Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Sorta Sophisticated with Pete and Amanda.
Okay, so I was thinking, Amanda, I don't really have a lot of hobbies. I mean, besides running. That's it. I guess I just don't have a lot of. I don't have a lot of hobbies.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: I think volunteering is a hobby.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: How much volunteering do I really do? I don't know.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: I mean, you put on friggin Oktoberfest, I think about.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Okay, but that's once a year.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: But you do.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Do you have a lot of hobbies? Like, where are you at with your, like, hobby?
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Oh, we all know that. I'm, like, psychotic. So here we are.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Is the podcast considered a hobby or it's like, what do we count that on the hobby? The hobby meter.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Well, I would assume it's a hobby because it's not a job.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Is that code for Peter you don't make any money doing?
[00:00:43] Speaker B: No, not at all. But like that.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: I think that's exactly what it was. That's kind of fucked up.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: No, but you don't view the podcast as a job.
Right. You get enjoyment out of it.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Right. So it's a hobby by default.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: I think so. Because you. Yeah.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: All right, so I have two hobbies. I have running and podcasting. There I have two hobbies and you have a hundred.
My point.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: You have a social club.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: What?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah. You go out like three times a week.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Oh, my God, Settle down. Working out, I guess is. Well, that's running, but like, you know, strength training, whatever.
I don't know. Here's what I decide. My whole point. Shopping. Not shopping. I shopped once. Okay. Oh, my God, I hate you. Can I get to my point?
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Oh, sure, yeah, sorry. There's a point.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: I picked a new hobby. Yes, there's a point. I picked a new hobby.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: What's your hobby?
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Are you ready? This is.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: I don't know if I am. Are you stargazing? Bird watching?
[00:01:28] Speaker A: I'm stargazing.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Are you really? Yes.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: I hate you so much. Yes. I've decided stargazing is what it's going to be. Yes.
I have spent the last week learning just enough to be sort of sophisticated about stargazing.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Did you learn, though, for the podcast, or did you learn and then you made the episode about the podcast?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Right. Well, like all things podcast, I was outside, I was looking at the sky. I don't know anything about the sky. I was like, that's dumb. Like, how do I not know anything?
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Oh, I have this every time I go to national Park.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Maybe the Big Dipper. Right? Like, whatever, but download the app. Huh? No, I have the app. You show me the app. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, so. So it started that way. And I'm like, I need to do that. Like, this needs to be a hobby. And I'm like, I don't really have a lot of hobbies. And I'm like, oh, my God. Maybe this is going to be a hobby. It's going to be a nighttime hobby.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Telescope.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: I. I didn't know that's actually one of the things you're not supposed to do. That's funny. Yes.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Why?
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Because it's like, that's what amateurs think they're supposed to go by. You just start with your eyes. I have this whole, like, I'm ready to go. I got this whole.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: I can't believe it. Stargazing.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Set up on how we're gonna teach people Stargazing 101. Astronomy. Stargazing 101. This is it. You're gonna get sophisticated.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: I'm so excited.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: That's what we're doing.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: I'm so excited.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I'm out there thinking about all this, Amanda, we have been look as human. So history. You know, the whole history connection with me.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: We've been looking at the same sky.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Forever.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: For.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: I mean, I know it moves a little bit, but, like, my point is, is like, yes. Thousands and thousands of yes. All the way back. Yeah. So I am hooked. And I'm ready to roll. Official title. Everything you see tonight already happened.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: That's weird. That's deep.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: It is deep. I know. Okay, here's the promise. First, of course, why. Everything you see up there already happened. And believe it or not, some of it before humans existed. Like, we're seeing the effects of something that happened in the sky before we even existed on Earth. So park that.
Second, how to tell a star from a planet? Because I was an idiot and didn't know how to do that, but now I know.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: One blinks, one doesn't.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Why are you giving it all away? This is awesome. Okay. All right. Well, we're go through that in a little more detail.
Third, how the sky rearranges itself every few months. Spoiler. The stars actually are not the things moving. Who wouldn't know?
[00:03:47] Speaker B: But isn't it like Mercury in retrograde? That's why we have, like, these.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: I don't even know what you're saying right now. Maybe that's a song. Whatever. Okay. And finally, what you're actually looking at when you look at the Milky Way and why you'll never see it the way you think you actually see it. That one's also.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: That's a deep one.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: That one's also kind of a mind.
Episode 120. Here we are, sort of sophisticated, the podcast where culture, curiosity and chaos and astronomy, stargazing, whatever, all collide today. Here we are. I'm Pete, that's Amanda. We're back at it. Let's go. It's 150 fucking degrees in here and outside, we're melting in the studio. So we gotta blow through this.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Okay, let's go.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Okay. We're not gonna fuck around. Word of the week. So our word of the week this week is fecund.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. From fecundus.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Do you know what that is?
[00:04:28] Speaker B: I have no clue.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: That's where it comes from.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: No. Is that like fungus?
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Fecund. F, E, C, U, N, D. It comes from the Latin fecundus. Of course it does. Right?
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Like fungus.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: Yes. Meaning fruitful or fertile. Fungus is fruitful.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Fungi is very fertile.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Same root that gives us fetus and fetal originally just meant capable of producing offspring abundantly. Amanda, you're very fecund.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Well, women in general are very fecund. Gabby was very fecund. Shit. Okay. Somewhere along the line, we started using it more broadly than just, like, biology and, like, having babies. So anything's fecund now. Like, your mind could be fecund. It's fruitful. It's. It's fertile. It's. Right.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: A piece of land is an interesting word.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Here we go.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: You know, the 80s could be fecund. The decade of the 80s, right? Anything can be. Okay, okay, okay. All right, so whatever. You got to work that in. Let's go.
All right, so before we start, if you like what you're listening to, hit subscribe. Follow us. Leave a review. Do everything you're supposed to do. I don't know. No, maybe leave a review afterwards. Not before afterwards.
Right. Now, just check when the podcast episodes come out and refer us and send it out to all your friends and all that good stuff. Okay. You ready for Astronomy 101?
[00:05:36] Speaker B: I am. Is this where you're also going to tell me that the sun revolves around the Earth and that we don't revolve around the sun?
[00:05:40] Speaker A: This is it. Or flat. This is a whole flat Earther thing?
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Oh, no, I don't believe in the flat earth, but continue.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: It all starts on the fourth day. The fourth day through the stars. Yes. Because apparently before that, on days one through three, God was busy doing some other shit that I don't know about. So on the fourth day, God looked up at the empty sky and said, well, to be fair, I don't know if he looked up because he's God.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: So let there be light.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: He's just looking, right? Yeah, he sort of looked. He said, let there be light. You're absolutely correct. Yes. Why do you steal that from me?
She knows her Bible verses and everything.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: See, here's the problem. I know just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to actually be smart.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: That's it. But that was exactly it. Also, he sort of said, well, these lights are going to tell you sort of what day it is and when to plant your crops and night when to celebrate Passover and that kind of stuff.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: And also there should be two lights because there should just be like a moon and a sun. And let's just do that whole thing. Oh, and then all the other planets. Who cares? We'll let, like. We'll let you name those, like, a lot later when you have your other gods, you can decide on all the names of the other planets. So I'm not really sure how that works. But anyway, he also threw some stars in there on the fourth day, and that's how we have the sun, the moon and the stars. That's where all this shit starts. I think the stars go in because he just wants to make it look romantic. Because God. God wants. Was romantical, right?
[00:06:47] Speaker B: I mean, I think how he painted the mountains and painted the sky.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Yes, I think that's sort of it. That was the fourth day. Like, he did a lot of shit on the fourth day. He was very, very busy. But anyway, that, as far as I know, is how we got the stars. That's a very unsophisticated version of how we got the stars. I'm sure there's way more to it than that. But we just took.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: There was a big bang and it exploded and it created. Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: And then the Earth cooled and then the dinosaurs came. We've talked about this before. Okay. So then somehow, I don't know, 6,000 or so years later, we had satellites, calendars, weather apps and everything.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: And now we know there's shit in the sky.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Exactly. Like what our UV is and when the sun goes down at the exact moment of time. But in my case, I still can't tell star from a planet. Apparently you can.
So. Yeah. Anyway, my first point of this whole thing about stars, and I'm going to say this, and you have to let this sink in for a second. Okay? Every time you look up at the night sky, you are looking into the past.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Okay, Mufasa.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: But you are.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Okay, Mufasa.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: No, no, you went too fast. You're not thinking. You're not taking it in.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Oh, I am. It is the scene in the Lion King when Mufasa is telling Simba that he will one day become a star, and if he looks to the sky, that is where he'll be. The Mormons also talk about this.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: You are legitimately looking in the past. So we're gonna nern out. This is real. So light moves at 1,186,000 miles per second, thank you very much. And based on that velocity alone, the sunlight that we see at any given time right now takes a little over eight minutes to get to the Earth. Okay, you with me? So the sun we're seeing is already eight minutes old.
So realistically, like, if the sun exploded right now, we would have eight minutes of not knowing at all that the sun exploded, and we would be sitting in here still podcasting for the next eight minutes. You understand that?
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: Okay. Which.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Terrifying.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: That might not seem like a big deal because you're like, oh, okay.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: It does.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: This is how cool this really gets. Okay, so Sirius, the brightest star that we can see in our sky, is 8.6 light years away. Okay, so technically, we're not even seeing Sirius tonight. You're actually seeing Sirius eight and a half years ago.
The light we're seeing is eight and a half years old tonight when we look up. Yeah. Okay. Beetlejuice, the reddish star, like in Orion. Okay. Hundreds of light years away.
That light literally left centuries before it hit our eyes. Okay, Centuries. Hundreds and hundreds.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: That we're not wrong. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: It is fascinating.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: I have to give you one more because this was what I was. I was like, I was buttering you up for this last one. Andromeda, okay? The nearest, biggest galaxy to us, okay? 2.5 million light years away. Two and a half million years ago.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: It's crazy.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: That is the light we're looking at.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: It's crazy.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: That's before humans existed. But also, the light we're seeing from Andromeda is 2 1/2 million years old.
So again, Andromeda, how do we know this, though?
We know this. We have instruments, science. We have data. We have instruments, we have facts. We have. We have. We have chat, dude. We have AI. That's how we know all this shit. What are you talking about?
[00:09:49] Speaker B: AI only knows what we tell it.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: We have Galileo we have Nostradamus.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: I know.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: We have. I don't even know. I mean, we got all sorts of things. I think.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: You know what the thing is, I think it's easier to question, like, well, how do we know this is all true? Because it blows our mind. Do you know what I mean? And, like, our human minds want to make sense of things.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: I know.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Anyways, I think it's.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: I didn't even. Like, when I started doing all this, I was like, I just forgot. It's not time. It's distance. Everyone just assumes a light year is. Is time. Because we say year, how far it is, right? It's distance. And so. Oh, my God. It just. It's. It puts history for me on the same axis as astronomy. And so now all of a sudden, that whole connectivity where I talk about how I'm, like, so into history and I have that weird. Sort of weird gene that I'm. It just makes it so much better because I can say, abraham Lincoln looked at the same damn star I looked at you. You know, Like, I just can connect with. I can connect with Jesus faster, right? Because I'm like, oh, he looked up at the same thing. Da, da, da. I'm only this. And it says.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: I mean, it is the one thing. This much time passed it, right?
[00:10:50] Speaker A: No, it's incredible. It's really crazy.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Okay, what else you got for me?
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Okay, well, that was enough to blow my mind already. Like, I was already, like, fascinated by just the whole. Looking back into history, but, you know, whatever. Apparently, I'm just catching up with Mufasa, star planet. The other thing. I have a star planet now you already know. So here we are, right? Da, da, da, da da.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: If it twinkles, but I don't know why.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: If it twinkles, I don't know. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. That's all I know, right? Planets don't have the same song. What do you want me to say? So stars are so far away. They're basically these little, little teeny points to us. So when the light punches through the Earth's atmosphere that bends and flickers. And it looks like it's twinkling. Because it's, like, so small. Cause it's so far away. But the planets, they're close enough to appear like disks. So they don't. It's not a single point of light because of how close they are to us.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Planets, in theory, are closer than the stars that we. Yeah, that's crazy. Like, crazy to think about.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Oh, well, here we are. All you gotta remember is, like, you Said disks planet. Don't twinkle. Stars twinkle farther away. That's sort of the simplest, most basic.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Farther. The refraction of light. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: Okay, so Big Dipper, right. Like, that was the only thing I knew when I went into this whole thing.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: That and a Little Dipper.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Only two things I didn't even know that wasn't a constellation. So I thought, though, it has to be a constellation. Why would you. Like, duh.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: But are constellations technically, like the Orion, Cassiopeia, Scorpio.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: Technically not Scorpio.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Like whatever. Our astrology signs are right.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: In Yes, a lot. But there's some that aren't. But yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Pisces.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Yeah, Right, right.
The Big Dipper is actually called an asterism.
An asterism, right. Should have been our word of the week.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: By the way, what is an asterism?
[00:12:23] Speaker A: So it's just a recognizable star pattern that isn't an official constellation on its own and could be part of a bigger constellation. So in this case, the Big Dipper is an asterism in the constellation of Ursa Major, or if you've heard of that one, called the Great Bear. Right. They have Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, and that's Big Dipper. Little Dipper. It's just the part of the bigger constellation. I didn't even know that. So. So I've been doing this. It's the only thing I knew up in the sky, and I was already wrong.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Well, you weren't wrong.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: I mean, I was sort of.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: It is an image in the sky.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: It is, but do you know why it's important? Because it is still technically very important.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Why?
[00:12:56] Speaker A: You got nothing. This one you're not gonna be able to answer. You've answered everything else and you don't know this one. Okay, so if you look up at the sky, find the Big Dipper. Take the two stars on the outer edge of, I don't know, like the bowl part. Like the outer side. Draw a line through them and extend it five times its length. Like, just count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Guess where you at?
Polaris. The North Star. Yes. So it points you in the direction of the North Star.
Yes. And did you know, fun fact, Polaris isn't even the brightest star in the sky. I always thought Polaris was the brightest star in the sky. North Star. That was the whole point. Wayfinders, the whole thing. No. Okay. It's famous because of where it sits.
So. Do you remember Hokulea episode that we did on Hokula? Right, right. Okay. So it sits almost exactly on the Earth's axis point, like where. Where we rotate.
So when we spin, everything else sort of appears to be spinning around Polaris. And that's why it barely moves. And that's why sailors were always looking for it, because it was sort of the only thing that never left the night sky.
Right. So that's why it was like such a waypoint for everybody. I didn't know any. Even when we did the hook thing, I was like. I didn't quite understand how they would find the. Da. Da. Now this makes more sense because it has to do with the Earth axis. So I thought it was Polaris. Oh, brightest star, North Star. Jesus, all this stuff. No, there's a lot of.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: But that's only for us in the Northern Hemisphere, right?
[00:14:18] Speaker A: I know. Yes.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: So in the Southern.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: Yeah, you're in the Southern Hemisphere. You can't. You can't way find in the Southern Hemisphere. You're can't do anything. You just sit out in the ocean.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: No way. There has to be.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: No. Okay. They use the Southern Cross.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: What's that?
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Crosby, Stills, Nash. Southern Cross.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: No.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: Oh, my God. The greatest song ever. Ever made in the history of the world. So the Southern Cross is like. It looks like a cross. It's like whatever, seven stars. I don't even know, maybe eight stars, whatever. You take its long axis and extend that line four or five times its length and that points you to the South Pole. Okay, so South Axis, Right. So same thing as the Big Dipper points you to Polaris in the Southern Hemisphere. You use what's called the Southern Cross to find it. Those are the two that you find. I have never seen the Southern Cross. Have you seen.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: I've never looked for it, so probably not.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Well. Well, you have to be in the Southern Hemisphere. But I've, like, I've been in there, but like, I don't remember looking up for it. You gotta listen to that song. Jimmy Buffett ended up doing a cover on Southern Cross. God, it's excellent. Okay, whatever.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: So I have a question.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Yeah, what?
[00:15:18] Speaker B: So you have the Southern Cross.
Does that not move as well? Because Polaris doesn't move. But then the Southern Cross, to me, I feel like could move because everything rotates, right?
[00:15:27] Speaker A: So same, same. It's like sort of close enough to the axis where it.
You don't lose it. The same. It's, it's. It's sort of on the same, whatever, Southern axis as we are on the northern axis, like, point. So, yes, it's gonna Move. But it's not gonna disappear on people.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: The same way. Does that make sense?
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: But what happens to all the other stars then? Because it's obviously everything spinning in some way.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Yes. Right. So the farther you are away from the axis, apparently, the more the night changes for you. So. So? So, yeah. So, like, a lot's going on when we're outside looking up at the sky. Okay. Like, the Earth is actually doing two things at one time, if you think about it. So first, it's rotating once a day. Right. 24 hours in a day. That's the whole thing. That's how we get sort of like the nightly look at the stars. Duh. Okay. And then it's also orbiting the sun once per year. Right. Every 365. So as we move, our nighttime faces a different direction into space. Like, ever so slightly every day, just a little bit.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Right. Which is why you can turn your camera on last.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Yes. So think about a campfire, I guess the easiest way to do it. And you're standing there, and you're looking across the campfire. Right. And you see what you see. And now you take a step over one, and now you look forward again, and your view changes just a little bit. Like, your peripheral starts to change. Right? And you're walking around the campfire, and you're looking forward, and your view keeps changing little by little by little. The same exact thing is happening behind you, too. You're not looking, but, like, literally the same thing's happening. So if you were to turn around and look outward, that's the same way as us looking. Sort of like, you know, as we're looking up at the night sky, that same peripheral changes every night, just ever so slightly. We're just doing it fast around a campfire. The Earth is just doing it a lot slower.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: So you're arguing it's more because we move, not that the stars move.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Correct. Amundo. The stars aren't going anywhere. So literally six months from now, we're looking in the Northern hemisphere at a completely different group of stars than we would be six months prior. Because we've just moved to the other side of the campfire.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Just. It just took six months for us to get there. Does that make sense?
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And, yeah. So I didn't even know because, you know, right now I'm looking up the summer sky, and I'm like, yeah, what am I supposed to even look at? Because all I know is the Big Dipper. Right. Dur.
So I learned that apparently in the Summer. There's something called the summer triangle. That's, like, the thing to see. Like, if you're sort of just getting into stargazing. It's three different constellations. It's Vega, Deneb. I don't know if I'm saying it right, and Altair. And they line up to form a giant triangle. And that's sort of the starting point for the novice stargazer. And then in the wintertime, it's Orion. And I always learned, like, Orion has his belt, and Orion's belt is part of the whole bigger Orion constellation.
But then from there, it's sort of like, you figure out what you want. You look at your apps and figure out what you want to do. So I didn't really know even what part of the year you're in and, like, what you're supposed to be looking at. So I was sort of fast fascinated by. By that whole thing to begin with. But now I know more than just the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, so yay for me.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, there's a whole big world out there.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: There is, for sure. There's a lot of stars.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: So besides constellations, though, what is the Milky Way? Because it's not a constellation. The galaxy.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: The Milky Way is totally a galaxy.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah, okay, but a galaxy.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Okay, but that was like.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: The other one is a galaxy too. Astradamus. What was it?
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Oh, Andromeda.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah. There's like a million galaxies out there. Like, my whole little cheeky thing about the Milky Way at the beginning was just, you'll. As soon as I say this, you'll be like, duh. So, like, we don't actually know what the Milky Way looks like because we only live inside the Milky Way. So we don't have pictures of the
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Milky Way inside the Milky Way.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: Yes, we're in the Milky Way galaxy. That's what we are. Yes. Like Earth, our planet, everything.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Cloudy gray thing.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Right, That's. So that's the band. That's the band. That's exactly my point. So when you go online and look up all the pictures of the Milky Way galaxy, you see it from far away. It's like a drone. It's like looking down at the Milky Way and it looks like this. This spiral or this sphere, and it looks totally gorgeous, and it's unbelievable. All that's computer generated. All that's bullshit. I mean, we know the position of the stars based on the distance and all that and, like, light years and everything. But my point is, is no one's ever Taken a picture of it. You can't. It's impossible. We don't have a camera to send that far enough out in space and get back in time. We can't do it. So there's no, like, anything that you see about a Milky Way galaxy. Any real picture is totally bullshit. It's totally made up. We know we have.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: It's like the space landing.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: No, just kidding. We have a good estimation of what it looks like.
My point is that gray band that you're looking at that is actually the Milky Way. You can't see it from, like, where we live because, you know, there's too much, what you would call noise. Light noise. You have to get farther away from the city. But you can only see the inside of the Milky Way. And that gray band is literally one of the spirals that we can see. So we're just in it. Because we're just in it. That's all. Whatever. I'm just saying, you know, imagine sitting. I'll use a blender just because of the spiral. But, like, we're sitting inside of it. So we can only see, like, what we can. From there. We can see outside. Yeah. It was just. It was a fun. It was just a fun way of explaining the Milky Way that was all but, like.
[00:20:12] Speaker B: Okay, hold on. Because the Milky Way and the stars are so many millions of light years away.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: How do we know? Because it's not as if, like, we sent a tractor. Be. Tractor beam? Is that what it's called?
[00:20:22] Speaker A: I like that. I don't know.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Laser beam, Whatever. A laser beam to these stars. Because it would take millions of light years.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: So how do we know that?
Too sophisticated. Got it. Math, I guess.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Math. It's all distance. It's all distance.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: All right. Technology.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: So we figure out how far light is based on distance. That's what we know. Then we know where to put each of these things. We've mapped it.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: I don't know.
I'm learning as I go. What do you want me to say? I'm learning to stargaze. I'm not an avid.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Well, I just feel like that's more the sophisticated route. Right. We're not going to go down today.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Right now I'm sort of fascinated.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: I. I'm curious because all of this is kind of like theory, Right. I think maybe that's the line between, like, scientist and amateur stargazer, is that I want to go out and look at the stars and be able to identify maybe what constellation they're in. But that's why I use the appy app, because it always, you know, you put it up and it tells you this star is that, and this and that. And you can like position. It's great.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: The app is wonderful.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: And you don't need much equipment. You just need to stay outside, make sure your phone's in red mode so your eyes adjust.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: I know. If you're not in red mode, you're fucked, right? I totally are. So apparently astronomers measure the distance to nearby stars using a geometric effect called parallax.
For the farther stars, they use the brightness measurements based on the cosmic distance ladder. I don't know what the hell that means.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Too sophisticated for us.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: So triangulation. Parallax, the Earth orbit around the sun is a diameter of 186 million miles, 300 million kilometers. By looking at one star, then looking again six months later, they can see the difference. With the little trigonometry, the different angles yield a different result.
Oh, my God. I don't know. Brightness measurements, color spectrums, I have no fucking idea.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: I'm just gonna say I have a new found respect for my professor in college. She always had this really big necklace that symbolized all the planets and they were like hunkin balls. I have a new respect for her. She understood all of this.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: I have no respect for you because you said hunkin balls.
Do you know what is so cool about our galaxy?
[00:22:29] Speaker B: What?
[00:22:29] Speaker A: It is so fecund with stars.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: It is.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: I mean, it is a. It is a fertile melting pot of stars. It's very fecund.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Well, there you go.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Little stars having baby stars, right?
[00:22:42] Speaker A: They're just. They're just out there doing their thing. Right? Okay.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: Okay. So we have decided we are not scientists. We are not astrologist. We are astronomers. We are just.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: We're just learning how to stargate.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: Simple people who just gotta look at a hobby.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: That was all this is. Listen, here's the deal.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: So how do you stargaze?
[00:22:59] Speaker A: This is it. Don't buy a telescope. I'll tell you that right fucking now.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: You did say that earlier.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: This is it. It's super, super basic stuff. So you go out. We're using our eyes first. That's all we're gonna do. Okay? Not sophisticated at all. Just make sure it's dark. Darker the better. Don't bring your phone. I guess you could bring your phone for like the app, but I would say.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: So you need it on red mode.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: I would, but I would start without the. I would. I would literally start to see if you could just do this shit like OG style. Okay. Do you know there's something for like how dark the sky is, by the way? Like you can measure like. Yeah, like a uv, but not really a uv, but it's the same thing. It's called a Bortle scale.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Like we have the UV index to figure that. Hold on.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: I don't know much about it, but I only know this because in the US there's like the Dark Skies program. Like Joshua Tree is one of them.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like a one or a two.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of national parks are because they are so removed from any light.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: This is perfect, right? So go to a national park.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: The clear. Yes.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So John Bortle published in 2001. 2001.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: That wasn't that long ago.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: 25 years ago. Right. How to measure, like how. Like dark. Yeah, like midnight dark. The sky is. By the way, you and I, we're nine. We're in. We're nine. We're. I'm sure where we live. Yeah, yeah. But like you said, Joshua Tree is like a two, so. Okay.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Anyway, that's convenient.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Look at that. Let's go. We got to go to Joshua Tree. Okay, so here's where we do five day plan. This is what I would say, okay. Go outside, find Polaris, find the Big Dipper. That's it. Just confirm you know which way is north. Big Dipper, Everybody knows how to figure that out. Follow it five times, click, click, click, click, click, you'll find Polaris, you're happy, you're done. You do that with your naked eye, you're proud of yourself. Night two. Let's look for the planets. Twinkling, not twinkling. That's what we're going to do. Venus, Jupiter and Mars. Those are the easiest. Right?
[00:24:30] Speaker B: And also their color schedule is a little different too.
[00:24:32] Speaker A: They are, Yep. We're just, we're going to look out. Amanda's right. If you need the app, use the app, figure it out. But like, that's all we're doing.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Basic shit the first time. We're trying to get people to identify what it is.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: And then once you've identified and know what you're looking for, maybe then try looking for it without the app.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Yes, I like that.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Training your eye. Training your eye.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: Okay. Night three. Go to the moon. Let's figure out the moon. Get binoculars. Binoculars better than telescope for the novice.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: I don't know if you need a telescope to be able to see this, but SpaceX crashed into the moon. But you can see the impact site. Supposedly.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: No, I did not know this.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, supposedly. Don't know.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: But I would believe that because I have a fun fact about the moon later. And so I'm going to say, wow, Holy cow.
Yeah. So just look at the moon and use the binoculars. Because to your point, like, look at the craters or the mountains, or find the SpaceX crashing site or whatever it is, like the Sea of Tranquility. Like all the things, just binoculars, super
[00:25:24] Speaker B: basic folktales, Rabbit in the Moon. I mean, there's lots of things.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: There's a lot of things.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: It's very interesting. The moon's kind of fascinating.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: I know, but I don't think enough people, like, I didn't know that all I needed was a pair of binoculars and I could actually do that. I was like, oh, I need a telescope.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: It's like the closest thing, right?
[00:25:38] Speaker A: Yes. So I would. Anyway, okay. Fourth night Orion. If it's wintertime and summer right now, Summer triangle. Try to find that. Now you're getting a little more sophisticated. And then finally, the last night, I would look for that Milky Way band. If you can find it. So you probably.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: I'm gonna find it in the city.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: But no, you gotta go Joshua Tree. But not even Joshua Tree. You just gotta get outta the city, drive like an hour, like, not that far. Right. Once you're out there right now, find the summer triangle. Like I said, the Milky Way band runs literally straight through the. The top of that triangle. You'd be able to see that gray band that Amanda was talking about. And that's it. And you're sort of sophisticated. In five nights on sitting outside and thinking about your life and all the choices that you've made, while you're looking up at history, literally history and the billions and billions of people that came before you.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: And I think that's including Mufasa.
It's incredible. Anyway, I'm in. I'm totally. It's my new thing.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: So we are now stargazers.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: We're stargazers. I. Well, I am. I don't know if you're gonna. I'm doing it. Yes.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: We'll find out next week. What? Like, give me some fun facts. Because I feel like, okay, yeah, yeah,
[00:26:44] Speaker A: I had some good ones.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: In order to get people interested in like committing to.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: This is not interesting. This was fascinating to me.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: I mean, it is fascinating.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: Here's what I.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: When you know a fun fact and you're able to like.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Latch onto something.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: This is kind of motivates you. This Is true.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: Maybe a little.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: I will say, oh, my God. I'm just. I'm a terrible human for doing this. I'm gonna bring everybody down. Just have nothing to do at night, right? Like, I just. I don't have anybody to talk to. So now I just go outside and look at the stars. Which makes it very easy.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: I mean, you can, though, because where you are.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: No, I know.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Is a little bit less light polluted than at the end by the freeway.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: My point is, you just have to be intentional about. Like, I'm not gonna stare at the television for 10 minutes. I'm gonna go outside and I'm gonna do that. That's all. That's all I did. One night. Okay, here we are. Fun facts. Number one. Beetlejuice. We were talking about that earlier. The reddish star.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Not the Beetlejuice that comes and kills you. No, he doesn't kill you. What does he do?
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Beetlejuice. He turns you into a freak.
It's dying.
It's expected to go full supernova at one point. Yeah, I didn't even know what that meant. Holy shit. It means, like, blow up.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: So how long, when supernova would we know?
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Very soon, statistically.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: So maybe it already happened.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Could happen. Yes, it could have happened. We might find out tomorrow.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: That's crazy.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: We might find out in 100,000 years from now. Who knows?
We don't know. Okay, but it is said that when it goes full supernova, it will be bright enough for us to see in broad daylight for weeks in a row here on Earth. Like, the sun will never go out. Like, that's what it'll seem like anyway. That's how bright it's gonna be. And it could have already exploded. We don't even know.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: So it's either just a supernova or it's the second coming of Jesus.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: We don't know. But then it turns into a black hole and everything goes out. Okay, number two.
Did you know that the rings around Saturn disappear every 13 to 15 years?
[00:28:24] Speaker B: What?
[00:28:24] Speaker A: I know they do. This is a trick.
They molt.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: No, they don't.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Like a snake.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: No, they don't.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: They lies.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And then they make new ones.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Okay, I thought that was pretty funny.
They just get impossible to see because of the angle. Like, the axis is in the angle. So every 13.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Right. That's why.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, no. When they turn towards us, they're un. An exact plane with our eye. Like the way we see, so we can't see them. So as soon as they tilt a teeny bit further, we can see them again so they don't disappear. They disappear to our.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: But it's not like it's like an actual disk around the planet. It's like stars and gases.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: All that matter.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, they're not real discs. I thought that one was funny. Okay, number three, you've probably heard this one before. Did you know there are more stars in the observable universe? In the observable universe? That's not even the unobservable.
[00:29:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Than grains of sand on every beach on Earth combined.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: That's crazy.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: How in the fuck do scientists figure that shit out? I have no idea. Estimates run that there are about 200 billion trillion billion trillion stars. Nobody actually counted those, but astronomers are confident that there's more stars than sand. Not even close. I don't know why they know that, but here we are. Okay. I feel like there's a lot of sand.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: That's insane.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Okay, anyway, number four, did you know that Venus is actually the hottest planet in our solar system?
Hotter than Mercury. Mercury is like next to the sun. Mercury is the closest one to the sun.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: So why is Venus the hottest?
[00:29:52] Speaker A: I don't know. Apparently its atmosphere is so thick with carbon dioxide that it traps heat like a greenhouse. So the surface hits 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: That's a lot.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: Hot enough to melt lead. Hot enough to melt my face off.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Oh yeah, Everyone, yeah. Inhabitable, Inhabitable. Uninhabitable.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: Unfocund. That's for sure.
Very unfertile. Okay, and finally, here we go. Back to your SpaceX on the moon. Finally, because the Moon has no wind, no water, no atmosphere, the footprints that our astronauts left on the moon will be there forever looking exactly the way they left them. So if your SpaceX theory is true, it'll stay there forever, ever, barring like something hitting the Moon.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Also, if you think about it, because they supposedly put the flag right, but
[00:30:42] Speaker A: because isn't that in some like Hollywood studio, some backlog?
[00:30:47] Speaker B: But supposedly that flag now is pure white because of the like, oh, interesting fading and the radiation of the sun all suppose. I don't know.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Well, I don't. I mean, we should know that. Like, didn't we just send the whole Artemis there? They probably got pictures. We got to check it out.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: I mean, they have the proof, they got to show us.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: We're going to put it together. Okay. Anyway, that's all I had, fun facts.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Okay, well, if somebody wants to do more, obviously go outside more, do that if they want to Learn more.
Did you pick up a book? Did you watch something?
[00:31:15] Speaker A: If you care about fun facts or the episode summary, DM us. Do whatever you need to now. Write a review, leave a review. Five star, please only. Okay. Yes. Read the Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. I did the audiobook version of it. He's a physicist, and the book makes the case that time doesn't work the way we assume it all does, which was my whole point at the very beginning about history and how it's all connected. But he's smart AF and explains it way better than we just did because I have no idea what I'm talking about. Or. If you want to watch something, start with Cosmos. Super famous Carl Sagan. Write anything about the Cosmos. Watch it from the 80s. Or Neil Degrassi Tyson redid Cosmos. And it's also fascinating. So whatever, get into it. It's super easy. Way to go down like a rabbit hole and have fun.
I would just say smoke a little dope or, you know, take a gummy or something.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Oh, dear.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: It makes it way better.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Oh, dear.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: And if you want a podcast that's more sophisticated than our podcast, check out Star Talk again with Neil Degrassi Tyson. Episodes come out weekly. He's connecting space to stuff that's actually going on down here at Earth, like right now. And so super fun to listen to. Super more sophisticated than us. So check that out. That's all I got.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: Ooh. I really love when things are a little bit more sophisticated than us.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: Well, because they are. Okay. It's not hard. We're not that sophisticated.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Yeah, but we pique your interest. That's the point.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Here we are.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: The idea is to go take it and run with it.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Start picking up a new hobby.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Make your brain do something different.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: There you go. Okay, well, if you don't want to do any of that, just remember these details. It seems sort of sophisticated. First, a light year sounds like it measures time, but it's actually distance. Six trillion miles.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Holy Jesus.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: And distance in astronomy is really the same thing as history.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: So the farther out you look, the farther back you're seeing, which is like a mind screw Mufasa. Second, not everything bright in the sky is a star. Stars twinkle because their light is basically a single point getting bent by our atmosphere. And planets are close enough to appear as tiny discs, so their light averages out steady. So twinkle, twinkle, little star really means what it is. If it twinkles, it's a star. If it's steady, it's a planet. Third, the sky isn't rearranging itself throughout the year. You are. So we are the ones moving. Earth orbiting the sun means your nighttime faces a different slice of space every few months. So you'll see Orion in the winter, the summer triangle in the summer?
[00:33:30] Speaker A: In the Northern Hemisphere?
[00:33:31] Speaker B: In the Northern Hemisphere, yes. So nothing up there moved? Just us and our rotation.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Well, God probably moved.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Well, there you go. And finally, when you look at the Milky Way's hazy band, you're not looking at your galaxy from the outside. You're actually standing inside it and you're looking through it. There's no photograph of it any other way. Every galaxy image you've ever seen is a reconstruction, not a picture.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: I know. Mind officially blown. There you have it, dear listeners. The night sky in all its glory. Hopefully that wasn't too intimidating. Hopefully we did it justice. The idea was to give you just enough to feel sophisticated and to realize how tiny we actually are here on this little blue ball hurtling, hurtling through space. Seriously, learning about the night sky isn't about becoming an astronomer. It's about realizing that everything you're looking up at is already history. And most of what you thought you knew. Polaris being the brightest star, the Big Dipper being a constellation, wasn't even right to begin with. Shame on me. I should have known better. If we did our job Today, you're walking away a little more aware, maybe catching yourself pointing at a planet instead of a star. Or dare I say, actually finding north without using your phone. Let's go. As always, if you liked what you just heard, hit subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who really needs to just get outside.
Until next time, stay curious, stay north looking up. And remember, the sky hasn't changed in thousands of years. We just stopped paying attention to it. Not anymore.
