It's night with Dan Ray. I'm telling you easy Boston.
Thank you Dan Watkins for announcing that the third hour is upon us. This is Nightside. Dan Ray is off. I am here and speaking of Dan, I mentioned Rob has assistance tonight. It's not an intern Dan and Rob. What is Dan's last Dan Cantano is is here with Rob. So if the phone is answered and it's not a voice with which you're familiar, it might be Dan Kintano. And I mistakenly called him an intern. He's a full fledged employee, paycheck and everything. He's just learning how to
handle Nightside from that side of the glass. I am now switching to a little discussion, an introduction for my next guest. About a couple of years ago, he called my show, my Saturday Show, The Morgan Show, and he told me about an upcoming celestial event, something in the skies, an eclipse. And he made it clear to me that he knew about the eclipse and all the details surrounding the eclipse. So when the eclipse became imminent, I scheduled him and had him on. Did an excellent job, and
I've used him one or two other times. And you must admit up in the sky over the past i'll say six to eight weeks, there's been a bunch of goings on. So I brought Dave McDonald here to talk about some of the things that have happened, and more importantly, a couple of things scheduled to happen. So Dave, welcome to Night's Side.
Well, thanks, Morgan, it's a pleasure to be here as always.
And did you tell your friends and family you're going to be in the radio tonight.
Absolutely, And I have some friends getting the word out among their friends and hopefully, you know how networking goes, Hopefully it'll just keep spreading, all right.
Explain why? And I never ever remember this happening at any point in my life. I'm in my seventies, I'm seventy one years old, and I can never remember. And I have a pretty good memory of northern lights being so clearly seen in the Boston area as happened a week and a half ago.
Tell us why, Yeah, So the northern lights happen as a result of activity on the sun. There are water called CMEs, which stands for coronal mass ejections, and the sun is a very active place, and there are what we call solar minima and solar maximums, and we're kind of in a season of solar maximums right now, which
means there's more sun spots than usual. And the cycle of sunspots is an eleven year cycle, so we're kind of again in the realm of the high spot, and then it will dwindle down and re emerge again in another eleven years. But right now, being in the high spot of solar activity, there's more sun spots, which are magnetic connections. Is like a north pole in the south pole. Sun spots generally come in pairs, and every once in
a while. The magnetic force on the sun is so powerful, Like you're familiar where everybody's played with magnets when they were in elementary school, and sometimes I still play with magnets. It's just a lot of fun to see how they repel each other. And there's a lot of force we're familiar with, like doors these days, you know, instead of just you know, locks with keys and such, we got
magnetic locks. Magnetism is very, very powerful, and so now that there's a greater chance of these coronal mass ejections, which is when these sunspots erupt and spew a lot of material out of the Sun out into space. When one of these is facing Earth, and this material comes out towards Earth, traveling at millions of miles an hour, and a great volume of this material in a day two or three, depending exactly how fast the material is traveling.
About three days or so after the CME erupt it reaches our magnetosphere, which is the protective zone around Earth that keeps us safe from radiation and from solar particles causing too much damage. But when one of these powerful cmees is directed towards Earth, it interacts in a very deep way with the magnetosphere and depending upon the angle that it hits at and how strong it is, will determine how far south the aurora might be seen. And as you mentioned, yes we saw well, I should say you.
I was not in Boston myself, but yeah, it got down to Boston and even in lower latitudes, which is unusual. But one of the reasons, again is a the power of the coronal mass ejection and the angle be that it hits Earth at is in terms of how low the latitude will be that will experience the Northern lights. And needless to say, you and others it has been an amazing show. So many people have taken pictures post
of them online. And the amazing variety of colors from vibrant red and orange and pink and purple and some underlying blues and greens, and the curtain like effect. I mean, needless to say, it's a it's a beautiful sight that we get to enjoy every once in a while.
What I remember from sixth grade science, red is the most dominant color in the spectrum. And I've heard of the northern lights not having any red splotches or red coloring, and I've also heard of red being very dominant. And what colors we see, what makes that happen or not happen the dominance of red.
Yeah, So, as you mentioned, the electromagnetic spectrum that we see from wavelengths of four hundred nanometers. A nanometer is a billion of a meter, so very very small. From four hundred to seven hundred nanometers is the range which
we see. And depending upon again the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetosphere that is around our Earth, it creates vibrations at different frequencies, and depending upon what frequency is vibrating, it gives off that color according to that frequency, and the higher the frequency, we tend to be towards the blue, and the lower numbers tend to be towards the red. So it's a matter of how the vibrations are happening when the interaction between the solar
wind and Earth's magnetosphere happens. So sometimes we get the red, sometimes we get the blue. And I think this pastime we really had a nice mixture.
I've got a break to take, but when we come back, I want to talk about that comment that's out there, and I am told it comes back every twenty thousand years. I don't know how they figure that out, and that it's trail. It's trailing a lot of stuff behind it. So I want to talk about that and what we should be on the lookout for. That's in our our future up in the sky. So let me give the phone numbers. Anybody wants to call in you got a question about the things you see up there, here's the
man to talk to. Six one, seven, two, five, four ten thirty or eight eight, eight, nine to nine, ten thirty. My guest Dave McDonald is here, and he's here for your questions on night side time and temperature ten sixteen fifty nine degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Dave McDonald is my guest. We are talking about the sky, space and things that actually demand our attention to look up, observe, and be put in a state of awe when you think about what we're looking at. And Dave, I have a question. There were two movies came out, oh a good twenty years ago, and they came out within a year of each other, Armageddon with Bruce Willis and Deep
Impact with Teleone and Morgan Freeman as our president. And in both movies, there was a comet that was going to strike Earth and it was science and NASA and politics that did the best to interrupt the trajectory of these comets hitting our planet. And when I hear that there's a comet that's in the neighborhood of Earth, I'm wondering if one of these things ever did zero in on Earth, would we be able to throw something up there to stop it.
Well, that's a great question, and that is something that astrophysicists and people involved in various space agencies around the world, because I mean, we obviously have NASA, There is the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and there are space agencies around the world. And obviously military governments and their militaries are interested in this sort of thing because
we don't want to be hit. We know that sixty five million years ago or so, a large meteor hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs and a bunch of other life, So things can hit us now. As far as being able to do something about it, that's a
tough one. We have tried to move an asteroid a little bit, and depending upon how big the object is, how soon we detect it that it might be on a collision course, and how fast we can get something there with enough power, and maybe it even needs to be a nuclear blast of some sort to move an object. These things are tough to move because one they're large,
and secondly they're moving very fast. So is it possible to the tweet a little bit, yes, But are we in a position to handle anything of any major significance. Probably not.
Have we tried in reality, not science fiction, not a movie, But have we really tried to do just this very thing.
In a very small scale, Yes, And I don't remember the name of the mission or the asteroid that it visited. But yes, it has been tried, and there has been a little bit of change of direction of the asteroid, which is not a big one. So I guess we could say that that text technology does exist and we're working on it. But as I said, we're not ready
to handle the big boys yet. But as the technology does exist, the ideas, the concepts, the blueprints, if you will, exist for doing what you're talking about.
Earlier this week, I saw a news story that the asteroid that made the dinosaurs wave goodbye was only the second in size of an asteroid that hit Earth. There was a bigger one, but it didn't do as much damage, which they lost me on that. Did you hear the story of which I'm.
Speaking, No, Morgan, I haven't heard that story.
All right, Well, there was allegedly three times bigger than the one that made all the dinosaurs go away. Yet and still, if it was that big and one second in size to it made the dinosaurs go away, how did we survive that? But if you didn't hear about it, never mind what.
I didn't hear about it, But a quick off the tough answer would be it would also depend upon the angle you know that it hit Earth would have something to do with it. Whether it was a you know, kind of a perpendicular impact straight on or where it hit how it hit more of it at an angle? Correct? Yeah?
Yeah, all right? Let me ask about what's upcoming in the skies. I know eclipses come around every two to ten to twenty years. When's the next eclipse or something of note that we should see in the sky.
Well, why don't we hang out with the comment theme for a moment, Because if you were to go outside tonight, and I believe it's clear, you could go out and take some time to enjoy the night sky and you might see a meteor flashby. And meteors are sometimes referred to as shooting stars, but to spoiler alert, stars don't shoot. Stars explode. And that's something else that we can talk about maybe in whatever the timeframe works, five or ten minutes.
That's an important thing to look out for, I think. But if you were to go outside tonight or the next couple nights and see some meteors shoot through the sky, you might be looking at Haley's comic. Now, Haley's Comet, the basic Big nucleus of the comet isn't due to be back until I think sixty one or twenty sixty two, but it's last time going by us in the nineteen eighties.
It left a debris trail or a dust trail of material that got blown off of the comet, and that debris trail stays in orbit around the Sun, because that's what comets do. Cormets orbit the Sun. There are long period cormt comets, which the current comet A three, we can talk about that if you want to, is a long period comet. Haley's commet is a relatively short period comet. But what's happening right now is Earth is going through
plowing through the debris field left by Haley's comet. So if you were to see a meteor or two or three any given evening in the next few nights, chances are high that it was particles from Haley's commet. And that's called the Orionid media shower.
Now, if I'm not mistaken, Oh, the timeframe between Haley's comment coming close enough to Earth to see with the naked eye is seventy five years. Is that accurate?
So that sounds about right, Yes, okay.
All right, well I'm gonna loss for words.
The well, but to stay with the commet theme for a moment. The next major shower coming up is the Leonid Media Shower, which will be in November.
In November, didn't we have that come through about a month or two ago.
No, No, we might be thinking about the Percied Media Shower, which was in August. That's a big one.
That's what I was thinking about.
Okay, yeah, and the Leondis is in November, but a couple of offshoots for that is. The high point or the maximum or the peak of the Leanded Media Shower is November seventeenth. But the bad news is we are going to experience a super moon on November fifteenth, which obviously indicates it's a full moon. So it's going to be tough seeing meteors, you know, the fourteenth, fifteen, sixteen, seventeenth, because it's going to be so bright because of the moon,
medias are going to be hard to come by. But if you start looking a week or so earlier, like perhaps November tenth, and your patient, the moon is going to be setting around midnight, so it's out of the way. After midnight is typically the best time to look for meteors, so November tenth, eleventh, the moon sets around midnight and you can go out and perhaps you'll see some limids which are left by the Comet temple puddle which last came by in nineteen ninety eight.
I'm going to start your here to take a quick hit of news again. People, if you want to call in and talk what's up in the sky. Six one seven, two, five, four ten thirty eight eight nine to nine, ten thirty, give my guest the call. I'd love to hear from you. Dave McDonald is my astrology, not astrology. There's a difference from astronomy and astrology, and he's the person that I
always think of when it comes to this subject. So I'm going to take my break if you want to call During the break, Robyn, Dan are waiting for the phone to ring. I'm six one seven, two, five, four, ten thirty eight eight eight nine two nineteen thirty. Time and temperature here at BZ on nightside ten thirty one fifty nine degrees.
It's Nightside with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Before we get back to our subject, and we have a phone call too, I want to let you know. For those you hear me fill in for Dan Ray periodically, but you might not be aware that I have my own show Saturday evenings ten to midnight, and author Tom Claven has a new book, so we'll be discussing that as well. Anthony san Marco will be on, a historian who knows all the ins and outs of Boston's communities.
Boston split up into fifteen, sixteen seventeen separate sections, and he's written he Anthony san Marco has written a book about each community, so that's coming up. He's written almost ninety books. In case you care about that sort of thing.
And if you want to come interact with me live every Tuesday, im at the Midway Restaurant in Denham to sixty nine Washington Street, give Way Prizes and you'll see a lot of people there, maybe some of the people here in the radio, like Mel Simon's who's on with
me every other month. So I've told you those things, and now my guest David McDonald, I'm going to ask one question and then I'm going to take a phone call Dave Sure, why did the scientific community pick on poor old Pluto and take the status of a planet away from it.
Well, now we can do a whole show sometime on this topic. Okay. So first of all, yeah, so, first of all, understand this that Pluto is a planet. It is the largest member of a new class of planet
called dwarf planet. So one of the things that got Pluto in trouble was its orbit is inclined a little more than the other planets to what we call the ecliptic or the pathway of the Sun around Earth, which technically is the pathway of Earth around the Sun. And then a guy named Mike Brown found this object out there called it became called Eris, and this is an object that was almost twice as far away as Pluto, and he thought believed it was bigger than Pluto. So
then the question became, hmm, is this a planet? And so that begged the definition of a planet needed to be established. So a real long story, kind of kind of short. That was August twenty fourth, two thousand and six. I saw live on the Internet the meeting of the International Astronomical Union where they took up this question. So I know personally Alan Stern. Alan Stern is the principal investigator of the new Horizons mission which visited Pluto on
July fourteenth, twenty fifteen. And the data we got from the New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto within seven thousand min aisles of its surface, detected a possible underwater ocean, detected mountains, visually imaged mountains, glaciers on these mountains, an atmosphere, and though many features, it's round and it looks like it has all the ingredients that the planet would have. And so Pluto is in a new class of planet called dwarf planet. We have Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
They're in a class called terrestrial planets and their planets. We have Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, which are gas giants or Jovian planets. They're planets. And now we have a new class of planet of which Pluto is the largest member. But it's a planet. And I had a direct quote from Alan Stern, who probably is the most knowledgeable person in the world literally about Bluto, and I have him on video saying, you can take this to
the bank. Bluto was a planet, it is a planet, and it will always be a planet.
Okay, I will drop that subject because that's a definitive statement. Let's go to John in Boston and see what he has to say here on night side John good evening, Hi.
Hi Morgan, and Hi Dave. I think it is.
Yeah.
I love.
Can Okay, I love looking at the nice sky and the day sky too. Not just a nice guy. I think I see Jupiter out there tonight. I'm not sure.
Yes you do.
It's really bright like Venus almost, you know, but I kind of get I'm an amateur, but I've looked at the website sometimes night Sky or something like that Night Sky Boston, or I'll google night Sky Boston, and they get pretty good examples of what's rising setting and what's visible right now by the naked eye or by a binocular. I don't have a telescope or anything like that. But I'm disappointed I live in the city because I know it really interferes, and I've never seen the northern life.
I'd like to see some data or sometime or even that recent comment that came by that was neither rising in the west there. I never got a chance to see that because of the city stuff.
You know.
But anyway, if you're going to recommend a book, is there any book I mean, the universe is fascinating the infinity of it. I feel like it's almost spiritual for me and them. You know, it's just so massive and can't be understood, almost to me. And I don't know if there's any basic book that you'd recommend, just as a general basic book.
Thank you tell I'll tell you. I do have an author in mind with two books that meant a lot to me. And interestingly enough, I mentioned the New Horizons Mission. And you may or may not know that Brian May the lead guitarist of Queen, one of the founders of the rock group Queen. He's an astrophysicist. Uh he as his doctorate. He's Doctor Brian May. He also has been knighted.
He's Sir Doctor Brian May. And I had the opportunity to meet him and to chat with him at the flyby of New Horizons going by ultimately, and we found out in our conversation that we both got our love for astronomy from the same person, Sir Patrick Moore. And Sir Patrick Moore wrote several books, but two that I would recommend. One is called Naked Eye Astronomy and the other one is simply called Astronomy. And these two books
meant a lot to me. They got me going and with a you know jam packed of you know, with information about things that you can see, how to see things. And then I would add to it a magazine either Astronomy Magazine or Sky and Telescope Magazine so that you can keep up on you know, what's current, what's going on in the night skylight tonight this week, this month, and I happen to have, speaking of this month, I happen to have a TV show on YouTube and it's
on some local cable TVs. It's called the Sky this Month with Dave McDonald and I talk about you know, what's going on for the month in the night in the night sky. But Naked Eye Astronomy Astronomy by Sir Patrick Moore would be two books that I would recommend. And then either Astronomy or Sky in Telescope magazine to see what the latest and the greatest is that's happening right now.
John, Okay, thank you, and also just quickly, I get a lot out of the old Farmer's Aminac. Thank you.
Hell yeah, John, thank you for your call. Appreciate it.
All right, all right, there goes John, and I have two more people to take and only fifteen minutes or less than that to get them on. Let me get the breakout the way and Jerry and Jack you'll get your chance to speak to Dave after this break time and temperature ten forty five still as it's been all night, fifty nine degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Things, a lot of things. Dave McDonald is make yes, Dave. Do you have a website if people wanted to get in touch with you?
I have an email which is astroman A S t R O M A N n H for New Hampshire. I'm like the astro Man of New Hampshire at gmail dot com astro Man NH at gmail dot com.
One of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid was Astro Boy. Yeah, I can't use that because it's still out there. There's still definite active things happening. Let me take the last two calls of the night. Let's go line too and speak to Jerry and Worcester. Jerry, good evening.
Hey, thank you, good eating. Hey guys, had I had a question about the moon. I'm sixty three years old and no one's been able to answer this question for me in a way that I understand it. Why do we always see the same side of the moon if it rotates?
Okay, that's a great question. So the moon rotates once a month and the same side faces us because it's what we call tidally locked. So when the moon was formed, which one of the leading theories, I may say, the leading theory is that when Earth was in its formative years, a large object hit Earth and it caused a big chunk of Earth be removed, and it became the moon
in orbit around Earth. But when that happened, the orbit of Earth, so sorry, the orbit of the Moon was such that one revolution around Earth was the same period of time as one rotation of the moon. So the moon does rotate, but it rotates only once for every time it goes around Earth. And that's called tidally locked. And that's why we only see one side of the moon.
Yeah, a little bit. So, I mean what I'm thinking is when it's daytime, you can't see the moon the other side is showing.
Now that's not true. You can see the moon very clearly in the daytime. Well, yeah, that's it depends on what phase you know the moon is in. But you can see the moon clearly in the daytime, you can obviously see it at night. It takes twenty seven and a third days for the moon to go around Earth, and it takes twenty nine and a half days from full moon the full moon because Earth is orbiting the Sun, so it takes almost the nextra two days for the moon to rotate back into the position of the next
full moon, so to speak. But a new moon is when the moon is closely lined up with the Sun, so we don't see the moon at all, and it's the far side of the moon that's lit up. And a full moon is like two weeks later, and we see the side that's fully lit up on our side, but the side that's unlit is the far side.
Are you getting an ice cream headache now, Jerry?
I probably have to set up one of the little models we had in high school where you spink yeah for just to see it, just to see it. So but thank you so much. I appreciate that we were draft and I love Scott. You guys sit care.
How can I thank you for your phone called Jerry that note We're going to go to the last call of the night down on Cape card Jack.
Good evening, Good evening, guys, Dave. That was a great explanation that you just gave that I've been pondering myself for quite a while and it was a yeah, I write that down because it really it really kind of clicked for me. But here's my here, here's my my.
Questions question.
Okay, the the flares that recently came off the Sun were strong, but they were not X twenty five class flares. So the fact that we're seeing the aroar way down on these lower latitudes I am suggesting as a topic of here of our conversation is that the magnetosphere is weak and that we are at some point in our future going to encounter a magnetic pole shift on the Earth. That is one phase. And the second question is has the government done any simulation of what that would mean
for all the electronic spheres we have? And secondly, as aside, would that change the right hand rule or right hand some rule for magnetism.
So your lasting questions are based on the idea of the poles on Earth flipping correct right.
In other words, the magnetic pole would would would shift to the south and the southern pole would shift to the north. And this has happened periodically. To know that it's I mean, well, you know, one hundreds of thousands of years in between. But when it happens, it does happen.
Well, it happens slowly, like the magnet. And maybe you know this. I don't mean to you know, tell you things you don't know, but maybe other listeners don't know. The magnetic north pole, for example, is constantly in motion. I'm a pilot. I fly airplanes and we have to buy we have to buy a doesn't have to be put published by the government, but I think most are. But anyway, we need to buy a flight chart and
for navigation. And one of the reasons, apart from new towers and TV towers and cell phones and power lines and besides all the infrastructure that may be new and being built and put on the maps, the magnetic pole moves. And in order to navigate correctly, you know where true north is. True north doesn't move. True north is always at the north pole, but a relationship to it because
you fly by your compass. You set your directional gyro according to your compass, and your compass points to magnetic north. But magnetic north is constantly moving and on the navigation chart it tells you how much it's moving by every week. Every three months, we have to get a new chart. Right.
But if you look into the the I believe it came from the lava dead examinations that indicate the polarity of the magnetic sphere of the Earth. It historically it has slipped. The magnetic polls flip randomly and then they then they readjust back.
But okay, and Jack, Jack, gentlemen, I hate to do it, but I am almost all out of time. I got baire enough time to say thank you to my guests.
So the answer that we've.
Given have to do, Jack, But thank you for your call. Ind I'm going to have you back in uh December because I'll be getting some Dan Ray fill in, because i want to talk about the five year NASA project to get to Europa because allegedly water up there, and we didn't get you to talk about it tonight. So I'm going to say good night to you, but I'll I will call you and bring you back in December.
Okay, Okay, And we have to talk about a style it's due to explode.
Oh yes, indeed, we do. It won't explode before December, will it.
I hope not. I want to be able to save it for our conversation.
Okay, okay, Dave, thank you very much. I'm going to get out of here and do an hour of news. Come an hour of news, do five minutes of news, and come back and do the final hour of night side time ten fifty eight, temperature fifty nine degrees