Date: January 1, 2010
Title: One final look back on 2009
Podcaster: Dr. Pamela L. Gay and the 365 Days of Astronomy Community
Organization: Astrosphere New Media Association
Description: When we first launched this show 366 days ago, we had a dream of producing one year of audio from the people of the world. We reached out to you, and said “Lend us your voice, your passion, your recorded audio yearning to be heard,” and you reached back – helping us create this show. In this episode we take a look back at 2009 and what we created together. Clips for this show were taken from:
- Pluto – The Planet that isn’t a Planet Anymore
- Why Isn’t Pluto a Planet?
- When the Universe was Young
- A Modest Black Hole
- Pulsars
- The Rabbit on the Moon
- Confessions of a Christmas Trash Scope
- Don’t Lick the Telescope, and Other Tips for Cold Weather Observing
- An African Boy’s Heavenly Dream
- The Summer We Flew to the Moon
- Looking for a reason. Why Astronomy?
Bio: The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is a community project to publish one podcast per day, 5 to 10 minutes in duration, for all 365 days of 2009 2010. The podcast episodes are be written, recorded and produced by people around the world who donate a few minutes to share with you their passion for astronomy. This is a legacy project of the 2009 International Year of Astronomy that is produced by Astrosphere New Media Association.
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by … no one. We’re still looking for sponsors for 2010 and we need your help. Donate today at http://www.365DaysofAstronomy.org.
Transcript:
[Pamela] Welcome to the very first episode of the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast for Beyond the International Year of Astronomy.
When we first launched this show 366 days ago, we had a dream of producing one year of audio from the people of the world. We reached out to you, and said “Lend us your voice, your passion, your recorded audio yearning to be heard,” and you reached back – helping us create this show.
And now we’re hoping you’ll help us keep it going. When the international year of astronomy was first conceived, we all hoped that the great things we built would extend beyond 2009… But being the cautious scientist types, we played our cards close to our chest and only promised you 365 Days as a start. But… we seem to have hit on a good thing, and all around the world, there are teams gearing up to start what we are calling the Beyond IYA mission: a concerted global effort to extend as many programs form IYA as possible into the future.
Are your apart of our Beyond IYA mission: Your charge is to keep listening, keeping sending in your audio,,, and if you offered to sponsor a show or two too, we won’t complain.
But before we leave IYA 2009 behind all together, I’d like to sit back and give the past year one final listen:
Let’s see… where did it all start…
[music]
[in clip: Michael] Hello World! … Welcome to the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast, the daily podcast of the IYA – International Year of Astronomy. And not just “Hello World,” but hello Pamela.
[in clip: Pamela] Hello Michael! … Oh what a wonderful endeavor we’re about to start out on!
[music]
[Pamela] And what an amazing endeavor it’s been! We’ve explored the near – the planets – addressing Pluto’s Planethood.
[music]
[in clip: Susan] Can you name the planets in our Solar System?
[in clip: Amanda] Mercury, Venus, Earth (of course), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
[in clip: Susan] What about Pluto?
[in clip: Amanda] Mom, Pluto isn’t a planet any more.
[music]
[in clip: Fraser] How many planets in the solar system?
[in clip: Pamela] 8
[in clip: Fraser] 8 planets. So just run out, grab your encyclopedias, grab your dictionaries, grab your kids’ books and scratch out 9 and put in 8. Where ever it says the word “planet” behind Pluto replace it with “dwarf planet. Pluto is no longer a planet.
[music]
[Pamela] And from the Solar System we moved outward, exploring the greatest mysteries of the most distant corners of our universe.
[music]
[in clip: Mark Whittle] So the microwave background is this, it’s a microscope, it’s a telescope, and it’s a time machine, all rolled into one, and stored in it is enough information to kind of diagnose what the character of the universe is today, what its future will be and what its birth was. It’s an extraordinary document, so you know when you look at that microwave background image, either the WMAP image or similar images, it’s nice to sort of view it as a primordial script or document. It’s written by nature
[music]
[in clip: Dr. Mark Morris] The mass of this black hole is now figured to be four million times the mass of our Sun. That’s a pretty respectable black hole. That’s why we call it a supermassive black hole, but it’s not the most massive one. Quasars apparently have supermassive black holes that can be even a thousand times bigger than that, so our galaxy has a fairly modest black hole.
[music]
[sound of pulsar B1937]
[in clip: Dr Stuart Lowe] That was the rather ear-piercing sound of pulsar B1937 So how can a pulsar end up spinning so fast that the surface of the star is spinning at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light?
[in clip: Dr Tim O’Brien] Well, its that we believe that they are actually in binary systems and as material from the companion star is transferred onto the pulsar, it can spin it to these incredibly high speeds.
[music]
[Pamela] And you also shared with us what can be seen by going out and looking up.
[music]
[in clip: Namaste] The real beauty of the craters can be seen near the shadow line or the terminator. Use a binoculars or a telescope – you’ll have a stupefying spectacle. Due to the angle of the Sun’s rays, the mountains cast long shadows giving us a wonderful view.
[music]
[in clip: Richard Drumm] With the aide of my poor trash scope I was learning to use a star chart and learning my way around the night sky like I never had before.
I still remember the first time I found the great Orion Nebula (exploded star guts as I described them to my cousins) I couldn’t believe my eyes! It was like finding a microscopic universe in the middle of the sky. It had been hanging over my head all my life and I had never known it was there. I marveled at Saturn’s rings. Jupiter showed me two brown bands and orbiting moons that changed nightly. I began to keep a journal and sketch in the positions of the Galilean moons and any background stars I thought I might see near Jupiter. Once under ideal conditions I even saw a polar cap on Mars’ otherwise featureless disk. M13 in Hercules took repeated tries from a lighted apartment complex parking lot, but once I found it I felt like a “deep sky pro”.
[music]
[in clip: Mike Simenson] Here are some cold weather survival tips I have learned, observing from Michigan in temperatures down to 20 below zero Fahrenheit. [clip…] Use a plastic flashlight. If you are like most of my friends who read charts and log observations using a red flashlight, you put the flashlight in your mouth to write. On very cold nights, a metal flashlight can stick to your lip and be hard to remove without losing a bit of flesh.
Don’t laugh; I’ve seen it happen!
I suppose rule 9A should be, “don’t lick the telescope!”
If I ever see anyone get his or her tongue stuck to a frozen telescope, you’ll be the first to know!
[music]
[Pamela] And beyond just hearing about the facts and figures of astronomy we also heard about you, and your childhood adventures in astronomy.
[music]
[in clip: Abraham Samma] Astronomy in particular had a special place in my heart. I remember reading about astronomers of the past; how the Inquisition accused Galileo of heresy, the story of Tycho, Kepler and all the others. The scientific endeavors particularly in astronomy burned brightly in my childhood imagination. In fact I used to question many of my relatives and friends almost to the point of annoyance as to why they preferred business and economics to the opportunity of seeking new frontiers in the universe!
[music]
[in clip: Mike Simonsen] We spent weeks working on our experiment getting ready for the big day. We thought we could last for about a week, but decided we’d be happy if we made it for three or four days the first time we traveled into space. We calculated how many sodas, sandwiches, bags of chips, Twinkies and other snacks we would need to take with us to the Moon and back, and stocked up. All conditions were go and we triumphantly blasted off Monday morning after breakfast.
[music]
[Pamela] You shared with us your childhoods, and you shared with us your passions.
[music]
[in clip: George] Out of all the sciences, there’s something unique about astronomy. What appeals to many is its potential to remind us where we’ve been, where we are, and where we might be going. The first conscious observers of the natural world gazed at the very same stars that we look at and I think there is a pan-generational connection that unites those early astronomers and us. Our proto-scientific forefathers weren’t looking at mitochondrial DNA or analyzing germs or determining seismic shifts in plate tectonics. But they were looking at the very same sky we see. And even though the methodology and sheer accuracy of that observation has changed a million fold, that essential connection reminds us of how far we’ve come and far we can still go, literary to the ends of the universe. What else has been with us since humans first realized they were well, human? Science, but most particularly astronomy appeals to both the factual and fantastic duality in each of us.
[music]
[Pamela] we’ve explored the cosmos through your eyes. Some might worry we’d be running out of content by now, but the universe keeps offering up new surprises. I’d like to end this show with a quote from Prof Joclyn Bell. She’s discussing pulsars in particular, but if you changed her 40 to 400, I think the words apply to all of the past 400 years of telescopic explorations of the cosmos.
[music]
[in clip: Prof. Jocelyn Bell] It’s still a very exciting, dynamic, rapidly changing field. You’d think after 40 years it would’ve settled into an interesting but mature phase. Blow me, is it heck. It’s fascinating.
[music]
[Pamela] This is Dr. Pamela Gay and this is 365 Days of Astronomy for 2010. Learn more about all of these voices and where to find them at 365DaysofAstronomy.org.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Astrosphere New Media Association. Audio post-production by Preston Gibson. Bandwidth donated by libsyn.com and wizzard media. Web design by Clockwork Active Media Systems. You may reproduce and distribute this audio for non-commercial purposes. Please consider supporting the podcast with a few dollars (or Euros!). Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. Until tomorrow…goodbye.