Date: February 28, 2010
Title: The Universe in 15 Minutes
Podcaster: TecnoCasters
Organization: TecnoCasters – http://www.tecnocasters.com/
Description: The TecnoCasters discuss several recent news items about astronomy and technology.
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 The Planetary Society, celebrating 30 years of inspiring the people of Earth to explore other worlds, understand our own, and seek life elsewhere. Explore with us at planetary.org
This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” has also been sponsored by Tom Foster.
Transcript:
Hubble captures Pluto’s seasonal changes
According to the article written by DR EMILY BALDWIN in Astronomy Now , The most detailed images of Pluto have been captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, revealing a world undergoing seasonal surface color and brightness changes.
The new images show variations in the surface appearance of Pluto on the order of a few hundred kilometers across. While this is too coarse for understanding the finer details of Pluto’s surface geology, the images provide evidence of a complex world comprised of white, dark-orange and charcoal black terrain, colors which are thought to relate to the degrading ultraviolet radiation of the distant Sun breaking up methane present on Pluto’s surface, leaving behind a dark and red carbon-rich residue.
In particular, Pluto became significantly redder between 2000 and 2002, while its illuminated northern hemisphere became brighter and the southern hemisphere got darker. These changes most likely relate to surface ice melting on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole as the planet enters the next phase of its 248 year long seasonal cycle. Earth’s seasons are driven by the tilt of our planet, but it’s Pluto’s elliptical orbit that defines its asymmetric seasons, with spring transitioning into summer quickly in the northern hemisphere when Pluto is moving faster along its orbit when it is closer to the Sun.
Ground-based images taken in 1988 and 2002 revealed that the mass of Pluto’s atmosphere doubled during that time, likely thanks to the warming and melting of nitrogen ice. Putting the ground-based and Hubble images together hints at complex processes influencing the appearance of the visible surface, and provides more information on the seasonal processes and changes occurring in Pluto’s atmosphere.
“The Hubble observations are the key to tying together these other diverse constraints on Pluto and showing how it all makes sense by providing a context based on weather and seasonal changes, which opens other new lines of investigation,” says principal investigator Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder
The Hubble images will help New Horizon mission specialists pick sites for surveying when the mission flys past Pluto in 2015. The spacecraft will pass by the planet so quickly, however, that only one hemisphere will be photographed in detail. A prime target for follow up observations is a puzzling bright spot that has been independently noted to be unusually rich in carbon monoxide frost, and has a sharp boundary alongside a region of dark black surface material. “Everybody is puzzled by this feature,” comments Buie.
Astro-Gadgets – Haydee Durand
Planets for iPhone/iPod Touch
“Planets” is a free application in support of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. Over 2.5 million downloads so far!
Is that dot in the sky a star or a planet? Answer that question with this application. Discover when you can see your favorite planet, and where to look in the sky in relation to the stars.
Provides lots of interesting information:
• location of the sun, moon, and planets in the sky
• maps of stars and constellations
• rise and set time of the sun, moon, and planets
• current and future moon phases
• 3D globe view of all planets and the moon
• facts sheet for each planet, including moon names
Astro-Frame Lorena Galan
Effective future exploration of the Moon or other destinations beyond low Earth orbit / requires development of a suite of technologies that can increase capabilities and lower costs. (credit: Pat Rawlings/NASA)
Future space capabilities for an ambitious civil space program
There is at present tremendous uncertainty and no little concern regarding the future of human spaceflight in particular, and global space programs more generally. This uncertainty is due in large measure to the recently announced redirection of the US space program. The reasons for those changes are complex and controversial. It is important to appreciate, however, that the principal issues driving the changes are not related to the goals of the US space program. Rather, they are being driven by the anticipated costs of achieving US civil space goals using the toolkit of technologies and systems that are available today. If they were affordable and cost-effective, no one would object to a lunar outpost, a human mission to Mars, or to large new Earth and space science missions. The central challenge for US space science and exploration during this decade revolves around the issue of affordability.
What are the most important challenges to overcome?
Sustainable Human Presence:
In-Space Refueling,
Affordable Long-Lived Power in Space
Reusable High-Energy In-Space Propulsion,
Reusable Low-Cost Launch Systems
Autonomous Space Operations:
Sustainable, Increasingly Self-Sufficient Human Operations Systems,
Radiation Protection,
Remote Medical Care in Space,
Transformational Space Infrastructures:
In-Space Refueling,
Affordable Long-Lived Power in Space,
Reusable High-Energy In-Space Propulsion
Reusable Low-Cost Launch Systems
My name is Juan Guevara Torres, host of TecnoCasters, and … thanks for listening!
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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