Hello everyone, and welcome back to NASA’s Universe of Learning’s Diaries of the Cosmos.  I’m Rutuparna Das, and you’re listening to the last part of Hydrogen Hunters.  Earlier in this story, we followed Dr. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin as she discovered that stars are made up primarily of hydrogen and helium. 

 

“The solid ground failed beneath my feet. With the familiar leaping of the heart, I had my first sense of the Cosmos.”

 

 Then, we chatted with Dr. Antara Basu-Zych, a scientist at NASA who uses hydrogen to explore the universe today.

 

“You’re getting an idea of what is basically recycled material from the insides of stars.”

 

Now, we’d like to hear from you!

 

Did you have any questions after listening to our story and interview today?  Was there something you heard here that absolutely blew your mind?  Let us know your thoughts, ask us your questions!  You can do this on our website, at universeunplugged.org/diaries.  You can ask us questions about the science, or about the history, or both – talk to us about what you’re thinking, and we’ll pick some of these questions to answer on our next installment.

 

Before we close, I promised to talk about how you can delve deeper into our topics for today – how you can explore the splitting of light into its component colors and the spectra of stars for yourself.  Light can actually be split up quite easily!  We talked about rainbows – you can create your own rainbows by using a garden sprayhose to split light into its component colors right in your backyard.  You can also split light with a CD or DVD – just hold the back of the disc up to the sunlight and tilt it this way and that.  There are these really really narrow ridges on the back of CDs and DVDs, and these ridges act the same way a spectroscope does, and split light into different colors.  Experiment with different kinds of discs – CDs, old DVDs, new blue-ray discs – do you find any differences?  Try other materials – did you find something that worked better than water or DVDs?

 

After you’ve gone and split light for yourself, you can explore the spectrum of a star through Universe of Learning’s Viewspace program.  Find the link on our website – universeunplugged.org/diaries – and scroll through various ways of observing the star Altair, and see how the light signal from a star actually translates into a spectrum!

 

Now it’s your turn to talk to us!  What intrigued you about splitting light at home, or what surprised you while examining a spectrum with Viewspace?  Send us the results of your explorations, and of course any thoughts and questions, through the form on our website, at universeunplugged.org/diaries.

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Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin was one of the scientific leaders of her day. Through her research and determination to stand by her data, she showed us what the stars are made of. Apart from being a brilliant astronomer and trailblazer for women in astronomy, Cecilia was also an artist and loved to write poetry.  Let’s end today with a poem she wrote titled ‘Research’. Once again, this is Rutuparna Das and thank you for tuning in to NASA’s Universe of Learning’s Diaries of the Cosmos.
 

Research

 

O Universe, O Lover,

I gave myself to thee

Not for gold

Not for glory

But for love.

Our children are immortal,

I am the Mother.

The offspring of our love

Will bear the image of a humble mother

And also a proud imperious Father.

Like Danae

I saw him in a stream of glowing stars;

Like Alkmena

Long, long I lay in his terrible embrace.

Their sons go striding round the firmament;

My children gambol at their heels.