Monthly Archives: March 2008

astronomy education, Astronomy outreach, NASA

Disengage!

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Or Engage?

Generation Y Internet-savvy

But Expects Different Things from NASA

I read an article yesterday about a discussion at a symposium held by NASA, the National Space Society, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics that explored the attitudes toward space held by Generation Y. These 8- to 31-year-olds are where the next generation of taxpaying space enthusiasts are coming from, but it seems that they’re not so connected to space in the same their parents and grandparents have been. This information is not a terribly big surprise, coming as it does at a time when budgets for space exploration, science education, and research are heading downhill at the same time we have a huge rise in the technology of global interconnectivity.

It’s also not too surprising that this generation, when pressed for information on their interests in space, seems to be saying that NASA needs to give them more real-time insight and connectivity to the topics being explored by the agency. Gen Y is the first to be so totally connected for most of their lives by the Internet and instant communications for much of their lives. They’re comfortable with globalization and want to be involved in science and exploration, but aren’t too interested in hearing about the past glories of space exploration.

This is interesting food for thought for educators and science center folk who are reaching out to this age group. I’ve been in many a conversation with such colleagues, and some are still wondering what these audiences want. Or, they’re trying to tailor currently accessible programming to this generation’s tastes. It’s a challenge, but not too different from the ones outreach people have always faced when trying to get the word out about science and exploration to vastly different generations.

exoplanets, extrasolar planets, planetary science

They’re Having the Vapors!!

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Some Protoplanetary Disks have Water Vapor

Image:M42proplyds.jpgSo, not only have astronomers found methane in the atmosphere of a planet circling another star, but now CalTech astronomers have found water vapor in the spinning disks of gas and dust surrounding other stars. These disks, called protoplanetary disks, or “proplyds” for short, are where planets are born.

The Earth and other planets of the solar system formed in a proplyd beginning more than 4.5 billion years ago, and so we look to other systems to understand how planets are born, and how ours looked at that time. The image here is a protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula studied by Hubble Space Telescope.

The astronomers used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawai’i to study the infrared wavelengths of light emitted by from these disks. The chemical fingerprints of water vapor showed up in disks around the stars DR Tau and AS 205A. The next step was to figure out where the vapor exists in the disk around each star. So, the science team (consisting of astronomers from CalTech, the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, SRON, and the University of Texas at Austin) made high-resolution measurements at shorter wavelengths of infrared light. The data showed the clumps of material where the water resides were moving at fast speeds, meaning that the clumps are closer to their stars, possibly in regions where Earth-like planets might be forming.

Now, you might think, “Okay, so they’ve found water vapor at a couple of stars. So what?” Astronomers expect to make more observations of dozens of similar-type stars, and the two instruments they’ve used should turn up more water vapor in more proplyds (if it exists). The bigger implications lie with figuring out how water concentrations evolve and survive in protoplanetary disks and eventually create oceans (or ice-covered planets). Who knows? What scientists find may help us understand how Earth got its oceans. Stay tuned!