Hey Everyone, here’s a space science
update for Tuesday September 10th.
The Polaris Dawn mission successfully
launched last night on a Falcon 9, now the private astronaut crew will begin
studying the radiation environment in Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts and performing
the first commercial space walk.
There’s a cool article over at The Conversation
by scientists at South Africa’s University of the Western Cape who have been studying
Pluto. The once-planet recently passed directly in front of a background star,
an event called an occultation. When you are standing in the right place on Earth and
Pluto is exactly in the middle of the star, it acts like a lens and focuses the light from
the star into a brief ‘flash’. By studying this flash and how much the light is colored and bent
by Pluto, scientists can learn a lot about the dwarf planet’s atmosphere. Until 1988 we
didn’t even know Pluto had an atmosphere and these occultation events are one of the
few ways of studying that atmosphere without sending a mission to Pluto.
Join us live on Twitch tonight at 8PM PDT to chat about these stories and
other astronomy and science news.
That’s our 60 seconds, please like and share
the video and I’ll see you back here tomorrow.