A Conversation With Telescope Inventor John Dobson

Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

The Planetary Society

Science, Technology

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2012

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When John Dobson invented the Dobsonian telescope he changed the face of amateur astronomy. The 96-year old pioneer talks with Mat Kaplan. Emily Lakdawalla loves Curiosity’s self-portraits. Bill Nye the Science Guy is in London to host a youth webcast with International Space Station astronaut Sunita Williams. Bruce Betts keeps us from getting Lost in Space and helps Mat give away a cool Curiosity bumper sticker in What’s Up.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	John Dobson
0:07.0	and the Dobsonian Revolution this week on planetary radio. I met Kaplan of the Planetary Society.
0:22.6	People used to tell John Dobson that he should patent his telescope design.
0:27.0	No chance, said John.
0:28.6	The whole idea was to allow as many people as possible to enjoy the wonders of the sky just as he did when he first looked
0:35.9	through an eyepiece. Now on the eve of his 97th birthday we'll talk to the man
0:41.2	who brought astronomy to the people.
0:43.0	Bill Nye will tell you why he is left for London
0:46.0	and Bruce Betts will give away a curiosity
0:48.0	cam-cam bumper sticker in the what's up segment.
0:51.0	Speaking to the Mars Science Laboratory rover, here's Emily Lockwala.
0:55.3	Emily lots more great photos in the blog of curiosity, and they really are of curiosity,
1:01.1	not just from curiosity.
1:02.6	Yeah, it's pretty unusual, curiosity's ability to shoot photos of herself.
1:06.6	You know, she's got a lot of cameras, but so have previous rovers.
1:10.3	But this one in particular, the cameras that male in space science systems built for
1:15.0	curiosity are just so spectacular. They're much higher resolution than previous
1:19.4	landed Mars cameras and they have this natural color and the detail and the color it just
1:25.0	lends this ver similitude to the pictures that make you really feel like you're
1:28.9	standing right there next to curiosity and she uses this camera on the end of her arm to point at herself.
1:34.8	She took a self-portrait photo, so it's like your, you know, my space profile photo, like holding
1:39.5	the cell phone camera and pointing it back at you.
	...

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