April 3, 2025

Cosmic Winds, Nebula Secrets & the Mysteries of Neptune

Cosmic Winds, Nebula Secrets & the Mysteries of Neptune

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Space Nuts Episode 509: Neptune's Secrets, Lunar Dust Shields, and...

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Space Nuts Episode 509: Neptune's Secrets, Lunar Dust Shields, and the Helix Nebula
In this exciting episode of Space Nuts, fill-in host Heidi Campo joins astronomer Fred Watson to explore some of the cosmos' most intriguing phenomena. From the latest discoveries about Neptune's atmosphere to innovative solutions for lunar dust challenges, and the mysteries of the Helix Nebula, listeners are in for a treat filled with cosmic insights and engaging discussions.
Episode Highlights:
- Neptune's Atmosphere: Heidi and Fred dive into the recent observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope, revealing the presence of auroras on Neptune and discussing its unique atmospheric conditions, including record-breaking winds and intriguing cloud formations.
- Lunar Dust Shield Innovations: The duo explores NASA's new Electrodynamic Dust Shield, designed to repel lunar regolith, and its potential applications for future lunar missions and even everyday life on Earth.
- Helix Nebula Mysteries: The episode wraps up with a discussion about the Helix Nebula, its stunning visuals, and the fascinating theory surrounding the remnants of a planet that was destroyed as its star transitioned into a white dwarf.
For more Space Nuts, including our continually updating newsfeed and to listen to all our episodes, visit our website. Follow us on social media at SpaceNutsPod on Facebook, X, YouTube Music Music, Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok. We love engaging with our community, so be sure to drop us a message or comment on your favorite platform.
If you'd like to help support Space Nuts and join our growing family of insiders for commercial-free episodes and more, visit spacenutspodcast.com/about
Stay curious, keep looking up, and join us next time for more stellar insights and cosmic wonders. Until then, clear skies and happy stargazing.
(00:00) Welcome to Space Nuts with Heidi Campo and Fred Watson
(01:40) Discussion on Neptune's auroras and atmospheric conditions
(11:20) The innovative Electrodynamic Dust Shield for lunar missions
(22:15) Exploring the Helix Nebula and its planetary ghost
(30:00) Final thoughts and reflections on space exploration
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/space-nuts-exploring-the-cosmos--2631155/support.

 

 

WEBVTT

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Welcome to Space Nuts. My name is Heidi Compo, and

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I'm here with Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. And I

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bet many of you are wondering who is this lady,

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Why is she here? Where is Andrew? I can assure

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you he is just fine and probably having the time

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of his life. I am here filling in helping him

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out while he is on a little break. And I

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found say Space Nuts originally from just being a listener myself.

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I also have a podcast, reality Check the Science of Fiction,

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where I talk to subject matter experts about the plausibility

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of sci fi concepts. And I am a graduate student

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here in Space City, Houston, Texas, and I'm focusing on spaceflight,

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human optimization and performance, so I have a very interesting

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segue into the space world. I'm really interested in a

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lot of the I guess, the sci fi concepts that

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integrate into space science and all the new discoveries that

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Fred knows so much about. And I'm excited to be

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here as your fill in host for this episode.

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Fifteen second guide to the in Channal ten nine ignition

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Si Wench Space Nuts NI four three two one Space

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Nuts as when actually boughted Neil's good Fred, thanks for

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having me.

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You're very welcome. Heidi.

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Is a delight to welcome you to the Space Nuts team.

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It's very appropriate. I think that we should be beaming

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out from Houston, Texas. And what better person to fit

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into Andrew's empty shoes at the moment than yourself. It's

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lovely to have you, and I'm really looking forward to

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our our next few sessions when we can chat together

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behind Andrew's back.

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Now, this is going to be great.

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So we have some really interesting topics this week. I

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was looking over them. We're going to be talking about

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the Blue Ghost sojourn on Mars or sorry, on the Moon,

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and that looked really interesting in me. The other thing

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we're going to be talking about is some of the

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activity with the James Webb telescope about Neptune. So that's

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a planet we really don't talk as much about. Neptune

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is really kind of the ignored stepchild of the Solar System,

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so I'm excited to hear what.

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You have to say about that activity.

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And then the last thing we'll be talking today about

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today is the Helix Nebula and some really exciting new

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discoveries going on with that. So I think that I

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would be interested in just jumping right in with the

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Neptune story.

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Excellent, a good planet to start with, Heidi, And you're

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absolutely right. Neptune has only been visited by at once

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by a human built spacecraft. Maybe there were alien spacecraft

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that have visited it, but only one human built one,

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which was Voyager two. And so what we know about

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it really comes very much from the images that were

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taken when Voyager two flew by Neptune.

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That was in the eighties.

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But Neptune, of course is a world that has an

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active atmosphere. It's an ice giant, one of the two

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ice giants in the Outer Solar System, and that term

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refers to the fact that we believe there are solid

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ices as a kind of haze in the atmosphere of Neptune.

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So it's slightly different from the other two gas giants,

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Jupiter and Saturn, which they don't have those icy hazes

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because their temperature is just slightly warmer being nearer the Sun.

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So the really interesting thing was when the flyby with

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Voyager two took place, Neptune looked very boring. It had

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you know, it was just like a pale, blue green

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disc with not much happening, and I think that probably

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did it a disservice because we've you know, we thought

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of this planet is having rather uninteresting atmospherics, although subsequent

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measurements made from Earth actually demonstrated that it does have

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high winds in its atmosphere.

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And just a mention to.

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The system of moons of Neptune because some of those

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are particularly interesting as well. Triton is its largest moon.

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It may well be one of these ice worlds with

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a rocky core, an overlying ocean, a global ocean, and

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ice on top. That's not what we're talking about today.

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So what's the story. Why is Neptune in the news. Well,

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it's because, as you might expect, it has been a

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subject of observation by basically astronomy's new toy, still new

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after three years, I guess now, the James Webb Space

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Telescope with its marvelous infrared cameras and very very sensitive

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spectroscopic systems. So what has been detected by the WEB

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is something that we've known about, maybe hinted at by

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earlier observations over a long period of time, probably since

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the voyager flyby, that it has a rory or auroras

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if you want to be less picky about your Latin,

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northern and southern light like we have on Earth, like

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the other gas giants themselves have. But the problem is,

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you know, hints are fine, but what you really want

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is a kind of signature of these things in the spectrum,

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the sort of rainbow of colors that we see when

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we split the light up into those components, and that,

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as we've discussed many times on space Nuts, those spectra

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are crossed by a kind of almost like a you know,

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a supermarket barcode of information which we can read and

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detect what gases are involved with these with these spectral colors.

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So yes, the James Webb has thrown its might behind

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observations of Neptune, and sure enough we have found strong

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emission of the kind of telltale elements that indicate auroral activity.

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And remember a rorria caused by the solar particles, the

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subatomic particles that come from the song interacting with the

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atmosphere of planet. That's what caused the glow and that's

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why it has characteristic colors, because the glow itself comes

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from the elements in the atmosphere. So yes, ar on

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Neptune and very similar to the phenomenon on Earth, but

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different colors because it's different elements that are being excited.

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The green in a rory here on Earth comes from oxygen,

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which isn't there on Neptune. So the colors are coming

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from they're actually coming from hydrogen.

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Yeah, and it's absolutely beautiful. I'm looking at these images

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right now.

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It reminds me of one of those mood rings that

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were really popular in the nineties where it's starting to

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change color.

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It's really spectacular to see. And I'm seeing in this image.

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So you just described that the greenish color comes from hydrogen.

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I'm seeing also spots of white, because if you look

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at the images of Hubble, which it's pretty much just

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blew all the way across, and then the image of

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the web, there's some big white spots.

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Is that part of the aura?

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I suspect some of those are clouds, which are also

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now visible in the infrared. We see similar things in

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the atmosphere of Uranus, white spots, which are very extensive

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areas of cloud in the atmosphere. The atmospheric circulation, you know,

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on both those ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, is relatively

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slow in terms of the changes in the atmosphere, and

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that's partly because the temperature there is minus two hundred

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and fourteen degrees celsius at the surface, but that doesn't

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necessarily mean that you don't get high winds, and in fact,

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I think the winds on Neptune are the record breaking

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winds in the atmosphere of a planet in the Solar System.

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Up to two four hundred kilometers per hour, that's what's that.

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That's about eighteen eighteen hundred miles per hour.

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So it's very fast. I'm thinking of it in hurricane terms.

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It's super hurricane, that's right. And I think that there

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is also on Neptune. There is a something that's sort

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of related to the great red spots on Jupiter, a storm,

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a long lived storm, and maybe that's what's showing up

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as the some of the white spots, or at least

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one of the white spot. I'm just looking for them now.

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There is a big white spot in the middle of

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the JWST images, but.

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Is the Aurora.

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And you've just reminded me though looking at those pictures.

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One of the peculiarities of Neptune is that we think

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it's magnetic axis that the two magnetic poles are tilted

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well over to sort the middle latitudes, unlike here on Earth,

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where they don't exactly align. Magnetic north is not the

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same as geographic north, but the the magnetic poles more

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or less align with the rotation of the planet. And

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that's probably to do with the fact that we think

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these that the magnetism is generated by the circulation of

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the iron and nickel core, which is in two parts,

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and it sort of acts like a dynamo, and that

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generates a magnetic field. Neptune and probably the other gas

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giants have something similar. We really don't understand the origin

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of their magnetism. We don't know whether there's a solid

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core or not in the gas giants. We suspect there

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must be in order for them to have these strong

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magnetic fields. But on Neptune, the magnetic field is tilted

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over at quite a considerable angle to the rotation of

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the planet, which is why the aurori appear at mid

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latitudes on Neptune rather than near the poles as they

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do here on Earth. As I know well from my

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sojourn up in the Arctic two months ago.

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So there's something going on with Neptune's orbit, it's either

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wobbly or it changes or something like that.

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Would that have anything to do with this tilt?

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It is possible, you know, the two may be related.

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Usually the rotation of a planet and its orbits are

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fairly decoupled. And you've only to look at Uranus, which

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you know, as you know, is tilted over nine degrees.

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I think it's nine degrees below what you might call

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the horizontal the plane of its orbit, and Uranus has

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a reasonably well.

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Sort of well behaved orbit.

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Neptune's interesting because it's, in modern parlance, it represents the

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outermost planet of the Solar System, and it does affect

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the orbits of the many myriads of objects that we

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know lie beyond that, so called trans Neptunian objects, which

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include things in the Kaiper Belt and things called resonant

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objects like Pluto's. Pluto's are resonant objects because it resonates

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in its orbital period with Neptune and the and the

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scattered disc objects as they're called, way beyond that. So

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it could be that Neptune's orbit is interacting with those.

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Although a big planet like Neptune, it takes a lot

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to shift its orbit to perturb it. So I haven't

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seen those reports that you've mentioned, and everything you've just

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heard is complete waffle. But that's the way it works

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when you're talking about things you've not seen before, right,

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And I.

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Think there's just so much of that with space.

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It's the I was at a NASA tech talk last

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week and one of the they were talking about sands,

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which is an ocular syndrome that the astronauts experience.

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Yes, sorry, they have issues with their eyes. And now,

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for those of you listening, my little dogs biking for

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attention to the corner. We're just gonna ig norm it

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totally good time when we're done recording.

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But the the person enter he brought he was a

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flight surgeon, and he brought up so many funny headlines

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and articles it's NASA scientists say this and this.

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He's like, I cannot find these experts.

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Yes, if anybody knows these experts that this headline is

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claiming to talk about, please let me know, because this

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is all wrong.

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So I think there's a lot of that in the

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space industry.

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So that is a really interesting syndrome, isn't it, Because

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that's one of the potential long lived consequences of long

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term spaceflight that you've got these ocular effects. My sorry,

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we're way off topic here, Heidi, But that's all right.

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I've forgotten you.

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About Simba, like the lion king, his wagon, his tail.

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He's asked me.

217
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He's trying as hard as he can to be as

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cute as possible.

219
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He's doing a fine job.

220
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Yea computer. He thinks if he's cuter, I'll stop recording

221
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and go play with him.

222
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Yeah, I know the syndrome.

223
00:13:59.240 --> 00:14:02.200
So just what I've read is that it may be

224
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caused by the fact that, you know, the circulation in

225
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the body, the blood circulation in the body changes in microgravity,

226
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and that you might well have pressures in the cranium

227
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that might affect the eyes in a way that we

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don't have on Earth. Is that the thinking or am

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I just making there?

230
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You're absolutely spot on.

231
00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:22.200
Yeah.

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It has everything to do with fluid. So when the

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fluid changes in the body, we normally have gravity pulling

234
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that fluid away from the head, But when we're in space,

235
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the fluid tends to, you know, pull up towards our

236
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head and shift in places that we don't necessarily want it.

237
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So there that is a leading issue and causing that pressure,

238
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and then there were you know, there were so many

239
00:14:46.960 --> 00:14:50.320
other points and tangents with that, but we're learning so

240
00:14:50.440 --> 00:14:52.399
much more about it now. And one of the really

241
00:14:52.559 --> 00:14:56.519
interesting things with space medicine and human performance in space

242
00:14:56.919 --> 00:14:58.600
is when we're looking at the research, we'll have like

243
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an n of eight and for those of you non

244
00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:04.720
science people, and is your subject numbers, so you know,

245
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when we're looking at, you know, cancer research, that can

246
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be in the hundreds or thousands of data points that

247
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we're looking at. But when we're talking about astronaut health,

248
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it's just a handful of people. So there's really there's

249
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as much as we know about it is with the

250
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people that have been to space already. And that's one

251
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reason why I'm so excited about what some of these

252
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other companies are doing, like Blue Origin, Axiom Virgin that

253
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are getting more and more people into space so that

254
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we can learn more about space health, which does influence

255
00:15:37.720 --> 00:15:41.360
health on Earth. There's so much we've learned about space

256
00:15:41.480 --> 00:15:44.000
medicine that has helped improve life on Earth.

257
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Which is remarkable and great news.

258
00:15:49.240 --> 00:15:51.480
And one of the you know, the many, many, many

259
00:15:51.559 --> 00:15:57.559
benefits of space exploration. We've got another commercial flight about

260
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to launch. I think within the next few days.

261
00:15:59.480 --> 00:15:59.759
Is that right?

262
00:16:00.039 --> 00:16:00.799
From two mission?

263
00:16:01.159 --> 00:16:04.559
Oh, they're going all the time. I don't I can't

264
00:16:04.600 --> 00:16:07.120
even keep up with all of them. Sometimes that's what

265
00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:10.120
you should listen to this show for.

266
00:16:13.240 --> 00:16:15.440
So I have another deputune question, and I want to

267
00:16:15.559 --> 00:16:18.799
segue this in with the Humans and the People part.

268
00:16:19.759 --> 00:16:22.840
Are you familiar with the book? It's a book and

269
00:16:22.960 --> 00:16:27.559
a TV series called The Expanse. Are you familiar with it? No?

270
00:16:28.519 --> 00:16:35.120
And I apologize for that because there's so much going

271
00:16:35.159 --> 00:16:37.360
on out there that I simply don't have time to

272
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read or look at. And yeah, I rely on I

273
00:16:41.679 --> 00:16:45.039
certainly rely on Andrew keeping keeping me honest in regards

274
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to science fiction, and I'm sure the same is going

275
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to be true with you.

276
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But no, I don't know about that.

277
00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:54.240
Yes, So in the Expanse, they have they have populated

278
00:16:54.360 --> 00:16:57.360
the Solar System. There's people living on Earth, Mars, and

279
00:16:57.519 --> 00:17:00.679
there are also people living out in the Asstroid Belts.

280
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They call them Belters. And these people are multi generations

281
00:17:05.640 --> 00:17:09.359
born in space, so they have physiologically adapted to life

282
00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:13.119
in space. So they have become physically different from people

283
00:17:13.240 --> 00:17:15.839
born on Earth because of the gravities and the systems there.

284
00:17:16.440 --> 00:17:19.279
So I want to segue this back into talking about Neptune,

285
00:17:19.359 --> 00:17:23.160
because we have ice, we have wind, and from what

286
00:17:23.319 --> 00:17:28.480
I do know about greenhouse gases and thinking about the expanse,

287
00:17:29.079 --> 00:17:35.839
there has been some chatter about putting some industrial factories

288
00:17:35.960 --> 00:17:40.039
and whatnot on Mars eventually to help generate greenhouse gases

289
00:17:40.160 --> 00:17:45.799
to help increase atmosphere on Mars. Is this something because

290
00:17:45.799 --> 00:17:47.759
I always like to think about what we're looking at

291
00:17:47.799 --> 00:17:50.559
and seeing with these auroras in space and everything we're learning,

292
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and what does it mean for future generations?

293
00:17:53.400 --> 00:17:55.559
Could could Neptune potentially be.

294
00:17:57.559 --> 00:18:00.720
A big power generating planet with the winds if we

295
00:18:00.759 --> 00:18:01.880
could harvest these winds.

296
00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:09.039
Well, the lovely idea wind turbines on Neptune, Now that's

297
00:18:10.079 --> 00:18:15.680
really a really expansive idea, if I can use the

298
00:18:15.799 --> 00:18:16.200
joke there.

299
00:18:16.960 --> 00:18:17.720
It's so.

300
00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:26.799
The likelihood is that with with so many things that

301
00:18:27.200 --> 00:18:31.240
people talk about doing in space, it's actually easier not

302
00:18:31.440 --> 00:18:37.039
to to find alternative sources of whatever it is you're

303
00:18:37.039 --> 00:18:43.319
trying to generate. And the winds on Neptune colossal winds,

304
00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:46.039
as we've said, you know, up to maybe approaching two

305
00:18:46.039 --> 00:18:51.279
thousand miles per hour, How you would generate them, It's

306
00:18:51.720 --> 00:18:56.079
hard to know. What might be interesting though, is if

307
00:18:56.119 --> 00:18:58.599
you could use them, sorry, how you could use how

308
00:18:58.680 --> 00:19:01.680
you could use those winds to generate power?

309
00:19:02.279 --> 00:19:02.680
How to know?

310
00:19:02.920 --> 00:19:07.359
But if you could use those winds to facilitate exploration

311
00:19:07.480 --> 00:19:10.839
of the planet's atmosphere, And that's something I could well imagine,

312
00:19:10.880 --> 00:19:15.559
you know, people dropping balloons into the atmosphere of Neptune

313
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to watch the circulation, to do what we do here

314
00:19:19.680 --> 00:19:27.000
on Earth with our multiple capacity for measuring and predicting

315
00:19:27.039 --> 00:19:29.759
the weather. So whether or Neptune might be something that

316
00:19:29.839 --> 00:19:32.960
turns out to be quite interesting, I think a more

317
00:19:33.599 --> 00:19:39.000
in some ways, a more what's the word apposite? Maybe

318
00:19:39.200 --> 00:19:42.880
is the right word world to be interested in the

319
00:19:42.960 --> 00:19:46.920
Neptune system is moon Triton, because that could turn out

320
00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:49.400
to be, you know, one of the places like Europa

321
00:19:49.480 --> 00:19:53.200
and Enceladus that has the potential for perhaps living organisms

322
00:19:53.240 --> 00:19:54.079
beneath the surface.

323
00:19:54.720 --> 00:19:58.599
And that is very exciting, very exciting, And it really

324
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just comes down to the human ingenuity, the engineering and

325
00:20:02.200 --> 00:20:04.880
all the new breakthroughs that we're making. It seems like

326
00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:06.960
every single day there's more stuff that we're coming up

327
00:20:07.039 --> 00:20:08.279
with to get us out there.

328
00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:13.039
Okay, let's take a quick break from the show to

329
00:20:13.319 --> 00:20:16.400
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357
00:21:50.799 --> 00:21:52.400
Space Nuts, which I think.

358
00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:55.240
Is kind of a good segue. Next, Storry.

359
00:21:56.920 --> 00:22:02.599
So now says created this new dust shield and it's

360
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:08.680
going to help repel the lunar regolith, which is very important.

361
00:22:09.720 --> 00:22:13.519
The is very fine, it's very sticky.

362
00:22:13.839 --> 00:22:16.759
It can be kind of dangerous if this is getting

363
00:22:16.960 --> 00:22:21.440
in their analogs and their facilities and where they're living.

364
00:22:21.599 --> 00:22:24.200
So tell me more about this. This is quite the

365
00:22:24.319 --> 00:22:25.039
interesting story.

366
00:22:27.599 --> 00:22:34.559
That's that's Jordy. Let me just check what's happening. Because

367
00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:42.000
he does sound like a chicken. J I do like

368
00:22:42.079 --> 00:22:42.480
a chicken.

369
00:22:43.240 --> 00:22:45.079
It does, doesn't it. Yeah, it's just like a rooster.

370
00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:47.920
He doesn't know that. He thinks he sounds like a

371
00:22:47.960 --> 00:22:50.559
big Just calm down, Jody, it's all right.

372
00:22:51.039 --> 00:22:54.720
That there's there's a dog that he hates that he's

373
00:22:54.759 --> 00:22:57.160
only occasionally brings it near our.

374
00:22:57.160 --> 00:22:58.119
Property to take.

375
00:22:58.200 --> 00:22:59.079
Don't they know better?

376
00:22:59.559 --> 00:23:02.559
Yeah, all right, joby count out.

377
00:23:05.119 --> 00:23:09.119
Okay, So the lunar regularis back to the Moon, from

378
00:23:09.160 --> 00:23:13.279
the sublime to the ridiculous, or the other way around. Yes,

379
00:23:13.359 --> 00:23:16.200
you're right, absolutely right that the soil on the Moon

380
00:23:16.640 --> 00:23:21.240
is such an interesting thing. It's different from anything we

381
00:23:21.400 --> 00:23:24.759
have on Earth. And that's because it has been formed

382
00:23:24.960 --> 00:23:28.480
not by wind and water erosion like the soil on

383
00:23:28.680 --> 00:23:32.839
Earth has, but by bombardment by these subatomic particles, the

384
00:23:32.920 --> 00:23:36.119
wind of particles that constantly blows from the Sun, probably

385
00:23:36.160 --> 00:23:38.240
a few micrometeorites banging into.

386
00:23:38.119 --> 00:23:39.039
The surface as well.

387
00:23:39.400 --> 00:23:41.319
And so what we've got is a soil that is

388
00:23:41.480 --> 00:23:45.559
very very fine and very angular, so it's got sharp

389
00:23:45.640 --> 00:23:48.200
edges all the way around it. And exactly as you've said,

390
00:23:48.279 --> 00:23:51.119
that's why it gets into all the nooks and crannies,

391
00:23:51.599 --> 00:23:55.680
all the crevices that the basically the clothing of astronauts.

392
00:23:56.480 --> 00:23:57.559
There is one.

393
00:23:57.799 --> 00:24:00.880
Recorded case, and you probably know more about this than

394
00:24:00.920 --> 00:24:03.599
I do, Heidi, one of the Apollo missions, and I

395
00:24:03.640 --> 00:24:06.960
can't remember which one it was, but so much dust

396
00:24:07.119 --> 00:24:11.680
was brought into the lunar module by one of the

397
00:24:11.720 --> 00:24:15.599
astronauts that it pervaded the whole return trip back to

398
00:24:15.720 --> 00:24:19.559
Earth and gave that person the first case of Luna

399
00:24:19.640 --> 00:24:22.279
hey fever because he was sneezing all the time because

400
00:24:22.279 --> 00:24:22.839
of this dust.

401
00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:23.920
I can't remember who it was.

402
00:24:24.680 --> 00:24:27.200
I do remember hearing about this. I also can't remember

403
00:24:27.200 --> 00:24:29.839
who it was. But yeah, it can be quite the problem.

404
00:24:29.920 --> 00:24:32.480
It's just a sticky, fine mess.

405
00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:37.839
So NASA, in their wisdom, are looking at ways to

406
00:24:38.160 --> 00:24:41.920
mitigate the effects of that. And as part of the

407
00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:46.559
Blue Ghost mission, that was a spacecraft at commercial spacecraft

408
00:24:46.960 --> 00:24:50.279
landed on the Moon successfully I don't know a month ago,

409
00:24:50.359 --> 00:24:54.720
I guess it's not very long ago, which was part

410
00:24:54.759 --> 00:24:59.039
of NASA's program for I think it's called the Commercial

411
00:24:59.119 --> 00:25:03.880
Lunar Payloads program, in other words, getting the commercial world

412
00:25:04.039 --> 00:25:07.839
to actually do some of the legwork in preparing for

413
00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:11.599
the Artomus flights to the Moon later in the decade.

414
00:25:12.319 --> 00:25:15.880
And one of the experiments carried on board Blue Ghost

415
00:25:16.759 --> 00:25:20.319
was indeed about how you can reduce the effects of

416
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:24.559
this lunar dust. It has a name, it is called

417
00:25:24.599 --> 00:25:31.839
the EDS, the electrodynamic dust shield, and basically it is

418
00:25:31.920 --> 00:25:37.119
a way of removing the contamination of dust and dirt

419
00:25:37.279 --> 00:25:41.240
from whatever surfaces you've got on the Moon.

420
00:25:41.400 --> 00:25:43.359
Probably it's more.

421
00:25:43.279 --> 00:25:47.359
Like spacecraft surfaces than clothing, although it might lend itself

422
00:25:47.400 --> 00:25:51.799
to that eventually. And it seems to have worked very

423
00:25:51.960 --> 00:25:56.000
very well. There is a pair of images which are

424
00:25:56.079 --> 00:25:59.359
pretty easy to find on the web. I'm looking actually

425
00:25:59.400 --> 00:26:03.680
at the NASA website itself for the press release which

426
00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:08.440
is entitled NASA's dust shield successfully repels lunar regularly on

427
00:26:08.599 --> 00:26:11.480
the Moon, and you can see her before and after

428
00:26:11.680 --> 00:26:18.319
with this device activatesd I suspect it works well. It's

429
00:26:18.359 --> 00:26:25.440
called an electro electrodynamic dust shield, but that electrodynamic usually

430
00:26:25.480 --> 00:26:30.599
means moving electrons, so there's a current flowing, but I

431
00:26:30.680 --> 00:26:34.279
suspect that the basic mechanism is electrostatic. It's a repulsion

432
00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:39.319
of the of the you know, the flightly charged soil

433
00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:40.119
particles that.

434
00:26:40.559 --> 00:26:41.319
Exist on the Moon.

435
00:26:41.559 --> 00:26:44.119
They are they are electrically charged, so if you can

436
00:26:44.680 --> 00:26:47.640
give them an opposite charge, they'll be repelled. And that

437
00:26:47.759 --> 00:26:49.920
looks as though it's what's happening, and it's been met

438
00:26:50.039 --> 00:26:53.440
with success, so perhaps it's a step forward in cleaning

439
00:26:53.559 --> 00:26:56.279
up our voyages to the Moon and not bringing back

440
00:26:56.279 --> 00:26:58.359
a whole lot of unwanted moon dust when you come

441
00:26:58.440 --> 00:26:59.119
back to Earth.

442
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:03.319
Absolutely, And I'm just thinking again of the implications for Earth,

443
00:27:03.359 --> 00:27:05.319
because i think sometimes there's a little bit of like

444
00:27:05.400 --> 00:27:07.400
I said earlier, there's a little bit of a disconnect,

445
00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:10.480
you know, thinking space and how it's not related to

446
00:27:10.519 --> 00:27:13.160
Earth and it's so so related to everything we do

447
00:27:13.279 --> 00:27:16.400
here on Earth. I mean, GPS, NASA gave us, GPS,

448
00:27:16.559 --> 00:27:21.400
NASA gave us water purification, NASA gave us. Oh man,

449
00:27:21.480 --> 00:27:23.759
I'm totally mind blanking the big machine that you go

450
00:27:23.880 --> 00:27:26.119
into that scans you, if you go to the hospital,

451
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:29.839
MRI machine, Yes, that should be the one that I know.

452
00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:31.599
But yeah, I mean, so much of this has come

453
00:27:31.640 --> 00:27:34.359
from space science, and I'm thinking of something that would

454
00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:37.400
make my life easier, even just on the simplest level.

455
00:27:37.839 --> 00:27:41.079
If the surfaces in my house, my tables and everything

456
00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:44.680
repelled dust. And I don't know if we are just

457
00:27:44.799 --> 00:27:49.480
that much closer to inventing dust repelling surfaces, and that

458
00:27:49.759 --> 00:27:52.839
just makes everybody's life that much easier, that much safer,

459
00:27:53.160 --> 00:27:55.839
because then you're not using cleaning agents and chemicals to

460
00:27:55.920 --> 00:27:58.519
clean your house. You just have a surface that just

461
00:27:58.640 --> 00:28:01.640
repels that dust automatic and that just that could even

462
00:28:01.720 --> 00:28:06.880
have really good implications in sterile environments like computer places

463
00:28:06.920 --> 00:28:10.079
where they're building computer or hospital settings. So this is

464
00:28:10.200 --> 00:28:14.160
actually very very exciting that they're doing this. And the

465
00:28:14.279 --> 00:28:16.599
article is quite short, it's just a blurb, but the

466
00:28:16.680 --> 00:28:19.519
implications of this, you know, we don't know how this

467
00:28:19.680 --> 00:28:21.519
is going to improve life down the road.

468
00:28:21.960 --> 00:28:23.119
Exactly. That's right.

469
00:28:23.279 --> 00:28:28.160
It's you know, the the sky the sky's limit, really,

470
00:28:28.240 --> 00:28:30.759
isn't it in terms of what we can do with

471
00:28:30.920 --> 00:28:36.039
the space technology technology perfected for space. I do worry,

472
00:28:36.279 --> 00:28:38.440
you know, if you if you press a button and

473
00:28:38.559 --> 00:28:41.160
all the dust leaps off all the surfaces in your house,

474
00:28:41.279 --> 00:28:44.200
you might need an extractor fan to take them away.

475
00:28:44.119 --> 00:28:46.559
So they don't wind up somewhere where you don't want them.

476
00:28:47.079 --> 00:28:53.480
Yes, to be the next the next segue, Okay, we

477
00:28:53.640 --> 00:28:56.640
take a space nets.

478
00:28:57.359 --> 00:29:01.480
Yes, speaking of the sky being the limit. Our last

479
00:29:01.599 --> 00:29:07.839
article that we're looking at there was a big Nebula

480
00:29:08.240 --> 00:29:14.000
explosion and there's a glow left over from it. The

481
00:29:14.200 --> 00:29:17.559
title is a Nebula's X ray glow may come from

482
00:29:17.599 --> 00:29:24.799
a destroyed giant planet, and that's quite dramatic. But we

483
00:29:25.240 --> 00:29:29.200
are excited about these images because it tells us about history.

484
00:29:30.680 --> 00:29:34.640
That's right, And in fact, everything in the universe tells

485
00:29:34.680 --> 00:29:37.400
you about history, which is great. You're always looking back

486
00:29:37.480 --> 00:29:40.480
in time. We're looking back in this case.

487
00:29:40.559 --> 00:29:43.759
I think it's about six hundred and seventy six hundred and.

488
00:29:43.720 --> 00:29:48.359
Fifty light years. It's a very very well known object

489
00:29:49.480 --> 00:29:53.519
called the helix nebula, and in fact first captured in

490
00:29:53.640 --> 00:29:57.400
full color by my colleague and friend David Merlin, who

491
00:29:58.279 --> 00:30:01.039
was the person who essentially developed a technique in the

492
00:30:01.119 --> 00:30:05.319
nineteen seventies and eighties to put true color into celestial

493
00:30:05.480 --> 00:30:09.440
images by taking three sets of photographic plates as we

494
00:30:09.559 --> 00:30:12.640
used in those days, through red, green, and blue filters,

495
00:30:13.359 --> 00:30:16.559
and he became very well known for that. He was

496
00:30:16.799 --> 00:30:20.279
totally fastidious and still is actually about getting the color

497
00:30:20.359 --> 00:30:22.880
balance right, so that what we saw in these images

498
00:30:23.039 --> 00:30:26.079
was what we would be able to see if our

499
00:30:26.240 --> 00:30:29.920
eyes were millions of times more sensitive. Now segue from

500
00:30:29.960 --> 00:30:34.279
that to the present time. When that lovely color image

501
00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:39.400
of the helix nebula, it became very very famous. That

502
00:30:39.640 --> 00:30:42.599
was what we see in visible light, but it's now

503
00:30:42.720 --> 00:30:47.000
been observed many other wavelengths of light as well, and

504
00:30:47.480 --> 00:30:52.160
ranging from infrared to X rays I fact put it

505
00:30:52.200 --> 00:30:55.279
that way around, or X rays to infrared, and it's

506
00:30:55.319 --> 00:30:58.039
the X ray radiation that is the most exciting, and

507
00:30:58.119 --> 00:31:01.079
it's the reason why we've got this story. So the

508
00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:03.720
helix nebula, just to give the backstory, is what we

509
00:31:03.839 --> 00:31:06.920
call a planetary nebula, and it's nothing to do with

510
00:31:07.039 --> 00:31:09.920
planets except in the way that we'll come to in

511
00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.559
a minute. It was called that by William Herschel, an

512
00:31:14.599 --> 00:31:18.640
astronomer back in the early nineteenth century, who saw these

513
00:31:18.720 --> 00:31:22.440
things which were clearly not planets because they were in

514
00:31:22.559 --> 00:31:26.440
the deep sky. They were moving with the stars rather

515
00:31:26.480 --> 00:31:29.160
than with planets, so they weren't in the Solar System,

516
00:31:29.680 --> 00:31:32.960
but they had a slightly planetary appearance. They looked circular,

517
00:31:33.759 --> 00:31:37.839
so he called them planetary nebulae. And what we discovered

518
00:31:37.880 --> 00:31:40.559
in the early twentieth century is that what we're seeing

519
00:31:40.680 --> 00:31:44.279
there is the outer layers of a star which has

520
00:31:44.359 --> 00:31:48.519
reached old age and is not massive enough.

521
00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:50.759
To explode like a supernova.

522
00:31:51.559 --> 00:31:54.920
An exploding star that detonates and blows itself to pieces,

523
00:31:55.400 --> 00:31:57.119
you need to be more than about three or four

524
00:31:57.200 --> 00:31:59.920
times the mass of the Sun to do that. In fact,

525
00:32:00.359 --> 00:32:04.000
ten times is probably a better bet. The star, like

526
00:32:04.119 --> 00:32:06.279
the Sun, gets to the end of its life and

527
00:32:06.440 --> 00:32:09.759
basically the instabilities that are caused by the fact that

528
00:32:09.839 --> 00:32:12.599
it's used at most of its hydrogen fuel. It causes

529
00:32:12.640 --> 00:32:17.720
the outer atmosphere to basically to be shed gently and

530
00:32:18.799 --> 00:32:23.839
that produces a cloud of gas, often spherical in forms.

531
00:32:23.920 --> 00:32:27.240
Sometimes they're eyeglass shaped. They've got all kinds of different shapes.

532
00:32:27.559 --> 00:32:30.559
But the helix nebula in the southern hemispheres sky is

533
00:32:30.599 --> 00:32:35.720
the classic example of a planetary nebula. A star at

534
00:32:35.759 --> 00:32:37.720
the end of its life, it shed its out alair

535
00:32:37.720 --> 00:32:40.960
as they're glowing. Because what's left of the star is

536
00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:45.920
a remnant called a white dwarf, which is an object

537
00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:48.319
the size of our planet, size of the Earth, but

538
00:32:48.440 --> 00:32:51.599
with the mass of a star, so it's very very dense. Now,

539
00:32:51.680 --> 00:32:55.279
white dwarfs are interesting creatures in their own rise, but

540
00:32:55.440 --> 00:32:59.759
the helix nebula has one that is even more interesting

541
00:33:00.119 --> 00:33:05.039
the normal because it radiates copiously in X rays and

542
00:33:05.680 --> 00:33:08.039
X rays. We have to get above the atmosphere to

543
00:33:08.160 --> 00:33:13.599
detect because the atmosphere fortunately absorbs X rays very very effectively.

544
00:33:14.319 --> 00:33:18.720
But there's been a number of space satellites, mostly satellites

545
00:33:18.759 --> 00:33:22.400
around the Earth, spacecraft that have been essentially used to

546
00:33:23.319 --> 00:33:28.359
survey the sky in X ray emission, and the helix

547
00:33:28.480 --> 00:33:30.960
nebula of course, has been one of the things that

548
00:33:32.079 --> 00:33:35.119
have been looked at with X rays with a whole

549
00:33:35.240 --> 00:33:40.079
series of different satellites through the you know, through the ages.

550
00:33:41.240 --> 00:33:41.599
It was.

551
00:33:43.279 --> 00:33:47.480
Actually first detected by back in the early nineteen eighties

552
00:33:47.559 --> 00:33:51.400
by NASA's Einstein Observatory, which is an X ray satellite,

553
00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:54.039
and there was another one called ROSAT.

554
00:33:54.480 --> 00:33:58.000
I guess it comes from the German word for X

555
00:33:58.119 --> 00:33:59.039
rays after.

556
00:33:59.319 --> 00:34:05.079
Professor who discovered them Rosat in the nineteen early nineteen nineties.

557
00:34:05.160 --> 00:34:09.800
Both of those spacecraft detected X rays from from the

558
00:34:09.920 --> 00:34:14.119
helix nebula, which weren't really understood now. Those have been

559
00:34:14.199 --> 00:34:18.320
followed up a couple of decades later. NASA's Chandra X

560
00:34:18.400 --> 00:34:21.679
ray Observatory in nineteen ninety nine and XMM Newton which

561
00:34:21.719 --> 00:34:24.719
is a European Space Agency spacecraft in two thousand and

562
00:34:24.840 --> 00:34:28.719
two have recorded these copious quantities of X rays coming

563
00:34:28.760 --> 00:34:29.880
from the helix nebula.

564
00:34:30.559 --> 00:34:32.840
What is it all about? Where do they come from?

565
00:34:33.039 --> 00:34:35.760
How do you get something that shouldn't be producing X

566
00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:39.559
rays but has you know, sort of thirty years, well

567
00:34:39.679 --> 00:34:44.239
twenty years anyway of strong X ray emission. And so

568
00:34:44.480 --> 00:34:48.199
the people who think deeply about these things, the theoretical astronomers,

569
00:34:48.360 --> 00:34:52.079
and some of these astronomers in this case, some are

570
00:34:52.400 --> 00:34:55.840
in the United States, but some are also in Mexico.

571
00:34:57.199 --> 00:35:02.679
They have deduced that what's happened is probably a Jupiter

572
00:35:02.880 --> 00:35:09.840
sized planet, maybe a bit more than Jupiter, was orbiting

573
00:35:10.280 --> 00:35:13.159
the star as it reached the end of its life,

574
00:35:14.119 --> 00:35:16.719
carried on orbiting the white dwarf. But because of the

575
00:35:16.880 --> 00:35:19.599
forces involved with the collapse of the star to a

576
00:35:19.639 --> 00:35:22.679
white dwarf at the end of its life, that the

577
00:35:22.760 --> 00:35:26.840
planet was shredded basically and formed a ring of disc sorry,

578
00:35:27.119 --> 00:35:30.719
a disc of material, not a ring of disc that

579
00:35:30.760 --> 00:35:34.920
doesn't make sense. A disc of material around the around

580
00:35:34.960 --> 00:35:39.920
the white dwarf which is accelerated to very very high velocities.

581
00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:41.960
The gravitational field of a white dwarf is a bit

582
00:35:42.079 --> 00:35:45.320
like a black hole, not quite as extreme, but very strong.

583
00:35:45.559 --> 00:35:48.880
And so this is the ghost of a planet exactly, Yes,

584
00:35:48.960 --> 00:35:51.639
the debris of a planet. Planetary ghost. I love the

585
00:35:51.800 --> 00:35:56.800
term it's but it's all it's you know, it's basically

586
00:35:56.920 --> 00:36:01.280
it's dismembered remains whizzing around this white dwarf at high

587
00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:07.079
orbital velocity, and that creates X rays because of the

588
00:36:07.599 --> 00:36:10.960
heating effects of this turbulence that is in the disc

589
00:36:11.000 --> 00:36:14.000
of material. And that's the theory at the moment, and

590
00:36:14.119 --> 00:36:16.159
it's the best one that we've got as to why

591
00:36:16.239 --> 00:36:19.719
the Helix nebula is so copiously emitting X rays. That

592
00:36:19.840 --> 00:36:24.079
it's got an unfortunate planet that didn't survive the collapse

593
00:36:24.800 --> 00:36:26.559
and is radiating.

594
00:36:26.280 --> 00:36:30.760
Violently in the X ray wavelength. So that rather story.

595
00:36:30.960 --> 00:36:34.039
Let me see if I understand this correctly. So I'm

596
00:36:34.079 --> 00:36:36.800
looking at this image and it's got kind of a

597
00:36:37.239 --> 00:36:39.519
red dot in the middle. For those listening, if you

598
00:36:39.559 --> 00:36:41.719
don't see the image, you guys can look up the

599
00:36:41.800 --> 00:36:45.079
Helix nebula. It's a very famous photo and you'll see

600
00:36:45.119 --> 00:36:47.239
what I'm describing. It almost looks like a kind of

601
00:36:47.280 --> 00:36:49.960
like an eye. So it's got this red like the terminator.

602
00:36:50.199 --> 00:36:52.280
It's got this red dot in the middle, and then

603
00:36:52.320 --> 00:36:54.519
it almost looks like an iris, and then it keeps

604
00:36:54.559 --> 00:36:58.039
expanding out. It actually does look exactly like an eye.

605
00:36:58.000 --> 00:36:58.800
Now that I look at it.

606
00:36:59.400 --> 00:37:02.559
But so the planet got sucked into the red which

607
00:37:02.599 --> 00:37:06.159
is the dwarf, and then bun apart like a centrifuge.

608
00:37:06.719 --> 00:37:10.000
And because it looks like it exploded from inside out,

609
00:37:10.079 --> 00:37:13.000
well what's happening is it's spinning apart, and that's why

610
00:37:13.039 --> 00:37:16.199
it's surrounding this red and it's spinning, and so the

611
00:37:16.280 --> 00:37:20.159
gravity is like the debris coming apart from the center

612
00:37:21.000 --> 00:37:23.480
rather than getting pulled into the center.

613
00:37:23.599 --> 00:37:25.360
Is that what I'm am, I understanding. That's correct.

614
00:37:25.519 --> 00:37:31.320
Yeah, that's right, Yes, that's right. So the X radiation is,

615
00:37:32.960 --> 00:37:36.679
you know, it's sort of pervading the whole of the nebula.

616
00:37:36.920 --> 00:37:39.039
You've got X rays coming from every part of it,

617
00:37:40.400 --> 00:37:44.800
or appearing to but they're being emitted by this object

618
00:37:44.880 --> 00:37:45.880
which is actually within.

619
00:37:46.119 --> 00:37:47.320
It's not visible.

620
00:37:47.400 --> 00:37:50.400
The disc itself is not visible, the disc of material

621
00:37:50.480 --> 00:37:55.199
that was this planet that's too near the white dwarf.

622
00:37:55.320 --> 00:37:59.960
The white dwarf itself is visible, in visible in optical image,

623
00:38:00.159 --> 00:38:02.320
visible light images, but not in the X ray image.

624
00:38:02.719 --> 00:38:06.599
So it's a match of inference along the lines that

625
00:38:06.639 --> 00:38:07.519
you've just described.

626
00:38:08.840 --> 00:38:11.679
So maybe you already explained this because this doesn't make

627
00:38:11.760 --> 00:38:14.440
sense to me. Why so if the gravity is strong

628
00:38:14.559 --> 00:38:18.159
enough to be keeping these bits and parts within its gravity.

629
00:38:18.960 --> 00:38:21.119
Why is it still spreading out.

630
00:38:22.519 --> 00:38:28.400
So that the the the gaseous envelope of the star

631
00:38:28.639 --> 00:38:36.320
itself is that was basically emitted over many millions, probably

632
00:38:36.440 --> 00:38:39.800
tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years before the

633
00:38:39.920 --> 00:38:43.400
star collapsed into a white dwarf. So that's far enough

634
00:38:43.480 --> 00:38:48.000
away that it's not feeling that intense gravity in the

635
00:38:48.440 --> 00:38:49.960
you know, the region.

636
00:38:49.719 --> 00:38:51.119
Near to the white dwarf itself.

637
00:38:52.159 --> 00:38:56.840
It's it's basically drifting off as because you know, the

638
00:38:56.920 --> 00:38:59.320
distances are measured in light years, they're not they're not

639
00:38:59.360 --> 00:39:00.920
measured in million of kilometers.

640
00:39:00.960 --> 00:39:02.639
They're very very large distances.

641
00:39:03.320 --> 00:39:07.920
So yes, it's a great question though, So it's all

642
00:39:07.960 --> 00:39:10.800
the stuff that is really within the immediate vicinity of

643
00:39:10.840 --> 00:39:15.000
the white dwarf that's feeling that acceleration and undergoing that

644
00:39:15.639 --> 00:39:19.039
intense orbital motion around the white dwarf.

645
00:39:20.400 --> 00:39:21.599
Is this your favorite nebula?

646
00:39:23.440 --> 00:39:24.119
It probably is.

647
00:39:24.239 --> 00:39:26.840
Actually that's a really good question too, because I've never

648
00:39:27.400 --> 00:39:29.400
sort of thought about that. There is a well known

649
00:39:29.440 --> 00:39:31.880
one in the northern sky which will be visible from Houston,

650
00:39:31.960 --> 00:39:36.280
called the ring nebula, But the Helix nebula, I think

651
00:39:36.480 --> 00:39:38.760
is a little bit more glamorous because it's got a.

652
00:39:38.760 --> 00:39:39.960
Bit more structure to it.

653
00:39:40.119 --> 00:39:43.000
It's got this it's called the helix nebula because it's

654
00:39:43.320 --> 00:39:46.039
it looks a bit like a sort of unwound spring.

655
00:39:47.000 --> 00:39:48.880
And you can see you're probably having a look at

656
00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:50.119
the ring nebula as we spear.

657
00:39:51.440 --> 00:39:54.039
Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful. That's just stunning.

658
00:39:54.760 --> 00:39:58.679
So I think maybe this will be a topic for

659
00:39:59.760 --> 00:40:04.119
a or another session, but I definitely want to understand

660
00:40:04.239 --> 00:40:09.159
more of the technology that you said your friend developes.

661
00:40:09.199 --> 00:40:11.199
And he was also Fred No.

662
00:40:11.719 --> 00:40:16.280
Actually is Fred's middle Dave's Frederick David Maeln. Yeah, so

663
00:40:16.760 --> 00:40:20.039
he just briefly.

664
00:40:21.679 --> 00:40:25.920
When the Anglo Australian Telescope, it's the largest visible light

665
00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:29.960
telescope on Australian soil, with a three point nine meter

666
00:40:30.119 --> 00:40:34.000
one hundred and fifty six inch mirror, and he and

667
00:40:34.119 --> 00:40:36.559
I both worked there. I was the astronomer in charge

668
00:40:36.639 --> 00:40:41.000
for twenty years in fact, but before that he in fact,

669
00:40:41.039 --> 00:40:43.880
when the telescope was brand new, he was taken on

670
00:40:43.960 --> 00:40:46.599
board on the stuff. He speaks a lot like me

671
00:40:46.719 --> 00:40:49.440
because it comes from the North of England, went to

672
00:40:49.519 --> 00:40:54.719
Australia and perfected this technique in those days imaging of

673
00:40:54.760 --> 00:40:57.360
astronomical objects was done with photographic plays, and I'm talking

674
00:40:57.400 --> 00:41:00.679
about nineteen seventy five. That's when he went to Australia

675
00:41:01.440 --> 00:41:06.480
and apart from a few experiments with color emulsions, normal

676
00:41:06.559 --> 00:41:10.920
color film, which really didn't work well for astronomical objects

677
00:41:11.000 --> 00:41:14.440
because color film is designed for a very short exposure.

678
00:41:14.920 --> 00:41:17.960
You know, you're in a camera, press the button, shutter

679
00:41:18.039 --> 00:41:20.280
opens and closes again in the fiftieth of a second,

680
00:41:20.719 --> 00:41:25.559
and you record the image. Astronomers spend hours exposing their

681
00:41:25.639 --> 00:41:28.480
photographic plays as we did in those days, and the

682
00:41:29.119 --> 00:41:34.159
whole you know, optical chemical process that makes color photography

683
00:41:34.280 --> 00:41:37.559
just didn't work, and so he designed this technique. It

684
00:41:37.679 --> 00:41:41.400
actually goes back a couple of hundred years to you

685
00:41:41.480 --> 00:41:44.760
know way people thought you can perhaps replicate with the red,

686
00:41:44.800 --> 00:41:47.239
green and blue, you can replicate a color image, and

687
00:41:47.360 --> 00:41:50.679
it's true you can, but it took David's skills and

688
00:41:50.800 --> 00:41:54.679
hard work to perfect that and the result was twofold.

689
00:41:55.039 --> 00:41:58.679
It made the telescope very famous because his images found

690
00:41:58.719 --> 00:42:01.840
their way on to the front covers of magazines and

691
00:42:01.960 --> 00:42:03.519
album covers and books.

692
00:42:04.119 --> 00:42:05.519
They were all over the world in.

693
00:42:05.519 --> 00:42:09.719
The nineteen eighties early nineteen eighties. It made the telescope

694
00:42:09.719 --> 00:42:12.559
famous and it made him very famous as well, and

695
00:42:12.760 --> 00:42:14.800
he still is interested in this.

696
00:42:14.920 --> 00:42:15.760
He's now retired.

697
00:42:16.239 --> 00:42:21.239
He doesn't really do any frontline photography anymore, but occasionally

698
00:42:21.960 --> 00:42:26.000
we end up involved in scientific discussions about all kinds

699
00:42:26.039 --> 00:42:28.159
of things, so he's still very active.

700
00:42:28.960 --> 00:42:31.199
Well, it's I mean, I think nebula's I think are

701
00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:34.159
probably one of the most beautiful, beautiful things in space,

702
00:42:34.239 --> 00:42:36.679
and these images are just breathtaking and to think of

703
00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:40.280
the it's almost impossible to comprehend the scale of a

704
00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:42.679
nebula because we just see him on our desktop as

705
00:42:42.719 --> 00:42:44.800
a beautiful picture, but to think of the size and

706
00:42:44.840 --> 00:42:48.760
the magnitude is quite amazing. And the contributions the field

707
00:42:48.800 --> 00:42:55.000
are really quite incredible. It's quite astonishing to think of

708
00:42:55.119 --> 00:42:57.800
the conspiracy theorists and how they think that these are

709
00:42:57.880 --> 00:43:01.039
just you know, computer generated and they're like, oh, the

710
00:43:01.119 --> 00:43:03.719
scientists are just painting the photos to make them look

711
00:43:03.760 --> 00:43:05.760
like how they want. And then you're telling us stories

712
00:43:05.800 --> 00:43:08.519
of how your friend and you put twenty years into

713
00:43:08.599 --> 00:43:10.000
just developing these technologies.

714
00:43:10.840 --> 00:43:18.880
Yep, yeah, that's right. Look, conspiracy theories another breed. We

715
00:43:18.960 --> 00:43:24.159
can talk endlessly about them, but yes, you know, the

716
00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:28.679
work that David did was really very rigorous to try

717
00:43:28.719 --> 00:43:30.840
and make sure that what we were seeing was what

718
00:43:30.960 --> 00:43:34.679
we would see if our eyes were more sensitive. The

719
00:43:35.239 --> 00:43:39.480
downside of that, Heidi, is that whenever David went anywhere

720
00:43:39.519 --> 00:43:41.679
to get a talk, and he did that all the time,

721
00:43:43.719 --> 00:43:47.239
especially in the digital era, as things moved on, he

722
00:43:47.400 --> 00:43:50.360
got very upset if the color balance on the projector

723
00:43:50.800 --> 00:43:54.800
was not to his liking. And indeed he started all

724
00:43:54.880 --> 00:43:58.000
his talks and I do now too, with a basically

725
00:43:58.039 --> 00:44:00.760
a color chart, you know, a color die, and if

726
00:44:00.800 --> 00:44:03.559
it wasn't to his liking, he would start tinkering with

727
00:44:03.679 --> 00:44:06.239
the projector to try and make it so, and once

728
00:44:06.320 --> 00:44:08.400
in a while he would refuse to give the talk

729
00:44:08.599 --> 00:44:11.159
because it would not show his pictures in the true

730
00:44:11.239 --> 00:44:13.239
colors that he'd work so hard to create.

731
00:44:14.440 --> 00:44:19.199
Talk about a perfectionist things like that, you really just

732
00:44:19.360 --> 00:44:22.519
makes the conspiracy theorists sound just that more that much

733
00:44:22.599 --> 00:44:23.079
more silly.

734
00:44:23.800 --> 00:44:26.000
They think they have something figured out because they watched

735
00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:26.840
a YouTube video.

736
00:44:27.719 --> 00:44:28.000
Yes, but.

737
00:44:29.559 --> 00:44:33.239
Not to end on a negative note of the conspiracy theorists,

738
00:44:33.320 --> 00:44:35.840
and we'll take it as we're ending on a positive

739
00:44:35.880 --> 00:44:40.400
talking about these beautiful, beautiful nebulas and these incredible contributions

740
00:44:40.920 --> 00:44:43.880
to the field, and I just want to, I don't know,

741
00:44:44.199 --> 00:44:48.239
inspire and encourage listeners to if you're a space enthusiast

742
00:44:48.440 --> 00:44:51.639
to keep considering all these possibilities, and if you are

743
00:44:51.760 --> 00:44:54.519
someone who works in the field, you never know what

744
00:44:55.320 --> 00:44:57.840
you know you're going to be producing twenty years from now,

745
00:44:58.039 --> 00:45:01.239
and what your work is going to do and contribute

746
00:45:01.280 --> 00:45:05.119
to humanity, and what kind of neuroticism you'll develop, if

747
00:45:05.119 --> 00:45:06.920
you'll never be able to look at a projector the

748
00:45:06.960 --> 00:45:08.800
same way, or if you're just going to become the

749
00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:11.960
person who is so obsessed with doing this one thing

750
00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:16.039
because you've put twenty thirty forty years into studying something

751
00:45:16.119 --> 00:45:20.000
so incredibly niche Fred, do you have anything else you

752
00:45:20.119 --> 00:45:21.079
want to add?

753
00:45:22.280 --> 00:45:25.159
Not to that story, just to say this has been

754
00:45:25.400 --> 00:45:29.559
a wonderful session. I think it's episode five hundred and

755
00:45:29.679 --> 00:45:34.920
nine that we've just done. Wow, it's been great talking

756
00:45:34.960 --> 00:45:37.400
to Heidi and I look forward to our next chat.

757
00:45:38.039 --> 00:45:38.440
Excellent.

758
00:45:38.559 --> 00:45:41.079
Again, thank you so much for having me and you

759
00:45:41.199 --> 00:45:43.159
have been listening to space Nuts.

760
00:45:43.239 --> 00:45:44.159
Thank space Nuts.

761
00:45:44.480 --> 00:45:49.360
You'll be listen to the Space Nuts podcast Hope available

762
00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:54.800
at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player.

763
00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:57.760
You can also stream on demand at bides dot com.

764
00:45:58.320 --> 00:46:01.679
This has been another quality bond Cast productions from nights

765
00:46:01.760 --> 00:46:02.280
dot com
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