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- [00:00]
A
100 years ago, something happened. I mean, to be fair, something happened just a minute ago and an hour ago and a week ago. But the Something that happened 100 years ago was special. We didn't know it at the time, but it would result in a complete perspective shift for millions of humans on the small rocky world we call home. What could I possibly be referring to? Perhaps it was the publication of Edwin Hubble's Extragalactic Nebulae, wherein he built the foundation of his now iconic and still used tuning fork classification diagram for galaxies. Was it Arthur Eddington's proposal that stars are powered by nuclear fusion explained by that now famous E mc2 equation? No. Alright, what about dozens of new comets in small solar system bodies discovered and added to our growing solar system family? All of these things did happen in 1926, but that's not what I'm referring to. I am, of course alluding to something that happened on home soil. On what is now the outskirts of London, on 8 May 1926, the iconic, the legendary David Attenborough was born. And in honour of his 100th birthday, there have been celebrations of his marvellous career up and down the country and around the world. Now, why bring David up in an astronomy podcast? Well, as much as we enjoy looking out into the cosmos, enjoying all of its deep sky wonders, so much of space exploration is actually all to do with looking back at Earth. Space telescopes make up just a few percent of yearly launches. The rest are all to do with our planet. Communication, tv, Internet and of course, Earth studies. Following ocean currents and monitoring the polar ice caps. The deforestation and reforestation of countries and continents, storms and droughts, harsh winters and mild summers. For environmentalists and conservationists everywhere, information from space is an essential part of the toolbox. But it is extraordinary scientists and communicators like David who bring it home for us, who weep with us as we see big corporations laying waste to our planet in search of more and more and more, and who celebrate with us as another species is saved from the brink of extinction. I cannot imagine a world without David Attenborough narrating nature documentaries, just as I can't imagine a world where we don't natter on about space every month. Are our voices as iconic as David's? Yet mine definitely isn't, because I've just waffled on for far too long and I bet you're all sick of me now. And if you hadn't guessed it, I'm Jenny.
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B
And I'm Paul.
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A
And welcome to episode 174. Of awesome Astronomy for May 2020. Hello, darling.
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B
Hello, gorgeous.
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A
How are we?
- [03:22]
B
All right. Have you ever heard of Doc Brown?
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A
Oh, wait, the TV show?
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B
No, no. He's a British comedian and rap artist. Doc Brown.
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A
Don't know if I have.
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B
Ah, look up Doc Brown. I wish Attenborough was my granddad.
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A
Ah, I will.
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B
He does a whole rap about how he wishes David Attenborough was his granddad. And it's really funny, but I think
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A
David Attenborough is his granddad because I think that David Attenborough is the nation's granddad.
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B
He's the nation's granddad. Yeah. He's good enough.
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A
Queen was the nation's grandmother.
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B
Yeah.
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A
David Attenborough is the nation's granddad.
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B
I'll take the granddad, certainly. I think he's definitely good enough for Paddington to, you know, walk him across River Styx as, you know, as the angel of Death he's now become in this country. You know, Paddington takes all the good people, doesn't he? That was, that, that.
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A
Oh, my God. I know.
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B
Bloody.
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A
I did give a birthday message to David.
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B
Did you?
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A
Paddington did.
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B
Oh, God. Paddington, did you know? I did. I didn't watch any of it. I didn't see any of it.
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A
Oh, have you not watched the. The Royal Albert hall gala? Oh, my God. I was just, like, tearing up through the whole thing. It was amazing.
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B
God, no, I had better things to do.
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A
Oh, you have been busy, David.
- [04:42]
B
That was great. But I don't. I don't. I don't care about the guy's birthday like that. It's really cool. He's 100.
- [04:47]
A
Yeah. I'd just be on all the documentaries. I've been watching all the documentaries back. I'm just, like, living in David Attenborough land at the minute. But you have been busy. To be fair, I have been busy.
- [05:00]
B
I have been busy, but. Yeah, yeah, I know I have been busy. It's just. Just. Yeah, it's that time of year. It's exam period in the world of education. Education, education. So I've got, like, lots of students screaming out for revision and help, and it's just busy. Life's just busy at the moment. It's one of those. One of those kind of. Sun's out, the sky's blue, the weather's good, so lots of things happen and it's all just busy, busy, busy. So, yeah, so, I mean, I've done some observing. I haven't got time to my class.
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A
Observing.
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B
You've done. Yes, you did. You did do some observing.
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A
Took My class, observing. And what was amazing is I also had like some friends come and stuff like that. And one of my friends and colleagues, Helen from Cardiff University, I said, oh, you know, gonna go observing. Because she'd been saying to me, oh, I haven't been out observing for ages. She's finishing her PhD now as a mature student. So I just want to put that out there that like, you know, Helen finished her career years ago and then decided that she wanted to do a PhD in astronomy. So it is never too late to do a PhD in astronomy. So I just want to put that out there. And she was, you know, she was saying to me, oh, I've been observing for age. I was like, well, why don't you come come to my class? She's like, I got friends coming down though, from London. Like, can they come? I was like, course they can come. And one of the guys who came down from London, he'd never done any observing before, ever. This was his first time doing astronomy and he absolutely loved it. Like, it was just the joy. It was amazing to witness. You know, like, it's something special, I think when people. You're with people who are seeing the sky for the first time.
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B
Yeah. Oh, it is, it is. I never get tired of it. I never get tired of it. It's, it's, it is. It's one of the things that drew me into doing like public facing astronomy and doing, doing that was being, being like, you know, doing the amateur astronomy thing. Especially when you're kind of at astronomy club and things like that and, and you have people, you know, go to your telescope and you show them that and they're like, oh, wow, look at that. That's amazing. Like, what is that like? And you know, suddenly half hour's gone by and you've spent all that time like chatting about what it is they're looking at and you've gone off and it's just brilliant. And you know, I've spent, you know, a career doing that now. It's brilliant.
- [07:22]
A
Yeah, it is. And it was even things like, you know, this is how you find north, and here's this constellation and here's that constellation. And you know, we had all different types of telescopes there. We had everything from like Sea Star to great big 8 inch Newtonians and Dobsonians and like refractors and Schmidt Cassegrains and it was just wonderful. It was a really wonderful evening in stargazing.
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B
Nice. It is lovely. These things are really nice when they too, yeah.
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A
And like did some stuff with the British Astronomical association this month as well.
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B
Do you know, I'm not gonna lie, when I was flicking down through the script you'd written, I saw that why is the British Airport Authority doing something with. And I was like, oh, no. Idiot.
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A
Yeah, but, yeah, so they, they run this back to basics event, like once or twice a year and it's about trying to get people into astronomy. And this time we were down in Cornwall, it was all about the moon and the sun and eclipses because obviously we've got that eclipse coming up and it was a fantastic day. Flo was there. Yeah, big deal. We love Flow because they support astrocamp. They were supporting this event as well. And Flow is first light optics for anyone who's not sure. And they are our, like, recommended suppliers. This is not a sponsored advert, by the way. This is just. They're good guys and we love them. So Flo was there and like the local astronomy club was there and we had like dinosaur fossils and we had meteorites and experiments that we call the rotato, which is all about light curves, asteroids. Interestingly, they brought the original rotato, which. Yeah. Which is a potato that's five years old. You ever seen a five year old potato? It was like a rock.
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B
Yeah. Wow.
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A
Just like dried out completely. It was. It hadn't like sprouted it, it just like fossilized. It was amazing.
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B
So you've been busy.
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A
You've been busy, busy, busy. Yeah, but like, in a fun way, you know, couple. Couple of online talks as well. Weymouth Astro Society, Cooper's company and Coburn School Secondary School in London did a little talk for them on the HR diagram. Yeah. What Astro things have you been up to?
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B
Actually, not tons.
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A
Yeah, not tons.
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B
I haven't had. It's one of those. I like. The sky's been clear a few times and I just haven't had the. I've been too. To work busy in the kind of other. Other house to be doing. I've been doing. I've been doing astro teaching. I've been doing loads of stuff, preparing kids for, like, astronomy gcse. Because there's. I know most people in the UK are probably aware of it, but we have a gcse, which is our like, secondary. Secondary equivalent of a high school diploma for the sort of American listeners. So, you know, what you've. What you. Your compulsory education, essentially, and what you kind of come out with at the other end. And we have GCSEs, but we have GCSEs in each subject and you have some. Some Ones that everybody does, like maths and English and stuff like that and sciences and da da, da. And then you get to select some. So you get to choose some of your subjects. When you're in. You're kind of 14, you get to choose some, some subjects. So you might do like French or German or Spanish or Cantonese or something like that and kind of choose. Choose some things to do. And one of the things you can choose to do is it's not all schools do it, but quite a few do it and some elect to do it just themselves anyway. And I've got a couple of students who do do it just. Just off their own backs is GCSE astronomy. It's big kind of, it's it. And it's really popular in the uk, this sort of.
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A
Is it growing?
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B
It has been for years. It's been a popular GCSE for a very long time. It really is, it's. It's quite a sort of popular, especially for people to do it sort of off their own backs. A lot of like home educators do it as a. An extra gcse and lots of schools do it as a science club gcse, like an extra qualification. And it is a. You find this. It's a good starting block for a lot of people who go on to go and do physics and astronomy and things at, you know, graduate level, things like that.
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A
Doing it because like, it wasn't offered in my school, it wasn't a thing.
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B
It's really good gcse. It's actually it, it covers everything from. So there's, there's two papers you have to sit, two exam papers, you have to do some coursework.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So you have to do some observing coursework, you have to go and do a aided coursework. We have to use some sort of camera, telescope, some sort of instrument and you have an unaided observation where you have to do a sort of like, you know, an ancient kind of astronomer. You have to go and do, you know, like build a sung dial and
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A
you know, oh, fun, try and work.
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B
But actually do the equation of time and work out when local noon is and stuff like that. You know, do all those sorts of EOT stuff. So that, that's, that's your coursework and then there are two papers. There's essentially pre telescope astronomy or like non telescope and telescopic astronomy, as they call it. And so the first paper is like ancient astronomy, your Greeks, your. You know, all that sort of malarkey and, and the basics of like the constellations, astronavigation equation of time, you know, right ascension, your degrees and all that malarkey, working out positions in the sky. Loads of, loads of stuff like that. All your sort of, you know, kind of astronavigation basics and that sort of stuff. And then like, you know, your history of astronomers and things like that. And then the telescope one is all as you might. It's all like if you like the nitty gritty of what you observe. So you know, looking at the planets and all that sort of stuff and the moon and you have to know all the features of the moon and stuff like that and types of star galaxy. Your tuning fork, you mentioned in here you got to do Hubble and all that and you have to do the whole magnitude calculations. So you log 5D and all that. You have to do the redshift calculations, you have to do cosmology. So you have to work out distances to. You know, there was one exam question, question couple of years ago, it's like, you know, prove, prove that the, you know, the age of the universe basically based on this data.
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A
Oh, so like inverting Hubble's constant.
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B
Yeah, exactly. And using like, you know, the Hubble. And you had some data and you had to then put that together and work out. No, no it isn't. And I mean this is, you know, we're expecting, you know, 16 year olds to do this and they do. You get 16 year olds, you know, 14 to 16 year olds learning this stuff and you know, they do this exam. So yeah, I mean I've been helping lots of kids get through the whole, like just plowing through the, like the M5 log D stuff, you know, the absolute. And how to work out absolute and apparent magnitude from a stein and therefore work out the distance to the star. They're the ones that they struggle with the most. And the equation of time stuff, they often struggle with.
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A
Magnitudes are tricky though.
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B
Magnitude is a tricky one. And working out the differences in magnitude between stars and how much brighter this is, isn't that is but the, the trickiest one. I definitely think it's the EOT stuff is, is that stuff about using longitude and latitude and things like that to work out your position on Earth and therefore calculating local noon.
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A
So it's like old Nate, I don't know if. I don't think I know how to do that.
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B
It's like, you know, so it's, it's basically it's like pretty much like, you know, what you do, old sailors used to do with Sextons and stuff like you Know, working out their position on Earth from the position of the sun or the position of stuff. We teach this at gcse. It's really. It's a brilliant. If you. And as an adult, if you want to do it as a course, you will learn loads about astronomy and, you know, really good grounding in. In kind of the whole science and everything. And it's like types of telescope and magnification and radio astronomy is in it. Satellites, the exploration of the moon, the Apollo missions are part of it. It's all. It's a really, really good. I love teaching it because it's just,
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A
honestly, like, I'm tempted just to kind of get the textbook to have a look at what's in it.
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B
Yeah, it's brilliant. It's a really good course. It's a really good course.
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A
Who. Who runs it? Is it.
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B
It's Edexcel. Oh, yeah. As the exam board, which is the old. For the. For the. For the age, more aged rise amongst the audience. That's the old University of London exam board, if you're now called Edexcel, but it used to be. It's the. The University of London exam board as. As was back in the day.
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A
Oh, very cool.
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B
But, yeah, it's a great, great course. And they say. But I've got lots of. I've got a bunch of students who are like, going, oh, my God, I can't remember how to do the.
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A
Yeah, it's exam time, isn't it? It's just.
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B
It is, it is and it is. We're literally, literally the first exams in the last few days and it's. I've been seeing students and it's like. I imagine it's like, you know, I've always thought this for the last, like, was 25 years of. In teaching. It's kind of like watching, you know, the soldiers go off to D day. Imagine they're all in the landing craft, they're plowing, about to hit the beaches and, you know, you're like, saluting, like, off you go, kids. Yeah, you're on your own now. Go and take that beach. Yeah, it's a bit like that on the. For a teacher and the. That kind of, as they approach the beach, like, oh, God, here we go. Let's hope they know enough.
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A
The thing is, like, they do know enough. It's whether they can summon the knowledge at the right moment. That's the thing with exams is they know it.
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B
Yeah, you do hope so. You do hope so, though. There are times I do have one particular student where I was going through about two weeks ago and we were just going through this. There's like a section which is multiple choice where they have loads of pictures of, like, different astronomical objects, you know, like what they are, or they have descriptions of them and they'll say, like, you know, you look at a telescope and you see this. What? What could it be? And they were just getting them all horribly wrong. And I'm like, we've been over this. Oh, my God. And then you get. And then the classic one is, but what is a globular cluster? I'm like, oh, we've been doing this for two years. Oh, my God.
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A
Yeah. And it's because they're just like. Their brains are just frazzled.
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B
Yeah, Completely. Completely, completely. And they've just. They just. And it's one of those ways you've done certain things two years ago and you haven't, you know.
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A
Yeah. Thought about it for so long.
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B
Suddenly they haven't thought about it for two years and then they suddenly, suddenly go. It's like convers one. I was showing him pictures, constellations, another student, and they were like, I don't know what that is. I'm like, oh, come on, it's Orion, for crying out loud. How can you not recognize Orion? It's like, oh, yeah. Oh, I thought it might be, but
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A
it's like, oh, just say, just have a go guess. Like, that was always. My thing with exams is, like, if I didn't know the answer, I would just put down as much as I thought might be correct in the hope that I would pick up some marks, you know.
- [18:38]
B
Oh, I know. Exactly, exactly. And you should. And it's always, you know, I've got a biology student who. GCSE biology as well. And I said, so they literally, it's their first exam today and I was speaking to him yesterday and I just said, look, just go through the paper, make sure they're really nervous. I said, just answer all the things you can just answer for straight away. Then go back, work your back, you know, work your way back through all the ones you did not. You thought you couldn't answer. When you've calmed down a bit and you've got something, you've got some answers on the paper and, you know, it's all. You're chilling a little bit. Do it like that. Just. Just work your way through. So, yeah, no, so I'm actually. I'm actually, as ever as most teachers are at this time, you're a bit of a ball of nerves, actually, because, you know, my Troops are, you know.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Out there doing their thing. There's nothing, there's nothing I can do about it. They're just, they're just, you know, sitting in little. Sitting in these exam halls. All the hundreds of them in a big spool.
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A
All one little sweating profusely with.
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B
Yeah, well that was a bit cold actually. Last few days. It's actually quite ideal. It's not. Oh yeah. But you know, with some, some. Well, they're not teaching anymore because actually higher. It used to be when I, when I started teaching, when I was actually a full time school teacher, the teachers used to have to do the invigilation for the exam.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So we would have like. Because we'd lose lessons because our exam kids are being examined. So we would, we would have to go and invigilate the various exams. Not your own one. You weren't allowed to invigilate your subject but you could invigilate the other subjects. Oh God, it's the most boring thing in the world watching like 300 people sit in silence writing exams. God, you want to. It's awful. And you can't speak.
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A
Yeah, it was horrific as well when they like started walking up and down the rows.
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B
Yes, but you know why you do that? One, it's really boring. Two, you're supposed to check on everybody's not cheating. Three, most of the teachers are playing games. When I first started teaching, we used to have an assistant head who used to stand at the front exam hall and he'd write on bits of paper and he'd hold a competition. So before all the kids came and said right, we're gonna hold competition, what we're gonna do is hide the pen lid and I'll time who finds it fastest. So you know how like exactly like sports halls hall have those colored lines on the floor for like various sports.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
So like basketball, it's all laid out as tape on the floor. Well, they're all. And so all the exam desks are on top of that, aren't they? Well of course you can get like a biro pen lid and hide it on a blue tram line on, you know the thing on the floor. Teacher just bends down and just leaves it on the floor. And then they'll time another teacher to see how long it takes them to find it.
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A
Oh my God, no way.
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B
And then, and then there were various competitions about stand next to the student that you think will do X first after they leaving school. Oh and the assistant head would stand at the front and sort of like judge who's picked the right student.
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A
So would it be what, like who's gonna get.
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B
Which is quite horrific actually sometimes, I
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A
don't know, like a certain type of job or like, who's gonna buy a house first or go to prison first?
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B
Let's say. Let's say it was more in the elk of who do you think is going to be at Her Majesty's pleasure first? And who do you think's going to pull that?
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A
That is hilarious. It's awful. But it's also.
- [22:08]
B
This is the seat. This is. I'm revealing the secrets of the chalk face here. But this is. This is what used to teachers don't invigilate exams anymore.
- [22:15]
A
This is why they don't invigilate exams anymore. They're not allowed.
- [22:18]
B
Partly. Well, partly. But also teachers are actually really expensive. We, you know, it's a. It's a lot of money to. And then you're paying extra because you're not paying by the hour for a teacher. But you're getting teachers to sit for 2, 3 hours in exam hall when they could be doing like other more important things like actually marking and planning lessons and prepping, you know, resources and stuff. There's loads to do as a teacher and you sit in the exact. They actually hire people now. It became a thing about, oh, almost 20 years ago now, actually hiring people to just do it in the size of like. But. And it's usually like old retired people sitting there watching all the teenagers like exam and. And they're real sticklers. It's brilliant. There's all these like old, old men and women in their like 60s and things sort of. And they're real sticklers for making sure the kid's absolutely silent and just sit there and just like, you know, do not mess around. They're brilliant. And I'm sure they don't play awful games like that from just sheer boredom. Having to spend like hours and hours and hours watching these children. It's awful. Really.
- [23:25]
A
Yeah.
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B
And I. Yeah, back in the day. I won't name any names. Who.
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A
No, no. Where'd you revealed enough secrets, Paul?
- [23:35]
B
I've revealed enough secrets of the chalk face.
- [23:37]
A
That is such a good book about like. Like an inside secret story on teaching, like the secrets of the chalk.
- [23:44]
B
You know what? For a book, I. It. The stuff that is said in. In staff rooms is. Would just. It would make it. Sometimes it would make Frankie boil blood. It's. It's teachers, I imagine. I know nurses are as bad and probably worse because my sister's a nurse and I know they're awful. I, I know police officers are really bad when it comes to like when the doors shut because of course you've got a love steam. You've got to, you know, you've, you as a teacher, from a teacher perspective, you've just, you know, if you've just had 30 absolute in your classroom for an hour, you gotta go and let off some steam.
- [24:27]
A
Yeah.
- [24:27]
B
You're human. You've got to go like, ah, yeah. Oh my God. You know, like.
- [24:32]
A
Yeah, that's true. That is true. Actually.
- [24:34]
B
You do, you have to. Otherwise you'll just explode. And, and some, some teachers do because they don go and do that and go like, oh my God, they're a bunch of like scumbags and I hate them. And then you come back, you just think, no, of course you don't.
- [24:49]
A
For the last hour.
- [24:50]
B
No, I, I, I do. You know, I finally had a student asked me the other day actually, I was teaching them, they said, have you ever actually disliked a student? I'm like, not very often. I'm not someone who actually takes a dislike to people. I actually, I'm, I'm quite a, I'm quite a nice person and, but actually there have been over the last quarter of a century, there have been a couple and I can name them all. That's how few there are. There's just this like, you know, I can literally, because he said to me, who was the worst one?
- [25:17]
A
And I was like, right immediately.
- [25:20]
B
Because, because I can tell you because also it was 25 years and they're actually probably in their like 40 now. And I imagine they are probably at her Majesty or his Majesty's pleasure by now. Almost certainly. They, they, when they were 14, they burnt down their own flat. Their parents.
- [25:38]
A
Jesus. Yeah, okay.
- [25:40]
B
Yeah, exactly. So I mean the, the people I've taught. But it is, but you do, you have to let off steam sometimes. It's, you know, you, you got to be human. And that's, you know, that's how police officers deal with it. I mean, how nurses. You got to have a bit of gallows humor, otherwise you'll just go mad. But yeah. Anyway, should we, should we talk about some astronomy?
- [26:02]
A
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about, I mean we have been talking about astronomy, but let's talk about like the astronomy that's happening now, I guess. Right?
- [26:10]
B
Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So go on. What's.
- [26:13]
A
So I want to, depending on exactly when this episode goes out on the 15th of May so it may be the day this episode goes out or the day before we have either just. Just had or, you know, is imminently happening a flyby of Mars by the Psyche spacecraft.
- [26:33]
B
Yeah, I know.
- [26:34]
A
And so I thought it might be fun to actually talk about how flybys work because they are such an essential part of space exploration.
- [26:47]
B
They are, they are. You couldn't do a load of the missions if it didn't work. It wasn't a thing that either we'd worked out or that you actually could do. You wouldn't be able to do, like half the missions we've done, especially in like, the further solar system. They just wouldn't work.
- [27:03]
A
Yeah, exactly. Like the Voyager spacecraft, we did not have rockets powerful enough. And I don't even know if we've got rockets powerful enough today.
- [27:12]
B
Not really, no.
- [27:13]
A
To like, send them out at the speeds that they traveled at.
- [27:16]
B
Yeah.
- [27:17]
A
To get out to the outer solar system.
- [27:19]
B
Yeah, completely. Completely.
- [27:21]
A
We had to do the flybys in order to boost their speed and to actually. I mean, they certainly would never leave the solar system on pure rocket power.
- [27:29]
B
Not really. No. No, no. You would need a flipping powerful rocket to impart that amount of impulse. Absolutely.
- [27:38]
A
So the Psyche mission just very briefly launched a couple of years ago and it is heading towards asteroid Psyche. Because it's not confusing to have the spacecraft called PSYCHE and its target also called psyche. Like, I don't know whose clever idea what that was, but anyway, they didn't
- [27:57]
B
give it an acronym, so.
- [27:58]
A
Well, there you are. Yeah, I have got a lovely act.
- [28:00]
B
I'll give them a pass on that. I'll give them. I'll give them a little buy on that because they didn't try and crowbar a. Like, PSYCHE doesn't stand for anything.
- [28:08]
A
I got. I got some acronyms for you later, so, you know, you can. You can enjoy those. I know. Anyway, so it's off to asteroid Psyche, which is an interesting object because it's debated whether it is the leftover core of a protoplanet or not. We don't know. And so this is why we're off to visit it. We know it's metallic, but we don't know if it's like a conglomeration of bits of rock and bits of metal, or if it actually is like the exposed core of a protoplanet, which would give us amazing insight into the cause of rocky worlds.
- [28:40]
B
God, wouldn't it?
- [28:41]
A
So this is why it's going off, in short. But in order to get there, because it's using an ion Thruster, which we. I think we talked about a few episodes ago, where. So these thrusters, they build up your speed, your momentum slowly over time, and they can allow you to reach incredible speeds, but it just takes a long time. So they're using this flyby to not only modify the direction of the trajectory, but also to give Psyche a speed boost. And I think, like, with flybys, we always talk about, oh, it's like momentum exchange and they steal momentum and it's like. But what does that actually mean? So that's what I thought we could talk about a bit today. So, first of all, we have to talk about the difference between speed and velocity, because they are not one in the same. Because speed is just.
- [29:34]
B
God, almost like doing my GCSE physics revision sessions.
- [29:39]
A
Oh, my goodness. Because speed is like how fast you are traveling, but then velocity factors in your direction as well. It's what we call a vector, Scott. It's got both of them. Do I get. Do I get two marks? Two arcs?
- [29:55]
B
Jen, you do you do you do you get. You get both marks, but make sure you show you're working.
- [30:00]
A
Okay, I will do more hands. I will do more hands.
- [30:03]
B
Not that the do more hands. Show your working.
- [30:05]
A
The listeners can see what my hands are. Are doing, but they do. So then we have to think about frames of reference. So we first of all, think we act as if we are Mars. We pretend that we're Mars and Psyche's gonna fly past us. Now, as far as we're concerned, from Mars's perspective, Psyche will just change direction, because what will happen is the satellite will come in, it will fall into the gravitational well of Mars, it will then come out of the gravitational well of Mars with the same speed, just in a different direction. Right?
- [30:45]
B
Yeah.
- [30:45]
A
It's much like if you imagine a cyclist going down a hill, and then it. When they come back up to the top of the hill, if we pretend the friction doesn't exist and air resistance doesn't exist, they roll down that hill, they will come back up to the. The top of that hill with the same speed as when they started going down the hill, but just they're now in a different direction. That's from the reference frame of Mars, but this is not true from the Sun's perspective. And this is critical. And this is where like, the velocity thing comes in. Because the thing is, Mars is also moving. Mars is not stationary. So what happens is that as Psyche is flying by Mars, it's not flying by stationary Mars. Mars is also moving. So Mars is gravity Essentially drags this satellite around a bit, around the sun.
- [31:36]
B
Yeah.
- [31:37]
A
And this is where that momentum imparting happens. And momentum is mass times velocity. And since Psyche's mass isn't changing, it is the velocity that changes. And so this is why then the velocity changes. So it gains speed and it also then changes direction. And it does mean a bit of momentum loss for Mars. But because Mars is massive, like its velocity does change, but by such a tiny amount, you can't even notice it.
- [32:12]
B
One day humanity sent so many spacecraft into the furs that Mars just grinds to a halt. Yeah.
- [32:18]
A
Mars just falls straight into the surface.
- [32:22]
B
Bollocks. Yeah, yeah.
- [32:24]
A
So, and so that's it. That I just thought it would be nice to dig into what actually happens on a flyby and why they always think of it.
- [32:32]
B
It's that idea of, you know, it's almost like someone, you know, sort of that swinging with a rope where you sort of, you know, kind of, you know, swing something past. It's almost like you, the planet's grabbing a rope and just giving it that sort of swing round. It just imparts a bit more and
- [32:46]
A
then it's like it feels a bit tired afterwards because it's.
- [32:50]
B
Yeah, because it's. It's lost a bit of energy doing that. Exactly in the same way you would. It's very similar. I mean, it's actually quite the kind of basic principles of physics is very. Is very similar.
- [33:01]
A
Nice analogy.
- [33:02]
B
So. Yeah, it is, it is, yeah. It's a fascinating. And it is. It's. If it didn't work, if it wasn't a thing, if you couldn't fly, because they're not connected only by gravity.
- [33:11]
A
Yeah.
- [33:12]
B
You know, if this didn't work, we couldn't speed these craft up to the kinds of speed. Would need so much more powerful, bigger rockets to do it and, you know, Voyager would never have happened. And anxiety.
- [33:23]
A
Yeah.
- [33:23]
B
It is a really important technique and
- [33:26]
A
it would be incredibly difficult for us to explore the inner solar system. Yeah. Because you kind of do the reverse of this when you're going into the solar system. Because when you go inside, as you're falling into the sun's gravitational well, then you're gaining energy and you need to get rid of this excess energy.
- [33:45]
B
You need to bleed it off. Yeah.
- [33:46]
A
And so it's like when you're doing a flyby, if you fly by with the planet, so like the same direction it's orbiting, that's where you gain the energy. But if you fly by in the opposite direction.
- [33:57]
B
Yeah.
- [33:58]
A
It's like breaking.
- [33:59]
B
Eventually what will happen is Mars will fall into the sun and Venus will be yeeted out of the solar system.
- [34:07]
A
No, it'll be yeeted out further, become habitable. That's where we will all live.
- [34:14]
B
Yes, On Venus.
- [34:15]
A
Venus.
- [34:16]
B
On Venus. Yeah. Yeah. It is brilliant. It's kind of like, I mean, going towards the sun. It's that sort of idea almost like you've got to hit the brakes before you hit a roundabout. You know, as you're approaching, you've got to slowly, you've got to bleed that speed off and kind of slow down before you. Otherwise you just go, hey, yeah. And end up in the sun though you do go pretty quick because of course, you know the. Fascinatingly, you know, the fastest spacecraft.
- [34:43]
A
Yeah.
- [34:44]
B
What is the fastest spacecraft?
- [34:46]
A
New Horizons.
- [34:48]
B
No, what is the fastest spacecraft that we've ever had? What is.
- [34:53]
A
Is it one of the pioneers then?
- [34:55]
B
No, it's the Parker Solar probe now.
- [34:57]
A
Yeah. I was thinking totally the wrong direction. I was just. All I was thinking about was exiting the solar system. Didn't even think about the inner solar system.
- [35:05]
B
In 2024 it reached 430,000 miles an hour.
- [35:11]
A
That's like. Which is a fraction of the speed of light.
- [35:15]
B
I mean all speed is fraction of
- [35:17]
A
speed light, but you know what I mean, it's like.
- [35:19]
B
Yeah, I know exactly. But it's. I can tell you it's 0.064% the speed of light.
- [35:27]
A
It's worth quoting as a fraction of the speed of light.
- [35:31]
B
So yeah, it's. It's 0.064% the speed of light. So you know, you're actually gonna get very minor relativistic effects going on there.
- [35:42]
A
That's mad, isn't it?
- [35:43]
B
It just gets that little. But 430,000 miles an hour. It reached 2024. It's the fastest, fastest human object ever.
- [35:50]
A
Wild.
- [35:51]
B
How mad is that?
- [35:52]
A
What's the fastest 1x in the solar system? Do you reckon? That's New Horizons?
- [35:56]
B
I think it's still Voyagers. I have a feeling. I think it's still Voyager. I that always. Because it always used to be it was the fastest spacecraft. It was Voyager because it was just the. All that energy imparted by those like flybys and things and off it wanged and just. But I have a feeling it's still in terms. And I think Voyager still is the most consistently fast spacecraft. I have a feeling in that.
- [36:22]
A
What do you mean by consistently?
- [36:23]
B
Well, where is the Parker Space Pro has been like accelerating and actually it's gone slower. It's now slower than that 400, if you see what I mean. It's not. That was just like its kind of peak speed in that particular orbit. Voyager is consistently at the same like banging along at that speed.
- [36:41]
A
So.
- [36:41]
B
Which is pretty darn check.
- [36:43]
A
And it is Voyager. It is still Voyager 1. Yeah, it's still the fastest. I thought New Horizons had beaten it, but. No, it is still Voyager 1. It's.
- [36:53]
B
I believe New Horizons was the fastest launch. I think it was like essentially like. It was the. It was the fastest. We've actually physically heated a satellite.
- [37:01]
A
Right. Okay. But not the fastest overall because I guess it did fewer flybys.
- [37:05]
B
Yes, it. It was more like direct.
- [37:07]
A
Yeah.
- [37:07]
B
Straight to Pluto almost. And it, I think it, of course you're just going to lose momentum as it, as it.
- [37:13]
A
Yeah.
- [37:14]
B
Powers away from the sun and things. It's going to do that. Whereas, yeah, Voyager is. I think it's like the. Consistently the fastest. Yeah, it is like overall, you could. You could argue it's still the fastest object because it's just constantly at that speed. Whereas, yeah, even Parker is like, you know, it's slow day. It's not doing 430, 000 miles an hour.
- [37:33]
A
No. Yeah, just very briefly.
- [37:37]
B
That's so quick.
- [37:39]
A
So then from planets to exoplanets.
- [37:43]
B
Yes.
- [37:43]
A
I wanted to talk about this because there's been like. Like two stories which are actually end up kind of crossing over and being linked that have come out. And this first one is. I mean, there's nothing so much to dig into with this story, but it's this amazing announcement from people using TESS data. So TESS is the Transient Exoplanet Survey Satellite Reasonable acronym, I think you'll agree. Maybe it's pretty good that one. Because it is.
- [38:14]
B
That gets a half nod.
- [38:15]
A
That's all right.
- [38:15]
B
It's not bad. It's not bad.
- [38:16]
A
It's not bad.
- [38:18]
B
They haven't tried to crowbar it.
- [38:20]
A
No, they haven't.
- [38:21]
B
What I really get upset about is where they try and crowbar an acronym into a word.
- [38:25]
A
Yes.
- [38:26]
B
Oh, they try and make it a. You know, they try and make a word and then they give it some kind of completely pointless acronym.
- [38:34]
A
I got a. I got a good one for you later on.
- [38:38]
B
Oh God.
- [38:40]
A
It may be an acronym inside an acronym.
- [38:45]
B
Oh my God. Just give it a good name. But anyway, can you imagine if they tried name like the Apollo missions or something with some sort of weird acronym. Yeah.
- [38:55]
A
But anyway, we'll come back to that.
- [38:56]
B
Carry on. So this is middle Aged man ran over.
- [39:00]
A
Yeah, this is Tess. So Tess launched in April 2018. And it has been surveying the sky, looking at the nearest like 200,000 bright stars for trans sinexoplanets. So these ones that pass in front of their star from our perspective cause a dimming and then that repetitive dimming allows us to confirm it's an exoplanet, not, you know, random bit of crud in our galaxy getting in the way sort of thing. And it's been looking in particular for like super Earths. So like rocky worlds, but bigger than Earth.
- [39:34]
B
Yeah.
- [39:34]
A
Possibly with thick atmospheres, possibly ocean worlds, these, these kind of worlds that we don't have in our solar system. And an interesting study was done because the thing is like the TESS goals are focusing on, on bright stars nearby. But then people were like, well the thing is, even though TESS is like designed to look at these bright stars, it sees a hell of a lot more fainter stars than just these bright ones.
- [40:00]
B
Yeah.
- [40:00]
A
So why don't we have a look at the stars it wasn't designed to study? Because there's millions of those buggers. And so people use machine learning to look at millions of stars that TESS wasn't supposed to look at and study to see if they could get any kind of transtin exoplanet signals. And they have now announced 10,000 planet candidates from this kind of extra test mission. 10,000. So these are not confirmed. One of them is, but 10,000 candidates which are now waiting confirmation.
- [40:36]
B
Bloody hell.
- [40:37]
A
Put this in perspective.
- [40:38]
B
Geez.
- [40:38]
A
We know. Confirmed 6200 exoplanets.
- [40:42]
B
Yes, I just say that. More than doubles. Yeah, it was triples. It's getting close to tripling. You know what, what we.
- [40:51]
A
And this is like data that wasn't even supposed to be looked at. And this is all then machine learning enabling astronomers to filter through this data and, and look at it and stuff. But the thing is like, what they're worried about is because these are fainter stars, they could be like things going on with the stars which maybe are mimicking.
- [41:13]
B
Yeah.
- [41:13]
A
The transits because they're fainter. So there's going to be a lot more kind of noise and mess. Now. Interestingly, this month a new telescope came online in the southern hemisphere at Paranal in Chile.
- [41:28]
B
Yeah.
- [41:29]
A
And this is. Are you ready? Go on, Poet. The Paranal Solar Espresso Telescope. Where Espresso is that wonderful VLT instrument, which itself is an acronym. So we've now got an acronym inside an acronym. And Paul looks like he's about to Die. Yeah.
- [41:51]
B
Why, why isn't there, why isn't there an S? Ah, because.
- [41:56]
A
Yes, well, that's because they.
- [41:58]
B
Solar.
- [41:59]
A
They have got.
- [42:00]
B
It wouldn't make the word poet, would it?
- [42:01]
A
They've got the P from Paranal, right? And then I think they've taken the little O from solar because it's not capitalized in the acronym. So it's capital P, little O, O. And then Espresso telescope. So it's like.
- [42:15]
B
But didn't you say observatory as well?
- [42:16]
A
No, it's just parallel solar Espresso telescope.
- [42:22]
B
Oh, it's for. Right, okay.
- [42:23]
A
Yeah. So it's like poet like that.
- [42:26]
B
That's, that's trying far too flipping hard.
- [42:30]
A
It is, isn't it? I'm sorry, but what, what this telescope is, it's very cool, right? It's because the thing is, right, Espresso is this amazing spectrograph which is usually attached to the vlt. And like, it's basically. This is the spectrograph. It's like if you, if they find something weird with jwst, they're like, can we get the VLC to have a look at it, please, and get a spectra so that we can find the distance. Thanks. Like, it's just, it's such an important diagnostic tool for distances and compositions of things. Like, it's absolute, it's brilliant. The thing is, because it's attached to the vlt, then it only works at night and there's no reason why it couldn't use it in the daytime. Right? You just can't use the VLT in the daytime because it's not a solar telescope. So what they've done is they've built a solar telescope. And that solar telescope is now going to feed sunlight, obviously filtered sunlight. It doesn't burn espresso into pieces, but filtered sunlight into espresso. Right, right. So that we can analyze the sun in great detail with espresso. And the idea behind this is to try and understand the sun and all of the noise that comes from the sun so we better understand the issues that may arise with transcend exoplanets.
- [43:43]
B
Good idea.
- [43:44]
A
So that's clever, isn't it? Because the thing is, espresso's not being used by the vl. It just sits there in the daytime. So why not use it?
- [43:51]
B
Yeah, yeah. So, so that's, that's, that's.
- [43:55]
A
Isn't it clever? It's brilliant.
- [43:58]
B
It is.
- [43:58]
A
And so then it's things. So when I say noise, right, with, with stars, which could kind of get in, in the way of us discovering trans synexoplanets. The noise is things like sensory spots because sunspots are darker, because they're cooler, and so then the light output can dip. And that's what happens with trans and exoplanet. So it's like understanding the specific sort of light emission that you get from sunspots. Because the idea with this telescope is it will look at the sun globally, but it will also be able to look at small regions of the sun as well in great detail. So it's going to be looking at sunspots, for example, also convection because the surface of the stars, they bubble and they broil and different size stars have different size convections. So it's kind of understanding the signals from that. That's really, stars oscillate. So he's looking at how oscillations impact starlight as well, even rotational effects, magnetic field effects.
- [45:00]
B
But beyond even just the test stuff, it, it's going to be a really interesting look at the sun. Just generally just, just like, forget, forget the exoplanet thing. This is actually a really, really good use of an instrument to look at our own star, isn't it? In much more detail.
- [45:14]
A
Yeah, it's amazing. So it's like, yeah, you know, by studying the sun we will then better understand other stars and especially these kind of fainter stars that now we're looking at with the, the extra test data. So, yeah, two completely independent stories, but actually they link beautifully. So, so, yeah, so those were just my interesting discussion points for this episode.
- [45:40]
B
Like that.
- [45:41]
A
And if we're done with that, it means it's time for the emails because that's what we do.
- [45:45]
B
Emails, email. Emails to awesome Astronomy. Right then, so we've got friend of the show.
- [46:08]
A
Oh, good friend of the show.
- [46:09]
B
Good friend of show, Alistair Frith.
- [46:12]
A
Hello, darling.
- [46:13]
B
Hi, team. I don't know if this is a question worthy of the show. Well, it clearly is because we're putting. So there we go. And I'm sure I could just Google it. You could, but you know what, you wouldn't hear us waffling on. So, you know, maybe Google should employ us to be the voice. You know, like that when you press, like the speech thing.
- [46:31]
A
Yeah, well, you know, like when you now you search on Google, it just comes up with like an AI summary. Should just be an AA summary. Awesome astronomy summary.
- [46:38]
B
Yeah, I've, I've turned that off.
- [46:40]
A
I'm going, okay, turn that off.
- [46:43]
B
Yeah, you can turn that off. No, I, I, I go through Firefox and you can Just turn it on. Yeah, because like. Yeah, no. Anyway, you know how I feel about AI and. So where was he? So, but I was wondering more about the absorption lines that we were looking at during Astrocamp and Jenny's explanations. I'm sure she said, I've always heard it as it's the electrons in the atoms that are absorbing the light and jumping up energy levels. But we are also told that stars are in a plasma, which I understand as nuclei without electrons, the electrons being free floating. So they're not associated with any particular element. So how can this be? It's a very good question. I can think of two possible answers. It's only deep inside the star that is plasma. The upper atmosphere is normal atoms with nucleus and all the electron shells, and it's the atmosphere that's absorbing the photons and giving us the absorption spectra. So the spectra only tells us what's in the star's outer atmosphere and we use other physics to determine the deep structure. Two in the plasma, it's only the outermost shell of electrons that are free and it's the lower shells that do the absorption. If this is the case, I am intrigued as to how that enables different elements to absorb different wavelengths. Since all the atoms in a row of the periodic table would have the same quota of electrons, are their absorption characteristics somehow affected by the nucleus? Or is this where reality differs from my simple A level layman's mind model? Or is it some combination of the two or different explanation entirely? As I say, it may be a bit niche for the show. Alistair. Well, it's cats, it's all kittens. It's just this as, as the standard answer for all star problems is it's just loads and loads of kittens just writhing around. And it's the absorption of kittens. That's what it is. It's just loads of kittens. That's all the sun is.
- [48:37]
A
But I mean, to be fair, like, you've actually got a lot of it in there. A lot of the answer is in there.
- [48:43]
B
You have, yeah, it has, absolutely has.
- [48:45]
A
So you were saying that it's only deep inside the star that is plasma. And yeah, that is true because as we get towards the surface layer of the star, the temperatures reduce dramatically. So for example, the core of our star is about 15 million degrees Celsius and the surface is about five and a half thousand. So yes, when you get to those sorts of temperatures, your atoms are not necessarily fully ionized. It doesn't mean that they, they have all of their electrons. They may be partially ionized, but they, they do have some electrons. And depending on how hot your star is, depends on the level of ionization you can get, this then impacts the absorption lines that you see. And so this is how we interpret the temperatures of stars because certain lines are absent, certain lines have different strengths and it's all to do with how much ionization you've got going on. But you're right in the sense of the photons are escaping the surface of the star and then the kind of cooler atoms like in that atmospheric layer. If we try and imagine the sun having a quote unquote surface and then its atmosphere, it's those atoms in that atmosphere which are cooler, absorbing the photons being emitted.
- [50:00]
B
Yes, yes, yes, exactly.
- [50:02]
A
Which is why we get those darker lines. Is there, is there anything else?
- [50:05]
B
Actually I think we say is it a combination of the two? In a way? Yes, it is actually a combination of the two. Exactly what you said. And it is, that is that idea that I think we always get the idea that everything is like uniformly like when you say about ionization, it's completely uniform at this particular temperature. All the atoms in this thing will have all their electrons. That's not the case because it is actually like all these sort of slightly quantum things and it's actually a probability thing that it's all about, you know, not all the. Some will actually have their full quota of electrons and some will have none and some will have some of them. And it's actually because it's not absolute uniform temperatures. It's not absolute uniform like transfer of energy between atoms. So it's actually sort of much more messy picture of how atoms and electrons and the shells and what they are over the whole star. It's not like at this level, at this temperature. Yes. All the atoms will not have electrons or they will have this number of electrons. It is actually far messier than that and it's much more a sort of probability scale of what electrons exist. So you. It a lot of averages out actually. And that's, that's sort of. So it's, it's one of those. Yeah, it's. It's kittens.
- [51:25]
A
Yeah, there you go. Hope that answers the question, Alistair. And great question. Not too niche for the show at all.
- [51:30]
B
No, no, got it.
- [51:31]
A
So then our next question comes from a long time listener and first time emailer. So hello, Matthew Finch. No disclosed location. So wherever you are in the world, hello, welcome to the show. And he's entitled his email Citizen Science with smart scopes.
- [51:49]
B
We talked about this at astrocamp, didn't we?
- [51:51]
A
Yes, yes. And so Matthew says in his email. I enjoyed hearing your question and answer session in this podcast from astrocamp, particularly around your ideas for the future of smart scopes. Making exoplanet detection simple via Aperture photometry There's a growing number of people currently using smart scopes and aperture photometry techniques to generate light curves for variable stars.
- [52:14]
B
Ah, yeah, that would make sense.
- [52:16]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Started by tracking T crb, so T Corona Borealis any day now and extended to many other stars and then submitting the data to the baa, the British Astronomical association, and the aavso, the American association of Variable Star Observers. This seems to have enough accuracy for certain stars and magnitudes within the limits of smart scope settings. Similar worthwhile science of smart scopes is tracking comets again, particularly estimating magnitudes. Etc that can be submitted to cobs. Other variable star science that can be done, particularly with The Sea Star. S50 is contributing to the HOYS project, and the HOYS project is about outbursting young stars.
- [53:01]
B
I have heard of this. I have come across it in an article.
- [53:05]
A
Yes, and wanching star clusters and things. Oh, that's very cool.
- [53:09]
B
I did come across the Hoytus project.
- [53:11]
A
I am unsure some of the more ubiquitous smart scopes such as the Sea Star and Dwarf, would be able to have the accuracy necessary for exoplanet detection. Aperture noise issues? Possibly, except for rather large exoplanets which dim the parent star significantly. My experience is limited to using a Seestar S50, but plenty of hopefully worthwhile science going on with the current crop of smart scope. So almost certainly more than what is mentioned here. I know others have created add ons to enable spectroscopy for various smart scopes. Oh, that's cool. Thanks for all you do on the show and beyond. Thanks Matt. So I wonder if the secret with exoplanet science with the Sea Star or other smart scopes will actually be using them in arrays. People have started to do that. They started to put them into arrays. So, you know, much like the vlt, the Very Large Telescope is an array of telescopes working together. People have started doing this with sea stars and it like artificially inflates your aperture. It's not easy to do, but people are starting to play around with it and figure out. So yeah, it'll be.
- [54:16]
B
It'll be one of those things that in like five years time when lots of people have cracked it, but then actually the companies who make this will kind of go, actually we can do. We can like do this from the beginning and actually like make these work together. That's, I think that's what you're gonna, that's what we were talking about camp is like, you know, five, ten years time you're gonna see that sort of actually, because in the same way that I was few. What was the telescope? I can't remember. And it was a load of essentially like 8 inch Macs that were strapped together. Oh God, what was that called?
- [54:53]
A
And it was like Dragonfly was Canon lenses.
- [54:55]
B
Yeah, there was that one. Yes, absolutely. But it was, there was a load of Macs strapped together which was like that kind of modern Mac telescope that's kind of, you know, become the ubiquitous telescope of the last, you know, amateur astronomy of the last, like 20 years. And suddenly like professional shots are going, actually we could strap a load of those together and it would make a really good like large aperture telescope. And we'd be.
- [55:20]
A
Yeah.
- [55:20]
B
And, and so I think that that idea that we'll start seeing people go, actually some of the more advanced smart scopes, you could, you know, link these together. As you say, it's almost like you're making a larger one. And then the companies that make them will probably cotton onto that and go, do you know what? We can probably create some software and some.
- [55:40]
A
Yeah. And like little struts or something to put them in the right place to get them working together.
- [55:45]
B
Ways that you can link these, you know, things via wi fi and you know, Bluetooth and things. I think we can straight up get these to work together, you know, much simpler, keep it simple, nothing too, too crazy.
- [55:57]
A
Yeah, yeah. And also it's like even if the sensors are not up to par now, like we're at the dawn of smart scopes. They're only going to improve as the years go on.
- [56:06]
B
Just, just. I mean, you look at some of the chips that we use for imaging beyond in sort of large telescopes and they, you know, that that stuff will all just, you know, all sort of merge and come together and do. Yeah, it's really exciting. It's actually really exciting. It's really cool.
- [56:22]
A
Yeah, some really interesting insights there, Matt. So thank you for alerting us to those scientific studies going on with smart scopes.
- [56:30]
B
Right next we've got Frederick J. Rech. Is that.
- [56:33]
A
Yeah, there wasn't an name at the bottom of the email. So that is just what the email is, is Frederick J.
- [56:39]
B
Okay, we're going to assume it's that. We're going to assume it's that.
- [56:42]
A
Yeah.
- [56:42]
B
So. Hi, awesome crew. Love the show. Keep it up. Nice. Just a quick NASA gripe. NASA wants to do all this stuff, go to all these places and build a nuclear powered rocket and no increase in budget. Deciding to go the same route as the uk, cut education funding. Who needs research anyway? I am not amused. Later. Yeah, completely, completely. Such is the world we now live in. I couldn't agree more anymore.
- [57:09]
A
Yeah, it's just I think like the latest proposed budget for NASA was, is like another 25% cut. So we have to hope that Congress is going to step in again. This is the thing is it's like if they want to do all of these things going off to the moon, they, they at least need the same amount of money. Like bare minimum the same amount.
- [57:28]
B
Exactly. Got some cash and it's just, it's social sighting. Oh God. We could, we could gripe and gripe and gripe. Frederick, let's go and get a bottle beer sometime and we can sit and
- [57:37]
A
winch put the world to rights.
- [57:39]
B
Exactly, exactly. And then go and march on Westminster and Washington and sort their out. I agree.
- [57:48]
A
Yeah. So our next one is good friend of the show Visto Tutti. Hello, Visto Visto says I can't remember exactly what you got wrong, but John Linden famously said may the wrong rise within you one. Yeah, I mean we usually get things wrong. You just don't hear all the things that we get wrong because Destin cuts them out and saves him until the end of the year.
- [58:11]
B
No, no mistakes ubiquitous in this show.
- [58:14]
A
Oh God. So presumably Destin would have cut out my about eight attempts to say that word. And I'm not going to say it again. It's just one of those words apparently I can't say. Anyway, carrying on with Vista, Vito says one thing you did get so right is that the Artemis suits look way cooler than those SpaceX Teletubby suits that they make those poor astronauts wear.
- [58:38]
B
Oh God, completely.
- [58:41]
A
Yes. I'm still absolutely gobsmacked that humans can climb on top of a tube of explody juice, light it up and then leave our precious earth. One single digit of wrong calculation on thrust or angle of approach or attitude of the rocketry things could mean being forever lost into the airless nothing of certain death. But Artemis threaded that needle all the way to the moon and safely back. Indeed it did.
- [59:10]
B
Yeah.
- [59:11]
A
And it's right like rockets are amazing
- [59:13]
B
and like I get regularly asked because all the talks and shows and things I do and one of the most common questions is would you like have you either have I been to space or would I like to go to space.
- [59:24]
A
Yes.
- [59:24]
B
And generally my answer is absolutely not.
- [59:28]
A
I get asked that all the time. Do I want to go to space? And I say I'll go after like a hundred people have gone before me.
- [59:35]
B
It's like, if there is a completely safe way to just go up and like, you know, go and see, that'd be cool. I mean, the idea of being in space itself would be very cool. Get that.
- [59:45]
A
Yeah.
- [59:46]
B
But the fact you've got to sit on top of several hundred tons of really, really explodey juice.
- [59:55]
A
Yeah.
- [59:55]
B
You know, essentially sit on top millions
- [59:57]
A
of liters, isn't it?
- [59:58]
B
Sit on top of a missile.
- [60:00]
A
Yeah.
- [60:01]
B
And, and hope it doesn't kill you. It's like, no, thanks. No, no.
- [60:06]
A
And it's, it's the getting back as well.
- [60:08]
B
Yeah, gotcha. And then. Bernie, Bernie, uppy, uppy. No, yeah.
- [60:12]
A
Like, like what, what is saving you a few inches of foam?
- [60:17]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [60:18]
A
You know, it's just exactly wild.
- [60:21]
B
No, it's bonkers. It is bonkers. Right? And so. Scott Northcart. So. Hi gang. Greetings from Huntsville, Alabama, usa, Home of Space Camp and Marshall Space Flight Center. I hope that you were all enwrapped with the Artemis 2 missions. I was. I kept NASA's YouTube channel on most of the work day. To keep tabs with what the crew were doing, especially on flyby day. I have attached a panoramic picture I shot last Friday evening. This crowd is easily a couple of thousand or more strong. Was gathered in downtown Huntsville not for an athletic contest, but a splashdown party. Yes, all those folks were there to watch the big TV screen and hope for the best. As the Orion capsule, christened Integrity by its crew, prepared to re enter the atmosphere and splash down off the coast of California. It was an amazing evening. And once we saw those three giant parachutes full reef and then saw the capsule get gently drop into the Pacific, there was more much rejoicing. It seemed like the kind of thing the awesome Astro crew would have been right at home at. Yeah, that sounds amazing. To be honest. That, that I would have. I would have enjoyed that. I do. Yeah, that would have been cool.
- [61:27]
A
I'd love to attend like a launch party or a landing party for something like this.
- [61:32]
B
Yeah, I've been to. I've been to a landing party. I went for the landing party for Curiosity, the Natural History Museum, because it was. All the scientists involved in it and it was amazing. It was absolutely. It is to actually be there with people who designed instruments and done all that. It is really cool. It is actually very cool and it's great fun. Anyway, carry on with the email. I want to be sure to let you know that even in a shockingly red state, there are still a lot of us who believe in science and who want us to continue to do feats of engineering that benefit humans everywhere, despite our political leadership. If you ever make it to Huntsville, the first round is on me. Oh, Scott, love to. Would love to. Thanks, Scott. Yeah, cheers.
- [62:15]
A
But yeah, that picture is amazing. Just like literally see all those people there to celebrate an extraordinary moment in science. I'm so glad that you were able to experience that and that those sorts of events were happening because it was a really momentous moment.
- [62:29]
B
Yeah, yeah, completely, you know.
- [62:30]
A
And so then finally our last email, this time comes from Taztali, who says hello, Jen and Paul. Hello, Taz. I thought I'd help you test your email by saying hello and letting you know I love your show. Oh, thanks very much, Taz. The new format is quite fun and as always, informative. Hope you don't mind that you have a Yankee listening in from across the pond. Oh, we don't mind at all.
- [62:57]
B
No effect. I feel you're in the majority actually.
- [63:00]
A
Yeah, I think Archie is mostly us listening listeners. So hello friends across the pond. Also, we've had a grand year for Aurora displays, so I thought I would send you a few of my faves and this is my way of saying thank you for your show and your pictures are spectacular. Really beautiful structure.
- [63:19]
B
They are great. Yeah.
- [63:20]
A
So thank you for sending those over to us because we always enjoy looking at them. So well done. Thank you very much. Also, I just listened to your most recent show while I'm on a month long backcountry birthday ski tour in the Brooks Range north of the Arctic Circle in Alaska.
- [63:39]
B
Whoa, that sounds amazing.
- [63:42]
A
Look at this. I was able to snag a rogue cell signal emanating from a remote Alaska dot road maintenance hut. So this is sort of being sent to us while Taz is like in the middle of nowhere, like eking out bits of signal. So we appreciate the dedication. We absolutely do. Here is one photo of one of my new snowshoe hare neighbors who I met while backcountry skiing on the Chandler Shelf with the Brooks Range crest in the background. Hope you enjoy. Cheers. Tas Tali from north of the Arctic Circle having the best birthday ever. And thank you for that picture of the mountain. Glorious. It does look like the best birthday ever. And thank you for tuning in to the show.
- [64:30]
B
This is cool.
- [64:42]
A
And that brings us to the end. So, as you can tell, dear listener, our emails are now sorted. We have access to them. So we want you to keep writing in with all of your wonderful stories, your pictures, your comments, your thoughts, everything. And it is the show@awesomeastronomy.com yeah, get in touch. Yeah, everything. You know, we, we wanna. This is what the second chatty episode is all about now. It's about bringing you guys in, answering your questions, reading out your thoughts, your comments, helping us direct the show. Because it's nothing without you guys. Oh, so much cheese.
- [65:14]
B
Oh, cheese is like, like cheese on cheese on biscuits. And some nice.
- [65:18]
A
Oh, yeah, dip that in. And so, on that note, until next time, it is goodbye from Cydonia Base.
- [65:28]
B
Bye bye. Bye bye. Awesome Astronomy is produced by Ralph Paul, Jen, John, Damien and Dustin and is free to use with attribution. Theme music by Starson Salzman with stinger variation by Rin Jorgensen. We promote general science, astronomy, space exploration and rational thinking with more resources on our website@awesomeastronomy.com if you want us to read your thoughts and comments out on the show, send us your views, opinions, critiques or questions to the show@awesomeastronomy.com tweet us @awesome Astropod or give the awesome Astronomy Facebook page a like and leave your comments there. Thanks for listening from Cydonia Bass. End of transmission.