Summer Skies

Have you ever wondered why the sky is blue? We have too, and so we’re giving you the long-awaited answer, along with more exploration into the mysterious celestial sphere up above. It’s above our heads every day, conveying its lightest and darkest moments, giving hints about the universe around us, and allowing us to learn by looking up…but are we really looking? In this episode of StarTalk, host Neil deGrasse Tyson is joined by co-host and comedian Lynne Koplitz to ponder the many questions, stories, legends, and phenomena of the sky. But first, we just can’t talk about the sky without “Bill Nye the Sky Guy.” We hear a little from Bill about Jupiter’s opposition to the Sun during summer, and the importance of stargazing, as he encourages us to make some time for the sky in our lives. Next on the horizon, Neil and Lynne dig through ancient legends of the night sky, as they invite us to imagine the sky as “Cave TV” before we had the real thing. Neil educates us on the meaning of the word “Planet” in ancient Greek, and Lynne discovers a mistake that may have been the reason all of her wishes on stars haven’t come true. You’ll also hear why marrying an astronomer means you’ll always know where they are at night…like a bartender. The second half of the show gets even more fascinating when “Astronomer Extraordinaire” and News 12 Meteorologist Joe Rao takes a seat. Joe, the ultimate sky expert, answers questions even Neil can’t answer concerning the sky during eclipses, hurricanes, rainbows, shooting stars, the brightest skies of summer, the white skies of winter, and everything in between. Joe also debunks the assumption that you must look away or even stay inside during a total eclipse, while highlighting that the moment of total eclipse is actually the only point when it is safe to look. He tells us about the Great American Eclipse on August 21st, 2017 (In fact, Joe was also our guest on “Cosmic Queries: The Great American Eclipse” the week before it happened!) And before we end, there’s revelation in the air (and a little precipitation) when we unearth the “Creepy Cloud”, A. K. A the Mammatus Cloud, one that was seen over CitiField (shown above) after a heavy thunderstorm that lit up the sky. Feeling enlightened? There’s more where that came from. Listen now for all of the “SkyTalk” you could ever wish for on a star. NOTE: All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/summer-skies/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  8.3, 7.6, but I...

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Our universe is filled with secrets and mysteries, leaving us with many questions to be answered.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Now, more than ever, we find ourselves searching for those answers as the very fabric of space, science, and society are converging.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Here, for the first time, these worlds collide. As we give you the knowledge that breaks the barrier between what is science and what is merely pop culture. This, this, this is StarTalk. Now, here's your hosts, astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Lynn Koplitz. StarTalk.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, Lynn!

• 1:14Speaker 03

  Hello, Neil. We have a great show.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guess what? It's summertime, but you probably knew that.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're deep into July now, and I love July.

• 1:23Speaker 03

  I love July. I love July in New York. It's a lot of fun.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why? What do you do?

• 1:28Speaker 03

  Because everybody, the men are so distracted by all the breasts that are out. It's just hilarious. You can almost make taxicabs wreck.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you have, like, notches on your bras for how many taxicabs you wrecked?

• 1:41Speaker 03

  I have notches on my bras for lots of reasons, Neil. Let's get on with the science, shall we?

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, excuse me! My goodness!

• 1:50Speaker 03

  What are we gonna talk about?

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I just wanted to say, well, first, the summer, people like the summer because they're, you know, the days are long and you get to have long evening, I mean, long sort of twilight. But actually, the night is short in the summertime. The nights are much longer in the winter. And actually, astronomers prefer the winter skies because they're, like, crisp and clean and clear and hardly any humidity.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  I think they feel longer in the summer because you're outside longer.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's it. So, yeah, so...

• 2:18Speaker 03

  You sit out on the porch.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Porch!

• 2:21Speaker 03

  We sit down in porch in the south where my people from.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your people, yeah, we don't have porches in New York.

• 2:27Speaker 03

  We have stoops.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stoops, you do sit on the stoop, or you go to the roof. And so, I just wanted, so this is about the summer skies. And we're gonna have one of my favorite guests of all time, he's gonna come on later, I'll tell you about him in a few minutes.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, but usually I feel incomplete unless we begin by hearing from our friend and buddy.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Bill Nye, Sky Guy.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill Nye, Sky Guy. You know, I can't begin until he starts us off, he's like the starting gun for us.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  He really is.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's see what-

• 2:54Speaker 03

  He's our shower.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's our, let's see what Sir William, Bill Nye, has to tell us about the summer skies.

• 3:01Speaker 04

  Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the Science Guy here. If you're like many of us here at StarTalk, you live north of our Earth's equator. It's summer up here, it's the time of year to be outside in the evening for some star and planet gazing. This year, the sun will be on one side of Earth and Jupiter on the other. By long tradition, astronomers say we're in opposition. The orbit of Earth and Jupiter conspired this summer to make Jupiter brighter in our night sky than it has been since the fall of 1999. Now, this would be just another one of those celestial things. But keep in mind that you, just like Galileo, can observe the cloud bands of Jupiter and see the four big moons zipping around for yourself. Get a modest telescope and try it. It may just change your life a little.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  Four hundred years ago, it changed the world. The warm, long days of summer can be full of activities and very busy. But in the evenings, have a look up. This is Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and here's hoping that this summer, you make some time for the sky.

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I now feel complete.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Make some time for the sky. Well, we're going to.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we're going to. Did you know, Lynn, Bill mentioned Jupiter, but if you look at the original classical planets in the old days in ancient Greece, the word planet meant wanderer. And they looked up at the night.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  Really?

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They looked up, that's right. Well, it still means wanderer. Pl- planetos means wanderer.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Planetos.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But pl- planet- planetes, yes. And so, so what's a wanderer? They looked at all the objects of the night sky that moved against the background sky. And there were seven of them. There was Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the sun and the moon.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  I love how you rattled those. I thought you were so proud.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm totally proud, you noticed.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  You know the planetos.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The planetos. And those seven wanderers are traceable to the names we give to the seven days of the week in, in the Roman mythology and Norse mythologies. And so, we name the seven days of the week after those original seven planets. And it wasn't until Copernicus we said, well, wait a minute. Like, Earth is one of these objects that goes around the sun.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Like sundae and moonday?

• 4:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, moonday, yes. Sun is named, yeah. So, should we want to take a quiz? Sunday's named after?

• 5:04Speaker 03

  The sun.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moonday?

• 5:07Speaker 03

  The moon.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moon, Tuesday. Actually, it's a Norse god, Tuz.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Tuz, oh.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Like, I would've known that. That was a trick question.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, sorry. Wednesday, Woden's day. Yeah, so those-

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Okay, those make no sense. Woden's day? What is that, a planet?

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Planet Woden? You haven't-

• 5:23Speaker 03

  Okay, let, let, let's get on something else.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, just so you know, there, those are gods in Norse legends that are the counterparts to the gods in Greek and Roman legends. And that's how that happened.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Now, what Bill Nye was saying, that, that is interesting. But what Bill Nye was saying was, he was talking about, um, looking at Jupiter. And I know, I remember this as a kid too. It, it, so sometimes when we think we see a star, we're seeing a planet, right?

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. Especially af- af- right after sunset, it, the stars come out and not mo- the first ones you see typically are not stars. They're gonna be planets. Because the planets are brighter typically than what the stars are.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Really? So, when you ma- when you, the first star I see tonight, be careful because that's why your wishes aren't coming true?

• 6:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, if you wish on-

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Wishing on a planet?

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're wishing on stars.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  I wished on Jupiter.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so Lynn, that's why your planets have not been coming true.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  My dreams?

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, your wishes are not coming true because you're wishing on planets. That's the problem.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Well, I, I do piv- I do tend to pivot and make a couple dreams. Like, I wish on the first star I see from the right, the first star I see from the left.

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that allowed? This can't be allowed.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  I make my own rules.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you got that. And by the way, the star stuff, people have been thinking about stars forever. Long before we had modern civilization, people were looking up.

• 6:32Speaker 03

  Well, before we had TV, people had nothing to do.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What else are you doing at night? Well, you, well-

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Well, there's one other thing you could do. After that fifteen minutes is over, then what do you do?

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you go outside and you look up and it's nighttime, there's no lit cities, there's no pollution, there's no distract, there's no HBO, you just go out and you look up and the night sky.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  That was cave TV.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it was. I like that. The sky was cave TV and at the time, they, so they made up stories about, put their legends and gods and, and culture onto the sky.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  They probably did that with clouds too, though.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, clouds came and went.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  We used to do that as kids, like you would lay on your back and try and guess what you saw.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they all looked like Abraham Lincoln or, or George Washington, didn't they?

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then in college you partake in some party activities and do the same thing.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the problem with clouds is they come and go. So, and they're, so they don't have a permanence across culture and time. The sky, the stars are there and so you could pass stories from one generation to the next and before the era of literacy and before people had any other meaningful kind of entertainment, you had the night sky. And however rich your storytelling was, you would be more likely to have your story remembered. And so what we have today is this repository of mythological stories that comes down from ancient peoples.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  Okay, but aren't there some stars and some, um, like the Big Dipper, you can always find it. But there are some things you can't find. Like I've seen things with you that you're like, "Look at that constellation of Capricornus, Capricornus."

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what I sound like to you?

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Well, whatever. But then I try to find Capricornus and I can't find it, but I'm like, "Well, there's a Dipper handle."

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're talking about, you're not talking about Cassiopeia, maybe?

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Not Cassiopeia. There was some other one we saw with you a couple of years back and you were like, "This comes by every five years."

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, okay. Well, some stars you see all the time. They're called circumpolar stars. These are stars that move around, well, all stars move around the North Pole star called Polaris. But depending on your latitude on Earth, you'll see stars all the time in the night sky. That's why you can always see the Big Dipper from most places in the United States.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  And there's a Little Dipper too, right?

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a Little Dipper too, much less interesting it turns out than the Big Dipper. The stars are not as bright and it's much harder to, to notice if you're not looking for it. You'll, you'll, you'll never stumble on the Little Dipper, but the Big Dipper is majestic and you see it. And you know, I'll tell you something about the Big Dipper? It's, it, that's what we call an asterism, which is a subset of more stars that actually make a constellation. And there are 88 in the night sky. And I, you know how I remember the 88? Because there are 88 keys in a piano. And the eighty-eight keys on a piano make music and the eighty-eight constellations make a zoo. Cause it's animals and creatures and centaurs and-

• 9:08Speaker 03

  I- I'm so confused right now, I can't even tell you.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Cause you went from piano to zoo to the Dipper.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eighty-eight keys on a piano, eighty-eight constellations in the sky.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Eighty-eight constellations in the sky, eighty-eight, um-

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, and the constellations, all kinds of animals and creatures and- and, though, here, the Big Dipper is part of Ursa Major, the big bear.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, here's- here's a cute part about it, so all illustrations of it have to sort of connect the dots. And when you do so, the bear has this long bushy tail, which is the handle of the Big Dipper. And then you say, "Oh, that's just a bear with a bushy tail." And then you pause for a minute and think, "Wait a minute, bears don't have big bushy tails. They just don't have to. They have little stubby nubs that you can't even see cause it's hidden in their hair. They don't have tails." So, it's this whole big, sort of, tapestry of fiction up there that is the expression of people's fantasies about what they either feared or loved in the world, or what they imagined that- or that they praised.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  Okay, but did they ever go, here's my, did they ever go out and look at it and say, "Okay, it's gone now, the bear is, the- the tail, like, that constellation's not there"? When did they start recognizing that things weren't always there?

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the constellations are there forever, for as long as a human lifetime, multiple- the stars are there longer than human civilization.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Oh, they are?

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. It's the planets that move back and forth.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  What do you think they thought meteorites were?

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, uh, no, that meteorites as a concept wasn't until the eighteen hundreds. Shooting stars, they're, they, shooting, they thought there were stars falling out of the sky. It was profound ignorance of how the world worked. It was before the era of science.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  That's what I thought they were.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, with my co-host, Lynn, Lynn Koplitz. Do you know, our toll-free number is 1-877-5-Star-Talk. Check out our website at StarTalk.net, where you can send us an email, or in fact, you can tweet us if you're- if you're a Twitter generation.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, that just makes me laugh. I'm so beavis in my head.

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 11:06Speaker 03

  I just hear tweet, it makes me laugh, tweet.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeted, uh, you can tweet us at StarTalkRadio, all one word, of course. You know what was really cool about the old days in Rome? They had an eye test. Before they had, like, spectacles to correct your-

• 11:17Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, that's cool, we have eye tests now, Neil.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and then let me finish the sentence.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  I'm sorry.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They had eye tests, they wanted to find out whether they put you in the army. And so they'd look up at a pair of stars that are part of the Big Dipper. In the middle of the handle of the Big Dipper, there's a double star system. It's actually a multiple star system, but from the eye you can see two stars. Mizer and Alcor, those are the names of those two stars. If you could tell that there were two stars there, you were good enough with your eyesight to be drafted into the Roman army. And if you couldn't see it, they wouldn't take you.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Okay, if you could tell there's two stars there, you're good enough to be drafted in any army. I mean, that's, I can't see that.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yes, sure. Next time, I haven't ever showed it to you. Next time we're out on the stars, I'll show you those two stars. And twenty, anybody with 20/20 vision will see it.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  You think when, when guys are trying to like get lucky and they take a girl driving to look at the stars, what do you think is the most common thing that they try and look for? Is it the Big Dipper?

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, if they're trying to show off.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  That's the one that's easiest, yeah. Cause everyone's always trying to show like, well, I'm not you, cause you're different. You're like, look at the tail of the donkey.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there are no donkeys among the 88.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Or whatever it is you know, but you know, you, you can show people like, those are the two girls holding hands and you know.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, it's cool. It's a lot of legends. And so, you know, so astronomers got that evening rap that works.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  But what do you think normally guys look for? You think it's astronomers have that evening rap?

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  It's Neil's Barry White.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey baby, let's check out the constellations. Cause we got, you know, there's a saying, always marry an astronomer, cause you know where they are at night. So you ever hear that one? Yeah. We got the, we got you covered.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Same thing with a bartender.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  But all right, but let's keep it, let's keep it, let's keep it serious.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got another interesting story.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  We have a serious.

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna come to him in like a minute. I'll just tell you a quick story. I was in Brooklyn, excuse me, I was in, in my office and I got a phone call from a woman from Brooklyn.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she sounded old and like she'd been there her whole life. And she said, there's something glowing outside my window. What is it?

• 13:11Speaker 03

  Okay, first of all, Neil, I love you, but that's, she was from Brooklyn. She was like, there's something glowing outside my window. What is it? Are you Dr. Tyson?

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's actually exactly what she sounded like. And I said.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  I'm concerned.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I said, okay, well, where is it in the sky? She said, oh, it's like three inches above Marty's Deli. And I said.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  It's above Marty's Deli. I don't know how many inches I haven't been able to see in years. It's glowing.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so I tried to say which way is New Jersey, which way is Manhattan, where's the East River, and I finally figured out she was looking at the planet Venus. And I thought to myself, how could this, she just noticed this now? The woman's like ninety, eighty, hundred years old.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  I've got my bags packed. I think it's like cocoon, they're coming for me.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's what happened. So I said, it's Venus, how, yeah, how long have you lived there? She said, my whole life. I said, how come you haven't noticed this? She said, there used to be a building outside my window and they just tore it down and now I can see the sky and it's beautiful.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  And now I can die.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna take a break and when we come back, a friend and longtime colleague, Joe Rao, who's like patron saint of amateur astronomers and the senior meteorologist for News 12 in Westchester. We're gonna, we're gonna bring him on the show. I got questions for him too, because it's stuff I can't even explain. And I turn to him anytime there's stuff I don't know. We'll be right back on StarTalk.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Where you're a space cadet. Or a rocket scientist. We want to hear from you. The phone lines are open. Call now. This is StarTalk.

• 14:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, joined by my comedian co-host, Lynn Koplitz. Lynn, welcome back.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this segment, we're gonna bring on a longtime friend and colleague, and he's an associate up at the Hayden Planetarium, and he's like senior, he's a meteorologist, a senior meteorologist for News 12, Westchester, and it's Joe Rao. Joe Rao, welcome to StarTalk.

• 15:22Speaker 05

  I'm overwhelmed.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Overwhelmed?

• 15:24Speaker 05

  Overwhelmed by that introduction.

• 15:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Joe, just before we bring you in, let me just tell the audience that you can find us at StarTalkRadio.net, that's online, and you can tweet us at StarTalkRadio. So Joe, welcome to the show.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  It's great to be. I used to hang out in this area many, many years ago when I was like an intern at Channel 2 in New York, back in the 70s, for the weather guys who used to work there.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you were a weather dude for decades?

• 15:54Speaker 05

  Well, professionally since 1978, but I've been, you know, really interested in the sky, both weather-wise and also astronomically.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus astronomers are, weather is a problem.

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Did you see that movie Anchorman? Was it like an Anchorman? Back then?

• 16:07Speaker 05

  No, I was-

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Slapping the skirts on the Hines?

• 16:10Speaker 05

  I'll tell you what I did. When I used to come down here to Channel 2, I used to give the on-camera weather caster, the weather guy, the magnets, you know, back then.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  Did you? Would it put the sun up?

• 16:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. But back in the 70s, we didn't have the fancy, you know, chroma key that we have today, or the plasma screen.

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had magnetic-

• 16:27Speaker 05

  You had magnetic maps.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had a magnetic sun, or something?

• 16:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. You'd put the sun up on the thing, and sometimes, you know, one night, he was-

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't tell me the sun had a smiley face on it, because then-

• 16:37Speaker 05

  I'll tell you that the sun had a, and sunglasses too.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sunglasses.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  Sunglasses too. One time, the sun fell down, fell off right in the middle of a weather cast, and, you know, the weather caster, I might as well mention the guy's name Alan Casper, who's now doing the weather on a radio station in New Jersey. He said, "Well, I guess that only proves one thing, the barometer must be falling."

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Oh, that Alan, he's so quick. He's known for that, you know?

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me tell you, Joe, I want to, we want to know, we just want to clue our viewers in. By the way, let me establish the fact. I get questions all the time, hundreds of emails a day, a subset of which are about the night sky, with intricate questions about what's up, what's down, and I send them over to you, Joe. I want you to confirm that on the air right now.

• 17:16Speaker 05

  That's absolutely true. I get all kinds of stuff from Neil, emails, phone messages.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As much as I know about the night sky, it is a subset of what this man knows, and that's why he's on the show.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  And that's why when Neil can't put up with these women from Brooklyn, these crazy women from Brooklyn who were saying, "What's going on with the man?", he sends them over to me.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  I'm worried about the night sky!

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're in the studio. So Joe, what's in store for viewing stars and planets and, you know, constellations and eclipses? What's going on this summer?

• 17:44Speaker 05

  Well, you know, interestingly, and

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me your top hit list. If someone were gonna like, check off the list, what would it be?

• 17:52Speaker 05

  Well, this month, the International Space Station, which of course is still in under construction, 240 miles above the surface of the earth, going around the earth at about 17,000 miles per hour. A lot of people still don't realize that you can see that and also a number of other satellites.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See with the naked eye?

• 18:09Speaker 05

  See with the naked eye.

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me, unaided eye.

• 18:11Speaker 05

  And this particular month

• 18:15Speaker 03

  Oh, you scientist. You dirty bird.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  This particular month, because of the various geometrical circumstances or whatever, the space station is visible, both in the pre-dawn sky and the early morning hours. If you care to get up, let's say at four or five in the AM.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before the sun.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  I'm gonna miss that one.

• 18:35Speaker 05

  And if you don't plan to get up that early, later on in the month

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lynn, you can just stay awake.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  Or I could just tape it.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  TiVo it. She's gonna TiVo it.

• 18:47Speaker 05

  Lynn is probably watching the Inside the Eyelid Show.

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 18:50Speaker 05

  The space station's passing over.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  That's absolutely right. Alright.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  But later on in the month, after a few weeks, the space station will now, will then be visible, like, let's say around the 20th or 25th of July, it'll be visible across the United States in the evening hours, right after sunset. So, if you don't care to get up in the wee, small hours of the morning, you can wait till later.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  What does it look like, Joe? Can you tell us the space station?

• 19:11Speaker 05

  It looks like a huge star with a kind of a yellowish-white tinge.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you say huge, you mean bright?

• 19:17Speaker 05

  Very, very bright.

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brighter than any, unmistakably black, complete anything else in the sky.

• 19:21Speaker 05

  There's nothing that you can mistake the space station for. It looks like a star that's taken leave of its senses and has decided to move to a different part of the sky.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  You're definitely getting bone holes on that. They're coming for me! Say goodbye to my daughter! My bags are packed!

• 19:34Speaker 05

  And it is very, very bright. In fact, it's so bright, it's gotten to be so large now.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also, it's been getting brighter over the years.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  It's getting bigger. Bigger, of course, as I said, it's still under construction. But the solar panels that they've added on in recent years, reflecting the sunlight up in space, it has now gotten so large and so bright that you can even see it in the, just even before the sun goes down, or even after the sun has come up.

• 20:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is, it could be normally be visible in broad daylight, except it's too bright. Right? I mean, that's the problem. The sun is out, competing with it.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  But I mean, like, you know, in the first half hour after sunrise, or in the first half hour before sunset, if you know exactly where to look in that daytime blue sky, you'll be able to see it as a white speck of light moving across the sky. Again, it's gotten to be that bright.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how can we, it'd be hard to give times on the air right now, but is there, you have a blog that, that...

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Well, probably the best thing to do, I think, is to go to a website that specializes in giving you this information, and that would be heavensabove.com. Actually, it's heavens-hyphen-above.com.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so you can dig out what's visible in the night sky from there?

• 20:44Speaker 05

  From there, but specifically you can get an idea as to when this, you know, moves across the sky.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they call it heavens above, it really should be hardwareabove.com. It's more romantic than the subject deserves.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  You know, when I was a kid, we didn't have all this fancy stuff that people have now. All you had was the sky. Like, I lived in Florida, the sky was the deal. I mean, eclipses, meteor showers, I mean, those are things we lived for. I mean, when you knew there was gonna be a meteor shower, you were allowed to stay up late, you grabbed a lawn chair, everybody got ready.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  So you're into, you're into looking at celestial streakers?

• 21:17Speaker 03

  Um, yes. I guess so.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do you have, what do you have for us in the way of meteor showers this summer?

• 21:23Speaker 05

  Well, probably one of the best...

• 21:24Speaker 03

  That's what I wanna know. What are the things that my nieces can say?

• 21:26Speaker 05

  One of the best is, is coming our way in the month of August, the so-called Tears of St. Lawrence. Because they're, Neil was talking about how they made up stories of the nighttime sky. Back in 258 A.D., there was a saint by the name of Lawrence, who was griddled to death on a hot gridiron. In fact, supposedly...

• 21:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what did he do bad?

• 21:47Speaker 03

  That's a great story for my nieces. Thanks a lot, Joe. I really appreciate it. So then, what happened was this man was griddled to death on a hot iron, and these are his tears.

• 21:57Speaker 05

  He, he found out, he found out that the local politicians were rather unscrupulous and were stealing from the townspeople. And so they said, you know, keep your mouth shut, but he didn't. And as a result of that, they punished him by putting him to death. His martyrdom is on August the 10th each year. And believe it or not, supposedly according to the story, as he was being, you know, grilled on this hot iron, he says, "I'm roasted on one side. Now, if you want me completely roasted, turn me over and I'll be done on the other side as well."

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Can't we change the name? Like, can't we call him like Ferris Tears of Joy? Like, now that everyone, everyone has come together and she's happy in heaven and she's...

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, is it just coincidence that he was grilled on the same day as the meteor shower? Or do they time it for that?

• 22:43Speaker 05

  The people who watched the sky and who looked up at the sky noticed that there was an unusual preponderance, an unusual amount of shooting stars that appeared around the 10th of August every year. And they looked up and they told stories. They said, "Well, what possibly could that be?" They said, "Oh, that's probably the fiery tears of St. Lawrence."

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They could have said it's just dripping blood, but that would have been less...

• 23:03Speaker 05

  No, I don't think so.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  All right, now, this is great. What else do we have that I could tell my nieces? I'm already having to change the tear story. We have a meteor shower in August, which is an awesome...

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. So at its best, what is the, um, how many do you get?

• 23:16Speaker 05

  You can, if you have a nice dark sky, free of any light pollution, city lights, if you're out in the country, out at the shore, looking skyward, you could see perhaps as many as 60 or maybe even 80 per hour.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many do you remember seeing, Lynn, when you were in Florida?

• 23:30Speaker 03

  As a kid?

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  I mean, I think the most I remember is maybe eight or 10.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just in the whole night?

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, like...

• 23:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You see any big ones, too?

• 23:38Speaker 03

  But you, yeah. But you'd see them falling, like, sometimes at the same time. So you'd hear all the kids yelling, like, "I see one, I see one."

• 23:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. That's interesting also that, you know, back, you know, years ago, when I used to join groups, and we'd specifically, you know, take one section of the sky to watch as we were counting...

• 23:54Speaker 03

  We used to do that, too.

• 23:55Speaker 05

  And we were counting these shooting stars. And we'd bring a tape recorder, and we'd always know the faint ones or the dim ones from the bright ones by listening to the recording thereafter. If you saw the one that went like that, you'd say, "Ooh, I saw one like that." But if there was one of those really large ones that looked like a Roman candle or a skyrocket that left a trail behind it for a few seconds, "Whoa! Did you see that? Oh, my..." You know, and, and you knew that that was...

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The volume level correlated with brightness.

• 24:19Speaker 05

  Exactly, precisely.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Can you see more of a, excuse me, but can you see more of a shooting star with a telescope?

• 24:26Speaker 05

  Well, you, I tell you, if you, if you were lucky enough to be looking through a telescope when, when, remember, a telescope is concentrating on a very, very narrow section of the sky.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:35Speaker 05

  So you'd have to, it'd be like winning the lottery to have a meteor, you know, zip through that little.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  How cool would that be?

• 24:41Speaker 05

  It's, it's quite, but I'll tell you what, if you, if you see a really bright one and leave a trail that's hanging behind it for, let's say, ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, you could probably get your telescope or binoculars up and, and you could see the trail and as...

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But probably better with binoculars because you have a wider field of view.

• 24:55Speaker 05

  Right, exactly. And what's interesting is that you could see the, the trail being distorted by those high level winds at fifty and sixty miles up, getting bent into all kinds of weird shapes.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lynn, did you know there was a gaffe in, in Carl Sagan's movie Contact where the, where Ellie Aroway as a child is calling her father and she's looking through a telescope and saying, "Come on, Dad, it's beginning." And she's looking through the telescope and she's telling him that the meteor shower is beginning, but she ain't...

• 25:19Speaker 03

  There's no way she would be seeing it.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No way she's seen it through the telescope.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Well, here's another thing that I saw as a kid that we were obsessed with and still, I'm frankly, a little obsessed with, were eclipses.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  Well, do you plan to go to China later in the month? Everybody's going to China, it seems.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  I do enjoy their food, but probably not.

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the food comes to us, apparently. Wait, wait, Lynn, which eclipse did you see, do you remember? Well, what year, just tell us what year.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  I just remember, I, I, no, I will not, because you'll know my age. What? What I know is we used to do the thing, let me finish. We used to do the thing where we would poke the hole in the paper because they said that if you look at eclipse, it will burn your, your eyes, is that true?

• 25:56Speaker 05

  Well, you know, not the eclipse, it's just the sun. The sun is, is dangerous to look at all the time, but when the newspapers or the radio and television stations say, "Hey, there's going to be an eclipse of the sun tomorrow," everybody all of a sudden, you would, I mean, like, you don't stop in the middle of the street.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  I've never seen one, I've never looked. I've been scared. I looked through the paper with the, the little hole.

• 26:14Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, that's, that's the best way, but, well, yeah, you don't look through the hole, you let the sunlight...

• 26:18Speaker 03

  No, you put the hole, right, you put the paper.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a pin, a pinhole camera kind of setup, yeah.

• 26:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. But the, the thing is that the, the incredible rise in eye, you know, people who report eye damage during an eclipse is because that they, they want to see the eclipse. But it's not the eclipse that's causing the eye damage, it's the sun. The sun is very, very brilliant and you're not supposed to look at it at any time for any long length of time lest you, you know.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Joe, we hear these actually exaggerated accounts, sorry, people overreact to that warning, right? I've heard people say, "Stay indoors during solar eclipses because you'll like burn to a crisp."

• 26:52Speaker 05

  And the sad part about that Neil is the fact that when the sun, if you're in the path of a total eclipse of the sun, one of the greatest, most spectacular-

• 26:59Speaker 03

  Songs ever written.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see, that even the Carly Simon song-

• 27:05Speaker 03

  Turn around.

• 27:06Speaker 05

  And, well, you know, if you, if you ever have a chance in your lifetime to see a total eclipse of the sun, that, those moments, those few moments when the sun is totally eclipsed, you can look directly at the sun, because, you know, all the-

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sun isn't there.

• 27:20Speaker 05

  The sun isn't there, the photosphere, you get to see the beautiful corona, but the thing is, is that people are under the impression that the total phase is probably the worst time to, to look at it, and people run into their homes or hide into the bed during this, this period when the sun is absolutely extinguished and-

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Completely hidden behind the moon.

• 27:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lynn, I just want you to know that if you even say, what, where you were when you saw the eclipse, he knows enough about eclipses to know exactly what year that happened, because eclipses happen in all different parts. So we already nailed your age.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  We've had Joe here for a long time and I have a million other questions. I'm 41, man.

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got, we gotta take a break. We're here with our special guest, Joe Rao, in the studio. He is astronomer extraordinaire, senior meteorologist up in News 12 Westchester. Lynn, we'll be back in a minute.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  I have questions about the sky.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can we keep Joe for, to the next segment?

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Well, can you say?

• 28:07Speaker 05

  I'm not going anywhere.

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he's good, he's good to go. We'll take a break.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  This is StarTalk.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. The tutor there is Lynn Koplitz, professional comedian and actress. And we're joined by a special guest in the studio, Mr. Joe Rao. He's a patron saint of sky watchers, and I don't know if he's ever been called that before, but he's my patron saint of sky watching, and he's a senior meteorologist in Westchester at News 12. So Joe, thanks for being with us here today, and thanks for staying longer into the segment.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  I'm happy. Before we proceed, I just, you know, I teased you a little bit before on the other segment about China, and on June, on June, we're already out of June, July 22nd of this month...

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Day before my birthday.

• 29:09Speaker 05

  We're going to have the eclipse of the century.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  What?

• 29:14Speaker 05

  The longest total eclipse of the sun that's going to occur in this century, but unfortunately, if you want to see it...

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Me bending over to blow out my candles.

• 29:20Speaker 05

  Oh, no. You have to, unfortunately, you have to go to either India, or China, or some of the South Islands of Japan, where the shadow of the moon will be crossing, and I must tell you that there are literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people from this side of the world, who are planning to go to China, or to India, or to be on cruise ships off of Japan to see this spectacular sight in a few weeks.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's in just a few weeks. Yeah, no, I'll just, I'll catch you, I'll TiVo it, like you said, I'm gonna be there.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, if they're all going to China, I guarantee you they're gonna take pictures.

• 29:54Speaker 05

  But, you know, you don't have to, this country is in the midst of an eclipse drought. We have not had, in the contiguous, the 48 United States, a total eclipse of the sun since 1979, but take heart, not too much longer now, eight more years, and those eight years will go by very, very quickly, on August 21st, are you writing this down in your calendar, Lynn?

• 30:15Speaker 03

  No, because I want to get to another question, Joe, and you keep talking about eclipses of the sun, and I have something important to ask.

• 30:21Speaker 05

  Okay, August 21st, 2017.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  But keep talking about it.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  August 21st.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  2017.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  2017.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Okay, I am gonna write that down.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She is writing it down, let the record show.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  2017.

• 30:31Speaker 05

  It's gonna be a really spectacular, it's gonna go from one, it's gonna go coast to coast.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  I'm gonna tell my nieces that, that's awesome.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  It's gonna go from Oregon, all the way through the middle of the country, it's gonna go over St. Louis, and then it's gonna exit the country at Charleston, South Carolina, out into the ocean.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Joe, there was a day when that was an issue, that it would take that long to reach us, but now we have like airplanes and things, so we can like travel to the shadow, rather than waiting for the shadow to come to us.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  That's right, well, but unfortunately, there are some of us, for example, that are not able to go to China or to India this month, so we'll just have to sit and wait, and wait for the shadow to come to us, which will be, again, in about eight years.

• 31:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you wanna send us email, just do so through our website, starTalkRadio.net, and you can tweet us at StarTalkRadio.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Now, can we tell Joe, can I, can I say something real quick?

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lynn, you're, I'm your host here.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  I know, but I see you two are so excited, so I don't wanna interrupt. You get two boys together who are talking about...

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our own heavenly bodies, yes.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  About your own heavenly bodies, and you get excited. But, part of why we're doing this summer sky show is because I was a kid raised in Florida, and I'm kind of obsessed with skies, Joe, and people listening, and I was talking to Neil about it, and I was saying how I just get obsessed with it, and now that I travel so much as a comedian, I've noticed that skies are different everywhere I go, you know? And I had been in Phoenix, and I got in at night, and it was the strangest thing, it was the first time I realized, and I came in at night, and I woke up in the morning, I had a gig to go to, and in typical New Yorker fashion, I'm on my cellphone, I'm not paying attention, and all of a sudden, I look up, and it was twilight, you know, and I, it was unbelievable, I'd never seen anything,

• 32:10Speaker 03

  there must have been eight colors in the sky, like colors I'd never even seen, like navy blue. I was like, what is this? And it was really amazing, so I...

• 32:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Lynn, you had a cosmic moment.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, but my, my question is about the different skies in different places. And I just wanted to talk about-

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Joe, twilight in Phoenix, it's desert versus twilight in Florida or LA?

• 32:30Speaker 05

  Well, obviously, I mean, in Florida, it's a very humid climate, a moisture-laden climate, as opposed to Arizona, the desert southwest, which has much less in the way of moisture. And so you get kind of a different coloration of the sky there, kind of a cleaner views of the colors of the sky.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the moisture kind of muddies the view, you're saying?

• 32:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, you get more of, I guess you get more of a, what's the word I'm looking for? Schmutz?

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's okay.

• 32:55Speaker 05

  The sun, you know, you see the sun go down in Florida, it goes down like a big red ball because it's being, the light is being attenuated by all of the humidity and all of the schmutz that's in the air, as opposed to out in the desert southwest where the air is drier and a lot cleaner.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  And you get more of a vivid coloration of oranges and reds and pinks and cobalt blues and saffrons and all the things.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  It is pretty awesome. And now the twilight at night, wait, is twilight daytime, morning or night?

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they can both be twilight, it's dawn and dusk that has, we have different words.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  Okay, you know what it is? My mom calls it rabbit dark.

• 33:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is rabbit dark?

• 33:28Speaker 03

  When I was a kid, it was called rabbit dark because that's when all the rabbits come out, like right at that seven o'clock time.

• 33:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would kind of depend on where you live.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  No, in Florida, she calls it rabbit dark.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In New York, it would be mugger's dark, in New York, right, okay, if that's what you're talking about.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Mugger dark, mugger dark, rabbit dark, but that's what my mother was calling it. Or, you know, or like the kids say, like when the streetlights come on, you know, it's that time.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, and in fact, unfortunately, if you live up in, let's say, Canada, especially central and northern Canada, there really is no-

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Or fake America.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  There's no real darkness during this time of the year because twilight lasts all night. The sky never gets truly dark up in northern Canada.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the other thing, Joe.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, so Joe, you're saying at midnight, it's still twilight, is what you're saying? If you go far enough north?

• 34:11Speaker 05

  If you go to a place like Edmonton, for example, Alberta, Canada, it always is a little bit light, even during the middle of the night, because twilight never ends up there.

• 34:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, which is weird too, because have you ever been there, like, or like Alaska, where everybody's wearing fleece and they're unattractive and you can see them? Because it's twilight all night long. You're like, really, if any place needed dark, it's this place.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  To all of the people who are now listening to us in Alaska, we apologize.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  They know, they have mirrors. So, here, here, um, here's the thing too. I noticed when I was in Alaska, that the twilight, you know, it stayed till about 11 o'clock, and it really affected me emotionally. Do you think that's just me, or is that a thing?

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did it depress you? What was your problem?

• 34:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, it was weird. Well, because I, you know, I'm one of these people, I can tell, I can kind of feel, I mean, you're meteorologist, Neil tells me I'm nuts, but I can feel when it feels like it's going to rain outside.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, some people have that ability, you know, they say, my bones are creaking, you know?

• 35:17Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  You know, it's sometimes a change in the atmospheric structure.

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Joe, is that true? Joe, to answer here and now on StarTalk, are you telling me people's bones can tell whether it's going to rain?

• 35:26Speaker 05

  There are some people who...

• 35:26Speaker 03

  I got a bad hit!

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't your, isn't your body fluids wetter than any air that's wrapped around your body to determine if it's going to rain?

• 35:34Speaker 03

  That just sounds scary.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  I can, all I can tell you, Neil, is I've met people...

• 35:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Riders on the storm.

• 35:42Speaker 03

  Joe, that's Ivan, our producer, being a cover.

• 35:43Speaker 05

  All I can tell you is that there are people who I've, who I have met, who, you know, say, you know, I feel, you know, they ask me, so what's the forecast? And I tell them why, he says, is it going to rain soon because I feel it in my bones?

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got a crick in my bones.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  You guys, you're scientists, I'm telling you, don't you watch movies? Like, the animals start going nuts when the storm's coming?

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because they hear the thunder, and they don't understand it because they don't have science.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  I think it's because they feel it. Now, why is, um, here's a good question, why is the sky blue?

• 36:11Speaker 05

  Uh, should I get into Raleigh scattering, or should I just?

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She'll take, if you do, she'll ha- she'll, she'll let you know about it.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  No, because, because everywhere I've lived, like, like the sky, there's not always blue sky. You know what I mean? Like, like, in Florida, there's very blue sky. In New York, there's very blue sky. You don't get to look at it a lot.

• 36:28Speaker 05

  You get, I mean, like, down in Florida, you have what's what might be called a tropical sky. Because if you get the flow of air from off of the ocean, that helps to, in a way, cleanse the atmosphere. As opposed to, let's say, a place like, like New York, or Los Angeles, where you got all that smog. Because everything is kinda like, it, it, there's not much motion of the air. And so all of that industrial pollutant just sits there for days and days on end. Also, in, in China-

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you're below, wait, so if you're below that smog, you have to look through the smog to then judge the color of the sky?

• 36:56Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 36:57Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you're not below the smog, you, like, if you're above it-

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Sometimes if you're, when you're above, if you're in a plane-

• 37:03Speaker 03

  You can see it.

• 37:04Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, you can, you can even see it, uh, there are times, like, even here in New York, when I'm on, let's say, the Whitestone or Throggs Neck Bridge, and I'm looking over toward New York City, even, I, I look high above me, and it's a beautiful blue sky. I look toward the city, and it looks like there's like a brown dome over, over the city. During these times of what's called a temperature inversion, when it actually gets warmer. It's supposed to get colder as you go higher up into the atmosphere. But sometimes, in certain cases, the, the temperature is warmer as you go up, and it acts like a giant lid, so to speak, and traps all the pollutants.

• 37:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's nasty, Joe, that's nasty. I mean, people's bad breath and everything just stays there.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  If other planets, like, like Mars is, like, full of methane and everything, then is there smog on other planets?

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Well, not, Mars has a very, very thin atmosphere, so I don't think you'd have to worry about smog there.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  How about Venus, or?

• 37:50Speaker 05

  Well, Venus is the runaway greenhouse effect, right?

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, each planet's got its own story to tell. Just to remind people, we're listening to Joe Rea, who's our special, Lynn and my special guest today. He's, uh, he's not only sort of patron saint of sky watchers, he's a meteorologist. And that's the source of our questions right now, because Lynn grew up in, like, Florida, where there's a lot of weather in Florida.

• 38:10Speaker 05

  Did you ever, did you ever experience a hurricane down in, uh, Florida?

• 38:12Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh, are you kidding? My mother used to track hurricanes. We had a hurricane closet that had just special food just for the hurricane. And the strangest thing was, it had, like, maraschino cherries, and like, like, like, sardines. And, and, to me, like, hurricane equaled, like, cocktail party.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  I never quite understood why all of that was in. So you can't touch that, that's why the hurricanes. Like, well, obviously, we're gonna die with a smile on our face.

• 38:41Speaker 05

  We're still waiting for the first one this year. The first one on the list in the Atlantic and Caribbean is ANA8. So, we'll see when she decides to.

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she begins with an A because you go alphabetically, if I remember correctly.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Correct, but not all 26 letters. I think there are five, well, I know, there are five letters. I think like Q, for example, is not representative and X and.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  I've seen tornadoes. I've been on the highway when a tornado was.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  How about a water spell?

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Next to us.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where did you grow up?

• 39:07Speaker 03

  In Sarasota, Florida.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You saw tornadoes in Florida?

• 39:10Speaker 03

  We were in Alligator Alley and we saw a tornado. And we, and the warning, and talk about an eerie, weird sky. This is the thing, too. Why is it that skies get so eerie before storms? You know, sometimes in Florida especially.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where did the green come from?

• 39:25Speaker 03

  The green, this is a question I have about the green. Now, this, in Florida, you get lots of electrical storms. You know that, Joe.

• 39:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  But you also get just these weird little showers that come out of nowhere. Like, it's sunny, then there's a shower, and then the shower's over.

• 39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lynn was only showering over your head.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  No, I'm not E or it's not. But, no, there's no, really, out of nowhere, there's just a little shower. But, and I've never experienced this any.

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just have a shower.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  Stop it.

• 39:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm okay.

• 39:53Speaker 05

  I'm as happy as I can be.

• 39:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm happy.

• 39:56Speaker 03

  No, wait. So, there's a, the one thing I have noticed in Florida, never noticed it anywhere else, is that after this little weird shower, everything gets bright green, like Emerald City green. And sometimes there's a rainbow.

• 40:11Speaker 05

  Well, I can understand the rainbow. The rainbow, of course, is caused by the departing storm and sunlight shining through the raindrops to create that rainbow effect. But as far as the green is concerned, I, you know, I've seen green skies. In advance of a thunderstorm, but I don't recall ever seeing green skies, you know, on a

• 40:30Speaker 03

  I don't mean the sky, I mean, everything looks kinda, like

• 40:31Speaker 05

  Everything looks kinda green.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Extra bright green.

• 40:33Speaker 05

  Aren't we all going green now? I mean, it's fashionable to go green, so.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll get back to green, we've gotta take a break.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  We have to talk about rainbows, too.

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And definitely rainbows, one of my favorite cosmic, or sky, objects. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Find us on StarTalkRadio.net and call us at 1-8775-StarTalk. We're here with Joe Rao and I'm here Neil deGrasse Tyson with your co-host Lynn Koplitz. Back after a break.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Bringing space and science down to earth. You're listening to StarTalk.

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk, I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson with Lynn Koplitz, my favorite comedienne of all time, and our special guest Joe Rao. Joe, Lynn put it to you, she said, "Why's the sky blue?" and you just dropped the ball, and I'm not, I'm gonna hold you to it.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  I think I interrupted him.

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:26Speaker 05

  No, as I've mentioned before, the official term is called Raleigh scattering, but to put it in the most basic terms, because we have an atmosphere and we have very tiny particulate matters that are up in the atmosphere as well, the sunlight bouncing off these tiny little particles, these dust particles, they are of a shorter wavelength, so short waves, or short wavelength of light, is more along the lines of a bluish coloration. Now, when the sun is high in the sky, we see those short waves, when the sun is down low and it is traveling, those beams of light from the sun are traveling through a longer stretch to our eyes, to a longer wavelength, then we see a reddish coloration at sunrise

• 42:11Speaker 05

  and sunset. So when the sun is low, and those light rays are traveling for a very long stretch to you, those long wavelengths look red. When the sun is higher up in the sky, there's shorter wavelengths of light, the light is getting, taking a shorter path.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  What about, excuse me, what about when the sky's really white, like in a winter sky? Not when there's snow, but you know how sometimes the sky's just white?

• 42:34Speaker 05

  Well, that's probably because you're looking at the sun, or you're looking at the sky through a layer of maybe high or mid-level cloud. Cirroform clouds give that milky appearance, that whitish appearance of the sky.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cirroform?

• 42:45Speaker 05

  Well, not maiden form, but cirrus form.

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cirrus form.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  But they look, but they look like, then it's like one big, big, I was gonna say a dirty word, one big old cloud, right?

• 42:55Speaker 05

  Right. If, in advance of a major storm, especially in the wintertime, you get these high, thin cirrus clouds, they look like, like the tails of a horse, mare's tail clouds.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:04Speaker 05

  And as you get closer to the storm, the clouds begin to get into more of a layering effect, until finally that, you know, you, literally the whole sky is covered by one layer of high or mid-level clouds, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five thousand feet up, and it gives that, that, that white effect that you just mentioned.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  We had a creepy cloud that was actually in the, in the paper recently, was it in the Times?

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what was in the Times?

• 43:26Speaker 03

  That creepy cloud, that storm that happened in New York.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, a few nights ago, they photographed it over Yankee Stadium, it was, there was this crap-

• 43:32Speaker 05

  A creepy cloud.

• 43:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Creepy cloud, and you don't have cloud formations called creepy, creepy, creepy cloud?

• 43:37Speaker 03

  A creepy cumulus.

• 43:38Speaker 05

  Oh, I know what you're talking about, and, and this was, uh, this was actually over, uh, I think Citi Field.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 43:44Speaker 05

  Right, the mamatus clouds, and I saw that, I, I saw, and, and I almost fell off my chair.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  What was it?

• 43:49Speaker 05

  It, it's a special kind of cloud that is, it, it almost looks like, like a bunch of cotton balls.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cotton balls dangling from below, yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and at that time of day, you had sunset colors on the underside of the cloud.

• 43:59Speaker 05

  And this type of cloud is usually seen at or immediately after a very strong thunderstorm, sometimes even a thunderstorm that is, in the Midwest, sometimes produces tornadoes, and in this particular case, just before the ballgame started last week at Citi Field, there was a hellacious thunderstorm, and in its wake, it left behind these, these, uh, mamatus clouds, or mama clouds, if you will.

• 44:20Speaker 03

  So, could they have me- meant that a tornado was coming?

• 44:23Speaker 05

  No, not, this is in the aftermath of the storm, they usually see an after-storm passes by, so, um, it, but, as I said, sometimes in the Midwest, when they've had thunderstorms with tornadic activity, in the aftermath, you do see these, these strange cotton ball-like clouds in the sky.

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there really such a word as tornadic?

• 44:41Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, tornadic weather.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Now there is.

• 44:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  If Joe Rao says it, it is. Don't question our guess.

• 44:49Speaker 05

  But I gotta tell ya, I saw those clouds, when I saw that on television, I was watching the Met game, and they showed those clouds, and I said, you know, I won't say what I said initially when I saw that, and I ran outside, and I saw them for myself outside my office. I said, my goodness, it's unbelievable.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  Well, let me ask you, can I ask a rainbow question?

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So storms go through, yeah, so as storms go through, they give you rainbows. So you must have had a lot of them in Florida, Lynn.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Oh, well, you know, I really couldn't believe Ivan, our producer, had never seen a rainbow.

• 45:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ivan, you have to get out more, okay?

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Growing up in, I mean, he's also, he also cries a lot. But as a kid, I remember not only seeing rainbows, but seeing double rainbows often.

• 45:28Speaker 05

  Right, right. Usually, the most common type of the rainbow is the kind that gives you the 22-degree bow, if you will. But on occasions, when the atmosphere is exceptionally clear, and you don't have very much in the way of haze, you'll see a secondary bow that extends outward to about 46 degrees. And the other thing that's of interest to rainbow lovers is the fact you can never see a rainbow in the middle of the day.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  Why?

• 45:53Speaker 05

  Because the rainbow is a function of sunlight shining through raindrops. So if you've got the sun way up here in the sky, let's say at like noon or 1 o'clock, and it starts to rain, and the thunderstorm is now departing, and the raindrops, the last raindrops are falling, where's the rainbow going to be? It's always opposite to the sun in the sky. So the rainbow's gonna be down by your feet. So you have to get that sun at a...

• 46:13Speaker 03

  So it's early morning or twilight? It's twilight time?

• 46:16Speaker 05

  In the late afternoon, or it's kinda rare to get thunderstorms in the morning, but it's possible.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  Now, what is a rainbow exactly, before we go?

• 46:25Speaker 05

  Well, the raindrops act like little prisms. They break the light up into different colors, and the arc, actually, a rainbow is a complete circle, if you will, of color.

• 46:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've seen complete circles when I was on Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls.

• 46:39Speaker 05

  Right, and you create a rainbow yourself. If you don't wanna wait for a thunderstorm, just get out your garden hose and put it on a fine spray, stand with your back to the sun, turn the spray on, and you can create a marvelous rainbow.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Oh, that's great. So if I was like having a wedding, which I probably won't ever, Mom, calm down, but if I was having a wedding, could I create a rainbow for it? Could you create a rainbow?

• 46:58Speaker 05

  You could do that, so long as you have your audience or your guests standing in the right spot relative to the sun, or relative to whatever lights or...

• 47:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you just need a fancy sprinkler system to do this.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  That is such a bridezilla thing. I want a rainbow, a big rainbow. I'm not getting married unless I'm a big rainbow.

• 47:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the pot of gold, Joe, can the bride go to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

• 47:20Speaker 05

  Uh, she can go to anywhere she wants to go.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, the last question, and then I'll let Neil ask the last question. Can we, um, can you, do they have rainbows on other planets?

• 47:31Speaker 05

  That's a good question. I'd never even considered that.

• 47:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Joe, you're letting me down here, Joe.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  See, I'm smart. I ask good questions.

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you don't satisfy Lynn, you ain't coming back here.

• 47:40Speaker 05

  It rains sulfuric acid on Venus. That would be an interesting trick to see whether or not, you know, you can get a rainbow.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sulfuric acid rainbow.

• 47:46Speaker 05

  A sulfuric acid rainbow, the stuff that's in your car battery.

• 47:48Speaker 03

  Can you get on that for me, Joe? Get on that, bring it back.

• 47:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  Thank you for being such a wonderful guest.

• 47:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Joe, you're like the man, Joe.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  It was very fun being here.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Can we call you with more rainbow questions and...

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Can we call you with more questions about all these things?

• 48:03Speaker 05

  You could, you could call me anytime, Lynn. Anytime you want.

• 48:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's flirting, I think. I feel it. I feel it. So Lynn?

• 48:10Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 48:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How've you been?

• 48:12Speaker 03

  I'm fine.

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're about to end the show. Do you have any, anything bugging you? Remember, I'm your private astrophysicist.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm, Joe, just so you know, and people at home, I, uh, they, we, they've decided to let me ask Neil one question at the end of the show every day. So I can, I can learn. I watched, uh, Nurse Jackie again.

• 48:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 48:31Speaker 03

  And I'm obsessed. And they were talking about, um, matter and antimatter and looking for the God particle. What is the God particle? I couldn't understand it on Nurse Jackie, so I'm hoping you can explain it.

• 48:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A God particle is a proposed particle that we don't know if it exists yet, but we have good reasons to think it's there. And the biggest accelerators in the world that smash atoms, smash particles together, we're hoping that out of the, out of the train wreck of smashed particles will reveal this one particle whose properties endow other particles with mass.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  You mean it makes it all stick together?

• 49:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It gives them mass. It is the, it is a measure of how much resistance they have to be setting, to be set into motion.

• 49:12Speaker 03

  No wonder that's important on Nurse Jackie.

• 49:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they've been calling that the God particle. It gives meaning to all particles in the cosmos.

• 49:20Speaker 03

  Thank you, Neil.

• 49:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, we'll give you one question a week. And yes, the, you are listening to StarTalk. Funded by the National Science Foundation. And I'm joined every week by Lynn Copelitz, comedian, actress, co-host. I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, thanking Joe Rao, who's been our wonderful guest today. Thank you, Joe. Joe, we'll have to get you back. Thank you. You're listening to StarTalk.