Date: February 26, 2011
Title: Sneak Peek of the Springtime Skies
Podcaster: Jane Platt from JPL
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Description: What is coming soon to sky near you? Jane Platt and Jane Houston Jones from JPL give hints and tips for skywatching this spring.
Bio: Jane Platt is News Chief of the Media Relations Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. During her prior career in broadcast journalism, she was the West Coast correspondent for ABC Radio Network, and a reporter for other networks and radio stations. She covered such varied stories as earthquakes, fires, high-profile trials, riots, Academy Awards, Space Shuttle landings, the Voyager Neptune flyby, and a total solar eclipse. Jane draws on this broadcast news background in her current job, providing information for journalists covering JPL missions and science discoveries, and creating and producing podcasts for JPL.
Jane Houston Jones is an amateur astronomer, NASA science podcast developer, writer, educational and outreach artisan at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and is a social media enthusiast. She manages informal education for NASA’s Cassini Equinox Mission, now in its 2nd and final 7-year extended extended mission to Saturn (through 2017). She is one of NASA’s twittering spacecraft, too, sending daily to weekly tweets from @CassiniSaturn to more than 91,000 Cassini Twitter fans.
Her “What’s Up?” podcast series enters its fifth year in March, with 45 podcasts and 10 blog posts archived on NASA’s Solar System Exploration website. http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/whatsup-archive.cfm In Jane’s spare time she takes some of her 13 telescopes out to the local sidewalks, city, state, and national parks, schools and libraries, sharing the wonders of the night (and daytime) sky with more than 10,000 viewers every year.
Today’s sponsor: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by Greg Dorais, and is dedicated to the Chabot Space And Science Center in Oakland California, home of Bill Nye’s Climate Lab, Space Explorers Summer Camp, and so much more. At Chabot Space And Science Center, the universe is yours to experience. Set amid 13 trail-laced acres of East Bay parkland, with glorious views of San Francisco Bay and the Oakland foothills, Chabot is a hands-on celebration of sights, sounds, and sensations. Find out more about the Chabot Space And Science Center at www.chabotspace.org.
Transcript:
Music opens….
Platt: I’m Jane Platt with a podcast from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
My guest today is another Jane—Jane Houston Jones, a senior outreach specialist and amateur astronomer at JPL. She hosts “What’s Up?”, which is a popular video podcast series that shows viewers what to look for in the night sky each month. I’ve asked her to join us to give us a little sneak preview of springtime.
Jane, thanks for being here, and what kind of cosmic treats are in store for us as we head into spring, or towards spring?
Jones: Hi Jane. This month, we have a wonderful lineup of planets to view in the western sky right at sunset. Some of you have probably looked up and seen a really bright star up in the western sky, and that’s Jupiter. Well, for the next couple of weeks we’ll be able to see Mercury creeping below the planet and then next to it and then above Jupiter from about the end of the first week of March through the19th.
Platt: So people might have looked at what turned out to be Jupiter but what they thought was a star, right?
Jones: That’s right. It’s the brightest thing in the western sky so go out and take a look, because it won’t be visible after this month.
Platt: So we have sort of a double treat of planets for March. And then what about beyond march, what else is coming up in April?
Jones: In April we begin the season of the lord of the rings. Saturn will be visible from April through August. And you’ll be able to see it early in the evening sky, starting in April and May and June, looking in the eastern sky.
Platt: Now this is true in all areas, or we’re talking…..
Jones: Yes, you’ll be able to see these planets no matter where you are.
Platt: On Earth.
Jones: On earth, everywhere on earth.
Platt: And I understand that in the month of May we’re going to have a plethora of planets.
Jones: That’s right, Jane. But you’re going to have to get up early for this one, so set your alarm before dawn. And what you’ll be able to see are Venus, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter, all bunched together.
And when I say bunched together, in an area about as big as if you held your one or two hands kind of out in front of your face, and make a circle. And so it’s kind of a close area in the sky. You’ll see four planets.
Platt: OK, and is that unusual to see so many?
Jones: It’s not unusual if you think of the way the planets orbit the sun. And then tip that kind of as if you’re looking straight at it. Sometimes a faraway planet and a nearby planet would appear to be close together, when they’re really not. So it happens all the time, but we don’t see it all the time, because it’s daytime half of the day and half of the night, and so you don’t see that.
Platt: Let’s see, so that’s for the month of May, and then we have a couple of special days this season coming up.
Jones: That’s right. If you don’t have your own telescope and you want to find people who are gathered looking at stuff, there’s a couple of special days in the springtime that you’ll have that opportunity. And one of them is on March 19th, which is called sun-Earth Day. And on that day, amateur astronomy clubs and science centers and planetariums will all have gatherings where they’ll show the sun in the daytime and show the moon at night. Also on May 7th is International Astronomy Day, where all the astronomy clubs everywhere will strut their stuff, and they’ll bring out their telescopes and invite everybody in town to come out for a look. So look for your astronomy clubs and your centers for these events.
Platt: Ok, and back to the sun-Earth Day, I guess it’s a good time to remind people about the sun and you have to be very, very careful.
Jones: Right, you never want to look directly at the sun with your sunglasses or with a piece of film or anything like that. You only want to look at the sun through a solar telescope that has a protective cover on it, so your eyes won’t be hurt. So be real careful, don’t do it at home, always use a trained astronomer with their equipment when you’re observing the sun.
Platt: Okay, and in a minute we’ll talk about opportunities where you go when you’re sharing this kind of thing with people, but first also wanted to ask you about this year, which is the year of the solar system.
Jones: The year of the solar system is NASA’s lovefest of the solar system. And the missions to the solar system as well as the objects that we can see in the night sky. And we have a special website that has monthly activities, events, great articles, blogs and even my What’s Up? podcast is in there. And that website is solarsystem.nasa.gov/yss, and yss means year of the solar system. It will last all the way through most of 2012, too. So there will be things to look at, things to do, things to see all on this wonderful website.
Platt: So that’s a long year?
Jones: It’s a long year of the solar system, yes.
Platt: Ok, so let’s see we mentioned a whole bunch of planets that will be visible, we mentioned the sun and the moon. What about beyond our solar system—stars, galaxies—what’s coming up that’s cool?
Jones: Yes, Jane, some of my favorite things to do are to take my telescopes far away from city lights. And here in Los Angeles area, you have to drive a long way to get away from light pollution. But when you do, you see a night sky that has, in the wintertime right now, we can see the Milky Way, the winter Milky Way, going from north to south, on the western side of the sky. So if you get out to a dark sky and you see what looks like a little ribbon of stars spanning the sky, that’s one of the arms of our own Milky Way galaxy. Now if you turn yourself all the way around and look to the east, what you’ll see is, through a telescope, are hundreds of galaxies. And you don’t even need a big telescope to see lots and lots of galaxies. You do need an astronomer who knows where to look, but you can only see those by getting into a dark sky, so get out and look up.
Platt: A desert, a….
Jones: A desert, a national park, a state park, a city park, somewhere where there’s not a lot of lights.
Platt: When you get to someplace without lights, you have to stay there for a little while to let your eyes adjust, right?
Jones: Yes, turn off your cell phone, don’t text your friends, turn off all the lights, turn off your car lights, and just enjoy the peace and quiet of the night sky and the beautiful stars and galaxies out there.
Platt: Okay, you mentioned a few minutes ago astronomers strutting their stuff. You do that with your fellow astronomers and you do that locally not far from JPL. Obviously not everyone can get to that, but go ahead and talk about what you do in this area.
Jones: Well I’m an amateur astronomer, Jane and what I do is take my own…I strut my own stuff, my own telescopes down to the corner of the town where I live and invite everybody walking by to look through my telescopes. We call that sidewalk astronomy and nearly every town has some guy or girl who wants to go and take telescopes out on the corner and let you look through their telescopes. So that’s what I do at least once or twice a month, sometimes more.
Platt: And that’s in Monrovia.
Jones: That’s here local to Pasadena to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But you’ll find sidewalk astronomers and astronomers from hundreds and hundreds of astronomy clubs all over the country and all over the world doing exactly the same thing.
Platt: Any suggestions for people on how to get started in this in their communities or where to look?
Jones: Well, you could always start obviously by you know looking on the internet for astronomy clubs, and if you have a local planetarium or a science center or amuseum or an astronomy club, Contact them and find out when their next star viewing night is and you’ll be welcomed, there’s almost never a charge for this kind of stuff.
Platt: Ok, a couple final questions. I just wanted to ask you, since you do go out of your way to take your telescope and share your knowledge with people out on the streets. What is it, a two-part question, what is it that you personally enjoy about looking up at that sky, and what is it you enjoy about sharing that with other people?
Jones: Well, I’ll do the sharing part first and that is–the best thing the very best thing that happens when you have a telescope and somebody looks through it and they see something they’ve never seen before and they say, “Wow.” And to me those wows, they add up and that’s, that’s my pay for sharing the sky with anybody are those wows. And the part two?
Platt: Well the part was what makes you personally enjoy looking up stargazing and looking for planets and things.
Jones: The thing I like about is I’m a real people person. I love to talk to people and be around people, but it’s really nice to be out and just kind of sharing the sky with yourself and exploring, dreaming, making up stories about what you see and just having a night with no television and none of the distractions of our daily life, and it’s just me and the stars.
Platt: OK, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your knowledge. And everybody who has joined us today, you can see Jane Houston Jones’ videos of “What’s Up?” each month. They’re at: www.jpl.nasa.gov/video and then you search for What’s Up? Thanks everybody for joining us for this podcast from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Jones: Goodbye.
Music fades
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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