Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #474 Q&A: Constellation Curiosities, Comet Encounters & The Universe's Birthdate

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#474 Q&A: Constellation Curiosities, Comet Encounters & The Universe's Birthdate · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, it's Space Nuts yet again. How many are
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: we up to now? Four one hundred and seventy four?
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: My goodness, it's a Q and A edition. My name
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: is Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for joining us this time. We
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: are going to be answering questions about what constellations look
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: like from a different point in space. If you're traveling,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: when when does it not look like your neighborhood anymore?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting question. We're going to talk about a
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: comet that's been in the sky recently, and I've seen
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: lots of happy snaps from people on the Space Nuts
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: podcast group facebook page about this comet, sou Chin Shan.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: We'll also be discussing the age of the universe and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: citizens science. That's all on this edition of Space Nuts.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Fifteen second Channel ten nine ignition sequence.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Space Nuts NI or three two one Space Nuts.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: As can I reported, Bills goods and joining.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Us to answer all of those questions, it is Professor
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Fred Watson. Hello Fred, Hello on.
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: Duh, Nice to see you here.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Very yes, yes, hey you been since I saw you last.
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: Sitting here? Really just waiting for something to help?
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, funny that funny? Shall we get stuck straight? Into it.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: We should. Yeah, my coffee is going cold, so we
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: should Oh.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, get into that. We are going to New
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: York first. This is a question from Roger.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Roger truck driver. And then I'm traveling through the around
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Back Park in Upstate New York. I got a question
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: about the constellations. I'm guessing that anywhere in our solar
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: system you went, they pretty much looked the same. But
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: how far would you have to go before things start
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: to get disoriented? We were to we were to go
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: to Alpha Centaur, like four light years away, would just
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: still recognize some of them? Are? Would they be completely disoriented?
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: And I'm kind of thinking of like science fiction shows
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: where they show the stars flying by like trees when
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: you're going down the road. I'm kind of guessing it
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: wouldn't look like that because of the distance between them.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: They probably look like they stayed in the same place.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: But now the question is how far can you go
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: before I think, before you don't recognize the neighborhood anymore? Right,
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: loving the show, guys, keep on trucking.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: There he is. Thank you, Roger. I always love that.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard from Roger in a wall. Yeah, that
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: was an interesting analogy about driving down the highway and
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: the trees fly past. They do portray space travel that
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: way with the stars, but I think it would probably
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: be a much more boring viewed in that in real
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: terms after a while, I mean, it'd be pretty extraordinary
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: to look at, but eventually you'd be saying, oh, yeah,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: there it is, the stars still there. Yeah, and what
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: check it in the thousand years time and see where
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: it is. It might be a bit like that.
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: It probably is actually. I mean, for first of all,
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: we you know, on human timescales, with the technology that
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: we have today, it takes a long time to get
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: even beyond the little bit of Pluto as we know
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: from New Horizons, which I think took nine years to
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: get from Earth to Pluto on its epic voyage in
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: the early part of this century. And it is interesting
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: that that that has been used as a baseline to
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: directly measure the distance to some of the stars. The
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: fact that we know where star is from the Earth,
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: and yeah, you get to what is it, thirty thirty
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: astronomical units something like that. The distance out to Blueto
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: it's thirty forty and an astronomical unit is one hundred
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: and fifty million kilometers the distance from the Earth to
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: the Sun. To get a view from there, their positions
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: look very, very slightly different. You need to measure them
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: accurately with the kind of equipment that New Horizons has
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: on board. But yeah, you can see the difference there.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: You can see what we call the parallax, the distant
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: the different position in the sky that a star looks
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: to be from different things. Yes, in the name of
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: a well known book by an author who has a
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: voice very similar to the one that you're not listening
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: to now, but you will be in a second.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I think I know him. Yes, it just happened. It
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: does happen to have a copy of the book on
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: my desk. As you mentioned you were.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's a great, great word and a great
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: title from book. But you know, Roger's comments are right
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: on the money. You've got to go a long way
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: before the constellations start looking different. I think if you
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: went to Alpha Centauri, you look at the sky and
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: think that's pretty well the same sky that we see
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: from except actually for except for you know, the Alpha
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: Centauri itself, of the Alpha Centauri systems is a triple
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: triple star system that would look pretty damn bright, and
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: so you wouldn't really see the stars of Centaurus. But
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: a lot of the stars in the sky are at
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: distances which you measure in hundreds of light years. I
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: guess with the naked eye we see out to about
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: very roughly a thousand light years, and so traveling just
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: for four and a bit light years is not going
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: to change things that much. There'll be some constellations that
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: will have the odd star looking as it's in the
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: wrong place, and said Norris will be one of them,
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: because you're right next to one of the stars of Centaurus.
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: But I think generally speaking, you will be able to
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: recognize them. They might look just slightly walked, but you're
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: able to recognize them. It was certainly a common feature
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: of textbooks that I used to read on astronomy when
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: I was a youngster growing up and getting interested in astronomy.
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: It's a common feature to have pictures of constellations as
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: they are now, as they would be in ten thousand years,
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: as they will be in fifty thousand years, and you know,
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: and so it goes on. And that's because of the
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: intrinsic motions of the stars themselves. It's not because we're
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: changing our vantage point, but it was always the same.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: You could see the basic outline of a constellation and
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: it would just change slightly sort of, you know, you
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: realize that it's not quite the same, that something's a
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: bit different about it. So I think that will be
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: what you'd see as you journeyed deeper and deeper into space.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you'd have to go a heck of a
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: long way before yeah, really sort of went where the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: hell am I?
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: I think I think fifty light years a hundred light
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: years you would start seeing a completely different set of
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: you know, set of star patterns. You really would worry
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: where you were. This would be a very alien sky
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: to you.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, indeed, a really interesting question. And that's brilliant
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and you know, not surprising that it's come from Roger,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: who spends a lot of time traveling and he probably
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: is driving along in the trees were flashing past, and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: he went, wait a minute, yep, there's a question in that.
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: So there it is.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Roger, Well done, Space MUDs. Our next question
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: comes from Lisa. Lisa is from Prince George in British
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Columbia in Canada. Hello, Professor Fred and Andrew. I was
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: lucky enough to have clear skies to comet. I'm going
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: to get it right this time. Soo Chin Shan was
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: passing by. He was passing by and got to observe
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it two nights in a row. I shared a few
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: pictures on the Space Nuts podcast group Facebook page. If
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: anyone is interested, I probably saw them, Lisa, I did too. Yeah,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: witnessing such a rare event was truly awe inspiring, and
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: it got me thinking. We know this comet has an
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: orbital period of eighty thousand years, but do we know
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: for sure that it's been here before. Is it possible
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: that it dropped out of the oort cloud more recently
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: and is on its first lap, so to speak? Is
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: there any way to tell other than direct observation if
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: a comet is a repeat visitor. Thanks for a wonderful podcast.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: I've been listening since twenty eighteen and love of both
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the show and the community that has formed around it. Lisa, Oh,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: that's lovely, Lisa. I'm glad you're enjoying being part of
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: a space nuts podcast group on Facebook. And if you're
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: not yet, maybe you should go along and have a look,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: because it is a great little page. And yeah, I
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: think everyone really enjoys there, their time there and their
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: company and the conversation they have with each other. However,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: we have an important question to answer with Sue Chin
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Shan the comet that was in the sky recently on
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the nights I was best able to observe it. It
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: was cloudy, and then when it finally cleared up, the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: darn thing was too low on the horizon for me
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: to get a look at it, so I never ever
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: got to see it myself, which I'm very disappointed about.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: But I'm pretty sure it won't be the last one
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: to pass by in the next several years, so I
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: might get a shot at another one.
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: Oh you will. And I've got a similar story to you, Andrew,
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: which is that when it was at its brightest in
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: the evening sky here in Sydney, we had really overcust weather,
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: which we've got now it's been like this for a
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: month and it's not very conducive to astronomy. But I
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: was lucky enough when we were I think I told
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: you we were many. Now we're down at a place
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: called Sea Lake near Lake Tyril in northern Victoria for
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: a star fest, and there were lots of telescopes there,
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: and one of them had his. One of the astronomers
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: who was using these telescopes had his telescope coupled to
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: a detector, a real time detector, in other words, a
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: TV camera, and he was showing the results on a
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: screen and he was actually pointing it at Tushin Chan
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: Tu Chin Shan, and so I did see it, but
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: not through the telescope, but I saw it live as
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: it was on the screen. So that cheered me up
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: quite a lot. Now to Lisa's question, that's a really
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: good one as well. And this business of the eighty
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: thousand years, it's a little bit of a moveable face
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: because comment often their orbits are perturbed strongly by the
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: gravity of other objects in the Solar System, including in
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: particular the planet Jupiter, which is the biggest of the planets,
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: and so often the orbital period of these very long
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: period comets changes. Now to the nub of the question,
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: could this be its first visit into the inner Solar System?
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: I think it could be. I'm not sure in this case,
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: and I should have read up on this, because there
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: are markers in a comet's emissions when it gets near
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: the Sun that give you some idea as to how
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: many times it has been around the tracks, in other words,
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: how many times it's passed close by the Sun, because
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: it changes the structure of the comet. Every time it
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: goes around the Sun. You get more of the volatiles
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: blown away and you're left with a more dusty body.
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: And I think think there's you know, the rate at
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: which these chemicals, the elements within and molecules within the
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: comets I see body, The rate at which these are
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: dispersed into space changes depending on which compound you're talking about,
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: And so I think by looking at the mix of
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: chemicals that is being emitted by a comet when it
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: gets near the Sun, you can get some idea of
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: how many times it's visited the Sun. Now, I'm only
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: saying things that I recall from having looked this up
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: a long time ago. So there might be nuances in
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: that that aren't correct, and there might also be details
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: that I haven't really explained. But at the bottom line
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: is that it may have been the first time around
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: the Sun. If not, we might have ways of knowing
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: about it, and I should check them out just to
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: see what the pondits say. About that.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well I was only discovered last year's.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: Right it was, so it was on its incoming orbit
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: last year, so we know the first thing.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I just did a quick search. And now I've said,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: has the commet been here before? And it says it
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: has never reached the inner solar system in human his
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: view before? Now apparently, so there you are. So it's
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: call for it.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: It's a pristine comet, isn't a thought?
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, So we just have to wagit eighty thousand years
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: to have another look at.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: It and see what's changed.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, indeed there's a few that are going to
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: be quicker than that's that's the good news. Thank you,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Lisa Tho. Really good question, and yeah you're right, it's
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the first time it's been here. Apparently. This is Space
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson, the road.
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: Piece Nuts.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Now Fred to our next question, although we're not moving
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: far around the globe because this one comes from David
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: who happens to live in Canada.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Hello Andrew and Professor Watson. David here from Saint John's
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Nufuna in Canada, just wondering how did we measure how
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: old the universe is Thanks love forcast.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Thanks David. I'm going to ask David a question that
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: every time I travel and I tell people I'm Australian,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: they'll say, oh, do you know John faith Waite? Oh, David,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: do you know Lisa? Now I gather from the provinces
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: they live in. They're probably not very close.
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: Together at all.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: But you know, I get that. You get that a lot.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: I get that a lot when I travel. It's ridiculous. Well,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I might know him, except there are thirty million other
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: people that you know. Ah, yeah, it's funny. It is funny.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Ah to the universe. How do we know it's right?
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: How did we measure it in the first place? What's
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: the goss there?
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: So? Yeah, So the first measurements made of the age
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: of the universe were when we started measuring what's called
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: the Hubble constant, And the Hubble constant is the current
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: rate of expansion of the universe. It's how fast it's
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: expanding now. And it's an easy calculation to go from that.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: If you assume the expansion has been constant throughout the
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: history of the universe, it's an easy calculation to go
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: from the expansion velocity back to when everything was at
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: the same point in space, and you get the answer.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: You get an answer of about if I remember this,
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: about fifteen billion years. So that was the first way
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: that we evaluated the age of the universe. And I
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: guess that was in the early sixties seventies when the
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: Big Bang theory was really becoming very much the theory
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: of the universe as we know it rather than one
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: that was just a hypothesis. And so that's the first way.
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: But there are there are other ways of doing it,
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: and we can you can sort of again it comes
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: to it's all about accurately measuring distances and things of
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: that sort, because that's what you need to do to
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: get a good idea of well, first of all, the
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: hubble constant. You've got to you've got to evaluate what
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: that is, and it needs the measurement of distances. And
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: there are two ways of measuring distances in this kind
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: of context. One is standard rulers and the other is
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: standard candles. So standard candle is is a light source
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: that you hold up whose intrinsic brightness that you know,
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: and then you see how bright it is from your
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: vantage point. And if you know the intrinsic brightness, you
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: can work out the distance, and that's how the super
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: and ova work works. People are doing investigation of the
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: in fact, in particular the dark energy and the accelerated
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: expansion of the universe. They look at super and ova
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: explosions of a particular type that we know has a
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: certain brightness, and from that you can deduce the supernova's distance,
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: and from that you can tell whether your value of
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: the Hubble constant is right or whether it needs tweaking.
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: And the standard ruler method actually goes back to the
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: early universe when there are characteristic separations of galaxies, and
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: even before that, the characteristic separation of the hot and
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: cold features, of the warm and cool features in the
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: cosmic microwave background radiation give you an idea about the
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: you know, the age of the universe, the state of
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: the universe at that time. So all these things come
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: together and you've got a much more subtle value for
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: the age of the universe. We now think it's thirteen
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: point eight billion years, but that's not that different from
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: just taking a straightforward, you know, linear expansion since zero
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: to determine the age of the universe from the hob
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: directly from the Hubble constant, So thirty point eight billion years.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: It's got a lot of input into it, but even
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: the crudest method gives us something similar to that.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: While you were talking, I thought I'll do a Google
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: search and I asked what is the exact age of
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the universe? And the answer was interesting. According to estimates,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the universe is thirteen point seven billion years old with
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: an uncertainty of two hundred million years. We can't really
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: be exact, can we.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: No, that's right, so our technology has to improve. I
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: have always had not a theory, but the notion that
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: when we do get down to the exact age of
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: the universe, it will turn out to have been created
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: on the first of April, and that will tell us
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: things about the universe that we probably don't really want
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: to know.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: If it's just one big joke, yeah, oh, how are
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: you loved?
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: Yes?
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Imagine So so there it is. David several ways of
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: making the measurement, and they all come up with around
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: about the same number. Finally, Fred, we have a question
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: from Sandy. I love these short form questions. Hi, Fred
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: and Andrew, are there citizens science programs that you know
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: of where average people I e. Me help with scientific
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: data for asteroid occultations, occultations and light curve data submission
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: for stars and asteroids. Wow, thanks Sandy.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: Yes, another great question and good on you. Some do
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: that means you're making measurements, and citizens science is a
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: great way of getting those measurements into our knowledge base.
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: So the first thing that came into my mind was
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: the universe, and Zuniverse is a kind of suite of
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: citizen science programs that started, I think with the Galaxy
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: Zoo project, which was citizens science citizen scientists looking at
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: images from the Sloane Digital Sky Survey, and that's a
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: telescope in New Mexico that surveyed the northern sky in
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: very great detail. Discovered all these weird and wonderful objects,
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: and they are among them galaxies, I mean, the weird
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: and wonderful galaxies is probably what mostly this was about,
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: hence the name Galaxy Zoo, which produced some quite extraordinary discoveries.
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: Hanni's object is one that comes to mind. I think
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: we might have mentioned that recently, a green blob next
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: to a galaxy, which was eventually traced to gas fluorescing
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: after an outburst from the center of the galaxy probably
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: are burnt by the black hole at the center of
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: the galaxy some millions or even billions of years ago.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: Haney's vote. It was called because I think that's the
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: Dutch word for objects, and she was a Dutch school teacher,
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: which probably still is. So that sort of thing was
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: a particular version of cities and science, but that sort
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: of spread its tentacles and became something called the zuniverse,
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: which I think has a number of different projects in it,
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: and I think there may well be they may well
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: be asteroid occultation you know pages or like data like
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: curve pages. I actually just googled cities and Science asteroid occultations.
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: They came up with a number of interesting websites. Unistella
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: has one Unistellar Citizen Science. Unistellar is a company that
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: is actually manufactures a very particular kind of telescope, and
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: they have an asteroid occultation citizen science page. That's one
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: to look for. I also googled light curves, I think
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: cities and science like curves. That came up with a
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: whole lot of things. One of them is it's actually,
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: you know, the Hubble telescope has global cities and science
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: projects of its own. But zooly versus perhaps the classification
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: that's biggest and perhaps most popular, and they certainly do
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: have a variable star like curve citizen science project. There
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: are specialist astronomical societies that do both of those things,
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: as well as societies dedicated to asteroid observations and dedicated
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: to variable star work. Most of them are international and
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: very well established, and they're not that hard to find.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: So have a look around, Sandy, and you're sure to
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: find the right one for you.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I thought I'd just throw one out there
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: and say, you know, what is the greatest discovery by
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: astronomical discovery by a citizen sign scientists? And it went
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: straight to an August twenty twenty four article in fiz
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: dot org Citizen science projects identify twenty new astronomical discoveries
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and that included previously unidentified supernovae. And there's more than
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: two thousand volunteers across one hundred and five countries that
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: are working on these projects. The project is called Killer
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Nova Seekers, and they're aiming to find kilo novae, the
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: explo cosmic explosions of neutron stars and black holes colliding
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: in distant galaxies. So there's all sorts of stuff going
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: on out there. If you've search deep enough, you'll find
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: what you're more in terms of citizen science in the
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: realm of astronomy. So yeah, there's a lot going on.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I don't do it with astronomy, but I do do
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a thing that's not I don't
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: suppose you call it citizens science. So I downloaded an
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: app called dream Lab d am Lab, and what it
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: does is at night, when I put my mobile phone
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: on a charger, I open up the dream Lab app
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and I just click start session and it starts crunching
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: numbers using my phone as part of a giant computer
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: to sort out whatever scientific problem somebody's trying to solve.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: The last one I did, which took two years to crunch,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: was a COVID nineteen calculation. Right now, I'm doing one
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: through dream Lab, supporting the Tropical cyclone Modeling Phase four study.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: So it's all sorts of subjects that you can sell.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Identity Hunter Phase two, which is an Italian study. The
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Imperial College London is doing a study on long COVID.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: So if you want to download, if you want to
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: use your phone for very positive reasons, you may find
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: astronomical studies that you can do through a mobile phone app,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: or if you want to help in so many other areas,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: just have look for dream lab. Dream Lab with a
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: little purple cloud is the icon. I basically let my
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: let whoever use my phone when I'm asleep to crunch calculations.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: So it's a good way to use mobile technology for
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the greater good. I reckon.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: But yes, Andy, I don't.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Think you'll have any trouble finding citizens science groups in
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: those areas that you are asked about. Thanks for your question,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and if you do have questions for us, go to
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: our website and send them to us there. It just
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: clicked the AMA tab on the space nuts dot com
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts podcast dot com website and send us your
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: textra audio questions there. Don't forget to tell us who
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: you are and we from just lately they've all been
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: from Canada or Brisbane as it turns out, but I'm
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: sure other people around the world sides as well. Jordie
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: who's always asking for dinner and Fred, thanks, thanks so
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: much for your company and answering those questions today. It's
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: been good fun.
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks again. I think Jordy is telling me it's
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: time I gave up on this. Don't pro walk.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: So you know you very much, Andrew, and we'll talk again,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: so we will. Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large and
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: to here in the studio. Nothing much to say there,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: no movement at all, and from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: for your company. See you again and Jordy on the
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: next epre Sad of Space Nuts by Bie.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: To the Space Nuts podcast.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bides
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: dot com.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.