America's Pastime: Planetary Science

This week’s Planetary Radio sticks with the home team. No, not the Dodgers. (But go, Big Blue!) I mean the heavy hitters here at the Planetary Society. Leading the lineup is the boss. Bill Nye talks about last week’s gravity boost given to the Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft by our home planet. The Science Guy can now be seen in a new series of very entertaining videos that explore aspects of the Juno mission. We’ve got links to these “Why With Nye” segments, courtesy of Thnkr. There’s an excerpt in the radio show.

Batting clean-up is Emily Lakdawalla. Our Planetary Evangelist just returned from the Denver meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences, or DPS. She's still writing about all she learned. You can hear her recap, focused on three major conference themes, in this week’s show. Emily was particularly impressed by a proposal that would provide telescopes and training to rural schools, enabling teachers and students to join occultation studies of Kuiper Belt and other objects.  She also takes us to Saturn's moon Titan.

Bruce Betts brings it home with a ellipsoidal shot to the left field bleachers. With his eye on the bright ball called Venus, Dr. Betts rounds the big diamond in the sky in this week’s What’s Up segment. We also learn about our planetary lineup’s most eccentric pitcher.  Planet.  Most eccentric planet. 

Enough already.  I’m afraid you’ll balk at my mound of less than clever metaphors.

Ad Astros.