Starfinder; Episodes 13-18

Hi and welcome to this edition of star finder. I'm Maggie Langtang. What to playing tennis. Competing at an archery tournament at a demolition derby have in common give up. Well today we're going to have a crash course in energy transfer elastic and inelastic will also meet David McCrone the main troubleshooter for the instruments aboard the HST. But first let's go to Eric Chaisson at the Space Telescope Science Institute where he has the latest news on the Hubble from the HSP data stream. Hi welcome back. By now I've shared with you a variety of very interesting and exciting indeed unique science pictures coming to us from the Hubble Space Telescope. But I also mentioned to you in an earlier program that the Hubble suffers from an optical condition known as spherical aberration. You may remember from an earlier program aberration is the problem whereby we're unable with the Hubble mirrors to bring all of the light collected by Hubble to a small clear point in about three years from now. So the astronauts will rendezvous with Hubble and attempt to fix up the machine.

But in the meantime we use mathematical techniques on the ground with computers in order to try to clean up some of those images. Let me show you what I mean about aberration and how we clean up these images on the monitor at the left is a mathematical plot of a star that you've seen previously a star known as I ought to Krajina the star in fact is plotted here in such a way that the bright source of light in the stars center is the strong peak here. But because of aberration the optical Flora onboard Hubble there is a great deal of light coming from the star in this halo of fuzz surrounding that sharp point. Now stars really don't have halos like that. They're not that fuzzy. If Hubble were working properly all of this light on most of the light in the Halo would be up on the point actually on the sky what happens is that when we look with Hubble because of this condition known as aberration we see toward a region such as 30 Dorados which we've studied before an image that is not as clean as we had hoped it is aberrated.

It has some degree of fuzz or halos around each of the stars. But by using a mathematical technique that we call image restoration or computer enhancement technically deconvolution we're able to use computers to in fact move from this fuzzy image to a much more clear crisp image shown here. Now we have an animation produced in our astronomy visualization laboratory which shows how we can go using a mathematical technique from a relatively fuzzy image to a much cleaner image. This animation here is shown on this monitor toward your left and you can see here in particular the image is relatively fuzzy. The raw image here. But now this computer technique is successively iterated to clean up the image to make it more crisp and clean and you'll see in a moment here how we flip back and forth switching back and forth between the fuzzy image acquired by a Hubble in reality. And there it is.

And the clean image after the mathematical techniques have been applied. What's happening here of course is that the halo around the star which should not be there is being subtracted by the mathematical technique. We're literally throwing away some light. That's the tradeoff with the current condition on Hubble to achieve the most clean and crisp images high resolution. We have to literally throw away some of the light. You'll never use your smallest marble to go after that. That's why you won. You might miss and lose it. Instead you choose your biggest Boulder. You know it's Matz's greater and should send your prize sailing out of the circle. You concentrate. Shoot an elastic collision. Welcome to the world of physics. We'll explain the differences between elastic and inelastic collisions. Plus much more today on science links. What happens when objects collide. For one thing energy is transferred

this energy transfer can cause at least one of the objects to change direction speed or shape. What does not change is the total energy amount of the objects before and after their collision. When this pool ball rolls it has momentum or energy of movement. Momentum is the force that moves an object against resistance like air or another object. How much momentum something has depends on its mass and its speed when both balls roll. They each have momentum when they collide. Their momentums are combined but none of the energy that the balls had before they hit is lost in the collision. It's exchanged or redistributed the total amount of momentum that the balls have before and after their collision is the same. This is part of the conservation of energy. A pool player knows that when pool balls exchange energy. At least one of them changes direction.

They reversed direction and a head on collision and are forced off their paths when they collide at an angle. There are two types of collisions and some collisions. At least one of the objects bounces. These are called elastic collisions. When the objects don't bounce the collision is called inelastic. Many collisions come somewhere between elastic and inelastic. Some of these collisions are between things of about equal mass. But what happens when objects of unequal mass collide. The effect of the collision is much less on the more massive object the bigger the difference between the masses of the objects the smaller the effect the collision will have on the more massive object objects collide in space all the time. Evidence of such cosmic collisions can be viewed each night by looking up to see the craters on the moon planets and their moods carry the scars from the collisions of

comets which are chunks of ice frozen gases dust and rock. And meteoroids or boulders of rock. Traveling through the solar system. It's believed that the solar system in its early stages of formation was a region of dust and rocky objects of different sizes as these rocks traveled through the solar system. They occasionally collided with each other building planets craters such as these on the planet Mercury are the scars of the final impacts and the growth of a planet. Although the number of rocks or meteorites traveling through the solar system has greatly decreased since its early stages. It still estimated that between 10 and 100 tons of debris are swept up by the earth each day. As these meteorites begin their collision course with Earth. They enter the atmosphere that surrounds our planet and are renamed meteors as in all collisions. No energy is lost as the meteors movements are

suddenly slowed by this dense atmospheric blanket. But their kinetic energy or energy of movement is changed into heat energy. So what we know is shooting stars are actually meteorites which burn and usually disappear as their energy is converted to heat and light. Those that do make it through the atmosphere are called meteorites and can range in size from smaller than a pinhead to larger than a three metre Boulder. The effects of atmosphere and weather on earth have caused that surface to undergo continual changes and the evidence of most of its earlier collisions with comets and meteors have disappeared. But many craters and actual meteorites remain behind to hint at the ancient stories of such collisions. But some stories aren't so ancient. In 1972 Mr. and Mrs. James Baker from Cincinnati Ohio were on vacation in the Grand Tetons when they became modern day witnesses

to a small meteorite entering the Earth's atmosphere. It is however very rare for a meteorite of any significant size to actually make it through the atmosphere. And because such a large percentage of the globe is covered by ocean and unlivable land. Few people ever see the actual impacts of large meteorites hurtling to earth. Canyon Diablo near Winslow Arizona you can still view the evidence of such a collision there at meteor crater. You'll see the result of a prehistoric impact a gigantic crater with a span of three quarters of a mile and more than 570 feet deep yawns from the earth's crust. One can hardly imagine the tremendous energy exchanged when such a massive meteorite collided with a tremendously more massive planet whose course through the solar system remained unchanged. DAVID Look Ron is deputy project scientist for the Hubble space telescope. That's a

long title for a very important person. He's the man responsible for all the scientific instruments on the HST. He works for Goddard Space Flight Center. And Sandy has talked with David another of the people behind HST. Undergirding record that became a tremendous science fiction movie for some of those movies of the late 40s and 50s we're dreadful embarrassed to think that I like them. But some were very good at the time and still were very good. I was also caught up with the romance of being a scientist as portrayed in the science fiction movies. David the crone's notion of becoming a scientist started as a fantasy on the movie screen but grew into a serious career path. His high school physics class above all inspired him to go on to college as a physics major. He then continued on for a doctorate in astrophysics. With his background he was immediately hired by NASA where he has now worked for 21 years.

David's favorite project with NASA has been to work with the Hubble Space Telescope team. He began in 1976 following the development of the five scientific instruments sent up with the Hubble. About a year and a half ago I changed job titles just a bit. I became the deputy project scientist and now that we're in orbit we've defined a small set of observations to take that are scientific observations that would illustrate what an instrument can and cannot do with the present circumstances and would have some hope of producing real scientific results here very early in the program. You could just sign this with technical problems arise. I work with the project manager of the project scientist and the teams involved to help try to find solutions. David's work day doesn't end here along with his management duties. David is also a practicing space astronomer we'll be getting the reprocessed images that will make you look a bit different when we interview David.

He was very excited about getting observation time on the Hubble high resolution spectrograph. His target a chemically peculiar star called Lupi since the interview. His observation was made David McCrone obtained the first spectrum of a star using this instrument. The spectrum is really spreading the colors out from the star and they're looking at very very fine details as to how the brightness of the light varies or changes. Now you can examine how the brightness changes from it. You can learn a lot about the chemical composition of the star. Its temperature is how rapidly it's rotating how rapidly it's moving through space. All kinds of basic physical information. What David showed us during the interview was a theoretical spectrum of Pilot B. Now with the Hubble's observation he's able to spend his time studying the real thing. This confirms that the star really is which is it's more of a potential in this

program than anything else I've ever done. This is what I really in it for. I want to see the science I want to see the data. I want to feel the excitement that everybody is feeling about what we're learning scientifically. Thanks for being with us today on our next edition of Starfighter. We'll find out what a record player has in common with planetary motion. Eric Tyson will be here with more news about HST and Andy Loeb now will tell us how he aims to please and his job with a moving object support system on the Space Telescope. I'm Maggie lanterne. See you next time. I'm Starfighter. Starfighter has been made possible in part by grants from the United States Department of Education and the Martin family. Dedicated to helping unlock the mystery.

Martin Marietta is masterminding tomorrows technologies. Get. A

on. Me i. Hi. And welcome to this edition of Starfighter. I'm Maggie Lattin remember riding on a carousel when you were a kid. If you were on the outside didn't it seem like you were moving faster than the kids in the middle. Yet everybody still made it around at the same time. Why was that. Why answer this question along with many others when we talk about planetary rotation and Star find a reporter and Sandy will introduce us to Abby loop now who works with the Hubble. But now let's turn to Eric Chaisson for our report from the HST data string. Hi welcome back. In our previous programs we've been sharing with you some of the images from

the Hubble Space Telescope taken of relatively local objects planets in the solar system and star forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy. Today I want to share with you a very exciting image taken and a much greater distance a distance of some thirty million light years away. The region is an active galaxy called NGC 10 68 1 0 6 8. What do I mean by an active galaxy active galaxy is quite different from the so-called normal galaxy that we live in the Milky Way normal galaxies are thought to be normal because they are just huge accumulations of stars hundreds of billions of such stars but active galaxies have in addition to stars. Something else. They have something deep down in the core. We think in fact maybe a black hole. This is one of the difficulties with active galaxies Namely we see a great deal of energy coming from a very small space. In fact the huge amount of power comes out of a very small location deep down in the core of an active galaxy. Stars simply cannot power these kinds of active galaxies. The target again

is NGC ten sixty eight and I have a picture of this particular act of Galaxy taken from the ground taken from a telescope. Again high atop the mountains of Chile. This is 2068 here and at face value it appears quite normal. But in particular when you examine the distribution or the spread of energy across this galaxy again you see that most of the energy comes out of the core that these lines here are showing how with the Hubble space telescope we looked into the core regions of this galaxy and what we saw is shown on the monitor at the right. This view now is is a 100 magnification of previous image of this galaxy. We used the special element the element oxygen radiating in a yellowish greenish color to look at what appear to be clouds of material in the vicinity of the core of the active galaxy 10 68. These clouds measure about some 10 light years across and they seem to be illuminated by a beam of light part of a

funnel shaped region where light is coming out of a point down below here and illuminating these clouds. Now through the eyes of the artist we've combined the data which is still shown in yellowish greenish fashion here with an invisible of course funnel that the artist has put on top of the data as an aid to interpretation and these in fact the clouds are again illuminated. So we think by light in much of a huge galactic flashlight shining outward through this funnel much as you might see lot in the summer air floating around a bit in front of the beam of a flashlight. Now the interesting thing about this in effect map is that pointing the funnel itself seems to be pointing to a location at the bottom where we suspect the action is the source of power the suspected black hole may reside in and subsequent programs with the Hubble space telescope will use this map

roadmap or treasure map if you like to get back to this point because we feel at the bottom of this funnel there is in fact a gold mine in this case a gold mine of science was all. By watching the graceful movements of a ballet we see an everyday example of rotational energy that dancers rotate and search for their partner. But sooner or later the dance is over the earth and sun on the other hand are in a dance that will continue until the end of time. You'll see why today on science links. For centuries people have been trying to figure out how the stars and planets move at one time they thought that the earth was stationary in the center of the solar system as the sun and other planets moved around it. But in the 16th century people not only learned that the sun was the center of the solar system. They found out that the earth other planets and the sun were also spinning all

planets have two motions within our solar system revolution and rotation. Revolution is the motion of the entire planet moving in orbit. It takes the Earth 365 days to revolve all the way around the sun all planets and the sun also rotate. They turn around at the same time they're moving in orbit the Earth takes 24 hours to make one complete rotation. Things that rotate spin about an axis the axis on the spinning basketball would be in line with the player's finger. Whereas the Xs on these other rotating object. They axes on this gyroscope is easy to find. Notice how the position of the gyroscopes axis stays the same while the rest of the gyroscope spins around it. The earth moves the same way.

But unlike the gyroscope the earth never stops rotating because in space there's no force to stop the planet spinning motion. This is an example of Newton's first law of motion on this model. Every point on the earth completes a full rotation at the same time. Yet every place on earth is not rotating at the same speed. How can that be on this record album. You can see that the disc. Are moving at different speeds. Yet they all finish their rotations at the same time. Because it has a greater distance to travel the disk farthest from the center is moving faster than the one below it. The disk closest to the center is slowest because it travels the shortest distance. Here is an album with string indicating the path of the disk. When we take the string and stretch it out. You can see that the links are very different the length of the string closest to the

center is much shorter than the one from the farthest edge of the record. It works the same once there's a planet. A Brazilian coffee farmer. At the equator is as far from the Earth's axis as he can be and still have his feet on the ground. The distance from the axes is much less for a volleyball team in Bangor Maine. And it will Greenland the top of the world to ice fishermen are closest to the earth's axis. The North Pole. When we look at the spinning earth from this angle we see that these different places on earth are moving at different speeds. But they all finish their rotation at the same time the rotation of a star is a little different. Stars are made of guesses all parts of a star. Such as our sun don't rotate in the same amount of time. In fact

the time that different points of the sun take to make their rotations is opposite to what you might expect. For example a point near our son's equator finishes rotation in about 25 days. While elements near the Suns pole take 35 days to go all the way around. One way we learn about how the sun rotates is by observing sunspots the cooler dark areas of the sun. Scientists have observed that these sunspots move which is evidence that the sun rotates. Today with the kinds of advanced instruments we have on the Hubble Space Telescope. We can detect rotation of stars much further from us than the sun. With this information scientists hope to learn even more about how distant stars spin in the heavens. People say it's hard to hit a moving target but to move now back that's the challenge we just can't pass up and it worked with a moving object support system and his

calculations are responsible for ending that giant telescope. And Sunday is tell us more about another of the people behind HST. When I was a little kid in grade school I had a reputation and a short attention span for the same reason I was interested in everything you know not just what they were doing in class that day because of his father's job and he spent a great part of his childhood in Buenos Aires Argentina although there were many cultural differences. His interests were often the same as any kid his age. I was pretty sure that you wouldn't be able to get the same kind of candies down there that you could get in the States. I was not proven wrong in that regard. As in he grew so did his interest in his surroundings. When you go around different places in the world like that you sort of gain an interest in geography for instance. Well I've always loved maps. I would read books about trains and books about airplanes and then of course wanting to know how they work leads you into books about science and physics.

Another favorite of these was to build things model airplanes trains boats at the top of his list was his first homemade telescope with even a small telescope if you know a little bit about the sky and what you're looking at. It's almost like being there. It's almost like having a private spaceship today and he still has a wide range of interests and keeps up quite a few of his childhood hobbies his interest in astronomy however has grown into his career after receiving a college degree in astrophysics and a master's in astronomy and he was hired by the Space Telescope Science Institute. He began as a research assistant and quickly moved up the ladder to his position today and Andy now programs the computer system which targets solar system objects. The Hubble will observe. So this is the computer system which occupies your all day good part of it. Yeah. Objects in the solar system move on so we have to be able to calculate where they're going to be when the exposures are going to be taken. And this is what I do with this computer.

So some of the things you can do like for instance the space telescope just sad. Right exactly. This is the very first picture of a solar system object. And that came out dead center in the field of view. I was so proud and pleased. What are some of the other things that you programmed the computer to see. Well I can show you Jupiter as you might see it if you were on one of the moons of Jupiter in a spaceship. And I can show you the Earth's moon as it went through a total eclipse last summer. What's your favorite part of the day. It's not so much a favorite part of the day it's it's working with the computer system that I helped to develop. I like doing that because in a sense it's it's partly mine. And so I like it. Where do you think you'll be in 15 or 20 years from now. You've probably gathered already in my tent my interest sort of shift around a bit. I could see myself doing anything from sailing around the world in a tiny little sailboat to still working here or. I would probably like to stay with the

space program. That brings us to the end of this edition of star finder. Be sure to join us on our next program when we find out what makes us see the light. And we'll have some more findings from the HST and you'll meet with Bob Blass who will tell us about his work with the high speed ometer on board the HST. I'm Maggie Lenton. See you next time On-Star finding. A. Star Finder has been made possible in part by grants from the United States

Department of Education. And the Martin Marietta. Dedicated to helping unlock the mystery of. Martin Marietta is masterminding tomorrows technologies. You.

Know. A. Hi and welcome to this edition of star finder. I'm Maggie Linton. Listen to how some writers describe light the light flooded the room sunlight bombarded this at the beach. When you hear the word flood you think of a wave of light swamping the room. But when you hear bombarded you picture

with thousands of tiny particles hitting you all over. Well which is it. Waves are particles. On this edition of star finder we'll explore light at aspect of science that has puzzled people for centuries. We'll also have a report from. And Sunday on Bob Bless. But first let's visit Eric Chaisson who has an update from the HST data stream. Hello again. In our previous program we reached with the Hubble space telescope out to great distances in the universe. Well in this program I'd like to go out into even deeper specs to examine an object that's has a distance of about a billion light years. That means the light left that object about a billion years ago. That particular target we've chosen is called Peak Yes 0 5 to 1 dash 3:6. It's from a radio astronomy catalog. The particular object is an active galaxy and it's seen here an artist's conception. It's thought to have in its heart a supermassive

black hole surrounding which there is in fact a great whirlpool of material spinning. We call it an accretion disk and out from which there emanates a large jet. Let me show you what we saw. Here's a ground based view of this particular act of Galaxy taken at a mountaintop Observatory in Chile. But you can't see much about what's going on in the core of that object from the ground with the Hubble Space Telescope by contrast on the monitor at the right. We've been able to see deep into the heart of this active galaxy now with some mathematical processing and with the underlying galaxies subtracted from the data. What we see here in fact is evidence substantial evidence for indeed a jet coming out from the core of this active galaxy. Now the jet is no small feature. It extends about thousand light years long which is hundreds of thousands of times larger than the solar system in which we live. I have an animation produced in our

astronomy visualization laboratory that will show you in fact on the monitor at the left what this object may look like. If we were able to actually see it spinning out there in deep space. The spinning accretion desk around the suspected black hole to jets in this case. But as the disk comes around in this animation it blocks the southern jet giving us a presumably what we actually see on the Sky namely this particular active galaxy with about one jet. Now what's the significance of all this. This particular observation suggests in fact that we're seeing much greater distances in the universe than before. With the Hubble space telescope we can see these distances from the ground as well but we're seeing those objects more clearly we're seeing into the hearts of galaxies we're seeing in fact into the central engines of those objects trying to understand what is powering those objects in particular. Is there a black hole in the center of PKU 0 5 2 1 dash 3 6. We don't know in all honesty for certain. But these are some of the best data to suggest that a black hole

does in fact lurk in the heart of this galaxy. Have you ever thought about what light actually is or how it works. Scientists do all the time and for centuries they've tried to unlock its mysteries today will shed some light on the subject of light on science like. People in ancient times thought that objects gave off light that allowed us to see them. But theories like these didn't satisfy everyone. In the 16 hundreds. People began to try to describe the nature of light. Galileo was one of these early scientists. He wanted to know if it took time for light to travel. To find an answer. He devised a simple experiment. He tried to measure the time it took for light to travel from one hilltop to another. He used the only tools available on the 6900. Candles. And lanterns. But light travels too fast. Stop watches that measure tiny amounts of

time had not yet been invented. Since Galileo was unable to measure the speed of light. Centuries later with the aid of new instruments another scientist was able to finish Galileo's experiment. Albert Michelson found that light was able to move at an amazing rate of one hundred eighty six thousand miles per second. Galileo's work inspired other scientists curiosity about light. Many of them wanted to find a way to identify the matter that made up light. Sir Isaac Newton was one of those searchers. He was so fascinated with the nature of life that he studied it for many years and finally decided that life was a stream of particles like pellets that were shot from a gun. He found a way to confirm his idea by looking at shadows. He thought a person or an object. Stop the flow of these pellets from a light source making a shadow that had sharp edges. Good enough thought

Newton. Not really said another scientist at that time. Christian Huygens had a different theory. He thought that light was made of waves like the waves in this pond. He knew that sound was made up of waves and thought that light might be also Newton and Huygens respected each other as scientists but they continued their debate about the nature of light. Which was it was like made up of particles or waves. Many people sided with Newton on this question because he was such a respected scientist. But about 100 years later Thomas Young thought of a clever way to demonstrate Wigan's hypothesis about life when two pebbles are dropped into a pool of water they create ripples these ripples or waves form predictable patterns when they meet each other. If the crest of one way meets the crest of another the wave gets higher. But if the crest of one wave hits the low point of a second wave they cancel each other out

and the water returns to its original level. The two waves interfere with each other. Young thought that this same principle might apply to life. To test his idea he set up an experiment. He placed two screens in front of a light source. The first Green had one tiny slit. The second had to. Newton's idea that light traveled as a stream of particles led him to believe that light from the second source would travel in a straight line to the screen behind the slits. If this were true young would see only two bright stars of light but this didn't happen. The light on the screen appeared as a series of bright and dark lines where the waves of light cancel each other out. There was no light where the crest of light meant there was bright light. Young had confirmed that life was a series of waves.

Was Newton wrong was his idea of light traveling in a straight line like a pellet. Incorrect. Not necessarily according to Albert Einstein. He challenged scientist in this century to stop debating about the nature of light. Instead he urges them to observe how it behaves. When Einstein looked at light in this way he found that light sometimes behaves like a pellet. This happens when a photon of light strikes an electron bouncing it out of its normal position in an atom. He also confirmed that light sometimes behaves like a wave creating the same pattern of interference that young first demonstrated. Even though a photon of light has definite boundaries like a particle. Closer examination shows it sometimes behaves like a wave. When someone finally understands a very complex idea we say they saw the light. Einstein said we could see the light about light and observe how it

functions but actually knowing the nature of life was and still remains a mystery. But Bles was working with photometry when the Hubble was still a twinkle in his eye and Sunday as has its report on one of the people behind HST. Well let's just the comedy or photo and light meter and measure for measure the brightness of light. God bless an astronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin is defining the high speed photometry. One of the five scientific instruments sent up with the Hubble high speed part means that we can make lots of measurements second. Objects do vary so rapidly in the brightness of the light they emit that you have to make like a hundred thousand measurements a second in order to follow that brightness variation is very accurate. How does an astronomy professor know so much about the Hubble's high speed phenomena. Well I'm the single principal investigator and principal investigator is national.

That means your head is on the block responsible for making it testing it making sure it works properly running it when it's. That's right. Bob glass is the main man behind this instrument and has been since 1977. He actually was involved with the early studies on the Hubble itself as far back as 1971. I was involved in some of the early studies feasibility studies were. How should you do it. How much will it cost to work while working on the Hubble project I'll call went out for suggested instruments to be launched with the Hubble and Bob proposed the high speed photometry. I literally forgot about those and some of them I was quite surprised frankly when I got this telegram up here to my mailbox. November 15. Oh my goodness is the telegram brought news that Bob's proposal was

accepted for the next 13 years he would oversee every detail needed to ready the High-Speed photometry for launch with the Hubble on April 24th 1990. Now after launch Bob hopes to test the photometry to perform its science in space. Since what we do trying to do was to find out how certain stars tick what makes them tick how do they how do they want work how do they bury him like some of them said very quickly. Why how do they do that. What causes them to do that kind of job on the list for the science done by the photometry is to determine diameters of stars such as the red giants to study the exotic phenomena in the rings of Saturn Jupiter and Uranus and also to try to prove the theory of the black hole. It's a terrific time to be in the. Last 40 years and seeing the complete revolution my understanding of the universe is no period in the 25 year history of the swarmy that can compare what hopes do you.

Well you enjoyed this edition of star finder on our next show will you sight and sound to discover the difference between optical and radio telescopes. There will be more news from the Science Institute. Plus as the US will introduce us to Peter caliber an amateur astronomer who is one of the fortunate five chosen to use the Hubble Space Telescope. I'm begging you. Next time on Starflight. Oh. A. A. Lot a. Star Finder has been made possible in part by grants from the United

States Department of Education and a Martin Marietta group. Dedicated to helping unlock the mystery. Martin Marietta is masterminding tomorrows technologies. This.

To. A. High. Five. And welcome to another edition of star finder. I'm Maggie MANTAN. You've heard the saying that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Well if you were on the moon and you lit that one candle today's telescopes are so powerful that they'd see the light and take a picture to prove it. Today on Star finder we'll visit

some of these enormous telescopes and scientists will introduce us to Peter Canada for an amateur astronomer who uses telescopes of a more conventional size. But now Eric Chaisson is standing by ready to wade once again into the HST data screen. Well I've got a very bizarre findings to share with you today. You may recall from an earlier show that the best modern theory of the universe that physicists now have is the one proposed earlier in this century by Albert Einstein called the Theory of Relativity relativity theory predicts a number of peculiar consequences in the universe one of which is that light bends as it moves around massive objects for example discussed in an earlier program as part of Star finder was the notion that if you had three objects such as the distant star our sun and the earth and light comes from that distant star and passes by closely the edge of the sun

the light will be bent on its way to the earth. So we therefore see the light bent around the sun in such a way that as we look back out we see in fact the light of the star displaced. In effect a mirage. The star actually appears in a slightly different location from where it really exists. Now as you move deeper out into the universe and look at more massive objects such as the galaxy and have this particular situation here where you have again the earth a massive galaxy and a truly distant object such as another galaxy then in fact the light from a distant galaxy can pass by this intervening galaxy and be multiple mirage. In this particular case there's whole intervening galaxy acts like a lens and as the light comes through it's slightly bent. But when we look back out into the

universe from the earth we see this distant galaxy out there and out there. So we actually see this object imaged twice with the Hubble Space Telescope has peered out into the universe truly deeply in this particular case out about eight billion light years from us. In this particular case about half way to the limits of the observable universe. But along the line of sight between this truly distant galaxy and the earth is a massive galaxy that acts like a lens. And this particular instance the faint object camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope has seen 40 images of the truly distant galaxy we see instead of one image we see in fact four mirages of that run distant galaxy the central location here the bright spot is probably due to the core of the

intervening lens and galaxy itself. All of it would be essentially seen as one big blur to an optical telescope on the ground. But with Hubble we can in fact see clearly this subtle phenomenon which is yet again another confirmation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The Hubble Space Telescope is a great step forward for astronomers. But the optical and radio telescopes already in place on earth are still marvels in their own right and continue to make major contributions. You'll see how today on science like. Earth bound telescopes are critical to gathering data from space. They come in many shapes and sizes but all telescopes do the same thing. They collect energy or radiation to form an image. Astronomers can use to study the universe different types of telescopes collect different forms of radiation optical telescopes collect visible light and for a

red radiation radio telescopes collect radio waves. When it comes to optical telescopes bigger is better. Why large telescopes have a greater light gathering power. The larger the collecting area the lens or mirror the more light a telescope can receive. Large optical telescopes can observe very dim objects at tremendous distances. Large telescopes also have better resolution which astronomers call resolving power the ability to separate fine details increasing the size of optical telescopes allowed astronomers to find pairs of stars called visual binary stars where they once thought there was one or two bring the mysterious surface of the moon and to Chris view. The larger the aperture size that is the diameter of the telescopes eye the finer the detail we can detect with it. Unlike optical telescopes

radio telescopes can read signals from space 24 hours a day continually scanning as Earth rotates. Some can be steered to phase any direction of the sky. A radio telescope antenna is Boll's shaped. That's why it's called a parabolic antenna or dish the antenna catches the incoming signals and reflects them to a focal point. Where the signals are sent to a receiver which in turn relays the waves to amplifiers and recording instruments at the control center. Like optical telescopes radio telescopes collect more radiation if they're larger the largest parabolic antenna is in Puerto Rico. It's about the size of three football fields placed end to end in spite of its size. It can only depict Saturn as a fuzzy blur. That's because radio waves can be more than a million times longer than light waves. The longer the wavelength the less detail can be

perceived by the antenna. To achieve high resolution or resolving power with a radio telescope. Astronomers use interferometers and interferometer is a telescope that's actually a combination of two or more radio telescopes linked together by electrical wire. These telescopes receive signals from space simultaneously combining them into a single sharp signal. The farther apart the antenna the finer the detail one interferometer has antenna in Sweden and West Virginia six thousand miles apart forming a telescope nearly equal to the Earth's diameter. Once one or more collectors receive incoming radio signals the radio waves are sent by cables to a control room for computer analysis and displayed on a video terminal. Radio telescopes have revealed radio stars that optical telescopes can't detect as well as

solar flares and invisible gases. Radio telescopes helped discover pulsars stars that emit very regular radio pulses no longer than five seconds apart. Scientists believe Paul stars are rotating neutron stars with the aid of optical telescopes radio telescopes detected quasars objects that can generate the energy of a hundred galaxies. They've also picked up radiation thought to be the faint remnant of an explosion 15 billion years ago. One that may have given birth to the universe. Telescope design continually improves large modern telescopes are computer controlled such as the w him Keck Observatory in Hawaii using it. Astronomers can theoretically see the light of a single candle on the moon. Attachments to optical telescopes known as spectroscope identify the chemical composition of stars their temperature and how

fast they're moving through space. By analyzing their Doppler shift. Using these tools scientists continually seek more information about the nuclei of galaxies how stars form. And the curious behavior of comets these sophisticated earthbound instruments continually give us more clues about the beginning of the universe. And. Its future. Peter Canda for is one of five amateur astronomers who will be allowed to work with the Hubble Space Telescope. He's been fascinated with one of the stars in the Big Dipper. And Sandy has found out more about another of the people behind HFS to. Most amateur astronomers as they find themselves in one form or another in an observatory like this one here at the Maryland Science Center and they often build their own telescopes to do some backyard viewing. But only five United States will do sky viewing from the Hubble Space Telescope.

And one of those watching five is Peter can for the opportunity for an amateur astronomer to work with any kind of Observatory telescope on the earth doesn't exist or if it does exist very rare. And the opportunity to work with an orbiting telescope like the Hubble Space Telescope is an absolutely unique application. Peter Canada has made a career out of electrical engineering astronomy he says has merely been a hobby. You said that your interest in astronomy almost grew with the size of your telescope to go from a one inch telescope to a 6 and then there's a problem called aperture fever and that the more you know the more you want to see and understand a little bit about astronomy to learn more. Peter joined several astronomy clubs here he was able to perfect his telescope making skills and attend lectures given by the pros on various astronomical subjects. One subject which caught Peter's attention was that of variable stars of about 300 billion stars in our own galaxy only about 30000 or star thought to

be variable stars. Of variable stars. A star was changing brightness. With research. Peter discovered that only 600 of these stars have magnetic fields a quality believed to be significant for future energy source studies all stars operate by burning hydrogen and helium. That's a process called nuclear fusion by looking at Starlight. We can get access to the astrophysical processes which run the star. That is we can learn about nuclear fusion to be involved further in the research of these magnetic fields. Peter competed for observation time on the Hubble. Although when he handed in his proposal he never suspected he would be chosen as one of only five amateurs. I went to the mailbox one day and picked up the letter which I thought would drop me out of the competition and opened it up and there was you I'd been awarded time with Hubble space telescope would let about six times before I realized that I had won competition time with a telescope.

When you actually get time observation time and the Hubble you'll be looking at what's called a variable star. Which variable star are you going to be like. I've chosen a target that's in the constellation of the Big Dipper. I'm looking at the one star. That's part of the handle that meets the ball but not part of the ball itself. This star will have a magnetic field approximately about 200 times greater than the Earth's magnetic field. Do you have any idea when this observation will take place. I think that my observations of the schedule by the computer perhaps as early as next spring. You obviously must have a great sense of pride in being accepted to have time on the Hubble. What else do you feel. It's a great accomplishment to get time with the telescope whether you're an amateur professional. I don't know where to lead me but it's certainly opening doors that were not available to me in the past. That brings us to the end of this edition of star finder. We hope you'll be with us next time when we learn more about the array of sophisticated equipment onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. You'll also meet Nuccio Kato and Eric Chase

and we'll have more news from the HST data stream. I'm Jacki Lyden. See you next time on Starflight. Oh. Well. I got a. Star Finder has been made possible in part by grants from the United States Department of Education and the Martin Marietta. Dedicated to helping unlock the mystery. MARTIN Marriott who is masterminding tomorrow's technologies. Hello and welcome to another edition of star 5 there I Naggie lantern the Hubble Space

Telescope has been sending back lots of information from deep space with the aid of five different instruments. Today we're going to take a look at them and meet the major troubleshooter for the science output of those instruments. And Sunday us introduces us to do chio my K-Doe. But first let's join Eric Chase in with his report from the HST data string. By looking back at the science institute today I want to take you back to examine an old friend 30 Dorados region where stars are forming in the southern hemisphere. We've been there before with the Hubble Space Telescope. We've gone back again and we found some more interesting things. Just to remind you to ARADAS is a region of star formation from Star nursery if you like in the southern hemisphere in the so-called large Magellanic Cloud. This is a picture taken with the telescope on the ground and the 30 Dorados complex where stars are now forming. Right here. A hundred and sixty thousand light years away from us. If you take another

telescopic view from the ground of this particular region under higher magnification you would see the full expanse of this star forming region. Again this is a photograph taken with the telescope on the ground and we've gone back with the Hubble Space Telescope to examine what's happening in the heart of this region right at the very core where the stars are actually forming now. But I have on the monitor at your left actually is a photographic reproduction of an image taken with the wide field camera. Something we've talked about previously toward 30 to Rattus. It shows that what we had previously thought just a few years ago to be one large star has now broken up into many many perhaps 60 70 maybe even a hundred stars in the heart of this region. You can see for orientation a V-shaped string of stars those stars are unresolved. You can't see with the wide field camera quite as clearly as we would like in this red

colored image. Well with another camera onboard Hubble we can achieve even higher magnification greater resolution. This particular camera is the faint object camera which do geo Marchetto is the principal scientist on the monitor at the right I show you in fact the image from this other camera onboard Hubble. And you can see the same V-shaped string of stars but now they're more clearly seen under higher magnification. But interestingly enough though I don't have a picture of it here for you. We've gone back more recently with a nother higher magnification mode of the European camera in the ultraviolet and have in fact looked at this same region under greater resolution. And you know what that blob in the middle that you can see here has split up into even more stars. So the design significance again is that we're looking in at a star nursery and we're understanding better how stars form by seeing more clearly with the Hubble telescope the nature of those stars. But the technical significance here is

that these two cameras now the wide field camera on the one hand and the faint object camera on the other can work together one to achieve the wide field view the other to achieve high resolution narrow field view. You have many different ways of observing something you can use your eyes. Your sense of touch your nose and ears. And of course your sense of taste. That can examine the stars with different senses too will show you the sensory system inside the Hubble Space Telescope. Today on science link. VHS tapes sensory system is a collection of five instruments that scientists can use to examine an object or phenomena just like our individual senses. Each instrument gives different clues about objects. When scientists put all the clues together they gain a more complete picture of our universe.

Four of these instruments are located in back of the telescope's focal plane which is where the HST images form the fifth instrument is slightly in front of that plane. Two of the instruments are electronic cameras which record images of the appearance of an object. Two of the instruments are spectrographs. These devices record information about the chemical composition of an object. The fifth instrument is a photon emitter which measures the brightness of an object. The cameras on board the HST have one special advantage over Earth based cameras. They are orbiting 380 miles above the earth outside the Earth's atmosphere. The pictures these cameras take are not distorted by dust and gas in our atmosphere such as the photos taken by ground based cameras. These cameras can also hold their shutters open for long periods of time gathering all available light. This allows us to see objects that

we couldn't otherwise observe. Scientists can choose the camera they want to use based on what they want to observe. If they want to look at the dimmest objects the telescope can see. Scientists can use the faint object camera. This camera was designed by the European Space Agency to see a smaller area of the universe in more detail. Gathering so much light that even faint stars appear as a blaze in the sky. If scientists want to see an image of a larger portion of the universe they can use the other camera on board the HST. The wide field Planetary Camera. This camera is located outside the main instrument Bay light entering the HST can be reflected to this instrument by Miras the wide field planetary camera. It's like a camera with two lenses a telephoto lens to see far away objects. When it's used in its planetary mode at a wide

angle lens to see larger areas when it's in its wide field mode the spectrographs on board the HST provide information about the chemical makeup of objects in space by recording their unique patterns of light. A kind of chemical fingerprint those fingerprints look like there is a spectrum of light. Each element creates a spectrum that is distinctly its own in order to create a spectrum. Light must first be broken down into its component parts by a device like this a diffraction grating spectral grass. Then we heard the pattern formed by diffraction. Scientists can find out many clues about an object in space such as its temperature and chemical composition by analyzing the pattern that spectrographs record. Scientists can choose to analyze the energy being emitted by objects in space by using one of two spectrographs on board the HST. If they want to look at fained objects they can use the faint objects spectrograph.

This device can block out the bright light at the center of an image to view the dimmer light at the edge of the object. The faint object spectrograph records a wide display of the energy of an object from near infrared through visible light to ultraviolet energy. The other spectrographs scientists can use is called the Goddard high resolution spectrograph. It looks only at the levels of ultraviolet light being emitted by an object providing a more detailed and precise look at this form of energy then does the faint object spectrograph. The fifth instrument on board the HST called the High Speed photon letter. Accurately measures the brightness of an object in space by looking at levels of visible and ultraviolet light. To do this the photon matter converts light into electrical energy and then measures it. The stronger the light the stronger the electrical current. Stars don't always emit

light of the same brightness. The high speed photometry will help scientists monitor those changes to help them investigate reasons the variations occur. Information about a star's brightness can be used to catalog them according to luminosity and determine their distance from other objects giving them a more accurate map of space. Each of the five instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope provides a different type of information. Broadening our understanding of the universe Duchin K-Doe has a special interest in one of the instruments on board the Hubble. He is the principal investigator for the faint object camera. The instrument he designed and Sunday is has more about another of the people behind HST. For my 50th birthday on the 1st of October 1957 the first Sputnik was launched as a 15 year old teenager

is really interested in physics or maths is really something that has a big impact to you determined to be involved in the space program. Do chio McKerrow attended the University of Cordoba in Argentina. Here he spent many hours in one of the oldest observatories in the world. From there do Geo's resume is a lengthy one. He became involved in the research and design of many projects sent into space. The International ultraviolet explore is one of his most impressive Hepton XY telescope on the instruments for this new project. And then I became the project scientist on project manager. The main aim was really to study stars but then we of course found out it was very very good also to study galaxies Decimo then became one of the first European scientists to be involved with the space telescope project. He worked on the early studies and also designed one of its instruments the faint object camera.

So the main aim of the camera is really to observe the faintest objects in the universe while they are close by or very this. A personal hope of do CIOs was to use the camera for the discovery of new planets. Do you really think there are other planets out there in other galaxies. Oh I do believe there are. I would like to see them. Until we have evidence. We can only speculate. This is important to have evidence that they do exist. In 1983 Dutilleux began working at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Today he watches over his camera in action and juggles several other managerial roles. My main job here is to get these programs the vision of always doing the job I do because I like to continue to be the scientist responsible for the fate of the camera. And then I also have a small administrative type job if you want to oversee the whole of the European stuff that works here.

One of those favorite places to be during the day is VFO see observation room where scientists analyze the latest data from the Hubble's faint object camera. That's a picture of a star cluster. They can with the camera in the ground. All of this was a blur. You maybe so thank you studied stars in the full image. If you count these there are several hundred. Some of the things that the camera is working perfectly and we are very proud of it. We can do great science with much more of the red signs in the signal. Throughout your career you always seem to be right on the leading edge. So what's the next project. Well what's next. I think we need to build a similar space telescope probably a larger one some of the Hubble space. That. Brings us to the close of this edition of star finder. Join us next week when we delve into the density of matter.

Meet Ricardo Giacalone the director of the space telescope science institute. And here the latest from Eric Chaisson and the HST data stream. Until then I'm Maggie lanta. See you next time on Starfighter. Oh. Not a. Star finder. Has been made possible in part by grants from the United States Department of Education. And the Martin Marietta corporation. Dedicated to helping unlock the mysteries

of the universe. Martin Marietta is masterminding tomorrow's technologies. A.

Hello this is Star finder I'm Maggie Manteno. Mass volume and density. These are the three properties of matter. Today on Star finder We'll explore the third property of matter density and Sunday as has an interview with the head of the Space Telescope Science Institute McCardle G. But now let's join Eric Chase and for the latest from the HST data string. Hi welcome back to the Science Institute. One of the most recognizable constellations in the sky is that of Orion. I have an image of Orion taken with a ground based telescope here. You may be familiar

with it in nighttime sky you see normally three stars along the so-called belt of the hunter Orion hanging from the belt along the shore is at the bottom in particular a rather fuzzy region. We called the Orion Nebula. If you took a look at that fuzzy region which is distinctly unlike a star with a large ground based telescope and did it in color you would see this spectacular region of glowing gas. Ryan nebular is about 1400 light years away. It's about oh some seven light years across here and it's a region of glowing gas that we call in particular plasma plasma is the fourth state of matter or gases or liquids solids and there's plasma and it's plasma because there's a tremendous amount of energy radiating outward from a set of some four stars in the heart of Arayan and energizing all of the gas and the surrounding environment. Naturally with the Hubble Space Telescope. We'd like to see what's going on here in greater detail because we

have the ability to increase with resolution of the telescope by a factor of 10. So the detail that can be seen the tradeoff of course is that the Hubble telescope only has a small field of view. So we took an early look with the Hubble telescope of a region of the northern part of the Orion Nebula pretty much outlined by this frame of a slide. And then what we have seen within that one small region with the wide field camera onboard Hubble Space Telescope is shown on the monitor to your left when this amount of detail. Much much more detail than we had imagined from the ground. The colors are due to sulfur glowing in red oxygen and hydrogen glowing in green and blue. But the sulfur is particularly interesting because the sulfur is indicating to us regions where the hot gas in the plasma is in effect eating its way or boiling its way into the colder regions. It's much like in your kitchen when you open the refrigerator door the heat goes into the refrigerator. The cold does not

come out of the refrigerator the heat goes in. If you look at a particular small portion of this wide field view shown on the monitor to the right you see a spectacular unexpected finding. Namely a young star here with a great jet of material a great jet of sulfur coming out here showing specifically it in great detail that we're still analyzing and of course how that hot matter is trying to eat its way in as heat would eat its way into the refrigerator. Sort significance of all this is that we're learning a great deal more about the detail and complex structure dynamically contained within the Orion Nebula detail that as I said at the beginning of the program we had never even imagined might be there in this region of star formation rate and balloon have about the same mass. Why are they different sizes. The answer lies in the differences between their other fundamental properties volume and density. We'll take a closer look at the properties of matter. Today. On. Einstein.

Mass. Volume and density. What are they exactly. Mass is the amount of matter that makes up an object. It tells us how much of an object there is volume a second property is a measure of physical space an object occupies. How big that matter is. For instance we might measure an object in terms of cubic centimeters cubic feet or leaders. If it's a liquid. So the ring and balloon have different volumes. They take up different amounts of space. When you increase volume of a solid or a liquid you also increase mass. This full glass of water has twice the volume and mass of this half full glass. Generally when you increase volume mass increases in direct proportion. For instance twice the volume of water means there's two times as much mass as long as the temperature is constant. If I take this ring and Balonne and place them in water what happens.

The rain sinks and the balloon floats. Why the explanation lies in a third property of matter if mass means how much volume how big density is how tightly packed units of density may be expressed in grams per cubic centimeter. The range of matter is more tightly packed than the balloons the ring possesses greater density like mass density can vary for different objects of roughly the same mass or volume. There are two ways of measuring density both of which you can try on your own. The first is to directly compare two substances. We've made colored ice cubes by adding several drops of food coloring to water. Now we're going to place one in a glass about three quarters full of hot tap water. See what happens. The cold blue water from the melting ice sinks to the bottom. What does this tell

you about the densities of hot and cold water density of water must decrease as the temperature increases. Hot water is less dense and stays on top. Cold water is more dense and sinks below the hot water. One reason for this is that cold water molecules move more slowly. They are more compact. So hot water takes up more room than cold. You probably know that if you try to mix oil and water they'll separate which is more dense which rises and which sinks the infamous oil spill in Prince William Sound Alaska deposited thousands of tons of oil. When emergency teams arrived they had to battle the oil spread. How did they do it. Oil floats on top of water. So we say it's less dense than water. That's why workers roped off the spill right on the surface so it couldn't spread with compared to substances. First hot in cold water then all in water.

This was one way of examining density. A second method of examining density is an indirect one comparing things of different densities to the same object. I filled two glasses with water and broken off two pieces of wood about an inch long. Now I'll drop the cards in the water. What do you observe. Now let's add a teaspoon of salt. We'll keep adding salt until we began to see something happening. The only difference between these two glasses of water is that one has salt and the other doesn't. What does that tell you about salt water. The carrot floats because salt water is denser than tap or fresh water. That's

why it's easier for you to float on your back in an ocean than it is in a swimming pool. Let's continue our experiment with the salt water. This time will place larger pieces of care at twice the volume in the water. Salt water is denser than the carrot. No matter how much carrot there is density is constant regardless of how much volume is present neither size nor volume influence density. What do these experiments tell us about space. We know that wethers matter there is mass volume and density. Because of mass. There's gravity which attracts stars planets and galaxies to each other with certain strengths depending on mass and distance. The strength of gravity depends on the density of space. Scientists believe gravity may have a large role in slowing down the expansion of the universe. In fact. If the density of the universe is great enough the gravitational

attraction between objects will stop the expansion altogether and eventually cause the universe to contract. Or fall in on itself. If the average density of the universe is too low the expansion though slowing will continue for ever Star find a reporter and Sandy has recently met with the director of the Space Telescope Science Institute. Ricardo geocoding is definitely one of the people behind HST. Possibly you grow up a little faster because you have to worry a little bit about. What. You get is use with the typical would and regarded you Maconie grew up in Milan Italy. His most vivid childhood memory was of war World War 2. His visions of the United States however were quite different. I loved that bit of the movie so I thought it was all like a mixture between Humphrey Bogart and Broadway. You know cities are wherever dominated by Humphrey

Bogart in The West was drawn when Ricardo studied physics at the University of Milan. But soon after graduation he made a permanent move to his envisioned Wild West. I applied for a Fulbright fellowship and I got it. It's all good. It's good to be doing in the wild west. Ricardo didn't actually find John Wayne but did make great astronomical discoveries early on in the late 1950s. He helped take the very first pictures of stars in their own x ray emission. This began a whole new branch of astronomy looking at the stars in their own tree becomes a way to study very peculiar phenomena of very high energy from the ball and to be governed by games of people who knew all the rules that we had before. In 1981 Ricardo heard about an institute being set up to run the science end of the Hubble Space Telescope another first in astronomy. He knew instantly he wanted to be a part of that. And today he's the director.

What are your chief responsibilities. Well I think the most important one is try to call this all. That's one major as we all do what we do is to allow people from all over the world historians all over the world to use the telescope and put together the best program we can. Getting at this institute is a busy job even while interviewing Ricardo we were interrupted several times by important Can't wait situations. All right. So you know a lot of the we're going to follow the law. So I'm sorry was the most vocal that's why they put it through. I think yes there is a problem without reservation. RICARDOS day is taken up with decision making meetings and conferences unhumble issues. But this attention to detail is not without its rewards.

I remember when the first big of the stars good work and I thought we were just like children who are just joyful. So while it didn't look possible that this thing or you would point out you've got this big shows up and this is going to be very stressful both so deep that we will be able to have very good people and be the before we book. We do very well. So that does mean. That's it for this edition of Starfighter. Next week we'll see why Asian astronomers consider the stars and planets so important. We'll meet skip Westfall and Eric Chase and we'll have an update on VHS tape. I'm Jacki Lyden. See you next time on Starfighter. Oh. A. A.

Star. Has been made possible in part by grants from the United States Department of Education. And the Martin Marietta corporation. Dedicated to helping unlock the mysteries of the universe. Martin Marietta is masterminding tomorrow's technologies