[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 9 - 11:10:14 ]
Welcome to Mrs. Mock's class! You're famous now for sending in such good questions! Sten is here and ready to chat! Hello Sten!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 10 - 11:10:34 ]
RE: [Martin5thgrade/MSOC-Mrs.Mock/MontessoriSchoolofCorona] Do study anything about Mars? Are you looking for any alien presecents on Mars? Would you rather work with the Hubble telescope or work with your telescope?
Hi! No, I do not study Mars professionally, I am a cosmologist and I also study how stars are formed in the Milky Way.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 11 - 11:11:37 ]
RE: [Ronica4thgrade/MSOC-Mrs.Mock/MontessoriSchoolofCorona] How old were you when you got your first telescope? How do the stars look like to you? Did you ever see a shooting star? What did you wish for? Did your wish come true? Did you teach your children about stars to? Were they interested in it? Do you work with a group? If you were a astronaut which Planet would you go on first?
I was 10 years old when I got my first one, then I built one when I was 13 years old, and a second larger one when I was 16

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 12 - 11:12:30 ]
RE: [Ronica4thgrade/MSOC-Mrs.Mock/MontessoriSchoolofCorona] How old were you when you got your first telescope? How do the stars look like to you? Did you ever see a shooting star? What did you wish for? Did your wish come true? Did you teach your children about stars to? Were they interested in it? Do you work with a group? If you were a astronaut which Planet would you go on first?
Yes i have seen a lot of shooting stars in my life, and they are always a thrill each time...how about you?

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 14 - 11:13:25 ]
RE: [StenOdenwald/Astronomer] I was 10 years old when I got my first one, then I built one when I was 13 years old, and a second larger one when I was 16
My daughters are 4 and 7 years old, and they also love to look at the stars, and know the planets in the solar system by heart in the right order!

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 16 - 11:14:46 ]
RE: [Yash4thgrade/MSOC-Mrs.Mock/MontessoriSchoolofCorona] We can not stay for the chat because we have Social Studies but we will look up the answers in the archive. Thanks for answering the qustions last week!
Goodbye Yash and thanks for submitting your questions today. Sorry you have to miss the chat, but Social Studies is a good thing too! Your questions with Sten's answers will appear in the chat archive.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 17 - 11:15:01 ]
RE: [StenOdenwald/Astronomer] I was 10 years old when I got my first one, then I built one when I was 13 years old, and a second larger one when I was 16
Sometimes I work with a group of two other astronomers. We are all working on the same 'problem' in astronomy and combining our 'smarts' is a good way to work on the problem to solve it! Othertimes i like to work by my self on projects that are unique to my interests.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 18 - 11:15:54 ]
RE: [Yash4thgrade/MSOC-Mrs.Mock/MontessoriSchoolofCorona] We can not stay for the chat because we have Social Studies but we will look up the answers in the archive. Thanks for answering the qustions last week!
Hope they made some sense to you all...Its hard asking 'simple' questions because sometimes they have very complex answers!

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 22 - 11:17:34 ]
RE: [George.Patis/Hellenic.College.Thessaloniki] Hi, Everybody....!!!
Hi George! Welcome back!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 23 - 11:18:06 ]
RE: [Raquel/SP/Brazil] Hello ! People dream of spacial expeditions, inhabit distant planets, go out of Earth. I know that one space station wouldn't make much difference, however, dozens of them would decrease our planet mass in some thousands of tons. Is there any sollution to avoid changes in the Sun-Earth-Moon interactions in this case ?
Hi Raquel, welcome back!! The mass of the earth is over 5 x 10^21 metric tons. There is nothing we can do that would emove enough mass to make the slightest difference. Just because it is in orbit does not mean it is lost to the total earth mass budget anyway.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 24 - 11:19:16 ]
RE: [Ronica4thgrade-Mrs.Mock/MontessoriSchoolofCorona] Yes, Ihave seen a shooting star.They look like they are a little fireball coming from space.
I think they are very pretty...and to think you get all that light and 'fire' from something only as big as a grain of beach sand!!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 25 - 11:21:17 ]
RE: [Raquel/SP/Brazil] If I travel at 99,99% the light speed ( not considering mass increase ) and a light beam passes by my side, will it be invisible to my eyes ( will it be a radio wave for me ? ) ?
No...first of all the wave would engulf you..and you would see it blue shifted as it approaches and red shifted as it moves away from you in your direction of travel.

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 27 - 11:23:03 ]
RE: [Sandy/NASAChatHost] Hi George! Welcome back!
George: So what hard questions have you thought up for Sten today?!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 28 - 11:23:30 ]
RE: [Raquel/SP/Brazil] I was talking about building space stations in other celestial bodies...
Oh...still the amount of mass in any human construction is insignificant.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 29 - 11:25:51 ]
Did you all know that on February 11, Pluto will once again be the most distant planet in our solar system...?

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 33 - 11:29:47 ]
RE: [Raquel/SP/Brazil] Think about the following 500 years and how many of them will be launched... :)
You dont change the dynamics of the solar system and the earths orbit unless you change the masses of the planets by an amount that is 'significant' changing the mass of the earth by a billion tons, when its mass is over 1 million million billion tons makes no physical difference.

[ Raquel/SP/Brazil - 34 - 11:31:28 ]
Thanks again Dr. Odenwald, I have to go !

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 35 - 11:31:45 ]
RE: [Raquel/SP/Brazil] What is your personal opinion about Pluto ? Is it really a planet ?
yes...but it is also a trans-neptunian object. This whole business of reclassifying Pluto as an asteroid is news media nonsence. All astronomers want to do is givbe Pluto TWO classifications...as a planet, and as the largest known trans-Neptunian body. there are currently 80 of these known, and some have 1/5 the size of Pluto!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 37 - 11:33:09 ]
RE: [George.Patis/Hellenic.College.Thessaloniki] Dr. Sten, I would like to ask you something for your job. If somebody want to make career in Astronomy,like you, he should have a physics diploma first or he could go directly for astronomy courses on a University?
George, in just about every major university that trains astronomers, there is NO difference between a degree in physics and one in astronomy...at the undergraduate level, it is only a matter of a few extra classes in basic astronomy that makes a degree in astronomy.

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 38 - 11:33:24 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] Hello Sten, I met you in Tucson. My class is interested in how fast the earth spins. Is it faster than Jupiter?
Welcome Renee and the rest of your class! Very glad you could make it again!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 39 - 11:36:03 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] Hello Sten, I met you in Tucson. My class is interested in how fast the earth spins. Is it faster than Jupiter?
Hi again!! The equatorial speed of the earth is 1,100 miles/hour. For Jupiter it is 28,700 miles/hour! Faster than the speed of the Space Shuttle!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 41 - 11:38:55 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] Have you ever seen something really unusual in the sky?
Yes...I have seen a few UFOs...lights flying in formation and moving faster that you would expect considering they did not make any noise...Interesting, but with all the military stuff going on these days, and weird atmospheric conditions, i dont worry too much about these kinds of things

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 44 - 11:41:34 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] What kind of telescope do you use and approximately how much does it cost? What is your favorite thing to look at in the sky?
Professionally, i havent used ground-based telescopes in at least 10 years. I use satellite observatory data from telescopes in space, mostly. I used to use radio telescopes like the VLA in the 1980's, but I dont 'do' radio astronomy anymore.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 45 - 11:42:55 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] Do you study the moon through your telescope?
Actually, I dont study the moon at all. I am not the kind of astronomer that studies things inside our solar system. I study very very distant galaxies billions of light years away mostly.

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 48 - 11:44:58 ]
RE: [George.Patis/Hellenic.College.Thessaloniki] Sorry, I have a lot work to do... See you next week!
Goodbye George!

[ George.Patis/Hellenic.College.Thessaloniki - 50 - 11:45:39 ]
Bye Sandy....take care...!!!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 51 - 11:45:48 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] Have you ever seen Pluto? Do you use the Hubble?
I have seen Pluto, but only in the pictures that come back from Hubble. You can see them over at http://www.stsci.edu ...I dont use optical telescopes. i work mostly in the infrared part of the spectrum with satellites.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 52 - 11:46:53 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] What's your favorite planet? What's your favorite "thing" in space?
Hmmm...my favorite planet is Jupiter, because its just so alien..powerful...full of spectacular radiation fields and weird-looking moons that may have life inside them.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 54 - 11:48:15 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] What's your favorite planet? What's your favorite "thing" in space?
My favorite 'thing' in space is probably a planetary nebula called MyCn18...visit the Hubble web site and look at it. It looks like a giant alien eyeball looking back at you across thousands of light years of space!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 55 - 11:50:22 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] Does that mean you study the light and use color to decide what you're seeing?
That's right. We can build telescopes that 'see' the heat waves produced by distant things. This kind of radiation cuts right through dust clouds and lets you look deep inside things that are completely dark to visible light. Its like seeing an xray of your bones...we can see stars being formed and all kinds of exciting things. The 'color' of the light tells us how hot the things are.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 57 - 11:54:05 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] Do stars have a certain shape like planets do?
Yep...most of them are pretty round, but if they are spinning, they tend to get flattened at the poles. Jupiter is actually not perfectly round but if you look at a picture and measure, you will see it is a bit squashed. There are stars that get so close to each other in theor orbits that the gravity pulls them into the shaps of giant footballs!

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 58 - 11:56:29 ]
EVERYONE: There are about 5 minutes left in Sten's chat today. Go ahead and send in a few more questions. Also, please let Quest know how we're doing with our chats and fill out a short chat survey at-- http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/qchats/qchat-surveys. Thanks :-)

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 60 - 11:58:21 ]
RE: [Renee-Mrs.Crawley/DrachmanPrimaryMagnetSchool] WoW! How many light years away can you really see things clearly? Do you get real pictures or just colors you interprete?
The Hubble, working in the optical spectrum, can detect galaxies 14 billion light years away...we do not see any details in many of them, but we do see the very BRIGHT spots where massive stars are forming. These stars are millions of times more luminous than the sun, and we can see clusters of them all the way to earth...

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 61 - 12:01:14 ]
OK everyone...Thank you very much for your great questions , and being so interested in space on a thursday afternoon! I need to go back to my job and study the universe!! ;>

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 62 - 12:06:06 ]
Goodbye Everyone! Please be sure to sign up for Sten's chat next week: Thurs. Feb. 11, 11 am Pacific. Have a good week!