Credit: NASA

Credit: NASA, S. Gezari (The Johns Hopkins University), and J. Guillochon (University of California, Santa Cruz)

“When the star is ripped apart by the gravitational forces of the black hole, some part of the star’s remains falls into the black hole while the rest is ejected at high speeds,” said project lead Suvi Gezari of the Johns Hopkins University. “We are seeing the glow from the stellar gas falling into the black hole over time. We’re also witnessing the spectral signature of the ejected gas, which we find to be mostly helium. It is like we are gathering evidence from a crime scene. Because there is very little hydrogen and mostly helium in the gas, we detect from the carnage that the slaughtered star had to have been the helium-rich core of a stripped star.”

The above image and this video are computer simulations:

The video shows a star being shredded by the gravity of a massive black hole. As the video caption says, “Some of the stellar debris falls into the black hole and some of it is ejected into space at high speeds. The areas in white are regions of highest density, with progressively redder colors corresponding to lower-density regions. The blue dot pinpoints the black hole’s location. The elapsed time corresponds to the amount of time it takes for a Sun-like star to be ripped apart by a black hole a million times more massive than the Sun.”

If you haven’t, check out Goldpaint Photography for some amazing astronomical images. This image of the night sky in Norway is also stunning – it shows the Milky Way and the Northern Lights running in parallel lines down the sky. Gorgeous!

In other eye candy news, check out this gorgeous video by Sander van den Berg, featuring Saturn, which uses image sequences from NASA’s Cassini and Voyager missions.

This lovely image of the Moon was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope – it shows the crater Tycho. However, it was taken for an interesting reason – in preparation for the transit of Venus across the Sun’s face on on the 5th of June, 2012. Hubble cannot look at the Sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Moon and use it as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight. A small fraction of the light from the sun will have passed through Venus’s atmosphere during the transit; imprinted on that light astronomers expect to find the fingerprints of the planet’s atmospheric makeup.

These observations are similar to a technique that is already being used to learn about the chemical composition of the atmospheres of giant planets outside our Solar System passing in front of their stars. We already know the chemical makeup of Venus’s atmosphere, and that there is no life on the planet. But it’s a good way to test how well this technique will work for detecting the very faint fingerprints of the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet around another star.

Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA

Another milestone met on the road to building the James Webb Space Telescope. The center section of the backplane structure has been completed! The backplane will support the telescope’s beryllium mirrors, instruments, thermal control systems and other hardware, serving as a sort of “spine” for the telescope.

Credit: ATK

This gorgeous Hubble image of the Egg Nebula shows a specific period of the life cycle of a star, when it runs out of nuclear fuel, known as the preplanetary or protoplanetary nebula stage.

Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA

Planetary nebulae actually have nothing to do with planets. Over a few thousand years, the hot remains of the aging star in the center of the nebula heat it up, excite the gas, and make it glow – this type of nebula is called a “planetary” nebula. Pictured here, though is a preplanetary nebulae – this phase of a star’s life is relatively brief, which means there are relatively few of them in existence at any one time. They are also very dim, requiring powerful telescopes to be seen. Being rare and faint means they were only discovered recently. (The Egg Nebula, shown here, was the first to be discovered, and was spotted for the first time less than 40 years ago.) This class of object remains a bit mysterious as a result.

At the center of this image, and hidden in a thick cloud of dust, is the nebula’s central star. Four “searchlight” beams of light coming from it shine out through the nebula. It is thought perhaps jets coming from the star carve ring-shaped holes in the thick cocoon of dust, letting the beams of light emerge through the otherwise opaque cloud. How the stellar jets produce these holes isn’t known for certain, but one possible explanation is perhaps that a binary star system, rather than a single star, is at the center of the nebula.

The onion-like layered structure of the more diffuse cloud surrounding the central cocoon is caused by periodic bursts of material being ejected from the dying star. The bursts typically occur every few hundred years. Read more at the NASA feature article.

Credits: Left image – Optical: ESO/VLT; Close-up – X-ray: NASA/CXC/Curtin University/R. Soria et al., Optical: NASA/STScI/Middlebury College/F. Winkler et al.

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers discovered an extraordinary outburst by a black hole in the spiral galaxy M83. This black hole is what is known as a ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) – that is objects that give off more X-rays than most “normal” binary systems in which a companion star is in orbit around a neutron star or black hole.

The observations, made over several years, showed that the ULX in M83 increased in X-ray brightness by at least 3,000 times. This sudden brightening is one of the largest changes in X-rays ever seen for this type of object, which do not usually show dormant periods. You can read more about this object at the NASA feature about it.

Please welcome our new guest blogger, Dr. Christina Richey!

Over 3,000 booths, 100 stage shows, a book fair, a career fair, and an estimated 100,000 people each day gathered in one building. At times you’d smell something burning, or you’d hear an explosion followed by squeals of pure excitement. Throngs of people would cheer on races across cornstarch and the occasional astronaut would walk by. All the while folks waited in line to meet people like The Big Bang Theory’s Mayim Bialik. In the midst of organized chaos on Saturday and Sunday, I realized one thing: I love science! The USA Science & Engineering Festival was held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on April 28th & 29th and lived up to its claims as “the largest celebration of science and engineering in the USA”. It was, indeed, a large, boisterous celebration.

Credit: Christina Richey

I was a volunteer scientist at the booth for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in the NASA Pavilion area. For the entire weekend, we had a steady flow of kids and adults visiting to our booth to make star life cycle bookmarks, watch the JWST deployment video, or hold pieces of hardware. All the while they got to learn about the JWST from the scientists and engineers working on the project.

The entrance of the NASA Pavilion area greeted you with the music of Third Rock Radio, America’s Space Radio Station. Once you entered the pavilion area, it was everything NASA squeezed into a hallway of booths. Along with the JWST, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), Kepler, Fermi, Dawn, and MESSENGER missions were all represented, as were the Challenger Center, Landsat, the International Space Station (ISS), and many more. Each booth was filled with scientists, engineers, and educators on hand, ready to excite children and adults alike about what we do on a daily basis.

Credit: Christina Richey

My booth was directly across from the area where NASA Astronaut Leland Melvin was signing autographs and meeting the kids. A small version of the hyperwall (a video wall capable of displaying multiple high-definition data visualizations and/or images simultaneously across an arrangement of screens) was up, with presentations by scientists in the Earth, Planetary, and Astrophysics fields. And this was just the NASA Pavilion Area! Luckily, I had the opportunity to explore the exhibits during each of the afternoons. It was an amazing sight to see so many fields of science and engineering represented.

The MythBusters put on a fantastic stage show on the Curie Stage while the Science Cheerleaders pepped up the crowd at the Wright Brothers Stage. There were a large section of schools and industries with booths in the career fair, which was meant to give high school students the opportunity to see what careers were available in science and engineering. One of my favorite places to stop was the Orion Service Module (hosted by Lockheed Martin), where kids had the chance to look inside the concept vehicle of a planned beyond low-Earth orbit manned spacecraft mission.

Credit: Christina Richey

Another great spot was The Planetary Society’s booth, where people stood in line for hours to meet with Bill Nye and hear talks from astronaut Tom Jones and astrophysicist Lisa Randall. I even had the chance to get up close to an Olympic medal from the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, which was a rather interesting and rare opportunity given the fact that the United States boycotted those particular games.

Credit: Christina Richey

I also had the chance to listen in on a Q&A session with a group of astronauts at the Lockheed Martin booth and see their hallway of model satellites, including a rather impressive Hubble model.

Credit: Christina Richey

Another of my personal (nerd-tastic) favorites was the booth for “R2DC”, or rather the R2D2 builders of DC, where two Star Wars R2D2 robots were spinning and wheeling about, beeping out greetings to the kids that walked by. And there was an entire section for the National Robot Festival and DIY Expo, where kids were building robots and launchers. More squeals of excitement and cheers for explosions or battling robots. For an entire weekend, science and engineering overtook the DC area and it was awesome!

Credit: Christina Richey

Having said that, to instrument builders, X-ray astronomy *is* a distinct discipline. Also, it takes time to become adept at using any complex tools and X-ray data analysis is no exception. In that sense, in terms of technical proficiency, I am an X-ray astronomer. I have also worked with infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet observations before – but not radio observations, not even by collaborating with the experts, until recently.

This is changing, partly because a phenomenon I’m very interested in called “nova outburst” can produce radio waves and X-ray photons. Basically, novae are nuclear explosions on the surface of the white dwarfs in cataclysmic variables and symbiotic stars. The material ejected (called ejecta) from these explosions emit radio waves when they are just expanding. However, collisions within the ejecta or collisions of the ejecta with some other materials can heat them up to many millions of degrees, making them bright in X-rays. So it makes a lot of sense to observe novae with X-rays and radio at the same time. Another reason for my evolving collaboration is that the premier instrument of radio astronomy has undergone a significant upgrade in the last several years, making them capable of doing observations that were never possible before.

Recently, I had the chance to visit the Science Operations Center of National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico. About one hour west, on the high plains of San Augustin, is what used to be called the Very Large Array (VLA). The VLA uses a set of 27 antennas, each having a diameter of 25 meters (or 82 feet). By combining the signals from these antennas, the VLA acts like a much bigger telescope – the separations of the antennas, not the size of each individual antenna, determine how detailed an image we get (“the angular resolution”). The antennas of the VLA can be moved along special railroad tracks to several pre-constructed stations to suit the need of the observers. It’s a stunning sight to see the VLA, particularly when the entire array is moving from one target on the sky to the next. I even got to climb up on the 28th antenna undergoing routine maintenance (you don’t want to do that with ones in use – for one thing, if the antenna is tilted to observe an object low in the sky, it would be very dangerous).

Credit: Koji Mukai

Credit: Koji Mukai

Credit: Koji Mukai

Credit: Koji Mukai

Credit: Koji Mukai

Credit: Koji Mukai

The VLA was originally constructed during the 1970s. The antennas themselves are still fine. But the instrument that takes the signals from the 27 antennas and combines them into an image, the correlators, are essentially special-purpose computers. And you all know how much computers have improved over the last several decades. So NRAO has upgraded the VLA, giving it brand new correlators (and making a few other upgrades). To mark the completion (more or less) of this upgrade, NRAO gave it a new name: the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, or JVLA, after the pioneer of radio astronomy.

Credit: Koji Mukai

I had a lot of fun visiting Socorro, talking to my colleagues, seeing the JVLA in person, and eating a lot of food with green chile. I’m still not a radio astronomer – not even in the sense that I am an X-ray astronomer. But I have become more familiar and comfortable with the subtleties of radio observations. I’m looking forward to continuing my collaboration with my colleagues at Socorro and elsewhere on radio observations of novae, cataclysmic variables, and symbiotic stars.

Koji displays his new JVLA t-shirt and mug.

Star-forming region 30 Doradus is colloquially known as the Tarantula Nebula (creepy!), but this new image released with data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys makes it look more like a rich underwater scene. Located within our galaxy’s close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud, it is one of the best stellar nurseries for astronomers to observe prolific star birth and learn more about how young stars form and grow. This image combines dozens of observations from Hubble, showing off star clusters at varying ages. The false color in this image represents the hot gas within the regions – red signifies hydrogen gas and blue represents oxygen. What a tangled web these stars weave!

Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and D. A Gouliermis
Acknowledgement: Flickr user Eedresha Sturdivant

Hubble has been busy in the past couple of weeks releasing amazing images and intriguing stories! Here’s another peek inside a star-forming region within the Large Magellanic Cloud, this time one known as NGC 2040 or LH 88. This image shows a wide range of wavelengths of light – ultraviolet, visible and infrared light – each of which reveal different details of baby stars forming and growing within the loose star cluster.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

In this image of globular cluster Messier 70, hundreds of thousands of stars are tightly bound together with gravity. The stars in a globular cluster look very densely piled together from our perspective – especially so in Messier 70, where a core collapse has caused even more stars to squeeze together in the core, giving it an especially intensely bright center!

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Looking deeper into space, here’s a shot of NGC 4980, a spiral galaxy spotted within the constellation of Hydra. The deformed shape of the galaxy is a bit of a mystery – this is usually due to gravitational interactions with another galaxy, but in this case, astronomers haven’t spotted any nearby culprits! Scientists are especially interested in studying the central disc-type bulge of this galaxy.

Credit: NASA/GSFC

Finally, check out this awesome new visualization from topographic data gathered by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter – they’ve recreated the famous “Earthrise” view that Apollo 8 astronauts had in 1968. The video pairs the animation with historic images and mission audio.

On its way to Dulles Airport (where it landed just outside DC) from Kennedy Space Center (where it took off from), it made approximately 4 loops around the Washington, DC metro area. There are many spectacular pictures of it, many of them taken by people lucky enough to look up and see it. Check out the #spottheshuttle hash tag on twitter to see some of them.

The official photos from NASA HQ, many taken from the T-38 chase plane, are spectacular. The photo below is from that set.

Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz

The shuttle did fly over NASA Goddard and was a beautiful if bittersweet sight. There is a Flickr group that has lots of photos taken by NASA Goddard folks. If you are one of them, consider adding your photos.

We’ll leave with you a couple of photos taken by friends from Goddard.

Credit: Tim Reichart

Credit: Richard Kelley

Or try Craig’s stereo image:

Credit: Craig Markwardt

The hardware in question is called the OSIM, or the OTE (Optical Telescope Element) Simulator. (I know, that’s an acronym within an acronym!)

What is the OSIM? It basically simulates the actual telescope for the purposes of testing the science instruments before they fly on the observatory. The OSIM itself will never fly into space, but it has an important job verifying that the science cameras and spectrographs will function as planned.

The actual telescope, known as the OTE, is the eye of the James Webb Space Telescope observatory and includes all the mirrors as well as the structure they will be mounted on, called the backplane. The OTE mirrors will gather the light coming from space and provide it to the Webb’s science instruments. Webb needs a large mirror to collect as much light as possible to see galaxies from the beginning of the Universe and to detect other faint astronomical sources.

Be sure to read the photo feature for more information on this test and what’s next!

Sara: Can you give us a little background on what you do, what your profession is?

Scott: Well, I’m the property master on the show and basically it’s anything an actor touches, from the rings, watches, food, guns, their computers, the chemicals, the experiments they do on the set. The wacky games they play. I built the 3D chess set – the actual one we bought was just too small. It was like on a Friday run-through and Chuck [Lorre, executive producer and co-creator] goes, “It’s really good. But can we have one, like, three times the size by Monday?” I literally built it. If you look at them, they kind of have this curve that holds the three levels. So I went and I got a globe stand that has the same curve and then I built it off that. So we just worked all weekend long and had it for them.

Photo courtesy of CBS/Warner Bros.

Sara: What’s the difference between props and sets?

Scott: If there’s just the floor and four empty walls, the production designer does all the colors and everything, and then the set decorator will come in and she’ll put the rugs in and the coffee tables and the couches and end tables and lamps and pictures and flowers. And in this case, on this show, Ann does all the weird little, you know, chemistry, or the DNA model, and all the old gadgets and things that are just around. Where I just deal with anything actually that’s in the script that the actors touch.

Sara: It seems like there must be overlap.

Scott: There is. We work together. I’ve worked on shows where we [the crew] just don’t get along. When I’m swamped and Ann sees something she can help me with, she’ll do that or vice versa for her. It’s just teamwork.

Sara: What are some of the duties you have during the build-up and the taping of a show like this?

Scott: After I get out of here probably midnight, one o’clock tonight, I’ll have to come back for a ten o’clock production meeting and the whole thing starts over again. But today for instance, we have a three o’clock run through, right before this, we go through all the sets. I cook all the food for the actors too. I was going to be a chef ‘til I got up to 333 pounds and said that’s not the line of work for me! But they all call me Chef London. But I mean, I literally just got done cooking. I cooked for all the background…

Maggie: Because they eat a lot on this show.

Scott: Yeah, they’re always eating. All the Chinese food. Tonight they’re having pizza and salad and things in the boys’ apartment. The cafeteria scenes…you know, they’re in there. So I’ve got to make the actors’ food plus all the background food. Some shows I think we’ve had every single scene, between three cafeteria scenes and two restaurant scenes. I knew you guys were coming today so I got on it a little bit early.

Maggie: Aw, we appreciate it!

Scott: It’s kind of nice. Four o’clock, when we finish the run through usually, and filming starts at 6:30, there’s been times when literally, I usually change my shirt and shoes, and literally they’re doing the cast intros when I walk out. That’s how close it is on things. And this week I had to make a black light that they could actually see. When you turn on a black light you can barely see it. So we had to just go with a straight florescent bulb and put a purple gel in there, so it would have more intensity so the camera can read it better.

Sara: Where do you find inspiration for the items on the set? Especially when it comes to the science and technology items.

Scott: Well, you know, I talk to David Saltzberg, our physicist over at UCLA. And you know, Bill Prady himself… Bill and Chuck and Steve Molaro, the executive producers, I’m convinced they are these characters. They really are! And most of the writers are too. They all give me the inspiration and kind of direction on where to go. I’ve had to correct them a few days. Bill told me since day one, “We’re going to come up with some strange stuff and it’s your job to make sure it’s accurate!”

Sara: Well, we’re always really impressed – since we come from work facilities that look like that, to see them using the real thing, in an atmosphere that looks so real, it’s awesome!

Scott: Ann does a fabulous job on the sets. Did you see the episode where they took the vacuu-form and made it a panini press? They came up with that on Wednesday morning, and the one that’s on the set, I designed it all and took it down to special effects, and luckily, they had just thrown one away, because they were downsizing their office, and they threw one away, so we converted it all over and went and bought a panini press and gutted it and put it in there.

Maggie: One of the things that we mentioned to Ann that she thought you were responsible for was when they were observing with the telescope, one of the computers had PINE, the email program running on it. That’s so realistic, it’s text only, but a lot of people at NASA use it still.

Photo courtesy of CBS/Warner Brothers.

Scott: David will give me a lot of that. And then I have Jason Weldon, he’s our technical video playback guy. One thing this show has done is taught me computers. One time a computer just shut down and I had to reboot it and that one minute it takes to reboot it is like an hour in front of 300 people and Chuck Lorre standing behind me going “Do we go on, should we forget this?” So then it’s nice to have the technician there because then I just go “fix it!”

Maggie: The level of detail is definitely noticed and appreciated. The set is so rich, both the apartments and stores and everything.

Sara: How much is built versus found?

Scott: Mostly it’s found. Some of it is built. I don’t know if you saw the space toilet episode? I got pictures from the Smithsonian Institution and it was basically the inside without the outer housing on it. And again, you know, I designed it, took it for their approval. There was everything in that thing from strainers for the basic bowl, because it just looked just like it. I took the three legs off it. It was like building a Model T. Again, I worked all weekend long. And we got it out there on Friday, had actual air cannons in it. It had sponges that were painted to look like the meatloaf that blew up, we put a little baby powder in there, because it goes so fast, you can’t see anything, so you can see the smoke. And we had it working on Friday, and they go, “Isn’t it going to be painted?” You know, it was all just welded tubing. “Isn’t it going to be painted and look nice?” So Saturday we came in and we took it all apart, and then painted every part, let it dry over night, came in Sunday, assembled it all. Made the Rolling Stone magazine and all sorts of stuff. It was pretty cool.

Photo courtesy of CBS/Warner Bros.

Maggie: Is there something that you’re most proud of finding or acquiring for the show?

Scott: There are so many strange things! One was probably the Death Star from LEGO. We went online and we found a couple, but one was fully assembled, taken apart in sections, and bagged for easy assembly. Well, when it got here, there was a bunch of baggies with about four pieces each connected in each one.

Maggie & Sara: [groan]

Scott: So the whole office staff, the PAs [production assistants] and everyone up in the production office [worked on it] for like two weeks. I mean, they’re usually really good about giving me time. If they see something coming up that’s going to be tight to get, they’ll give you plenty of time to get it. And that worked out really well.

Photo courtesy of CBS/Warner Bros.

Scott: I like building, a lot of guys sub it out to places, but with the time frame… thank goodness this is a Monday/Tuesday show because I don’t think a lot of it could get done on a Monday through Friday schedule! I get the grace of a couple of extra days. I get a full seven days rather than five days. So it’s fun. And they’re really appreciative of everything I do too, so that makes it worth it.

Maggie: What is your official job title?

Ann: I’m the set decorator, and so usually once I get the plans and the walls are built is when I start my work of providing the furniture and the plants and the artwork and all the cool objects, the floor coverings and the practical lights.

Maggie: Where do you source everything? Do you have to send out a crew to go buy things in different places?

Ann: I go out to the prop houses or online or retail stores, and I pick it all out myself, every single thing on the show, and it’s a lot of stuff. Then my crew goes and picks it up for me and they bring it back here and place it where we think it should go.

Maggie: Once the initial plans are developed, and things are shopped for, what are your duties show to show? Do you supervise how stuff is put on the set?

Ann: Yes! And people think that, “Oh, once you have the main sets done, you pretty much don’t have much to do, right?” But little do they know, every week sets come in and go out. So, Koothrappali’s apartment doesn’t sit here on the stage all the time. It goes out and comes back in. So just collecting all that stuff again is a bit of a job. But usually my lead man takes care of most of that. But every once in a while when we try to get stuff back, and it’s a rental, they’ll be out, so I have to find whatever items are missing off of our order. But also, we have lots of swing sets every week, that are new sets, that people don’t even realize. We may only be in there for 10 seconds, but yet I have to do the whole set.

Maggie: We know that Leonard & Sheldon’s apartment is always there but it’s amazing when you watch the show that Raj’s apartment and all these things come down and up, because they look the same every time. And I can’t imagine how much work it is to put the comic book store up and down, and it’s impressive.

Sara: They’re very rich – I can’t even imagine every item that has to go into them.

Maggie: Yeah, because there’s a lot of stuff, it’s not just like one shelf with three things on it. There’s a lot of detail in each set.

Sara: These guys own a lot of stuff!

[Everyone laughs.]

Ann: The thing about the comic book store that’s funny is, I got it all done and I thought it was a miracle to get it done and to get all that stuff in there, and also its legal clearances and everything. And then after two episodes, one of the producers said, “Now this has got to change every episode, this has to be different every episode,” and I almost fell over because it was so much work! But we figured out a way. We’re all hooked up now, that we can keep circulating the inventory and keep new stuff coming.

Maggie: Where do you get inspiration as far as the science and technical sets? You’ve had universities and observatory rooms. And one of the little details everyone liked – was it in the Keck room, when Wolowitz was doing observations? – one of the monitors had PINE up on it, the email program, because a lot of us at NASA use PINE. That was a little detail we got, that we’re sure no one else would have. But everyone was excited to see the PINE window. How do you learn what to put in these scientists’ houses and workplaces?

Photo courtesy of CBS/Warner Bros.

Ann: Well, that particular thing I can’t take credit for – I wouldn’t put it past Scott [the propmaster], who I think you’re also going to be talking to. He probably thought of that because he’s in touch with the video guy and sort of in contact with him.

Mainly before the show even started, I toured some, well, at the time they were going to be physics students, not professors, and so I toured a lot of physicists’ apartments, and that actually was not as big a help as I hoped, because I’m sure they’re all always working, so there wasn’t that much in their place to say “I’m a scientist!” But what we did do was go to the physics department where David [Saltzberg, the science advisor] works and we took hundreds of photos and so I still refer to them all the time when we do new labs. And we just took tons of photos of the labs. And also of course for the Keck Observatory room, I just found whatever I could find online and luckily there were lots of photos. And so my goal is always to make it what it would be in real life and make it as authentic as possible, but make it a little cooler and a little more attractive.

Maggie: Did you have any inspiration in particular for Leonard & Sheldon’s apartment? And the science instruments on the shelves? Bill [Prady, executive producer and co-creator of the show] had told us that he (or you) wanted it to look like Leonard had gone shopping at the Pasadena flea market – where did you guys get that idea?

Ann: Well, I think we realized that these are not guys who are collecting art necessarily, so to Sheldon, the big DNA sculpture [in the apartment, see photo below] would be art. And we thought he would find that cool. So based on my conversations with Bill and Chuck [Lorre, executive producer and co-creator] and a couple of the physicists, I just tried to imagine what would be cool for these guys. And at the time, it didn’t seem like they really would have very much money, so yeah, we thought thrift shop, or Rose Bowl flea market, but where I got a lot of it was an Aerospace Scrap yard. It’s where I got a lot of the cool rocket parts and stuff like that and vintage electronic devices – and literally it’s a scrap yard. It’s like a junk yard. And so we were digging for days, excavating these things. Just the coolest things we could find. There actually are some rocket parts from famous rockets in there. Although they weren’t marked and now I can’t tell you what they were! But there might be an Apollo something!

Maggie: What was the find you’re most proud of for the set?

Ann: Oh, that’s hard! So many of them have been so exciting, how would I pick one? The DNA sculpture is up there. The periodic table shower curtain is up there. What else? I love the globe that you guys sent – or that we have…

Maggie & Sara: The WMAP beach ball?

Ann: Yes! That is one of my favorite things on the set, although I didn’t find that! Some of my favorite finds are things we use in the comic book store which are from Sideshow Collectibles, all the huge figures. They’re so cool and just beautiful. It’s not my style of what I would want in my house, but if I were into sci-fi…they’re so cool!

Maggie: Was there anything that was hard to replicate, like lab equipment when you do those sets? Or is that stuff available in prop stores?

Ann: No! At first we did have a hard time replicating things in Leonard’s lab, when he would have the laser set-ups. I was very concerned with having the table be right. And luckily we contacted [the company that makes the tables] and they sent us a real table and a real laser. It was fantastic! I love that our show now has gotten to be, dream up whatever you want, and they will send it to you! We have these fabulous, expensive telescopes. And I just said, “That would be cool, I wish I could have one of those, Chris, will you call them and see?” (My lead man.) And they said “sure!” and I couldn’t believe what they sent! I think it must be worth $15,000 or something. So we’re so fortunate on the show, that it’s as popular as it is because that’s part of the reason why I’m able to have such cool stuff!

Maggie: We’re just really impressed that you guys have captured the science workplaces and apartments.

Ann: Oh my gosh, thank you so much!

Maggie: You really have done a beautiful job with the sets. It’s one of my favorite sets. We visited in 2010 and after that I started paying more attention to other sitcoms and there’s just such a level of detail. And I really do want to live in that apartment.

Sara: You imagine if you opened a drawer it would be full of things. And maybe it is!

Maggie: It seems like a real apartment.

Ann: Sometimes on the swing sets I don’t have time to get there and if they’re not opening the drawer, I guess I would be wasting my time. But on the main set, for sure, there’s stuff in all the drawers, drawers and doors, and in the closets and everything. So it’s like someone really lives there. Almost.

I think one of the most exciting things for me is being able to use Star Trek and Star Wars stuff. Once we got to the point that we could use that stuff..

Maggie: I guess you needed to get a license to be able to have it?

Ann: Yes, and they were a little resistant at first. But luckily, as the popularity of the show grew, we got Star Wars, and then we eventually got Star Trek. And right about then, we got connected with Lord of the Rings. So that made a huge difference. Because, you know, how do you have, you know, that kind of a show without those things?

Another funny story about being on a show like this is that when Leonard Nimoy was on, he was just wandering around the stage apparently, and wandered into our gold room, and of course, what is there, as soon as you walk in the door, a big statue of Spock. He probably was walking by and was like, “Oh that’s interesting,” and so he came in and just looked around and was like, “Wow” (unfortunately I was there). But he was just like “Wow, this is quite a room,” and you know, so, it’s interesting. You can just be at work and Leonard Nimoy wanders in.

We do get astronauts from time to time at NASA Goddard, but we can’t say Leonard Nimoy has ever wandered in! Such a cool story and a cool job. We think she does amazing work capturing the lives and workspaces of scientists and engineers – quite a feat in Hollywood! Thanks so much to Ann for talking with us!

We’ll have an interview with Scott London, propmaster, coming up soon.

The game allows you to build your own satellite. First choose what science your satellite will be used to study, and then decide what wavelengths, instruments and mirrors will help you learn the most about the science topic you’ve chosen. After you launch your satellite, you’ll see what it looks like, and learn what real mission has data similar to the one you created. You’ll discover a large range of astronomical missions, dating from the 1980s to today. The “today” part is where the James Webb Space Telescope comes in – it’s being built right now, with some pretty cutting edge technology (like its 18-segment mirror). You might be able to build a similar satellite if you choose the right options!

Since this game is brand-new, we’d love your feedback on it (via our blog, Facebook, or twitter) about what worked and what confused you. We hope you will enjoy trying it out! (Requires Flash 9 or higher.)

Here’s a screenshot:

Here are some of the photos I took during my visit.

The exhibit starts with a copy of Aristotle from 1495 – the text in which he, in the 300s BC, suggested that everything revolves around the Earth.

Next is a text from 1279, which contains Ptolemy’s 2nd century earth-centric universe. The book contains drawings of Ptolemy’s epicycles, needed to explain the movements of the planets in the sky.

This is Edwin Hubble’s copy of Copernicus’ “On the revolution of heavenly bodies”, a second edition, dating to 1566. Originally published in 1543, this book posited that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but one of the planets revolving around the Sun. Note that censors marked out portions of the text because this idea was so heretical.

A detail of the book:

Kepler’s laws of planetary motion are contained in this book, “Astronomia nova”, published in 1609:

A detail:

This is Tycho Brahe’s “Astronomy renewed”, published in 1610 and owned by astronomer George Ellery Hale. In this book, Tycho tried to find a middle ground between Copernicus and Aristotle was theorizing that the planets orbited the Sun, and the Sun orbited the Earth.

Here is one of the famous books ever in physics, Isaac Newton’s Principia (“Natural Principles of Natural Philosphy). It’s important to astronomy because it shows that the heavens and the earth are both governed by universal laws. He used math to describe the sun-centric universe, laying out the laws of motion and the basis of classical mechanics. Even cooler, is that this is Newton’s own copy of the book, and contains his own annotations. The book was later owned by Edmond Halley who also made notes in it.

A detail:

There were also some facsimilies of famous letters. Here’s one written by Annie Jump Cannon, famous for her work on classifying stars.

And one from Albert Einstein to George Ellery Hale, written two years before he published his theory of relativity.

Here is Edwin Hubble’s log book from the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson:

Moving back again in time, we turn to the telescope, with this important text from Galileo, published in 1610, in which has the first drawings ever made of the moon under magnification. The publication of this work, in which Galileo first displays the results of his work with the telescope, is also why we celebrated the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, as it was considered the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s observations with a telescope. (We even “interviewed” Galileo about his work in a past podcast.)

In this text from 1659, Christiaan Huygens proposed that Saturn had rings. He even built a new telescope to see Saturn more clearly. It was a decade until his theory was accepted.

Newton made his own improvements to the telescope, documented from this book in 1672:

There were other sections to the exhibit, including biology and natural studies text – including old (and scary) medical books.

Then it was back to physics.

Here are some early lightbulbs:

Faraday’s 19th century experiments with electricity:

Volta’s 18th century book about galvanism, or creating electricity with chemistry:

And Benjamin Franklin’s own book on his experiments with electricity:

Isaac Newton’s own copy of his “Opticks” – this book is also considered one of the most important books in science. It is a series of experiments and deductions about light and color, and diffraction of light. In this book is described Newton’s splitting of light into a spectrum with a prism. While the Principia was all about math – this book was about experiment.

Rene Descartes on how eyes work:

Kepler’s book on optics…

…which might contrast with Euclid’s theories on optics from 300BC:

Or Plato from the even earlier:

Here is Einstein’s famous publication of his theory of special relativity from 1905:

Detail:

And Maxwell’s 19th century text which unified electricity and magnetism (you might have heard of his equations):

There were a number of books on spectra and their analyis:

From Lockyer:

To Fraunhofer… (This is George Ellery Hale’s copy of the text. Fraunhofer had the lines that are the signatures of chemical elements in the spectrum of the sun and other stars named for him.)

To Kirchoff, who helped determine what the sun and stars are made of:

(I saw Kirchoff’s birthplace and spectrograph in Heidelberg, Germany.)

If you have a chance to see this exhibit, it’s well worth it. This is only a small sampling of what’s there. It’s to be in the presence of all these great works and to think about how the ideas contained in them left our understanding of the world forever changed.

Here’s a full slideshow of all the images: