Pluto Occults! Join Us on the Mountain

Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

The Planetary Society

Technology, Science

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2018

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pluto passed in front of a star on the evening of August 14. Mat Kaplan joined pro and amateur astronomers on a mountain to observe this rare event. It may reveal more about the dwarf planet’s tenuous atmosphere and other properties. Everyone hopes that Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity will phone home when the waning worldwide Martian dust storm allows the robot to charge its batteries. Digital Editor Jason Davis tells us about the online mistake that had some fans believing it had already happened. And it will be “raining fire in the sky” when Bruce Betts drops another What’s Up segment. Learn more here: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2018/0822-2018-franck-marchis-pluto-occultation.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Join me on a mountaintop as we wait for Pluto this week on planetary radio.
0:07.0	Welcome, I'm a Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.
0:17.0	It's not an occult science, it's occultation science.
0:21.0	On August 14th, Pluto passed in front of a star. Astronomers
0:26.0	were waiting. I joined several of them, including the SETI Institute's
0:29.8	Frank Marchis, as we waited for this cosmic event that would reveal more of the dwarf planet's secrets.
0:37.5	The dust is settling on distant Mars. Will we hear from opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover,
0:43.2	when it is once again able to see the sun?
0:45.8	Planetary Society digital editor Jason Davis wrote in a June 21st blog post
0:51.6	about internet fans of Oi who jumped the gun.
0:55.0	Jason, you called this piece false alarm.
0:57.0	Here's why people thought Opportunity phoned home last week.
1:01.0	You can't fault them for their what? Optimism? What's the word I want?
1:06.0	We're all hoping to hear from opportunity again, right?
1:09.0	Yeah, I think so. I'm finding that opinions are starting to vary on whether we will ever hear from opportunity again but I think everybody really wants to a lot of people were really keeping tabs on the deep space network to see if it's talking with opportunity.
1:24.4	Then of course there's a neat little dashboard called the Deep Space Network
1:28.3	now where you can go and see what the Deep Space Network, what missions it's talking to at any given time.
1:34.6	So people have kind of been watching that like Hawks
1:37.0	to see if we get in touch with opportunity.
1:40.4	And that dashboard is very cool.
1:41.8	We've mentioned it before and we'll put a link up on this week's show page,
1:45.3	planetary.org.
	...

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