Speaker 1: This is the seventy seven WABC Mini cast.
Speaker 2: Walter Sterling, Oh what and Doctor Sky? Doctor Sky. Now,
Speaker 2: the reason doctor Sky is on with us is because
Speaker 2: he needs a cover. He's deep in the woods of
Speaker 2: the Southwest, as many witness protection people are. His name
Speaker 2: changes fairly regularly, and doctor Sky spells his name with
Speaker 2: an E at the end. Yet he's not Polish. Good morning, Walter,
Speaker 2: doctor Sky. You're on today because there are three enormous
Speaker 2: astronomical events. Doctor Sky's a weekend host, which is in
Speaker 2: radio p jarreative term, but in fact, Casey Caseum was
Speaker 2: a weekend host, and I think you should view yourself
Speaker 2: in the same league with Casey Caseum, another weekend host.
Speaker 2: Doctor Sky.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much. Good to be with you.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of activity. Is we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking.
Speaker 2: He earned six million dollars a year at ABC. To
Speaker 2: have a point of reference at your next negotiation with
Speaker 2: the catsmetides now, yeah, but maybe they'll throw in coupons
Speaker 2: and beans, you know, goya beans, the whole package, gift
Speaker 2: package of goia beans. Now listen, thank you, you're darn
Speaker 2: right you do. Now listen. There are three major celestial
Speaker 2: events and doctor Sky is an expert on obviously sky things,
Speaker 2: and he's brilliant at it. He gets the best guests
Speaker 2: about it. I hope you listen to him on the
Speaker 2: weekends because you won't have a better time. But something
Speaker 2: amazing happened on the Moon yesterday and right now if
Speaker 2: you look up, there's spectacular gifts from the universe. So
Speaker 2: please let's start on the moon. Doctor's guy, go ahead,
Speaker 2: Ye Walter. As we mentioned before, and we had the
Speaker 2: other interview earlier in the week, we were all expecting
Speaker 2: big things, the big boom on the Moon, and in
Speaker 2: case people are just tuning in and never heard about this,
Speaker 2: space intentionally had a large booster the upper stage of
Speaker 2: what they call it the alpha stage. It's about forty
Speaker 2: five feet long by twelve feet wide. And though it's
Speaker 2: history right now, there was a impact with that particular body.
Speaker 2: At around two thirty five am Eastern daylfetime, a day ago.
Speaker 2: I was out with the big telescope, and many people
Speaker 2: who have telescopes understand that you really need to set
Speaker 2: these things up ahead of time. I was looking at
Speaker 2: the Moon at exactly the moment here in these very
Speaker 2: horrible temperatures that we're having in the southwestern in Phoenix
Speaker 2: through partial monsoon clouds. So the report I can give
Speaker 2: you on the other side of midnight is I saw nothing.
Speaker 2: How about that for honesty. But it's interesting because I
Speaker 2: doubt it from the beginning that you would see any
Speaker 2: kind of a flare, and the media was talking about
Speaker 2: the possibility of this, and we're now confirming nothing was
Speaker 2: actually seen. Now I have people that have emailed me
Speaker 2: things and they say, look, I have an image from
Speaker 2: another telescope, and look at this bump doctor Sky on
Speaker 2: the side edge of the moon, exactly where the impact is.
Speaker 2: And I can tell you, Walter in the audience, from
Speaker 2: observing the moon for so long, there is a bump
Speaker 2: where there was a bump on the edge.
Speaker 1: Of the moon. And what we were seeing is a
Speaker 1: very rare sight. It's a mountain region on the left
Speaker 1: edge of the moon that we rarely never get to see.
Speaker 1: It's called the Rook Mountains, and it's part of a
Speaker 1: basin called the Oriental. The orient pisint Now, if you
Speaker 1: hold your hand and have your fingers straight up, and
Speaker 1: don't do this if your driving, if you hold that
Speaker 1: hand and just tilt it a little to the left
Speaker 1: and the right. The Moon occasionally gives us a little
Speaker 1: bit further view, either view of east or west of
Speaker 1: the Moon. So that's what people were seeing. So no confirmed,
Speaker 1: you know, explosive material from the Moon, no ejecta. But
Speaker 1: yet there's a spacecraft called Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that's actually
Speaker 1: going to look and see the exact location where this
Speaker 1: impact occurred and show us. The whole purpose was to
Speaker 1: see what happens when a body like that is intentionally
Speaker 1: smashed into the Moon, what sized craters are created. So
Speaker 1: the best is yet to come from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Speaker 2: Now, doctor skuy, you were looking with a high powered
Speaker 2: telescope and very trained eye at the Moon at the
Speaker 2: exact spot where the rockets should have hit.
Speaker 1: Is that right? That is absolutely correct?
Speaker 2: And you saw nothing.
Speaker 1: I saw nothing, and a lot of other people they
Speaker 1: were tremendous Walter amounts on the web. How many people
Speaker 1: may have watched this on YouTube? They had all these
Speaker 1: live feeds from around the world. Now, there's a few
Speaker 1: images that I saw that show something like I don't
Speaker 1: know if somebody photoshopped it or what have you. Why
Speaker 1: would they do such a thing. Like that right where
Speaker 1: there was some sort of a little gas image on
Speaker 1: the edge of the moon. But ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: the things that I've been looking at for the last
Speaker 1: twenty four hours no visible material. But some of the
Speaker 1: giant telescopes waltered down in Chile, they claim that they
Speaker 1: have some image, not images, but they take the spectroscope
Speaker 1: and they can actually put it under the edge of
Speaker 1: the Moon and it can give us an example of
Speaker 1: what chemical elements might have been around in the atmosphere
Speaker 1: or the moon, which hardly has an atmosphere, And they
Speaker 1: claim there might be something, but no visible flash, nothing
Speaker 1: that we could see. But it goes back to Canterbury monks.
Speaker 1: If we go back in time, there were claims back
Speaker 1: in around eleven seventy eight that they'd wrote in their
Speaker 1: most prosaic way, of course, in the early days, some
Speaker 1: fiery dragon appeared on the edge of the moon. And
Speaker 1: if that's possible, I mean, if that was what they
Speaker 1: saw Walter, there have been other sightings in the past
Speaker 1: and history. Now, if that was true, they didn't have telescopes,
Speaker 1: but can you imagine asteroidal bodies slamming into the moon
Speaker 1: would have created such a thing like that, but lucky
Speaker 1: for us, we haven't seen anything from the outer parts
Speaker 1: of the Solar system. This was just a man made rocket.
Speaker 2: Now, is it possible that you, with your trained eye
Speaker 2: and your excellent telescope and your minimal ambient light because
Speaker 2: of where you are, secretly, is it possible that it
Speaker 2: didn't happen at all, that this was a story.
Speaker 1: It's possible, Walter, But I think watching the thing that
Speaker 1: gives me, it gives crety to the whole story is
Speaker 1: we're actually watching live feeds from the you know, the
Speaker 1: three letter agencies, the four letter agencies like NASA, and
Speaker 1: they're actually showing the data from what they have of
Speaker 1: the countdown to this. They're showing where it should be,
Speaker 1: where it impacted. I believe it did happen, but then again,
Speaker 1: you never know. But why would they want to trick us, right, Walter?
Speaker 1: Think about that? That's amazing. We've been tricked before, but
Speaker 1: maybe not in this case. So no visible sighting of
Speaker 1: the space X rocket booster at this point in time,
Speaker 1: And the reason that people are wondering, why are they
Speaker 1: even smashing something into the moon. Yes, we're looking. I know,
Speaker 1: this sounds so ridiculous. Why are we doing this to
Speaker 1: you to destroy the Moon and put space junk if
Speaker 1: we have enough space junk in orbit. The simple answer,
Speaker 1: and it's really complicated if you get to go deep
Speaker 1: into it. We want to know when we do man habitation.
Speaker 1: We mentioned this last time. The south pole of the
Speaker 1: moon has the water ice. This is a great place
Speaker 1: to look. But the reason they're doing this at the
Speaker 1: south pole of the moon is the sun never rises
Speaker 1: deep inside those craters. So what you'd have to do
Speaker 1: is you could set up permanent solar stations up on
Speaker 1: the top of the mountain, let's say, or the ridge
Speaker 1: or the mesa, and you could be in permanent darkness
Speaker 1: because the moon every time. If you and I went
Speaker 1: to the moon right now with the listeners, a lunar
Speaker 1: day is fourteen earth days, so you'd see the sun
Speaker 1: rising along the lunar limb and you'd have to watch
Speaker 1: it for fourteen days before it's set, and a lunar
Speaker 1: night is fourteen days. So well, let's hope they want
Speaker 1: to know what happens when these objects strike the Moon,
Speaker 1: because who knows. You don't want to be in a
Speaker 1: lunar habitat and all of a sudden something comes down
Speaker 1: out of the sky because remember there's no sounds in space,
Speaker 1: it would be boom. And they want to understand what
Speaker 1: size objects come in to create craters. And that's a
Speaker 1: whole nother long story that we could talk about some
Speaker 1: other time.
Speaker 2: I'm sure doctor Sky brilliant expert on celestial events. Tonight,
Speaker 2: my daughters are at the outer Banks of North Carolina
Speaker 2: and they they have sent me video of the sky
Speaker 2: because they said.
Speaker 1: We see shooting stars. We see shooting stars?
Speaker 2: Are they what are they seeing? Doctor Sky?
Speaker 1: Well, Walter, this is the time of the year in
Speaker 1: the best meteor shower. And I have to be careful
Speaker 1: because they've done this for so many years, and every
Speaker 1: time I tell people, wow, it's going to be a
Speaker 1: really great event at the big meteor show. What they're
Speaker 1: probably looking at the Percian meteor shower, Walter, is one
Speaker 1: of the best of the year. Comes from a constellation Perseus.
Speaker 1: If we go back into the whole story, he's the
Speaker 1: guy that apparently does not supposed to look at Medusa
Speaker 1: from mythology, he does something nasty, he cuts her head off,
Speaker 1: and in the mythological way, that's another story. But this
Speaker 1: meteor shower called the Perseans is starting to ramp up,
Speaker 1: and it peaks on the evening of the twelfth and
Speaker 1: thirteenth of this month. Because the moon will cooperate, it'll
Speaker 1: be at new phase on the twelfth. So if you
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to get out and there's no clouds,
Speaker 1: those nights the twelfth into the thirteenth and the thirteenth
Speaker 1: into the fourteenth might be best. Look in the northeast sky
Speaker 1: after midnight. Walter, I've had the luxury of observing the
Speaker 1: shower for over forty years, and I'll tell you, sometimes
Speaker 1: the sky just pours forth with amazing numbers of meteors,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they don't do much at all. And a
Speaker 1: great comet observer, a good friend of ours here in Arizona, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: that many people in the astronomy world may know, David Levy.
Speaker 1: He said something because all these meteors, or as I say,
Speaker 1: these little particles, and no kidding, they're about the size
Speaker 1: of my least favorite cereal grape nuts, these little tiny
Speaker 1: pellette size objects that you'd see as cereal. That's about
Speaker 1: the size of this debris. All these meteors come from comets.
Speaker 1: So David Levy said, something very interesting. He said, comets
Speaker 1: are like cats, and I said to him, well, how's that. Well,
Speaker 1: they said, they both have tails and they do exactly
Speaker 1: what they want to do. So what your daughters are
Speaker 1: looking at more than likely. And I hope everybody in
Speaker 1: the vast audience of the station all over the Earth,
Speaker 1: this is amazing. And the danger is part of this
Speaker 1: danger danger. He is something interesting. They all come from comets,
Speaker 1: and this particular shower is known to come from a
Speaker 1: comet cold comet Swift Tuttel discovered in the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: It's been pumping out. Think of it like the exhaust
Speaker 1: of a vehicle, a gas powered car, with all the
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide and particles coming out. When these comet orbits
Speaker 1: intersect the Earth, we collide with that. So every year
Speaker 1: around this time we get a visibility. But here's a
Speaker 1: weird fact of any object in the Solar system that
Speaker 1: could be dangerous to the Earth. It's the nucleus of
Speaker 1: this comet Swift tunnel. Now, not to alarm people, it's
Speaker 1: said that maybe hundreds or even a thousand years from now,
Speaker 1: the orbital intercession of the nucleus of this comet, which
Speaker 1: could be twenty miles across. Could you imagine something like that?
Speaker 1: No comets go super fast, So they're saying that that
Speaker 1: object when you see the little shooting stars, count your
Speaker 1: blessings because that's an object that continues to pump material
Speaker 1: out and it's one welter of what millions of comets.
Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing that the Earth hasn't been hit? And
Speaker 1: that's hopefully some it doesn't happen in quite a long.
Speaker 2: Time now, Doctor Sky. There was a third item we
Speaker 2: were going to talk about.
Speaker 1: Sure, there's an eclipse again, people say eclipses. This one's
Speaker 1: another total solar eclipse. And Walter, have you ever seen
Speaker 1: a total solar eclipse? This is interesting. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you.
Speaker 2: Total solar eclipse. I don't think so well.
Speaker 1: This is something that everybody and I don't work with
Speaker 1: any travel agents, but I'll tell you something. I've been
Speaker 1: addicted to this. I've seen seven of these and you
Speaker 1: travel all over the world. Oh, this is amazing because
Speaker 1: if you want to learn about what the beauty of
Speaker 1: nature really is, you have to go to one of these.
Speaker 1: Here's the next one, August twelfth. Next week. People in Spain,
Speaker 1: the entire nation, they get the after part of where
Speaker 1: the shadow is racing across the Earth. It goes fast.
Speaker 1: So what happens at a total solar eclipse. The moon
Speaker 1: will be new, meaning it's invisible to us, so it's
Speaker 1: going to move across the disk of the Sun. And
Speaker 1: however close the Moon is indicates and however close we are,
Speaker 1: you know, with the moon totally clip can occur best.
Speaker 1: They can only occur when the Moon is closest to
Speaker 1: the Earth what covers this on up. So lucky people
Speaker 1: in that area of Spain will get to see an
Speaker 1: eclipse that probably lasts only about maybe two and a
Speaker 1: half minutes. But if you really want a big one,
Speaker 1: here we go. August two, twenty twenty seven. Walter is
Speaker 1: probably the best eclipse for all of us in our lifetimes.
Speaker 1: If you were going to go deep into Egypt, a
Speaker 1: place called luxor the Valley of the Gods, the Pleasing Pyramids,
Speaker 1: you would see a total eclipse Walter of over six minutes,
Speaker 1: which is unheard of. That will be quite spectacular.
Speaker 2: Are you going to go do that?
Speaker 1: Are you going to go there? No, it's a little
Speaker 1: out of my moment of travels because I'm a little
Speaker 1: concerned about that, and not not because of any terrorist
Speaker 1: threats or anything. Who knows, but there was an incident
Speaker 1: that happened there a long time ago. If people look
Speaker 1: at it, I don't want to scare people not to
Speaker 1: go to Luxor. But the point is right now, these
Speaker 1: people who love eclipses, and I'm one of them, and
Speaker 1: many listeners out there I'm sure are too, they look
Speaker 1: these things.
Speaker 2: Is that right? Oh my gosh, Hey, doctor Sky, this
Speaker 2: was a great update. It's twenty past the hour time, terrific.
Speaker 2: Always an honor to have you on the show. I
Speaker 2: will promote your weekend program heavily, but I don't want
Speaker 2: it to be minimized by the word weekend. This is
Speaker 2: a great radio show from a spectacular broadcaster, Doctor Sky,
Speaker 2: visiting on the other side of midnight from the Red
Speaker 2: Apple Audio Network.