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Pale Blue Dot XE "Title" Sphere Demo XE "Activity Type" ? DATE \@ "yyyy" \* MERGEFORMAT 2016 Pacific Science CenterWritten by Joy DeLyriaEdited by Dave CuomoThis script is based upon work supported by NASA Astrobiology Institute under Cooperative Agreement No. NNA13AA93A. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Terms of use:These materials are for non-commercial use only, and cannot?be sold.These materials are for your organization’s internal use only. Additional requests should be made before sharing beyond your organization.If these materials or a portion of these materials are copied as is, please credit as follows: “Pale Blue Dot demonstration created by Pacific Science Center, NASA Astrobiology Institute under Cooperative Agreement No. NNA13AA93A.”If new activities are created that are based on this original activity, please credit as follows: "Activity modified from Pale Blue Dot demonstration created by Pacific Science Center, NASA Astrobiology Institute under Cooperative Agreement No. NNA13AA93A.”408622510731500DescriptionPale Blue Dot is a live, 20 minute demo, featuring Science on a Sphere, a dynamic interactive data modeling tool. In this show, our guests will explore the different ways Earth can be viewed from space. Using hands-on props and interaction with a live science interpreter they will learn how scientists find planets orbiting different stars. They will explore what Earth might look like from these interstellar distances.Props and MaterialsI-Pad40386007493000Small Earth on a StickSmall Jupiter on a StickDatasetsBlue MarblePale Blue Dot PIP 1Pale Blue Dot PIP 2X-Ray SunEarth as ExoplanetX-Ray SunBlue MarbleVenusReal-time Weather (IR-Clouds)3860800-825500Real-Time Surface TemperatureBlue MarbleSunset/water glare PIPEarth With Glint4028440156210000Earthlike PlanetWhat you sayWhat is DisplayedHey everyone welcome to Science on a Sphere and the Pale Blue Dot, my name is _______. How are you all doing today?Great, so I was wondering have any of you ever seen the Earth from space?Really, you’ve been to space? Oh you meant you’ve seen a picture of the Earth from space. Yes very cool. As a matter of fact what we are looking at here is a picture of Earth from space. It’s called the Blue Marble and it took NASA six months to create this image. They had a satellite orbiting the Earth, over both poles, and taking pictures of the surface from over 400 miles away. They wanted the entire planet cloud free and it took six months to get that. They then pieced that mosaic together, added a generic cloudy day and created this true color image of Earth. That is what your eyes would see if you could see the Earth from space. The blues would be that color blue, the greens that green the browns that brown. Let’s see if we can find Seattle. Oh look, there it is, it seems to be under a cloud….Now, just over 30 years ago scientists took another picture of Earth but it was a little further away. A scientist by the name of Carl Sagan convinced the team in charge of the Voyager 2 spacecraft to turn it towards Eath and take a picture. At the time Voyager 2 was traveling by Neptune over 3 billion miles from home.So are you guys ready to see a picture of Earth taken from further away than any other? Are you? Well here you go!Blue MarblePretty cool huh?What? Can’t you see it?Here let me point it out.Pale Blue DotThere it is, the Earth. The red streaks are the glare of the Sun. From the orbit of Neptune the Earth is seemingly so close to the Sun that the glare is overwhelming.As Carl Sagan said, “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” On that Pale Blue Dot.Pretty interesting. But in the time since that picture was taken scientists have started to find worlds much further away than Neptune scientists have found worlds orbiting other stars far, far away from the Sun. We call these planets Exoplanets and they can be hundreds of light years away.What would the Earth look like from there?Well before we get to that let’s figure out how scientists have found planets orbiting other stars.Pale Blue Dot 2So here is the sun.And this is the Earth (hold up Earth stick). These are actually the right size compared to each other. If the Sun where the size of the sphere then the Earth would be only this size. Let me ask you a question, where do you think the Earth would be at this scale?Hmm. Well you would have to take the Earth just outside of the Science Center and over to the Space Needle.Here is Jupiter. It’s also the right size too but it would have to be even further away. You would have to take this all the way to Pike Place.Now who wants to help me demonstrate one of the ways scientists can find exoplanets.Okay what’s your name? Take the Earth and hold it up high above your head. Now start walking around the sphere. Walk at a normal pace. Now while you do that I’m going to walk around with Jupiter. Now since I am further from the Sun I’m less affected by its gravity so I am going to be walking slower.Let’s say we were looking at the Earth from another star. If we were looking at the Sun, when the planets passed in front of it the light would dim just a little bit, but a measurable bit. If we detected that dimming consistently and repeatedly we could detect the planets. And that is how scientists using the Kepler space telescope have detected potentially 2,000 planets orbiting other stars. To give you an idea of how sensitive that instrument is. Imagine going to the top of the Space Needle and looking toward New York City. Imagine your friend is on top of the Empire State Building with a flashlight. Imagine that you could detect not only the light from the flashlight, but would notice the dimming caused by a flea walking across it.What would the Earth look like from so far away? X-Ray SunWell scientists at the University of Washington have put together this image of what the Earth would look like if it were an exoplanet. If we could see the Earth from hundreds of light years away what we would see is a single pixel. Can we possibly tell anything from so far away?Earth As ExoplanetWell we talked about how we can detect these planets. Could we learn anything else? Let’s get another volunteer. You take Earth and I’ll take Jupiter.Hold Earth up high. Which planet would block more light from the star? That’s right Jupiter. So we could tell how big a planet is. That’s important because scientists think that the bigger a planet is the less likely it is to have ground to walk on. The big, big, planets are all gas!Now I am going slower so an observer from far away could tell that I take longer to transit the sun. They could calculate the speed. Now here is a cool thing. By looking at the color of light coming from the star scientists can tell how hot it is and if you know how hot a star is you can calculate the star’s mass. If you know how fast a planet is moving around that star you know how far away it is from the star.No matter if we are talking about a really hot or a cool star what happens to water if you get too close to it? That’s right it boils away. Also even if a star is super-hot if a planet is too far away water will freeze. So using the same method that scientists found the planet they can also tell how big it is and whether water could exist.Is there anything else we can tell from that pixel of light?Let’s look at Earth. As we look is it the same color all over is it different? That’s right it’s different. What color is the water? How about the land? So as the Earth turns we might see differences in color based on what we are looking at. Here’s Venus.As we look at Venus does it change color like the Earth does? No it doesn’t. Does it change in brightness?Here is the Earth again. This is showing the weather for the last 30 days. Notice how the brightness changes? That’s because of the clouds moving, because of weather! If we noticed a change in brightness coming from that single pixel of light it could tell us whether that distant planet had an atmosphere with weather.Other information we get from light is temperature. Here is an image that shows the changing temperature here on Earth as seen from space. Satellites in orbit around both poles can eventually image the entire surface of Earth. These satellites carry instruments that detect microwave. Microwaves are a type of light that like infrared can give us information about temperature. Let’s take a look at the Earth again. Do you think the water or the land reflect more light? That’s right the water. The other day I was out by Puget Sound at sunset. I noticed that the light would be brighter off of the water than off of the land, and brighter off of the water between me and the sun. It’s called glint.Well if an alien planet had water on it, and was rotating we would be able to see that glint shining off of the water. So we could possibly tell, from that little pixel of light, whether that planet, very far away had liquid on its surface.To an Astrobiologist (that’s a scientist who studies the possibility of life in the universe) water is everything because all the life we know of depends on water.EARTH With GlintSo here it is, what we are looking for. An Earthlike planet orbiting another star. We haven’t found it yet, but we are looking. And we have a better understanding of how we might find it.And that is a Pale Blue Dot, thank you for coming to the science center today. ................
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