Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Journey To Palomar -- A New Documentary

Episode Date: November 3, 2008

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George Ellery Hale built the largest telescopes in the world, leading to the greatest discoveries since Galileo and Copernicus. It is a story filled with obsession, defeat, and breathtaking triumph. This is the dramatic story of America's first journey into space. The Journey to Palomar, 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 journey to Palomar this week for the premiere of a new PBS documentary

about George Ellery Hale and his telescopes that stunned the world. We'll sit down with filmmakers Robin and Todd Mason right underneath the 200-inch Hale telescope. It reigned supreme for decades, advancing science as much as any other instrument ever created. Later, we'll check in with Emily for another Out of This World, did I say that, Q&A, and stick around to hear how you can enter our 6th anniversary contest when we talk about what's up in the night sky with Bruce Betts.

Here's Bill Nye. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here, Vice President of Planetary Society. Greetings, everyone, on Earth. Once again today, I'd of Planetary Society. Greetings, everyone on Earth. Once again today, I'd like to just review what's going on on Mars. The Phoenix lander, which, you know, can't rove. It can't drive around and it can't get its panels to point toward the sun. And not only that, it's up in the Arctic on Mars. It's cold, crazy cold, minus 96 Celsius. It's like minus 140-something Fahrenheit. And

that's at night. During the day, oh, it's only minus 50 Celsius. It's so cold. And so all the electronics on board are getting cold, and there's less and less sunlight to keep them going. And yet, once again, because I suppose, because of the high quality of the craftsmanship of these instruments, the thing has lasted almost twice as long as it was supposed to. It's gone through its 160th sol instead of just 90 sols, and we have sniffed and seen water ice on Mars. Not only that, there's water ice in the clouds blowing over, which of course is making things worse because it's blocking the solar panels. But these are details. It's another amazing thing.

We are learning about the weather on Mars, which is teaching us about the weather on Earth. So what everybody's hoping, see, get this. It's so cold there. How cold is it? It's so cold. People are expecting this spacecraft to be under a meter, under a yard, three feet of ice

in the next few Earth weeks. And so the thing will be buried and there's no way to get in touch with it. There's no way to take a picture of it. There's no way for it to take pictures. But everybody's wondering if it won't come back, if it won't, like the phoenix, rise from the ices. Well, thanks for listening. I'm Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. Stay tuned to Planetary Radio, and let's change the world. 5,000 feet up in the middle of a pine forest in Southern California sits the great dome that shields what was for many years the largest telescope in the world.

We're inside that dome as final preparations are made for the premiere of The Journey to Palomar, a new documentary that on November 10 will begin airing on PBS in the United States. Standing next to me as the great instrument slews to a new position is Todd Mason, half of the husband and wife team that has created the film. What's truly amazing is to think that this telescope, which weighs a million pounds, is floating on a very thin layer of oil. And it's so finely balanced and it moves so smoothly that theoretically, if all the clutches are disengaged, you can actually move it by hand.

Photographs simply don't catch the mass of it and the majesty of it in motion. No, absolutely impossible. And that was one of the great challenges for us as filmmakers, is to try to portray the size of this telescope on a small TV screen. It's almost impossible to do. We think we did a pretty good job, but that's why we are encouraging people, after they see the film, to come here and see the telescope in person. It's like trying to capture the Grand Canyon. Absolutely, yeah. Moments later, I sat down under the 200-inch telescope mirror with filmmakers Robin and Todd Mason.

I guess, in a sense, you've returned to the scene of the crime for this ideal spot to premiere your documentary. Yes, this is a huge day for us. But, you know, I'm not sure whether it's a bigger day for you or for us, Matt, because you're telling us this is your first time to actually visit the 200-inch telescope. You know, born and raised in Southern California and amateur astronomer and crazed for space as listeners to this show now. And so really it is kind of a pilgrimage. I'm amazed that it took me this long to get here.

But what a wonderful excuse to come up here. It certainly is. You know, on the drive up here today, we were just talking about this, and we realized that it was eight years ago, almost to this month, that we first came up here after reading Richard Preston's book, First Light.

And that got us very excited about seeing the telescope, of course. And we just came up to look around, and we had no idea that it would lead to all this. Because at first what we're going to do is just a very short little kind of fun documentary piece about the telescope. It's an amazing machine.

It weighs a million pounds. The mirror took 11 years to polish and there are many fun things like that. But the more we got into it, the military has a term for this called mission creep. And the more we got into this, the more we realized that it would be a shame to just talk about this telescope when really there's no way to fully appreciate this telescope unless you give the backstory. You know, that led to Mount Wilson, which led to the Yerkes Observatory, which led to, of course, George Ellery Hale. And that in turn led to the story of Chicago and Hale's whole birth, his whole source of ambition,

which ultimately led back to where we are right here today, the 200-inch. You know, I'll differ with you slightly. I can appreciate this telescope without knowing that back story. But the back story that you folks told is so rich. Robin, I think I was telling you that I sat down to watch the DVD that you guys kindly sent, and my wife was running around doing other stuff. Within about 10 minutes, she was totally sucked in, not by this technology, this temple of science, really, but by the amazing story of this man who overcame tremendous personal challenges

and created the four largest telescopes in the world sequentially. Yeah, George Ellery Hale is truly a forgotten American hero. He's someone who was born in the ambition of Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871. And it's really strange to think that almost all of American astronomy and even NASA and the space program can trace its roots all the way back to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He also received from his father that contagious Chicago ambition. And unfortunately, throughout Hale's life, he repeatedly sort of wrote checks with his ambition that his body couldn't cash.

He had a frail constitution, but his plans were large. Matter of fact, who's that? Daniel Burnham. Daniel Burnham, the famous architect, had a phrase that Hale loved, and it really kind of summarizes Hale's whole life. And the motto is, make no little plans, for they have not the power to stir men's blood. And I think that thought alone can explain the life of George Ellery Hale. In a very real sense, before we went to the moon, George Ellery Hale took us to the stars. We subtitled the journey to Palomar, America's first journey into space. And what we discovered is that that is really what happened because the achievements of space scientists and engineers and later astronauts

and NASA and everything that came along with that and the moon landing were so spectacular that by the time we got to the end of the 20th century, the achievements of the first half, those achievements were being forgotten and overshadowed in the glare of the achievements of the second half of the 20th century. So that's why we did that. And it truly is America's first journey into space. And you document that the building of instruments like this generated excitement that was similar to what we saw in the Apollo program. Oh, it definitely was. And, you know, people, they would turn, there was no television back then, so they would actually turn out to watch

when the mirror went across country. People drove to the nearest city where it was going through, and, you know, thousands of people would turn out. It was kind of like some of the first space shuttle landings at Edwards where people would come out with their trailers and watch or to watch the shuttle take off, you know. This is one of the greatest stories of the 20th century that nobody's ever heard of. It was a national event. People followed every stage of the building of this telescope. Kids would read about it in newspapers on radio programs too. By the time the train carried the

Palomar mirror, all the newspapers called it a lens, but of course it wasn't a lens. That infuriated Hale. Actually, at that point, it was just a blank, a glass blank. It wasn't even ground yet, so technically it wasn't a mirror. It was just a glass blank, but it was this enormous disk of glass, the biggest piece of glass ever manufactured in the world. And when this made its trip across the country from Corning, New York, to Caltech in Pasadena in 1936,

it was a national event. That's Todd Mason. He and Robin Mason will tell us more about their new documentary, The Journey to Palomar, in 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 and to the Palomar Observatory. I'm Matt Kaplan. We'll continue our conversation with Robin and Todd Mason, creators of The Journey to Palomar, their new public television documentary about George Ellery Hale and the creation of what were the biggest telescopes in the world. Hale was responsible for getting

these amazing instruments built, but he was not the one who used them to make, by and large, the great discoveries. And here you get into some of the other amazing characters that you talk about in the book. In this case, I'm thinking of Edwin Hubble. Oh, yeah. The scientists are fascinating characters. The philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, Charles Yerkes, the famous nefarious streetcar baron of Chicago that built all the L trains in Chicago, elevated trains, John D. Rockefeller Jr., John D. Hooker in Los Angeles. It's as though someone had written a novel. It's that interesting a story, but it's real, of course, which makes it even more interesting. I think what we discovered as historians looking into this is that Edwin

Hubble deserves all the credit that he is given historically. However, he would not have been able to do what he did had it not been for George Ellery Hale. Hale was a salesman. Hale could do things that none of the other astronomers like Hubble could ever do. Hale, in some ways, is sort of a strange combination between P.T. Barnum and Carl Sagan. He was the Carl Sagan of his day. He wrote popular books, he gave lectures, but he also had this amazing ability, I don't think even Carl Sagan had,

going to extremely wealthy men and convincing him that his ideas, Hale's ideas, were in fact their ideas, and separating them from enormous fortunes. And he did this repeatedly. However, of course, the process of doing this took a tremendous toll on his frail constitution. And by the time it got to Palomar, he was really worn out physically. He really wasn't up to the job.

He didn't survive to see first light. No, he didn't survive to see first line no he didn't it's it was a difficult story in one sense because the hero of our story dies before the story is finished so we struggled with that a little bit and in kind of an a poetic way what happens is that hail in a sense is transformed into the 200 inch telescope And so when we look at this thing, when lots of people look at the 200-inch telescope, in a way, they see the spirit of George Ellery Hale. How about your journey? You talked about the mission creep that led to the creation of this documentary,

which I think is one of the great stories of the 20th century. But this really did become quite a journey for the two of you. Well, you know, it took a long time to do this because we had to try to get funding and we had to get PBS involved and so forth. But that was really a blessing in disguise because that gave people an opportunity to find out what we were doing and come to us. For example, we met the Hale family. His grandchildren are still around. And they dug through their attic and they had home movies of George Ellery Hale. And they gave them to us and we took them to a post house and transferred them to video. And sure enough, there he was, Biggest Life.

And those things never would have happened had we done this in a hurry. So that was a really good thing. And we also found other footage. It's one thing that we're very pleased and proud about with this film is that we rescued footage that would have been lost had we not done this project. When we've done some early screenings, one 10-year-old came up to us and he wrote on this piece of paper, he said, your film has changed my view of the universe.

So that's, for a 10-year-old, that's quite an interesting thought. It is a magnificent work about a magnificent story and magnificent instruments like this one that we're sitting underneath right now. PBS, as they say all the time, check your local listings, right, because it will be played different times, different days. It premieres nationwide beginning on November 10th, but each of the PBS member stations, of course, is independent, and they can decide when to put it on. Most are showing it on the 10th, but people should check their

local listings. And I've already seen the DVD for sale on Amazon. And I want to add one thing, too, which is that on the home video, we added these three special features, and they're really terrific. They're about future telescopes, including the 30-meter telescope, the giant Magellan telescope, and the James Webb telescope. And the reason we did that is because all three of those projects, to varying levels, are following in Hale's shadow. And if you talk to the directors of those massive future projects, they will all tell you that what they're doing is greatly inspired by Hale's story. I want to close with an anecdote that I want to get your reaction to.

Last week's radio show, we had a conversation with Andrew Chaikin, the terrific space writer. He's just written A Passion for Mars. And on the very first page of the book, he talks about this young scientist who went to work for Caltech and because of that had the chance to go up to Mount Wilson and spend the night not in the 100-inch dome, but using the 60-inch telescope, also built by Hale, and it changed his

life. And that was Bruce Murray, who later became the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the founders of the Planetary Society. It completely changed his future. Oh, I don't doubt it. And that's happened with a lot of people. Like, for example, the famous astronomer Alan Sandage that we talked to during the course of our research had read Woodbury's book, The Glass Giant of Palomar, when he was a teenager.

And that's what inspired him to become an astronomer. And so these things, once you, I can understand how maybe how your wife was pulled into this story within 10 minutes because we were pretty much pulled into it very quickly too, and now we're eight years later. Supposedly Frank Capra went up to Mount Wilson as well and told someone later that if he hadn't already gotten involved in film, he would have become an astronomer. He suddenly got taken with it. Telescopes are one of the best things that the human species can do.

I also want to be sure to mention, too, that our project website is journeytopalomar.org. And on there is a lot more information about the show that some things we didn't include. And there are some great books on there. And the Journey to Palomar is based in part on author Ronald Florence's book The Perfect Machine about building the Palomar telescope. So I want to highly recommend that to everyone because it goes into much greater detail than we could possibly do with the film. We will link to your site from planetary.org slash radio

as well as to the Palomar Observatory site. Thank you so much for taking a few minutes and congratulations on the creation of this really marvelous documentary. It's a thrill to be at this point and we think everyone's going to really enjoy it. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, can you tell me what date it would be at the Phoenix landing site if you stretched the Earth calendar out over a Mars year? It makes a lot of sense to compare dates and seasons on Earth and Mars because they've got days of similar length and because

they have similarly tilted axes that cause seasons. If I were to tell you that a spot on Mars's northern hemisphere is at the same point in its season as June 1st in Los Angeles, you'd understand that you could expect warm temperatures and long, sunlit days. The main difference between the calendars of Earth and Mars is that Mars years are about 90% longer than Earth years. So how can you compare calendar dates on Earth with the time of year on Mars? The way that scientists track seasons on Mars is using solar longitude. Solar longitude is measured in degrees, counting up from a zero point set at the northern hemisphere vernal equinox.

So the summer solstice occurs at a solar longitude of 90 degrees, the autumnal equinox at 180, and the winter solstice at 270. One full year is 360 degrees, of course. The fact that Earth years are pretty nearly 360 days long makes it easy to convert from Mars solar longitudes to Earth calendar dates. Just take the current Mars solar longitude, which you can find on the internet using an application called Mars 24, and think of it as the number of days elapsed since March 20, the date of the northern hemisphere vernal equinox on Earth. When Phoenix first went into safe mode on its 152nd day of Martian operations, Mars' solar longitude was a little shy of 150 degrees.

March 20 plus 150 days gives you an equivalent Earth calendar date of August 17, time to think about going back to school. plus 150 days gives you an equivalent Earth calendar date of August 17th, time to think about going back to school. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio with Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society.

Not only is he going to tell us about the night sky and our new trivia contest, but we're going to tell you how you can enter the big 6th anniversary contest. We figured it out. Dun, dun, dun. Hey, welcome back. Thank you. Good to be here. I guess I should clip through the night sky, then. Yeah, please do.

All right. In the evening sky, after sunset over in the west, you can check out Venus looking like a super bright star-like object. And then if you swing to the left or go a little farther up towards the south, you'll see Jupiter also looking really bright, though not as bright as Venus. And they're just going to keep getting closer and closer to each other in the sky for the next few weeks. In the pre-dawn sky, we've got Saturn getting higher and higher up over in the east before dawn, and low on the

horizon just before dawn, you can still check out Mercury, both looking like fairly bright star-like objects. Man, we whizzed through the solar system. We also have the Leonid meteor shower peaking on November 17th. Leonid's great every 30 years. This is not one of those times. That's a very important date on November 17th. We'll come back to it. Oh, thank goodness. See increased

meteor activity for a few days before and after that, although there'll be some moon interference with the brightness, but they're going from about the 13th to the 20th. On to this week in space history. 1996, Mars Global Surveyor was launched. It had a fabulously successful 10-year mission around Mars. 2005, Venus Express launched, still having a great mission around Venus. Hello to our friends in Europe. Yes, indeed. And now on to Random Space Fact!

Space Fact! Space Fact. Space Fact. How do you do that? That's incredible. Isn't that amazing? You'd think I had help. Go ahead. Give them some credit.

The echo provided by my sons, Daniel and Kevin. Round of applause. Okay. Hit us. Now the actual Random Space Fact. This is one of those. Yay! Okay, hit us. Now the actual random space fact. This is one of those things to prove how empty space is. If sun... How empty is it?

It is so empty that if the sun were the diameter of a soccer ball, called a football in some other places of the world... I-E-S-A. ESA. Then Neptune would be almost a kilometer away. Really? Neptune. Neptune. Pluto really would be almost a kilometer away. Really? Neptune. Neptune.

Pluto really would be off a kilometer or so away. Wow. I love those. You know that I love them. I know. I'm such a sucker for those things. I realize it had been a while since I'd done one of those. Thank you very much.

So there you go. You're welcome. Let's move on to the trivia contest. And we asked you, how far will the rover Opportunity have to drive to reach the 22-kilometer crater provisionally named Endeavor, which is its little goal in life now? They've decided to send it off on a very long journey heading over to Endeavor. How do we do, Matt? Huge response. And I think I know why.

It's because this winner, in addition to getting a Planetary Radio t-shirt, is also going to get a free one-year membership in the Planetary Society. And, you know, as we've said, existing members in the society, a free one-year extension. I'm going to start. He didn't win, even though he did get the answer right. But Taras Hinatishin, which I'm sure I got wrong, said about 12 kilometers. Got it right. Said it will probably take about two years, but still faster than L.A. traffic, isn't it?

So thank you, Doris. You want to know who our real answer was? I do, I do. Well, congratulations, Abraham Sama. Abraham Sama, who said 12 to, he's at 12 to 13 kilometers, close enough. So Abraham, we're going to send you the shirt. And congratulations, you're now a member of the Planetary Society.

I've got to mention Mike Pollard. 7,500 opportunities. That's the distance? Yes. The new unit of length? Yes, right. Well, that's pretty cool. I guess that gives you a better perspective for how far it has to go.

Yep. L.A. traffic. All right, how about another trivia contest, then we'll talk about the big ones. Go for it. So the next normal trivia contest, if you can ever call it that, name the top three astronauts, cosmonauts,

in terms of extravehicular activity time, how long they've spent outside of spacecraft, in space. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter, and you can also find another way to get a T-shirt and a membership on the Planetary Society if you're so inspired. So top three, cosmonaut, astronaut, now taikonaut as well, I suppose. Or taikonaut, yeah. Okay.

Be sure to get it to us by Monday, November 10th at 2 p.m. Pacific time. All right. Here it is, folks, the sixth anniversary contest. Now, we're going to make you work for it, as we sometimes do. We think we've come up with a really good theme. In fact, we're looking for a sort of, not a musical theme, but a theme, a slogan for the radio show. What you have to do is come up with something pithy and very short. We've already got a couple as examples.

What's the one that you guys came up with? Well, kind of a takeoff on another local radio station. Give us 30 minutes and we'll give you the universe. Okay. And then there's the one that I say at the top of the show, of course, which is Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. Can you top those? If you come up with something good enough, we might even start using it as a part of the radio show or put it on the next t-shirt. But it can also just be really silly funny. Who will judge this, Bruce? Well, gosh, I think it should be you and me. Heads you win, tails you lose. So keep that in mind as you're coming up with these. How should they get those to us?

And they'll be able to enter multiple is what you decide. As many as you want, preferably all on one email message. So wait until you've got them all. But, you know, if you really come up with something else that's great, send a second note. And remember, keep it short, keep it fun. Here you go. You need to get it to us by Monday, the 17th of November. Monday, the 17th.

Guess what time? 2 p.m. Pacific. And then we will announce the winners on the radio show that begins airing on November 23rd. And what fabulous prizes might they be able to win? I'm so glad you asked. We're going to have Space Station Sim for all three of our top winners. Third place will just get Space Station Sim. Second place will get that great package of commemorative covers from our friend Florian Knoller.

Go to his website, or you can go to his website at spaceflori.com. He's got all that amazing stuff. But this includes that envelope that was actually on the helicopter that picked up the Apollo astronauts from the Apollo-Soyuz mission, some other great stuff that they designed at JPL. And then, of course, from OPT, Oceanside Photo and Telescope, optcorp.com, www.optcorp.com, the SkyScout, the Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium. That is just outstanding. Our big first place winner, of course.

What if people want to know more about that Space Station Sim you mentioned? Oh. The simulation of. Darn me. Spacestationsim.com, spacestationsim.com. There you go. Those are fabulous prizes, man. They are.

So, you know, put your thinking caps on. Can we get a hold of any rice-a-roni for the runners-up? I don't know. We could go up the street, I guess, to the market. Probably not. No promises on the rice-a-roni. Just promises on the top three prizes. Go to planetary.org slash radio if you need to find out how to enter and send us your ideas.

We'll judge it, and it'll be cool. It'll be fun. It'll be great. Let's get out of here. All right, everybody. Go out there. Look up at the night sky and think about stucco. Thank you.

Good night. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He's not plastered. He's just high on space. He joins us every week here for What's Up. Now that's good. That's better. Yeah, we have fun. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

Have a great week. Thank you.