February 6th radio show...

... is now online and available for your listening pleasure. This program was mostly an all-news show, but constitutes the beginning of a series on Goddard Space Flight Center, the NASA research facility which has played a large role in developing, building, and maintaining some of NASA's most successful missions - such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) - which discovered the hot and cold spots, and the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) - which for a long time was the only source of information on Gamma Ray Bursts and other high-energy phenomena, to name a few. I'll post more on this series later but, first, the synopsis of this week's show:

• News: NASA's Deep Space Network broadcasts Beatles song "Across the Universe" across the universe.
• Solar System: Messenger (NASA), in its first flyby of Mercury before it orbits this planet, uncovers evidence for recent volcanic activity, identifies deep impact craters, discovers a weird spider-like feature on the surface, and determines that Mercury's magnetosphere is strong enough to protect its surface; Venus Explorer (ESA) uses carbon monoxide to trace the motion of low atmosphere winds on Venus; lots of Mars news - high-altitude ice dense enough to cause shadows are seen by OMEGA instrument on Mars Express (ESA), HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (NASA) discovers features of Martian surface which indicate the presence of high-speed winds, HRSC on Mars Express (ESA) identifies features in Terby crater which were likely carved by water, and 3D map of Martian surface compiled using HRSC images released; Hubble images massive storms on Jupiter that originate deep in Jupiter's atmosphere; Cassini determines that in the densest parts of Saturn's rings particles are even spaced - origin for this unknown, and some neat Cassini tools are now available online; dust captured by Stardust as it passed by Comet 81p/Wild 2 has same chemical composition as asteroids, which implies that some comets may have initially formed in the asteroid belt and then moving to the outer Solar System or that, when the Solar System was forming, material was moved around.
• Magellanic Clouds: Hyper-velocity star HE 0437-5439, currently in the Milky Way, believed to have originated in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC); peanut-shaped nebula DEM L316 in the LMC actually two different supernova remnants - one produced by the explosion of a white dwarf, the other by a massive star - with two very different ages which coincidently overlap on the sky; detection of a large Hydrogen cloud leading from the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds to Milky Way, believed to indicate where Magellanic clouds are going next.
• Wednesday Morning Astronomer: (an Astronomer's response to this) Fast-moving neutron star RX J0822-4300 requires a huge power source to make it moving so fast, as will be the case for any spaceship which can travel interstellar distances in a reasonable amount of time.
• Calendar of upcoming science events in the greater New York City / Poughkeepsie area.
• Description of Goddard Space Flight Center.

Hope you enjoy and please leave any questions / comments below or email them to me. Thanks a lot for listening -- Yosi