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. Data From NASA’s Voyager 1 Point to Interstellar Future Data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased. Voyager scientists looking at this rapid rise draw closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion – that humanity’s first emissary to interstellar space is on the edge of our solar system. “The laws of physics say that someday Voyager will become the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, but we still do not know exactly when that someday will be,” said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “The latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system’s frontier.” The data making the 16-hour-38 minute, 11.1-billion-mile (17.8-billion-kilometer), journey from Voyager 1 to antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network on Earth detail the number of charged particles measured by the two High Energy telescopes aboard the 34-year-old spacecraft. These energetic particles were generated when stars in our cosmic neighborhood went supernova. “From January 2009 to January 2012, there had been a gradual increase of about 25  percent in the amount of galactic cosmic rays Voyager was encountering,” said Stone. “More recently, we have seen very rapid escalation in that part of the energy spectrum. Beginning on May 7, the cosmic ray hits have increased five percent in a week and nine percent in a month.” This marked increase is one of a triad of data sets which need to make significant swings of the needle to indicate a new era in space exploration. The second important measure from the spacecraft’s two telescopes is the intensity of energetic particles generated inside the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. While there has been a slow decline in the measurements of these energetic particles, they have not dropped off precipitously, which could be expected when Voyager breaks through the solar boundary. The final data set that Voyager scientists believe will reveal a major change is the measurement in the direction of the magnetic field lines surrounding the spacecraft. While Voyager is still within the heliosphere, these field lines run east-west. When it passes into interstellar space, the team expects Voyager will find that the magnetic field lines orient in a more north-south direction. Such analysis will take weeks, and the Voyager team is currently crunching the numbers of its latest data set. “When the Voyagers launched in 1977, the space age was all of 20 years old,” said Stone. “Many of us on the team dreamed of reaching interstellar space, but we really had no way of knowing how long a journey it would be — or if these two vehicles that we invested so much time and energy in would operate long enough to reach it.” Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 are in good health. Voyager 2 is more than 9.1 billion miles (14.7 billion kilometers) away from the sun. Both are operating as part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission, an extended mission to explore the solar system outside the neighborhood of the outer planets and beyond. NASA’s Voyagers are the two most distant active representatives of humanity and its desire to explore. The Voyager spacecraft were built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. IMAGE….Voyagers in the Heliosheath (Artist Concept) This artist’s concept shows NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath, the outer shell of the bubble of charged particles around our sun. After more than 33 years of travel, the two Voyager spacecraft will soon reach interstellar space, which is the space between stars. Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble around our solar system known as the heliosphere. The solar wind travels at supersonic speeds until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. That part of our solar system is shown in dark blue. Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock in December 2004 and Voyager 2 did so in August 2007. Beyond the termination shock is the heliosheath, shown in gray, where the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up. Outside those two areas is territory dominated by the interstellar wind, which is blowing from the left in this image. As the interstellar wind approaches the heliosphere, a bow shock forms, indicated by the bright arc. The Voyagers were built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate. For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit http://www.nasa.gov/voyager . Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    Data From NASA’s Voyager 1 Point to Interstellar Future

    Data from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer
    has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our
    solar system has markedly increased. Voyager scientists looking at this rapid rise draw
    closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion – that humanity’s first emissary to interstellar
    space is on the edge of our solar system.

    “The laws of physics say that someday Voyager will become the first human-made object to
    enter interstellar space, but we still do not know exactly when that someday will be,” said Ed
    Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “The
    latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more
    quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system’s frontier.”

    The data making the 16-hour-38 minute, 11.1-billion-mile (17.8-billion-kilometer), journey
    from Voyager 1 to antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network on Earth detail the number of
    charged particles measured by the two High Energy telescopes aboard the 34-year-old
    spacecraft. These energetic particles were generated when stars in our cosmic
    neighborhood went supernova.

    “From January 2009 to January 2012, there had been a gradual increase of about 25 
    percent in the amount of galactic cosmic rays Voyager was encountering,” said Stone.
    “More recently, we have seen very rapid escalation in that part of the energy spectrum.
    Beginning on May 7, the cosmic ray hits have increased five percent in a week and nine
    percent in a month.”

    This marked increase is one of a triad of data sets which need to make significant swings of
    the needle to indicate a new era in space exploration. The second important measure from
    the spacecraft’s two telescopes is the intensity of energetic particles generated inside the
    heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. While there has
    been a slow decline in the measurements of these energetic particles, they have not
    dropped off precipitously, which could be expected when Voyager breaks through the solar
    boundary.

    The final data set that Voyager scientists believe will reveal a major change is the
    measurement in the direction of the magnetic field lines surrounding the spacecraft. While
    Voyager is still within the heliosphere, these field lines run east-west. When it passes into
    interstellar space, the team expects Voyager will find that the magnetic field lines orient in a
    more north-south direction. Such analysis will take weeks, and the Voyager team is
    currently crunching the numbers of its latest data set.

    “When the Voyagers launched in 1977, the space age was all of 20 years old,” said Stone.
    “Many of us on the team dreamed of reaching interstellar space, but we really had no way of
    knowing how long a journey it would be — or if these two vehicles that we invested so much
    time and energy in would operate long enough to reach it.”

    Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 are in good health. Voyager 2 is more than 9.1 billion
    miles (14.7 billion kilometers) away from the sun. Both are operating as part of the Voyager
    Interstellar Mission, an extended mission to explore the solar system outside the
    neighborhood of the outer planets and beyond. NASA’s Voyagers are the two most distant
    active representatives of humanity and its desire to explore.

    The Voyager spacecraft were built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,
    which continues to operate both. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology.
    The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored
    by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

    IMAGE….Voyagers in the Heliosheath (Artist Concept)
    This artist’s concept shows NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath, the outer shell of the bubble of charged particles around our sun. After more than 33 years of travel, the two Voyager spacecraft will soon reach interstellar space, which is the space between stars.

    Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble around our solar system known as the heliosphere. The solar wind travels at supersonic speeds until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. That part of our solar system is shown in dark blue. Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock in December 2004 and Voyager 2 did so in August 2007. Beyond the termination shock is the heliosheath, shown in gray, where the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up. Outside those two areas is territory dominated by the interstellar wind, which is blowing from the left in this image. As the interstellar wind approaches the heliosphere, a bow shock forms, indicated by the bright arc.

    The Voyagers were built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate.

    For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit http://www.nasa.gov/voyager .

    Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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