Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Zero-G With OK Go!

Episode Date: February 16, 2016

OK Go has gone where no band has gone before to make a music video. Mat talks with Damian Kulash and Tim Nordwind about the hazards, thrill and promise of making art in free fall.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Greetings, Planetary Radio listeners. I suspect we space geeks have been joined by a lot of OK Go fans, so welcome newbies. We've been here talking about space exploration for more than 12 years. It's always fun when someone from the arts turns our STEM into STEAM, and this is one of those shows. As you'll hear, even our CEO, Bill Nye the Science Guy, had a question for Damien and Tim. Before we get into the actual show, I, had a question for Damien and Tim. Before we get into the actual show, I've got a special bonus to play for you. I was still setting up my interview equipment when Damien brought up the big science announcement made on February 11th, the same day the guys released the Upside Down and Inside Out Zero-G video.

My recorder was running, so I'm able to share this brief clip with you. predicted gravity waves and they've been working at trying to detect them for like, I don't know, 30, 40 years now. Everybody suspects that the big announcement on Thursday will be that this new new and improved detector has found gravity waves. On the day that our Zero Gravity video comes out? Yes! You guys are making

waves in the universe, obviously. There's a planet, guys. Awesome. I was actually really worried. I was like, the first photographs of Planet 9 or something. Something that was just going to be way, way more interesting than our video. But if it's actually that great, I mean, that's just like, that's great timing. Fun, huh? Much more of OK Go is minutes away.

Thanks for listening. Here's the show. OK Go for Zero-G, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. We'll revisit the intersection of science and art this week as we talk with Damian Kulash and Tim Nordwin of the band OK Go. Their new video shot in a zero-g airplane gathered nearly 50 million views in its first five days on Facebook.

President Obama has released his budget proposal for 2017. 700 pages of it are devoted to NASA. We'll get first impressions from Casey Dreyer. Later, I'll join Bruce Betts in his astronomy classroom to learn what's up in the current night sky, and you'll get another shot at the space trivia contest. Emily Lottowale is the Planetary Society's senior editor. Emily, our topic this week, I don't want to get my or anybody else's hopes up, but it sure sounds, if you'll pardon the expression, like we have another shot at getting something terrific on Mars. Yes, I really hope it works out. But like you said, our hopes have been dashed

before, so we'll have to wait and see. But yes, there's a possibility that there could be a microphone included on the next Mars lander, the Mars 2020 rover. Of course, there are more details in this blog entry, which is this time from you and Bruce Betts. What's going on? Well, the Planetary Society has been trying to get a microphone onto the surface of Mars for decades. And as a matter of fact, we succeeded once. Unfortunately, the lander didn't.

And our microphone is embedded in the surface of Mars near the South Pole with Mars Polar Lander. There was also a microphone actually on Phoenix that never got turned on for very complicated historical reasons. So it hasn't been done yet. Every single time we land something on Mars, people constantly ask me, is there a microphone on this one? And I have to say no. So I'm really hoping that it will work out this time for public relations purposes, but also as the blog entry details, it'd be good for science too. Just give us a little bit of an idea of how this would help this instrument called SuperCam to do its work. The main way that it would help do its work

is that the volume of the sound, the intensity of the sound pulse produced is directly proportional to the amount of mass that this laser blasts off the surface of whatever rock it's trying to study. And that information will help scientists interpret the results of their laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy of the rock. It's also useful for measuring wind speed, at least it's an independent constraint on what wind speed is. And it actually could be useful for engineering too, just to be able to monitor the kinds of sounds that the rover makes as it's going about its ordinary operations on Mars. All well and good, and this is how we're going to get there. But is anybody not thinking about us hearing the breeze pass a spacecraft on the surface of Mars?

Just pause and think about it for a second. And it's appropriate that there is a moment of silence there, because we've never recorded sounds from the surface of Mars. Well, fingers crossed. Thank you so much, Emily. Talk to you again next week. See you then, Matt. She's our senior editor, the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. You can also check out her latest update from Curiosity and learn what a THWACK actuator is.

No Bill Nye this week. He has given up his spot so that we can have a conversation with the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy, Casey Dreyer, here to talk about the new NASA budget, or at least the one proposed by the president. Casey, I know there's much more going on with this president's budget request than we're going to be able to cover in two or three minutes. So I look forward to one of those longer conversations with you and your colleague in space policy, Jason Callahan. But give us a couple of headlines here, beginning with what's going on with planetary science. Matt, the story of planetary science at NASA has been the story

of a number. Your listeners know, my readers know, that the Planetary Society has been arguing for $1.5 billion minimum to have a healthy, balanced program of planetary exploration. The last five years have seen cuts to planetary science by the White House not hitting this number. Lo and behold, for the 2017 budget request, what do we see? $1.52 billion requested for planetary science. This is the highest amount that they've requested, I think, ever, not adjusted for inflation. And now I will tell you why that is no longer enough for planetary science. But it's true. This is a great number. This is one of those budgets where we have good news and bad news, which is great,

because mostly it's been bad news in the past. But for planetary science, we needed 1.5 billion four years ago to keep a healthy program. Many, many missions have been delayed. There's very few missions in the pipe coming down to build. We need to recover this program.

We need to make the next generation of spacecraft that will be replacing the aging, decrepit is maybe too strong a word, but older spacecraft that are going to be dying here in the next few years. And so last year, Congress gave planetary science $1.6 billion, $1.63 billion. That is what we are pushing for now in 2017. We want to see Congress continue and extend that to let it grow with inflation. That'll help Europa stay on track for early 2020s. That'll keep March 2020 on track for 2020 and allow these new missions, discovery, new frontiers, these smaller missions to move forward. This is what we need to recover and rebuild this program. And this is what we will be arguing to Congress again.

But at a very basic level, the president's request has been moving in the right direction. And that is definitely because of what we've been doing at the Society, mainly what our members have been doing, letting the government know that this is important to them. Give us some idea of what's known as the top line, the overall NASA budget requested by the president. The top line budget, $19 billion requested for NASA. That is a solid number. That is a good number for this administration. It's $300 million less than the great number Congress provided to NASA last year. And so once again, we'll be going to Congress and asking them to continue the great work that they did in 2016 into 2017. So it's an okay number, and there's some weird gimmicky stuff that we'll talk about in our longer conversation.

There's a lot of interesting stuff to unpack in this 700-page NASA document. Wow. And it's way too much to talk about in three minutes, that's for sure. All right, Casey, you just keep burying yourself in those 700 pages, and we'll have that conversation very soon, hopefully as soon as next week, bringing Jason Callahan in for a much deeper discussion of this proposed budget just issued by the administration in D.C. And, you know, maybe you folks out there, if you want to participate, tweet us or tweet me. It's at PlanRad, at P-L-A-N-R-A-D. Or you can add a comment to Casey's most recent blog about this. We'll bring you into the conversation that way.

We are now just moments away from talking to the band OK Go about making music in zero G. Which of OK Go's videos was the first to make your jaw drop? For me, it was the Rube Goldberg machine that helped them perform This Too Shall Pass. But you may go all the way back to the treadmill video that changed the perception of what a band could do in this medium. On Thursday, February 11th, the same day we learned that gravity waves are real, OK Go said, gravity shmavity, slipped the surly bonds of earth, and released the first professional music video created in zero-g. I didn't know my jaw could drop any lower. Just two days before the release, I sat down with Damien Kulash and Tim Nordwin, the two guys who met in summer camp when they were 11 years old.

They've been working, playing, and making art together ever since. Among other things, we talked about the tremendous amount of work that went into creating Inside Out and Upside Down on a very special Russian airplane. It climaxed in the eight stomach-churning parabolas that you see in the video, though they make it look like one long, glorious ride into performance history. I cannot tell you guys how excited I am to talk to you. I could barely sleep last night because you guys with this video have realized something that I've been dreaming of since at least the Skylab days, maybe 40 years ago. So it is an honor. Congratulations on this magnificent piece of work.

Thank you so much. It's been such a dream of ours for a long time, too. And honestly, I can't believe it happened. We made a video in zero G. It's truly unbelievable that we pulled this off. And we're going to get into that. The line that I thought of many, many years ago, when I was thinking about what could artists do in space, is this one with apologies to Pete Townsend, weightless will surely take the mind where minds can't usually go. Any truth in that? Yes, it'll take the mind and the stomach to places that are not meant to go. take the mind and the stomach to places that are not meant to go.

You know, when there was that sort of buzz around space exploration and travel going commercial, like, almost 10 years ago now, it was like the early days of SpaceX and Virgin Galactic and stuff, I remember thinking then something clicked, and I was like, oh, my God, people are going to be making art in space. Like, we have to get moving quick, you know? And, and so for almost 10 years, we've been looking for the opportunity to do this. Of course, we're not actually in space. We're in a parabolic airplane. So we're flying in this kind of, you know, this sine wave essentially. And each parabola gives us just about 30 seconds of weightlessness. And so if, you know, when you think about how you're going to make that,

for three minutes of video, you need 10 of those parabolas, essentially, eight, 10 of those parabolas. And to practice that, you need 10 times or 100 times longer than that. So it just seemed impossible that we would ever actually get the logistics together. And I'm still sort of surprised it actually happened. It's also like it's just such a foreign feeling once you're weightless. It's just like you think like, oh, well, maybe we have an idea of how we'll move up there. But then you're like, wait, I don't know how to move up here. It's just like, you just start swimming around and you just have to figure out a whole new vocabulary for movement

up there. Yeah. How do you rehearse choreography in 1G that's going to be performed in zero. All we could rehearse in 1G in normal circumstances were basic movements. Like, okay, during this part, the camera will move back and I'll fly towards the camera. I'll think of something to do when we start practicing it. At that point, I'll fly back. You guys will do something on the ceiling. You know, these'll fly back. You guys will do something on the ceiling. So these very basic tricks. I mean, taking a step back, our video making process always adds a step to the normal filmmaking process.

Usually what people do is they sit down and plan very, very, very, very carefully for as long as they need to, and then they shoot. It's basically those two steps. And you don't want to waste any time or any money when you're actually shooting because that's such an expensive circumstance. You've got your big crew and all your equipment and location permits, all that kind of stuff. However, you're limited to the ideas you can have sitting at a desk planning. And we would never be able to plan out something this complicated without actually just testing it a lot. So what we usually do is we've gotten pretty good at picking out which ideas look promising to have a full arc that look more than just 30 seconds of a cool idea, something that you could have this idea. And from within that idea, you

could have another idea, that sort of range. And having located something like that, in this case, we're going to shoot in zero G, then we just get there, we just go, we get in the circumstances as fast as we can and start playing as much as we can. In this case, that meant going to shoot in zero G. Then we just get there. We just go, we get in the circumstances as fast as we can and start playing as much as we can. In this case, that meant going to the cosmonaut training center outside of Moscow for a week. We did six flights and just played like the whole time. We'd set it up basically so that we could test as many things as we, as we could imagine. We tested liquids of all sorts of viscosities. We tested every kind of fabric we could think of. Like, is there a difference between putting a canvas shirt in the air and letting it sit there or a silk scarf? And at the same time, the band were just literally bouncing off the walls,

just trying to figure out what sorts of tricks we could do and repeat. You imagine something, then you try it. Next parabola comes around, you try it again. Can you do the same thing again? We had no idea what would work and what didn't. So after that week, we had built a basic vocabulary of the tricks we thought made the most sense. We then came back to the States, and for two weeks, we mapped that stuff out in normal 1G. We went to a dance studio, and we set up some chairs, and we're like, okay, you do something interesting here. I'll move that way. I'll do something interesting there the camera will

follow us back you know those basic blocking things i remember during that time too there was a lot of in 1g rehearsing there was a lot of like and then i'll be like and then and then you're like sound effects are important yeah sound effects are important when rehearsing in 1g yeah yeah then when we got back to r, we had a full week of rehearsal. So at that point, we had a basic sort of skeleton of the shape. It was like we had it broken down into eight scenes, each of which has a parabola to it. In each scene, we knew basically where we were supposed to wind up with the rule that if you don't get there by the end of the scene, wherever you land, that's where you start the next scene.

You just have to sit there through the double gravity that happens, sit there for the five minutes of reset, back through double gravity as the plane's about to throw you into the air again. And then as soon as the music starts and gravity lifts off, that's when you restart the routine. Yeah. Among the compliments that I have for you is that I only caught maybe two, maybe three times when you had to deal with the double gravity, as you said, because you bottomed out in the parabola, right? That's incredible. Yeah, so the physics of this is that, you know, given the depth of the Earth's atmosphere, if you're going to do these sine waves, what you have is an airplane flying up,

throwing everyone in it up into the air, and then sort of sailing, chasing them as they fly through the air. Like, you know, imagine how you throw a ball into the air, chase that ball, and then catch it. And the longest arc you can get without hitting the ground is roughly 27 seconds. So during the video, there's no way we could do this whole thing in one long stretch of zero gravity. What we had to do was break down the song into chunks. And every time gravity returns, we land back in our seats or wherever we are, stay there as still as we possibly can, wait for the plane to reset itself. And when zero gravity happens again, then we continue the routine. Of course, in between sections of zero gravity, you actually

go through double gravity twice. And of course, then there's a long period of just sitting there too. So there's a lot of just sitting very, very still in kind of weird circumstances. There are comfortable ways to deal with double gravity, and then there are really uncomfortable ways to deal with double gravity. Like if you get caught standing in double gravity, that's really tough because you're just

feeling, you know, you're feeling like twice your body weight just come down on you. Which you could see. There was at least one time when at least a couple of you were standing, and you could see the arms and legs flexing a little bit. Or even kneeling. Damien gets caught kneeling a couple times. Yeah. I was the most comfortable with the vestibular chaos.

Like, you know, your vestibular system, the system that keeps you in balance and deals with the inputs to your brain that are telling you, wait, we're moving this way. No, we're not moving this way. What's going on with your body? I didn't freak out as much as the other guys did. So I wound up doing some slightly more difficult maneuvers. There's one of the transitions that I stand through the whole thing, which means standing through double gravity a couple times right after having done a lot of flips and right before doing a lot of other flips. And there's one right after the third scene of the video where I do a lot of flips and land on my knees.

And once I actually fully passed out, when gravity happened, I just, when the double gravity happened, I just, the blood went out of my head, I guess, and I just passed out. Well, you're in good company. Forget how many, it's like one in three or one in five astronauts get zero G or microgravity sickness. Did anybody get sick? Everybody wanted to get sick. Luckily, the band were on pretty heavy anti-nausea medicines. So none of us actually puked. But in the 21 flights we did, there was an average of two or three unscheduled regurgitations per flight. So it was like So I think it was 58 total pukings by the end.

That's a NASA term, isn't it? You are unscheduled regurgitations. Yeah, exactly. It's an industry term. Astronauts learn real fast that weightless doesn't mean massless. So you guys, all those incredible props you were playing with, some of them pretty heavy, I mean, laptops and things like that, kind of dangerous.

I mean, how did you keep everybody from being beamed by something? We didn't. Everyone got knocked around, you know, knocked by computers and balls and, you know, whatever else that was flying around. I mean, the important thing, I think, was just to try, when double gravity returned, try not to be under something because that would have been really heavy. We actually weren't nearly as brave as our air hostesses.

Those two women, I wanted to ask you about them, if they were part of the OK Go family, or did they come as part of the package? They are professional aerialist acrobats in their normal lives, and now space stewardesses, I guess. The reason we chose them to work with is because they have a very special set of skills. Most people we thought of were, first it was synchronized swimmers, because they're always in, quote, zero G. But they have something to push off of. And then there was gymnasts. They can do all sorts of incredible things with their bodies.

But again, they're used to working against gravity. We kept on going. And we eventually wound up with these airless acrobats because their normal routines are usually hanging from silks or from a big hoop. And they have nothing to push off of. They're just spinning one way or the other, and so they have to learn how to do these incredible movements using only their own strength and their body's inertia. So they really had an amazing skill set, on top of which their vestibular systems were well-trained

to keep them from puking all the time. They really hurled themselves around in there in ways that none of the rest of us could have. They were absolutely fearless, too. I mean, on flight one, the first parabola, they were up and spinning around. And they had not done this before. They had not done this before, no. Damien Koulash and Tim Nordwin of OK Go.

They'll be back after the break. This is Planetary Radio. This is Robert Picardo. I've been a member of the Planetary Society since my Star Trek Voyager days. You may have even heard me on several episodes of Planetary Radio. Now I'm proud to be the newest member of the Board of Directors. I'll be able to do even more to help the Society achieve its goals for space exploration across our solar system and beyond. You can join me in this exciting quest.

The journey starts at planetary.org. I'll see you there. Do you know what your favorite presidential candidate thinks about space exploration? Hi, I'm Casey Dreyer, the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy. You can learn that answer, and what all the other candidates think, at planetary.org slash election2016. You know what? We could use your help. If you find anything we've missed, you can let us know. It's all at planetary.org slash election2016.

Thank you. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. My guests are Damien Kulash and Tim Nordwind. If you haven't seen them and their OK Go bandmates, Dan and Andy, cavort in zero G, come on, go see it right now before you hear the rest of our conversation. We were talking before the break about the other two people seen in the new Upside Down and Inside Out video, the Aerialists. Everybody who's seen the video listening to you talk about these

two women now is thinking of, I mean, there's just one amazing move after the other, but it's the one where they form, essentially you're spinning them like a vertical hula hoop. Yeah, that actually, during our test week, we went there and we split up the plane into three parts. One was where the band was sort of getting their sea legs and figuring stuff out. One was where the acrobats were playing and figuring their stuff out. And the last was what we called the Dexter Room, which was all plastic out so that one of our props guys could sit there and explode paint balloons and break eggs and spray Pepto-Bismol all over the place. So during that test week, one of the cosmonaut trainers who was working with us,

he was sort of playing with the two acrobats. And they would try spinning around in different ways and they would try making shapes and he would hurl them and stuff. And we saw this move in the test footage. And that's sort of how we came up with a lot of the choreography was everybody play. We'll watch all the footage and then pick out the best moments and see if we can recreate it. Were there any really great moves that you just couldn't fit in, that you just didn't have time to do? It's a hard one to answer. There are so many amazing things that happen when the rules change.

When suddenly there is apparently no gravity, everything seems amazing. But repeating something that seems amazing is the real trick. We did this over the course of 12 test flights and eight shooting flights, basically. There was one additional flight in the end. If we'd had 100 times that many flights, I'm sure we would have come up with even more precise movements and more exciting stuff. It's like there are things we saw that were amazing that we couldn't repeat. So it's not like there is this long list of things that we knew we could do and we just couldn't fit in. It's not like we were waiting for an extra minute of the song. But yeah, there's kind of infinite things we would like to have tried. I'm a fan of all the videos,

but one that stands out for me is Pilobolus, your work with them, your collaboration with them. You guys have certainly opened the door, but have you thought about what a dance company would be able to do in this microgravity environment? Let's say on the International Space Station, where you would have more than 30 seconds at a time. Amazing things could be done. Truly amazing things could be done.

You know, there was a big difference between our abilities up there and the aerialist acrobats who came prepared to hurl themselves around in incredible ways. The amazing control they had over their bodies and the way they could control their inertia was, it's just, I mean, that's what dancers do, right? So given the opportunity, a good dance company could do a lot better than what we did. Or just a lot different than what we did. Or just a lot different than what we did. Yeah. All of your videos, I can't even begin to imagine the amount of work, preparation, pre-production that goes into these. But in every one of them, it also looks like you're having a

good time. Does this stand out? Yes, but largely because it was actually a very difficult shoot. out? Yes, but largely because it was actually a very difficult shoot. I'm really glad that the resulting piece feels so joyous. It's not a physically comfortable thing to be flipping between 2G and 0G. The circumstances in which we were shooting just were very high anxiety for a lot of people involved. And so this was not a bright and sunny shoot. This was pretty, it was, it was pretty grim and dark at times, but for those little bouts of zero G it's, it's so otherworldly that it's a thrill for me personally. I found like whenever we'd hit the zero G, I would just feel like this tiny opportunity to sort of like touch the impossible for a second. But I know that looking around at my compatriots on the plane, a lot of people were just going like,

when can we get back down on the ground? Damien's talking about me. Well, you hit it well, because it sure looks like you're having a good time, which of course is the point. Yeah, no, there was definitely, there was sort of an emotional and physical hurdle to get over making this video.

But I will say, you know, in the moments when zero gravity hit and there were choreographed moves that we knew we had to do and land, that is when I felt the most comfortable. It was actually waiting for those moments to happen. That is where I was, like, shaking and nervous, you know. But when we were actually in motion, that was pretty thrilling. So has it been there, done that now?

Or if Elon Musk called you up tomorrow and said, I want to take you up to the ISS, the space station, what would you say? Yes. I'd say yes. I'd say yes. All of these things come with a certain kind of, you have to have an adventuring streak in you in the first place to want to do anything like this. And to be offered an adventure like going to space would be a very hard one to turn down. You guys met in camp. But it wasn't space camp. It was not.

I wish it was space camp. No, we went to Interlochen, a music camp in northern Michigan. I actually initially went for music. I switched from music to visual art while I was there, and Tim did theater. So we were doing the wrong thing even then. Got an idea of what you're going to do next? We have a little bit of an idea-ish. Yeah, sort of.

We have some ideas. I mean, we're working on new music right now, which is the most exciting thing, and hoping we can get it out soon. Our guitarist is about to have a baby, which is amazing, but also means we probably won't be touring for a little while. So we have some projects to work on. Nothing worth announcing yet because so often we have 10 things going and one of them eventually happens. I don't want to

get anyone's hopes up about something that doesn't actually happen. We are speaking, what, two days before the actual release of the video. I expect as big a reaction as you've gotten to anything else that you've done. And you've gotten some pretty big reactions. I mean, we're talking, what, 60 million views now, nearly, for some of them. I'd be shocked if you don't achieve that with this. I hope this one spreads far and wide. We'll see. The internet video world has changed so much in the 10 years that we've been making

stuff like this. When we first put out the treadmill video, it was a shock to everyone, especially the music industry, that something that was just cool and compelling could take on this life of its own. Now there are Madison Avenue firms dedicated just to attempting to make that happen. And so the numbers you see on streaming videos online are not as trustworthy as they were back then because there's machines that help gin up views and all that kind of stuff. And it's a much more corporate world than it used to be. And I'm super excited that we've managed to get in sort of under that wire, you know, that we're able to still, we carved out a place where we can make these crazy things

and still sort of have a platform to do it. I think it'd be a lot harder if we were a young band right now to be like, hey, we're just going to make some cool thing and hope it does well on the internet. I have one more question for you. And it's for both of you.

The boss, the science guy, also a fan. Here's the question that he wanted us to pass along to you. Greetings, OK Go. Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. Very impressed with your works. Love them. Why do you make them? I mean, I know why I do what I do, because it's science.

But why do you do what you do? OK Go. Science? Art? Yeah, I guess we do what we do for the same reason. Because it's science and art. I don't know how we'd do something else. We like chasing our most exciting creative ideas. And we're lucky that we live in a time when that can go anywhere.

It almost always starts with just straight-up songwriting for us, but they lead into these crazy places where we wind up with a large scale science project a few months later. And it's all come from this song. And that is so exciting to us, the idea that we can we can chase our creative urges and it can go into filmmaking and it can go into art and it can go into science. And I really can't think of a more sort of fulfilling life than getting to just chase those creative ideas. I really can't think of a more sort of fulfilling life than getting to just chase those creative ideas. Yeah. I mean, I think it's we really enjoy the joy of making stuff, and we really enjoy the joy of making stuff together. We've been friends a long time.

And then to get to share it and to have people see it and enjoy it is just incredibly thrilling. I cannot tell you how envious I am for the experiences that you've had, not just the ones inducing regurgitation, but all the amazing stuff you've done and the inspiration that it provides. So I'll thank you for that and specifically for one little, oh, I don't know, second and a half shot of a certain Mars rover that showed up in your Rube Goldberg machine. Oh, yeah. Yeah, in our Rube Goldberg machine, several of the engineers we were working with were JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratory folks, and so they slipped in some of their own references to their own work, which we were super excited about.

Yeah, it's a nice little Easter egg. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Best of luck with this video and everything that is yet to come. Like millions of other folks out there, I can't wait to see what comes next. Thanks so much. It's an honor to be here. Yeah, thank you. Time once again for What's Up on Planetary Radio. We are actually sitting at California State University, Dominguez Hills,

at the anchor desk with the host of, well, it's the astronomy class, right, once again? It is indeed. So it's my introduction to planetary science and astronomy class, Physics 195 at California State University, Dominguez Hills. That's the director of science and Technology for the Planetary Society. He is Dr. Bruce Betts. This is, I don't know, fourth or fifth time you've done this? Even more.

So we're doing a great class. People can find it online at planetary.org slash Betts class, B-E-T-T-S class. And watch the archive videos or tune in next time to watch it live. And I hear from a lot of people, a lot of listeners to the radio show who are big fans of yours. There's the guy who just wanted to know if he could offer you an apple. I prefer chocolate, but no, I'm beyond bribery, but I still enjoy chocolate. So here's how we roll. What's up, Bruce? So up in the evening sky, you can still check out Jupiter in the early evening rising in, well, mid-evening rising over in the east.

But the real display of planets is still in the pre-dawn sky. Mercury very low in the east in the pre-dawn, but then super bright Venus easier to see low in the east. Going up to Saturn and then Mars and almost on the other side of the sky, bright Jupiter. So check out the rare five planets that are visible with your naked eye. Is there going to be a quiz? Well, there will be for the class, but no, not for the planets. But I do point out for the students, and we're holding the class, I'm going to ask you to see planets and record when you saw them.

Now's a really good time to do it. We move on to this week in space history. It was three years ago, 2013, that out of the sun came the 18-meter asteroid that impacted and blew up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring more than a thousand people, shattering glass, reminding us that asteroid threat is real, if infrequent. Now, to be clear, the sun didn't throw it at us. It just made it really hard to see, right? I can neither confirm nor deny that. All right, we move on. Random Space Fact! Tying into my class that is, I've just been talking about the electromagnetic spectrum and what colors things emit at with temperature. The sun, it's going to

be a pretty straightforward one, but a lot of people are confused. The sun is white. It is not yellow. It is white. It peaks in the visible part of the spectrum, but emits light all across white. We often think of it as yellow or reddish because when we do see it, we typically see it around sunset or sunrise where the light's going through a lot of atmosphere and only the longer wavelengths like the yellows, oranges, and reds make it through. By the way, do not stare at the midday sun or the sun in general to prove that it's white. Just trust me. And also pictures often show I have colors or tints to the filters that make it confusing. Then why do we call it a yellow star? Because we're wrong.

Well, you heard it here. It does explain, by the way, why you don't see stars that are green in the sky, because they're actually white. We move on to the trivia contest, and I asked you, in Earth days, how long is a Pluto day? How long does it take for Pluto to rotate? And because they are synchronously locked, this is also the length of a Charon day, moon of Pluto. How do we do, Matt?

I think this is just sort of the new normal. We have more listeners than ever before, so we're getting more entries than ever before. But still, a good chance of making it through random.org if you've got the right answer. But still a good chance of making it through random.org if you've got the right answer. And I believe that that's what Bernadetta Daydonate did. Oh, Magdalene College, Oxford, the UK. I was in Oxford last summer. What a great town. Just fantastic walking around with all the colleges there.

So Bernadetta, she said it's about 6.4 Earth days. Is she correct? That is correct. Ooh, Bernadetta, congratulations. You are the winner of the big prize package this week. Of course, a lovely Planetary Radio t-shirt, a 200-point itelescope.net account for that worldwide nonprofit network of telescopes, and a year in space desk calendar and wall calendar. Those are cool. Bruce and I both contribute to those.

Bernadetta added, love listening about the frontiers of our universe while working on some of the smallest organisms on Earth, i.e. viruses. Ew. He doesn't like squishy stuff very much. This also came from Martin Herjofsky. He says that based on that 6.4 days, it means that New Horizons, the probe that just passed Pluto, of course, took about 546 Plutonian days to get from Earth to Pluto. Todd Yampole in Chandler, Arizona, he says he last won the contest, well, it was merely 185 Pluto days ago.

Fortunately for you, Todd, we don't have any rules about that, at least not yet. Yeah, that's a long time. Finally, this from Ryan Duryea, who listens to us with his brother in Thousand Oaks, California. Who knows, might be part of this class. He says, I read that after its three-hour journey, the sunlight that reaches Pluto is more like moonlight than daylight. Probably makes Pluto a romantic place for dinner, but I hear it's lacking in atmosphere. It is about 1,600th the brightness of the sun. I mean, there's a little thin atmosphere, but it would be really unhealthy to have that be the only thing you're breathing. All right, everybody,

go out there. Look up at the night sky. Wait, we didn't get the new question. No, I'm done now. I don't want to give a new question. I'm offended. All right, they may have forgotten I hadn't given them the new question. All right, here's your new question. and I hadn't given them the new question. All right, here's your new question. Tied back into sunlight, what is the peak wavelength of the sun's electromagnetic radiation, of the light coming from the sun?

What is the peak, the wavelength that has the highest amount of it, the wavelength nodule? Be approximate. So say to the nearest, just the nearest hundred nanometers. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to find out how to get us your entry.

When do they need to get that in by, Matt? The 23rd. That would be February 23rd at 8 a.m. Pacific time. We are going to give, for the last time, that same prize package. Well, the shirts will continue and maybe itelescope.net, but it's getting pretty far into 2016, so this is the last chance to win the year in space desk and wall calendars, at least until December of this year for the 2017. And now we're done. Alright everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky and think about what it's like to be surrounded

by cameras. Thank you. Good night. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here, well, not here at Dominguez Hills, but here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by our lighthearted members. Danielle Gunn is the associate producer. Josh Doyle wrote the theme music.

I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear sky.