We remain CLOSED to the public due to ongoing concerns related to COVID-19. Enjoy our virtual programs, educational resources and sign up to receive updates about our reopening plans.
How will we go back to the Moon? Is it possible to stop an asteroid from hitting Earth? Could there be life outside our solar system?
Join Fiske Planetarium hosts Tara Tomlinson and Collin Sinclair as they interview local Colorado experts in all fields of space science. New episodes every Thursday.
Do you have a space or science question that you've always wanted to ask? Leave it here!
Have any other comments for us? Email us.
Everything in the universe is moving...but it’s not all moving in ways we would expect. For our current theory of gravity to be correct, there must be a huge amount of “dark matter” in the universe to explain the movement and distribution of galaxies and other objects in space. But, is dark matter really a mysterious invisible particle, or is there a more mundane explanation? This week, we talk with one researcher who is on the hunt for the universe’s missing matter using some of the world’s most powerful telescopes.
Dr. Mike Shull is a professor in the CU Astrophysics & Planetary Science department, specializing in UV and X-ray observations of galaxies, their constituents, and the spaces between them. He works to understand the early days of star and galaxy formation and how they affect the distribution of matter in the universe both then and now. Mike also uses the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the local environment of our own Milky Way galaxy.
One of the most important questions we ask about a body in the solar system is, “What is it made out of?” Understanding the chemical composition of planets, moons, and asteroids tells us about their formation and evolution, as well as how it might relate to Earth and the rest of the Solar System. Rovers and spacecraft can analyze objects and provide the information we need, but there’s nothing like holding a rock in your hand or analyzing a real sample in the lab to understand the makeup of a planet’s crust. In this episode, we talk with a scientist who works with moon rocks and Martian meteorites to characterize the surfaces of these bodies, and we’ll discuss some of the future plans for space missions designed to sample and return bits of space back to Earth.
Dr. Carolyn Crow is an assistant professor of geosciences at CU Boulder. Her work focuses on understanding the evolution of planetary crusts through chemical analyses of firsthand samples like meteorites and moon rocks. Part of her research also supports Nuclear Forensics projects that aim to understand the signatures of underground nuclear explosions and characterizing materials for the international monitoring system.
Have you ever thought about how GPS works? Or how your phone always knows the correct time? You may know that satellites are involved, but keeping all those satellites functioning together requires incredibly precise timing. An atomic clock uses vibrations of atoms much like a grandfather clock uses a pendulum, only this pendulum swings nine billion times every second! And one of these clocks is right here in Boulder! This week we’re chatting with an atomic clock technician...a Time Lord, if you will...whose job is to keep that atomic clock ticking so you don’t miss your next important meeting.
Andrew Novick is a Denver-based artist, musician, director, photographer, collector, Casa Bonita connoisseur, and many other things...but he is also an electrical engineer in the Time & Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder (NIST). Andrew has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1992. He has worked at NIST in the Time and Frequency Division since he was a college freshman. He has published several papers in time metrology, including network timing and common-view satellite time comparisons. He works on real-time remote frequency and time calibrations and is in charge of the official United States web clock.
Missions to Mars might seem a dime a dozen these days, but why doesn’t anyone ever talk about going to Venus? Turns out, it’s really, really hard! Venus may be closer to Earth than Mars is, but its toxic atmosphere and hellish temperatures make it a challenging place to visit. But with recent advances in technology, it may not be impossible! In this episode, we talk with a lifelong proponent of Venus exploration about a new push for Venus missions and their chances for success. What can we learn, and what will we find? He might have some ideas!
Dr. Larry Esposito has been a professor of planetary science at CU Boulder since 1977. He was highly involved with the Cassini mission to Saturn, as well as the earlier Voyager and Pioneer missions. He even discovered a new ring around Saturn! Dr. Esposito has also been a participant in numerous US, Russian and European space missions and used the Hubble Space Telescope for its first observations of the planet Venus.
You may not think that a big hole in the ground could be a fascinating study, but to a cratering expert it is just that. Craters are found on almost every body in the solar system, and they’re useful tools for exploring the surfaces of far away planets and moons, giving us clues about the history, composition, and currently active processes happening on the surface. This week, we’re talking with an award-winning crater buff about her work on bodies like Europa, Pluto, and Charon, and what sort of interesting things we can learn about these places just by looking at their craters (or lack thereof).
Dr. Kelsi Singer is a planetary scientist with Southwest Research Institute specializing in the geology and geophysics of planetary bodies. Her most recent contributions have been as a co-investigator and deputy project scientist on the New Horizons mission, working in operations and on the geology and geophysics team. She recently received the Harold C. Urey Prize from the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences; the prize is the highest DPS honor for a young planetary scientist, recognizing outstanding achievements in planetary research.
No one becomes an astrophysicist overnight. For most professionals, it requires years of study, research, mentorship, and self-discipline. Luckily, there is a whole field of research dedicated to finding the best and most effective way to teach astronomy to students, whether they are looking to make it a career or just want an interesting way to fulfill a transcript requirement. Our guest this week gives us an inside look at what it’s like to teach astronomy, how education has evolved as a science, and how new generations of teachers and students are making astronomy more exciting and accessible than ever.
Dr. Seth Hornstein is a senior instructor at CU Boulder and the Observatory and Education Director at Sommers-Bausch Observatory. He serves as lead mentor for undergraduate astronomy majors with career interests in teaching and is the department coordinator for the Learning Assistant program (a university-wide program to recruit and prepare talented science majors for careers in teaching). Since 2008 he has been working with the Center for Astronomy Education's Collaboration of Astronomy Teaching Scholars (CATS) team and the STEM Teacher and Researcher (STAR) program. In addition to his research in astronomy education, he has also worked on infrared observations of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center.
So far on our podcast, we’ve talked with tons of people who are interested in what it takes to make space a viable habitat for humans. This week, we turn the mic over to one of those very humans! In this episode, we’ll be talking with a real live astronaut about what it takes to succeed in the position, his time on (and outside!) the ISS, and what life is like after you’ve been IN SPACE.
Col. Astronaut Dr. Jim Voss is a retired United States Army colonel and NASA astronaut. During his time with NASA, Voss flew in space five times on board the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. He also served as deputy of Flight Operations for the Space Station Program Mission Integration and Operations Office. While participating in ISS Expedition 2, he and Susan Helms conducted an 8-hour and 56 minute spacewalk, the longest to date. He is currently a Scholar In Residence at CU Boulder.
Our first episode! This week we try out podcasting for the first time with Fiske Planetarium’s director Dr. John Keller. We talk with him about his journey to becoming our director and lessons that he’s learned along the way. We also talk with him about his research in astronomy and science education.
Dr. John Keller is a professor in the department of astrophysical and planetary sciences at CU Boulder and serves as Director of Fiske Planetarium. He is currently Co-PI for the Research and Education Cooperative Occultation Network (RECON), an NSF-funded citizen science astronomy research project involving communities across the western United States to measure the sizes of Kuiper Belt Objects. He is also a leader for the Collaborative Around Research Experiences for Teachers (CARET) and active with 100Kin10, an organization of over 280 stakeholders committed to preparing and recruiting 100,000 science, math, engineering, and mathematics teachers by 2021.
This week’s episode focuses on the strange and fascinating objects found at the centers of galaxies: BLACK HOLES. We’ll be speaking with two local experts about how these black holes are formed, what happens to the material around the black hole, and what observations of galactic centers can tell us about these otherwise invisible objects.
Dr. Andrew Hamilton is a professor in the department of astrophysical and planetary sciences at CU Boulder, as well as a fellow of JILA (formerly the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics). He's interested in relativity and black holes, cosmology, and astrophysics; and most recently published a paper regarding the interior of astronomically realistic black holes. Dr. Hamilton was a major contributor to the film Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity shown frequently at Fiske and other planetariums around the globe.
Jimmy Negus is a PhD candidate at CU Boulder studying Active Galactic Nuclei with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. With this survey, he can analyze the light from 10,000 galaxies to identify signatures of movement and composition in their bright centers.
This week is all about The Red Planet, and we’ll be talking to two experts about Mars’s climate, atmospheric history, and surface geology. We’ll also discuss an upcoming mission by the United Arab Emirates to send a spacecraft to Mars, and what sort of amazing things they are planning for their first venture into the Solar System.
Dr. Dave Brain is a professor at CU Boulder and researcher for the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. He specializes in atmospheres and magnetospheres, at Mars and elsewhere in the solar system, and is a member of the MAVEN spacecraft team. He is also a science advisor for the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), a new and exciting mission that plans to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere at high altitudes and close to the surface.
Andrew Wilcoski is a graduate student at CU Boulder studying geophysical and atmospheric processes on Mars’s polar ice caps. His current work looks at how the ice caps change over time due to weather, atmosphere, and even the location and orientation of the planet.
This week’s episode takes us to the outer edge of the Solar System as we chat with two scientists studying Kuiper Belt Objects like Pluto and other small bodies. We’ll talk about the New Horizons mission to Pluto and Arrakoth, what’s next for the ongoing mission, and what kinds of things we can learn about tiny objects billions of miles away just by using small ground-based telescopes.
Dr. Fran Bagenal is a Professor Emeritus at CU Boulder and has been involved in a number of planetary science missions, including Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, New Horizons, and Juno. She has sat on or chaired a growing number of NASA assessment groups, advisory councils, and review boards, and has received numerous awards for excellence in research and teaching. Her enthusiasm for teaching and lecturing is legendary and she may be the only CU APS faculty with an IMDB page!
Ryder Strauss, a CU alumnus, who for the past few years has been part of the core team of RECON, the Research and Education Collaborative Occultation Network. RECON is a network of citizen volunteer astronomers which seeks to measure the shapes and sizes of outer solar system objects by measuring their shadows as they block out the light from distant stars. He has been involved in all levels of the project, from supporting prediction efforts to coordinating observations to analyzing the volunteers' data.
In this episode, we’re chatting about those pesky planetary neighbors and dinosaur killers, asteroids. Since Bruce Willis wasn’t available, we’ll hear from two local scientists specializing in asteroid orbits and dynamics, as well as what it might take to deflect an asteroid and how NASA plans to test it.
Dr. Daniel Scheeres is a Distinguished Professor of Aerospace Engineering at CU, specializing in astrodynamics and satellite navigation. Dr. Scheeres has also done work for JPL and received awards from NASA for his group’s work on an asteroid redirection mission concept. He is the recipient of numerous awards for publications on astrodynamics. In fact, he is so recognized in the field that he has an asteroid named after him!
Kya Sorli is a current Ph.D. student in astrophysics & planetary science at CU Boulder. Her research spans planetary defense, small-bodies and astrobiology, including work on how to stop asteroids and comets from hitting the Earth with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Planetary Defense team. Kya is now working for NASA’s Janus mission, focusing on thermal modeling of binary asteroid systems in an attempt to learn about their past and present.
This episode is all about...aliens. Or rather, alien planets and what sort of characteristics they possess, and whether they might be good places to look for life. We sit down with experts in exoplanets and exoplanet atmospheres to talk about what these distant planets are like, how we find them and study them, and how they are like and very unlike the planets in our Solar System.
Dr. Zach Berta-Thompson is a professor of astronomy and planetary science at CU Boulder with a specialty in studying exoplanets. His research ranges from mid-sized bodies and their atmospheres to small planets around small stars to what he calls “wonderfully complicated stars.” Within the student body, he is especially known for his stellar shoe collection, his love of arts and crafts, and his enthusiasm for teaching and advising students.
Jessica Libby-Roberts is a graduate student at CU Boulder working with Dr. Berta-Thompson on research regarding exoplanet atmospheres. She currently works on “super-puffs” planets with densities similar to cotton candy! Her research tries to understand how the low gravity of these puffy planets holds on to a substantial atmosphere and what that can tell us about planetary formation and dynamics.
People have been studying the sun in one form or another for millenia, but how much do we actually know about our nearest star? This week we’ll be talking to two solar physicists about our sun, inside and out, and some of the amazing new spacecraft, telescopes, and modeling techniques we use to unravel its mysteries.
Dr. Ben Brown is an assistant professor and researcher at CU Boulder studying fluid dynamics in stars and exoplanets. He uses supercomputer modeling techniques to understand convection inside of stars and how it builds and affects the sun’s active magnetic field. This can help us learn more about the origins of magnetic field events, like solar flares, that could impact life on or near Earth.
Chris Gilly is a graduate student at CU Boulder studying waves that help heat the outer layers of the sun to MILLIONS of degrees. He is also interested in the Sun-Earth connection and how what happens on the sun can affect us here on Earth, for good or ill. Gilly looks to use new technologies like the Parker Solar Probe and the DKIST telescope to further his work.
NASA says we’re going back to the moon, but could it be for good? In this episode, we ask two lunar scientists who specialize in water, ices, and atmospheres about what it might take for humans to set up camp on (or under!) the surface of the moon. We’ll also find out what sort of cool new things are in store for the upcoming Artemis missions that aim to put humans on the lunar surface in the next four years.
Dr. Paul Hayne is an assistant professor at CU Boulder studying surface and atmospheric processes on terrestrial bodies like the moon and Mars. He is especially interested in ices and how they affect the atmospheres of these bodies. Dr. Hayne is involved with several NASA missions, including the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Climate Sounder, and the upcoming Europa Clipper. He is currently the lead on an instrument slated to be launched to the moon as part of the Artemis series of missions; this radiometer will help map the distribution of different chemicals and materials on the moon and their thermal properties.
Dr. Margaret Landis is a post-doc at CU Boulder specializing in geology and icy bodies all over the Solar System. She has worked with spacecraft such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Dawn spacecraft that visited the dwarf planet Ceres, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter at the moon. Her current work looking at the chemistry of ices on the moon could be essential in determining what sort of water reservoirs our future human explorers could access for drinking, farming, and fuel.
The possibilities for life outside of Earth is a topic with innumerable perspectives and ideas, books, movies, and even albums, but how does our current technology measure up? In this episode, we’ll talk with two scientists about far-out ideas like using bacteria to mine asteroids, or whether or not we can terraform Mars. We’ll see where our current tech stands, what we might need to consider, and what we can and can’t accomplish in the near future.
Dr. Luis Zea is an assistant research professor for CU Boulder Aerospace who specializes in the intriguing field of bioastronautics, studying how biology and space interact. His interests span everything from gravitational microbiology to biomining and bio-based resource utilization. His work asks questions like “How can we protect our astronauts from bacterial contamination?” and “How can microorganisms help us mine metals from asteroids?” Dr. Zea is also part of the Artemis mission, leading an investigation using yeasts to study the radiation environment of the moon.
Dr. Bruce Jakosky is a professor at CU Boulder, Associate Director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Principal Investigator of the MAVEN spacecraft mission, and newly-appointed member of the National Space Council User’s Advisory Group. His expertise in geology and cosmochemistry make him a leading expert in Mars’s atmosphere and what it would take to make the Red Planet habitable. In fact, he’s authored two books on the search for life in the universe and leads the CU team for NASA’s Astrobiology Institute. If anyone knows how to create a liveable Mars, it’s Dr. Jakosky! But does he think we can do it?
We can’t all be astronauts, but you don’t need a pilot’s license or a PhD to be a space scientist! Citizen science allows everyday people to be involved in real science projects on their own time, contributing to vital research and data analysis. This week we’ll be talking to scientists who use citizen science projects to assist in research on everything from analyzing features on the surface of Mars to observing far-off asteroids across the US. Join us and see how you can get involved!
Dr. Michael Aye & Dr. Ganna (Anya) Portyankina run a citizen science project looking at the surface of Mars; participants can help to find and analyze jets of material that spray up from the ground to help understand wind patterns in different locations around the planet. Dr. Portyankina brings an expertise of ices in the solar system, studying them both with data from spacecraft and from experimental low-temperature labs around the world. Dr. Aye creates new and innovative ways of analyzing data using a variety of programming languages, and works with instruments studying Mars, the moon, and Saturn’s rings.
What’s summer without a double-dose of sun? With so many amazing discoveries happening in solar physics this summer, we had to bring you more! This episode features two experts in stellar flares on our sun and other stars. They’ll tell us what these flares mean for not only the stars but also the planets orbiting around them. Planets like Earth!
Dr. Adam Kowalski has been at CU since 2016, when he joined the National Solar Observatory and the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences as an Assistant Professor. His research interests lie in solar and stellar astrophysics with a specialization in spectroscopy of optical and ultraviolet emission in stellar flares. He uses state-of-the-art modeling codes combined with analysis of data from ground and space-based observatories (such as Hubble, IRIS, and the APO ARC 3.5m) to understand how the lower, dense stellar atmosphere (chromosphere and photosphere) is heated in response to the sudden release of magnetic energy during flares. He is also interested in developing new media for the dissemination of scientific results to the public and in establishing collaborations across disciplines.
Dr. Maria Kazachenko is an assistant professor at CU Boulder and works in solar astrophysics. Her research interests range from the storage of magnetic energy in solar active regions, to the release of that energy in solar flares with an emphasis of comparison and integration of observations with simulations. Understanding how this energy is stored and released is necessary to predict solar eruptions and hence the space weather. She is also involved in the development of the Critical Science Plan for The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the largest 4-meter solar telescope in the world, which had its first light in December 2019 revealing stunning mega-close up images of the Sun's surface. She has received the NASA Early Career Fellowship, the NSF CAREER award, and the Robert Bartnik Fellowship.
Tara is a planetary scientist and CU alumnus with a degree in Astronomy and Geology. Aside from co-hosting “A View From Earth” she coordinates Fiske’s outreach activities in the community and works as a presenter in the theater. She is thrilled to be a part of this podcast, utilizing her passion for science communication combined with past careers in radio and film. When not Fisking, she’s most likely engrossed in her research of moons in the outer solar system, tackling an insanely complicated lace knitting project, or watching something hosted by David Attenborough.
Collin is an undergraduate studying astrophysical and planetary sciences at CU Boulder. He works as a presenter at Fiske and co-hosts “A View From Earth.” Collin has a passion for teaching and aspires to be a professor and science communicator. Over summers, he enjoys working as a music director and pianist for a local educational theatre company. Collin spends his free time hiking, rock climbing, camping, and running.
Jon Schiller is the producer and editor of the Fiske podcast “A View From Earth.” He got his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2019, majoring in Astronomy. He currently also works for Fiske Planetarium as a Fulldome Production Assistant. In a previous life, Jon worked as a Lift Operator at Snowmass Ski Area while getting his Associate’s degree in Ski Area Operations from Colorado Mountain College. In his free time, Jon enjoys solving Rubik’s cubes, playing video games, camping, and fishing.
