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Science
Friday > Archives
> 1999
> August
> August 20, 1999:
Hour One: Cassini Mission/Space Update
| Sometimes it seems our knowledge of space is expanding as quickly as the universe, and this past week was no exception.
On Tuesday night, the giant robot spacecraft Cassini flew past Earth, using the planet's gravity as a sort of slingshot to Saturn (see route map), where it will use various instruments to study Saturn's surface, rings and moons. Because Saturn is too far from the sun for the probe to effectively utilize solar power, Cassini is powered by nuclear energy. This caused controversy, as some environmentalists feared the repercussions should the spacecraft crash during its fly-by past Earth.
It didn't. So we'll talk to Dr. Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini Imaging Team, about the purpose and ramifications of the mission.
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Artists rendering of Cassini performing radar imaging in Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
(Courtesy NASA.)
| Probably the most intriguing news of the past week came out of the Palomar Observatory in California. After collecting data on more than 50 million galaxies and 2 billion stars, the team of scientists completing the the Palomar Digital Sky Survey at the California Institute of Technology have reported finding a "mystery object" in outer space. The astronomers can find nothing familiar about this object. It is not a star or a planet or a galaxy. It might be a quasar, but nothing like any quasar they've ever seen.
| We'll talk to the discoverer of this strange new object.
Black holes have always been a mysterious phenomenon, but astronomers have at least been able to explain what they do: suck things up. These dense regions of extremely strong gravity let nothing escape their pull, including light. The problem is that nobody had ever seen actual evidence of matter entering a black hole. Until now.
Astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, are reporting in Astrophysical Journal Letters that they have recorded what they think is the first evidence of matter actually falling into a black hole. Located in a galaxy 100 million light years away, this matter was clocked entering this void at more than six million miles per hour. Part of this hour will also be spent discussing black holes.
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What is this mystery object?
(Courtesy S. G. Djorgovski et al./
Palomar Observatory) |
Guests:
Carolyn Porco
Imaging Team Leader, NASA Cassini Mission
Associate Professor of Planetary Science
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Neil de Grasse Tyson
Astrophysicist
Director, Hayden Planetarium
American Museum of Natural History
New York, New York
S. George Djorgovski
Team Leader, Palomar Digital Sky Survey
Professor of Astronomy
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA
| Books/Articles Discussed:
One Universe: At Home in the Cosmos, by Neil De Grasse Tyson, Charles Tsun-Chu Liu and Robert Irion (2000/in press, Joseph Henry Press)
The Sky is Not the Limit: The Adventures of An Urban Astrophysicist, by Neil De Grasse Tyson (2000/in press, Doubleday)
Just Visiting This Planet: Merlin Answers More Questions About Everything Under the Sun, Moon, and Stars, by Neil De Grasse Tyson (1998)
Merlin's Tour of the Universe: A Skywatcher's Guide to Everything from Mars and Quasars to Comets, Planets, Blue Moons, and Werewolves, by Neil De Grasse Tyson (1997)
Universe Down to Earth, by Neil De Grasse Tyson (1995)
| | Related Links:
Palomar Observatory
Cassini Mission Homepage
NASA Space Science Homepage
- This segment produced by:
Tom Clarke
Web producer:
Brad Kloza
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