The Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 launched March 2, 1972 and April 5, 1973 respectively:

An artist’s view of a Pioneer spacecraft heading into interstellar space. Both Pioneer 10 and 11 will eventually exit the Solar System. Pioneer 11 sent its last signal in November 1995, while Pioneer 10 lasted until January 2003. Image credit: NASA Ames Research Center

Each spacecraft carried identical plaques:

The Pioneer plaques were placed on board the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft – there is a lot of information in this picture.

NASA gave Carl Sagan permission to send a message with the Pioneer spacecraft, so that if the spacecraft were to be intercepted by extraterrestrial life they could learn something about the human race. Together with Frank Drake the plaque designed. Sagan’s wife at the time, Linda Salzman Sagan, did the artwork.

They wanted to tell ET where we were, what we looked like, how tall we were, etc. But how do you tell ET something about you when you haven’t got much in common? They won’t have any common units of measurement. They won’t know how a long a second lasts or how long one metre is.

Well, we both live in the Universe for starters. We can use universal measurements. This is where the two circles in the top left hand corner of the plaque represent. They depict hydrogen (the most common element in the Universe) and a certain electron energy transition. This transition produces an important spectral line in astronomy: the “21 cm hydrogen spectral line“. As the name suggests, the line corresponds to a wavelength of 21 cm and it also represents a frequency of 1420 MHz (which is a unit of time).

[For more information, I've written a few blog posts about the fascinating subject of spectroscopy. We can learn a lot about distant objects using spectroscopy]

Now we have communicated some information about length, we can discuss the pictures of the humans. The dots to the right of the female represent in binary 1000, which is 8. 8 x 21 cm = 168 cm: giving a height of a typical human. Incidentally, Sagan originally wanted the man and woman to be holding hands but then thought that ET would think the picture represented a single creature with two heads!

Moving onto the radial star-like pattern. This is where the information about time is used:

Pioneer Plaque – “We Are Here” Pulsar Map

This part of the picture (which was also etched onto the Voyager Golden Record) is a “we are here” map. There are 15 lines in this diagram, with 14 representing pulsars. Pulsars are a type of dead star – they are rapidly rotating neutron stars and were first discovered in 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. “Jets” of radio radiation are emitted from the magnetic poles of the star. Each time a pole points at Earth, we see a pulse of radio waves. We see some pulsars emit radiation at incredibly regular intervals – so regular they can be used for precision timing. The frequency of the pulses can also be very rapid – the fastest-spinning pulsar currently known spins at about 716 times a second!

Given how bright and useful pulsars are, pulsars are used to show where we are. The lengths of the lines show the relative distances of the pulsars to the Sun. A tick mark at the end of each line shows how far the pulsar is from the plane of the Milky Way. The “notches” on each line are binary numbers giving the frequency of pulses in the units provided by the 21 cm hydrogen line. The non-pulsar line (it extends from the centre of the radial map to behind the human figures) indicates the Sun’s relative distance to the centre of the galaxy.

The bottom of the plaque shows the Solar System with the large Sun on the left:

Diagram of the Solar System, with the trajectory of the Pioneer spacecraft shown.

The sizes of the planets are to scale, but obviously the distances are not. The notches above/below each planet represent in binary the relative distance to the Sun.

Notice the arrow showing the trajectory of the Pioneer spacecraft. An article in Scientific American criticized the use of an arrow as ET may find the arrow symbol meaningless. Also, though Pioneer took the shown trajectory (via Jupiter), Pioneer 11 actually exited the plane of the Solar System via Saturn.

Also notice there are 9 planets: Pluto was still classed as a planet back then!

Images from Wikimedia Commons

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Psocoptera – an order of insects that are commonly known as booklice.

If you are unsure what this is all about, see The Pop Sci Book Club –  an introduction.

For our second book we are going to read Richard Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces: Fundamentals of Physics Explained (176 pages). It’s a perfect choice as it’s Feynman’s birthday on 11th May!

So, please buy the book and join the Pop Sci Book Club forum. I’ll create the book specific discussion forum around 11th May 2013.

Update: I’ve now created the forum to discuss the book.

Related posts

• The Pop Sci Book Club –  an introduction and our first book.
• A List of Must Read PopSci Books.

Officially named “Space Transportation System” (STS), we all know it as the Space Shuttle – an iconic, incredibly photogenic spacecraft. It started operations 1981 (1981!) and retired recently – in 2011.

It is the only reusable space vehicle that has ever made multiple flights into orbit (though it was criticised for being a very expensive way to get to space and back).

And, of course, it had two fatal accidents. Challenger (STS-51-L) exploded 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986; Columbia (STS-107) disintegrated on its return trip on February 1, 2003. Space travel is dangerous.

On to the pictures. There are so many to choose from. As I’ve already said – the Space Shuttle is an incredibly photogenic spacecraft. And together with the surroundings it operated in, there are so many stunning images out there.

So, here are a few that I’ve been gradually collecting for the Space Scenery series.

As always, click the image to see a much higher resolution image.

Ground

Space Shuttle Atlantis waiting for launch day.

With a rainbow as a backdrop, Space Shuttle Atlantis in the foreground sits on Launch Pad A; Endeavour at Launch Pad B (NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA’s space shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis switched locations at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and in the process came “nose-to-nose” for the last time in front of Orbiter Processing Facility 3.

Launch

Space Shuttle Columbia Launch.

STS-123 – night launch.

STS-130 – night launch.

STS-135: the final launch of the Space Shuttle Programme. This is Atlantis as it launches from Pad 39A on Friday, July 8, 2011, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

Lt. Col. Gabriel Green and Capt. Zachary Bartoe patrol the airspace in an F-15E Strike Eagle as the Space Shuttle Atlantis launches May 14, 2010, at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. (Capt. John Peltier, USAF).

Space

Space Shuttle Discovery over Switzerland.

Space Shuttle Discovery approaching Mir.

Space Shuttle Discovery over our blue planet.

Space Shuttle Endeavour attached to the International Space Station on May 23, 2011 (taken from Soyuz TMA-20).

Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the segmented Mir.

Landing

Space Shuttle Endeavour Landing.

Space Shuttle Atlantis Vapour trails as it approaches Runway 15 on the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.

Space Shuttle Atlantis landing at KSC (STS-122).

Retirement

Thousands of spectators gathered in front of the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., as the space shuttle Endeavour stopped temporarily for a celebration as it headed overland to its new home at the California Science Center in Los Angeles on Saturday, Oct. 13, 2012. .

The Space Shuttle Enterprise is towed by barge up the Hudson River in New York June 6, 2012.

All images: NASA/Troy Cryder/Bill Ingalls.

Related content

I highly recommend a couple of videos.

First, here is the “Space Shuttle: The complete missions” – a Nature Video. It was put together by Adam Rutherford - all 135 missions spliced together into a fantastic 8 minute movie.

NASA’s 30-year Space Transportation System (STS) program came to an end on 21st July 2011. The Space Shuttle fleet delivered the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station, and dozens of satellites, space probes, crew and supplies. Two Shuttles were lost: Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003. The touchdown of Atlantis at Kennedy Space Center marked the end of an era, after 135 missions. This video shows all of them in chronological order.

The second is a BBC special: Space Shuttle: The Final Mission. It’s an excellent documentary that was presented by Kevin Fong.

It seems to be available on You Tube at the moment…though I guess it might get taken down by the BBC.

Related Posts

Space Scenery series.

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In 1974, a specially encoded message (that become to be known as the Arecibo Message) was broadcast into space towards the globular cluster M13 in the constellation of Hercules:

Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules. Image acquisition by Jim Misti, image processing by Robert Gendler. http://www.robgendlerastropics.com

The message was broadcast by Frank Drake from the enormous (you can see road and a car in the foreground) Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico:

The Arecibo Observatory. Image courtesy of the NAIC, a facility of the NSF.

The message was intentionally sent to broadcast Earth’s existence to any alien civilisation that might be listening. No permission was obtained from the rest of the planet. Frank Drake just decided to do it. Sir Martin Ryle (who was the Astronomer Royal at the time) wrote to Drake questioning the wisdom of this act. However, even if some hostile civilization received (and understood) the message, we don’t need to be overly concerned – M13 is 50000 light years away.

Just 1679 bits of information were transmitted. Compared to today’s data quantities, this is a tiny amount of data. Even so, in 1679 bits, an impressive amount of information was broadcast. The message was carefully designed by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan to provide as much information as possible in this small data packet.

Why was the message encoded in 1679 bits? 1679 is the product of two prime numbers (23 and 73), and mathematics is the only common language humans could possibly have with an alien civilization. The intention was that the receiver would convert the incoming 1679 binary bits into a 23 by 73 rectangle, colouring in the ‘ones’ and leaving the ‘zeros’. This would result in this:

The Arecibo Message

The colours have been added to distinguish between the different areas of the message.

Message Part 1 – The Numbers 1 to 10

The white dots at the top of the message represent the numbers 1 to 10, in binary. Each dot in the bottom row is ignored (it just signals the start of number). Hence we have 1, 10 (decimal 2), 11 (decimal 3), etc.

Message Part 2 – Elements found in DNA

The next section (purple) represents the atomic numbers of the elements found in DNA: hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous. Again, ignore the bottom row – so the first column has one dot in it, signifying the atomic number of hydrogen.

Message Part 3 – Nucleotides

The green section follows on from the elements presented in part 2 and shows the molecular formula of each nucleotide – e.g. the top left collection of dots is deoxyribose C₅OH₇ and needs to be read as (ignoring the bottom row again): 7 atoms of hydrogen, 5 atoms of carbon, 0 atoms of nitrogen, 1 atom of oxygen, and 0 atoms of phosphorus.

The next symbol is adenine (C₅H₄N₅), then Thymine (C₅H₅N₂O₂), etc.

Message Part 4 –  The DNA Double Helix

The blue curved lines represent the DNA double helix, with the white vertical line representing the number of nucleotides in DNA.

Message Part 5 – Humans

This red symbol clearly represents a human. Apart from the obvious shape, there is also information to left and the right of the red figure.

The white bits on the left represent the binary number 1110.

Note: this image from Wikimedia Commons has the number on the left – I’ve seen other images with the number on the right. It makes more sense on the right, as then it would actually read 1110.

1110 is 14 in decimal. The message was broadcast at frequency 2380 Hz, which is equivalent to the wavelength 12.6 cm. 14 x 12.6 cm = 176.4 cm. This is the average height of a human.

The white bits on the right of the red human form represent the population of Earth at the time the message was broadcast – which was just over 4.25 billion in 1974.

Message Part 6 –  The Solar System

The yellow dots represent the Solar System, with the large Sun on the left and Earth slightly raised to show that “We Are Here”. Also, the human form is directly above the raised dot, again showing where we live.

Message Part 7 – The Arecibo Observatory

Finally, the bottom image represents the Arecibo Observatory dish that broadcast the message with the dots at the bottom representing the diameter of the dish.

What happens when you give this message to a human?

As you can see, Sagan and Drake managed to cram a lot of information into such a small number of bits. Whether an alien civilization would be able to decode the message or not is another matter. Drake presented the binary bits to some of his colleagues – only some of them were able to partially decode the message; no one was able to fully decode it.

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A few years ago I donated some DNA to The National Geographic Genographic Project.

I was very pleased with what I discovered about my ancestry.  I blogged about it, and even recorded a Pod Delusion report about it. I know for a fact that based on that Pod Delusion report and my general raving about the project, friends also bought the kit and joined in.

The Genographic Project – is this the equivalent of genetic astrology?

Recently I have started reading articles like this:

• We are all ‘related’ to Romans, Vikings, Egyptians & Attila the Hun”.
• Some DNA ancestry services akin to ‘genetic astrology’.

These articles were the result of this: Sense About Science’s “Sense About Genetic Ancestry Testing” publication (PDF). I respect the work that Sense About Science do, and as I’ve been recommending the National Genographic Project for years, I thought I should investigate further.

Sense about Science state:

Many companies now offer to tell you about your ancestors from a DNA test. Adverts for these tests can give the impression that your results are unique and that the tests will tell you about your specific personal history, but the very same history that you receive could equally be given to thousands of other people. Conversely, the results from your DNA tests could be matched with all sorts of different stories to the one you are given: you cannot look at DNA and read it like a book or a map of a journey. This guide will help explain why, and what it is exactly that genetic ancestry companies are offering.

That sounds fair enough.

I left it for a while, but the number of “DNA” Google searches arriving at my blog spurred me to carry on investigating. I went to the National Geographic website, fully expecting that by now they would have responded to the Sense About Science publication in an FAQ or something.

Nothing.

I searched across their website for the word “astrology”. No hits. Same for “Sense About Science”. No hits.

So, I thought I’d do some proactive skepticism. I decided to write to them. I sent the following email to the general contact email address, but also to the press department (as I thought they may be up for doing a Pod Delusion interview in response to Sense About Science) [Their replies in italics]:

Hi,

I participated in the Genographic Project years ago.

I loved the results and as I contribute to a UK podcast  (The Pod Delusion), I covered the project for the podcast.

Here is a written version of that podcast report: 
http://thethoughtstash.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/wanted-your-dna-for-national-geographics-genographic-project/

Recently I have started reading articles like this:

• We are all ‘related’ to Romans, Vikings, Egyptians & Attila the Hun”
• Some DNA ancestry services akin to ‘genetic astrology’

Do you have any information in response to this?

I’d like to do a follow up report on any information you provide. Perhaps interview someone via Skype for the podcast if you’d like to explain to our listeners why your testing is scientific and not astrology!

Many thanks

After a week or so I received a reply:

Kash,

Thank you for contacting the Genographic Project. For information on the science of genetic testing and the Genographic Project specifically, please refer to the website here 
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/science-behind/
. You may also want to do some basic research on DNA and genetics via the internet or an encyclopedia

That’s it. And no, that link didn’t answer my question.

So I responded, letting them know that I’m going to put their replies on my blog (in the hope they’d give me a better response).

Hi,

I’ll add your reply to my blog for my readers to get more info.

I’ve looked at the link you provided but it doesn’t really answer my question:

My question is: Are the National Genographic DNA tests akin to “genetic astrology”?

Thanks

Kash

And their reply:

Kash,

I believe that the article/podcast is making an analogy to genetic testing being akin to astrology in that it is “taking general information as more personal than it really is” much like astrology does with astronomy. However, that is not the case and the confusion comes from a lack of knowledge and/or background in the field of genetics and anthropology.

So there you go. Are they saying that Sense About Science are confused? Or that I am? I am definitely confused!

I’m not sure how I should progress further with this. I’m unsure if Sense About Science are saying all these DNA Ancestry tests are practically useless and a waste of money, or just some of them. It’s certainly put me off “upgrading” to the latest Genographic Project offering: Geno 2.0.

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Hypothetical ocean planet with a terrestrial atmosphere and two satellites. Image by Luciano S. Méndez. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

I recently interviewed the astrobiologist Professor Charles Cockell for The Pod Delusion.

Adam Jacobs left a comment on the Pod Delusion website:

Kash, something that I always find puzzling when I hear astrobiologists talk about the search for extraterrestrial life is that there seems to be a totally unquestioned assumption that life can only exist where there’s liquid water.

Now, that may be true on Earth. But life on Earth has evolved on a planet where there is a huge abundance of liquid water. Who’s to say that life based on some completely different sort of chemistry couldn’t exist on other planets?

I have to say (and I speak as someone with a PhD in chemistry) that I couldn’t actually imagine what sort of chemistry might evolve into life that’s completely different to what we have here on Earth, but then everything I know about the chemistry of life is conditioned by studying how it works here. So just because I couldn’t imagine a different way of doing things, it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.

Do you think astrobiologists have good reason for focussing on liquid water in this way, or could they be missing a trick?

This is a very good question and something I should have actually asked Professor Cockell to explain.

I’ve replied on the Pod Delusion website, but I thought I could also turn that reply into a blog post.

Let’s start with the basics.

There are exoplanets everywhere!

There are various techniques that can be used to find exoplanets orbiting around stars. For example, you can find exoplanets using Doppler Spectroscopy. Another technique looks for the dips in starlight caused by an exoplanet crossing the face of a planet from our point of view – this technique, the transit method, is how the Kepler mission looks for exoplanets.

There are now hundreds of confirmed exoplanet discoveries, and hundreds more that are classed as unconfirmed (i.e. more data is needed). It is estimated that there are billions of planets out there. Planets seem to readily form around stars.

All 786 Known Planets (to scale) as of June 2012. Image by http://xkcd.com

The habitable zone

Amongst all the discoveries and potential discoveries, astronomers and astrobiologists are looking for a so-called Earth 2.0. A planet that is Earth like. One that may be capable of sustaining life.

In particular, there is a search for planets that are in the habitable zone of a star. This is the range of distances from a star for which liquid water can exist on a planetary surface. Stars of different size and luminosity (a measure of the total amount of energy emitted) will have different sized habitable zones. There are further refinements of the habitable zone size with the Kasting Model – this attempts to determine the inner and outer edges of habitable zones taking the effects of albedo (a measure of reflectivity) and greenhouse gases into account.

But how we can possibly detect life from billions and billions of kilometres away!?

Once we have found potential target planets, how can we work out if there is any life on that planet? We could try to listen in that direction, to see if intelligent life is transmitting anything. This is something that SETI or doing.

Or, if the planet transits the star, we could look at the star’s light that is filtering through the atmosphere of the exoplanet. We can split the light into a spectrum and use a technique called spectroscopy. I’ve written a few posts about spectroscopy (I love spectroscopy!), but the post of interest is Finding Out What a Star Is Made Of With Spectroscopy. This shows how we can analyse the light and detect specific signatures in the spectrum that are created by certain elements or molecules. We can, for example, detect water or oxygen or methane.

Analysis of the spectrum of Saturn – we can see that there is methane in the atmosphere by finding the unique signature of methane.

We could detect the existence of  life on another planet by looking for gases that, as far as we know, require a biological origin. An example gas is oxygen, which on Earth is produced by life – photosynthesis in plants. There is no geological process on Earth, or indeed the rest of the Solar System, that generates oxygen in the quantities found in Earth’s atmosphere.

An even better result would be to find methane and oxygen at the same time.  These two gases readily react and become carbon dioxide and water. If they were to be found in significant quantities in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, then they must be getting continually replenished by something. On Earth, life replenishes the methane that is lost in the oxygen/methane reaction.

Why are astrobiologists always looking for an exoplanet that has water?

Finally, getting to Adam’s question. Why do we assume that water is essential to life?

Basically, liquid water appears to be an essential requirement for life. For life to get started, there needs to be medium in which molecules can bump into each other and react. Water is the perfect medium for that to happen. It has been called the universal solvent because so many different substances can dissolve in it. Water allows dissolved molecules to get close to each other and react.

And water is liquid in an ideal temperature range for chemistry – not too cold to sustain biochemical reactions, and not too hot to stop organic bonds from forming.

It has been suggested that on some exoplanet (or moon), ammonia could perform the same function as water. It is liquid on worlds much colder than Earth. The problem with this is that at such low temperatures, chemical reactions are slow and may not happen very frequently. And because the reactions aren’t happening very rapidly/frequently (or not at all), molecules would not form of sufficient complexity. Hence, life may struggle to become established under these conditions – basically, there is not much happening in the ammonia “soup” from which life could develop. [Updated: After some questions on G+ by Bob Churchill, this paragraph has been updated to (hopefully) make it clearer.]

Perhaps “life as we do not understand it” exists on another planet. However, we only know of life that is water-based. Anything else would just be speculation. There are billions of planets out there – we have plenty of targets to look at. We can afford to restrict ourselves to just look at those planets that may have liquid water; and hence we know that on these planets life could exist. [Update: This paragraph has been added following the comment conversation below.]

In summary….

We look for planets in the habitable zone, as those planets may have liquid water. And if an exoplanet has liquid water, which we think is essential for life, then life may have got going on that planet.

We can then use spectroscopy to look for the signatures of life in the atmospheres of these habitable zone planets.

Further Reading

If you want to learn more about this fascinating subject, there are are couple of books I highly recommend:

1. Life in the Universe: A Beginner’s Guide - by Lewis Dartnell.
2. Strange New Worlds: The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond Our Solar System - by Ray Jayawardhana.

Up until 1925, the scientific consensus was that the Sun had a similar chemical composition to Earth.

Then, one Ph.D thesis changed all that.

Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979) – image from Wikimedia Commons.

This is Cecilia Payne. She discovered that the Sun was mainly composed of hydrogen.

Some history

Cecilia Payne was born in England in 1900. A the age of 19, while at Newham College, Cambridge, she attended a lecture by Sir Arthur Eddington. The lecture was about something scientifically very important. It was about how Eddington demonstrated that Einstein was right.

Payne was hooked and realized then that she wanted to study physics and, in particular, astronomy:

The result was a complete transformation of my world picture. When I returned to my room I found that I could write down the lecture word for word.

So, following the lecture, she switched her studies to focus on astronomy.

After completing her studies (for which she wasn’t awarded a degree  - Cambridge didn’t award degrees to women back then) she left England in 1923 to join the new graduate program in astronomy at Harvard College Observatory.

At the time, Harvard had the world’s largest collection of spectra of stars. The light of a star is split into its constituent colours and recorded on photographic plates. When you do this, dark lines appear in the rainbow of colours. You’ll something a bit like this (but the patterns would be far more complex for a star):

Hydrogen absorption spectrum

By comparing laboratory spectra against stellar spectra, it is possible to determine all the chemical elements that exist in the Sun and other stars. See Finding Out What a Star Is Made Of With Spectroscopy for more details. This had already been done and catalogued by the time Payne arrived at Harvard – it was well known that the Sun contained hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon and many other elements.

What Payne did with this catalogued data was revolutionary. She examined the properties of the spectral lines, and with her newly acquired knowledge of quantum physics, she was able to determine the relative abundances of the 18 elements found a typical spectrum. Within 2 years of arriving at Harvard she had produced a thesis for her doctoral degree: she showed that the majority of stars are made of the same stuff, and in the same quantities.

She also calculated that hydrogen and helium make up 98% of a the matter in a typical star. Most of the mass of a star is accounted for by the two lightest elements! And this extrapolates, by the way: most of the mass of the visible Universe is hydrogen.

Harlow Shapley, the director of the Harvard College Observatory, sent Payne’s thesis to a professor at Princeton who replied that the result was “clearly impossible”. Payne, worried about her scientific reputation and future career, amended her thesis to include a statement that her calculated abundances of hydrogen and helium were “almost certainly not real.”.

Within a few years, however, she was found to be correct. Not only did we now know that all stars are essentially the same, her work also allowed astronomers to determine the temperature of any star from its spectrum. This is how we know that, say, Sirius has a surface temperature of about 10000 K and that Betelgeuse has a surface temperature of about 3250 K.

So, why hasn’t everyone heard of Cecilia Payne?

I’ve been studying astronomy for a few years now. I only heard about Cecilia Payne a few weeks ago. Thinking that I must have just missed something, I searched through all the Open University PDFs for my physics and astronomy courses for the word “Payne”. Nothing.

And @PenguinGalaxy has previously told me that there is no mention of Payne in her astronomy text books either.

I have just asked Twitter too. A friend (that studied star formation during her masters degree!) had never heard of her either. One person (from Australia) did know of her from university physics textbooks.

My point is… why isn’t she as famous as, say, Hubble. She should be. What she discovered was amazing and changed how we see the Universe.

This clearly is not right.

Why isn’t there a space telescope named after Cecilia Payne?

We have various space telescopes named after scientists. Examples include Hubble, Fermi, Kepler, Newton and Spitzer.

NASA have missed a few opportunities to name a space telescope after Payne. It would have been apt to name one of the space telescopes currently observing the Sun (like Solar Dynamics Observatory) after her. Or perhaps one of the telescopes mapping hydrogen in the Universe.

But it’s not too late! How about one of the upcoming Solar Space Telescopes? Come on ESA, how about naming your upcoming Solar Orbiter space telescope after Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin? She is from Europe after all!

Cecilia Payne, on accepting the Henry Norris Russell Prize from the American Astronomical Society

I thought I’d end this post with a quote from Cecilia Payne:

The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience… The reward of the old scientist is the sense of having seen a vague sketch grow into a masterly landscape.

References

• Cecilia Payne and the Composition of the Stars.
• Wikipedia

Related Posts

I have written a few posts about Spectroscopy if you want to learn more about this fascinating subject.

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Continuing my Space Scenery series…

There are several space telescopes observing the Sun and they are returning amazing data and, most importantly for the Space Scenery series, amazing images.

The Sun emits lights in all wavelengths – our eyes can only see one small range of wavelengths (i.e. visible light). The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has several instruments and is capable of capturing images in different wavelengths of light – it can see what our eyes can’t.

NASA make the images freely available – you can view or download images via the SDO Data Browser. For this post I downloaded images in all wavelengths of light that were captured by SDO on 1st March 2013 between the times 00:00:00 and 01:00:00. SDO takes about 4 or 5 images in each wavelength per hour – so in one hour it takes about 50-60 images.

I’ll start with an image in normal visible light (click to see the bigger version):

The Sun in 4500 Ångström – a few sunspots are visible on the featureless background.

[Note that The Ångström is a unit of length equal to 10⁻¹⁰ m]

You can see a couple of sunspots  - ‘cooler’ areas of 3000-4500°C that appear darker in contrast to the hotter surroundings at 6000°C – but apart from that, the Sun appears featureless.

All the action takes place at the wavelengths our eyes cannot see. If you place different filters over the cameras, you can capture only the light that can get through that filter. So, by using different filters you can see different features that are prominent at various wavelengths.

Rather than just present a series of images of the Sun in different wavelengths, I thought I’d combine the SDO images to form one multi-coloured image. Click to view the big (6 MB) image:

The Sun in different wavelengths created from 7 individual images. From left to right the wavelengths are: 94, 131 ,171, 193, 211, 304, 335 Ångström. The images were captured by SDO within a 3 minute period.

All these images were taken within 3 minutes of each other – so they practically match up. Notice the prominent feature in the leftmost ‘slice’ – it is emerging from the sunspot you can see in the 4500 Ångström image.

The SDO data website also provides composite images – images combining 3 of the wavelengths. I thought I’d include them in this post as they fit the “multi-coloured” theme of this post:

Composite image: 94, 335 and 193 Ångström.

Composite image: 211, 193 and 171 Ångström.

Composite image: 304, 211 and 171 Ångström.

All images from SDO archive.

Related posts

• Exploring The Sun with Helioviewer
• Exploring Sunspots and Coronal Loops with Helioviewer
• Space Scenery series

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A guest post by Megan Whewell

Inspiration Mars press conference panelists (left to right) – Dennis Tito, Taber MacCullam, Jonathon Clark, Jane Poynter.

I don’t remember the Apollo missions. I was born 16 years after the final astronauts, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt left the last human footprints on the Moon. I don’t know what it feels like to look into space and be inspired by the knowledge that humans are heading further away from the Earth than ever before, just because we can.

On Wednesday 27 Feb 2013 I thought I might have a chance of experiencing that in my lifetime. Not only by knowing that humans are going to the Moon, but all the way to Mars!

By the evening of that very same day I lost that belief.

Yes, there has been a manned mission to Mars proposed by multi-millionaire Dennis Tito. A crew of two Americans, one man and one woman, being sent on a 501-day trip to fly around Mars. For more information on the actual announcement, see this National Space Centre blog post. This trip would stretch our understanding of human psychological and medical limits, while also serving as inspiration to the next generation of Americans.

Yes, Americans and only Americans. This is very definitely an ‘American dream’ and that disappoints me more than anything. Even though the money hasn’t all been found, even though the total cost of the mission hasn’t been announced, even though the whole world was watching, Dennis Tito sat in the press conference and squirmed when asked if he would welcome international collaboration, before saying “We have specified this mission as an American mission”.

In my opinion, this type of mission is exactly the kind of inspirational dream that could bring the world together. Projects like the International Space Station (ISS), with 16 countries contributing, have shown that we can collaborate, so why not take advantage of that spirit to truly inspire the next generation around the whole world instead of just in America?

Perhaps I’m simply naïve. Perhaps the spirit of competition is the only way to push human space exploration forward. Perhaps we have to pit countries against each other to push them to ever more daring achievements.

But perhaps that’s an old fashioned view. Perhaps that idea of the world belongs to an age when space exploration was only ever done by government agencies. If we need that competitive edge as a push, with the emergence of private companies in space exploration, could that competition come from a race between companies? Companies that could each represent a wide range of nations; even representing the same nations as each other. Why can’t we learn that where you happen to be born doesn’t define who you can and can’t work with?

For this reason above all others, I am disappointed in Dennis Tito and his Inspiration Mars Foundation.

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Note: I know the Apollo missions were very much American and a point of national pride.  I know I feel inspired by their achievements the same way I know a manned mission to Mars would inspire people around the world, but that doesn’t mean any level of inspiration is good enough. Not when it would be incredible to be able to point at numerous places on a world map and say they all worked together to do something extraordinary. Surely we should want to show children that sharing knowledge and collaborating is the way to push forward into the future.

Psocoptera – an order of insects that are commonly known as booklice.

A short blog post to publicise this thing a few of us have started up.

I’ve been collecting Popular Science book recommendations over the last few weeks. This resulted in a impressive list of books: A List of Must Read PopSci Books. There lots of interesting sounding books on that list – my “To Read” list has grown massively thanks to this!

Tania saw the list, mentioned it in her blog post and a few Twitter conversations later, the #PopSciBookClub was formed!

We did originally think it would be a Twitter based thing (hence the hashtag in the above logo), but decided that would be impractical.

Instead, with suggestions and help from Bob, we now have a Pop Sci Book Club forum. We thought that this would be a far more useful way to run the club. People can then read at their own pace and check the forum when they get to particular chapters. You could even read the book months later and check what people said about it previously.

The first book we are reading is Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution - by Nick Lane (352 pages).

So, get the book, join the forum and get reading!

Related posts

• The forum: Pop Sci Book Club forum.
• Tania’s “welcome to the forum” post: How we started.
• The book list: A List of Must Read PopSci Books.
• Tania’s blog post – see “3) A Reading Diary”: On Dastardly Plans and Schemes.
• Buy the first book: Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution.