It’s time for our Holiday Gift Guide, where we suggest ideas for presents for the space fans in your life! What books are we reading? What games are we playing and what telescopes are we admiring?
Show Notes
- Lego Sets for Space Fans
- Telescopes and Astronomy Equipment
- Book Recommendations
- Space Art
- Video Games
- Gift of Patreon Subscription
Transcript
Fraser Cain [00:00:49] Astronomy Cast Episode 736 Our Annual Holiday Gift Guide. Welcome to Astronomy Cast a weekly facts based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know about how we know what we know. I’m Fraser Cain. I’m the publisher of Universe Today. With me, as always, is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of Cosmic Quest. How are you doing?
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:01:10] I am doing well. It is snowing and it is beautiful. And I don’t have to leave my house. And it actually feels like Christmas. So this is the perfect day to be doing the gift guide.
Fraser Cain [00:01:20] Yeah, I. Not snowing here. We had like, just a couple of flakes as snow. And I’m ready. I’ve got a snow plow now for my my quad. I’m ready to plow the snow when it when it comes. And of course that means it won’t come. Right. But but yeah, but things are definitely gloomier. Fog here. Mystere. Rainier. This is. This is December in on the west coast of Canada. It’s time for our holiday gift guide where we suggest ideas for presents for the space fans in your life. What books are we reading? What games are we playing and what telescopes are we admiring? We’ll talk about it a second, but it’s time for a break.
Speaker 3 [00:02:07] Get that way. Yeah. They got a bomb. It will be. It must be Kenya. Maybe that KG may look terrific. Either they budget that sells him as Grandi El-Gamaty total video. Or is it that axiom permanent then river level satin wrap for consume and endless compulsively either boredom as me yes econ LBC forex total mint electrical auroras own mass electrified content Toyota punto con Toyota by Germans Hunters.
Fraser Cain [00:02:38] And we’re back. All right. So we made lists independently of the things that we’re looking at and thinking about and recommendations that we might have for people who are looking to buy gifts for the space fans in their life or I guess gifts that the space fans can inflict on the non space fans in their life to maybe make them more of a space fan. So I’ll let you start with a sort of a broader category. You were to do it again.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:03:08] So I have to admit, in part because I live near a Lego master, Lego has been doing a real space kick this year. If you search on the word space on the Lego website, it comes up with some of the most delightful things and you can spend any amount of money. They have an art on this rocket that has the tower and everything. I looked at that and I’m like, I do not need this. I want this, I do not need this. And and so they also have cheaper things. They have what’s called series 26 space Minifigs They’re mystery boxes of space related minifigs perfect for stocking stuffers. They have wall art tales of the space age that are these little plaques that you put them together and they’re really cool, essentially Lego paintings. And for years, a lot of us educators have been following some of the online by these bricks by those bricks. Build your own story of the earth, moon and sun. They now have a kit. You don’t have to go randomly searching for pieces. It is amazing. It is a new space age for Lego.
Fraser Cain [00:04:20] Right?
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:04:20] Fill your house if you have a cat. I don’t know what to say.
Fraser Cain [00:04:23] And you’re saying like there’s a bunch of these newer ones, but there are some classic sets that came out over the last decade. You can get a Saturn five, you can get the space shuttle, you can get like there’s like a milky Way wall, art, lunar rover.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:04:41] Curiosity, the Milky Way wall art. I want that one so hard. Is that $200?
Fraser Cain [00:04:48] Now I have a bit of a bone to pick with these highly specialized Lego sets, especially with the pieces that are very like these serve a role and no other role, and that is that it discourages you taking your Lego apart, throwing it into a giant bucket and turning it into random creations of your own imagination. And that was my childhood dream. Was was. Sam Yeah, it was that I would buy a space, a Lego set, and then I would build the thing that the Space Lego set recommended, and then I would build some of the things that they had alternate ideas you could use with that same set. And then I would tear the thing apart. I would add its pieces to the mass, and then I would just sit with my Lego and build things. Just one line, all kinds of stuff that I could imagine. And the problem with these wall art or even these very specialized lunar rovers and things like that is you you have to make a decision. Have you made a little sculpture or have you contributed to the to the collective? And and I feel like if you if you aren’t able to take the stuff apart and put it together and and try different variations and be imaginative, then I think something is lost. So I’m now going to say, get off my lawn, kids these days. So if you are going to buy these big sets and also buy some stuff that you can blend into the collective and build stuff.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:06:08] So so I have to admit, because we have a used Lego store in town where we can go and buy bulk, buy the volume.
Fraser Cain [00:06:18] That’s amazing.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:06:18] We’ve yeah, we’ve started doing two different things. So like one of my favorite things to do is they have all these amazing three and one sets. And so I have one where the backdrop is is a space photo I already had. And then in front of it I’ve built basically the Serengeti, right where I bought the set that does the giraffe. And I was gifted the set that does the monkeys. And then I went and I bought bulk and I did this amazing tree and I’ve done the landscape and I have. So you can do both.
Fraser Cain [00:06:56] Yeah.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:06:58] And so I encourage all of you get that Milky Way scene that tells you how to build it and then build stuff in front of it, build the surface of an alien world and occupy it with many things from the space series. Do both.
Fraser Cain [00:07:14] Yeah, Yeah. I think you’re just like, objectively wrong that that Lego was meant to be torn apart and reformed, formed into new things. But, you know, that’s fine. I can. I can still be your friend.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:07:29] I have taken apart my Lego flowers and turn them into monsters. Good. Turn. See the little petals?
Fraser Cain [00:07:34] Yes.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:07:35] The little petals on the Lego flowers. Make a. Amazing monsters. Yeah. So. Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:07:41] Yeah, exactly. And then when you want to try and also merge them together with parts from your space Lego, then you know, this is. That’s fine. Now you’re welcome to my world. So let’s talk about the elephant in the room, which is telescopes. But we will do that in a second. But it is time for a break.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:07:59] This show is sponsored by Betterhelp. Winter is upon us, and for a lot of people, December means it’s the holiday season. For some, that is comfort and joy. For others, not so much. Some of us, myself included, have to find our own comfort and joy through purposeful actions. For me, when things start to get distressed, I grab some hot tea, call the dogs and curl up under a big gray blanket and write or build something in Minecraft. It took me a lot of years to find ways to get through winter, and during the pandemic it took getting help from a therapist at better help. Therapy’s a great way to bring yourself comfort. You can hold on to even when the seasons change. If you’re thinking of starting therapy, give Betterhelp a try. It’s entirely online and you can find a licensed therapist who both matches your needs and your schedule. And you can change therapists at any time. Find comfort this December with Betterhelp. Visit betterhelp. Dot com slash astronomy today to get 10% off your first month. That’s better. Help. H e l p.com/astronomy.
Fraser Cain [00:09:16] And we’re back. All right. We’re going talk about telescopes. And I would say our recommendations this year are going to be dramatically different than anything we have recommended in previous years. It is a completely new world now, and my baseline recommendations have changed. And so so here is sort of like I think we still have like if you have less than $100 astronomical binoculars.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:09:42] Yeah, exactly. Celestron has the Sky Master series. They’re perfectly reasonable. They’re what I use. Pick the ones that feel good in your hand. Right.
Fraser Cain [00:09:52] I’ve got the 15 by seven. Easily make a 15. They make a 15 by 100. They make a 20 by 100.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:10:00] They make a 12 by six. So for those of us who like wider field of view.
Fraser Cain [00:10:04] Yeah. Yeah. So you can find the one that sort of is the right way to have the right field of view and you should work out pretty well. And that’s like that recommendation has not changed. If you really want to be able to look through a telescope with your own eyeballs and look at the moon, look at Mars, look at Jupiter, things like that, then I think I think we still recommend the Double Ionian.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:10:25] Yeah. Celestron Star Science series is the new one. Orion Telescope doesn’t exist anymore, right? The telescopes I have been recommending for over 20 years are now only on the used market.
Fraser Cain [00:10:37] Yes. So there are it’s harder to get your hands on on some of these small tubs. Only in the star sense, as you mentioned.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:10:47] First scoped by Celestron.
Fraser Cain [00:10:49] If you just do a search for double Sony and should be able to find like a six inch dab Sony in for around $300 and that’s a good way, then this is where everything has changed. And this is if you want to spend 500 to 5000, it’s a completely different world out there now. So so let’s talk about the Sea star.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:11:16] Yeah. They they things I would buy if I had more money. Right. So. So I avivah when one of the folks that runs the 365 days of astronomy podcast she has one of these that she’s using from Bandung, Indonesia, which is a giant city, and she’s getting some of the most amazing images of nebulae and stuff. Yeah, they’re amazing.
Fraser Cain [00:11:45] So, so the Sea Star, this is a all in one smart telescope made by Z. W and this is the same company that does the cameras that most astrophotographers are using the sort of when you see a telescope and it’s got this red camera bolted on to the back of it, that’s the ZW0 astro photo camera. And so they are they took their camera and then built a smart telescope around it. And, you know, we talked last year about these smart telescopes. You’ve got the unique stellar, you’ve got the valence and where you just like put the telescope down. You connected with a smartphone and then it figures out where it is on planet Earth and then starts to show you images of the sky. And these things are amazing. They’re magic, but they are expensive. I mean, they are 2 to $5000 depending on the model that you get. The Sea Star is $500. Yeah. And it is a 50mm lens, which sounds crazy. Like that’s is that’s.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:12:45] That’s a camera lens.
Fraser Cain [00:12:45] That’s a camera lens. It’s very small. And yet if you go to various places where people are posting their astro photos and you look at these images that are coming from the Sea Star, they are phenomenal. They are you are seeing the heart and Soul Nebula. You are seeing the North American Nebula, the Pelican Nebula, like whatever astrophotography target you want if you’re willing to put in the time with the sea Star, you’re getting it. And they’re sort of main model right now is the 50, the S 50, and they’re coming out with a, S 30, which is going to be even cheaper, 350 bucks. But same thing is does Venus a new seller? You take this thing, you plop it down, you can’t with a smartphone and it just starts imaging the night sky. And the pictures are are just incredible.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:13:37] And the key to what you just said is you connect it to your cell phone. And that’s one of the things Celestron Star science uses a connection to your cell phone to essentially guide you around the sky. VW and unique stellar AI are both connecting to your phone for the control system so that you aren’t trying to figure out how to type things into a paddle. Yeah, and yes, the fact that our cell phones and iPads are computers that are more powerful than what we had in the early 2000s for our laptops allows these telescopes to. Not need to have all of the stuff built into the telescope, and that lowers the price and makes automated finding of objects essentially just a side effect of cell phone technology.
Fraser Cain [00:14:27] And the magic that these this whole class hotels course has done is they’ve figured out that you can trade time for aperture aperture for time. Yeah. And so you know in the olden days it was all about bigger is better that you want an eight inch telescope, you want a ten inch telescope, you want a 12 inch telescope. The more aperture fever you have, the bigger you can get. Then you can look through this thing and see fainter objects and so on. But if you just have a telescope that is designed to track perfectly, then you can just image the sky for minutes, for hours, 40 days, and you can stack up the images over and over and over again until the data comes through and the noise goes away. And yet what is the what is the kind of pictures that you would have seen that people were taken with a $10,000 photography rig? You’re seeing pictures that that are sort of holding their own in this. And it’s a it’s a revolution at this point.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:15:26] And the Zeta video cameras are fast. So so I was using just one of their off the shelf CCDs or CMOs chips. Nowadays I’ve been programed to say CCD and they’re no longer CCD. Yeah. I was using one of the CWO cameras on just about every day, 16 inch telescope, and I went to use the kinds of exposure times that I used to use and now they’re like, Now you only need 30s, not three minutes, you’re good. And so you have this extremely high sensitivity in very low light conditions, very low, dark current. Yeah. And you can just do amazing things. Yeah. A new world.
Fraser Cain [00:16:13] And it’s. And it’s like you take the thing, you set it outside under clear skies. It figures out where it is. It does some plate solving figures out which parts of the sky that it’s seeing start to track the night sky. You pick targets from the app and it starts recording frames of the of the exposure length that you want and then starts building it up in front of you so you can see the image. But also they can be storing the raw files and you can then pull that into some astrophotography software that you may traditionally use like nebulosity or picks inside. And then you can actually do all of your regular magic on these photos or Photoshop or whatever. And so it really is about having a rock solid view to the sky. So you know, the landscape right now and this is all very dynamic was, you know, a year ago we talked about the automated telescopes, to be honest to you, in Stellar and they’re great, but they’re 2 to $4000 like they’re not cheap. And so it’s a serious investment and the technology is rapidly increasing. And then we got the sea star and the dwarf to the dwarf three, although, you know, I’ve looked at the pictures from the dwarf to.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:17:26] Their numbers.
Fraser Cain [00:17:27] And they’re just not as good. So I think the Sea Star is the one now that is taking the world by storm. And yeah, look, if you’ve got a if you want to buy a nice present for your partner and you want to spend about $500.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:17:41] The Sea Star. Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:17:43] For something that that they’re going to really enjoy that sea star 50 seems to have just nailed the features, the capability, the quality of the images. This feels like we’ve we’ve crossed into this level of accessibility now. So so that is my sort of number one recommendation now for for people.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:18:05] And the U.S. dollar with the thousands of dollars you’re spending. Just to be clear, it’s it’s worth it. The unique stellar is capable of being used for science. They have amazing citizen science partnered with it. They’re working with the Study Institute. So there’s lots of different reasons. And by what you can afford for the purpose that you want. Yeah. And I. It’s a new era. It’s amazing. Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:18:33] Yeah. Look like the UCLA is. Is a bigger telescope. I think it’s a four inch. You’re going to get a bigger telescope. It’s going to be faster, right? It’s going to have a good camera system, but it’s going to be able to collect more light and it’s going to be able to do more work. And so if if you want to try and have this thing be working harder and collecting more images than these bigger telescopes do it, but it is just astonishing how good the little guys.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:18:59] You know.
Fraser Cain [00:19:00] Are. Yeah. And then the last like the top end of this right now is the Celestron origin, which is a I think it’s a six inch telescope made by Celestron. Same thing. Completely automated. Builds these images up on the fly. This is the one that I’m using for the livestreams that I’m doing on like the return of the virtual Star party. And this was supplied by Star Front, but it’s like a $5,000 telescope and yet same thing. Use that same intelligence, same automation carried up to the next level. So really, from 500 to 5000, you can find an option that meets what you need. And so I think if you’ve been sitting on the fence like, I’m not sure I want to get one of these things. I think now there are a lot of options that are that are pretty interesting.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:19:46] It’s it’s a whole new world. And I want to talk to you because I have a star I want to chase in January on that telescope if we can work it out.
Fraser Cain [00:19:54] Totally. That sounds great. All right. Well, we are going to take another break and we’re going to talk about books and video games.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:19:59] Sounds great.
Speaker 3 [00:20:02] Get evacuated. Yeah. They got a bomb. It will be. Must be Kenya. Medevac. Like I may look terrific. Either they budget that says must Grandi El-Gamaty totality video or is it that I assume permanent. They know that river lovers happy wrap for consume it most conclusively either bottom as me yes econ LBC forex total mint electrical auroras own mess electrified content Toyota punto con Toyota by Germans hunters.
Fraser Cain [00:20:33] And we’re back. All right. Let’s talk about books.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:20:37] There are so many to pick from. And and I had to run up and down the stairs right before we started this recording because I knew you would ask, do you have your book? And and I do. So if you have a child in your life, we have I put together with my really good friend Sam Exner and George Kramer. A book is from DK, which is a label under Penguin Random House. It is all about what we’ve done for lunar exploration, what we know about lunar science and what we’re hoping and dreaming of doing in the future. Its its goal is to get kids thinking about no matter what I’m passionate about, there is a place for me in the future space exploration.
Fraser Cain [00:21:29] That’s great. Awesome. So the book, I’ve got a couple of books that I’m going to recommend and then we’ll go back to you. So I recently finished reading Reentry, which is the new book from Eric Berger, who’s the space reporter from Ars Technica. And the gist of it is how SpaceX accomplished reusable rockets. And this is a follow on. His first book was called Liftoff and it was How Space Viking Came to be. And and and so it really gives you this great behind the scenes look at the various engineers at Space X and all of the challenges and problems that they had to overcome to make this technology work. And, you know, I think under the current climate political climate, Elon Musk is a bit of a problematic person to be telling stories about. And I think reentry does a great job of of providing a fairly accurate representation of of his role and involvement and really tries to place the emphasis on on the engineers, the people who did the work to actually accomplish and came up with the insights that made a lot of this technology happen. And so it’s really a story of of thousands of space X engineers who accomplished this wonder that we watch rockets take off and then the first booster stage comes back and they land at a barge out at sea, or they land in perfect synchronicity at Cape Canaveral after a Falcon heavy launch. And of course, when we watched Starship’s super heavy Booster get caught by MC Zilla. So so we’re now in the sort of the age of reasonable rocketry and it’s quite impressive. And and Reentry was a terrific book.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:23:17] And and I think in our current day and age where a lot of us Gen-X people are going back to our dark goth moments of of the 90s as we face the future because it just feels right. There is a pair of books that I think it would just be delightful to give someone. One is the older book that hopefully you already have full plate Death from the Skies that talks about all the ways the universe is trying to kill us. And then Paul Matt Sutter came out with a new book called How to Die in Space, which is all the ways you can inadvertently kill yourself once you leave the planet. And. Just the idea of somebody unwrapping these two books together somehow makes my Gen X heart happy and I can’t explain it.
Fraser Cain [00:24:08] These are all the ways to die. Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. And then the other book that I want to recommend is A City on Mars by Kelly Winter Smith. It’s great because, you know, they took this idea, this fascination that we all have about the future of humanity living in space, that there will be colonies on Mars and in, you know, O’Neill cylinders and people on the moon and so on. And they wanted to find out who’s working on it, how’s it going to come together, who’s going to pay for it? And what they found was it’s going to be a lot more complicated, a lot more difficult, and that there are a lot of challenges and there is no way to pay for it. And so it could very well be that that although we have this science fiction future of a city on Mars that we’re hoping for, this is a very sober look at the reality of of what it would actually take and how much more difficult it is and more expensive it is. Then then we’re thinking and this has really Nash, I think, you know, the conversations that we’ve been having here on the chart. Yeah. Have been leading in this direction too, which is like nobody’s figured out how to make a profit, so they’re not going to be able to afford to keep sending people to Mars. And then at the same time, we’re hearing that, you know, a million people are going to be going to Mars by 2050 and so on. Well, maybe not. And so if you want a realistic view about the future of human space exploration and space colonization, that comes from a place of sort of wide eyed optimism and dreaming, but just kind of says, okay, like thank Star Trek. Now how are we going to do this? I think you really enjoy a city on Mars. It was it was one of the best books in space exploration that I’ve read in the last couple of years.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:25:59] That, yeah, it’s all the things he said. I completely agree. And and when you then need to just have a story to fall into. Moya McTeer is a storyteller and she wrote the Milky Way, which is an audio biography of our galaxy. And it is just joy. It is delightful. It you will learn things. And we need more storytellers who can draw people into understanding the science in entirely new ways. And I hope she keeps writing more and more books. It’s just pleasing. It’s just please and go get the Milky Way by Moya McTeer.
Fraser Cain [00:26:46] So let me shift gears and I don’t think you were prepared for this, but I want to talk about art.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:26:51] Okay.
Fraser Cain [00:26:51] Go for it. So I know you make art. You make your various planets and hopefully you get them kicking around with you. And and so so I think a gift would be if somebody wants to buy some of your artwork, what’s the best way to do that?
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:27:12] I it’s over on Etsy search for Star Strider. Star Strider Studios is the shop and everything comes gift wrapped because when you’re packing planets, you have to pack them very, very carefully. So they just naturally get gift wrapped in the production process.
Fraser Cain [00:27:29] Right?
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:27:30] And you can build solar systems on your walls. When one of my my friends, she actually got a whole bunch of floating shelves that are set up with Mario Legos on them. So it looks like the game with all the different shelves and she’s putting the planets on the walls around it to make basically a background to a video game So you can get all sorts of really cool stuff with these paintings. They come in a variety of different sizes, so you can do moons, gas giants with whatever you want.
Fraser Cain [00:28:00] So I want to recommend a couple of the artist in addition to you. So one is Lacey Brooks, who I’m sure you’re familiar with, Lacy now, and she’s on, you know, all of the places, and she is an astrophysicist by training, but also a phenomenal painter, and so does all these great paintings of various astronomical objects, which is great. Another woman is Katherine mentioned who I hope you know, Catherine. She’s terrific. And same thing. Well, she’s not an astronomer, but but she has is an amateur astronomer, has a telescope, but also has been doing just these phenomenal paintings and murals of of space. And then the third person is Jay Bingham, and he’s in Canada and he does some of these really great abstract representations of things like James Webb’s. Pillars of creation or the Tarantula Nebula or the Crab Nebula. And if you know the object, then you look at it and there are these sort of almost like geometric shapes. But they’re beautiful. And I really liked them. So I think you can either obviously spend the thousands and buy the originals or you can buy prints of these things. And I think any of the work by by Lacey Brooks Katherine mentioned or J bigger them will look wonderful on on anyone’s wall and I think you’d be pleased to receive it.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:29:27] And Lacy Brooks is stellar arts on the socials which is why I had no clue. And her real name is. Yeah. And another person I want to plug is Amy Davis Roth. She’s surly Amy should a surly remix and she has a bunch of little pendants. I can’t believe I don’t have one sitting on my desk. I usually do. She also does coffee mugs and there are a ton of science themes you can get radio telescopes, you can get moons, stars, galaxies and all the other sciences. She’s been doing a whole lot of paintings working in neuroscience. I have spent more money than is rational in her store over the past 20 years. She does amazing things.
Fraser Cain [00:30:13] That’s phenomenal. And then I’ve got one last category that we should talk about briefly, and that is video games. Okay. So I think, you know, my recommendation still stands that the most useful video game console that you can buy the people in your life is the steam deck. You know, there are a lot of people are thinking of buying the PlayStation five or the new version of the Xbox or so on, but the steam deck just gives you access to your entire steam library. And so it’s the games that are relatively inexpensive. And the thing is, small portable has a pretty good battery life, very powerful. You can you can play all of these great games, games. It won’t even plan for it. You can modify it and play them on it. And I still like, you know, we were raving about the steam deck last year when we did the Gift guide. I’m still.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:31:05] Using the steam.
Fraser Cain [00:31:06] Deck daily. I don’t play video games on any other thing. And so then once you have that, then there’s a lot of great games that you can get. And I think for me it’s games like Factorial, rim, World projects on board, Slay the Spire, I like strategy games and I like sort of card building games and this and the steam deck has just been phenomenal for that. Potato Vampire Survivors Deep brought Galactic. I’ve been playing a lot of that kind of stuff.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:31:44] Deep Rock is absolutely hilarious. Yeah. Yes.
Fraser Cain [00:31:49] Yeah. Now what are you playing?
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:31:50] So we both have a quest three. Yes. I have to admit, playing fruit and doing the the Jedi dojos that are in the Vader games have been some of my favorite stuff when you’re having a really bad day, right? Fruit Ninja in the Quest three, which has nothing to do with space. It does have a nighttime view of the sky. They have these little robots that will fly around you in survival mode and fling fruit at you. And you have two swords. The Jedi games are really good. I have a whole list of games waiting for me to have a couple days off to go play. There’s a bunch of Star Wars games in addition to the Vader series, and there’s something about VR that. It allows you to stop entirely out of this world and explore other worlds. National Geographic. I can’t recommend spending money on them, but National Geographic actually has a game that I’m hoping gets updated where they’ve done photography in sites that like, I’m never going to climb to Machu Picchu. My ability to deal with with that with altitude is not that good. And you can go to Machu Picchu and have a llama face to face and look over the edges. Yeah, I love this ability to visit other places that exists in VR, like nowhere else.
Fraser Cain [00:33:27] Yeah, I agree. So, I mean, the Quest three has been the biggest change in my in my gaming landscape this year. And, you know, there’s people are still figuring out how to make this work. But the platform delivers now that you buy the Quest three. Yeah. They’ve got a store that you can buy games on and it’s very easy to just put the thing on your head and start playing games and you are totally living that virtual reality world. And so if you’ve been on the fence, you’re like, I don’t really know the Quest three And I think they came up with a new quest three s They came in with a yes.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:33:58] It’s like the cheaper version, the cheaper.
Fraser Cain [00:33:59] Version of it. And even the older Quest two is, you know, you can buy them or they’re available used. And that’s still a pretty good system. And so I think now is the time you’ve been sitting on the fence and you’re like, I really want to get into VR. I want to try it. The tools that are now there that you can play it and it’s a lot of fun. So yeah, I totally agree with you.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:34:18] I have taken things out playing in spaces that weren’t quite big enough, including destroying one controller. Do not recommend they’re very expensive. Yeah. Yeah. But you will experience vertigo. You will experience. There’s four inch White has been exploring the overview effect using VR. See just what you can inspire with people. And different missions are starting to make their data available so you can walk around on review goo and things like that. That’s really cool. That’s happening.
Fraser Cain [00:34:55] All right. I have one final recommendation, and I don’t know whether you guys have enabled this. I haven’t enabled this yet, but I will do it before this goes live, which is that you can buy a gift Patreon to any of us. So if you want to give the space fan in your life access to additional content behind the scenes meetings with me. Pamela You can buy a gift Patreon to Universe Today to Astronomy cast and to Cosmic Quest for the person in your life. And then that gives them, you know, as if they’re a paid sponsor of the work that we’re doing. So consider gifting Patreon for the kinds of of communities and content that the space fans in your life really like. All right. We’ve reached the end of our time. Thank you, Pamela. I hope this has given everyone a bunch of recommendations. Now we stand. There’s no affiliates. We don’t stand to make any money from any of this stuff except for Patreon, I guess. And if people buy your art in your book. Yes, but but, you know, there’s no affiliates or any of that kind of stuff. These are just our genuine personal recommendations for things we we like and don’t like. Yeah. So thanks very much.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:36:09] Thank you, Fraser. And thank you to all the people who are already part of our patriot. We can’t thank all of you, but we are thanking those of you who are at the $10 level and up once a month. This week I’m going to read the names. I’m going to try and pronounce and fail to pronounce the names of Abraham Cottrell, Alexis, Arctic Fox, Bart Flaherty, Bob Zawacki. Brian Cagle, Cami Rozen. Cooper David Diane Philippon. Dwight Elk. Evelyn Mulkey. Frank Stewart. Georgie Ivanov. Gordon Dewar’s. Hot Dog Shredder. Janelle. Jeff Collins. Jim McGeehan. Joe Holstein. Gordon Turner. Cape Sun Ratto. Keith Kenneth Ryan. Christian Mager Holt. Les Howard. Mark Schneider. Mathias Hayden. Michael Procida. Mike Cousy. Paul de Disney. Peter Robert Handle. Sam Brooks and his mom got big Simon part in the Big Squish Squash Time. Lord IRA. William Andrews. Adam Annie’s Brown. Andrew Powell. Astro Astro. Bob Benjamin Carrier. Bob Krell. Brian Kilby. Szymanski. Daniel Donaldson. David Fogerty does as Trina and Father Prax Frodo Tannenbaum. Gerald Schweitzer. Greg Davis. Helga Bjork, Hogg Jarvis, IL Earl. And thank you all. And I’m so sorry for what I just did to your names.
Fraser Cain [00:37:46] Thanks, everyone. We’ll see you next week.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:37:49] Bye bye. Astronomy cast is a joint project of Universe Today and the Planetary Science Institute. Astronomy Cast is released under a Creative Commons attribution license. So love it. Share it and remix it. But please credit it to our hosts Fraser Cain and Dr. Dr. Pamela Gay. You can get more information on today’s show topic on our Web site, Astronomy Cars.com. This episode was brought to you thanks to our generous patrons on Patriot. If you want to help keep this show going, please consider joining our community a Patriot Act slash astronomy cast. Not only do you help us pay our producers a fair wage, you will also get special access to content right in your inbox and invites to online events. We are so grateful to all of you who have joined our Patreon community already. Anyways, keep looking up. This has been astronomy cast.
Speaker 4 [00:38:54] Hey there. Rachel here to give a big shout out to you for making it through the hectic holiday season. The magic of those family moments. That was you. And now there’s new milestones to prep for in 2025. This New Year check clean quality pregnancy nutrient support off your to do list with ritual. We’ve done the research to create science backed pregnancy support like our prenatal multivitamin, natal choline and fertility support, all designed to be taken alongside each other. But don’t just take our word for it. They’re also third party tested for microbes and heavy metals. And clean label project certified. So whether you’re trying, thinking about trying or already there, we don’t have to tell you that prioritizing yourself can be the hardest part. That’s why we’re helping you get started today with 30% off a three month supply for a limited time. At ritual.com/podcast. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:39:54] Ready to launch your health care career. Don’t get held back by long waiting lists that can delay your future for months or even years. Pima Medical Institute offers.
Speaker 4 [00:40:03] A variety of programs that start each.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:40:05] Month. Take your career off hold.
Speaker 4 [00:40:07] Visit pmi.edu.
Dr. Pamela Gay [00:40:09] Today.