Ep. 97 - Discovering Pluto and Beyond: Insights from the Lowell Observatory with Todd Gonzales

Hello, and welcome to another episode of "Science 360" the podcast where we explore the wonders of the universe, all aspects of science (360 degrees...full circle...get it?) and the brilliant minds that bring them to light. 

I'm your host, Tim Stephenson, and today I have a very special guest joining us from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Our guest today is Todd Gonzales, the Director of Education at the observatory. Todd is here to share with us the rich history and groundbreaking discoveries made at Lowell Observatory. We'll delve into the story of Percival Lowell, the visionary who founded the observatory, driven by his fascination with Mars and his desire to determine if there was any life there.

We'll also discuss the construction and significance of the iconic Clarke Telescope, and the fascinating tales of how Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were discovered.

Additionally, we'll touch on the incredible contributions of Vesto Slipher, whose work provided the first evidence that our universe is expanding.

For any teachers tuning in, get ready for a wealth of information about our solar system that you can bring back to your classrooms. So, without further ado, let's welcome Todd Gonzales to the show. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This was one of the questions,like do we call them all planets?
Some kids thought, you know,maybe we should call them plants. I
love to ask them, like doyou think it should still be a planet,
and what's your reasoning? Because itis all semantics. We just have
to define the universe, and youknow, what's your reason for it to
be a planet, Because maybe somedayyou'll be an astronomer on the IAU that

(00:21):
will vote to have a definition ofa planet. Change. Welcome back to
another episode of Science three sixty.This is Tim Stevenson, your host.
That was Todd Gonzalez of the LowellObservatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, and we

(00:43):
were just talking about Pluto and inthis episode we're we're talking about lots of
things about the Solar System, allkinds of discoveries and people who made them.
Here on episode number ninety seven,approaching number one hundred, so some
exciting things ahead. This podcast isa proud member of the Teach Better Podcast

(01:07):
Network, Better Today, Better Tomorrow, and a podcast to get you there.
Explore more podcasts at www dot TeachBetter Podcastnetwork dot com. Now let's
get onto the episode. My guesttoday is Todd Gonzalez. He's the director
of education at the Lowell Observatory inFlagstaff, Arizona. In this episode,

(01:30):
what you're going to get is areal interesting history of the Solar System.
Did you know that the planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto are the only
ones that were discovered. The restof the planets were just visible to the
naked eye, so they didn't needto be discovered. But Perceval Lowell had
a particular fascination with Mars, andthat was mostly because there have been some

(01:55):
talk about there being canals on Mars. This was coming out of Europe and
some people were talking about the possibilityof some irrigation canals and Perceval Loil really
wanted to do something about that,so, with his great resources, went
to Flagstaff, Arizona and built theClark Telescope. And it turned out that
this was a great venture. Thetelescope was used to make all kinds of

(02:19):
discoveries that Todd and I kind oftalk about, and that's what this episode
is really all about. We're goingto get into the making of the telescope,
the motivation behind it, the observationsof Mars, how Uranus and Neptune,
were discovered the way Pluto was discoveredusing this very telescope, as well
as the greatest discovery, which wasthe red shift in the galaxies, which

(02:43):
was discovered by Vesto Slipher, andof course that information was used by Edwin
Hubble some few years later as hewent on to make great discoveries about the
expanding universe. So this is agreat episode to just learn about the Solar
System, to become well versed inthe hit of it and the intricacies of
the way the planets were discovered.And then of course the question of is

(03:06):
Pluto still a planet, yes orno? And if it's not a planet,
then what is it? While weget into that as well. So
I think without further ado, let'sget started in our conversation with Todd Gunzalez
of the Lowell Observatory. Just togive you a little bit of background on
what my podcast is is. It'scalled Science three sixty and it's it was

(03:29):
an idea I came up with aboutfour years ago to provide teachers, high
school teachers in particular, with contentthat they may not otherwise be familiar with,
so that when they go to theirclasses they'll have that much more interesting
things to talk about. And theone thing that I hear a lot about
is I don't want to teach theastronomy unit because I just I never took

(03:50):
astronomy and so I don't know anythingand I'm intimidated, and so they skip
it. And you know what isthe is the part of the science curriculum
that students love the most. Soso we're here to fill a need right
right, super excited. That's that'sa really really something I see a lot
too. And right now, justout outside, you know, campers are

(04:12):
being picked up. We have theseday day camps that go on, and
how we staff them is kind ofunique because we use we use certified elementary
teachers to help us as Gelser's,and we we the idea is that they're
coming with this idea that I don'tknow if I could teach astronomy, just
like you said, and then wewe pair them with our loal educators and

(04:35):
they help teach the teachers lessons theycould teach in astronomy, and we get
classroom management from them. They're teachingstrategies. But then we also have pre
service teachers joining and it's really youknow, stark the comparison when we ask
them how comfortable are you with STEM, and they're very uncomfortable with the idea

(04:59):
of teaching it. But at theend of the camps, they're just like,
you know, some of them areeven changing their major. Some of
them want to be a science teacheror that's awesome. Yeah, so it's
it's really neat to see the transformationafter you just have fun with science,
you know. Yeah, I seethe same thing here in Canada for sure.
The there's a certain intimidation, andyet everybody's fascinated by and in particular,

(05:28):
everybody's fascinated by space, and itdraws people into just wanting to know
more. And I go into it. I'll often go into grade six or
grade seven classroom and I'll have certainthings in mind about what it is I
want to cover, and before Icould open my mouth, every kid in
the room, Oh, mister Stevenson, I got a question about black holes.
I got a question about Pluto,I got a question about the moon,

(05:49):
and I can't And an hour goesby and I haven't even done what
I meant to do. But I'mjust allowing them to let their creative and
you know, curiosity juices flow,which I guess is you know something you
probably see as well down there andyou're in flag Staff, Arizona, Right,
that's correct, yep, yep,yeah, we definitely see that a

(06:11):
lot. You know, well,we'll definitely get side railed on our tours
for school programming with black holes oryou know, the questions about is the
sun gonna blow up? Oh yeah, you're just these big questions. They
they you can tell they've been thinkingabout them for a long time and they're
finally going to get to a placewhere they can get some answers. Yeah,

(06:33):
well that's good. So I wassuper excited when I saw the word
lol observatory show up in my classroomor sorry, in my email, because
I mean, the low Observatory isan iconic piece of equipment with huge astronomical
historical relevance and meaning, and soI'd love to be able to ask you

(06:54):
about some of those things, andthen we'll get into some stuff about solar
eclipses and whatever or else we canthink of that. You know, maybe
even some of the curriculum that youuse in some of your ed camps would
also be very fast even just givenoutline. And then there's something new coming
up in the fall, A newa new facility that's opening up with the
observatory. That's correct, the AstronomyDiscovery Center, right, Yeah, And

(07:18):
because I think part of your mandatethere the Low Observatory is is outreach,
education, outreach. Great. Yeah, our mission is to do world class
research, and you know, uhpair that with world class outreach, so
to do research and share it withthe public. And so I'm on the

(07:40):
arm of the mission that shares itwith the public, specifically schools pay through
twelve groups. Yeah, I lovethat. I love that. Let's get
some kind of perspective to start.I I know, I teach an astronomy
course at my high school, andI'm so I'm familiar with the personal with

(08:03):
personval Ol and with the Low Observatoryand some of the discoveries there. But
I wonder if coming straight from you, you can just sort of start us
with a little bit of an understandingof the significance of the Lowll Observatory and
what's gone on there over the lastone hundred and thirty hundred and forty years.
Yeah. So you know, personalLoll came from a pretty wealthy family.

(08:26):
They made their wealth from textiles onthe East coast, and so everyone's
probably heard of Lowell, Massachusetts,a town that was named after the Loll
family. Hey wait a minute,I don't think I made that connection before.
Yeah, that's where their textile millsare. So you can still get
tours of those mills. I guessthey weren't the best working conditions, but

(08:50):
those a lot of those mills arestill there. And so the family acquired
quite an inheritance, and so theirstipulation was, you know, before we
passed this inheritance on to the kids, first full being one of the kids,
you you have to do something thatwill benefit humanity with it. And
so Personval Lowell had this this driveto much like the kids we teach,

(09:15):
this drive to find more out aboutthe universe, specifically Mars, because he
was he was very interested in Mars, and he was I think he was
seeing these canals on Mars or thesestraight lines in the telescope. But you
know, we we still this daydon't exactly know what he was what was
causing that, because it wasn't thatthat was sort of a spinoff from the

(09:39):
work of ga Ni Chipperelli right,Canale right, And it didn't he use
the word canale, lady, butthat I don't think he intended for it
to be interpreted into English as canals, as in irrigation canals, right,
right, that's you know, morelike channels, right and so U But

(10:00):
you know, I first of Lollotook it as like, well, there's
street lines. Nature doesn't like tomake street lines. So these things must
be taking water on this dry planetfrom the ice caps and bringing it to
words warmer on the on the equator, around the equator, so there must
be some intelligence civilization over there,right, And so he started the observatory.
He bought this twenty thousand dollars Clarkrefractor, which is one hundred and

(10:24):
twenty eight year old refractor we stilllook through today, you know. You
know the kids always ask, hey, you know what is twenty thousand dollars
in today's money, and you know, it's somewhere in the range of two
point two million dollars. But thiswas a lot of money back at the
end of the day. So heordered this telescope from Alvin Clark and Sons,

(10:45):
which was based out of Cambridge,Massachusetts. It was shipped by train
all the way out here to thewest and it was set up and personal
loll studied studied Mars with it.But that's not the biggest discovery made the
telescope. We'll get to that later. Yeah, we'll get to that.
Yeah. Yeah, Now you mentionedit was a refractor, which, to

(11:05):
be honest, I always just assumedit was a reflector. Now do you
want to just give an astronomer's takeon the difference between a refractor and a
reflector. Yeah, So a refractoruses uses an optical element like a lens
and so glass that light can passthrough and it can be bent to a

(11:30):
focal point, whereas a reflector usesexactly you know where we see our own
reflection, a mirror, which hasalso got a shape to it. Now
that the difference is is that,you know, for a piece of glass
like what's on the Clark, refractorneeds to be pretty perfect all the way
through, you can't have too manybubbles or blemishes. It's got to be

(11:54):
polished, it's got to be shapedjust right, and it's got to be
pretty near perfect glass all the waythrough, whereas a reflector, the mirror,
the glass, the blank that themirror is made on, you just
need a near perfect shape to reflectthat light and then the surface is usually

(12:16):
usually now it's aluminum, but backin the day it was silver, and
so you just need a reflective surface. But a very small layer of that
mirror just needs to be a goodshape. The rest of it can have
bubbles or blemishes because light is notgoing to try to pass through it.
We're just reflecting the light. Andso that's the big difference is we can
make bigger telescopes with reflectors than wecan with refractors. Refractors, when they

(12:39):
get huge, they start to bendunder their own weight. And that's why,
you know, some of the biggerrefractors, you know, they're not
very many around anymore. Clark isone of the few bigger refractors out there.
And so we ever break that lens, guess what, we're probably not
going to be able to replace it. Someone's gonna be paying about two point
two million dollar right right, becausetwenty four inch refractor, twenty four inch

(13:05):
lens, it's a big piece ofglass. It must get quite thick in
the middle. Yeah, And sothe clo it's what's kind of called the
DOUBLET and so it's actually two lensesstacked close together. So the idea was
to try to eliminate this chromatic aberration. This where the where the light passes

(13:26):
through and bends down to its focalpoint, not all the colors of the
visible spectrum, you know, bentat that same angle. And so having
that doublet there kind of help tryto correct some of that that offspray of
of other colors. Yeah, it'skind of interesting because Newton in the seventeen
hundreds had thought of the idea ofusing a mirror, and the Newtonian reflector

(13:50):
was one of his, you know, his brain child. And and Lowell,
a rich fella from Massachusetts, couldhave bought a telescope with a mirror
and at a larger objective, maybehad better seeing power. I wonder why
he chose to use a lens.You know, did he know somebody at
the company in Cambridge, Massachusetts,or well, you know what. That's

(14:13):
it. That's that's a good,good question. I can I can speculate
a little bit on the on theyou know, the logic behind the telescopes.
You know, the refractors are usedfor brighter objects typically, so you
know, the view viewing stars orbinary stars, planets, the moon.

(14:33):
These refractors work really good with thingsthat are bright and easily you know,
easy to see, whereas the reflectors, you know, you can make them
bigger, they can gather more light, and they tend to do really well
in the deep sky objects and andand things that are just a little bit
harder to see for the for therefractor, which will play into the amazing

(14:56):
discovery made at the clerk a littlelater here. Mm hmm. Okay,
So, so Lowell's built this.He's inspired kind of by the notion that
maybe there's life on Mars and intelligentlife building canals, and he's got the
means and he's gonna build a telescope. He goes to Arizona from Massachusetts,
probably because the air is clear.Is there something about the sky in Arizona,

(15:20):
the atmospheric conditions, humidity that makesthe ideal for scope being down in
that region? Well, yeah,So he was looking all over Arizona,
so he had a few sites inmind. One of them was Tombstone,
Arizona. So, but the reasonwhy flag Staff was picked was because one

(15:41):
a big help was the city donatedthe land. But we were very close
to a railroad. Black Staff hasthe sixty six and the railroad running through
it. But back then it wasthe railroad was your major supply line,
and so being close enough to townfor supplies. But yeah, we are
high up. We're about seven thousandfeet seven thousand feet, that's less air

(16:06):
to look through. Why most telescopesare placed on high places because we want
to look through the least amount ofatmosphere as possible, you know, besides
putting things in space where we getthe really good shots and so flag staff
rivals also you know Arizona Serti ofRivles, California, for their their weather

(16:26):
throughout the area. We don't havevery many rainy, cloudy days. It
is dry. We are considered ahigh desert and so that also plays a
factor in being a great place toview the night sky. Okay, that
makes sense. So now that he'sgot his telescope, does he himself personal

(16:48):
loll actually get into the observatory anddo observations of his owners? See more
of the businessman behind it and howhires a staff to look look at these
things. Yeah. Yeah, Sohe's a mathematician from Harvard, so not
necessarily an astronomer, but he doesget time on that telescope. He spends
a lot of time on that telescope, mapping out the canals, these you

(17:14):
know features he calls canals on Mars, and so writes books about, you
know, the things he's seeing onMars, which spawns all these science fiction
stories too. But he does geta lot of time, and there was
a little building he built near thetelescope where he would come and stay on
the when he was here out inArizona, to look and study Mars through

(17:40):
a telescope. It must have beennice to have, you know, if
people have hobbies, all go bya telescope and look, but you build
something of this magnitude. Must havebeen nice to have that freedom to pursue
his passion with such vigor. Sobesides Mars, where did he have any
of their specific targets? Was heparticularly interested in Venus perhaps, or or

(18:03):
the Moon? Yeah, so,you know, personal Personval was pretty interested
in the planets of the Solar System. And this this is kind of what
you know, Low Observatory sort ofstarted its its bounding research on was just
the Solar System and the objects withinthe Solar System. You know, we
have since added many astronomers over theyears that have studied things outside the Solar

(18:25):
System, galaxies and other stars andthings like that. So, but this
was a core of of Perconval's youknow, vision of the of the observatory
and you know, with the ideathat you know, I'm speculating here,
but with the idea of there possiblybeing life on Mars for him, you
know, there was there is alsothis idea that you know, Venus might

(18:45):
be a place that you know,would harbor life too, and so there
was a there was there was alot to kind of to play off of
in the in the Solar System foryou know, where we could start looking
for for these living things. Yeah. Of course, at the time,
this is the late eighteen hundreds,this is before the work of Edwin Hubble,

(19:08):
even they wouldn't have known really anythingabout the magnitude of the universe or
the expanding universe, even what agalaxy is. I suspect at this time
they would have looked outside of thenight sky and said, look, there's
the universe. They would have noidea that what they're looking at is a
few stars close proximity to our partof the small part of our galaxy,

(19:33):
and so their their knowledge of spacewas very limited. So this is just
not it's kind of internally human history. This is not that long ago that
they really didn't know much at allabout what they're looking at. No,
No, And it's you know,you're saying Edwin Hubble, and this is
going to really lead into where theClark is, you know, you know,

(19:55):
really, you know, the biggestdiscovery in astronomy is arted with the
Clerk. But before we get tothat, you know, yeah, even
in eighteen ninety four when we foundedthe observed story, it wasn't that long
ago that they discovered Neptune. Andso you know, there's a there's a
lot of really you know, neatrecent events that led to this search in

(20:18):
astronomy in the Solar System. Ican speak to how they were discovered,
What was it, what was itobserve astronomers? What led astronomers to think
that there was something else out there? Yeah, and so you were breaking
up just a little bit there,but I'm you were I think you're asking
about what what led to astronomers startlooking for this planet ex er would later

(20:41):
be Pluto. Yeah, well,andr Uranus and Neptune as well. Yeah.
So you know, I love whenI'm taking school groups up the we
have a planet planet walk and Iusually stop halfway in the Solar System,
which people are surprised that that's theplanet Urinus, and I like to throw

(21:02):
a little, you know, sentenceout there to kind of make them think,
and I said, welcome to thefirst planet that was discovered, the
first planet discovered. And I letthem think about that, because they're like,
what, you know, how howis that possibly we had all those
other planets? How is that thefirst well, you know, it took
William Herschel to look at this thingthrough a telescope, who thought it was
a comment at first and then realized, no, this is this is a

(21:26):
planet. And by studying Uranus's orbitand how it didn't necessarily fit the predictions
of how it should move in theSolar System, that they started really started
to think maybe there's something bigger outthere holding on it with gravity. And

(21:47):
so then I walk them up toNeptune and I say, welcome to the
first planet discovered. With math thatthis planet was predicted in within a degree
of its location on paper before wefound it on a telescope. And you
know, then I get on mysoapbox as a as a, as a
as a teacher, and say,you know, I don't want to hear

(22:08):
if anyone's bad at math. Mathis a language, the language of the
universe, and you just need topractice it to get good with it.
And so just a ringing language.And so here's Neptune discovered with you know,
math within a degree. And soof course this led firstpal Louell to
thinking, now Neptune isn't enough todescribe that the disturbances we're seeing in the

(22:33):
planet Uranus's orbit, there must beanother planet out there. We're gonna look
for this planet X, this ninthplanet, and he, being a mathematician,
said I'm gonna put my skills tothe test, and he, you
know, pretty much mapped out wherethis planet X might be. And so
he had this chart in the skywhere we were going to start looking.

(22:55):
And that's unfortunately, right when hestarted getting things set up for that search,
that's when he he passed away innineteen sixteen, before he could even
really start that search in full,and so he ends up passing away,
and so it's not picked up untillater in nineteen you know, the late

(23:15):
nineteen twenties and nineteen thirty with ClydeTombaugh and so and of course, you
know I can jump into that storytoo. Yeah, no, yeah,
and I want you to. Butfirst, the thought I had with the
Yeurineus thing Neptune, like, hadthey been on opposite sides of the Sun,

(23:40):
there would never have been any noticeableperturbations in their orbits. Like was
it true that the two planets happenedto be in the local vicinity kind of
orbiting around the Sun on the sameside that would cause a noticeable disruption in
their predicted orbits. That's a that'sa good you know, that's a good

(24:03):
question that I'm I'm not sure ifI have an answer to. But the
the thing with with the Solar systemis things are things are in balance based
on all the masses that are inthe Solar System, and so so it's
even though Neptune and at opposition atone point, there's still gonna be some

(24:26):
effects in that orbit from just Neptuneand and Jupiter even be in Saturn being
present and so, but there's gonnabe some some ways that that doesn't exactly
match with the orbit. But Iyou know, I need to go back
and see if if they indeed wereclose, and that would probably add to

(24:47):
a lot of the the you know, the peak of the disturbances they were
seeing. But but that is coolthat that William Herschel found Urinus. Thought
it was a common just back Hershellwould have been temporary of people like oh,
Edmund Haley or Charles Messier who arealso comet hunters, and maybe he

(25:08):
thought, oh, I got onetoo, so I can add my name
to the record books of being acomet. But then he finds a planet
and is Uranus? All right?But yeah, yeah, you know,
and that's that's exactly what he wasdoing, was, you know, trying
to find these these comments and soand then yeah, finding a planet instead.

(25:29):
You know, of course this isa shock to him. And you
know, on our literature, onour signage, you know it it mentioned
that he wanted to name the planet, you know, after his team,
and so, uh, yeah,the planet Urineus for the longest time was
going through some identity crisis because youknow, William Herschel wanted to call it
Georgium Cittis, but then everybody keptcalling it Herschel's planet. And so there's

(25:55):
a story and I'm not sure howaccurate the story is, but there's this
story that it took some geologists orchemists that we're working with an element uranium,
decided, you know what this wecan't name this planet after a king,
none of you know, we can'tname it after a person. They
follow, they follow this Greek Romanmythology. How about we found this this

(26:18):
new element, we're playing with,this new element. Let's just force the
issue by saying we're gonna name it. We're gonna name it after the planet
Urinus, and we're gonna call ituranium. And so in those journals,
those chemical journals, they they sortof forced the issue to name the planet
after the Greek god of the sky, Urinus. And so yeah, and

(26:40):
then then the element ninety three isneptunium, right, so Neptune so Uranus,
and then Neptune is number ninety twoand ninety three in the periodic table.
It's kind of interesting, right,not a coincident. I'm sure it's
not a coincidence though. That wasintentional, right, right, And you
know Pluto also gets the same honorand tonium, right, and you know,

(27:03):
here's the irony of that one.The New Horizon space probe, which
flew by Pluto in twenty fifteen,took the first pictures of Pluto with a
graham of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes on board. So not only did Clyde Tomba find
Pluto, but he also is thefirst to fly by it, and it
was powered by plutonium, which theycouldn't have known back then that they would

(27:27):
have powered a craft to take picturesof the very planet they named it after.
Was the power for propulsion or forelectricity, for electricity, So it
is one of these I think they'recalled RTGs radio thermal generators, and they

(27:48):
used plutonium as the radio isotope.Right, Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah.
You know. The thing is,NASA's got this propensity for doing funny
things like that. You know,I feel like they would have done that
on purpose. Hey we're going toPluto, let's power it with plutonium,
right right? Yeah, maybe maybethere was a decision or a secret room

(28:11):
discussion to kind of like, hey, let's do this. This this seems
kind of neat to play on.But yeah, but the one, the
one thing I've always wondered about,and these could be old wives tales,
I don't know, but Pluto discoveredby Clyde Tombaugh. No, first of
all, was he like an employeeat the observatory. Yeah, so,

(28:34):
you know, we hired him.He was twenty four years old, young
kid from Kansas, a farm inKansas, and he you know, the
story goes that, you know,this is during the Great Depression. You
know, nobody was able to affordto go to college. Clyde Tomba got
into loul on his hard work anddedication to astronomy. He built telescopes in

(28:56):
his barn with his dad. Wehave one of his old telescopes in our
museum and it's made of tractor parts. And he polished his own mirrors,
and so he was no stranger totelescopes and astronomy, and we hired him
sort of as a custodian. Heyou know, shovels snow, he kept
furnaces going. You know, hegave tours. But you know, he

(29:18):
also operated the astrograph which would laterbe used to discover Pluto, searching and
taking pictures of the night sky andthen using a blink comparator to compare one
picture from another that were six nightsapart. And he would be looking for
these moving dots and these these oldplates, and you know, would later

(29:41):
find Pluto in nineteen thirty, sothe pictures had already been taken and he
was just analyzing the plates. Yeah. So when I get to Pluto on
my tours, I say welcome tothe first and I say planet still when
I but welcome to the first planetdiscovered during the day, because yeah,
it took the pictures and day.Yeah, but he took he was looking

(30:03):
through the plates during the day,so he discovered that planet D and D.
And I think that that catches alot of people by surprise when they
come up to see the telescope.One, you can't look through the telescope,
it's a camera. And then two, oh my gosh, Yeah,
that makes sense. He would haveto be looking through the film in the
plates during during the day. There'sa lot of parallels to another story of

(30:27):
Wilhelmina Fleming. Do you know thatname? No? Okay. Wilhelmina Fleming
was hired by Edward Pickering at Harvardthe Harvard Observatory and what she was hired
as a maid, But then EdwardPickering needed some cheap help to analyze the
glass plates that had been recorded bythe telescope at Harvard, and she was

(30:52):
the one to sort of start thiswhole sort of tradition of these so called
women of Harvard. Literally everything weknow about the stars were discovered by or
the same way Claude Tomball was doingwith for Pluto, but they were doing
it for the stars, things likeSefian variables, and ultimately even vera Reuben

(31:15):
with dark matter, she would havebeen in that long line of tradition.
So it's funny how people look atothers as oh, you're just the janitor
or you're just the maid. Butsome great discoveries were made by these otherwise
not looked upon with respecting people.Yeah, so that's interesting. Yeah,
women were the computers, you know, and we have a little exhibit about

(31:37):
that, the number crunchers, andthey did all the background research that led
to these huge, you know discoverieshere at woll we We you know a
lot of calculations were done done heretoo, so you know, this was
this was yeah, that was That'swhat's really cool about the science is is

(32:00):
is all these people that go intoall this, all these people that go
into the research for these discoveries,and we're really starting to make amends on
that by including everything, Like yousee these research papers coming out with names,
and it's just like the first fewpages of names, it's like,
these are the people that contributed tothis research. So interestingly, like so,

(32:21):
Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto arethe only planets that are actually discovered.
Uranus was done somewhat by chance,noticing movement plate by play thought it
was a comet. Neptune was discoveredmathematically, and Pluto was discovered during the
day. Right, the only planetdiscovered during the daytime. Right, these
are interesting little anecdotes that people willremember, right, And you know what's

(32:46):
kind of what's kind of interesting isnow today today in modern astronomy, a
lot of exoplanets are probably discovered duringthe day too, because oh, for
sure, you get all these robotictelescopes looking at the night sky now and
so a lot of that that thegraphs looking for the little the patterns of
something orbiting a star. You know, it's probably discovered during the day,

(33:08):
which you know, Pluto is justthe very first in a long line of
discoveries that would be made during theday. Like a great example would be
a young lady here in Vancouver,Michelle Kunamoto, who was given a lot
of the data from the Kepler Spacetelescope by her professor, doctor Jamie Matthews,

(33:29):
who's kind of Candida as astronomer,and she ended up finding in her
fourth year, senior year of university, she found four exoplanets by studying the
data. There was just so muchdata. They're saying, hey, who
wants this? We can't get throughit all to somebody, and she said,
yeah, I'll do it, andshe found four plus. Pretty good
way to start her career in astronomy, right right, you know, and

(33:52):
I keep you know, I'm drawingblinks on the names. But Galaxy Zoo
is a city and science project whereyou know, you could go through all
these different images of galaxies and helpclassify and I know a few discoveries of
odd objects have been made by peoplejust seeing a picture that has the first

(34:13):
human eyes on it because there's somuch data and they're finding discoveries just sitting
at your computer and going through picturesand helping scientists classify these data. That
I wonder I can get that kindof data into the hands of some high
school students. I BETU there'll besome who'd be willing to take it on
and pour through, right right.But the the other thought, I had

(34:36):
though I was going as getting outwith Clyde Tomba, was is there anything
to the story of Pluto being atribute to Personval Lowell p L and Pluto
p L personal Lowell? Yeah,is that a thing? Yeah. The
the symbol for Pluto if you sawif you type into Google, hey what

(34:57):
are the planetary symbols, and you'llsee these these symbols pop up, But
Pluto's is a emerged he in L. And that is sort of our you
know, we couldn't name Pluto afterPerconval. We couldn't name Pluto planet Percy
because you know, personal started thistry to start this search that ultimately became

(35:17):
successful with cly Tomba. But youknow, so our way of sort of
kind of putting that in there withoutbeing so direct is the symbol which has
emerged he and L, which standswe could also stand for personal lull.
Yeah. I always thought that.I think around the same time Steamboat Willie,
which was the precursor to Micky Mouse, he had a dog named Pluto

(35:42):
around the same time that Pluto atthe planet was being discovered, and I
always wondered if maybe that the thoughtwas, well, the public will be
quite you know, amenable to thisname Pluto because we all love the dog
Pluto. I don't know that right, So that the naming of Pluto,
actually the credit goes to a youngeleven year old girl by the name of

(36:05):
Venetia Bernie. So you know,we sort of sent out this sort of
limited you know, hey, helpus name Pluto to various institutions, and
so Venetia Bernie, uh, sentin a suggestion. Hey, you know,
basically I'm you know, she said, hey, there's all these Roman
and Greek themes for the planets.You know what, what what about the

(36:30):
Roman god of the underworld Pluto forsomething that's in a cold, dark,
mysterious place, And that name stuck. And so so at least in the
during the tours, we we say, you know, one we give we
say, oh man, how howcool is that that? You know,
because when I see eleven year oldsin my tour, like, how cool

(36:51):
is that that you've got to namea planet that somebody, somebody your age,
got to name a planet without abeen around nineteen thirty that she was
naming it yep, right, Andso she she sends him a telegram with
you know, uh, because hergrandfather I think was connected to our observatory
in some way. But we havethe telegram that you know, suggests Pluto

(37:15):
for the Roman god of the underwomdand that that's what you know, stuck.
And so of course then the Pand l uh comes into it,
because you know, there's there's alwaysa little bit of you know, political
push and shove at the observatory whenmoney is being managed by you know,
Percell L's widow. And of courseyou know, we want to throw credit

(37:37):
at personal Loll for starting this andwanting to keep it going and leaving money
behind to get it going. Butwe really didn't want to be the institution
the first one that tried to pushnaming a planet after a person. And
so Pluto just just fits so nicelyin the merged P and l that that

(37:58):
just I think that's just so it. Now here you are, all these
decades later, you're working at thevery place that this planet was discovered.
That's pretty cool, oh. IWhen I came to college here to get
my credential to teach middle school science, I wouldn't go anywhere else and put
applications in. I put only myapplications did for LOLL because I had such

(38:22):
a fondness for the story, thatsuch a fondness for space, and so
I just, you know, Ijust kept my fingers crossed that I would
get a call. Sure enough Idid, and so there you are,
and here I am. Now.The reality is, in two thousand and
six, Pluto gets stripped of itsplanetary status, and I think it'd be

(38:44):
appropriate for you, coming from theLowe Observatory, to explain why that process
happened and the reasons why Pluto isno longer considered an official planet. All
right, So this is good becausethis is the question I get asked a
lot on our school group programming.So you know, back when Pluto was

(39:06):
discovered, there were really two twoI guess guidelines or rules that helped define
what a planet was. And thosetwo were one you had to be around
and two you had to go aroundthe sun. Pluto was it from nineteen
thirty all the way to about twothousand and one, when telescopes, detectors,

(39:27):
cameras were getting better that we starteddiscovering other round objects out there in
Pluto's neighborhood. Eris said, none, q quarwar, you know, Mahi
mahi, Just to name a fewof probably slaughtering those names, but just
to name a few, Yeah,I've heard of them. And so you
know what I what I tell thekids is like, hey, you know,

(39:50):
we were in a we were awe're in a time where there's going
to be more of them, andso we either like, here's where we
are as a human as humans,this is how we we do science.
We try to put nature in boxesto better understand the universe around us.
Nature doesn't always fit in those boxes. And you know, we were starting

(40:10):
to see that our planet box wasoverfilling, and so what we're doing is
we're taking another look at that boxand saying, hey, some of these
things are similar to each other.Maybe we should make a new box for
them, because they all seem tobe a little bit similar. And so
we made a new guideline or rule, and that as you you know,

(40:32):
in general terms, you have tohave gravity strong enough to sort of clean
up your orbit, uh in yourarea, and Pluto's gravity isn't isn't that
strong, and it's not really doinga great job at cleaning up its orbit.
It's floating along with all these otherthings out there. And so Pluto
gets you know, we we hateto use the word demoted because it's sort

(40:54):
of employee. It's still there.Yeah, Pluto's Fluto is agree and wants
revenge. But Pluto was reclassified asa dwarf planet. Now here's a fun
little twist to the story. Twentytwenty four. This year, the Arizona
legislature votes to consider Pluto a stateplanet. So what does that mean for

(41:20):
everyone in Arizona. Like we liketo joke with this and say, well,
when you're in Arizona, Pluto isa planet, not a dwarf planet.
But if you go to New Mexicoor anywhere else, it's considered a
dwarf planet because now Pluto is consideredthe state planet. And so just kind
of an interesting word. But it'sall semantics. Humans are just trying to

(41:42):
understand the universe. And I alwaystell the kids it could change in your
lifetime. It's going to change againas we learn more information. Our definitions
of planets might change in your lifetime. And we just have to understand,
oh, this is science, thisis science happening. We're just trying to
understand these scenes that were in youknow, these patterns in the universe,

(42:07):
and so we'll we'll change their definitionsover time. And Pluto also has a
highly elliptical orbit, and I believeit was nineteen seventy nine to nineteen ninety
nine it was actually closer to theSun than Neptune. Right, so it
in a sense, if you wereto draw the lines, it would show

(42:28):
Pluto crossing Neptune's orbit for those twentyyears. I think it was a two
hundred and forty nine year, twohundred and forty eight year orbit yep,
yep, about about that, abouttwo hundred and fifty years to go around
once. So since we've discovered it, it has not been around the Sun.
It's gone around about a third ofthe way or something. Yeah,

(42:49):
so and for twenty of those yearsit was closer to the Sun than Neptune.
And I guess planets aren't allowed todo that. And that and then
if you're going to call Sedna andQuo are all those other ones, if
you're if they're gonna be planets likea Pluto is going to be a planet,
then they're all planets, right,And then you can't well you can't,
you can't make them all planets,right. And again I like to

(43:13):
joke, like you know, inschool, I was taught, you know,
my very enthusiastic mother just served usnine pizzas to remember our planets.
And so then I say, well, now it's my very excited mother just
served us nachos and so but yeah, I said, kids, how long
would that be if all of themwere planets? Like we you know,

(43:34):
my poor mother is serving lots ofthings like that's you know this is this
was one of the questions, likedo we call them all planets? Some
kids that you know, maybe weshould call them plants. I love to
ask them, like do you thinkit should still be a planet? And
what's your reasoning? Because it isall semantics. We we just have to
define the universe, and you know, what's your reason for it to be

(43:55):
a planet? Because maybe someday you'llbe an astronomer on the IAU that will
vote to have a definition of aplanet change. Yeah, And I guess
at one time Pluto was the smallestand most distant planet, but now it's
maybe the biggest and closest dwarf planet, right, right, Yeah, from

(44:17):
actually a little guy to a bigguy, right, and actually two asteroids
got an I guess you could saya promotion to dwarf planet status because you
know, they're they're round series beingone of them, and so they're round,
and the orbit in an area ofspace where there's a lot of junk

(44:39):
out there and so rocky debris,and so they don't clean up their orbit.
So in a way they got apromotion from asteroid to dwarf planet according
to this definition. So that's whythere's some some on the astronomer two different
schools here that are like, hey, maybe we should redefine this, you

(44:59):
know, just because there's a lotof gray area. Things are getting kind
of mixed up and confusing people,So maybe we should come up with a
series is series is between Mars andJupiter. And then you said that,
but there are two what was theother one? Yeah, uh he Pallace

(45:20):
series and there's another one that's yes, keeping my mind that they're both in
the asteroids belt between Mars and Jupiter. Yeah, and plice P A l
l E s h P A Ll E. Sorry, yeah, yeah,
okay, And and and then there'sa there's these other categories that Pluto

(45:46):
may fall under. It may becalled trans Neptunian, or it might even
be called a Kuiper Belt. Object. Right, That's that's another thing that
nature doesn't like, you know,to fit in his bound so you know,
uh, and so trying to definewhere those things those zones start is

(46:07):
pretty tough because there's no border innature where that is. And so,
yeah, trans Neptunian and objects,things that you know come close to Neptune's
orbit or some you know cross itkind of like you know, Pluto in
its highly elliptical orbit, and thenKuyper built objects, which describes many many,
many many thousands of things that areout there in this icy realm of

(46:30):
where Pluto is. And then ifyou go out even farther, you have
the Org cloud where you know,these comments exist, the material for these
comments that come in on these reallyelliptical paths. And so, but where
where is that boundary? And that'ssomething that the Voyager space probes are kind
of looking at, is like whereis this boundary of where the Sun's influence

(46:52):
stops and interstellar space influence starts?Like is there is there a boundary?
You know, can we detect it? You know, is there a point
where we can say that's definitely wherethis this border is. And it's not
very clear even the border between theEarth's atmosphere and space is called the carbon

(47:14):
line. But it's not like therockets are passing us a line. Oh,
there it is. We just passedthe boundary, right, the atmosphere
leaks out into space. But it'sjust sort of well, we had to
define it somewhere. We'll call itone hundred kilometers above the surface of the
Earth right right exactly. And evento this day, they still have to

(47:35):
adjust satellite positions because they're still runninginto the very small wisps of the of
the atmosphere and they're leaking that partof the atmosphere didn't follow the rules.
They know that they're not supposed tocross the carbon line, right, that's
right, that's right. And thenwhat can you tell me about the New
Horizons spacecraft It went past in twentyfifteen and it took lots of pictures.

(48:01):
Was there was some thought at somepoint about is is Pluto the planet or
is it a moon orbiting caron?And there there's I mean, I think
we're pretty clear probably Pluto is thecenter of gravity out there. But even
that came into question a little bit, didn't it. Yeah, actually it

(48:22):
is. It's still it's still aquestion because you know, they're the Berry
Center between the two objects Chiron andPluto. Since Karen's almost you know the
size of Pluto, you know it'sit's massive. It's still massive for a
satellite, a natural satellite. Theyorbit a central central point in space.

(48:42):
So the the Berry Center is actuallyoutside of Pluto. Where are you know,
are moons between the Berry Center forEarth and the moon is under our
crust. The Berry Center for Plutoand Caron are is outside in space,
and so they sort of orbit eachother like a helicopter, you know,
it's sort of in the motion ofa helicopter blade. And so but yeah,

(49:07):
it was called into question. AndI think one of the biggest surprises
that they got with New Horizon whenwhen we were up close to see these
pictures, these high definition pictures.The thing that struck us the most wasn't
so much the satellites of Pluto,but that Pluto's surface appeared to be renewed,

(49:29):
that there was there was processes happeningon Pluto. We weren't there long
enough to see the processes, butthe amount of craters is very limited,
which means that the surface is beingrenewed by some some process. Nothing coming
up from below. Something coming upfrom below is renewing it some energy processes.

(49:52):
Even though Pluto is so far awayfrom the Sun, the energy,
there's energy moving nitrogen and material around. And one of the biggest like wow,
you know, that's it. Youknow, we turned the camera around
on New Horizons looked at Pluto withthe Sun behind it illuminating the halo around

(50:13):
Pluto, and there were nitrogen clouds. So you know, nitrogen goes through
the three phases of matter on Pluto. Apparently that water does here on Earth.
Nitrogen goes through its liquid solid gas, you know on Pluto. Now
will that continue as Pluto goes furtherand further away from the Sun and it's
elliptical orbit, We don't know,but you know is that those clouds are

(50:37):
going to come back down to thesurface at some point. So, you
know, there's lots of speculation.We actually have a time capsule in the
Pluto Discovery Telescope dome built up withpredictions from scientists on the New Horizons mission
that you know, if only tobe opened up when we send a lander

(50:57):
or an orbiter back to Pluto withthese like we want to pull these predictions
back out to see if we wereright, like, and some of these
predictions might be, like what's causingthe surface to renew? Is it is
it? You know, are therecryo geysers, cryobocanism? Is things raining
back down? Or is nitrogen rainingback down? Is snow and covering you

(51:20):
know some of the features, likeyou know, we would love to spend
more time there, but you know, when's that next mission. It took
ninety nine years to get New Horizonsout there, and it took four hours
to just talk to New Horizons eighthours if you wanted a two way and
so you know that's a it's it'sways off. So I'm opening some I'm

(51:42):
hoping I'm still around for when theyopen that time capsule. Yeah, you'll
have to just catch in the orbitfor another one hundred and sixty years to
get the characterises of the entire lap, right, right, So yeah,
you're gonna have to stay healthy,right, Yeah, I drink my oval
teeth and you know, and yeahstay yeah, And now New Horizons is
one of these five escaping spacecraft.Do you do you use Heavens Above dot

(52:10):
com? I don't know the websiteHeavens Above dot com. It lists all
of the escaping spacecraft and tells youwhere they are, how fast they're going,
what direction they're heading, and NewHorizons is obviously on that list.
It's quite an interesting website. Yeah. Yeah, Well, I hope we

(52:32):
were getting science just as long aswe've got from our voyagers on some of
that. I just hope we keepgetting back data. Uh. There's a
student dust counter on that spacecraft,so built by students. I forget which
institution had that built, but itwas built by students and it counts dust

(52:55):
in interstellar space, and so theythought this through. Really I think,
Okay, most of this time's light, most of this probe's lifetime is going
to be with nothing to look at, and so we really, we really
want some instruments on there that areare going to do science when there's nothing
to point the cameras at. Mmhmm. This has been a ton of

(53:17):
information. But I've got one morething I want to ask you about,
and and I'm I'm hoping that itapplies to what you do. But I
wanted to touch on the name VestoSlipher and spectroscopy. Didn't he do some
work as well as a low observatory? Oh yeah, so this is this
is where you know, I wantedto get to the biggest discovery in astronomy

(53:38):
is Lark and so U Vesso Slipherfor for everyone that wasn't isn't aware of
who he is. Vesto Melvin Slipherwas one of two brothers that worked here.
Earl Slipher was his brother would lateron move on to to another institution,
but Vesso spent his whole career here. And Vesta was one of those

(54:01):
astronomers hired by Loell that was justkind of quiet, didn't really like the
limelight too often, but very brightindividual. Well, the story goes that
we we were going to polish oneof the tell the We borrowed a telescope
before the clerk got in there,and so we decided, well, let's

(54:22):
send it back clean. So wesent an aaron person to go get some
alcohol. They came back with whatalcohol Without us knowing, we ruined the
lens, you know, pretty muchetched the lens. And so before we
we send it back, we said, we are so sorry, we would
love to buy an instrument from youpay for the damage. The brasher didn't

(54:45):
want any of the damages, sowe said, let us buy the best
spectroscope you've got, and we boughtthe spectroscope that would be later used for
this discovery. Well, Vesto learnshow to use this. These things didn't
come with user manuals like most thingsdo today. He had to learn how
to use this. Put it onthe back of the Clark telescope, and

(55:07):
so light comes through the telescope througha few prisms broken into its colors,
and then Vesto modifies it to takepictures of the rainbow. And this is
in nineteen twelve, nineteen fourteen.Like through that range, there's no color
photograph, so we've got these blackand white, small microscopic pictures of rainbow.

(55:29):
And I love telling the story becauserainbows tell you two key things in
the universe. One rainbows tell youwhat something is made out of and two
rainbows can tell you how fast somethingis moving towards you or away from you.
And so Vesto was pointing the spectroscopeand the Clark at these things called

(55:52):
spiral nebula. And the first nebulawas the Andromeda nebula. Now, of
course we know that's a galaxy today, but this goes back to saying,
we didn't know that these things werethe size they were and as far as
they were, so we thought theseare, you know, baby proto solar
systems. They were just a starin the center and planets forming in the
spiral arms. And so Vesto pointsthis thing, thinking, I'm gonna find

(56:15):
that these have the same element signaturesas Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and
Neptune. We're gonna see the samehydrogen helium markers that were we saw on
the outer planets, and we canpretty much add that evidence to the wall
that these things are proto planetary disksor their their solar systems forming. While

(56:36):
he gets this image and he's like, man, this is too dim.
Well, yeah, these things arepretty low quality and this is why they
refractor wasn't the best telescope for this, but Besto was persistent, so he
shut the shutter on the camera aftera whole night of exposure, went to
bed, came back the next nightand exposed the same piece of film at

(57:00):
night. Two nights of waiting forthis exposure, and he gets these lines
and he's like, oh, yeah, there's the hydrogen, hydrogen and helium
lines. Wait, wait, they'reshifted. They're shifted a lot. And
he does the calculation and he realizesthat this Andromeda nebula is moving on the
order of about one hundred and eightymiles per second. This is the fastest

(57:22):
thing he's ever observed in the universe. Stars aren't moving that fast, Planets
are not moving that fast. He'snever seen anything move this fast. And
he writes personal Loll and he says, hey, this is what I found
with the Andromeda nebula. What doyou think? What do you think about
this? Person of Loll writes himback and says, hey, that is

(57:44):
weird. Maybe it's a fluke.Why don't you point this at other spiral
nebula and get their you know,radio velocities. And he points it at
other spiral nebula finds out those onesare moving faster, but this time they're
red shifted. They're moving away fromus. They're not moving toward us like
the Andromeda nebula is. These nebulaare moving away from us at three hundred

(58:05):
order about three hundred miles a second. He's like, how is this?
How is this possible? The universeshould not be changing and moving this fast,
And so he gathers all of hisdata, goes to Indiana nineteen fourteen
at thebas conference and Edwin Hubble isin that room, and Edwin Hubble's like,
oh my gosh, now this isthis is the polar opposite of Vesto.

(58:30):
He's a rock star, he lovesa crowd. He goes back to
his bigger one hundred inch telescope.Mount Wilson takes pictures of long exposures of
the drama Nebula and finds out I'mseeing Sepia variables there. I'm seeing stars
that vary in their brightness that Ican calculate their distance. And he's like,
oh my gosh, these things haveindividual stars. And this scene is

(58:52):
like two million light years away,and so sort of over, I like
to say, sort of overnight,even though it's a few years of data
collection, overnight, the universe grewand is still growing. And so when
I people are sitting in the roomwith the clerk, I say, this
is the room where the first evidenceof an expanding universe started. And to

(59:17):
this day that is still the biggestdiscovery in all of astronomy because it changed
everything we weren't expecting it. Itchanged everything, our textbooks, the way
we view the universe, and ityou know, to this day, you
know, people say that that that'sstill the biggest discovery. We were looking

(59:37):
for Pluto, we found it.We were looking for pictures of black holes.
We designed whole software packages that youknow, would take a picture of
a black hole. We were lookingfor them. And so when we found
them, yeah, great discovery,But not the universe bending discovery that we
found with that spectroscope attached to theclerk of all things. It wasn't really

(01:00:00):
designed for dim deep sky objects.And so Vesto is credited for starting us
down that path of an expanding universe. Of course, with Edwin Hubble's many
many, you know, pictures andevidence after that, Besto was the first

(01:00:20):
to start it. And so yeah, at a time when the common theme
was that the universe was static andunchanging, and of course the number one
opponent to the idea of an expandinguniverse was Albert Einstein, a fairly intimidating
opponent, and butted heads a littlebit with or quite a bit in the
twenties with Edwin Hubble over is theuniverse expanding? Or isn't it? But

(01:00:45):
isn't it fascinating? That spectroscopy,which I'll tell my students is maybe one
of the most or the most importantpiece of science, because with spectroscopy,
I know how far away it is, I know how fast is going,
I know how hot it is,I know what is made of I know
that the universe is expanding. Ican I can figure out the magnitude in

(01:01:07):
terms of millions of light years.I mean spectroscopy. I like the expression
I like to use is we didn'tneed to go to the stars because the
stars came to us in the formof their light. All we needed to
do is have someone like vest thosesliphers say hey, I know what to
do. I can analyze that lightand look what I found out this spectacular
piece of science. Right And justtelling you know, the younger generation that

(01:01:30):
there's hidden messages in light is mindblowing enough. And then you know when
it's not just astronomy that uses thescience. It's biology, it's chemistry,
it's geology. We have robots onMars that are shooting lasers at rocks just
to get a puff of vapor andthen analyzing it with spectroscopy to see what

(01:01:51):
the rock is made out of.Like I mean, we were doing spectroscopy
in a lot of different fields,and so and the kids when I put
on the rainbow glasses and show themthe spectrum tubes in the field trips here
and then we go through hydrogen andhelium and nitrogen and they see the different
lines. I say, if youloved doing this, like you know,

(01:02:15):
there's not much that's changed with spectroscopy. We look at instead of looking with
your eyeballs, we look at graphsof colors, like you know, we
graph it out and we can learnwhat things are made out of, how
fast they're moving, the temperature theyare like. There's so much we can
uncover with light, and it's hiddenwithin those beams of light coming from so
far away, so far away.I teach my students to purple, purple,

(01:02:38):
green and red. It's the spectrumof hydrogen. You know, a
couple of shades of purple, ashade of green, and then a shade
of red is the dominant lines andhygien and I want them to be able
to draw that into the notebook andfrom memories say no, no, no,
that's hydrogen. What do you meanthat's hydrogen. It's the fingerprint of
hydrogen, and that's how we understandwhat the universe is made of. Right,

(01:03:00):
beautiful discovery. Yeah, and inastronomy is one of those things where
it's like, you know, thescientific method, the idea of the scientific
method. Now we're kind of morethe scientific process is what we sort of
teach now is like, oh,it's a process because in back in the
day, we teach this method thatwould go step by step by step.

(01:03:21):
You start with the question, thenyou know, or a problem, and
then you you observe, you experience, experiment, you observe, you conclude,
like you have these steps that you'resupposed to go in order. But
in astronomy, like you know,we can't experiment on everything that's that far
away. And so you know,a lot of astronomy is done, a
lot of the science for astronomy isdone through light. And it's how we

(01:03:45):
understand as much as we do aboutthe nurse, which isn't a lot,
but you know, light gets usquite a ways there. So and persistence
and dedication to your craft. VestoSlipher could have been and the person we
talk about when we talk about theexpanding universe, but it's Edwin Hubble that
we talk about. Maybe he hada bigger telescope as part of it,

(01:04:08):
but he's also the one who wouldbe described as being just very very dedicated
to his craft and was willing tobe patient enough to sit through all those
hours of taking those pictures of maybewhat forty or fifty galaxies he recorded over
a period of maybe about eight orten years. But he he jumped onto

(01:04:30):
the work of Vesto Slipher and said, hey, I got a better telescope.
I could do this, and hedoes. Now we call it Hubble's
law. We don't call it Slipher'slaw, right right, Yeah, there
was. You know, we wedo talk about that occasionally, like,
oh man, you know, inanother world, the Hubble telescope would have
been the Slipher telescope. Yeah,it's true, and so you know,
you know, in another world.But Bestill was was just that he was

(01:04:55):
just kind of a quiet didn't wantto didn't really want to butt heads with
anybody, and but really bright individual, loved his loved his craft, loved
his science, but just kind ofa quiet, shy guy. And so
where Edwin Hubble was just like,yeah, let's let's publish, let's let's
let's go talk to folks, andyou know, just a loud rock star

(01:05:18):
kind of guy. Now, theLow Observatory today is available obviously is based
on what you've said, is availableto the public becoming for tours and for
learning. School groups can come inand and what is this new thing that's
coming up in the fall is goingto be opened up? Yeah, we
have the new Astronomy Discovery Center.So our current visitor center does not have

(01:05:39):
an exhibit hall. And you know, it's my pain when when families asked
me, Hey, you know we'rehere tonight. What is there to do
for kids if they can't look throughthe telescope? And then I don't have
anything to give them. And sothe new Astronomy Discovery Center is going to
be a forty thousand square foot newvisitor center with two exhibit halls, one

(01:06:00):
dedicated just to children learning the basicsof math and science, motion and shapes
and you know, uh real handson uh stuff with with the universe.
And then the other gallery is calledthe Astronomy Gallery, where we try to
connect the adult like hey, oror the you know, the middle school

(01:06:21):
kid or a high school kid.You know, why do I want to
learn this stuff? What what's importantabout astronomy? Why do I why do
I need to know? And itconnects atoms that make up our bodies with
things that are we're seeing out therethat you have, you are part of
this universe. You have you youwere made up of stories. You know,

(01:06:44):
trillions of stories uh that you know, uh, that connect to the
universe, and we're trying to tellthat story in this In this new building,
it'll have a theater giant, twostory tall, one hundred wides green
for telling stories like, hey,here's Personal olds Mars. Let's land on

(01:07:04):
Mars, Personal olds Mars, Here'swhere you know things would would be like
if Personal ols Mars was real.Or take you to Pluto. Let's land
on Pluto, and we have thisgiant screen to make you feel like you're
there. And then the best part, Since Flagstaff is a dark sky city,
the first internationally recognized dark sky city, you can still see the Milky

(01:07:28):
Way in our city, the topof the building is a dark sky planetarium.
There's no domed roof, it's justthe Flagstaff sky and so we'll have
educators up there with laser pointers pointingout constellations, telling stories all while you're,
of course at seven thousand feet.We have heated seats so you don't

(01:07:48):
have to freeze. It's kind ofspectacular. Right, all of this is
going to be grand opening on Novembersixteenth, know, whole new ways to
teach children, which I'm super excitedabout. The tools. May be one
of the people standing up there infront of the crowd is teaching them,

(01:08:09):
well, at least with the schoolgroups. Yes, And and they're you
know, the OBSERVATORI is looking atyou know, different fields, like for
people that are presenting in the theater. We're looking at theater majors like you
know we should be. We shouldbe looking for people who who specialize in
talking, telling stories and talking tolarge crowds and keeping them engaged. Uh.

(01:08:31):
And then of course, you knoweducators like me with my team that
specializes with school groups, like youknow, the tools that this opens up
for schools is amazing. You know, we border along the the Navajo and
Hoping Nations, and so you know, to bring schools from rural areas,
uh to enjoy some of these thesecool technological tools. And see the night

(01:08:57):
sky and I don't know, Ithink it's just such a cool idea to
share, oh the stories that arein the night sky and and uh see
our our see our connection to it. And so I gotta I gotta apply
for some funding to get down fora pro D. Yeah, maybe I'll
fill out Maybe I'll fill out anapplication while i'm there, right right,

(01:09:21):
Yeah, oh yeah, it's spectacular. I love all of that. It's
gonna be it's gonna be so awesome. What a great resource for the people
in your area. But yeah,I mean I should. There's a lot
of tourists to come through as well. So a lot of people get that.
We in most of our biggest drawfor tourists that come through flag Staff
are here to see the Grand Canyon. So but you know a lot of

(01:09:44):
them are stopping in flag Staff spendingthe night if they're traveling pretty far.
And so it's it's all about tryingto catch people that are coming from the
Grand Canyon or going to the GrandCanyon, Like, hey, there's something
really cool to do at night thatloveles during the day. But you know,
uh, come see the magic ofthe night sky before you leave the

(01:10:05):
Grand Canyon state. Mm hmm.Wow. I love that whole conversation,
Todd. Yeah, there's so much, so much cool, so much cool
information. Uh. I learned,I learned stuff, I got some things
clarified. I knew some of thesethings, but some of the things I
had not full details on. Butyou know, now I do and without

(01:10:26):
a doubt. I mean, I'llbe taking this stuff to my classroom,
and hopefully everybody who listens to thiswill be either taking it directly to the
classroom or writing things down going,oh, I got to look that up
a little bit further because I needto know that well enough to be able
to teach it. But it's soaccessible, right, I mean, there's
people like yourself, people like mewho can answer questions and and what I
found is that when students start tolearn chemistry and biology and physics through the

(01:10:51):
lens of astronomy, they're they're soconnected to it and they just love them.
They're fascinated by and they love tolearn about it. So it's got
to get into the classroom on abig in a bigger way. Yeah,
And that's a that's a goal weall share, right, I mean,
you know, to open up alittle bit more appreciation for the scientists.
But we can do it through astronomybecause it's it is very exciting to think

(01:11:15):
about these big things and these youknow, things like black holes and stellar
life, you know, life cycles, and you're just all these really cool
things that just kind of blow ourmind, even the idea of time,
how time operates at the speed oflight, and it's just these these questions
are big and kids kids love eatingup these these discussions. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:11:39):
well it's Shawn me was the firstscience look up. Look up scientific
revolution. And the first two namesyou see is Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo,
right, two of the greatest astronomers. Right, So, thank thank you
very much Todd for coming on tothis. This is gonna be a great
episode and I'm really looking forward togetting it out out there. Yeah,
thank you so much for inviting me. We'll have to meet up again when

(01:12:03):
the visitor centers open. Oh yeah, here for a alive recording. Oh
oh god, I want to dothat. That was so awesome. Yeah,
let's see if you can work thatout. Yeah. I have to

(01:12:24):
look at the map to find exactlywhere where Flagstaff, Arizona is. I
know approximately, but I'm gonna haveto look closer. I thought it was
near Winslow, but that's the songfrom the Eagles. Yeah, well the
windso is only forty miles away.So yeah, if you look at if
you see the square shape that Arizonamakes, flag staffs kind of right at

(01:12:44):
the upper middle. And so yeah, we're on this scene called the Colorado
Plateau where all this sedimentary rock wasjust lifted up. And so we're at
this elevation here on the Colorado Plateauwhere most of Arizona is a desert,
even us we're considered a high desert, but it's we're in the alpine ecosystem.

(01:13:05):
So you're straight south of Colorado,right, yeah, Utah, And
then yeah, Colorado is a littlebit you know, Oh okay, if
you're looking at it's a little morein the upper right, okay. Yeah.
And then of course, wasn't thatThe Route sixty six is famous highwayway.
They wrote songs about it and Lightningthe Queen write goes right through Flagstaff.

(01:13:29):
So if you're in Flagstaff, you'reon the you're on the sixty six
at some point. So that's prettycool. Yeah, well I got I
got a new addition to my bucketlist. Yeah, get down to flag
Staff. Yeah reach out. Ifyou ever do, get your travel plans
in order, we'll we'll be happyto give you a VIP tour. So

(01:13:50):
that'll be awesome. Well, thankyou. Thanks really nice talking with you.
Yeah, thank you Tim. We'llsee you okay, bye bye bye.
And if you wouldn't mind to helpa teach her out, share this
episode with a colleague, tell themwhat you'll learned, have a discussion about
it, Share it with your students, and share this podcast with friends,
family, and colleagues. Rate andreview, and I'll see you on the

(01:14:13):
next episode.