StarStuff

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About Me

Hi, I'm Stuart Gary, I'm a journalist and broadcaster with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I love science, especially the majesty and wonder of space, so I put together a weekly astronomy show for the ABC called StarStuff.

In my spare time I like to fly planes, practice karate and pistol target shooting and play around with my cars, a twin Turbocharged Falcon GT Interceptor and a DeTomaso Pantera GTS.

I’m vegan, a life member of the RSPCA and a supporter of several animal welfare organisations.

My other great passion is music which is understandable when you realise that I was a radio music jock long before I became a journalist. My record library contains tens of thousands of singles, albums, videos, CD’s and DVDs. These days that’s all stored in an 8 terabyte raid enclosure linked to a desk top PC at home. My tastes range from rock and grunge through to trance and new romantics. At the moment I’m listening to heaps of MGMT, William Control, Hawthorne Heights and Short Shack, but I have lots of time for the classics like Placebo and the early stuff from Silverchair, In fact Neon Ballroom is still my favourite album, and Emotion Sickness is still one of my two favourite songs (the other being William Control’s Death Club).

StarStuff is a great name for the show, but it works on more levels than just astronomy, it’s really cool for any science program because everything in the universe after the quark gluon plasma of the big bang is star stuff even the iron which makes your blood red was manufactured in the supernova explosions of stars. Carl Sagan said it best, we are all star stuff.


This blog is designed to allow me to publish all the things which can’t fit into StarStuff. There’s heaps of really interesting stuff out there and only a half hour window for the show, so each week becomes a battle to try and squeeze it all in. This blog lets me do that.

You can check out the show at the offical ABC StarStuff website:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/starstuff/

There's also an official ABC StarStuff Twitter feed: @abcstarstuff

And an official ABC Science website: http://www.abc.net.au/science/


The legal stuff: This is my personal blog. The views expressed in this blog are those of me only and not the Australian Broadcasting Corporation or its management. I do not claim ownership of any of the media in this blog. where possible credit and or source will always be given. If one of your photos or other media is submitted in this blog and you would like it removed please let me know.

Blogs I follow:

Theme by: Miguel
  1. ESA missions gear up for transit of Venus ESA’s Venus Express and Proba-2 space missions, along with the international SOHO, Hinode, and Hubble spacecraft, are preparing to monitor Venus and the Sun during the transit of Earth’s sister planet during 5-6 June. ESA’s Venus Express is the only spacecraft orbiting Venus at the moment and while the transit is being watched from Earth, it too will use light from the Sun to study the planet’s atmosphere. As sunlight filters through the atmosphere it reveals the concentration of different gas molecules at different altitudes. This technique is also used to probe the atmospheres of planets outside our Solar System – exoplanets – to determine their potential habitability. Simultaneous measurements are planned during the transit from ground-based observatories around the world to compare with the Venus Express results. Exoplanet scientists can then test their techniques for looking at the characteristics of rocky Earth-sized planets. Because Venus Express is in orbit around the planet, it will not notice any difference while the transit is being observed from Earth. But the spacecraft will be watching the Sun setting through the atmosphere of Venus, and its data will be compared to measurements made at the Earth at the same time. These will include data from ESA’s Proba-2 microsatellite and Japan’s Hinode solar satellite, which will have ringside seats in low-Earth orbit to watch as Venus passes in front of the Sun. “Proba-2 is expected to see a dip in the solar brightness as soon as the thick atmosphere of Venus makes first contact with the solar disc, which is an important measurement for exoplanet scientists,” says Joe Zender, ESA’s Proba-2 mission manager. There is also the possibility that if Venus passes exactly in front of an active region on the Sun we can obtain information about the energy emitted by that region. “This is important for space weather studies that help us to understand the Sun and its influence on Earth.” Hinode will be watching the transit in visible, X-ray, and ultraviolet wavelengths to study phenomena such as the ’black drop effect’ – the small black teardrop shape that appears to connect Venus to the limb of the Sun just after it has fully entered the solar disc and again later, when it begins to leave the disc. It will also observe the aureole, an arc of light seen around the planet’s disc during the first and last minutes of the transit. “The most spectacular images and movies should come from Hinode’s Solar Optical Telescope, which has by far the highest resolution of any solar instrument in space,” says Bernhard Fleck, ESA’s Hinode and SOHO project scientist. “Unfortunately, SOHO will not be well placed to observe the transit. However, it has one thing that no other spacecraft can provide: views of Venus as it approaches the Sun days before the actual transit, and then moves away from the Sun for several days after the transit.” Meanwhile, NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope will use the Moon as a giant mirror to capture diffuse, reflected sunlight: a small fraction of that light will have passed through the atmosphere of Venus en-route to the Moon. This will test techniques aimed at measuring the atmospheres of Earth-sized rocky exoplanets that could potentially reveal traces of life on planets outside our Solar System. IMAGE….The path that Venus will take as it approaches the Sun in SOHO’s field of view. The image is from the transit of Venus in 2004, but a similar path will be taken during the transit of 2012. Credits: SOHO/ESA/NASA

    ESA missions gear up for transit of Venus

    ESA’s Venus Express and Proba-2 space missions, along with the international SOHO, Hinode, and Hubble spacecraft, are preparing to monitor Venus and the Sun during the transit of Earth’s sister planet during 5-6 June.

    ESA’s Venus Express is the only spacecraft orbiting Venus at the moment and while the transit is being watched from Earth, it too will use light from the Sun to study the planet’s atmosphere.
    As sunlight filters through the atmosphere it reveals the concentration of different gas molecules at different altitudes.

    This technique is also used to probe the atmospheres of planets outside our Solar System – exoplanets – to determine their potential habitability.

    Simultaneous measurements are planned during the transit from ground-based observatories around the world to compare with the Venus Express results.

    Exoplanet scientists can then test their techniques for looking at the characteristics of rocky Earth-sized planets.

    Because Venus Express is in orbit around the planet, it will not notice any difference while the transit is being observed from Earth. But the spacecraft will be watching the Sun setting through the atmosphere of Venus, and its data will be compared to measurements made at the Earth at the same time.

    These will include data from ESA’s Proba-2 microsatellite and Japan’s Hinode solar satellite, which will have ringside seats in low-Earth orbit to watch as Venus passes in front of the Sun.

    “Proba-2 is expected to see a dip in the solar brightness as soon as the thick atmosphere of Venus makes first contact with the solar disc, which is an important measurement for exoplanet scientists,” says Joe Zender, ESA’s Proba-2 mission manager.

    There is also the possibility that if Venus passes exactly in front of an active region on the Sun we can obtain information about the energy emitted by that region.

    “This is important for space weather studies that help us to understand the Sun and its influence on Earth.”

    Hinode will be watching the transit in visible, X-ray, and ultraviolet wavelengths to study phenomena such as the ’black drop effect’ – the small black teardrop shape that appears to connect Venus to the limb of the Sun just after it has fully entered the solar disc and again later, when it begins to leave the disc.

    It will also observe the aureole, an arc of light seen around the planet’s disc during the first and last minutes of the transit.

    “The most spectacular images and movies should come from Hinode’s Solar Optical Telescope, which has by far the highest resolution of any solar instrument in space,” says Bernhard Fleck, ESA’s Hinode and SOHO project scientist.

    “Unfortunately, SOHO will not be well placed to observe the transit. However, it has one thing that no other spacecraft can provide: views of Venus as it approaches the Sun days before the actual transit, and then moves away from the Sun for several days after the transit.”

    Meanwhile, NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope will use the Moon as a giant mirror to capture diffuse, reflected sunlight: a small fraction of that light will have passed through the atmosphere of Venus en-route to the Moon.

    This will test techniques aimed at measuring the atmospheres of Earth-sized rocky exoplanets that could potentially reveal traces of life on planets outside our Solar System.

    IMAGE….The path that Venus will take as it approaches the Sun in SOHO’s field of view. The image is from the transit of Venus in 2004, but a similar path will be taken during the transit of 2012.

    Credits: SOHO/ESA/NASA

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