Date: November 30, 2010
Title: Oxygen at Rhea
Podcaster: Juan Guevara Torres, host of TecnoCasters
Organization: TecnoCasters – http://www.tecnocasters.com/
Description: The Tecnocasters discuss the recent finding of oxygen in the atmosphere around Saturn’s moon Rhea.
Bio: TecnoCasters is the best technology podcast in Spanish. Hosted by Juan D. Guevara, Pedro Riveroll, Lorena Galan and Raul Mitre, TecnoCasters offers a funny and friendly point of view about the gadgets and technology you’ll come across in your ordinary day.
Produced simultaneously in the US and Mexico, TecnoCasters is an international podcast, specially created for the Spanish speaking audience in the world and or for all of those who want to improve their Spanish speaking skills and love technology at the same time.
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Wayne Robertson, who encourages you to join him in supporting this great podcast.
Transcript:
Episode 365 Days Of Astronomy : Juan D. Guevara Torres
Publication Nov, 30 2010
(JUAN) Hello everyone and welcome to this Episode of 365 days of Astronomy. My name is Juan Guevara Torres , Host of TecnoCasters – the best technology podcast En espanol.
(GRAHAM) And I am GRAHAM, an Artificial Intelligence Text to Speech engine specifically designed for broadcasting. I Hope you like my voice. Today, Juan and I will Co-Host this episode of 365 days of Astronomy.
Please check out www.365daysofastronomy.com for more information about this podcast and the many ways you can support our effort to bring you a cool astronomy podcast every day of 2010 and now extending it to every day of 2011.
According to an article published on the BBC recently, scientists discovered that Rhea, the second biggest moon of Saturn, has an atmosphere of oxygen and carbon dioxide. It is incredibly thin, however. The density of O2, for example, is probably about five trillion times less dense than the oxygen that blankets Earth.
(JUAN) The presence of an exosphere, as it is more properly called, was confirmed by instruments on the Cassini probe which orbits the ringed planet and its moons. Oxygen exospheres have been seen at Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede, but this is the first time such a detection has been made in the Saturnian system.
(GRAHAM) Rhea’s thin atmosphere is maintained by high-energy particles that constantly bombard the moon’s icy surface. Dr Teolis from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, US says :”As the magnetic field rotates around Saturn, particles carried in the field slam into the hemisphere of Rhea that’s facing their flow. They hit that hemisphere and break water molecules on the surface. The atoms are then rearranging themselves to make O2 molecules, which are sputtered from the surface by additional impacting particles.”
(JUAN) Previous efforts to try to identify an exosphere at Rhea using Earth telescopes and even the remote-sensing instruments on Cassini had failed.Only by getting up close to Rhea could Cassini make a positive detection.
“What we’ve been able to do now with Cassini is actually fly through this atmosphere and measure it in situ – to ‘sniff’ and ‘taste’ it, and find out what it’s made of,” said co-author Professor Andrew Coates from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, UK.
(GRAHAM) All this suggests these kinds of exospheres may be very common,” said Dr Teolis. “There are different moons at Saturn and at Uranus, for example, which should be massive enough to hold an atmosphere. And, presumably, this kind of thing is duplicated billions of times throughout the galaxy. This could be something happening all over the place.”
Its mission has been extended up until 2017 when it will be commanded to destroy itself by plunging into Saturn’s atmosphere
Well, that is all for us today. Be sure to check www.365dayofastronomy.org to keep up with this podcast. And for those who love gadgets and technology and speak spanish dont forget so subscribe to the TecnoCasters – the best technology postcast en Espanol. You can be in touch with us our website www.tecnocasters.com.
Don’t forget to follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/guevarajd. (GRAHAM) Well, yeah, Juan let me spell to our audience your twitter so they can follow you, since you always make everything a bit more complicated… you can follow Juan on twitter at G-U-E-V-A-R-A-J-D
(JUAN) Gee, thanks GRAHAM…
My name is Juan Guevara Torres, host of TecnoCasters, (GRAHAM) and … thanks for listening!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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