Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - This is Global Astronomy Month

Episode Date: April 5, 2010

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It's Global Astronomy Month on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The president of Astronomers Without Borders returns to tell us about a brand new worldwide astronomy party that will last the entire month of April. Mike Simmons will explain how you can join the PB&J of stargazing. That's passion, beauty and joy, a phrase borrowed from our friend Bill Nye.

Bill has an acute case of PB&J, thanks to the revelation that our universe may be a much more crowded place than anyone ever thought. We'll share his thoughts in a couple of minutes. No trivial pursuit this week. Instead, Bruce Betts will pose one of those questions that can't be answered by a quick search of the Wikipedia. He'll join me later for another edition of What's Up. My colleague A.J. S. Rail has posted another of her marvelously detailed updates on the Mars Exploration Rovers. You'll be the envy of all your Martian friends after you share some of what you've learned from her article. It's at planetary.org. We are now barely three weeks away from our first ever PlanRAD

live event. You can be in the audience when we record the show at Southern California Public Radio's Moan Broadcast Center in Pasadena, California. That's on the evening of Friday, April 30. The even better news is that it's back to being a free event. Turns out we won't have to hit you up for the ticket fees and refreshments after all. So you've got no excuses left. Get on the will call list at the Brown Paper Tickets website. That's brownpapertickets.com. Just search for Planetary Radio once you're there. We've also got the link at planetary.org slash radio and the page for this week's show. Emily Lakdawalla continues to present news from around our solar system and beyond in the Planetary Society blog. The organization's science and technology coordinator is ready to share a couple of her favorite entries from the last few days.

Emily, or should I say, eminent blogosphereian. I'm not sure what I think about that title, but I'll take it. It's certainly dignified. We're going to get to an explanation of that. But first, I guess we've said goodnight to Spirit. Hopefully just goodnight and not goodbye. That's, I think, what everybody is worried about in the back of their minds. There's no reason to think that Spirit won't come back after the winter solstice,

but this is the first time that we've been out of touch with the rover for a really long time. Spirit went to sleep on Sol 2210 of her mission to Mars, or sometime after that. We don't know when. But she didn't turn up for a planned communication session on March 30th, so she's probably gone into hibernation. And this was more or less expected. It was very much expected. They even predicted the time. They said, you know, late March, early April, and they were right. So her behavior is very well understood. They think she's going to wake up on the other side of winter solstice, which is in mid-May. But, you know,

that's three months at least that we're going to be out of touch with the rover, probably. Still got a very active rover on the other side of the planet. In fact, we'll be talking more about Opportunity next week, but it's very busy, right? It's very busy. Yeah, it's kind of funny. Spirit's always been the drama queen, always taking the limelight with the big news, not always the best news, but Opportunity is just chugging along, driving meters and meters over in Meridiani Planum. Let's get back to the new title that's been awarded to you by a very recent guest on this program. What's that all about? Yeah, well, I actually finally got to see my very first requested image from the surface of Mars.

One of my four high-wish requests actually came back with a photo, and it was of the site that I had detailed in the blog. It was a possible volcano in Mars' southern highlands. When the photo came back, it turned out to be kind of disappointingly dusty. And, you know, Mars has a lot of dust. It blows from place to place. You know, some places it blows away from, some places it lands. And this is one of the places where it lands, evidently.

And so there's virtually no bedrock to be seen. But I found a little bit of bedrock in the shadows. I still don't know whether I could answer my question with this picture about whether those features were volcanic or not, but it was awfully cool to put in the request and to get my photo back. And that photo was up on the blog from one of the blog entries from last week, of course. That title that you got came from Alfred McEwen, the high-rise camera principal investigator,

and I think it was a pretty smart move, a bit of pandering, but pretty smart to go to one of planetary science's most popular bloggers and pick your site. Yeah, I thought it was funny. He actually made a reference to that in the caption that's posted on NASA's Planetary Photo Journal. It's like the go-to site to get all of NASA's official photos from the different planets across the solar system. And there, Alfred McEwen wrote in the caption about how it was no coincidence that they had taken one of their first high-wish images was from someone who could possibly write about it and promote the program a little bit more. But I'm happy to promote the program.

I think everybody should go to the high-wish website and select a target to view on Mars. But you have to be careful. You can't just pick something that you think is going to be pretty. You need to put in a good scientific justification for why you think it's worthwhile for the spacecraft to spend its valuable data bits on that piece of Mars. All right, you eminent blogosphere-ian, you. We'll talk to you again next week. Thanks, Matt. Emily Lakdawalla is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. We'll be right back with Mike Simmons after we hear from Bill. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here, Vice President of Planetary Society.

And this week, it has been discovered that in some parts of the universe, we may have underestimated the number of galaxies by 90%. That is, in some parts of the universe, there might be 10 times as many galaxies as anybody thought. And this has to do with the use of ultraviolet light to detect the presence of distant, distant, old, old, old galaxies. But now it's generally agreed that cosmic dust, which is out there, the very stuff that you and I are made of, is blocking this ultraviolet light. So, in fact, there are many, many more galaxies beyond the clouds of dust than anybody thought before. My friends, my friends, if there are 10 times as many galaxies as anybody thought,

that's a lot of galaxies. I mean, when I was young, there might have been 10 to the 85th atoms in the observable universe. Well, now we've got dark matter. Now we've got dark energy. Wait, there are 10 times as many galaxies as anybody thought. That is a lot of stuff, my friends.

And that enhances the chances that there's somebody else out there. I'm not saying there's somebody else out there, but it's quite reasonable. When you get 10 times as many galaxies in some parts of the universe, it's that much more likely that they're going to have planets with, let's say, a solvent for life, like liquid water. And there'd be a planet like the Earth, and on the Earth there'd be things kind of like you and me, only totally, utterly, completely different.

It's something to think about, because it gets to those deep questions. Are we alone? Well, I've got to drift off for now. Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. Mike Simmons was last on our show to tell us about 100 hours Astronomy. That celebration was a big part of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy. Now he and his colleagues around the world are back with an entire month of astronomical wonders that cut across our planet's political boundaries. Global Astronomy Month, or GAM, is sponsored by Astronomers Without Borders.

Mike is that organization's president, and he may also be its busiest ambassador. As you'll hear, AWB's mission includes much more than instilling a love of astronomy. Mike was at his rural California home when I found him on Skype a few days ago. Mike, great to have you back on Planetary Radio. It has been just about a year since we talked about 100 hours of astronomy, but I guess you just can't keep good astronomers down. Well, yeah, you know, there are a lot of people around the world that just had a fantastic experience during that,

and there's just too much energy and too much organization to let it go. And so there are a lot of good astronomers all around the world who wanted something more to do. So tell us about Global Astronomy Month. organization to let it go. And so there are a lot of good astronomers all around the world who wanted something more to do. So tell us about Global Astronomy Month and the kinds of things people can get involved with all over this planet. Well, the idea behind Global Astronomy Month is really different than 100 hours of astronomy. That was a gigantic event. I mean, we had millions of people involved in different kinds of things around the world. It was fantastic. It had never been done like that before. And it showed what the amateur astronomy community and other enthusiasts can accomplish. But Global Astronomy Month is really

more about showing how we can connect in really global programs, not just individual events here and there, but things that involve people all around the world coming together. And it's really a way of highlighting all of these different things and bringing them to a place. I think of it sort of as like a big expo tent. All the program organizers set up their booths and everybody comes in to check them out. And it's not just about doing something right then and there, but getting involved in things that will then grow afterwards as a result. So on the website, and we'll provide the link to that website, but it is www.gam-awb.org, and we'll put that up at planetary.org slash radio. But on the website, people can put up local events, but you have, well, I know I got a list of 10 sample events,

and you're saying these things are really people anywhere on earth can participate all together. Well, it's the idea of most of the events, and I'm not saying that the local events aren't important, too. It's someplace where people can put up their events to advertise them, and they're in our list of events and on our map. So that's one way of doing it, the same as 100 Hours of Astronomy. But most of the other things there are events. Many things are online. Many events or programs are local things that you do yourself,

but it's really connected with everybody else. So that's really the focus this time for sustainable programs that will continue on. Talk about some of the programs that stand out in your mind. Oh, gosh. Well, let's see. One of the ones that's already kicking off in other places around the world is done by a partner organization called Starpeace, and they were a special project of the International Year of Astronomy. And it is some young people in Iran who decided to use astronomy in the way that I like to think of it, especially as a way that we come together as one people under the same kind of a sky. And they have events where neighboring countries, some of whom don't

get along or might even be at war, meet at the border as close as they can to observe the sky together. And they've got a marathon going on that's starting in one area of the world and taking 30 days to go around all the way from one neighboring country pair to another around the world and through April. You know, when you mention Iran, I think of the one listener that I know of in that country because he writes to us every now and then, and it's just such an incredible thing to think about someone in a place like that, that this country, the United States, is not always on the best of terms with, obviously, in fact, has not been for a long time.

But someone who is sharing that same fascination that so many of us do when we look up at the sky. Well, that's the whole idea of Astronomers Without Borders. And in fact, I don't remember if we talked about this last year. Probably not. But it was my first visit to Iran over 10 years ago that really was what started this because I found amateur astronomers there and others and we were all interested in the same things and we had no interest in the political things or the governmental things and others in the United States were fascinated by this and I've been back there many times but I'm also in touch with amateur groups in Iraq in a couple different places, and I've visited one of

them in Afghanistan. And there are groups working together between India and Pakistan and Iran and Iraq and real enemies, real enemies, shooting wars. What are one or two of the other events, global events, that you might want to point out? Well, there are a lot of remote observing events, and these are things where telescopes can be controlled over the Internet. Some of them are to control it yourself, and some of them are actually narrated guided tours. And these are very popular, and they attract thousands of people from countries all over the world. There will be, for example, a Messier marathon where the whole night is spent looking at the objects from the Messier catalog. But also during certain times, we have a lunar week that

highlights the moon when it's good for observing. And that will be with star parties with telescopes for the public to look through and other programs. But in addition, a remote event like that so people can tune in, chat with other people from other places around the world who are there at the same time, while your guide, an astronomer, controls the telescope and talks about what we're seeing, there are other remote events like that as well. So there's a very big program of that.

One event that's starting, just being launched during April, is called One Star at a Time. And it's a light pollution program where every person in the world can pledge to claim a part of their area, their observing site, their home, their town, anything like that, to protect it from encroachment by light, and thereby protecting their sky, what you see from that portion of the earth. I think this is going to be a gigantic program for many, many, many years. It's a way for every person to get involved in this effort, and we're starting it during GAM. There's one that I would love to see be broadly successful in my home area of Los Angeles. Someday, someday we're going to see real skies from this city. It's entirely

possible. Light pollution is the one kind of pollution that can be completely reversed. It's just the flick of a few million switches, and it's gone. You know, the effect is gone. It does have major effects, and it is, I think, an important program. That's Mike Simmons, president of Astronomers Without Borders. He'll tell us more about Global Astronomy Month in a minute. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Robert Picardo.

I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager. I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager. Then I joined the Planetary Society to become part of the real adventure of space exploration. The Society fights for missions that unveil the secrets of the solar system. It searches for other intelligences in the universe, and it built the first solar sail. It also shares the wonder through this radio show, its website, and other exciting projects that reach around the globe. I'm proud to be part of this greatest of all voyages, and I hope you'll consider joining 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. Our nearly 100,000 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. Global Astronomy Month, or GAM, is already well underway. It's the work of Astronomers Without Borders, and we are talking with the president of that organization. Mike Simmons has traveled to some of the most primitive and even hostile places on Earth. He finds people who share his love of the sky no matter where he goes. And there are ways for everyone to participate in the current Worldwide Sky Party. How do people sign up, or do they even need to?

Do they just go to the website, and you've got all kinds of stuff there, blogs and a Twitter feed and Facebook? It depends on the program. Again, you know, some of these are the programs that we're doing, and some are brought to us by other people. And so there's a web page for each one of this on our site. And that says, you know, directs you to somebody else's website to sign up

or something you just go and watch. We will have a schedule of regular online programs as well, some special interviews with special people and meetings similar to tweet-ups, but with pictures and things. So some of them, you just attend, just like anything else. And some of them, where you're actually doing something, like the one star at a time, you sign up for that. You've got tools on the website where people can find events near them, or they can search by day. And I saw a Google map there as well.

Right. There's a map of the different events. Because of the change in focus, it's not as many events as 100 hours of astronomy, and it certainly won't be. But there are events going on all over, and we've seen news about Global Astronomy Month coming from around the world. But a lot of times it will be the local or regional media or the local astronomy clubs that will be advertising it, and they may or may not be highlighted on our site,

but there are things going on everywhere of different kinds, many different kinds. Let's zoom out a little bit from just Global Astronomy Month to sort of the overall mission of Astronomers Without Borders, and in particular a campaign that I found on the website called One People, One Sky. What's that about? Well, it's really the slogan of the group, and it's the concept behind all of this. In astronomy, as we both said, if you're in a different country talking to different people, you find the same interest in astronomy.

They're looking at the same sky. When I'm in Tehran or northern Iraq or in India or different places, you know, I look up and I see the same sky that I do back home, also not far from Los Angeles, a bit too close to Los Angeles considering the lights, and the same interest. It seems to be something that is involved in every culture and is an important part of everybody's history. So through that, we recognize that we are the same people at our very roots, that the sky is the same for everybody. And we've been living under this same sky for thousands of years. And while we move around and we put up borders and various other things, we're not affecting the sky. That always remains the same, and we're always looking at the same thing. So it's not so much a program as the idea behind the entire concept. And it's something that

is caught on and that's been translated into a lot of other languages and so on. And you're looking for support so that you can do even more of this kind of work. Well, absolutely. Everything that we're doing now is really all volunteer. But we need to do a lot more. See, Astronomers Without Borders was started just a couple of years ago and has had a tremendous explosion. It's a tremendous growth. So there are so many opportunities out there

and so many people that are interested, people in other countries that need support while we have people here in the United States, for example, another Astronomers Without Borders program who have extra telescopes. And there are people in countries where there is no telescope in the country and no way to get one. And we have a program to try and get those surplus telescopes to places that they need them. But that costs money. We can't do it just with volunteers. So there are quite a number of opportunities that we have that are very worthwhile.

And we do need support for those things as well, of course. Mike, we're about out of time. Keep up the great work. Clear skies and lots of success in Global Astronomy Month that we're already well into. Thanks very much, Matt. Mike Simmons is the president of Astronomers Without Borders. We've been speaking to him via Thanks very much, Matt. dot gam, as in Global Astronomy Month, hyphen awb.org. And we will put it up at planetary.org slash radio. Another guy who likes to look up at the night sky tells us about it every week. That's Bruce Betts.

He'll be with us in just a few moments with this week's edition of What's Up. Got the director of projects for the Planetary Society on the Skype connection. It's Bruce Batts here to tell us about the night sky and all the other stuff that we do during this segment. And we'll have some fun with it today. Hi there. Welcome back. It's good to be back, Matt, as long as we get to have fun. Yeah. What's the point? If we're not having fun, what's the point? What's the point of the universe if it's not going to be fun? Wow. That's profound. So tell us, what's up there in the universe? Well, I'm not sure it's as

profound, but there's some really cool looking planets up there. We've got not only Venus looking like the extremely bright star over in the west after sunset, but during the first couple weeks of April, you can also check out Mercury, dimmer but still like a bright star. You can find it to the right or lower right of Venus for the next week or two. And we've also got up yellowish Saturn high in the east, other side of the sky in the evening, looking yellowish. It's in Virgo. And reddish Mars still up there in the evening sky, just nasty with planets in the evening sky. It's still kind of fairly bright but fading, and it'll be fairly high overhead in Cancer.

That's the planet roundup. Let's move on to this week in space history. It was 40 years ago this week that Apollo 13 was launched off for their unique adventure in excitement and returning safely back to Earth after their scary scariness. The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was deployed in 1991. In 1959, NASA selected the original Mercury 7 astronauts. And now we move on to... One-armed space truck! That sounded a little like Al Jolson there.

There's a little waver there. Thank you. The Saturnian rings, they were named alphabetically in the order in which they were discovered. And the first ones, of course, from Earth, and they were given names like, you know, A, B, C. Now, it turns out, when we got closer with a spacecraft like Voyager, a lot of those turned out to be not one ring, but hundreds of rings. But we've kept the nomenclature, but added on different separated ring systems so that we end up with this kind of kludgy collection of letters as we go inward to outward away from the planet. D-C-B-A-F-G-E. Gosh, I wish I had an easy way to remember that.

I was just thinking the same thing. Hmm. All right, we'll keep thinking about that. Let's go on to the trivia contest. And we asked you about what was the liftoff thrust of the Saturn V rocket. Arr, arr, arr, arr, arr. How'd we do, Matt? Very nice response. Even though we're just back to giving away t-shirts, you know, stay

tuned. We may have some other special stuff before too long. Just t-shirts? Just planetary radio t-shirts. Planetary radio rockin' awesome t-shirts. I stand corrected. You will be the envy of all you know simply by slipping one on. The answers came from a whole bunch of people, but it was Joe Plassman of Tucson, Arizona, who was chosen by Random.org as our winner this time around, and indeed he said the Saturn V first stage thrust was about 7.5 million pounds. Now, we would have accepted a little bit more than that, too,

because the numbers vary a little bit, especially if you go with later versions of the F-1 engine, those mighty F-1 engines, five of which were at the bottom of the Saturn V. I'm going on here because it's like one of the few things I really know a little bit about. I actually knew 7.5 million.

Turns out, after Apollo 15, it was like 7.8 million pounds of thrust. So it kept getting upgraded, new and improved, as they say. They added moonshine, right? Yeah. Get it? Moonshine?

Moonshine. All right, go ahead. How many horsepower do you think that is? At least two, maybe six. 160 million horsepower or 34 mega newtons, million newtons mega newtons i would sure that's a whole lot of figs i'm telling you uh here's the best one you want to know because we got some other good comparisons from some people i mean like somebody said more than half a million gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen in two and a half minutes. Even better than that, Lindsay Dawson, who sent us another one of his marvelous essays

in answer to the question, as a part of that, he said 743 gigawatts per second. But better than that, you know what that translates to? No, although we could put it in terms of megawatts, but that'd be kind of boring. Yeah, here's something be kind of boring. Yeah. Here's something not at all boring. 35 Mr. Fusions built into the hood of a DeLorean. Very nice. I always enjoy any good Back to the Future reference.

Marty! Sorry. Marty, start the Saturn V! It ain't Marty. Sorry, Doc. It's Joe Plassman. We're going to send you out that Planetary Radio t-shirt. Now, tell us how people can win one in the coming week.

Well, you know what they could do? They could help us remember the order of the Saturnian rings. That's right. Come up with a mnemonic for the rings of Saturn from inner to outer. That's right. D-C-B-A-F-G-E. Give us a mnemonic that will make us laugh, that will be easy to remember, or that we'll just find inspiring. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter. And you've got until Monday, April 12th at 2 p.m. Pacific time

to get us that answer. You know, maybe we'll give away two shirts, maybe one for funny and one for, hey, this is a pretty darn good mnemonic, and it'll sweep the countryside. By the way, I want to mention again, while you're on the line, because of course you will be there, that our April 30th event at the Moan Broadcast Center in Pasadena, California will be free. It's back to being free. We made this terrible error where we thought, oh, we're going to have to cover

the cost of tickets and cookies. Well, not anymore. It's a free event. So come out and see Bruce and me do What's Up Live. And I suspect, I just have this suspicion that you might bring along a t-shirt or two to throw out into the audience. Only if you can find

that t-shirt launcher for me. Say goodnight. Alright everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about trying not to cough. Thank you, and goodnight. Well now that's the only thing I can think of. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up.

Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and made possible in part by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation. Keep looking up. Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова