NASA Blueshift

Professional meetings are a part of the lives of most scientists - but what actually goes on at one of these? It's not just sitting in meetings and listening to talks! These meetings offer an opportunity to share exciting results, catch up with old friends, and pick up some goodies in the exhibit hall. The Blueshift team team attended the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in January and we thought we'd give you a tour of what we were doing there. Because what happens at a professional meeting... ends up on Blueshift! Check out our gallery of photos, too!

A remote research outpost like McMurdo Station in Antarctica draws many different kinds of people - scientists, engineers, writers, artists, and more. The station provides many of the comforts of home, and it's difficult to get bored with the opportunities presented during a visit. Whether it's learning to drive the special ice-friendly vehicles or participating in a chili cook-off, visitors often find themselves embarking on adventures and picking up unusual skills outside the scope of their own area of expertise. In our last episode, we interviewed Dr. John Mitchell about scientific ballooning in Antarctica and his experiences launching his experiment, BESS, in 2004 and 2007. But what's it like to spend a summer on the southernmost continent? In the second part of this interview, Dr. Mitchell tells us about the unique experiences he's had at McMurdo during his visits.

Hunting for antimatter requires a serious expedition. Scientists aren't looking for run-of-the-mill particles - they're collecting cosmic radiation that could be the signature of primordial black holes or other forms of dark matter. With instruments suspended from enormous scientific balloons, they're looking for a launch site that offers long orbits and lots of particles to detect. Where's one of the best places in the world to go particle hunting? Over the remote Antarctic continent! To find out more about Antarctic scientific ballooning, we talked to Dr. John Mitchell, the lead scientist on BESS (the Balloon-borne Experiment with a Superconducting Spectrometer), a joint Japanese/US project that is studying antimatter in cosmic radiation. BESS has flown twice from Antarctica, and a team is headed back this month to recover their detectors from the last flight. We caught Dr. Mitchell just before he left for his latest Antarctic adventure. And no, the last name is not a coincidence - Dr. Mitchell is Blueshift producer Sara Mitchell's father!

We're looking to the future here at NASA Goddard, with the construction of our new Exploration Sciences Building. To celebrate the occasion, we're preparing to seal a time capsule that won't be opened until the year 2059. In this episode of Blueshift, we talked to Dr. Michelle Thaller to find out all the details about this time capsule, and then we went around and talked to our friends and colleagues to find out what they thought might best speak to the people of the future about the NASA of today. Also, if you work in the Sciences and Exploration Directorate here at NASA Goddard, it might not be too late for you to contribute something to our time capsule. There's more information on this at the end of the podcast!

The evening of November 2, 2009 was the world premiere of "Cosmic Reflection," an orchestral composition inspired by one of NASA's satellites, in Washington, DC. This opus began as a simple prelude inspired by (and performed by a brass quintet at) the launch of the GLAST mission. To celebrate the first birthday of this satellite (since renamed Fermi), composer Dr. Noel Gasser wrote a symphony which uses music to aurally portray the history of the universe. We were able to go backstage at the Kennedy Center on the day of the performance to speak to a few of the people involved in this project, including the composer, the producer, a NASA scientist, and the "voice" of Cosmic Reflection.

The makings of new planets lie in dusty, debris-filled disks rotating around stars, held in place and shaped by the influence of their host stars. But the dust, ice, and small bodies in these planet-forming disks also feel the effects of a system's motion through space - and interaction with interstellar gas can warp a dusty disk into a weird and unexpected shape. We spoke with Goddard astrophysicist John Debes about his team's research into these oddly-shaped disks. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists are investigating these disks in hopes of finding clues about how other planetary systems are formed - and perhaps even discovering the origins of our own.

Welcome to a special Halloween episode of Blueshift! It's a time of transition here at Goddard Space Flight Center - a new Exploration Sciences Building has just been completed and the Blueshift team is on the move. For the past 50 years, Goddard's Building 2 has been the home of cutting-edge research and development for many of NASA's space science missions. In the midst of our packing, we wanted to share some stories from this old building and give you an inside look at one of NASA's longest-operating space science facilities. This episode is available in both video and audio formats - for the spookiest Building 2 experience, we recommend you grab some candy and watch the video!

For scientists, winning the Nobel Prize is a lot like winning an Oscar. Winning one comes with prestige and recognition, both from inside and outside of the science community. There are many other prizes and awards in science that are very prestigious, but you may never have heard of them. Science should be awarded and valued - after all, there is a great deal of groundbreaking science that will never win a Nobel Prize, but is still extremely important in the effort to understand the workings of the Universe. (In the same way, movies can't get made without the folks they give the technical Oscars to in the non-televised ceremony!) To celebrate the start of "award season", we have a special presentation for you - the First Annual Blueshift Awards show, complete with Red Carpet and a Very Special Interview.

This summer, the world was watching as seven astronauts visited the Hubble Space Telescope and did the first ever on-orbit repairs in space. This fifth and final Shuttle mission to service Hubble has equipped the telescope with cutting-edge technology and extended its mission lifespan for several additional years. Here at the Astrophysics Science Division, we are excited about the data being captured by Hubble's enhanced instruments, and the discoveries that are sure to come. One of the astronauts on this mission, Dr. John Grunsfeld, is also an astrophysicist. We interviewed him about his experiences with Hubble as both a researcher and a repairman. He shared his thoughts about Hubble's new capabilities, the value of astrophysics, and more. He also told us about a gorgeous image he snapped on a previous servicing mission and is now using as a screensaver - and you can download this image for your own computer!

Scientist Dr. Stefan Immler was part of a team that captured a new and unique view of one of our closest galactic neighbors with the Swift satellite, which has the ability to detect ultraviolet light. The Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, is a beautiful "nearby" spiral galaxy that is actually visible to the naked eye. We talked with Dr. Immler about what his team learned about the galaxy when Swift took a look in the UV.

Earlier this summer, Nobel Laureate Dr. John Mather told us that data are beautiful when they have meaning. Astronomical images communicate information about the way the universe works and how we know what we know. But can a pretty picture be just as lovely even if you don't know what it's about? We interviewed Dr. Randall Smith of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a collaborator on the Aesthetics and Astronomy project that is looking into how the public perceives multi-wavelength astronomical imagery. A team of scientists, educators, and psychologists are examining the intersection of science and art in the processing of astronomical data. In this conclusion to our summer series on data, Dr. Smith shares some surprising early results from the project that may change the way we communicate with images.

The Hubble Space Telescope is famous for its beautiful images of celestial objects - from planets in our own Solar System to far away galaxies. The Orion Nebula (known to astronomers as Messier object 42, or M42) is a cloud of dust, gas, and stars. It's actually visible with the naked eye, located in the "sword" of the constellation Orion. The nebula contains both an open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, and many stellar nurseries. Because of this, it's of interest to scientists who want to learn more about how stars are born. And we don't mean the kind out in Hollywood! (We know, that's a terrible joke.) Astronomer Massimo Robert from the Space Telescope Science Institute has dedicated a lot of his research to the Orion Nebula, and he talked to us about the creation of a breathtaking mosaic of it made with data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

How have you spent your summer vacation? An internship at NASA may not be the most relaxing way to spend these summer months, but for hundreds of high school and college students, it's an opportunity to gain valuable experience. The offices and labs here at Goddard Space Flight Center overflow every summer with interns from around the country, working with their mentors to analyze data, design and build instruments, write software, solve problems, and try their hands at unraveling the mysteries of the universe. Some of Goddard's interns were also interested in getting a taste of science communication - so we gave them the opportunity to put together an episode of Blueshift. They share their stories of how they got here, what they're working on, and what the future holds for their education and career plans.

It's summertime, which means that Hollywood is releasing a bunch of long-awaited, big-budget blockbusters! You can cool off in the theater with action, adventure, and... astronomy? Space science has been written into a variety of films - from the predictable genre of science fiction to romance, drama, and comedy. But do these movies get it right? Occasionally, but many movies have astronomers and other space-savvy members of the audience gritting their teeth and groaning at the misconceptions and misrepresentations upon the big screen. We took our microphone into the hallways and offices of the Astrophysics Science Division and asked: What's your pet peeve about astronomy in the movies? The opinions included represent that of the individuals we interviewed, and not Blueshift or NASA. Sound off on our website or Twitter about astronomy movies that drive you crazy!

It's easy to think of a satellite as a fancy digital camera - just point, shoot, and look at the pretty picture that emerges. But it's not that simple. Astronomical data has a far longer journey to make it from the satellite to end users. Bounced between satellites, sent to Earth, processed, networked, and archived... each observation has to pass through several steps before it can be analyzed by scientists. And that's not even considering the further effort required to make a pretty picture! This episode follows data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on its odyssey from space to Earth, interviewing key personnel along the way.