Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Artemis Updates, The Brain Nebula & Mapping the Galactic Center

Transcript

Artemis Updates, The Brain Nebula & Mapping the Galactic Center · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us again. This is Space Nuts.
0:03
Speaker 1: My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's great to have your company.
0:06
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about a lot of things today,
0:10
Speaker 1: and one of them is the Artemis program. Now, we
0:13
Speaker 1: did talk about it very recently because things had changed.
0:17
Speaker 1: The Artemis to launch was set back, and it looks
0:21
Speaker 1: like they're actually going to take the artemist to rocket
0:24
Speaker 1: back to the assembly building now and they're not anticipating
0:28
Speaker 1: an Artemis to launch to send humans around the Moon
0:31
Speaker 1: and back until at least April. But that's not what
0:35
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about. We'll explain that shortly. We're
0:39
Speaker 1: going to look at the new Ukrainium nebula. This one
0:42
Speaker 1: sounds quite unbelievable a brain in space could be and
0:48
Speaker 1: the center of our galaxy has been mapped in detail.
0:51
Speaker 1: What's it look like? We will tell you on this
0:54
Speaker 1: episode of Space.
0:55
Speaker 2: Nuts fifteen, Channel ten nine ignition sign Space Nuts NY
1:04
Speaker 2: or three.
1:06
Speaker 1: Two Space Nuts as when I reported Bill's good. Joining
1:13
Speaker 1: us once again is Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large.
1:17
Speaker 2: Hi Fred, Hello Andrew. Good to see you back from
1:20
Speaker 2: your sod.
1:22
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I won't dwell on it too much. I'm
1:25
Speaker 1: sure people have seen the photos on Facebook if they
1:28
Speaker 1: cared to look on my page. I didn't put them
1:30
Speaker 1: on the space nuts page. But yeah, we went to
1:32
Speaker 1: Borneo for a couple of weeks and we saw some
1:36
Speaker 1: amazing wildlife, orangutang sun bears, proboscous monkeys, civets. You know,
1:43
Speaker 1: you know about the civet They eat the coffee berry
1:47
Speaker 1: and pooh out the bean and then they collect the
1:49
Speaker 1: beans and turn them into coffee. Yeah, we saw some
1:52
Speaker 1: of those. Didn't try to coffee. What else? Macaque monkeys.
1:57
Speaker 1: I even managed data in holes at a rather nice
2:00
Speaker 1: resort golf course, and I've paid the price for that
2:03
Speaker 1: because it was a pretty ordinary game. But I enjoyed
2:06
Speaker 1: the course beautiful, although the greens in are better than
2:11
Speaker 1: that there, you go much better. It's how Superintendent was
2:15
Speaker 1: very pleased to hear when I saw him the other day.
2:18
Speaker 1: But yeah, incredible country.
2:19
Speaker 2: I think.
2:20
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can see the map behind me,
2:22
Speaker 1: Fred say that, I tell you, yes, that is the
2:25
Speaker 1: map of the Sandikan Death March. In World War Two,
2:30
Speaker 1: Australian and English military personnel that had been captured by
2:33
Speaker 1: the Japanese were sent to Borneo to build an airport,
2:38
Speaker 1: and when it looked like the war was lost to Japan,
2:41
Speaker 1: they were ordered to kill all prisoners and they force
2:44
Speaker 1: marched one eight hundred Australians from Sandakan to a place
2:53
Speaker 1: called Ranao in northern Borneo. Of those, eighteen hundred six survived.
3:01
Speaker 1: It's a terrible tragedy. It's Australia's worst atrocity in terms
3:08
Speaker 1: of war, and not many people know about it. They
3:12
Speaker 1: know all about Gallipoli, they know all about some of
3:15
Speaker 1: the major battles of World War One and World War Two,
3:19
Speaker 1: the Rats of to Brook. It all goes down in folklore,
3:22
Speaker 1: but it is is one of the probably one of
3:25
Speaker 1: the most forgotten elements of Australian military history really, and
3:29
Speaker 1: I would encourage people to go and read about it.
3:32
Speaker 2: I knew about it.
3:33
Speaker 1: But it's not well publicized. And I think it's a
3:37
Speaker 1: tragedy that we tend to put this stuff at the
3:41
Speaker 1: back of our minds and should never be forgotten what
3:45
Speaker 1: happened over there. So we've basically on the tour followed
3:50
Speaker 1: the route of the death March, not intentionally. It was
3:53
Speaker 1: just the way the road went, but went to the
3:56
Speaker 1: memorials and read all the names, one hundreds and hundreds
4:01
Speaker 1: of names. The British suffered similarly, there were six hundred
4:05
Speaker 1: British that were captured and basically left to die. It
4:09
Speaker 1: was just just horrible. For itd horrible, but the wildlife
4:14
Speaker 1: and the rainforests and the rivers and the people magnificent.
4:18
Speaker 1: Highly recommend borneo, highly recommend it. Now, you were up
4:22
Speaker 1: late last night, weren't you.
4:25
Speaker 2: I was, Yeah, there was because of the total eclipse
4:27
Speaker 2: of the Moon, which I know you didn't get to
4:31
Speaker 2: see because you had eight eighths cloud. I know that
4:36
Speaker 2: because of the angle. Australian telescope not very far away
4:39
Speaker 2: from you got no observations last night of any can
4:42
Speaker 2: But in Sydney we've had cloudy weather for weeks, but
4:46
Speaker 2: the clouds, the clouds broke and so we saw the
4:51
Speaker 2: eclipse and that was Geordie. Of course that just chimed
4:55
Speaker 2: in there. But we actually have Geordie's sister staying with
4:58
Speaker 2: us for a whole one. So yeah, this is going
5:03
Speaker 2: to probably for the next few weeks. We'll have the
5:06
Speaker 2: terrible duo, the more or less identical ones a little
5:09
Speaker 2: bit fatter than the other. I won't mention which is which,
5:11
Speaker 2: but yeah, and so they yes, she arrived, Rosy arrived today.
5:16
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's nothing to do with the clips. We
5:19
Speaker 2: did see the blood moon. It was a total eclipse
5:21
Speaker 2: of the moon, so that the Earth, the moon was
5:24
Speaker 2: well immersed in the shadow of the Earth. We had
5:27
Speaker 2: about an hour of totality and during that time the
5:30
Speaker 2: clouds came and went a bit, but we got a
5:33
Speaker 2: really good view of that blood moon phenomenon caused by
5:37
Speaker 2: scattering of lights from the atmosphere, scattering of sunlight. Yes,
5:42
Speaker 2: so it was good, but it was, as you've just said,
5:44
Speaker 2: of late night and I'm just catching up.
5:46
Speaker 1: Yeah enough, it's quite a spectacle of blood moon. I'm
5:49
Speaker 1: sorry I missed it, but it can't help the weather,
5:54
Speaker 1: which reminds me we also had to deal with flooding
5:57
Speaker 1: at the end of the monsoon while we were overseas,
5:59
Speaker 1: and that it was fun driving through floodwaters. They wouldn't
6:02
Speaker 1: let you do that in Australia, but we weren't in Australia,
6:04
Speaker 1: were we. So yeah, we should get down to it, Fred,
6:08
Speaker 1: There's a lot to talk about, and our first subject
6:11
Speaker 1: is yet again the Artemis missions. And I mentioned at
6:14
Speaker 1: the beginning that Artemis two has been put back in
6:17
Speaker 1: the shed and probably won't launch those astronauts until at
6:21
Speaker 1: least April. But we are now talking about Artemis three. Now,
6:28
Speaker 1: this was the mission that was slated for initially twenty
6:32
Speaker 1: twenty seven, then push back to probably twenty twenty eight
6:36
Speaker 1: to put people on the Moon. There's been several changes.
6:41
Speaker 1: It looks like they won't be doing that, and they
6:44
Speaker 1: might not be using SpaceX the way things are shaping up.
6:49
Speaker 2: That's right. So this was an announcement last week at
6:54
Speaker 2: the time we're recording, and you're quite right. What has
6:58
Speaker 2: happened is that there's in a major update to the
7:01
Speaker 2: Artemis program with an extra mission slotted in. So Artemis three,
7:08
Speaker 2: exactly as you've said, was originally going to be the
7:10
Speaker 2: lunar landing mission sometime after twenty twenty seven. But what
7:19
Speaker 2: they have, what NASA has done, is inserted another mission,
7:26
Speaker 2: which is now Artemis three, which will not land on
7:29
Speaker 2: the Moon. It will be a spacecraft that will simply
7:34
Speaker 2: go into Earth orbit, and what it will do is
7:40
Speaker 2: essentially replicate in a sense what Apollo nine did after
7:47
Speaker 2: the Apollo eight mission. It's to check that you can
7:52
Speaker 2: rendezvous with the equipment, you can do the necessary steps
7:57
Speaker 2: that need to be taken in space which have not
8:01
Speaker 2: yet been tried and tested. Because Artemis two will simply
8:05
Speaker 2: involve the Orion capsule containing the four astronauts, what that
8:10
Speaker 2: will do is it will accelerate up to the eleven
8:14
Speaker 2: kilometers per second needing to get to the Moon, go
8:17
Speaker 2: around the Moon, and then come back again without any
8:20
Speaker 2: of the kind of technical details involved with first of all,
8:24
Speaker 2: refueling spacecraft in space, that's one of the things that's
8:27
Speaker 2: part of the Artemist program, but also doing the rendezvous
8:32
Speaker 2: and turning spacecraft around and things of that sort. It's
8:35
Speaker 2: a bit like in the Apollo missions where you had
8:38
Speaker 2: to turn the turn the lunar module around to dock
8:43
Speaker 2: with the with the crew module, with the basically the
8:47
Speaker 2: crew capsule. So all of that is now being slotted
8:51
Speaker 2: into Apollo. Sorry, Becky. Artemis three, with the landing itself,
8:57
Speaker 2: actually forecasts for Artemis four, and one of the reasons
9:02
Speaker 2: for this is the fact that there is still a
9:07
Speaker 2: lot of work to do on the landing vehicle. Now.
9:11
Speaker 2: Back in the day some years ago, NASA contracted both
9:16
Speaker 2: SpaceX and Blue Origin. The two companies led by the
9:21
Speaker 2: two billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Those two companies
9:25
Speaker 2: were tasked with developing a crew lander vehicle to land
9:30
Speaker 2: on the Moon. The favored version was Elon Musk's Starship
9:37
Speaker 2: the top end of a starship which would which was
9:42
Speaker 2: originally going to be the Artemis three Lander. Now the
9:46
Speaker 2: lander landing has been pushed back to Artemis four, but
9:49
Speaker 2: the gate is now still open for the Bezos company
9:55
Speaker 2: to further develop its own lunar landing module, which has
10:01
Speaker 2: been under test for quite a while and is so
10:04
Speaker 2: in a sense, is a competitor to SpaceX. So the
10:08
Speaker 2: two programs are running side by side, and NASA will
10:12
Speaker 2: eventually have to make a choice as to which one
10:14
Speaker 2: they go with. If I may, there's a very nice
10:17
Speaker 2: quote from NASA NASA Associated Administrator, a very senior person
10:23
Speaker 2: in NASA, who says, we are looking back to the
10:26
Speaker 2: wisdom of the folks that designed Apollo. The entire sequence
10:30
Speaker 2: of Artemis flights needs to represent a step by step
10:33
Speaker 2: build up of capability, with each step bringing us closer
10:36
Speaker 2: to our ability to perform the landing missions. Each step
10:40
Speaker 2: needs to be big enough to make progress but not
10:42
Speaker 2: so big that we take unnecessary risk given previous learnings. Therefore,
10:46
Speaker 2: we want to fly the landing missions in as close
10:49
Speaker 2: to the same Earth are sent configuration as possible, which
10:53
Speaker 2: means using an upper stage and pad system as close
10:55
Speaker 2: to the Block one configuration as possible. That's the basic,
10:58
Speaker 2: the basic space launch system configuration. So we will see
11:03
Speaker 2: what happens. You're right that Artemis two, the the stack
11:09
Speaker 2: is currently back in the vehicle assembly building for checks
11:13
Speaker 2: on the upper stage, that's the second stage that will
11:16
Speaker 2: actually push the spacecraft into a lunar trajectory. There were
11:22
Speaker 2: issues with the helium mechanism for that upper stage, you
11:27
Speaker 2: might remember we did talk about that before. That's now
11:31
Speaker 2: being fixed and we have a date no sooner than
11:35
Speaker 2: April the sixth for a launch of Artemis two, so
11:38
Speaker 2: we'll look out for that. But yes, a major change
11:40
Speaker 2: in the in the Artemist strategy, which makes a lot
11:43
Speaker 2: of sense.
11:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it does, and copying a successful series
11:49
Speaker 1: like the Apollo missions, notwithstanding what happened to Apollo third
11:52
Speaker 1: in but that wasn't that was unforeseen.
11:55
Speaker 2: It was just a quirk really.
11:58
Speaker 1: And everyone got time. But yeah, what I find interesting
12:03
Speaker 1: is those Apollo missions went back to back to back
12:06
Speaker 1: to back to back really fast. They seem to be
12:09
Speaker 1: much more inflated in their in their mission dates, don't they.
12:14
Speaker 2: They do, and that's partly because the technology is now
12:17
Speaker 2: far more complex, because these missions are not just to
12:21
Speaker 2: achieve boots on the ground. It's all about setting up science,
12:25
Speaker 2: you know, a kind of almost permanent presence on the Moon.
12:30
Speaker 2: The ultimate schedule, again, this came out of the recent
12:35
Speaker 2: press releases and press conferences. The ultimate schedule is one
12:39
Speaker 2: Artemis mission per year once we have started, once the
12:43
Speaker 2: first lunar landing has taken place, there'll be one a year. Now.
12:47
Speaker 2: That is much slower than the Apollo cadence. They were
12:50
Speaker 2: one every few months I think. So Apollo eleven was July,
12:55
Speaker 2: Pollo twelve was was November, when Apollo thirteen was. But
13:01
Speaker 2: you get that, you know that the intervals were a
13:04
Speaker 2: few months rather than a few years. I guess another
13:07
Speaker 2: reason for not just not just the scientific reasons for
13:13
Speaker 2: making it a spacing of one year, but that each
13:16
Speaker 2: of these is a very expensive venture. I've seen a
13:20
Speaker 2: figure quoted a four billion dollars per launch for an
13:22
Speaker 2: Artimist mission, which is high watering. That's right.
13:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, did they hit you up for a loan for it?
13:32
Speaker 2: I think yeah, I could probably muster a few dollars. Though.
13:37
Speaker 1: It's funny when you talk about the advances in technology
13:39
Speaker 1: because I'm holding my mobile phone in my hand right now.
13:43
Speaker 1: It's got a hell of a lot more computer power
13:46
Speaker 1: than the computer on Apollo eleven.
13:49
Speaker 2: Sadly, it's also invisible because of your background. No, no, yeah,
13:56
Speaker 2: it just disappears what it looks like. You know what
13:58
Speaker 2: it looks like. That's right, Yeah, but you're absolutely right. Yes,
14:03
Speaker 2: it's quite amazing.
14:05
Speaker 1: Not many people probably realize they're packing a lot more
14:07
Speaker 1: power than the Apollo missions carried. So yeah, it's all
14:11
Speaker 1: in your pocket. If you'd like to read about the
14:13
Speaker 1: latest in regard to the Artemis missions, you can do
14:18
Speaker 1: that at the Universe today dot com website. But Nasau
14:21
Speaker 1: I'll have it on their website and many others as well.
14:24
Speaker 1: Is a Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
14:34
Speaker 3: That's a that's agreement is that if the goodness this
14:41
Speaker 3: is what he does is he gets very enthusiastic.
14:48
Speaker 2: Nuts. Oh drives me in mud. Honestly, it drives me mud.
14:55
Speaker 2: I love it. I really do.
14:57
Speaker 1: To our next story this this could be the title
15:00
Speaker 1: of a science fiction novel, The Brain in space. We're
15:04
Speaker 1: talking about a very strange nebula that looks like a
15:09
Speaker 1: brain inside a clear sphere, and this is the consequence
15:15
Speaker 1: of a star that's kind of shed its out of
15:20
Speaker 1: layers and created this quite bizarre looking nebula called PMR one.
15:27
Speaker 2: Indeed, that's right. I very much like the headline from
15:33
Speaker 2: space dot Com covering this story, which is James Webspace
15:37
Speaker 2: telescope performs brain surgery or mysterious exposed cranium nebula, which
15:42
Speaker 2: I think sums it up pretty well. That's a good one. Yeah,
15:45
Speaker 2: it's great. So it's basically a highly evolved star, by
15:52
Speaker 2: which I mean a star that's getting near the end
15:54
Speaker 2: of its life. It's thrown off some of the layers
15:58
Speaker 2: of its outer envelope. And what we've seen from the
16:02
Speaker 2: James web is images which are taken in the near
16:06
Speaker 2: infrared and in the mid infrared, and so we get
16:09
Speaker 2: two quite different views of this thing that does look
16:12
Speaker 2: for all the world like an X ray inside somebody's head.
16:18
Speaker 2: You can see the outline of the skull and a
16:20
Speaker 2: lot of funny stuff going on inside.
16:23
Speaker 1: It really does look that way, doesn't it Like somebody
16:25
Speaker 1: does put a brain in a goldfish ball and check
16:28
Speaker 1: that up in the air.
16:29
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, with a few stars in the backgroom.
16:33
Speaker 2: It's a little bit close to home for me actually,
16:37
Speaker 2: because the object's technical formal name is PMR one, and
16:44
Speaker 2: it was discovered originally by astronomers using the telescope, one
16:50
Speaker 2: of the telescopes. I was astronomer in charge of the
16:52
Speaker 2: one point to me to UK Schmidt telescope back in
16:56
Speaker 2: the late nineteen nineties, and three of my close leagues
17:00
Speaker 2: were involved with this program, Quentin Parker, David Morgan, and
17:04
Speaker 2: Ken Russell. And their names are Parker, Morgan, and Russell.
17:08
Speaker 2: And that is why this is called PMR one. It
17:11
Speaker 2: was the first object that was discovered under a program
17:15
Speaker 2: actually really masterminded by Quentin Parker, an old friend who's
17:19
Speaker 2: now a professor in the University of Hong Kong. He
17:23
Speaker 2: had a mission to photograph the sky because back in
17:28
Speaker 2: those days we were still using photography on the Schmid
17:30
Speaker 2: telescope using what we call a narrow band filter that
17:34
Speaker 2: just picked out the light of excited hydrogen, something called
17:38
Speaker 2: an H one filter or an H alpha filter, and
17:41
Speaker 2: so the telescope used this filter to survey the night
17:45
Speaker 2: sky and many interesting objects were revealed, of which the
17:50
Speaker 2: first one in the particular program that he collaborated with
17:53
Speaker 2: David Morgan and Ken Russell was concerned PMR one. That's
17:59
Speaker 2: the object we're talking about now. Now we never saw
18:02
Speaker 2: it with the Schmidt telescope. That was just a flaint,
18:04
Speaker 2: faint glowing blob. But with the James Webb we see
18:11
Speaker 2: this extraordinarily detailed, this detailed image. So that the history
18:16
Speaker 2: is that it was discovered in the late nineteen nineties
18:18
Speaker 2: on the Schmidt telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, which was
18:22
Speaker 2: a kind of fore runner of the James Web telescopes
18:24
Speaker 2: and Infrared Telescope and NASA Infrared Observatory when they looked
18:28
Speaker 2: at PMR one. That was when this curious appearance led
18:32
Speaker 2: to its unofficial name of the exposed cranium nebula. But
18:37
Speaker 2: the James Webb was taking that a step further with
18:39
Speaker 2: these latest observations, which are really quite remarkable, and you
18:43
Speaker 2: do get a very strong impression of the three dimensional
18:47
Speaker 2: view of this ball of not so much a ball
18:51
Speaker 2: it's a kind of elongated almost like a you know,
18:55
Speaker 2: an oval football elongated sphere of gas with a whole
19:02
Speaker 2: lot of stuff going on inside it. And what we've
19:06
Speaker 2: got is an ancient star which is casting off its
19:12
Speaker 2: outer layers. There is a class of stars called wolf
19:18
Speaker 2: Rea stars, named after two astronomers I think Drs wolf
19:25
Speaker 2: and Reya. I think that's right thinking back, and they
19:28
Speaker 2: are really ancient stars, massive stars that are getting near
19:31
Speaker 2: the end of their lives, and basically they have winds
19:35
Speaker 2: of radiation which are blowing away their outer envelopes and
19:40
Speaker 2: form this nebula, and eventually they may turn into a
19:44
Speaker 2: supernova and exploding star. So we understand though from the
19:51
Speaker 2: research that's been carried out with this, that whether it
19:54
Speaker 2: is a wolf raya star in the middle of PMR one,
19:57
Speaker 2: or something else, we don't know. The that's going to
20:00
Speaker 2: be absolutely at the very center of that brain like
20:04
Speaker 2: nebula inside the exposed cranium.
20:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gathering that seeing something like this is very unusual.
20:13
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like the kind of nebulaly normally see photographed.
20:19
Speaker 1: It's got uniformity for a start, and it's and you
20:23
Speaker 1: can see the explosive effect radiating out, it just happens
20:29
Speaker 1: to look like a brain.
20:32
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, So I mean that hydrogen alpha survey
20:38
Speaker 2: that I mentioned that Quentin Parker and colleagues were engaged in.
20:42
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I took some of the photographs for
20:45
Speaker 2: it as well back in the day, because I was
20:47
Speaker 2: still a working astronomer then when I was an astronomy
20:50
Speaker 2: in charge. I think that one of the main things
20:54
Speaker 2: that that program did was reveal a very large number
20:58
Speaker 2: of silicle planetary nebula. So a planetary nebula is a
21:02
Speaker 2: cloud of gas that's got usually has circular symmetry, which
21:07
Speaker 2: is why it looks like a planet. And it was
21:08
Speaker 2: William Hershall who gave it that gave them the name
21:11
Speaker 2: a planetary nebula. The most famous ones are the Ring
21:15
Speaker 2: nebula in the northern hemisphere and the Helix nebula down
21:18
Speaker 2: in the south. But this thing might might be might
21:22
Speaker 2: actually in the end turn out to be a planetary nebula,
21:24
Speaker 2: which is an old star that's cast off its out
21:28
Speaker 2: a lairs and the central core of the star has
21:31
Speaker 2: turned into what we call a white dwarf, something about
21:34
Speaker 2: the size of the Earth, but with very high mass
21:41
Speaker 2: massive a star, and those are white dwarfs are very
21:45
Speaker 2: hot and they're what excite the glowing the gas into
21:49
Speaker 2: into glowing. But it's not clear whether this object is
21:52
Speaker 2: actually a white dwarf or one of these al free
21:54
Speaker 2: stars that I was just talking about.
21:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think we've probably got a bit of
21:59
Speaker 1: a Dolier effect here because we've just got it and gone,
22:03
Speaker 1: that's a brain.
22:04
Speaker 2: It's a brain. Yeah, that's right, Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
22:08
Speaker 1: When we were out on the river in Borneo, what
22:11
Speaker 1: they told us was it's chock full of saltwater crocodiles,
22:15
Speaker 1: because every time we saw a log, Yes, that's the
22:19
Speaker 1: thing you.
22:19
Speaker 2: Thought it was, Oh, it's a crocodile. Yeah.
22:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think when we saw that forty meter crocodile
22:26
Speaker 1: surging down the river, we were all panicking a bit
22:29
Speaker 1: turned out to be a tree.
22:32
Speaker 2: Well the brunches gave it away, did they, Yes.
22:35
Speaker 1: Well, no, I didn't have any was that's what really made.
22:37
Speaker 2: It weird like a crocodile?
22:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, because we had all that monsoon rain while
22:42
Speaker 1: we were there, and the river was flooded. And this
22:44
Speaker 1: is a river five hundred and sixty kilometers long and
22:47
Speaker 1: about where we were two or three hundred meters wide.
22:50
Speaker 1: It was massive and the water was flowing very fast.
22:53
Speaker 1: It was quite scary actually, but yeah, it is. It is, Yeah,
22:57
Speaker 1: one of those weird effects. We try to humanize every
23:00
Speaker 1: thing we see in You look at something and think crocodile. No, actually, no,
23:04
Speaker 1: that's a log And here here we are looking at
23:07
Speaker 1: a brain in space, which is a some kind of nebula.
23:12
Speaker 1: Trying to figure out what kind and how it all happened.
23:15
Speaker 1: But you can read about that at theaweb dot org
23:19
Speaker 1: website if you want to check it out. Amazing images
23:22
Speaker 1: they are too. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley
23:25
Speaker 1: and Fred Watson.
23:28
Speaker 2: About step Bartolom mount Up. I'm all crowd preman space nuts.
23:43
Speaker 1: In the past spread we've had questions from the audience
23:45
Speaker 1: about the center of our galaxy and it's not easy
23:50
Speaker 1: to answer because we can't see it. It's all shrouded
23:52
Speaker 1: in dust. Although you and I have discussed what it
23:55
Speaker 1: would be like on Earth if there was no dust,
23:58
Speaker 1: and the light would be so much different for us,
24:01
Speaker 1: So things could have turned out a different way had
24:04
Speaker 1: that not been there. But yes, it's shrouded, but there
24:08
Speaker 1: are ways to look, and they've just published a finding,
24:13
Speaker 1: thanks to a couple of the great telescopes on Earth,
24:17
Speaker 1: of what the center of our galaxy is like. They've
24:20
Speaker 1: mapped a massive section of it in significant detail.
24:25
Speaker 2: That is correct. And I might just preface this discussion
24:30
Speaker 2: by noting that in terms of personnel there is a
24:35
Speaker 2: close connection with what we've just been talking about the
24:38
Speaker 2: UK Schmidt Telescope, because one of my former colleagues at
24:42
Speaker 2: the UK Schmidt Telescope, doctor Andy Longmore, I worked with
24:47
Speaker 2: him at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. He's still based in Edinburgh,
24:51
Speaker 2: but he and his wife Marie were actually visiting us
24:54
Speaker 2: here in Australia at the beginning of this year, so
24:57
Speaker 2: I went up to Newcastle to see them. And it's
25:00
Speaker 2: their son that is the lead author on the paper
25:04
Speaker 2: that has just mapped the center of the galaxy, which
25:07
Speaker 2: is very nice. It's a lovely connection. So Steve Longmore
25:10
Speaker 2: their son, like father, like son. He's turned into an
25:14
Speaker 2: astronomer and very capable because he has led this major
25:19
Speaker 2: survey which is called ACES. ACES is an acronym for
25:27
Speaker 2: Alma CMZ Exploration Survey and the CMZ, if I remember rightly,
25:33
Speaker 2: is the central something zone, central molecular zone of the
25:39
Speaker 2: galaxy where molecules lurk around around the black hole at
25:45
Speaker 2: the center of the galaxy. So these observations have been
25:48
Speaker 2: principally done by as you said, it's been done by
25:52
Speaker 2: some of the great telescopes. One of them is ALMA.
25:55
Speaker 2: ALMA itself the Attakama large millimeter submillimeter array that has
26:02
Speaker 2: basically formed images of the whole of the region around
26:07
Speaker 2: the center of our galaxy, and it's a very very
26:10
Speaker 2: detailed image. It's a mosaic basically that's been built up.
26:14
Speaker 2: The great thing about ALMA is that you can tune
26:17
Speaker 2: it in to various chemical molecules, all of which emit
26:22
Speaker 2: their radio frequencies at different wavelengths, so it's like having
26:26
Speaker 2: a radio spectrum of every point in the center of
26:30
Speaker 2: our galaxy, which means that you can build up images
26:33
Speaker 2: showing how these molecules behave around the center of the galaxy.
26:41
Speaker 2: So it really is an extraordinary piece of work with
26:47
Speaker 2: a lot of detail, a great deal of information about
26:52
Speaker 2: both the turbulence and the chemistry that's taking place around
26:57
Speaker 2: the center of our galaxy. There's a very extensive article
27:02
Speaker 2: about it on the brighter side of science, on brighter
27:06
Speaker 2: side of news. It's got some great images and a
27:10
Speaker 2: lot of details about what has been found. I'm looking
27:14
Speaker 2: for a quote which came from one of the scientists
27:17
Speaker 2: which really describes very cogently what they've done. In fact,
27:26
Speaker 2: Andy sorry, Steve Longmore himself is saying the CMZ or CMZ,
27:31
Speaker 2: we would call it americanizing it because that's arta karma.
27:35
Speaker 2: Large millimeter array has got a strong US contingent as
27:38
Speaker 2: well as other international users. The CMZ hosts some of
27:42
Speaker 2: the most massive styles known in our galaxy. Many of
27:45
Speaker 2: these styles live fast and die young, and the end
27:48
Speaker 2: in super and ova explosions and in some cases what
27:50
Speaker 2: we call hypernova, very very intense supernova. Let me just
27:56
Speaker 2: find some other words that I was looking for, because
28:02
Speaker 2: the extraordinary thing is just how turbulent this region is
28:07
Speaker 2: the fact that we've got packed into that region around
28:12
Speaker 2: the center of our galaxy. We've got the turbulence of
28:15
Speaker 2: gas moving under the gravitational influence of a black hole.
28:19
Speaker 2: You've got the gravity of the black hole. You've got
28:21
Speaker 2: intense magnetic fields, you've got outflows from these giant stars,
28:26
Speaker 2: and all of this is coming together to make a
28:29
Speaker 2: very complex region of space, which basically is what has
28:34
Speaker 2: been revealed by this new image. It is quite extraordinary.
28:38
Speaker 1: It is rather and I'm just reading some of the
28:40
Speaker 1: data and you know the description they've given lists of
28:45
Speaker 1: radius of six point one pass six with an expansion
28:49
Speaker 1: velocity of twenty one killed meat. It's a second. Like
28:53
Speaker 1: you said, it's a pretty busy neighborhood.
28:56
Speaker 2: Yes, about six hundred and fifty years across, so really
29:00
Speaker 2: quite a large a large area. And you're right, it's
29:03
Speaker 2: actually that the other telescope that was involved. Sorry I
29:07
Speaker 2: didn't mention that is the European Southern Observatory's Vista telescope,
29:11
Speaker 2: which is one that is also at Sera Paranell near
29:14
Speaker 2: the VLT. Vista was a telescope built actually by the
29:18
Speaker 2: Brits and used by them as there buy into the
29:22
Speaker 2: European Southern Observatory.
29:25
Speaker 1: It's a really great article. I like the way they've
29:28
Speaker 1: got those different images of the various chemical makeups of
29:33
Speaker 1: and they've overlapped them all to create one image. But
29:36
Speaker 1: you can you can look at it from several viewpoints
29:40
Speaker 1: really and it helps you to understand what's going on
29:43
Speaker 1: in there, which we've been trying to figure out for
29:46
Speaker 1: a long time for it.
29:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, again happing back
29:51
Speaker 2: to my time in the Royal Observation in Edinburgh, my
29:55
Speaker 2: work was actually on my research was about stars in
29:58
Speaker 2: the galactic sense region, and we couldn't see the galactic
30:02
Speaker 2: centers because it's hidden from us by dust. And a
30:05
Speaker 2: lot of these stars were visible through thick layers of
30:09
Speaker 2: dust that's all penetrated of course with infrared telescopes and
30:13
Speaker 2: that's why, and by millimeter wave telescopes too, that's why
30:18
Speaker 2: you can reveal all these fairly complex molecules that have
30:22
Speaker 2: been that have been found, so really quite a remarkable
30:27
Speaker 2: is exactly as you've said. It's a great article. Gives
30:31
Speaker 2: you a good idea of just what's going on in
30:33
Speaker 2: the center of our galaxy.
30:34
Speaker 1: Somebody's going to ask, so I'll ask on their behalf,
30:37
Speaker 1: why couldn't James Webb have done this?
30:41
Speaker 2: So a lot of it's to do with field of view,
30:45
Speaker 2: the fact that you've got a huge area here. You
30:47
Speaker 2: need the coverage of what we would call a survey telescope,
30:50
Speaker 2: which the James Webb isn't it homes in on fine
30:54
Speaker 2: points of detail. And the other thing is that James
30:57
Speaker 2: Webb would give you a different set of of chemical
31:02
Speaker 2: constituents because you're looking at different wavebands. So these are
31:08
Speaker 2: the ACES projects, the one I just mentioned which uses
31:14
Speaker 2: Alma as its main instrument, that's looking in the millimeter
31:19
Speaker 2: similarly to wave region, and so you see that sensitive
31:23
Speaker 2: to different molecules from what you get in the infrared.
31:27
Speaker 2: So it is it's really it's a really neat piece
31:30
Speaker 2: of work that's been done by the right telescope by
31:33
Speaker 2: the look of it, and the right group of people
31:35
Speaker 2: in Breed.
31:35
Speaker 1: Yes, fantastic. If you want to read all about it,
31:38
Speaker 1: you can do so by finding the paper. Just do
31:42
Speaker 1: a search for ACES overview paper, or you can read
31:45
Speaker 1: the fabulous article at the Brighter Side dot News. We're
31:51
Speaker 1: just about done, Fred, Thank you very much.
31:54
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure that went extremely quickly, Andrew.
31:57
Speaker 1: It hasn't been lately. Maybe we finally get more efficient.
32:01
Speaker 2: No, no, no, all the other not efficient.
32:05
Speaker 1: I think it's because Jordie didn't actually play up too much.
32:08
Speaker 2: So that's right, because his sisters are holding him down. Yeah, cheez,
32:14
Speaker 2: sisters do that. Thanks. Fred, will catch it very very soon.
32:18
Speaker 2: Sounds great.
32:18
Speaker 1: Thanks Andre, Professor Fred Wat's an astronomer at large. I
32:21
Speaker 1: don't forget to visit us online while you're listening to
32:25
Speaker 1: the podcast, maybe Space nuts podcast dot com or space
32:28
Speaker 1: Nuts dot io and have a look around, visit the shop,
32:32
Speaker 1: maybe become a supporter, leave a review on your platform.
32:37
Speaker 1: Wherever you listen to us, and don't forget. You can
32:40
Speaker 1: send us notes and information and questions on the Ask
32:44
Speaker 1: Me Anything tab at the top AMA And thanks to
32:48
Speaker 1: Hugh in the studio. Now Hugh couldn't be with us
32:51
Speaker 1: today Apparently he heard about this, this mapping of the
32:55
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy and put the coordinates in his
32:57
Speaker 1: car GPS and he hasn't been said since. And from
33:02
Speaker 1: me Andrew Duncle, thanks for your company. We'll see you
33:04
Speaker 1: on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye. You'll
33:08
Speaker 1: be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
33:16
Speaker 1: or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on
33:19
Speaker 1: demand at bites dot com. This has been another quality
33:23
Speaker 1: podcast production from Nights dot com.