transcript: 24 - 28 July

PAUL
Welcome to Idaho Skies on Radio Boise. This is the fourth week of July. We’re your hosts, Paul..

RACHEL
..Rachel..

KRIS
..And Kris

PAUL
Last week was the anniversary of Gus Grissom’s flight on Liberty Bell 7.

RACHEL
If you’ve watched the movie, the Right Stuff, you’ll get the impression that people thought Gus was to blame for the sinking of his spacecraft.

KRIS
The truth is that after a thorough investigation, NASA could find no evidence that Gus was responsible for the hatch blowing open.

RACHEL
In fact, it’s quite likely that the helicopter hovering near Liberty Bell 7 was responsible for the mishap.

KRIS
In 1999 Liberty Bell 7 was finally recovered from the ocean bottom by a team lead by Curt Newport.

RACHEL
He’s the man who also led the expedition to find the Titanic.

KRIS
The Liberty Bell 7 display travels on occasion. So perhaps someday Idahoans will be able to see it close to home.

PAUL
We celebrate another space anniversary on the 26th.

KRIS
In 1971 the crew of Apollo 15 was launched to the Hadley-Apennine region of the moon.

RACHEL
The Apennines are the name of a lunar mountain range. They were created over three billion years ago by a massive meteor impact.

KRIS
Did you know that Apollo 15 was the first moon crew to carry an electric moon buggy?

RACHEL
The Lunar Roving Vehicle allowed the astronauts to explore much more of the moon than they could by walking.

KRIS
But they always made sure the LRV was within walking distance of the lunar module at all times.

PAUL
That’s insurance in case the LRV broke down.

RACHEL
Unfortunately, a stroll on the moon can kill you, if you don’t have enough oxygen.

KRIS
Apollo 15 returned a total of 169 pounds of lunar rocks and dust to earth.

PAUL
A meteor shower peaks the night of the 29th and morning of the 30th.

RACHEL
Now this is not the only night you can see them. So plan to watch them for several days around the 29th.

KRIS
Meteors from the Aquarids will appear to originate in the low southeast after midnight.

PAUL
You may see up to twenty meteors per hour from this shower.

RACHEL
The moon was new earlier this week, so moonlight will not interfere with this shower.

KRIS
Because of its low elevation above the horizon, the shower is better if you watch it from the southern hemisphere. So now is the time to plan that camping trip to Australia.

RACHEL
But wait! Isn’t it winter in Australia now?

KRIS
Oops. That could be a problem.

PAUL
The moon is at its greatest distance from earth on the 29th at seven AM.

RACHEL
At a distance of 251 thousand, 907 miles, it’s still a bit of a drive to get there.

PAUL
It’s taken me five years to drive my car that distance.

FADE IN MUSIC

KRIS
That’s Idaho Skies for the fourth week of July. Join us next month when we will bring you news of another meteor shower and the flight of the second cosmonaut. Listen to Idaho Skies to hear about the space and astronomical events for Idaho and beyond.

For Idaho Skies this is Kris

RACHEL
..Rachel

PAUL
.. and Paul.

Our sound engineer this month was Gwen Sanchirico.

transcript: 17 - 21 July

PAUL
Welcome to Idaho Skies on Radio Boise. This is the third week of July. We’re your hosts, Paul..

RACHEL
..Rachel..

KRIS
..And Kris

PAUL
What promises to be a very attractive celestial alignment takes place on the morning of the 20th.

KRIS
The thin crescent moon will be traveling through the edge of the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters.

RACHEL
The moon rises at two AM, but wait at least one hour for the moon to climb higher above the east-northeast horizon.

KRIS
In binoculars you’ll find the moon immersed in the eastern most edge of the Pleiades.

PAUL
Quick! Which appears larger, the moon or the Pleiades?

RACHEL
If you said the Pleiades, you’re right. The Seven Sisters appear twice the size of the moon.

KRIS
And you’ll be able to prove it to yourself on the morning of the 20th.

PAUL
Thirty years ago on the 20th, the first spacecraft successfully landed on Mars

RACHEL
Viking 1 soft landed on Chryse Planitia, or the Land of Gold.

KRIS
Viking 1 was a two part spacecraft and consisted of an orbiter and a lander.

RACHEL
When Viking 1 arrived in orbit, its superior cameras reveled that the previously selected landing site was too dangerous for the lander.

KRIS
So the pair remained together in orbit while new images were radioed back to earth.

RACHEL
After locating a safer landing site, the lander, safely tucked away inside its bioshield and heat shield, separated from the orbiter and entered the Martian atmosphere.

KRIS
At three and a half miles above the surface, the lander’s parachute deployed and the now useless heat shield dropped away.

RACHEL
Soon after, the lander’s three legs deployed.

KRIS
At about one mile above the ground the Viking 1 lander disconnected from its parachute and finished landing on three rocket engines.

RACHEL
To minimize the disturbance of Martian soil, each rocket engine had a total of 18 nozzles to spread out their rocket blast.

PAUL
Since Viking 1 was America’s first spacecraft to land on Mars, it carried a wide variety of experiments.

KRIS
There were cameras, meteorological, biological, and geological experiments. That’s over 200 pounds of experiments.

RACHEL
Viking 1’s robotic arm scooped up Martian soil and place samples of it into one of three biological experiments.

PAUL
The soil samples reacted just as soil samples laced with bacteria would. So did we discover Martian life?

KRIS
No organic compounds could be detected in the soil samples. Therefore scientists concluded that it was just unusual chemical behavior producing the results.

PAUL
Gus Grissom made his first flight into space 45 years ago on the 21st.

RACHEL
Gus became the second American into space when he rode his Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft on a short suborbital hop.

KRIS
Liberty Bell 7 reached a peak altitude of 118 miles during its 15 minute flight.

RACHEL
Everyone knows Liberty Bell 7 sank after splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.

KRIS
But Thomas Wolfe’s novel, the Right Stuff, is not correct when it blames Gus for the sinking.

PAUL
We’ll have more Liberty Bell 7 next week

RACHEL
That’s Idaho Skies for the third week of July. Next week we’ll discuss Apollo 15. For Idaho Skies this is Rachel...

KRIS
..Kris..

PAUL
.. and Paul.

transcript: 10 - 14 July

PAUL
Welcome to Idaho Skies on Radio Boise. This is the second week of July. We’re your hosts, Paul..

RACHEL
..Rachel..

KRIS
..And Kris

PAUL
We celebrate astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi's 260th birthday on the 16th.

RACHEL
What makes this astronomer so famous?

KRIS
Why Giuseppe discovered the first asteroid on January 1st, 1801.

PAUL
Just an asteroid? Why that’s just a minor body in the solar system. What makes that so special?

RACHEL
By the mid 18th century, astronomers had discovered a mathematical pattern to the spacing between the planets.

KRIS
This pattern was given the name, the Titus-Bode Law, after two of its principle discoverers.

RACHEL
Twenty years later, the discovery of Uranus by William Herschel showed the law worked for undiscovered planets.

KRIS
And according to Titus-Bode, the huge gap between Mars and Jupiter should be filled by a planet.

RACHEL
So several European astronomers teamed up to search the skies for this missing planet.

PAUL
They called themselves the Celestial Police.

KRIS
So at the beginning of the 19th century, the Celestial Police divided the zodiac into 24 sections and each astronomer began methodically searching his section for the new planet.

RACHEL
On January first, Giuseppe discovered what he initially believed to be a new comet.

KRIS
But calculations performed by Gauss, one of history’s greatest mathematicians, showed the new comet was traveling in a near circular orbit between Mars and Jupiter.

RACHEL
This is just where the Titus-Bode Law predicted.

PAUL
So it sounds like the Celestial Police had found their planet.

KRIS
However, the new planet was smaller and fainter than either Jupiter or Mars.

RACHEL
Giuseppe’s discovery was eventually named Ceres, after the patron goddess of Sicily. The asteroid is just 578 miles across, or about the size of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

KRIS
Just imagine the surprise of astronomers when they discovered several more planets within the gap between Mars and Jupiter.

PAUL
Two hundred years later astronomers know of over ten thousand asteroids.

RACHEL
There are so many asteroids that last century astronomers called them vermin of the sky.

KRIS
They created streaks on astronomical photographs, ruining images of more important objects like galaxies.

PAUL
Recently there’s been a renaissance in the interest in asteroids.

RACHEL
That’s because they hold clues to the formation of the solar system

KRIS
And because they have changed the course of the evolution of life on earth.

PAUL
Why are there asteroids, rather than say, a single planet between Mars and Jupiter?

RACHEL
The solar system’s thousands of asteroids represent material left over from the formation of the solar system.

KRIS
And had Jupiter’s gravity not interfered, they would have condensed into a single planet.

PAUL
That’s Idaho Skies for the second week of July. Join us next week when we’ll talk about a lunar passage through the Seven sisters.

For Idaho Skies this is Paul.

RACHEL
..Rachel..

KRIS
.. and Kris.

Idaho Skies Is Now Being Podcast!

Now you can download IS or subscribe to the IS podcast by clicking here.

Transcript: 4 - 6 July

PAUL
Welcome to Idaho Skies on Radio Boise. This is the first week of July. We’re your hosts, Paul..

RACHEL
..Rachel..

KRIS
..And Kris

PAUL
Earth is at aphelion on the third

KRIS
Aphelion is the point in our orbit that is farthest from the sun.

RACHEL
The earth’s orbit has an aphelion because it’s not circular. Instead it’s elliptical.

KRIS
An ellipse looks like a squashed circle. And once it’s squashed, it has a maximum and minimum diameter.

PAUL
This makes the circle a special form of the ellipse, since a circle has a diameter that is the same no matter at what point across the circle you measure it

RACHEL
Earth’s elliptical orbit has an aphelion that’s 94 million, 507 thousand, 705 miles from the sun.

KRIS
Since that distance is not familiar to our listeners, let’s put it into perspective.

PAUL
Perhaps by comparing with the speed of a Boeing 747?

RACHEL
Sure. A Boeing 747 airplane flying at 660 miles per hour would take 16 years, 4 months, and 5 days to fly to the sun.

KRIS
Then I would recommend you purchase a first class seat for that flight.

PAUL
Hip hip hooray!! The US of A is 230 years old on the 4th.

RACHEL
That’s also the day the Venus Express spacecraft begins its science mission.

PAUL
What is Venus Express?

KRIS
Why it’s the latest space mission from the European Space Agency.

RACHEL
Venus Express is designed to explore the atmosphere of Venus and how it interacts with space and the surface of the planet.

KRIS
It even has a camera that can see some surface details of this cloud enshrouded planet.

RACHEL
Check our website for links to Venus Express

PAUL
On the morning of the eighth, the moon will be placed between the heart of a scorpion and a far more distant globular star cluster.

KRIS
The scorpion is the constellation Scorpius. And its heart is the red giant star, Antares.

RACHEL
The globular cluster is called M-4. It was first observed in 1746 and later cataloged by Charles Messier.

KRIS
Since it was the fourth object in his catalog of objects that looked like comets, it’s named M-4.

PAUL
M-4 is one of the best globular clusters, and very easy to find.

RACHEL
You’ll need to go out at two AM to see the close alignment between the moon, Antares, and M-4.

KRIS
But that’s alright. It’s a Saturday morning. So what else would you be doing?

RACHEL
Both Antares and M-4 will be one degree from the moon and all will fit within the field of view of your binoculars.

KRIS
The moon’s glare will partly wipe out M-4, so don’t expect it to glow brightly. But if you wait until the next night, you can see M-4 as a smudge of light next to Antares.

PAUL
The moon is full on the 10th at nine PM. The full moon in July is often called the Thunder Moon.

RACHEL
And that’s Idaho Skies for the first week of July. Join us next week when we’ll talk about asteroids.

For Idaho Skies this is Rachel.

KRIS
..Kris..

PAUL
.. and Paul.

Transcript: 27 - 29 June

PAUL
Welcome to Idaho Skies on Radio Boise. This is the fourth week of June. We’re your hosts, Paul..

RACHEL
..Rachel..

KRIS
..And Kris

PAUL
A space tragedy took place 35 years ago on the 30th.

KRIS
During the summer of 1971, the Soviets launched the first space station into orbit around the earth.

RACHEL
The space station was named Salyut 1 and was launched on their most powerful rocket booster, Proton.

PAUL
Salyut 1 was over seventy-five feet long with room for three.

KRIS
It also had an awesome view.

RACHEL
Salyut 1 was launched in order to beat the American’s launch of its first space station, Skylab.

KRIS
The first cosmonauts to spend time onboard Salyut 1 were the crew of Soyuz 11.

RACHEL
They spent a total of 22 days onboard the space station. Their television broadcasts to the Soviet people were very popular.

KRIS
At the end of their stay, the crew of Soyuz 11 undocked from the space station and promptly returned to earth.

PAUL
Their recovery system worked flawlessly and they parachuted to a soft landing.

RACHEL
But when their recovery crew opened the hatch, they discovered that the cosmonauts were dead.

KRIS
At first the recovery crew assumed the cosmonauts had collapsed because they had spent three weeks in weightlessness.

RACHEL
Instead they had suffocated due to an air leak in their return capsule.

KRIS
No other crews visited the Salyut 1 space station and all Soyuz spacecraft were grounded until modifications were made to their design.

PAUL
The crew of Soyuz 11 were the fifth, sixth, and seventh space fatalities.

KRIS
There would be no other astronaut deaths until NASA’s Challenger crew in1986.

PAUL
Did you know that the world’s most visited museum is located in Washington DC?

RACHEL
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum celebrates its thirtieth birthday on July first.

KRIS
The latest addition to the museum is Space Ship one, the first private rocket to carry a person into space.

RACHEL
If you visit the National Air and Space Museum, you should expect to spend half a day there. It really is a very large museum.

PAUL
Hey, what happens to our home planet on the third?

KRIS
Why it’s at aphelion.

RACHEL
Aphelion is the point in earth’s orbit that is the greatest distance from the sun.

KRIS
This year that’s 1.017 astronomical units.

RACHEL
In more common units that’s equal to 94 million 500 thousand miles. Can we add some perspective to that distance?

KRIS
Sure. A Boeing 747 would need 597 days to fly to the sun, or over one and a half years.

PAUL
Then you’d better purchase a first class seat

RACHEL
That’s Idaho Skies for the fourth week of June. Join us next month when Idaho Skies will bring you the space and astronomical events for Idaho and beyond.

For Idaho Skies this is Rachel

KRIS
..Kris

PAUL
.. and Paul.