Transcript: April Week 4

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

RACHEL
..Rachel..

KRIS
..And Kris

PAUL
On the 23rd, the moon is at apogee or its greatest distance from the earth.

RACHEL
This month the moon’s apogee is at a distance of 252,240 miles.

KRIS
At apogee the moon spans an angle of 0.48 degrees, or 12% smaller than the moon was at perigee on the 7th.

RACHEL
That’s enough of a change to be noticeable in photographs.

KRIS
To photograph the moon only takes a camera tripod and telephoto lens.

PAUL
The next module for the International Space Station is scheduled to leave earth on the 24th.

RACHEL
NASA will launch Kibo onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-124.

KRIS
This will be NASA’s 26th flight to the International Space Station.

RACHEL
There will only be six crew members aboard this Shuttle flight instead of the usual seven. And one will be a Japanese mission specialist.

PAUL
Kibo is 37 feet long and 14 feet in diameter and it was designed by the Japanese Space Exploration Agency.

KRIS
There are four sections to Kibo. The first two are its pressurized section where the astronauts work and a logistics section where their equipment is stored.

RACHEL
Outside Kibo are its last two sections. They are the rack where experiments are exposed to the space environment and a robotic arm for operating and moving experiments.

PAUL
The moon is at last quarter phase on the 28th.

KRIS
The last quarter moon is a nice moon phase to look at, if you don’t mind moon watching after midnight.

RACHEL
You’ll see the greatest number of craters in the lunar south. The rest of the moon contains more lunar maria, or frozen lava seas than the other side of the moon.

KRIS
The lunar maria have been cold for over three billion years. That makes most rocks on the moon far older than any rock on earth.

RACHEL
One reason moon rocks are far older than earth rocks is that there’s no water to cause erosion on the moon.

KRIS
The other factor is that the moon is too small for plate tectonics.

PAUL
You can also see Mars and the star Pollux close together on the night of the 28th.

RACHEL
Mars and Pollux will only be five degrees apart, or close enough to see at the same time in your binoculars.

KRIS
Over the next couple of weeks, Mars will slowly drift past Pollux. So you might want to observe them every few days to see the change.

RACHEL
Although Mars and Pollux have the same magnitude, you can tell Mars from Pollux because Mars has an orange cast to it.

PAUL
Eugene Shoemaker’s birthday is on April 28th.

KRIS
Gene almost single-handedly convinced the science world that craters arise from meteor impacts.

RACHEL
That’s right. Before 1960, most astronomers and geologists believed the craters on the moon were the result of volcanic action.

KRIS
Even the meteor craters on earth, like Barringer Crater in Arizona, were believed to be volcanic in origin.

RACHEL
That’s Idaho Skies for the fourth week of April. We’ll talk more next week about Gene Shoemaker and the crypto-volcanic structures he studied here and on the moon.

For Idaho Skies this is Rachel…

RIS
..Kris..

PAUL.. and Paul.