Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up on Art Palace. 

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I keep on asking astronauts whenever I meet 'em. I was like, is the International Space Station just disgusting with stuff floating around and everything? 

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host Russell eig here at the Art Palace. We meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is Dean Rigas astronomer at Cincinnati Observatory and co-host of the podcast looking up. So it's been two and a half years since we've chatted. So what's been going on with you in that time? 

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, quite a bit. I got into the podcast game also just kind of, I don't know, maybe inspired by yours. And so I'm doing a podcast with W V X U and Cincinnati Public Radio called Looking Up Anna Heman. We talk about popular astronomy topics, have guests in the astronomical and space travel world, and so that's a lot of fun. And then lots of things going on at the Cincinnati Observatory. We've been so busy with events and cool things happen in the sky. We've got a lot of stuff happening in 2019 that we're really excited about. And man, just, there's always something going on at the observatory seems like. 

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, yeah. So tell me, I'm a little curious. Tell us more about looking up because what's sort of the general kind of format of the show? 

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah. Well, it started as an idea that I was kind of thinking, yeah, I tried to do a podcast that's kind of on answering questions about astronomy, things that are in the news, that kind of thing. And W V X U approached me and said, yeah, we want to do something. And so my first thought is I need to have a co-host. I don't want to do it all by myself. And so I was thinking somebody outside of the astronomy world, and so I proposed we should have one of the weather, the meteorologist to be my co-host. We could do a weather space thing. 

Speaker 1 (02:26):
And 

Speaker 2 (02:27):
They were like, no, that doesn't sound good at all. So I was like, okay, well 

Speaker 1 (02:31):
I like that I was on your side right away. I'm like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. 

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Doesn't sound great. 

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I like 

Speaker 2 (02:35):
The idea. Well, they didn't like the idea. They're like, weather is too temporary. We're have to record ahead of time. You can't predict the weather very well anyway. And so then 

Speaker 1 (02:45):
I guess, yeah, it wouldn't be cutting edge news. Exactly. 

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Exactly. What was the weather like in two weeks? I don't know mean they don't know what the weather's going to be like tomorrow. So instead then I thought of, well, there's my coworker at the observatory, Anna Heman. And so she and I would get into these conversations in front of all the other staff and volunteers and drive them crazy with our back and forth banter. And so we thought, well, if we were driving our coworkers crazy, we should take that to the airwaves. 

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Surely somebody else will find it interesting. 

Speaker 2 (03:16):
And so we did a little tryout with them and the V X U was like, that's great, let's do it. And so it's been about a year and a half we've been doing this. And so yeah, the format is we do kind of a, did you know, fact to start off with then a chat of what's in the news in that month with some discoveries. And then we interview a guest and then at the end we either have an ask the astronomer question, kind of something that kids would ask, even though most of the questions come from adults or there's another segment we call the crank file. This is the weird theories that we get at the observatory that people send us all the time. And it goes back about a hundred years. There's a file at the observatory called the Crank File where we'd get letters from people saying, I have a theory about things, and here's my theory. 

Speaker 2 (04:14):
The old astronomers would put it in that file called the crank file. We're still not quite sure if they met crank as in the way we think of is it's like a crank email, a crank phone call, or if it was actually the file where they put the cranks that they wound up things with cranked to wind up the clocks or crank because there is a crank drawer with cranks in it. So we're not sure if it just happened to go in the crank file or if they thought they were cranks, but either way. So there's some real good ones from the past. And then I mean 'em like every week I get a new U F O report or a new weird sighting in the sky. And so right now it's pretty simple. When people call up, they call up and they start saying, I saw this thing in the morning. I'm like, stop. It's Venus. Yes, because right now Venus is in the morning sky and super bright and everybody's noticing it. So it's like that's the U F O in the sky right now. And so I'll make it an identified flying object, not unidentified anymore. 

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Go ahead and identify that one. 

Speaker 2 (05:20):
That's right. I'll identify it right away. I know what it is. 

Speaker 1 (05:23):
So do you remember any particularly good crank files 

Speaker 2 (05:28):
From 

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Your time or 

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Before? One of my favorite old ones was somebody advocating for the base eight system. 

Speaker 1 (05:38):
What is that? 

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Well, so we live in a base 10 system, so we have ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, that type of thing. They thought, well, that's inferior to another thing. We could do a base eight system because if you think of the number eight, you can divide it by 1, 2, 4, you can divide it in all different ways. 10 can't be divided as much. And so they thought, let's all work to the base eight system. And they had a whole big paper that they wrote about this and it was dated 1922. And so at first you think, alright, that's completely nuts. Just forget about it. We can't do it, but let's look at all the other things we have in our society that aren't base 10. 

Speaker 1 (06:21):
I mean measurement, 

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Measurement, 12 inches in a foot, we've got 60 minutes in an hour, we've got 24 hours in a day. There's all these weird other things. And those are based 12 systems. And so the more I dug into it, I was like, this is pretty weird the way that we just have these things that are just in our system. And so the base 12 things, our clocks go back to Babylonian times. So for thousands of years, that's why we have clocks the way they are because we go on Babylonian times. 

Speaker 1 (06:51):
That's insane. 

Speaker 2 (06:53):
So then the other thing that I learned to, boy, we're going down this tangent, but that 

Speaker 1 (06:58):
That's the subtitle of the show 

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Going 

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Down this tangent, 

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Going down that tangent is because I learned to count in Babylonian a while ago. I don't know who taught me like you do. Yeah, of course. Everybody does this. And so this is hard to demonstrate in a podcast, but maybe we can do it with a picture is you take your right hand 

Speaker 1 (07:17):
And 

Speaker 2 (07:17):
That's going to be your counting system. You have four fingers there and one thumb. So how you'd count, it's a base 12 system in Babylonian. 

Speaker 1 (07:26):
And 

Speaker 2 (07:27):
So you have three joints on each finger. 

Speaker 1 (07:30):
So 

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Touch your pinky with your thumb, one joint, two joint three joints, that's 1, 2, 3. 

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Then 

Speaker 2 (07:35):
Your fourth finger, 4, 5, 6, middle finger, 7, 8, 9, index finger, 10, 11, 12. So that's how you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And so it's superior to our base 10 system with our 10 fingers because when you're doing your trading and selling your goods and everything like that, you're trying to count. You can do it with one hand. 

Speaker 1 (07:57):
So 

Speaker 2 (07:58):
You count to 12 with one hand, and your other hand is good for selling and taking money and exchanging goods and that kind of stuff. So you could count with one hand instead, two hands. 

Speaker 1 (08:06):
This also presumes that somebody still needs to count on their fingers. I 

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Took 12, 

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Well, 

Speaker 2 (08:10):
It was thousands of years ago, and I've seen people in stores today. They could use your finger. Yeah, that's true. 

Speaker 1 (08:19):
I'm saying this, I'm a real math whiz. If somebody throws a math question, I'd be really fast. I get that dull look on my face, like, oh, what? I am not prepared at any moment to solve math. Well, that's a perfect one. I still love that you just started to learn to count in Babylonian. 

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Oh yeah, you might as well. It's something else to do. But yeah, then most of the majority of 'em are U F O reports. It's like, I saw something in the sky, what was it? And what's funny, the most recent one is the guy said, I saw something in the sky. What was it? And I don't know. And I even admit, I was like, I'm not sure, based on your description, I can't really tell, but I'm going to give you my best estimate or best guess of what it was. And I thought it was these lights that just hovered in the sky. 

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Oh, I remember this. 

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh, that's another one. There was always more of 'em. So this guy was in Florida 

Speaker 1 (09:11):
And 

Speaker 2 (09:12):
He saw lights there, but then he also heard about reports of sounds in Ohio. And he thought, okay, those have to be linked. And I was like, oh, that's a thousand miles. Sound doesn't travel very far. It's 

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Very long distance. Yeah, you 

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Saw lights and they didn't see. But anyway, so I said, well, my best guess is they're, it's Cincinnati fire Kites. This is a thing that's named after our city. For some reason, you get a newspaper, you fold it certain way and you put a candle under it and they float up into the air, the hot air rises up. They're called Cincinnati Fire kites. And so that was my best guess. And I even said, I was like, I don't know. I wasn't there. I didn't see it, but that's what it sounds like. So he wrote back and said, you're wrong. It said a number of really disparaging things questioned my manhood and my expertise in the field. And then he said, don't bother responding. I'm going to move on. And I was like, good idea, 

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Good idea. 

Speaker 2 (10:06):
So that's the kind of thing that happens sometimes when they come to experts and ask for my expert opinion. When I give them the wrong answer, then they yell at me. 

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, I think the one I was thinking about recent, I mean I say recent, I don't even remember, it's probably over six months ago or whoever knows, but I remember seeing a bunch of videos online locally of this thing that at first I was like, whoa, this is really crazy. And it was these maybe five lights in the sky, and they seemed to be very purposefully moving in a certain way, and they just were really mysterious. And then I think it eventually became pretty clear somebody just pointed out like, oh, these were sky divers with flares on their suits that it was over the stadium or something. They're doing something like that. And then when you think about it like, oh, that totally tracks. And when you watch it, you're like, oh yeah, they're only descending. 

Speaker 2 (10:57):
They're 

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Falling the whole time. You're like, that totally makes sense. 

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, that's another thing. Yeah, sky divers with pyrotechnics. It's another thing they're doing nowadays. But yeah, it could be drones, it could be all sorts of stuff. And then on the other hand, whenever I get the majority of the reports that I get and I answer, people are like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And I understand. And at first some of 'em just sound totally nuts. What are they talking about? So in the end, I always try to encourage them, well, keep watching the skies and keep looking for stuff, and you'll find all this stuff and look for Venus and look for Jupiter. And even if you don't see your U F O again, at least keep looking and try to put a positive spin on it at least. 

Speaker 1 (11:47):
Yeah, it is. I think because what you're doing is you're basically destroying their right. You're ruining their fun. When you destroy this, the mystery is what is fun, and if you answer it, then it's gone. Right. 

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Well, I think there's also, see, I've been trying to psychologically analyze these people remotely, and I think there's a little ego involved too, that they want to be the discoverer of something special, that they want this to not just be explainable, whatever it was. Yeah. I'm curious as to what they wanted the answer to be, but it's a weird phenomenon where people come to you as an expert, and when you give 'em your expert opinion, they're like, no, you're wrong. So 

Speaker 1 (12:42):
We get a fair amount of, I mean, maybe less of it, but you'll see that in art too. A big one that comes up a lot is when we had the Van Gogh exhibition, 

Speaker 1 (12:54):
There's a lot of people who want to try to talk about these theories that Van Gogh was murdered or these other ideas. And we will have the world's foremost Van Gogh scholar on a stage talking and still somebody will ask them about it and they're like, no, no, sorry. I mean, there just doesn't really seem to be a lot of evidence to suggest that. And basically all it takes is one person who sort of puts that out in the world and it kind of captures their imagination, and it's a more exciting thing because suddenly it's like, oh, this thing you thought you knew, oh, wait, wait, but maybe you didn't know. 

Speaker 2 (13:34):
And that's one of the things that if people see stuff in the sky that I'm like, okay, awesome, that's great. We will record that information and then go out tomorrow night and see if it's there again and go out. So I encourage 'em like, okay, well go see it again. So that's usually when I don't hear from 'em again because they go out and they're like, oh, yeah, there it is again, in the same spot, just like Dean described it. 

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, there's pretty much nothing up there I've not seen, but I do find that I would say that in my past when I was younger, I probably, no, I don't want to say probably. I definitely believed in UFOs and aliens and abductions and that kind of stuff. And so even when I started the observatory, I was still going under the premise, there are UFOs down there, there are aliens among us, they've abducted people, all this stuff. But since being at the observatory, and I hear all these observations, what I'm finding is humans are atrociously terrible observers. They cannot remember anything that they see and they say, for example, somebody calls in and says, okay, I saw something in the sky. 

Speaker 2 (14:48):
First question is when was it? They're like, well, this was yesterday. Wait, no, two weeks ago, wait, no, five years ago. My grandma saw it. I'm not exaggerating. They can't get that first thing of when was it that they saw it? And they say, which direction? The sky was it? I don't know. What color was it? I'm not sure who was with you. I don't know. Would you take any pictures? No, I mean, so it made me with Fox Mulder on the XFiles. I want to believe now that I'm in this field, boy, this is some X-Files trivia, but I feel more like Skinner now. I used to feel like molder. I want to find the truth that's out there now. I'm like, Skinner. I'm like, God, these people are nuts. I like, if only, geez, just roll your eyes at molder and that kind of stuff. I mean, that's where I've come. 

Speaker 1 (15:51):
That's an interesting thing about memory though too, is we think of our memories as so rock solid. And when you realize things like, oh, it was actually happened to my grandma, and the way that people can take on other people's memories, if you've heard a story told to you as a kid growing up over and over again, there's a certain point where you just sort of start thinking it happened to you. That happens to people all the time where they'll describe something that happened to them and somebody was like, you weren't there. 

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Exactly. Exactly. 

Speaker 1 (16:25):
It's really easy to, I mean, our memories are so much more malleable than we think they are. 

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah. For me, it was that book Communion the Alien AB with the alien, alien face on the front of the cover. Oh God, 

Speaker 2 (16:37):
I really thought those, I really, maybe those did visit me in my sleep and took me away. I mean, it was like, it's just a book. It's just a book. And when we think of some people do think that I'm part of the conspiracy that I'm a government funded stooge, and I point to the car that I drive and say, yeah, that's what I, they're paying me very, very well to live this lifestyle to keep their secrets. I'm like, no. And that's the thing is that my experience is the government can't keep this stuff secret. There's so many, there's hundreds of thousands of amateur astronomers in this country alone that can see stuff like this. They can record stuff like this. And what I know about amateur astronomers and love about 'em is man, they love to talk about it. And so you couldn't keep amateur astronomer quiet. They saw a U F O up there, and if we saw a good video, if we saw something that was real legit, oh yeah, we'd put it out there because there's a motivation too. There's also this fear of a rogue planet that is going to come and destroy the earth that the government might know about, but they don't want to tell you because they don't want to freak you out. I'm like, no. Amateur astronomers would see it. They discover it. There's a competition out there. Everybody wants to be the first to discover it. 

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Astronomers 

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Are cutthroat, man. You're not going to be the second person to discover something if you're like, you see it and the government says, Nope, don't tell anybody about it. They're like, well, then the second guy will see it. I mean, there's no hiding. That kind of thing. Yeah. It's really cool to work with astronomers and other amateur astronomers too, because there's this passion for the subject, and that's the thing. So if people see stuff like, Hey, be part of the club, man, be part of the club and join us, and we will look altogether. 

Speaker 1 (18:44):
It's also, there is something about it that's a little bit funny too, because it's a little bit like gilding the lily. You have to tart up this thing that's already pretty amazing. And so I can see that maybe being a little part of frustration too. It's like you have to basically invent this other mystery around something that's already vast and mysterious. 

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah. I don't know what you need more with the universe than, but I think there is this thing called, it's a condition kind of thing called cosmo phobia, 

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Fear of death from above, or fear of the universe destroying you. There is really, and Americans have it more than other countries, apparently. We have this apocalyptic mentality. And so we love it. And I think I was talking to somebody about it and they were talking about, oh, this meteor is going to come and destroy the earth and all this stuff. And they were almost saying it with a smile, and I was like, are you looking forward to this? And they were like, no, no, of course not. But I think there is this kind of thing that people are afraid of this, but like you said, there's no reason to spice it up. I mean, you get some amazing things happening, like total solar eclipse like we had about a year and a half ago. That was something that definitely happened since the last time we talked. 

Speaker 2 (20:09):
That was, I mean, from coast to coast, people saw the sun blocked out by the moon. It was such a great day in astronomy. And I think we look at moments in history, we look at the moon landing as being this kind of inspirational moment. I kind of think that eclipse that happened in August is going to, we might see it in 10 years or 20 years that people were, saw this as a kid. They saw that eclipse as a kid, and that's going to stick with them. And maybe we'll see a lot more scientists and astronomers coming forward in the next generation. 

Speaker 1 (20:43):
There's something, I mean, a lot of the responses I heard from people about the eclipse, especially those who went to go see the, what's it called? 

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Totality? Totality, yes. Total eclipse. 

Speaker 1 (20:54):
We didn't get that here. It's hard for us to understand the scale of these things, of the sun and the moon and the earth, and it somehow puts that into perspective in a way that is shocking and amazing and awe inspiring. 

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah, definitely. I mean, that is the best event that you can see. And you're out there and it's sunny, and then the light starts getting a little weirder and it turns a little purple and silver, and then there's wavy air around you, and the crickets start chirping, and birds start being quiet. And then all of a sudden, I mean, in a split second, it's like the lights are out, the sun is blocked out the moon. You look up and there's this black hole where the sun used to be, and the moon's covering it up, and these streamers are coming out from the sun, and you can see some of the stars out so dark, and it's just like nothing you've ever seen. And so this was my second one, and it's just, people go nuts. I mean, they're yelling, they're screaming, they're crying, they're all sorts of stuff. You can't describe what it's like, and then it's over like that. It's like a minute or two, a couple minutes, and then the sun's back, and you're like, you're in this daze. Did that just happen? Did I just see that? And then you start thinking, oh, man, I've got to see that again. That was sweet. 

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Yeah, I was really sad. I missed the totality this time, but I know there's another chance soon. 

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, 2024, April, April 8th, 2024, we'll be going through from Mexico, Texas, up through Ohio and Buffalo and up to that way. So that kind of angle. So closest for Cincinnati. The view will be you go out 74 west towards Indiana, and then 75 north towards Dayton. So Indianapolis and Dayton get it. 

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Cincinnati 

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Gets 99, 90 8%, which are so close, but we won't have to travel very far. 

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Right. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, I definitely was bummed to miss that last time after I heard people describe it. I was just like, oh, that was, and I feel like if you just saw the, I mean, it was cool to see it not even what we did see here, but I think it's a very different experience, it sounds 

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Like. No, no. Seeing 90% what we saw in Cincinnati, that's not 90% experience. It's 

Speaker 1 (23:31):
About 

Speaker 2 (23:32):
1% experience. It's cool. But it 

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Was just kind of like, oh, yeah, I guess it looks a little different out here, kind of. It just doesn't quite have the same effect. 

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Nope. Nope. It gets slightly darker, right around 85 to 90%. Yeah, the big thing, even 99, it's not the same. You got to have the a hundred. 

Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of the moon, yeah, I thought we could go look at a photo in the collection that's on view right now of the moon. 

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Sounds good. 

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Awesome. Let's go. All right. We are now in Gallery two 12, and we are looking at a photograph that's part of a special feature we have right now called First photographs from the collection, which is a pretty diverse group of photographs from a lot of different periods of time, all kind of being either a first process or a first location that was photographed. And that's kind of more what we're hitting with this piece we're looking at, which is a photo taken by Buzz Aldrin. So the title is Just Tranquility Base seen from the orbiting lunar module Eagle Apollo 11. So what were your thoughts when you first saw this dean? 

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Well, this is the first thing I looked at was the date this was taken, and that's the big anniversary coming up July 20th, 1969. So that's what I wanted to see is when was this? Was it before they landed or after they landed? And so this has to be before they landed. So on their approach, buzz took some pictures, and I mean, what you see is Neil Armstrong has the famous quotes from the Eagle has landed, and this is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. But Buzz Aldrin's main quote, which I think is maybe even more appropriate is the moon to him was magnificent desolation. And that is what we're seeing right here, because all it is is planes of rocks, rocks and more rocks. 

Speaker 1 (25:57):
And 

Speaker 2 (25:57):
It doesn't look like a very friendly place to go. This is what we see in the view through the telescope. At the observatory, not this much detail. This is something you can't get from an earthly telescope. So this is something as you're on your way down to the moon, probably less than a hundred miles up, this is what you see. And it's kind of daunting because you look at this, you think, oh my gosh, we're going to land on that somewhere, and where are we going to land? It's just craters. And so I know the big, the anniversary's coming up this July, it's the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. And this picture really takes you there. It really puts you in the seat with them thinking, alright, we're coming down. And as somebody who studied this, I know what happens next is that they come down to the tranquility, the sea of tranquility. 

Speaker 2 (26:53):
That's what we're looking at here. So that's the future landing spot and the landing, it looks very smooth. So with telescopes, the sea of tranquility looks like this flat plane with a piece of cake. We can land on that. It's like landing in the salt flats or something like that in the desert. But then when they get closer, they see boulders are everywhere. I mean, on this scale, the craters we're looking at are probably miles across something like that. So we're not seeing anything very small here. In fact, now I see the mountain ranges in the top. This is a pretty wide angle view here. 

Speaker 2 (27:28):
And so when they get lower and lower, they're seeing all these little boulders, and you don't want to land on a boulder sideways and knock your lander off. So Neo Armstrong had to take control of the spacecraft. It was going to be automatically landed by the computer, and he had to disable that and land it himself. They had to just keep on coming down, and they only had so much fuel. So if they got to the spot where they didn't have enough fuel to come back home, they had to abort and go right back up. And they only had a few dozen seconds of fuel left by the time they landed. So it was that close to not happening. So this picture does a lot for me. That's true. It makes me think of those moments right before landing, all the things that could have happened could not have happened. Yeah. This is a picture of the moon before we landed. I kind of like that. 

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah. Also, I was just looking at, when you were talking about the scale, it made me think about this shadow that we're seeing in the corner. 

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah. That's the part that I'm really confused about because I was thinking, okay, that means they're almost on the ground that we're seeing the shadow in the bottom left corner. And I don't know how to explain that. Those craters have to be pretty big. Yeah, 

Speaker 1 (28:48):
That's what I was thinking. I was like it when you said the scale, I was sort of thinking about that too. I was like, but that looks like a shadow made by the lunar module probably. 

Speaker 2 (28:57):
It does look like that kind of thing, but 

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Then it seems way too big for that to be, so I almost wonder, is it something like in the actual frame of the, or inside the lunar module that's just in the frame 

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Incidentally 

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Or something? I can't 

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Tell. Well, I can't either. And that was because it shouldn't be the craft on the ground itself, but it certainly looks like a shape of something like that. So 

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Now 

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Of course Buzz has taken this picture through the glass. This is pretty thick glass as you're looking down onto this, so you get all sorts of that kind of stuff. But that's something, yeah, I'd want to know. That was one of my big questions too. So I would think it's got to be something inside the capsule that's making 

Speaker 1 (29:39):
That 

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Shadow on the glass or something like that. 

Speaker 1 (29:41):
That's kind of what I was thinking. It's just out of focus because the fact that it's a black and white photograph and it's just this sort of blurry shape, it really, it reads as a shadow at first. But yeah, when you start to think about it, you're like, oh, it could just be something that's up close. So it's out of focus because he is focusing on the landscape and it just reads as a shadow. It's really hard to tell. 

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Yeah, I would imagine if that was the shadow of the lander, this had have been taken a couple seconds before landing, and Buzz would've been pretty busy with other things at that point. Right, 

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Right. To be 

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Able to snap this photograph. This is, it does say it's orbiting the lunar module eagle, but yeah, the size of the craters, and we get this question a lot. The observatory is like, so when we look through our telescope, people say some jokingly, some half jokingly, so can we see the flag? 

Speaker 1 (30:32):
And 

Speaker 2 (30:33):
Nope, we can't see the flag because the smallest crater we can see at the observatory, at the telescope is about the size of Cincinnati. 

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Oh, wow. 

Speaker 2 (30:40):
So you're looking, you see this little crater, and that's the size of a city. 

Speaker 1 (30:44):
You're 

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Not going to see a little flag there or footprints and that kind of stuff. So the only pictures that we have like this of the moon now, or come from orbiting spacecrafts, there's at least one that's orbiting the moon, that's taking closeup pictures. But from Earth, you can't get shots like this. And that's what was extra special about the Apollo missions is they got to get these really closeup pictures of the moon and the far side of the moon and other parts that telescopes just don't let you see. 

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, and one of the other things I was noticing about it is just that seems so distinctly moon like or alien, is that it seems different than a photograph taken on earth is the way that shadow at the top of the frame just blends into the nothing of black. There's no hint of a horizon or created by atmosphere that you would see on earth. If you were taking a picture at night, you wouldn't have that. I don't think you would have that kind of stark black contrast on the surface. Right, 

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Right. Yeah. That's one of the ways, when we see it through the telescope, it's the same thing. You look along the edge of the moon, that's the best where you see these long shadows and there's even a couple little islands of light at the very top that those are mountain peaks that are getting sunlight while everything around it's dark, but with no atmosphere, things get dark pretty quickly. And the blackness of space is pretty startling, that's for sure. And yeah, the other thing that I thought about with this was the time of how daylight and night work on the moon. Because we go to, we think of let's make a moon base, we'll live on the moon, and people that do that are going to have to live with a weird day, night cycle. It's a daylight for 14 or 15 days straight and then dark for 14 or 15 days straight. So in this picture, you see the darkness on the horizon, and when you get covered over by the darkness, it's going to be dark for a long time, two weeks or so. 

Speaker 1 (32:58):
And very dark. 

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Very dark. That's right. Exactly. No sunlight. And you'd be able to see, that's the other thing we don't have in this picture is where's the earth? By the angle of everything here, the earth would be out of the frame, but that would be one of the pluses. If you were there at night on the moon, you could still see the earth up in the sky, 

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Which I guess would presumably provide some light in the same way the moon does for us. It would 

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Be a 

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Similar reflection of light back down. 

Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, it would be because tried to picture that what it would be like, how big the earth is up in the sky. So since the earth is so much bigger than the moon, the earth's size would be pretty considerable. I think it's something like on the order of 16 or 17 times bigger 

Speaker 1 (33:45):
Than 

Speaker 2 (33:46):
The moon is from our side. So it would be a pretty big thing up there. And if you stayed on the moon long enough, the earth would just stay pretty much in the same spot. It wouldn't rise and set like our moon does because the moon doesn't spin very fast. And so the earth would just sit there and you could just watch the earth spin very slowly. If you're really patient and you just watch it spin for 24 hours, spend one time around. 

Speaker 1 (34:14):
That's crazy. That's something you never think about. 

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Yeah, it's called synchronous rotation. So the earth, the moon spins one time for every one time it goes around the earth. 

Speaker 1 (34:26):
So 

Speaker 2 (34:26):
It always keeps that one face facing the earth the whole time. So we only see that half of the moon. We never see the other side. That's the far side. So if you're living on the near side of the moon, you would see the earth in the sky all the time. 

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Wow. Wow. That's see 

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Where home is. That's 

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Really crazy. Well, is there anything else about this photograph that stood out to you? 

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, I like the juxtaposition of the plane. So the flat parts there, that's what we call the seas. The darker areas you see on the moon when you're looking up at it and you see the man in the moon kind of thing. Those dark areas where the seas, so the sea of tranquility, they have other sea of serenity and all these other different pleasant sounding names. There's also a sea called sea of crisis, which sounds less exciting. So they picked sea of tranquility to land on. I guess that sounded nicer. But yeah, you see in the horizon, the mountains too. So all these seas were the sites, there's no water there. They just kind of look like it to people first looking through scopes. But they're all circular. All the seas are very circular because they're giant craters. So we see little craters on here, which I say little as in a hundred miles across, but the seas are gigantic craters where something hit the moon with such force that it cracked the surface and lava flowed out from the inside and filled in the giant craters. So all the seas are filled in craters. And so that's what we're looking at. Something that had this violent explosion a very, very long time ago, and then the mountains on the horizon there, that's stuff that was shot out of the crater. So the rings around the seas are just all this ejected material that fell back to the moon. 

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Wow. When you talk about lava filling these craters and stuff, I mean, that's the kind of thing I was talking about earlier where I'm just like, you don't need to make this more exciting. You don't need to make it more mysterious. It's insane when I hear things like 

Speaker 2 (36:39):
That. Yeah, science fact is sometimes stranger in science fiction. Yeah. It's hard to make up some of this stuff, but that's where those craters, those big seas came from giant impacts a long time ago. 

Speaker 1 (36:52):
I really like this piece is kind of paired with another work right next to it, which is a really interesting pairing because it's Carac in Egypt that was taken by a Cincinnati photographer in, let's see, this is from, well, we've sort of got a range of dates, but sometime between 1851 and 1852. So this is really early photography being used to sort of document this far off place for somebody to witness back home basically, which wouldn't have been possible up before this point. So it's a really interesting mix of these two kind of framing how Egypt was just as remote as the moon at one point if you were living in Cincinnati. 

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Most definitely. Yeah. And that's the thing that astronauts do today too, is they take their own photographs, which I think have a bigger impact than NASA photos. It's like you're seeing somebody's travel pictures, and I always thought people hated looking at travel pictures. When I show, I'm always self-conscious like, oh yeah, I went on this trip. But I think people really do. They think they secretly like it. I don't think they like being trapped in a room with a slide projector, but I think because some of the astronauts, like Chris Hadfield was really famous for taking all these pictures with his own camera and posting them on Instagram and having the kind of rougher cut ones like this one from Buzz Aldrin is pretty cool. 

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yeah. Would you go to the moon? 

Speaker 2 (38:37):
I would go to the moon, yeah. That'd be one trip I would do. It's three days to get there. Three days to get back, spend a little time on the moon. Unfortunately, for Buzz and Neil, they were there less than 24 hours. All the NASA handlers were kind of scared. They're like, okay, we made it. Let's get 'em back safe. We will spend more time the next time. So it was only a week or eight day trip for them. And I like that idea of a quick two weeks max in space. Going to Mars is a two year journey, and I don't think I could deal with the space toilets for two weeks or two years. Two weeks maybe. I keep on asking astronauts whenever I meet 'em, I was like, is the International Space Station just disgusting with stuff floating around and everything? They're like, yeah, we're part janitor, part spaceman. We got to clean up after ourselves. And I was just like, it's got to be gross. I mean, it's all glossed over in Star Wars and Star Trek. Nobody ever goes to the bathroom and those things, but 

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Well, and they just explained, there is no sort of explanation of the gravity issue either in those two. I mean, that's something I never even would've thought about. I mean, the idea of just sort of dust and debris and things like that, that it's actually helpful when it falls to the floor and you can sweep it up a lot easier, right, 

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Than 

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Being loose 

Speaker 2 (40:01):
Everywhere. Exactly. Yeah. So I'd be in for a two week journey going to Mars. Nope, no thanks. Too far. Too dangerous. But yeah, sign me up. I'd do it. 

Speaker 1 (40:16):
All right. Well, thank you so much for looking at this photograph of the moon with me. 

Speaker 2 (40:21):
My pleasure. This is a lot of fun. 

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Thanks, Dean. Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have your own conversations about the art. General. Admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking. The special exhibition on view right now is collecting Calligraphy Arts of the Islamic World. And don't miss the special feature that Dean and I visited today. First photographs from the collection is on view until February 3rd, so you only have a few weeks left to see it. Do you want to improve your painting skills? Sign up for our weekly studio class on painting that takes place on Thursday evenings in February. This all ages painting class is taught by a professional artist, and class fees are only $20 for members and $40 for the general public. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and also join our Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is Fra Al by Belau. Do you listen to the show regularly but have never written a nice review? If so, stop what you're doing right now and do that. Write me a review unless you're driving. Keep driving. I'm Russell Iig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.