Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders

Episode Date: September 1, 2008

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Exploring astronomical wonders with Robert Bruce Thompson, 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. We talk about the night sky every week on this show. Want to stop talking and get up into that sky? Then I've got a good book for you. I'll talk today with the co-author of the illustrated guide to astronomical wonders, which may be the only book you'll ever need to get deep into amateur astronomy.

Bill Nye is back with some calming thoughts about dependence on Russia for access to the International Space Station, while Emily Lakdawalla takes a light approach to Q&A this week as she tells us about the future of laser communication with spacecraft. Then the baton will go to Bruce Betts, who will anchor our relay race across the sky with What's Up and return to giving away Planetary Radio t-shirts. Here's a minute's worth of headlines from across the universe, beginning with another detailed update on the travels and travails of the Mars Exploration Rovers at planetary.org.

Opportunity has made it all the way out of Victoria Crater. She took images that have been assembled into a beautiful mosaic of the face of the Cape Verde Mesa. Four years and eight months since arriving on the red planet, Spirit continues to gain strength as the sun rises. Spirit is completing a 360-degree panorama that has been named for the great space artist Chesley Bonestell. Way up north, the Phoenix lander toils away. Emily has provided a recap of recent adventures in her blog. Astropulse. That's the new SETI at home effort that has begun looking

for an entirely different type of signal from the stars. You can read about what it means and how you can help at planetary.org. Time for Bill Nye. We want to congratulate Bill on the premiere of his brand new weekly TV series that begins airing this week on the newly named Green Planet channel in North America. Check your local listings for Stuff Happens, as they say. I'll be right back with author Robert Bruce Thompson. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy here,

Vice President of the Planetary Society. And this week I'd like to talk about the International Space Station, Russia, Georgia, and the United States. You see, Russia had a little disagreement with its former satellite state, Georgia, and people suddenly got it in their heads that the Cold War was heating up again, or if you will, cooling off again. This is not the Cold War, heating up again, or if you will, cooling off again. This is not the Cold War, my friends. This is not nearly as serious a thing with regard to space exploration. The Russians are hired by us to send rockets to the space station. So if we don't hire them, they don't get any of our money. And I say our, I'm from the United States, and that's the way I view this. But let's keep in mind that there's economics involved now. Russia is much

more a part of the international economy than it was during the Cold War. And I have a feeling that they have a feeling what's at stake here. You see, people are concerned that the United States can't carry on unless there's a space shuttle to take people from the United States to the International Space Station and back. But I remind us all, this has happened before. After the Challenger disaster, after the Columbia wreck, the space shuttles did not fly. There were safety concerns that overwhelmed any political concerns. that overwhelmed any political concerns. No, people still came and went from the International Space Station,

just not on the antiquated and still, in a sense, experimental space shuttle. Everything's okay. The Earth kept spinning. The space shuttle continued to orbit. Now, let's not get, if I may, spun out about this. This will be fine. We're going to retire the space shuttle in 2010 because it's too expensive to operate, and there will be a few years when we have to use either Russian rockets or United States or European rockets to ferry things and people to the space station. You see, the space

station really is good for one thing, for international relations. People argue all the time about the quality of science that's done up there, but for international relations. People argue all the time about the quality of science that's done up there, but for international relations, the space station is proving to be outstanding. Stay the course, my friends. Let's stay in orbit, keep the space station flying, and we'll get there one way or the other. Well, thanks for listening. Planetary Radio, and I, I guess, am the planetary guy.

Whether you're an experienced amateur astronomer who needs a forklift to move your telescope, or a novice wondering which instrument to buy and where to point it, the Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders has something for you. In fact, it has an easy-to-follow, easy-to-use guide to hundreds of the most interesting objects in the night sky. The book has gotten five stars from Amazon readers, and that's how I feel about it, too. A while back, I got Robert Bruce Thompson on the phone. He and his stargazing wife, Barbara Fritchman Thompson, are the co-authors of The Illustrated Guide. Bob, let me say right up front, I love this book, and I didn't think I would. stargazing wife Barbara Fritchman Thompson are the co-authors of the illustrated guide.

Bob, let me say right up front, I love this book, and I didn't think I would. I'm glad you liked it. Why didn't you think you would? Because I thought, why would somebody come out with an illustrated guide to astronomical wonders for astronomers when there is so much wonderful computer software out there now? And then, when I really started digging into the book, and even better, when I took it out one night with my little Schmidt-Cassigan here and found out why or how it is that there really is still a place for a book like this for amateur astronomy. Oh, absolutely, Matt. Well, I'll give you a serious answer to your question that will sound a bit facetious.

What I always tell people is that when you're using a book, you don't have to worry about the batteries running down in the middle of a procession. I say facetious, but it really is true. If you go to a big star party with a lot of experienced amateur astronomers, you will see a lot of people running planetarium software on notebooks and so forth. But the real problem that you don't think about until you actually get out in the field and start trying to do it is that notebook battery, for instance, my notebook runs two and a half, three hours

typically on a charge. You get it out there in the field and things start to cool down a little bit. Well, I'll put it this way. The coldest weather that I'm comfortable observing in, that three-hour notebook battery will run literally about 15 minutes. There are other problems as well. For one, it's very difficult to keep most notebooks from showing white light, which if you're in a group of deep sky observers... Can get you shot. Incoming stuff, yeah. So there's definitely a place for notebooks and planetarium software. We sometimes take one out in the field observing, but typically we do preliminary session planning and so forth on the system at home.

And then the notebook goes along, but it usually stays in the truck. I have seen a lot of software. I've seen a lot of books that are full of star charts. But it really seems to me that you and Barbara tried to take a different approach with this book. We did, Matt, and basically the genesis of the book, people ask how long it took to write, and my answer is either about a year or about seven years, depending on how you look at it. It all really got started as a young teenager back in the mid-60s. I was heavily into astronomy, built my own scope, ground my own mirror with a kit from Edmund Scientific and so on.

Oh, you were much braver than me. I saw those kits and never wanted to even give it a try. Well, believe me, you missed a lot of hard work. I bet. I was seriously into it as a teenager, and then I went away to college, and life intervened, and jobs, and I kind of got away from the hobby for quite a few years. And then one night in 2000, my wife and I were walking the dogs,

and it was a very clear night, and she looked up and saw Castor and Pollux, a bright pair of stars in the constellation Gemini, and she asked what they were, and I told her Calvin and Hobbes, which she didn't know much about astronomy at that point, but she knew better than that. And so she started saying, well, gee, maybe we should buy a telescope. And I think I actually left skid marks on the way home to order a scope. And so we got out there, and she had the same problem that all or nearly all beginning astronomers do,

and that is two problems. Number one, what to look for, and number two, how to find it. Now, to some extent, the modern go-to scopes and so forth, for people that all they want to do is look and they don't care about learning the night sky, go-to scopes are great because you get them calibrated, you tell them what you want to look at, and the motors turn the scope to point at what you want to look at.

I'll tell you, for lazy guys like me, it's been a godsend. It is, and if you have limited observing time, it's great. But a lot of people really like the challenge of locating objects which are very dim and very hard to find and very small in that gigantic night sky. And Barbara was one of those. She said over and over throughout the next couple, three, four years as we were out on observing sessions and starting new observing lists, she'd say, you know, we have all these books in front of us and star charts and maps

and compendiums of information about it. We need to have one book that has all the stuff that we need getting started and into intermediate status as observers. And finally one day I said, gee, why don't we just go ahead and do the book? So I talked to my editors at O'Reilly. They said, that sounds great. Let's do it. About a year later, we finished the book. It covers about 400 of the best objects in the night sky. And we wanted a book that a beginner could get started with comfortably, but that unlike some of the beginner books out there, you wouldn't outgrow in a year or less. So basically what we did was put together half a dozen of the observing lists of the best objects up there,

separated them by constellations, because it makes sense to work one or two constellations rather than jumping all over the sky, and then recorded, went back and took our recordings of our observations, and in many cases went back to revisit the objects and look at them again, write up descriptions as to what you should see and how to go about finding them. And you do have a very nice guide for people just considering getting into this hobby. Yeah, that's one of the really great things about astronomy, Matt. I mean, basically for the whole history of humanity, with the exception of the last few hundred years,

all there was was the Mark I eyeball. Ancient astronomers, they went out. Now, of course, they didn't have problems with light pollution that we do or air pollution. But they went out and they mapped and memorized the night sky. And that's a good way to get started even today is just to go out and learn the guidepost stars and some of the constellations. It's a lot like looking at a roadmap. I mean, if somebody asks you where is Colorado, you might say, or Wyoming, you might say it's south of Montana and it's north of Colorado and so forth.

And constellations work the same way because if you just jump in and start looking up, it gets intimidating mighty fast because the night sky is a big place. Most people have a binocular around the house somewhere, and even an inexpensive Walmart special is just so much immensely better than naked eye. You can see things that are unimaginable to the naked eye. Put it into perspective, a standard so-called night vision, 7x50 binocular, has about as much advantage in terms of light gathering over the naked eye alone as about a 24-inch, which is a huge telescope, does over that 50-millimeter binocular.

That's Robert Bruce Thompson, co-author of the illustrated guide to astronomical wonders. He'll tell us more about binocular astronomy and his book in just a minute. 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. Here's how you can join us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds.

Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. The Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders is a great book for nearly anyone who likes to gaze up at the night sky. Co-author Robert Bruce Thompson has been telling us how novices can get into astronomy without having to buy a telescope. There's plenty to see with binoculars. Basically, the brightest stars in the night sky are magnitude 0 and 1. Basically, the brightest stars in the night sky are magnitude 0 and 1. The dimmest stars that are visible to the naked eye from a fairly dark side are about magnitude 5 to 6. And a binocular makes those really dim mag 5 to 6 stars look about as bright as the brightest stars in the sky do to the naked eye.

And a lot of people think that a binocular is just something you use until you can afford or until you buy a telescope. But the truth is, if you go to a star party and look at the amateur astronomers, including ones with literally $20,000 worth of telescope, you'll find that almost all of them have a binocular around their neck. And in fact, some of them never buy a telescope. There are amateur astronomers who specialize in binocular work, and that's all they ever do is work with binoculars. There's a lot to see just with a binocular. And there are objects up there that a telescope might even be overkill for, right? Oh, absolutely. One of the things,

particularly things like open clusters that cover a great expanse of sky, for instance, the Hyades, the Pleiades, with a lot of telescopes, you literally are looking at the trees instead of the forest. You never see it in context, whereas with a binocular, which has a much wider field of view, you can see these objects as objects as opposed to just individual stars that you have to move the scope around to see one of its neighbors, that sort of thing. Take us a little bit deeper into the book. I mean, as you said, it's organized by constellation. end of the book. I mean, as you said, it's organized by constellation. But within each one of those, you really give people a nice primer on what's going to be easiest to see

and most exciting. Yes, there are different categories of objects. And there are also different lists which may incorporate multiple categories. And objects vary greatly in brightness. Some of them are naked eye, visible, and others are incredibly dim, even in a large telescope. One of my favorite objects, as a matter of fact, is one that beginners very often can't see, even in a scope. I remember one evening, we had a group of about four or five pretty experienced amateur astronomers out, and it was a beautifully clear, transparent night, and the Wh a beautifully clear, transparent night. And the Whirlpool Galaxy M51, which is just off the handle of the Big Dipper, I had in our 10-inch scope, and the experienced amateurs were all looking through it and just marveling at the

amount of detail visible in the dust lanes and the connector. The object is actually two galaxies that are physically colliding. And there was a beginner there, and even though we had the object centered in the eyepiece, he looked in and he thought we were making it up because he couldn't see a thing. So part of it is learning to see. That's the hardest thing for a lot of beginning astronomers is these objects are so dim and so low contrast, many of them, they look at them and expect to see like they would see an object in broad daylight. And you have to train yourself to see dim, low contrast objects. And it's worth the training because they're magnificent.

And there is something special about looking through an eyepiece and seeing something which, yes, in fact, the Hubble might have provided an image that no amateur is ever going to be able to put together on their own, but there's just something special about seeing it in person, if you will. Well, there is. To me, Matt, the big difference is your eye is actually capturing photons that have been on their way for billions to billions of years before they hit your eye and form that image. And the other thing is that people, of course, see Hubble images in full color and all their magnificence, and then they look through a telescope, and sometimes they're disappointed.

What they don't understand immediately is that it's a different experience with the Hubble or indeed any kind of astrophotography. It's wonderful because they can expose for hours, and in some cases literally days, to collect enough light to make these magnificent, bright, colorful images. But the human eye is actually much better at, it's not nearly as sensitive to light, but it's much better at accommodating a wide range of contrasts.

For example, the most magnificent object is the Great Orion Nebula. And in the middle of it, there's a group of stars called the Trapezium. It's actually a baby star factory star being born there as you watch. If you look at an image of that area, you'll see either a great deal of detail in the nebula and a burnt-out white area in the center, which is the Trapezium area. Or, if it's exposed to show detail in the trapezium area, the nebula is invisible. With the naked eye, you can see it encompasses such a much wider range of contrast that you can actually see both of them simultaneously. So it's a different way of seeing things than a photograph. And some people will say, I like the photograph better. And for

some things, that's indisputably true. But for many things, just the actual experience of seeing this wide range of brightnesses and the incredibly fine details in these objects is much more satisfying than looking at a picture. Bob, real quick, how are you doing as you work toward that big truss tube Dobsonian you're putting together? That's kind of on hold because O'Reilly keeps giving me more books. What's next? I keep saying O'Reilly. It's actually Make Books, which is Make Magazine, a subsidiary of O'Reilly.

And the first in their Do-It-Yourself Science series was the astronomy book. The second in the series, which I wrote this time without my wife because she doesn't like chemistry, is the Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. And right now I'm working on deadline for the third in the series, which is the Illustrated Guide to Home Forensics Experiments. Wow. A little home CSI action. Yes, absolutely. And it's real stuff, too. I mean, it's actual wet chemistry tests that they actually use in forensics labs.

Way beyond the scope of this show, but maybe for some general science show someday in the future when we get around to that. Absolutely. We're out of time, Bob. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, thanks, Matt. I really enjoyed being here. He is Bob Thompson with Barbara Thompson, his wife. He has written The Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders. As he said, it is from MAKE, which is an imprint of O'Reilly Publishing,

and it is available to you now, and I heartily recommend it as somebody who has used it out in the field and was mightily impressed. All 520 pages of it. And I'll be back with Bruce Betts for this week's edition of What's Up and our look at that current night sky that we've just talked about with Bob. That'll be after this visit with Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked,

Why aren't spacecraft using optical communications yet? Didn't the Galileo mission test it out a long time ago? In optical communications, a laser beam, rather than a radio signal, is used to transmit data. It is generally regarded as the next step for deep space communications because it has the potential to provide much higher data rates and much higher energy efficiency per bit. But the technology isn't quite there yet. In the Galileo test, called GOPEX,

engineers used a laser to uplink a signal from Earth to the spacecraft during its second Earth flyby in December of 1992. But what we really want is for laser communications to go the other way, from the spacecraft to Earth. You need new technology at both ends of the link, small but powerful lasers for the spacecraft and optical receivers at all the deep space network stations. Also, for laser communications,

spacecraft will need to be able to point more accurately at Earth than they do for radio. Because of these stringent pointing requirements, spacecraft won't be able to rely on their lasers for emergencies, so they'll also have to carry along a traditional microwave radio system. Despite these challenges, we'll probably see the first laser communications experiment go into space fairly soon. In fact, one was included in the planned Mars Science Telecommunications Orbiter before that mission got cancelled. What'll take longer and more money is to develop the ground-based infrastructure needed to receive those high bitrate signals.

Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Got Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society on the Skype connection. He's here for another edition of What's Up? How you doing? Oh, hunky-dory swell. And you, Matt? I'm okay, sitting here in the little home studio.

Happy to be talking to you, because I have a house filled with females, and there are more than usual at the moment, so it's nice to be talking to a guy person. Did you catch the football game the other day? Oh, that was something, wasn't it? Pass me a beer. Sorry. We're not very good at that, actually. Hey, but I can tell you what's up the night sky, including the king, the king of the planets. That's good. That's right. The macho night sky. The macho night sky. And the brightest thing in

the macho night sky is the big macho Jupiter. Largest planet in the solar system. King of the planets. You can see Jupiter. He is the king. Thank you very much. You can see the king in the solar system, king of the planets. You can see Jupiter. He is the king. Thank you very much. You can see the king in the south in the early evening. It is the brightest star-like object up in that direction. And in fact, any time past sunset, it's the brightest star-like object. But if you want a challenge, have a dark sky, nice clear view to the low western horizon, then go check out maybe half hour after sunset. And you can check out Venus, brightest star-like object out there, maybe with some binoculars to help you.

You can also see Mercury and Mars. We've got Mercury kind of to the lower left, Mars to the upper left of the much brighter Venus. And Mars and Venus will keep getting closer until September 11th, where they'll be snuggling close to each other as Mars goes past Venus. I got this week in space history, 1979. Pioneer 11 flew past Saturn, giving us our first spacecraft views of Saturn, and then headed off into the rest of the solar system and off into interstellar space these days.

You know, I get these weekly reports from the Cassini team, and, you know, it always starts with the spacecraft is in excellent health, and then they tell you what it's up to, and it's kind of week after week, it's almost humdrum. And then you think, oh, my God, it's orbiting Saturn. It's pretty amazing. Next year, we'll be talking about what happened this week in space history as Rosetta encounters the asteroid Stein.

So keep an eye out for that. They've already been getting data, and you can check out information, I know, in Emily's blog as well as elsewhere on planetary.org. Follow up on that. We move on to Random Space Fact. That was manly. Thank you. Mars. We're going to talk about large craters on Mars.

Anything approximately 60 kilometers and larger, named after deceased scientists who have contributed to the study of Mars, as well as writers and others who have contributed to the lore of Mars. Most of whom were men. Well, yes. Exactly. We're going to get a lot of email. But let's talk about the small craters on Mars.

Approximately, you know, some of them are still big. Approximately 60 kilometers and smaller. Do you know what those are named after, Matt? No. Dainty ballet dancers? Oddly enough, no. But oddly, they are named after small towns and villages of the world with populations of approximately 100,000 people or less.

I did not know that. And we move on to the trivia contest where we asked you what was the first geostationary satellite. How did we do, Matt? This was a little bit tricky. I don't know if you intended it that way. Lots and lots of people did say CINCOM, but some of them said the wrong CINCOM satellite

because I guess there's a difference between geostationary, which is what you asked for, and geosynchronous. Indeed, indeed there is. Geostationary is when your satellite's matching the Earth's rotation, so about 24 hours, and over the equator. So it really doesn't move in the sky, looking up with, say, your TV satellite dish. Geostationary is a subset of geosynchronous. Geosynchronous is any orbit that basically has this roughly 24-hour period,

but it can be inclined relative to the equator. Syncom 2 was inclined at 30-some-odd degrees to the equator. It means that it's kind of matching the Earth's orbit, and it moves in the sky somewhat, draws out a figure 8 in the sky. So I asked for geo-stationary, the one that says moves in the sky somewhat, draws out a figure eight in the sky. So I asked for geostationary, the one that says stationary in the sky, and that was CINCOM-3, the first geostationary satellite. Well, Tracy Lamarato figured it out. Tracy of Beverly Hills, Michigan. Get that. Tracy said CINCOM-3, which, by the way, several other people let us know that one of the first uses

of SimCom 3 the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 that's how we got to watch them live from overseas for I assume the very first time so Tracy it's a Explorer's Guide to Mars poster for you we're going to get in the mail soon what do you got for us next time well I'm going to go back to

nomenclature and it's time it's been a while since we've played Where in the Solar System? So it's time to play that. So I'm going to ask you, where in the solar system is Tangaroa? Named after the Maori fishing and sea guides,

so stick your tongue out, wiggle it around, and find out where it is. Go to planetary.org slash radio to get us your answer, and I guess we're going to go back planetary.org slash radio to get us your answer. And I guess we're going to go back to giving away Planetary Radio t-shirts. Yeah, we've had people saying, but I'm not getting a chance to win a t-shirt. And so we're going back to it because, after all, it's unique to this program. And you'll need to get your entry, though, if you want to have a chance of getting one of those shirts. You'll need to get it to us by 2 p.m. on Monday, September 8th.

That's it. We're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about all the amazing things you can do with bamboo. Thank you, and good night. Do you know that my daughter is now writing copy for a company that does do amazing things with bamboo? Is that cosmic or what? Whoa.

Well, after all. We're like so connected in a manly kind of a way. Yeah, right, yeah. Okay, see you soon. See you soon. Good luck with those females. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, and he joins us every week here in a manly way for What's Up.

Alexis Lovanos is president of Northrop Grumman's Space Technology Division, which is building the James Webb Space Telescope and a new generation of Earth observation satellites. He'll join us next time. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week. Thank you.