Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Pamela Gay and the Image Detective

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Astronomer Pamela Gay tells us how anyone can work with images of Earth taken by astronauts, turning them into terrific scientific resources.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pamela Gay and the Image Detective, 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. Astronomer and podcast host Pamela Gay also runs CosmoQuest, where anyone can conduct great science. We'll talk with her about the site's newest citizen scientist opportunity, one that looks down on our own beautiful planet. Later, we'll take a few extra minutes with Bruce Betts to talk about the discovery of rings around the distant dwarf planet Haumea. Of course, the big astronomy news this week was the detection, for the first time, of colliding neutron stars,

an event long predicted to be the birthplace of the heaviest elements, including uranium, platinum, silver, and gold. I talked about it a couple of days ago with Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, the science guy. Bill, as we speak, it was just this morning that more institutions than I have ever seen put out the word of a discovery that is pure gold. Oh, Matt, that's horrible. You get it. I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. In platinum. So what happened, everybody, is these two neutron stars collided way, way out in deep space. And not only did we, I say we, did scientists here on Earth detect the light and electromagnetic waves from this thing, we detected the mythical gravitational waves, which were predicted in relativity, and there they are. Not only does energy, light, travel at the speed of light, so somehow does gravity.

Like, dude, that's so out there. And I note you say gravitational waves, not gravity waves. That's right. Yeah, I've been corrected on it in my defense or my admission. Yeah, so gravity wave, that expression, gravity wave, is often used in meteorology or climate science. There are these enormous waves that ripple through the atmosphere and go around the northern hemisphere like spokes of a wheel, bicycle wheel. Gravitational waves, that expression is now being used for these waves from deep space that are the waves of

gravity. And you think about it, I guess, everything else travels in waves. Why not gravity? But detecting it is a heck of a thing. It's a 10,000th of the diameter of a proton. They detected the motion of these mirrors. Now, talking some more about me, Matt, finally. these mirrors. Now talking some more about me, Matt, finally, when I had a job, when I used to be productive, I worked on laser gyros. So these are gyroscopes that have beams of laser light that constructively and destructively interfere with each other. And with those things, you can measure extraordinary small distances, tiny distances. Talk about billionths of a meter wavelengths of light. Well, this thing, this LIGO, Laser Interferometry Gravitational Observatory, is using these very, very long beams of laser light to look for interference.

Very, very cool. It's just an amazing idea. I'm telling you, this is space exploration, and it brings out the best in us. I mean, who thought something like this would work? It's just very cool. Clearly, you should have put out a press release because your work led directly. Listen, everybody else is getting in on this today. One of them, tongue in cheek, said, we saw it first. Saw the gravitational wave? this today, one of them, tongue-in-cheek, said we saw it first. Saw the gravitational wave?

No, saw one of the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. I mean, that's part of the wonder of this. Oh, I see. Oh, I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it. It's the entire electromagnetic spectrum. And so there was a little piece there for everybody, all these institutions. Multi-messenger

physics, both light and gravity. It's really something. But I just think again about my grandfathers. They came of age when there was no such thing as relativity. That is to say, no one knew about it. It existed, but no one knew about it. And then relativity was discovered. And it was shown to be real or be the best theory anybody had by several extraordinary means over the course of decades, 50, 60 years. Then lasers were discovered. Coherent light was discovered. Lasers were invented. And I remember as a kid, it's an invention waiting for an application. Now there's lasers in everything. I go to the office supply store, I get a laser in my ballpoint pen. You just don't know where this discovery will lead. Who knows where the discovery of gravitational waves or the proof that they exist, who knows where that will lead. type of computing. Could be new types of molecules can be synthesized, some new type of medicine. You just don't know. This is where basic research is vitally important.

We say it all the time because it's always true. Exciting times. Exciting times. Hey, man, it's solid gold. Actually, it's not solid. It's particles, And it's solid gold. Actually, it's not solid. It's particles, little particles of gold thrown into space. And you and I are made of the same dust, the same cosmic dust. It's really a striking thing. Thanks for bringing this up, Matt.

It is big news in science. Thank you for joining us on Planetary Radio to talk about it, Bill. He's the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye the Science Guy. He's pure gold, too. One of the highlights of my trip to Southern Illinois University for the recent eclipse was running into Pamela Gay. She was in Carbondale

chaperoning a lucky group of eclipse chasers. Pamela told me about an exciting new citizen science opportunity on the CosmoQuest website, so I asked her to come back on our show to talk about it and more. Pamela is, of course, the co-host with Fraser Cain of AstronomyCast. She's also the principal investigator for the CosmoQuest virtual research facility. She is much in demand as a public speaker, so I wasn't surprised when I caught her while she was once again on the road. Her hotel

room had a typically lousy Wi-Fi connection, but I think you'll still enjoy our recent Skype conversation. Pamela, welcome back to Planetary Radio. I told you when we saw each other in Carbondale that I was overdue getting you back on the show. And so I'm especially glad to talk with you today. Well, as long as we're not talking about those clouds that we saw in Carbondale, this would be a fabulous experience. And I'm so pleased to be on your award-nominated podcast. I saw you're a finalist for the Parsecs this year. Yes, and congratulations to AstronomyCast as well, that wonderful podcast, pioneering space podcast. I think you've been nominated probably three or four times as many times as Planetary Radio has been nominated. So stiff competition, wouldn't you agree?

It is. And I have a feeling that, once again, AstronomyCast will lose either to you or Fraser's Guide to Space, which your production values are kind of amazing. With AstronomyCast, we're just a workhorse. We get new shows out on a regular basis. But we're doing it for fun. And you guys, really, kudos to your production values. You simply have marvelous, brilliant discussions, conversations on a weekly basis. Yeah, no big deal. Frankly, don't count out Talk Nerdy to me because that is also a terrific podcast.

You said clouds, plural. That was one cloud, one evil cloud. Oh, I know. That was one cloud, one evil cloud. Oh, I know. Yeah. There were people 100 feet away from me that were right outside the edge of that little tiny expletive cloud. Yep.

Yeah, just perfectly timed for totality. Nevertheless, I had a wonderful time in Carbondale. As I've said on the show, SIU did a terrific job of planning about three days of events. And if only that cloud had cooperated. It's true. But what was amazing is so many people just a few yards, a few hundred feet away from us were able to see Corona. So for the majority of the people i i think they got what they came for and you know we're pros we're there to provide the color commentary and look pretty and sound good so i think we did our job says you i wanted to see the corona i did too but all right there'll be another opportunity right I'll see you in 2024, if not before. Ten years of AstronomyCast.

Congratulations once again. Thank you so much. It's kind of amazing that we're starting our 11th season. And we always said that we'd keep going until the universe stopped having new things to discover. And it hasn't yet. So we're living up to our promise. Damn that cosmos. It's just going to keep you working.

It's true. It is a terrific show, as a lot of the listeners to this program know very well, because I hear from them when they list their favorite podcasts. And I feel like I'm in good company. But we're mostly here to talk about this other side of what you do. It certainly is integrated with AstronomyCast, and it shares the mission, I would say, but that's CosmoQuest, which we've brought up before. For those who aren't aware of it, give us a real quick overview of what you do

with CosmoQuest at CosmoQuest.org. There's a whole lot of different science problems where we just don't have enough science students, enough science professionals to be able to learn all the things that our data will let us learn. Anyone with some free time, the software tools and the training they need to help get involved in mapping out the moon and Mars and Vesta and Mercury. And with our newest project, Image Detective, we're even working to find new ways to study our own changing planet Earth. And we're going to talk more about Image Detective in a moment. You haven't used the phrase so far, citizen science, which of course is what all this is. Why is it important? Why not just leave science to the scientists? Well, there just aren't that many of us and the universe is big. And it turns out that as technology has evolved, the ability of scientists to keep up with all the measurements we're making, it hasn't kept up.

So when I was an undergrad, I could go out to the telescope with my advisor and we'd sit out there and every few minutes our CCD would say, hey, I'm done with this image and make noise. And we'd write it down, literally write it down with pencils and then analyze it. Every photon was used by the end of the week. Nowadays, you go out and it's hundreds of stars per image, not the one you can write down with pencil. With all of this data coming in, not just from individual researchers, university telescopes, but from the orbiting observatories, from the space probes out doing flybys of other worlds, with all the instruments, we're drowning in terabytes of new data coming in every single day. And there's only a few thousand of us on the planet. I've seen estimates that 15% of the globe's professional astronomy community

was involved in the gamma-ray burst discovery with the colliding neutron stars. If that can use 15% of the world's observers, we have no hope of getting through these terabytes per day of data without the public's help. And this is where we ask amateur astronomers, volunteer astronomers, citizen scientists, whatever they want to call themselves, they're scientists. And we need their help in their spare time instead of playing whatever video game they might otherwise be playing. Do that later. You can still do that. But spend some

time clicking through images of other worlds and our own planet and help us explore what science otherwise might not get done. I think, of course, of the work that my colleague Emily Lakdawalla is such a proponent of and a practicer of, the image processing. For that plethora of images that come back now from those planetary science missions primarily, a plethora of images that come back now from those planetary science missions primarily. You know, the scientists, like the people leading the Cassini mission, say, who knows when we would have gotten, if we would ever have gotten to some of those images, that these citizen scientists, these image processors, so-called amateurs, are doing marvelous work with.

And with us, what we're dealing with right now, we have maps of the moon that can tell us what are the dangerous features, what are the interesting features at the one kilometer scale. But with the moon, we actually have images that are a half meter per pixel or better from lunar reconnaissance orbiter. We now have the capacity to map out features on the moon that are just a few meters across because of differences in soil from place to place, because of differences in soil texture from place to place, because the sun moves across the moon's sky ever so slowly. Computers just can't look at all of these different images and map out this is a crater here this is a boulder there they just can't do it and as we start looking to land more google lunar x-prise teams

more scientific rovers from the world's various space agencies we need these higher resolution maps to know where is it safe to land and where are the interesting places to explore. So real work, real science being done by these citizen scientists. But there are other benefits, aren't there? I mean, just in having science literate members of the public. And this is where it really is a partnership between AstronomyCast, Cosmic Quest, and working with many of our other partners out there, which includes the Planetary Society. CosmoQuest and working with many of our other partners out there, which includes the Planetary Society. With the images that you're looking at, anyone can do pattern matching. You can say,

ah, this is a circle. I can draw a circle around this. And you may know that it's called a crater, but you may not understand what a crater is. But with CosmoQuest, we're always encouraging people to learn. We have our 365 Days of Astronomy podcast series. And we invite people to constantly listen to podcasts and learn science while they're doing science. This is something that a lot of professionals have learned to do with their undergrads. Undercrad comes in first week of freshman in college, and they're an empty slate. And you can't teach them everything instantly. But what you can do is like, okay, I need you to go do these basic tasks

that your high school education has prepared you to do. But read this, watch this and learn at the same time. You can be productive from day one, but it takes hours and hours and years to learn all the things that, well, our universe has to tell us. More from astronomer, science communicator, and CosmoQuest PI Pamela Gay after a break. She'll tell us about the brand new image detective. This is Planetary Radio. She'll tell us about the brand new image detective. This is Planetary Radio. Where did we come from?

Are we alone in the cosmos? These are the questions at the core of our existence. And the secrets of the universe are out there, waiting to be discovered. But to find them, we have to go into space. We have to explore. This endeavor unites us. Space exploration truly brings out the best in us, encouraging people from all walks of life to work together to achieve a common goal, to know the cosmos and our place within it. This is why the Planetary Society exists. Our mission is to give you the power to advance space science and exploration.

With your support, we sponsor innovative space technologies, inspire curious minds, and advocate for our future in space. We are the Planetary Society. Join us. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Let's rejoin astronomer Pamela Gay. Pamela is Principal Investigator for the CosmoQuest Virtual Research Facility that you can find at cosmoquest.org. It offers many

opportunities for everyone to do real planetary science, learn about our universe, and share the wonder of it all with others. There are other terrific resources on the site. There are all of these projects that people can and should contribute to or become a part of as citizen scientists. But I was looking a couple of days ago at your Educators Zone with the content, as it says, for educators, museums, and scientists.

Checked out a couple of the units, curricula and lessons plans that, you know, obviously intended for teachers, but anybody can use these. I was really impressed by Terra Luna. And then, of course, astronomy versus astrology, which I thought took a really even-handed approach to that topic that, you know, some of us can be kind of heated about. That one's actually one of my favorite activities.

We designed it to do in a public square in Greece. And the idea of talking about astronomy versus astrology while in the place, the name, the constellation, was just this fabulous experience. It's a simple activity that starts out by having people wearing T-shirts that match each of the different astrological symbols, standing out with their arms outstretched, forming a big circle of even space in between the constellations. And you make the point of this is what the zodiac symbols for astrology say the shape of the sky is with equal time being spent in each of the constellations.

And then we have the people change their spacing based on what are the actual sizes of the constellations where I forget exactly how many degrees we assigned to the width of a body from the shoulder to the elbow, from the elbow to the fingertips. And as we change this spacing and then throw in Ophiuchus, because everyone forgets there's a 13th sign that the sun passes through, you realize that reality is so very different and so much more complicated. It's just spacing in this particular activity, but it's so powerful to look at. As I said, all of these resources are there at cosmoquest.org. Let's talk about that new project. The one that on the website at least still says that it's in beta.

Although I checked it out, I tried to match up an image that apparently was in Florida. Didn't do too well. I didn't have time to stick with it. But tell us about Image Detective. So Image Detective, it says that it's in beta because we may decide that we need to change some of the wording on things. So for instance, we've had people already point out that we have a button that asks, do you see Aurora in these images? Because part of what we're having people do

is identify what is in the photos that astronauts take. It turns out that the astronauts from all 18 different nations that have flown on the International Space Station over the past many, many years, they've taken over 1.5 million photos and they haven't labeled them. So we know where the space station was. We know what was on the Earth directly below it. We know what camera lens they were using. But we don't know where on

Earth they were pointed. Literally, we don't know where on Earth they were pointed. And sometimes they weren't pointed at Earth. Sometimes they were looking off out in the distance they were looking off across the atmosphere and the reason that we have the word beta is we're finding things in these images that we we hadn't thought about in designing the interface so that you can go through and you can tag this image has clouds this image has cities at night this image has lightning and currently we have one and this is one of the ones I suspect is going to change, which is the reason we have the word beta. And it says, do you see Aurora? But we don't ask, do you see sky glow? And a lot of people don't realize there's a difference between Aurora and

sky glow. Those who do realize there's a difference don't know what to do. And so it's these little things that we're realizing by talking to the people using it, we're still getting great data, that we're realizing by talking to the people using it, we're still getting great data. But we might be able to get even better data just by adding things like the word sky glow next to the word aurora. But like you said, you went in and you tried to find where on earth this photo was located. It's a project that starts with pick an image. You can go through, you can pick whichever one of the astronaut photos you want to work with. It asks you to tag what's in the image, mountains, deserts, rivers, oceans. And then the last step is here is the part of Earth that was below the International Space Station. Now try and find where on Earth this photo was located. And some of them are super easy.

Some you just zoom straight in on the center and the astronaut was looking straight down and you have a match. Other times the astronaut was looking off to the side. There's one of the Suez Canal that left me quite confused for some time before I realized that they were looking off and what to them was the distance across the earth to see the Suez Canal. You locate the images in Google Maps. And when we're done, or actually once we get enough images to usefully have a catalog, which will happen well before we're done, folks will be able to go in and say, I need an image from space of the Suez Canal images from this area of California that's been on fire so that I can see what it looked like before the fire struck. I want to look and see what does the suburb look like at high tide and at low tide. And people will be able to go into

the catalog and pull this information out and use it for science, use it to illustrate journal articles, use it for school projects, or just because we're curious about the world around us. It is also a gorgeous user interface. And more than just being pretty, it's really fun to use. I mean, yeah, yes, my laziness took over, but I was having a great time changing the transparency and moving the images around, zooming in and out. It really, it's more fun than a lot of video games I've seen.

It may very well be this combination of a digital Where's Waldo, except you're trying to find Where's the Suez Canal, it turns out. And then at the same time, you are dealing with images with a literally out-of-this-world perspective on our planet. The astronauts have been trained to be pretty good photographers. Now, what does, I have to admit, make my photographic heart feel better is you do occasionally hit the ones that are out of focus and you're reminded astronauts are humans too. hit the ones that are out of focus and you're reminded astronauts are humans too. There's a few in the system where the astronauts were trying to take artsy photos and you look at them and you kind of wonder if they've gotten enough sleep recently, but they're human. They have a human perspective on our planet and it's beautiful and all of the images can be easily downloaded. I've changed my screen background. I don't know how many different times since we started working on this.

It's beautiful, and it's science. How do people get started? You go to CosmoQuest.org and pick a world you want to map. We have five worlds listed out right now. Earth is the first one on the left. So just click. It takes you in. There's a tutorial.

When you're done with the tutorial, if you like what you're doing, you'll be asked to register. And once you're registered, we store your data, and it gets used by scientists to, well, generate science. And we do give people credit for their discoveries. And that's a nice plus that you will actually be recognized for the science that you're helping Image Detective and CosmoQuest conduct. You have a terrific team. You lead it. You're the principal investigator for CosmoQuest. But this takes a lot of work. How do you make this? How do you keep this going? I mean, who are your partners? I have to start by giving a shout out to my two right-hand humans. Corey Lehann has been working with CosmoQuest since we first launched, and he's my lead developer and really has developed a

vision for how we need to evolve the software over the years. And we work on the coding together with a team of student programmers drawn from the Southern Illinois, Metro East St. Louis area. We also have as our project manager, Sandlin Buxner at the Planetary Science Institute. And our institutional partners are the Planetary Science Institute, where our science postdoc and science team is located. are the Planetary Science Institute, where our science postdoc and science team is located. I'm at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. We have our human subject investigators. This is a psychology team that helps us understand why it is that people are engaging in this. They're at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. And then, of course, our image detective science team is the Johnson Space Flight Center. Our planetary programs are out of the Southwest

Research Institute in Colorado. Our lead for Vesta Mappers is at Georgia Tech. It's a real astronomy and planetary science hall of fame. It really is. And every year we bring in more teams. We're really looking forward to new projects that draw in the University of Texas and Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland. In the coming months and years, we have great things planned, funding willing, of course. Everything's funding willing. So, yeah, NASA's taking data, and we're inviting you to come in and help us process it. Thank you, Pamela. I will once again encourage folks

listening to this episode of Planetary Radio, who I bet also listen to AstronomyCast, to check it out. If you haven't been to CosmoQuest.org, take a look and pick your project. And, you know, whichever one you end up with, do take a look at Image Detective because it just is such a fun interface. And you get to see all these real pretty pictures of what is for a lot of us our favorite planet, because as Bill Nye says, everybody I know lives there, planet Earth. Keep up the great work. I'm going to try and you do the same. It's always a pleasure coming on your show. That's Pamela Gay, astronomer and the lead, the principal investigator for CosmoQuest that we

have been talking about today. Someday we'll talk with her about why she loves variable stars so much and all the great things that that work has contributed to our knowledge of the cosmos. Let's go on now to talking to yet another astronomer we hear from on an even more regular basis. It's time for What's Up with Bruce Betts. Time again for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is, always is, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society,

and he's going to tell us what's up in the night sky and do all that kind of stuff. But we also have reason to talk to Bruce because of the announcement that was made last week about an interesting feature that was found around an object in the Kuiper Belt. That little object, that little planetoid, what would you call it, of Haumea? Officially classed as a dwarf planet, it's also a trans-Neptunian object, has all sorts of terms out there. And it's not that small. It's super weird, though. It's an ellipsoid rather than really a sphere, but its long axis is about as long as Pluto

is wide. It's small for planet standards, but not that small compared to other objects in the solar system. But they found something neat, right, Matt? They did indeed. And they found it partly because of work by a couple of observatories that received some assistance, some support from the Planetary Society. They did indeed. So they found a couple rings around Haumea, making it the farthest object out in the solar system around which we found rings. Lots of observers were

involved in these observations. There was a star occultation, so Haumea passed in front of a star. And so all sorts of observatories in Europe, where the occultation was visible from were taking observations. And two of them received Shoemaker-Neo grants in recent years, which we give out to mostly advanced amateur but also professional observers to help them study near-Earth asteroids. But, hey, they do other stuff with their spiffy telescopes. So there are two that have said that they couldn't have made these observations if it weren't for our grants and participate in this process. One of them was in northern Italy, Albino Carbagnani. Carbagnani? You know, I have an Italian wife, so I've learned a little bit of this stuff.

All right. little bit of this stuff. All right. Well, he and a large group of astronomers get together in northern Italy, and they made observations. And then also Herman Makus. Do you also speak Slovenian? You're on your own. All right. In Slovenia, at an observatory I can't possibly pronounce because I'd have to buy a vowel. They made observations as well. So we're stunned and excited about the discovery and proud that some of the people we helped fund their facilities were involved. And what is the current status of the Shoemaker-Neo grant process? We're coming around again, aren't we?

We are indeed. We're in the middle of reviewing them right now, the proposals we've got, and we'll be announcing the winners in the next month or two. By the way, you can learn more. Jason Davis has a blog about the Haumea activity at planetary.org. Thank you for adding that. Let's go on to the stuff we normally talk about, beginning with the stuff that the rest of us can see,

even without a grant from the Planetary Society. In the sky in the pre-dawn, we've got Venus looking super bright and Mars above it. That's over in the east. In the evening sky, Saturn is in the southwest in the evening. And on October 24th, it is very close to the moon. We move on to this week in space history. It was 2001 that Mars Odyssey arrived at Mars.

It's still working. Part of the flotilla out there at the Red Planet. All right, we move on to Random Space Fact. Yeah. A little sort of Ronettes action there, which you're going to find that's very appropriate in a moment. That's unexpected. As you may know, the moon's distance from Earth due to tidal effects increases,

and it increases by about 38 millimeters or about an inch and a half per year, which is roughly the rate at which human fingernails grow. Oh, that is random. So I don't know how one pictures that, but I found it intriguing. All right, we move on to the trivia contest. And I ask you what I thought was an easy question. In English, what does the Russian word Sputnik mean? What did we learn, Matt? Wow, people were coming out of the woodwork or out of the

cosmos for this one. We heard from so many people who are regular listeners to the show but generally do not enter the contest and so many of them had wonderful things to say about the show. Thank you to all of you. I will write back to as many of you as I can. I guess it was because you said it was easy or maybe because of the great prize that we've got for this. Whatever the reason, out of that huge crowd, it was Scott Ronci, not the Ronettes, but Ronci in Carson City, Nevada, Ronci in Carson City, Nevada, who said that when he looked it up, Sputnik, while it also has come to simply mean satellite, the actual Russian meaning when the Soviet Union put the very first human-created object in space, what it meant to them was fellow traveler

of Earth. And sometimes the of Earth is in parentheses parentheses but fellow traveler would have been enough and i'm hoping that that was enough for uh for scott uh that works i would have taken fellow traveler uh satellite or matt kaplan well we also did get this uh from martin haj, who said he's heard that the Russian word for Bruce Betts is light sailor. Either that or sail lighter. His translation program may need some work. Well, I certainly do need to sail lighter than I am. I did not know that.

I did not know that. Well, back to Scott Ronci. He's picked up a Planetary Society T-shirt from Chop Shop Store. ChopShopStore.com is where you can see it. A 200-point iTelescope.net astronomy account on that worldwide nonprofit network of telescopes. And a beautifully mounted print by space artist Michelle Roche from her Astro Girls series. And this one is Marilyn Monroe on Mars. I got it out.

And it's really fun. It's a great little caricature of Marilyn with a ray gun, of all things, standing on the Martian surface. It's pretty fun. And stay tuned because we're going to have another work by Michelle, a little somewhat more serious work to give away in the new contest. But before we get to that, Brian Mangold, Maricopa, Arizona, he says his grandfather was an amateur radio operator and told him that when Sputnik flew over, he picked up the beeps, the pings, and carried them over to the hometown's

radio station so that everybody could listen, I'm sure on AM radio radio at that point to Sputnik going beep, beep, beep. On that topic, Mel Powell in Sherman Oaks said he's not sure he would have wanted to be a fellow traveler with Sputnik 1 because after a couple of days on the road, that beep, beep, beep would have gotten very annoying. Ozzy Osband, I assume that's not a pseudonym. Titusville, Florida. He said Sputnik's radio signal was put in the middle of the amateur radio band, the ham radio bands, because the Soviets knew that then thousands of hams around the world would hear it, and that they would share it, and nobody be able to deny that they had made this tremendous achievement. Lots of these today, because after all, we had so many entries.

Laurel Bischow in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Laurel's father claimed that several of their neighbor's garage doors started opening and closing whenever Sputnik passed overhead. And Laurel says, that sounds fishy to me. Was it possible? I would guess, yeah, if there was somebody inside the garage trying to get out. Finally, and this is true, I looked it up, Jeff Sosby in Sacramento. Look up Sputnik in the Urban Dictionary. There are a bunch of meanings for that word, which we cannot share on a family radio program. Well, I'm glad we're not sharing them then, I guess.

Well, it's all there in the Urban Dictionary. We're ready to move on. What have you got for next time? Question for next time. What two moons in our solar system have the highest and second highest densities? Densities of moons in the solar system. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. All right. You've got until Wednesday, the 25th of October, Wednesday, October 25 at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us this answer

and win yourself maybe a Planetary Society t-shirt, a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account, and, as I said, another beautifully mounted print by famed space artist Michelle Roosch. This one is her rendering of the Kelly twins, Scott and Mark, the identical twins, who, not together, but both flew, helping us learn much more about the physiology of spaceflight and what that does to human beings. It's kind of tough on us, as it turns out. We're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about what street sign best represents your life. Thank you, and good night.

I'll take no outlet. What are you taking? Soft shoulder. That's Bruce Betts. Good night. I'll take no outlet. What are you taking? Soft shoulder. That's Bruce Betts. He's the hard-driving director of science and technology for the Planetary Society who joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by its solid gold members.

Daniel Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schl gold members. Daniel Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan, tweeting now and then from at PlanRad. Clear skies.