Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Digest: Eps. 401 & 402: Night Vision & Above Scotland
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s 2 topics:
- Experience the wonders of the Universe first hand using your night vision.
- The CubeSat industry is making relatively low cost exploration of space possible and is creating heretofore undreamed of opportunities for the human exploration of space.
Bio: Dr. Al Grauer is currently an observing member of the Catalina Sky Survey Team at the University of Arizona. This group has discovered nearly half of the Earth approaching objects known to exist. He received a PhD in Physics in 1971 and has been an observational Astronomer for 43 years. He retired as a University Professor after 39 years of interacting with students. He has conducted research projects using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Georgia with funding from NSF and NASA.
He is noted as Co-discoverer of comet P/2010 TO20 Linear-Grauer, Discoverer of comet C/2009 U5 Grauer and has asteroid 18871 Grauer named for him.
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Transcript:
401 – Night Vision
Many people in our modern world rarely if ever experience night vision. To achieve this interesting state of sensory awareness you cannot look at your cell phone or any other source of bright light for 30 to 45 minutes. Your night vision comes about over time because the rod sensors in the retina of your eye undergo a chemical change when they are placed in total darkness. The process starts immediately but takes 20 to 30 minutes to get 80% of maximum sensitivity. The night vision process can be reversed in seconds by exposure to a bright light. In it’s most sensitive state your eye can function with a billion times less light than is present in strong sunlight enabling you to see a candle flame from 1.6 miles away.
One of the of the most interesting and fun ways to experience night vision is to go to a location with a natural night sky such as the Cosmic Campground International Dark Sky Sanctuary on a clear moonless night. Allow your eyes to become dark adapted by using only a very dim red light. Amazingly you will find yourself walking about by the light of the stars. Your reward will be to experience seeing the Milky Way, meteors streaking through the night sky, star clusters, planets, bright and dim stars of different colors and more. Pick a dark sky place near you on darksky.org and recruit a friend. Bring a red filtered flashlight, star maps, binoculars, warm clothes, and snacks to experience the wonders of the Universe first hand.
402 – Above Scotland
During the age of steam, shipbuilding along Glasgow, Scotland’s River Clyde once produced a nearly a quarter of the worlds ocean going ships. Now a small company, Clyde Space is producing products which support approximately 40% of all CubeSat missions globally. CubeSats are the new small spaceships containing the volume on the order of that of a quart of milk. They weigh from 2 to 10 lbs with some of them being no larger than the diameter of a drink coaster. In 2017 CubeSat launches are running at the rate of more than 300 per year and are on an exponential path of growth. Typically these small spacecraft hitchhike on rockets carrying larger satellites into near Earth orbit. Their uses include observations of crops, fires, floods, and urban development, as well as providing new communications channels, and testing components for larger spacecraft.
In 2014 Clyde Space launched UKube-1 the first satellite to be designed and built in Scotland. Currently Clyde Space offers a number of off-the-shelf CubeSat platforms with internal volumes ranging from that of a coffee cup to ones which can contain a small suitcase of equipment. These customizable platforms provide the power, pointing, data storage, communications channels, and more for complex missions. The CubeSat industry is making relatively low cost exploration of space possible and is creating heretofore undreamed of opportunities for the human exploration of space.
For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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