Ep. 730: The Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope

Let’s look over the long life of the  Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope as it watches for the multi-spectral flashes of high energy explosions.

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Fraser Cain
Universe Today

Dr. Pamela Gay
CosmoQuest

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Ep. 504: Radar, Lidar, and Sonar

To really study something, you want to reach out and touch it. But what can you do if you’re separated by a huge distance? You reach out with electromagnetic or sound waves and watch how they bounce back. Thanks to radar, sonar and lidar.

Ep. 503: Gravity Mapping

The Earth looks like a perfect sphere, but down here on the surface we see that there are mountains, rivers, oceans, glaciers, all kinds of features with different densities and shapes. Scientists can map this produce a highly detailed gravity map of our planet. And it turns out, this is very useful for other worlds too.

Ep. 502: No Touching: Determining Composition of Worlds Remotely

How do you know what something is made of if you can’t reach out and touch it? How do we know what planets lights years away have in their atmosphere? What about the rocks all around Curiosity? Or the geysers coming out of Europa and Enceladus? Scientists have a few handy tricks.

Ep. 501: Water Worlds Revisited

We’re not learning that the vast majority of potentially habitable worlds out there are actually icy moons like Europa and Enceladus. Good news, there are hundreds, if not thousands of times more of them than worlds like Earth. Bad news, they’re locked in ice. What have we learned about water worlds and their potential for habitability?

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