Focus 580; The Summer Skies

Good morning and welcome to focus 580 our morning talk program my name is David Inge and we're glad to have you with us. We're also pleased to welcome to this program someone who I'm sure folks around Champaign-Urbana will know but who has never been here on the program before. And our guest this morning for the first hour is Dave leek He is director of the star cool planetarium at Parkland College He also teaches physics and astronomy there he does the Friday night shows there at the planetarium and was good enough to come over here and talk with us a little bit about what you can see in the sky this time of the year. And this is something that we do periodically throughout the year but because of course the sky changes there's always something a little bit different. And we have these shows so we can talk a little bit about that and also give people the opportunity who are listening to ask questions about astronomy and I know that Dave would do his best to answer those questions perhaps we'll get a chance here to talk a little bit about some of the things that will be going on at the planetarium. So certainly if you live in Champaign Urbana and you haven't been there for one of the shows. Shame on you. You should head out there and see it because it's it's a lot of fun and of course if you have kids it's in an ideal sort of activity for families to do together

so we can talk a little bit about that whatever seems to be on your mind. Astronomically speaking you can give us a call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well thanks very much for being here. Thanks David it's a pleasure to be here. Well usually when we do these shows we just at the beginning I ask whoever it is that's here just it to say a couple of things about the highlights of the sky at this particular time so you would say to people now I want you to look up and I want you to look here. And this is what you're going to see. Is there something that's a really a stand out feature right at the moment. I think the first thing that people will notice if they go out underneath the skies over over central Illinois are the two bright lights over in the western part of the sky one of them is hanging very low just a little north of west and that's the planet Venus the brightest planet in the solar system in fact. I have a friend who runs the control tower out at Willard and says that there actually are some pilots that will call in and say let the other person land thinking that Venus are some landing lights because that's what it looks like it's not very high. The thing that's a little

not quite as bright but in the southwest is the planet Jupiter. Now the thing that's interesting is the name planet means wanderer so the planets will appear to move as the orbit orbit the sun and Venus and Jupiter are going to be getting close together at the end of August. So what's interesting is to watch them now and see how far apart they are now and then keep an eye on them throughout the entire month and you'll actually see why we call them wonders. And for those this is one of those things that we've talked about with other astronomy guests on the show to how it is that you tell when you're looking up there and you're seeing these these objects and they're all points of light different sizes different intensities. Sometimes you can actually detect a color difference although it's probably kind of hard to do with that with the naked eye. How do you tell the difference between a star and a planet. Great question. And really there's two reasons one of them takes a little time and that is of course the planets will appear to move. They will shift their position against the background stars. The other thing is that since the planets are. They're closer to us so through a telescope they appear

a little larger. Not just a pinpoint that they won't appear to twinkle in the twinkling comes from an atmospheric effect of the pinpoint of light coming to the through the many layers of turbulent atmosphere to our eyes and the planets being a thicker beam of light coming at us. Isn't is a suspected as much by the twinkling. So basically if you see a point of light in the sky that's twinkling you found the star and if it's a very steady light you found a planet that has a red flashing light on it than I'm assuming that's an airplane. OK well I tell you what we have a caller here and we'll go right to them rather than make them wait. Someone listening this morning in Indiana on our toll free line line for hello hello. A couple of questions about the tenth planet. First one is to the prince the Asian If you IQ you are of are two different ways on the radio and worrying about that and secondly the discovery of the tenth planet. Were they using any more recent

astronomical devices or was it sort of the standard telescopes you know they're around for quite some time. Third question is there seems to be some discussion in the astronomical community whether it's a planet at all. And that would lead to the question Which side are well maybe you are on but which side are you. You know the heavies are on and which side are their controversial boys on or whatever anything you can give about that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot. Sure thank you that another great question. And I was just telling David we've been talking all morning about Ed keys or his wedding and I was actually in Keizer his wedding so I was a witness to that. And at the reception somebody asked me what about the tenth planet and being in Youngstown Ohio. I knew nothing about it. So. So I came back and kind of cram for that one so I appreciate you asking. First off the name is Kiper Kiper was an astronomer who postulated that this belt of comets we were observing

comets in their their orbits and they seemed to be coming from this belt that is out beyond the planet Pluto at the time had no evidence for it but now we're finding these Kuyper Belt objects as they're called In fact we found over 600 of them as of today most of them are small you know little little snowballs out there. Second as far as the planet goes. Again a very interesting situation because I had somebody from a newspaper called me a while back and said you know what well what about this what you know is this a planet or not wanted a yes or no answer I can give you that. What is really interesting to me is that this isn't your mother and father solar system. You know we all knew there were nine planets and we knew what an asteroid was we knew what a comet was now the definitions are getting fuzzy and I see that as a very good thing. Science does change. And so if you're going to try to pin me down I I can't tell you the object. There's actually two of them. And if you're keeping

score one is two thousand three you'd be three thirteen. Put that on a license plate and the other one is 2003 E.L. 61. And there one is smaller than Pluto B 313 actually they think now is about one and a half times the size of Pluto. And I think we really don't have a definition of what a planet is we know what a star is if there are nuclear reactions going on in the core of a star than we can call it a star. So we're not really sure about these things. I can tell you ask about instrumentation probably the best thing we have pointing at this thing is the Spitzer Space Telescope which sees things in infrared light. If your houses emitting heat and you're trying to plug that up you take an infrared picture of it. So anything that's giving off even minute amounts of heat we can see with the Spitzer and we can set a mass limit with that. And because really the size of these things are really just how much light they reflect. So we're taking a few guesses there

but but it's a very very exciting thing. I can tell you this that you'd be 313 is about 97 times as far from the sun as the Earth is in Pluto on the average is about 40. So we're looking at about twice as far away roughly as Pluto is. And this well as my understanding was this was discovered using a ground based instrument. That's right yeah. In fact out at the old I say old. Palomar Observatory out in California and they found this in most of the planets kind of inhabit this belt in the sky we call it the ecliptic plane. The solar system is basically well relatively flat like a pizza pan. And this one was well above about 44 degrees above this plane which is why we hadn't found it till now. You know when the person that discovered Pluto was looking he didn't look that far out on the plane of the solar system. Well it seems to me this is not the first time that someone has proposed that there is a tenth planet. And I

guess I my understanding was that there are a lot of astronomers say well there is this belt of material the Kiper belt there's all kinds of stuff out there and apparently some of it or some of these objects there are pretty big. Again that sort of gets this whole question of how big does it have to be for it to be a planet. But apparently there's all kinds of big stuff out there so if you if you wanted to set some sort of size limit you might indeed end up with a with a number of objects that if you felt like it you could say well those are planets too and will give them names and say yes indeed the solar system has a set of nine it has 12 or 13 or 15 or you know somebody I don't remember the number but somebody this weekend proposed a size limit. And if that sticks and it's just somebody making up a number then the largest asteroid which is Ceres it's about the size of Texas would in fact be considered a planet. And when you think about a planet the asteroid I mean their names it's interesting just that these things are out there and I know human beings like to

put things in bins and give them names and you know the name planet is just that it's just a name but it's a minimum. It's it is an object of certain size that orbits a star. Yes yes. And when I say that that really that would be a good definition. But we there really isn't a definite definition for that like not on the books and not actually written out. So and you did say that there were there was it in New York. The. They're at their at their There's a planetarium and yes the resident there in New York they've actually dropped Pluto off the list. Yeah that was it was thought that Pluto itself is probably like these objects that we're finding and so maybe Pluto is not a quote planet unquote but the largest Kuyper Belt Object. And the reason it's still a planet is things to millions and millions of schoolchildren who said you're not taking Pluto away from us that Pluto black holes and aliens are the three the three big questions I usually get Where's Bluto at. So right now every planetarium that I know about recognizes Pluto as a

planet except the Rose Center in New York they have dropped it from their solar system. Our guest this morning is Dave leek. He's director of the stark planetarium at Parkland College and he also teaches physics and astronomy out there were talking a bit about astronomy which you can see in the sky this time of year. And if you have questions and we have a few here I know he'll do his best 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 here in Champaign Urbana and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Next caller here is in white heath and the line one. Hi I'm calling because my husband built a telescope and he just likes to. Bill thanks but we're we just really don't know anything about astronomy. So we're having difficulty really seeing something through this telescope. You know we can see things on the ground but I guess it I don't know what. What it depends upon. But I'm wondering if there's any books out

there for a novice astronomer that we could pick up that might give us some direction. Well I never built my own telescope before. But there are a couple of yeah I don't have the patience for that but there are some good books a very old one is one I have is Sam Brown's all about telescopes which is yeah. Yeah it's got a lot of illustrations in it. One of the things I might mention to you is there are several astronomy clubs around I know here in Champaign Urbana. We have the CEO Astronomical Society that meets every second Thursday of the month at 7:00 p.m. at the planetarium at Parklane and I don't think anybody in our group actually does astronomy for a living and we do have. Not me but we do have several very very good telescope makers in the group. And I'm sure that they could help you out in fact our observatory is between champagne and Doris and if you wanted to bring the telescope if it's portable we could sort of

big. OK. But I'm sure we could get somebody to help you out because there are very community oriented group of people. All right. And to say that again the second Tuesday or second Thursday Thursday of the month Magnum at what time again at 7:00 p.m. at the planetarium and you can don't have to be a member to show up. All right great. Thanks so much. You're welcome thank you know anybody who was interested in astronomy and would like to get together with other people who have similar interests should feel welcome to stop by. Oh sure definitely. Yeah. And also I'm sure that now once when school gets going here on the U of I campus they also have an open house at the old observatory that's on the campus. That's right. They do that once the first month first Friday of the month at the Cus your nominal society observatory and that's the one I just referred to between here and so Doris we base our open houses by the moon phase the Saturday closest to the First Quarter Moon So if you have a calendar that has moon phases on it the University of

Illinois Observatory which is at the South and the quad that's the first Friday of the month. There get so there are opportunities and if you don't have your own telescope and you just like to look through one and perhaps also share some some tips from somebody who does actually kind of already know where to look and how pointed and some things about that then for both of those cases and certainly at that the U.S observatory on the campus you can you can get a chance look there were a fairly good sized telescope a real classic sort of oh yes I think was built in 1896 but it still works wonderfully. And I don't mean for this to be a shameless plug but I'm also doing at the very beginning at the end of September I should say it's called backyard astronomy it's a five weeks workshop just for novices of how to find things in the sky and to check the Parkland College live and learn brochure which will come out actually might be out this week and they'll be information about that workshop in there. OK well let's talk with some of the folks here will sure go to Belgium overbite Danville that would be

lying to you. Hello. Good morning all. Couple quick questions I hope you can answer for I'm sure you can answer. There's no question about that. My annual trip to Europe recently and I have I watched. Mercury for a while and has it set you know. I believe so yeah. Mercury was there near Venus last month but Mercury doesn't stay in one place for very long though its seems to move off. Yeah believe in August it heads back into the morning sky. That's unfortunate I'm a night person. Oh well that's the way it goes. As I traveled I went pretty far north this time and I noticed that it's a phenomenon we all know about. It stays lighter longer OK and in the north the space is lighter so much longer than than it does here. And yet at the equator that the times of the day very very very much very shortly and it is seem so puzzling. You know I

understand it's the tilt of the earth but it's so traumatic and so absolute You just go 600 miles farther north and that it stays light a lot longer. And if you go to the North Pole in late yesterday you are right. It seems kind of unintuitive why it does that I mean if you think about it why would we should. Almost as much but and why should a stay so constant quieter. One of the things we do at the planetarium is has to do we call them Sun arcs we can actually put the path of the sun up there for the Souls to CES and the equinoxes. And you know I've been teaching astronomy a long time but until you really see that it really becomes clear because the sun if you look at now of course this is as you said it's all because of the tilt of the earth the sun isn't really changing. But from our vantage point there are really three parallel arcs. You have the summer solstice and then spring and fall

equinoxes and winter solstice. And if you actually look at the path that the sun takes across the sky it's really amazing that it's you know it's not up there very long in the winter but it follows this big arc in the summer and then when you change your latitude of course that kind of changes the position of these three kind of parallel arcs for the course of the year. And it is really interesting a watch where now of course we're a ways from the summer solstice now but watch where the sun sets when I when I went to Ed's wedding I had to leave at 4:30 in the morning and I couldn't believe the sun was rising where it was at. I mean it's it's you know when it starts getting light it's pretty far to the north. Yes yes. It almost frozen off down here. Well. Thank you very much sir. Thank you for calling so early a call. We're talking this morning in this part of focus 580 with a leak he is the director of the stucco planetarium at Parkland College she also is associate professor of physics and astronomy. And we're talking about what you can see in the sky this time of year and if you have questions

you can call us. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. Next caller is in Bethany. That's a line for toll free line. Hello good morning. Yes. Thank you for calling me out for help. Kiper wondered about that for a long time. I've also wondered about something else. You know I've heard about the Ork cloud and the Kiper belt and are they the same thing or are they separate or if you talk about that a little bit. Sure. I don't I don't have all the distances in front of me. But as far as numbers go but let's say if you think of the solar system as a pizza pan. It's not exactly flat like that but it's kind of in a plane and the Kiper belt is also in the same plane. Beyond that you can almost think about it. If I can get away with using the word Taurus sorta like a like a flat ring around the outside now the ort cloud is a big spherical cloud that you might be a third of the way to the

next star. So we think that the solar system maybe started out somewhat spherical and then because of something called angular momentum a kind of flattened out into this pancake. But we still have some of this spiritual cloud that's way way out there and the Kiper belt is closer and it's in the same plane as a solar system. Well okay let's buy the last yarn or it came up with that. It was a man named yon ort who was an astronomer over in believe the Netherlands if I'm not mistaken. What year was that. You have no idea. Oh my goodness probably in the I'm going to say I guess the 50s I mean I'd have to check that to be sure it wasn't just recently though. OK. Thank you very much. Thanks for one thing so the call to Champagne next line 3. Hello. Hello yes. Yeah I have a question for you I'm going back to you.

Time planet issue. Could you describe a little bit about the size of the solar system I've always kind of I mean edge and the edge of our solar system being Pluto. And now you're saying that this time planet which is supposed to be in our solar system is twice the distance from the sun as Pluto is. And then the second question I have is regarding Mars I received an email saying that's supposed to be closer to Earth than it has been in thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. I was wondering when somebody was going to bring that up. Thank bless you for doing that. All right. Thank you very much you have to go first on the side of the solar system. Let me do it this way without throwing a lot of numbers at you. Think of the sun as being a big beach ball like effect we have a model out at Parklane it's about they're working on the road so you can't get to right now but it's about 38 inches across on that scale the earth is a marble about 100 10 yards away. If you can imagine that Pluto would be a grain of sand about two and a half miles from that beach ball. Now

we haven't put Of course these new objects in our solar system but if you can imagine it be something one and a half times a grain of sand. So it's still not real significant and of course I guess if it's twice as far there'd be a roughly five miles away from our way from our beach ball. So and then on that scale the nearest star on that scale would be about twice as far away as the earth excuse me would be the twice the diameter of the real Earth. Well it's as far as what constitutes that our solar system then though that is its is it the sun and all of the named all of the things that we consider planets or do. Or is that do we consider the Kiper belt to be part of the solar system. We do consider the Kiper belt to be part of the solar system one of the things that our Voyager probes are doing which were launched back in 1977 and sent out of the solar system after taking a tour of the planets is some of the instruments are still working and we're trying to figure out where the sun's influence ends and we're right about at that

point right now I believe. I believe where I haven't heard the latest word on that but we're close to about that point now about Mars. Very quickly there is something I get about three emails a day and phone calls so I'm really glad that you brought this up. Mars will not be as close what it was 60000 years I believe in August of this year however in August August twenty seventh of 2003 it was that close. So not sure why the email is still going around again. As the earth catches up with Mars we're close to Mars every 26 months. So we're about to that point again. In fact it'll be this late October early November that will be close to Mars again not as close as it was in 2003. But I'm not not sure where this is coming from but it's like an old e-mail that's been dredged up. But some of you might remember we had telescopes out at Meadow Brook Park in 2003 and I

couldn't believe it there was over twelve hundred people there in this park. And so we got good looks at it. Also about Mars being I believe it was bigger than a full moon. Well whoever wrote that neglected to leave out they they did leave out that. That's through a telescope. If you look at Mars through a telescope Apparently it will be about the size of a full moon so know if Mars were just your eye the size of a full moon we'd have other problems. Yeah I guess so. Be cool to look at. Oh well yeah we'd be able to see quite a bit. Right or you're lying. I do remember it was it really was beautiful at that point where it was it was this close as it's been and however long it certainly was very very beautiful and. And to at least to my I guess different people see it differently but to my eye it definitely was reddish. So you could see why why it was that you know it has this association with blood and war and fire and why it's the red planet and why Mars was the God of War and

all that. Well that's right and if you if you get up in the morning now just before sunrise when there's still some twilight and I was driving Friday morning so I saw this. Mars is a little more than halfway up and just about due south and it'll be known most of the brightest thing there and Mars is getting brighter because we're going to pass it again this late October early November. OK so should be good time again to any time probably be good but to have a particular be a good time to look for Mars. Yes. Well let's continue no shirt on we'll talk next with some people here in Urbana line one first. Hello hello David. Yes this is Barbara Peckham with the champagne coming museum. Hi Barbara. I just wanted to tell you how you are very much appreciated by the museums at the crossroads. Oh thank you. The M you do such a beautiful job for us and we're we just want to know how you were appreciated. Well thank you very much. That's very nice of you and that the museum is at the crossroads our

informal consortium of all eight county museums and we get together our reps get together and we talk about successes and problems and joint promotions and that's a wonderful group of people and Barb's a part of that. And again thank you very much. Oh you're welcome thanks for calling in. Okay. Well and I think people should definitely go and take advantage of the planetariums being here certainly because we do there is one in Chicago. Yeah I don't know where the next closest Planetarium to us here in Champaign Urbana would be they have been in Kankakee and one in Illinois state where the second largest in the state. OK. So definitely it's a it's a great experience the kind of thing to go out there and see and as I said it's if you're looking for somebody new with your family it's I'm sure it's a great thing to do. It's even educational. That's right. That's right you can learn something that's kind of scary but. It's not you know I was such a bad thing. Let's talk with someone here also in Urbana this is line two.

Hello. Oh yes it's called their line too. Below are you there. Yeah go ahead. Great start. I thought picture apparently taken by an astronaut aboard one of the missions and it was a picture of the Northern of the aurora from space when it looked off in the distance. And there you know closer to like the rounded ball of the earth. You could see the Northern Lights It looked like the different colors were different altitudes from their perspective or in fact the gases. You know they were responsible for different colors at various altitudes. I do believe it's an altitude effect not only the gases. And I don't know that if it were here he could answer this one. As far as the composition goes how much that changes but I bet you know the nitrogen glows one color oxygen glows another color and it's really just like a neon sign in a grocery store. It's just that it's a disaster in it with 5000 volts here we're zapping these little atoms and molecules with the

particles from the sun. And so it it you're right it is actually the air glowing over there is what. Yet different concentrations in in probably different compositions. And the various gases are at different altitudes. Yeah it's not I don't want to suggest that like oxygen goes up so far in the nitrogen takes over it's not that but probably the way they're mixed might be a little different and I'll admit I'm kind of getting outside my area of expertise there so. Oh OK and then I have another question you'll probably cover this about this person. Meteor shower coming up. Oh yeah it's like I've planted all these people out there going to work. Yeah I know I'm glad you mention that too yeah the Perseid meteor shower is probably in my mind anyway the next big event we have coming up throughout all of August you can see shooting stars in the sky but probably the night of August 11th and the morning of the 12th and maybe even the next day to consider the maximum. And it's a

wonderful thing to go out and see it's like Nature's fireworks and you don't need equipment either. No telescope is necessary. Take a lawn chair out in the country. The darker it is the better you can stay in your backyard but the darker the better. And just look up basically and be patient. The only downside about meteor showers is that the rates pick up after midnight. So we're going to go out maybe bottle Levon and see if we can stay out till sunrise and see how many we can count. And now they are the reason that they're there meteor showers have different names is that that has to do with where the most of them appear to be coming from say exactly. Is there some particular point in the sky where you would expect to see more of them that than any place else it's not exactly a random kind of a thing and not to be facetious but up is the best direction. The the constellation of Perseus will be rising in the north east but

sometimes I hear people say face north east if you're facing the horizon you're going to miss a lot. The meteors will be all over the sky but they will be if you trace their paths backwards They'll appear to come from the north east. So really it's just to look up and they're not really coming from one spot but the best example I can give is if you're standing in the middle of a railroad track. It looks like the tracks go together like a vanishing point. And it's that same kind of effect actually all the meteor particles coming in are roughly parallel and they these the objects that are causing this light how how big a thing are we talking about. About the size of a pencil eraser but when they come through they roughly 20 30000 miles an hour. And just the shock heating with the atmosphere you see there are trails you don't actually see the little chunk that big but you see that the trail as it goes through the atmosphere. And is this there I remember this right that this is stuff from. This is comet debris as well. It's a comet swift Tuttle that comes around about every hundred twenty years and I think of comets as like Hansel and Gretel as they go through the

forest and leaving bread crumbs which as comets go around the solar system they leave dust. And if the earth happens to run into that dust then you see a meteor shower and there's about roughly a dozen or so a year. Well we're past the midpoint here and our guest on this first hour focus 580 is Dave leak from Parkland College She's director of the planetarium and teaches there teaches physics and astronomy and you have questions about astronomy you can give us a call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 1 Take a minute and talk just a bit about some of the things that will be happening at the planetarium this fall. Sure we can do that. We are just ending our summer schedule will be going back to our regular schedule we reduce a little bit in the summer. And so in August we'll be going back to our Friday and Saturday programs which are 7 8 and 9:30. The schedule is on our website which if you just go to Parklane diet edu. It's linked to that and our numbers 3 5 1 2 4 4 6. Which reminds me now that I'm back I need to change that answering machine and updated for a for August. We have

a program called Follow the drinking gourd about how. African-American slaves during Civil War times use the stars to along the Underground Railroad. Some are prairie skies is always a big hit because it's our live sky show. It's kind of rare anymore and oh Adler doesn't even do live shows and we like to interact with the crowd on that. We also are doing a program called the extraterrestrial files which is kind of a takeoff on The X Files with the instead of let's see Scully and Mulder we have a gully in Boulder and they're taking a lighthearted look at life in outer space but we are updating the show at the end with a little live segment to talk about these new planets that are we find around other stars because there's a number of those. And then if you'd like we can talk about the fall program sometime too we've got we've got a number of things going on this fall. OK. And certainly a people have to as Dave says if people have internet access you can go to the Parkland College website and you can find out what's going on there or all people can use the telephone and

just call up the number and get the information there. That's correct. Well let's go and we'll get someone here next in kinky key on our toll free line line for Hello. Morning. Well good morning caller We're talking with a friend. We were aware of that of course in the northern hemisphere. Sun rises to the north at the Summer Solstice and to the south at the Winter Solstice. But at the same time the moon rise to the south and the summer for the sins of the north at the weather for us. And we don't have a feel as to why this right has about the relationship between our parts of the earth and the causes of phenomena. Well couple of things. Probably the easiest thing to talk about is the full moon since everybody has seen

that the full moon is always opposite the sun. So you think about if you draw a line from the Sun the Earth To The Moon the Earth is in the middle and then the moon being opposite from our vantage point. Which means you mention the summer solstice so the sun's coming up in the north east so that means that full moon is going to be setting at the same time since it's got to be opposite in the south west. OK so if the think about it this way if the sun is at the Summer Solstice then the moon is going to be at that position. See if I get this right where the sun would be during the winter solstice because it would be opposite. And what complicates things is that the moon's orbit is off about five degrees so it's not exactly opposite or we would have eclipses once a month both lunar and solar that help any at all.

Yes just trying to get a feel of what that was. No thank you. OK thank you good thank you. Let's go to Champagne someone back here locally in line number one. Hello hello I am calling with a philosophical question. I wanted to do that first sky that has increased or decreased as a result of this work now. And your answer as what increase or decrease if I think she's talking about a religious faith. Yeah. Oh which is one of those things that you know sometimes people make this argument that somehow a. Religion and science are incompatible with one another and then of course there are scientists to come along and say well no that's that's not true at all. Yeah it's difficult to give a short answer to that. I know I can tell you this that if you go out where it's dark away from town it's kind of a shame we have so many lights here in town. But if you go out where it's darker and sometimes you can get telescopes out look at this and then the other thing but just sometimes to sit

on the hood of your car and just to look up and you just go wow it's just amazing. And to me that's kind of a religious experience. Granted if you get into the techie side of it as you just mentioned you know there is this the civil conflict where. The way I kind of simplify it and maybe it shouldn't be simplified is in religion they ask you to base things on faith. You know you can say what you want but it does have to get back to faith at some point. And science is kind of the opposite. Science doesn't want you to base anything on faith you're supposed to base things on hard evidence. And that's kind of where the conflict lies. If your faith tells you one thing you know I can't prove that wrong because that's what you feel. But science is a dog eat dog world and if if I come out and say you know I can flap my wings and fly you know somebody is going to say show me. You got to have some evidence for that. You know not to imply there's no evidence for religion. But eventually you do

get back to a faith based system. So you know it's kind of two answers to that that's kind of the science answer but but still when you go out and look at the sky it's a it's a wonderful natural resource. And just to to make a point is to reinforce the point you made not a philosophical point but that if people are lucky enough to be able to go someplace where the sky is really dark where there are not a lot of streetlights and other kinds of ambient light. It's can be really dramatic and if you've never seen it it's sort of stunning. So if you ever get the chance it's really a great thing to see what the stars really look like and how many of them there are and you can quite see quite clearly see the Milky Way and a lot of other things. You know if you if you happen to be in a city even like Champaign Urbana you just can't see that because there's too much light around. I don't have any dates in front of me right now but keep on the lookout for

times when our Astronomical Society does viewing from the meadow at Allerton park. And that is just phenomenal. The skies out there are just fantastic. Yeah I guess that if you can get outside of Champaign Urbana you don't have to go too terribly far before you start to get rid of a lot of that light. And the viewing conditions do improve I suppose is not the same as if you were out someplace where it was really if you were in the you know in the West in the West someplace or one of those places where you're away from civilization and you're away from all that ambient light that's going to be more dramatic but even here in town if you go if you go the right direction you don't have to get too far away and you're stuck. You're going to start to get a much darker sky. It's a directional thing with our observatory being between here and the doors. The Northeast is basically wiped out by Champaign Urbana and we're 20 minutes out 20 minute drive out and we don't even look towards the northeast because of the sky glow.

Well we had about 15 minutes left and if folks who are listening have questions you can call in here our guest is David leek He's director of the stark planetarium at Parkland College. He also teaches physics and astronomy there. And you have questions I know he'll do his best to give me an answer. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 and it's anything else that you'd like to talk about that we haven't touched on I know it was a few things we we said we haven't talked about this Mark to talk about this tenth planet thing. We got to talk about the Perseids. Yeah one of the things in this. This is kind of plugging something at the planetarium but there's a w l l connection so I thought I would mention it is I just finished booking our world of science lecture series on the first Friday of the month that classes are in session we have a speaker come out at 7 pm and I try to make it so it's not just astronomy and I know our own Ed Keizer is going to be out on December 2nd to talk about the Florida hurricanes not just you know who knows what it will be like and what kind of year we would have had it in December but also last year and why those are

there. But we also have Stephen Hurst coming from the department geology is going to talk about the paedo deep ocean trench that he's actually been in a submersible is going to bring some video of that it should be fantastic. And Paul quiet at the physics department is going to also come on talk about Einstein. The Peto deep is October 2nd and Einstein's miracle year is of course this is the 100th year for that is November 4th. We have Jim Kaylor coming out in February talking about our complex universe of human understanding through art. We're going to have Sally Greenberg from the Geological Survey coming out in March to talk about radio carbon dating and our own Tony Burke alter out of Parklane is going to be the April speaker talking about understanding the food you eat that wouldn't make you might want to eat before you go to that because I have a feeling what she has to going to have to say. It probably should change some of my habits very well. And again information available on the go to Parklane website and then from there you can get

to. That's right and all the world science dates are on there I've dated that before I left. OK well let's talk with some of the folks here. Footsie champagne wine one hello. Oh yes. Yeah. Sort on your last questionnaire about face and all that strength. Siri are we kind of taken out on stage. And I'm on my own there and I have this really far out thing of strength areas that basically maybe string theory explains God and all knowing in all places and all things and I just well hang up and listen. OK well now I get thank you. I I will give you my view on that. But if there's somebody from the physics department listening may they maybe could call in and would have more. Qualified opinion string theory is kind of a neat idea. But to my knowledge there is no observational evidence for string theory. It's

something people are working on it doesn't. Does it mean that there won't be when Einstein came up with his theory of relativity. We didn't have a lot of evidence for that either. And then they came up with what Mercury's orbit in light bending around the sun and the theory of relativity has withstood every test since then but there weren't a lot of tests initially. It was just a cool idea. If you think about Copernicus putting the sun at the center of the solar system it was a cool idea and right now I'm simplifying it quite a bit but I think string theory is a cool idea and the evidence may come later. But I don't think in a good time somebody can call and correct me but I don't think we have any observational evidence for it right now. You better. Can you give a very simple explanation of what it is for people who don't who don't know or maybe you know I have heard of it but I'm and I may have even to talk to somebody about it. But I'm not exactly sure I could tell you was a simple Can I give a simple explanation. No.

Chance but it's more or less. You know we have our electrons or protons or neutrons but if you really reduce those then you find out they're made of quarks and we do have observational evidence evidence for that. But then if you get down further than the idea is that all these things are made up of a series of vibrating strings you know not so much you'd fly a kite with but it's like energy. And but in order for string theory to work in again I'm pulling this out of memory you have to have something like 11 dimensions which is kind of beyond the lay person's understanding. Again it's I'm not saying it it's not true but it's you know in science we it's a dog eat dog and right now people are working on this but I don't believe there's any direct observational evidence for it. Line 3 is next Champaign. Hello.

Yeah I know we just discovered a planet that was about seven times the size of earth and not the smallest planet that we discovered or even a probability in our lifetime we might actually be able to detect either. The signature of life such as oxygen on a planet or you know perhaps liquid water. I know there's a telescope going up and I think like 2000 or something like that after 2012. Wouldn't a probability we can actually detect even you know the signature of life relatively soon. I actually think it's quite good. The planet will reflect a light from a star. And that's the light we detect run it through a spectroscope and we can actually detect elements that way. I do want to clarify one thing in. You probably were thinking this already but just to make sure it's clear for the listeners the planet seven times the size of the earth that's not in our solar system. We are finding planets around other stars in the way we do that in do a demonstration in my class of

this I pick up my son who's 12 it is getting harder and harder to do now. When he was younger was easier and I swing him around. Well if I swing him around I'm much bigger than he is and so he goes flying around. But I also wobble. I don't stay in one place well as the planets go around stars. It makes them wobble just a little bit. But our instruments are good enough now to detect that and we can get an idea of the mass of the size of some of these things. So we are finding in fact I'm sure this is low but at one time there were 70 other star systems out there that had planets going around them and of course the big planets make the stars wobble the most. So those are the easiest to find you know something 20 times the maybe 15 times the size of Jupiter. But now our instruments are getting good enough we're finding some of these smaller once you have a techno wobble in the Star I mean how will our instruments are going to have to be. I mean I know we can do run spectrums of the white man identified which elements are present which compounds are present. But I mean like the earth

from say 75 light years away I mean. Yeah. You might go well the amount of white reflected from Earth 75 light years away would be very very small. Yeah you're right you're exactly right. And that's where you need very very sophisticated instruments and hopefully this next generation telescope the Webb Space Telescope which will eventually replace the Hubble will be able to do something like that you can maybe subtract out the light of the parent star and see what's left over and be able to find something something like that. OK thanks a lot. Hey thanks for calling call and then you touch on something that I know we've talked about here on this program and that is that the end of the life of Hubble and there was I guess within the astronomy community a lot of discussion about could it be kept going up a little bit longer I think the answer was Well yes I mean it it could be you if you decided that you wanted to spend the money you could send the shuttle up there and that he could do some maintenance and he could keep it going for for some

time longer extend its useable life. And of course that would cost money and then there was there was a point when the shuttle was grounded so there was it wasn't even up for discussion now they're all backed up and who knows now what's going to happen in the future with the shuttle. So maybe that answers the question but where does that stand with this idea of doing a repair maintenance mission for the Hubble to then keep it going for a little while longer. Well of course they got set back with what they found that some of the foam fell off the when the Discovery was launched and now the shuttles are grounded again. And that's disappointing but I obviously want to be safe. Any time you do any missions like this of course it's very risky but you do if you get out of bed in the morning sometimes it's risky. The shuttles gyros are going and that will make it very difficult to point if possible excuse me the telescope. Yeah the Hubble telescope. And yeah the web telescope is is there. It's I believe it's ready to go it's just. I do believe it was something like 2010 or something like that that it was going to be we're going

to get it up there. So it was that was that also going to be taken up by a shuttle I believe yes I believe it was but was going to be put in just into orbit because they're going to put it it's not going to actually orbit the earth. They're going to put it out at what's called a little grungy in point so we don't have to worry about the earth getting in the way of something that we want to see. See we do at least one more church line or two. One champagne. Hello. Yes I just went and struck me. People have a unique situation. Ever wondered if they could do something like zone for a right to go down rather than to go up. Is there any move of further evidence to the strongest to suggest to city strike campaign that they are not his own son that writes go down instead of up. Well it's interesting that you mention that because our astronomical society are taking a look at the lighting ordinances now the mission as stated in the champagne

lighting ordinance is excellent as far as what they want to do. But a lot of the lighting codes cover street lights and parking lot lights. But we weave. I know people call the planetarium and said I have my neighbor's light shining in my window I can't even you know it's daylight inside my bedroom at night and there's no nothing to cover that right now and obviously you never want to squelch any people's freedoms but when your freedom intrudes on someone else then maybe someone should look at that. So yeah we're hoping to kind of take a look at that and not to get rid of lights you don't want to do that. But they're called street lights so let's light up the street. Well I think I appreciate the caller's comment I think that there are a lot of people who also argue that a lot of that we're wasting light and therefore we're wasting energy. If if indeed as you say the the point is to light the street if the light goes up that. We have we have wasted that energy because it's putting the light where we don't really need it. Exam not only would it be. It would be more energy efficient. It would put the light where we want it. And then of

course for people who are interested in looking up it ought also perhaps help to dampen down on that on the light pollution problem. The way the example I give is you'd never take your water sprinkler and put it out on the boulevard and water the street. No one would think it's a waste of water but we do it with our light all the time. Well we're going to have to leave it there. Again with the suggestion that if you're interested in finding out what's going on out at Parkland and if you've never been to the planetarium think about going out there go to the park one web page and you can get the schedule or you can call them and find out what's going on there. 3 5 1 2 4 4 6 is the number out there. Our guest Dave Leake is the director of the stark planetarium he teaches physics and astronomy at Parkland College. Thanks thanks so much David.