of being chair of the International New Media Task Group, and 365 Days of Astronomy was really our flagship project where we worked to bring together the voices of the entire planet in different segments.

And as near as I can tell, and we're still working on figuring out the numbers, we had over 500 different people contribute their voice. We had audio from all over the continent, again, except for Antarctica. I'm determined to get Antarctica involved now. And so far, we've had, between the daily show and the weekly download, we've had 2.6 million episodes downloaded over the course of the year. So it went out to a lot of people, and I'm really proud of all the people that were able to help out. And I know you helped out as well.

And everyone out there listening, thank you for all of your support. And thank you for helping us be able to take this into 2010. And it ain't over, exactly. I mean, how are things continuing? Well, we already have over 100 days signed up for 2010. So if you want to be part of it, sign up soon. And we so far have funding to keep us started, but we are desperately looking for sponsors. Just like last year, this is not just community audio, but also community sponsored, where we're just looking for

$30 a day to keep the entire thing rolling. And it's great to see so many new voices already starting to sign up, people that weren't part of it last year who are like, oh, didn't get my date last year, have to get it now so that they can be part of it into the future. And 365 Days isn't the only project moving into the future. And one of the more terrifying things that was said today is one of the people proposed that we should start the decade of astronomy in 2010, and then in 2020 perhaps start the century or the millennium of astronomy and stop having closing ceremonies and just keep this going forever. And I can't really say that I see 365 going an entire millennia into the future,

but we're set on 2010, and we have many sister projects as well. So I wasn't too far off, maybe, with my 365 years. There have been so many other highlights during the year. Of course, we talked months ago with Mike Simmons of the 100 Hours of Astronomy. Does that rate pretty highly in your book? Yes, and in fact, 100 Hours of Astronomy is considered one of the great successes. It truly brought the entire planet together. Every nation that was part of IAEA participated in some way in 100 Hours of Astronomy.

And there are these amazing images of, in India, people using camels to get from Earth to the universe exhibits taken from village to village. There are images of hundreds of telescopes set up in various places from China to Brazil, all waiting for people to look through the eyepieces. And with one of my own favorite projects, Galaxies, we participated in our own way, and in 100 hours got 2.4 or 2.6 million people classified, or not people, 2.4 million galaxies classified. You can see in all of the statistics this bleep centered right on 100 hours of astronomy. More in a minute from astronomer Pamela Gay at the celebration of the International Year of Astronomy.

This is Planetary Radio. I'm Sally Ride. After becoming the first American woman in space, I dedicated myself to supporting space exploration and the education and inspiration of our youth. That's why I formed Sally Ride Science, and that's why I support the Planetary Society. The Society works with space agencies around the world and gets people directly involved with real space missions. It takes a lot to create exciting projects like the first solar sail, informative publications like an award-winning magazine, and many other outreach efforts like this radio show. Help make space exploration and inspiration happen.

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The International Year of Astronomy may be over, but we're hearing from Pamela Gay that in some ways it was just the beginning. Pamela is an astronomer and the co-host of AstronomyCast, one of the web's most popular science podcasts. She was in Padua, Italy, where participants in the IYA gathered to review and celebrate their accomplishments and to commit themselves to continuing this unprecedented effort to make the universe more accessible to human beings all over our little planet.

Anything else that you'd like to point to as a real highlight across this year of 2009, the International Year of Astronomy? Well, one of the ideals that I think really got picked up in a variety of different ways was what the Germans were referring to as a Volks telescope, a telescope of the people. It was most famously carried out as the Galileo scopescope that you can purchase for just $20 right now, although rates are going up. And you can donate one to someone in a developing country or to a teacher for just $15. And while the Galileo scope is the most famous of these Volks scopes, there are other telescopes that were built in a variety of different forms all across the planet, not all of them with as high an optical quality as the Galileo scope, but little two-inch refracting telescopes

kids put together in Honduras. All over the world we saw different people coming up with different ways, the classic toilet paper tube telescope or all sorts of other different forms. And I think there's more people who've looked through a telescope and more children who've had the chance to tear one apart and put it back together or just originally put it together than we've ever seen. And perhaps when it comes to kids building scopes, in this one year, we surpassed all the telescopes that had previously ever been put together.

I like to think of the one laptop per child project. And, you know, maybe this is one telescope per child. Little ambitious. It was one of the goals of the Galileo scope. We set a price point that would allow that to be possible. At $15 to donate one, it starts to become very reasonable to consider getting one, well, like Norway did for every single primary school in their country. And in some places, they're starting to figure out how can we get one telescope for every sixth

grader. These are scopes that are also designed to be taken apart and used as optical benches to teach all of the concepts of how telescopes work. They're amazing little educational tools, and they're affordable, and they have amazing optics. Those two things very rarely

come in the same package. We've already talked about a lot of different projects here, and I want to mention that we will put all of these at planetary.org slash radio. We'll have links to all of them. But another good place to go is starstrider.com, your blog, your site, and you have links. I think it's safe to say to all of these there. Somewhere along the lines I've talked about everything,

and I will be, in relationship to this conference, posting a summary of all the different things that are out there that are getting carried forward into 2010 and beyond, we hope. So it's something past 11.30 p.m. there in Padua, Italy, as we speak. Did you just come from a party? Yes, we actually had the most amazing concert to help celebrate the end of everything

with a local orchestra. It played a whole series of, in various ways, star and sky related songs. I love, they closed it originally with the Star Wars saga and then ended up playing

three different encores. I didn't even know that classical music orchestras played multiple encores. But for our little audience, they did this evening. We've been celebrating in all sorts of different ways. How did you get involved with all this? Of course, you have been very involved with bringing astronomy and science to the people for many, many years.

But how specifically did you get pulled into IYA? I think it was in many ways due to Astronomy Cast, the podcast that I work on with Fraser Cain, who's our wonderful, he's really the brains behind the outfit. He and I had been doing that for a couple of years, and before that I did the S States at this point. They made the decision that they wanted to have a new media working group to figure out how to take advantage of social media and alternative forms of communications. And I got a phone call in March of 2007 from Doug Isbell asking if I'd fill that role. And I very quickly decided to confiscate Fraser, who's Canadian, and Stuart Lowe, who does the JOD cast up at Jodrell Banks, and Rob Simpson, who does Orbiting Frog, and ended up with a admittedly very Anglo but very international committee. And then we got adopted by the International Astronomical Union Secretariat to be the international working group,

the international task group, in fact, for new media. And, of course, AstronomyCast, your incredibly popular podcast with Frasier Cain, highly recommended, and I think you're on your fourth or fifth year of that? This is our fourth year, and now that IYA is behind us, we hope to get back to doing regular, everyday,

take you through a concept, explain how we know where our understanding comes from, and get back to doing question shows. It's going to be good to have some of my life back. When do you find time to do astronomy and study variable stars and the birth of galaxies? Well, it's been a very busy year for me. I have to admit, I've probably managed to cram in five days attempting to finish off two Variable Star Papers, again, hoping to get back to that now that Ai Wei is behind me. The key is having a very, very patient husband and living a fairly disciplined life.

I tend to work all hours and then play hard in the few stolen moments I get. But Google actually rules me. I tell my computer to tell me when I need to switch tasks. And it's all I have to admit. I read Chandrasekhar's biography, Chandra, and he had a secretary that ruled extremes to make sure that no one interrupted him during the wrong hours. And that's the only way you can really accomplish anything nowadays. And Google works cheaper, I'm sure. Yeah. Kamala, you got to get some rest. We didn't even mention that you came to Italy to celebrate the closing of the IYA

directly from the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. And we need to hear more about that at some point, but we really better let you get to bed. Well, thank you so much, Matt. It's been wonderful to get to talk to you, and I'll come back and talk about AAS whenever you want. We would love to talk to you about that and other things, and again, recommend that people check her out at StarStrider.com. There are all kinds of organizations listed there, like the Astrosphere New Media Association,

and of course, there's a link to AstronomyCast, one of the most popular podcasts on the web. Not just science podcasts, but podcasts overall. You'll find it on iTunes, of course, where you can also find Planetary Radio. We'll hope you'll make time for both. She is an astronomer, a writer, and a podcaster. And as you heard, her special love is studying variable stars. She's very involved for years now in making astronomy more available to people

all over the world. She is Pamela Gay, and with all of this, she also finds time to teach at Southern Illinois University. We'll be back in just a few moments with Bruce Betts for this week's edition of What's Up. Such a pleasure to be sitting right across the table once again from the Planetary Society's Director of Projects, Bruce Betts. And it's time for What's Up. Welcome back. Thank you, and welcome back to you. You know, I wish everybody else could get the wonderful service that you provide to those of us on staff here,

letting us know when the ISS is going to fly over. Speaking of things in the night sky, how can people find out for themselves, Bruce, for their portion of the Earth? Well, there are different sites you can go to. I recommend www.heavens-above.com. Quite spectacular. Worth a try. It's really bright these days.

Yeah, it's amazing. It's much bright these days. Yeah, it's amazing. It's much brighter than the brightest star, depending on the angle. And moving like a son of a gun. You know, it's in orbit. And technically, when you calculate circular velocity, it is moving like a son of a gun. All right, smart guy. What else is up in the night sky? There's a lot going on. We shouldn't be prattling on like this. What else is up in the night sky? There's a lot going on. We shouldn't be prattling on like this.

No. Hey, there's an annular eclipse of the sun on January 15th. I heard about it. I saw some ads for it. So if you're in Central Africa or in the middle of the Indian Ocean, or possibly within Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, or China, you can actually see it as an annular eclipse where the moon gets right in the center of the sun, but because of relative distances does not block it

out, does not form a total eclipse. But if you're not in that small band, you also can see a partial eclipse of the sun again on January 15th from much of Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe. Let's hear from somebody who sees this. One of you folks out there, because we know you're there listening, you know, write to us at planetaryradio or planetary.org. Tell us what it looks like. Tell us if anything magical happens. The sun blotted out from the sky, partially.

For the rest of us, we've got Jupiter still in the evening sky, looking super bright just within the first hour to two hours after sunset over in the west. Mars coming up earlier and earlier until it'll be rising right about sunset, the day of its opposition, opposite side of the Earth from the sun, which is January 29th. from the sun, which is January 29th. Interestingly, it also happens to be a full moon, which will be very close to it in the sky on that particular night. Check out Mars. It is getting nearly as bright as the brightest star in the sky

with that characteristic reddish hue. If you can get a telescope on it, you can possibly see the Martian north polar cap, the white spreading out the carbon dioxide ice. So it's good stuff. You can also see the Martian north polar cap, the white spreading out the carbon dioxide ice. So it's good stuff. You can also check out Saturn rising in the middle of the night up high in the sky in the pre-dawn. And Mercury starting to make a low appearance right before dawn in the southeast. You might be able to see it or you might not, depending on your horizon.

be able to see it, or you might not, depending on your horizon. And one more thing. On the 17th, Jupiter will be right next to quite the young crescent moon. It should be lovely. January 17th. January 17th. Okay. That is correct. We move on to this week in space history. Five years ago, and this time, darn it, it really was five years, that Huygens from the Cassini-Huygens mission successfully went through the Titan atmosphere, returning lots of information, and even successfully landing on the surface and returning data. And we had

a lovely event. Good stuff. Amazing. I was just showing, just moments ago, maybe an hour ago, a Huygens image to kids in my wife's sixth grade class, giving them a little presentation. They loved it. Good stuff. Let us move on to Random Space Fact! X-rays. X-ray telescopes. They're so weird, because if you take a normal telescope, X-rays just penetrate through the mirror

and there's no fun there. And so they create these nested mirrors that are more like tubes or barrels rather than a parabolic, what you think of as a normal optical mirror. Weird stuff. The Chandra X-ray Observatory, still successfully out there taking data, uses four pairs of nested mirrors. These are really strange.

I saw the diagram. Look it up. Go to the Chandra website. It's just the strangest thing in the world. I mean, the fact that they can use X-rays in the first place, focus them and, you know, learn stuff is, like, really cool. They should try that in medicine someday. Well, I've carefully arranged my internal organs to actually focus the x-rays.

No, no, let's not. Yes, and people will have another reason to be looking up information about x-ray mirrors in just a few moments. Oh, no kidding. No kidding. So let's go to the previous trivia question and see how people did. We asked you, when in the next decade will Mars be closest to Earth? Because it varies considerably from opposition to opposition. How'd we do, Matt? Very interesting. A lot of people did come up with the opposition, which was four days before the actual closest pass. Three or four days. I forget which, I think it's four days, but the closest pass as reported by Paul Freeland, Paul Freeland of Jakarta, Indonesia. I wonder if he'll be in the path of that, probably just outside the path. Should see the partial eclipse. Yeah, right. Anyway, Paul, let us know that at 7.50 a.m. on July 31st, 2018, Mars will be just 0.38496 astronomical units,

AU from Earth, and that's 57.59 million kilometers. Now, we had to rely on Lindsay Dawson to tell us when the really close pass will be. That's in the year 294,851. It actually grazes the upper atmosphere that day. Yeah, it's something, isn't it? I hear it'll be as big as the full moon. Yes, exactly. For those getting emails saying it'll be as big as the full moon, that's the reference. It, of course, never will be. To the naked eye, it always looks like a star. We got one other thing, and when we put this link up,

it's much too long a URL to give it to you now, but go to planetary.org slash radio. And Bjorn Getta, regular listener, had a site that actually has a real-time readout of the Earth-Mars distance. You can watch it change. Cool. Isn't that cool?

I know what I'm doing tonight. Yeah, well, I'll give it to you. I promise. It'll be on the website. All right, next week. Next week, back to Chandra X-ray Observatory. What are its mirrors coated with? So most optical mirrors, aluminized.

That's not going to cut it for X-rays. What are Chandra's mirrors coated with? I'm guessing not chocolate. We'll find out in a couple of weeks. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter. You've got until the 18th of January in 2010. Give away another one of the signed Bill Hartman books.

Yeah, can we do that? Traveler's Guide to Mars. Those are pretty popular. Great books. Really beautiful books. I saw the stack of them in your office, so let's do that. All righty. All right.

Say goodnight, Bruce. Goodnight, Bruce. All right, everybody. Go out there. Look up in the night sky and think about the importance of switches in your everyday lives. Thank you. Goodnight. Goodnight.

Turns me on. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. I gotta go. He joins us every week here for What's Up. Next week, how the Kepler mission is discovering new worlds. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Keep looking up. Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова