Hi everyone.

I'm Abby Brown.

Looking up in the clouds is a great way to use your imagination.

Sometimes I think I see letters or animals.

Humans have been examining the sky throughout the ages.

And at night when there are no clouds or light pollution the night sky turns into an amazing light show.

Let's learn what is up in Iowa's night sky when we Go Beyond with the Science Center of Iowa.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Even in the daylight, the stars and planets are still all up there in the sky.

The daylight just makes it a little difficult to see them.

But our friends at the Science Center of Iowa have a special way of showing us what is up in Iowa's night sky.

♪♪ Have you ever wondered about all the things you can see in the night sky when it's clear out?

Well, you're not the only person that has, if you have.

For thousands of years people have looked up at the night sky and created images by the different things that they would see.

They would play connect the dots in the sky and create little pictures.

Now, today we know these dots as stars and planets and those pictures that we have created, we call them constellations.

♪♪ My name is Dan and I'm inside the Star Theatre Planetarium at the Science Center of Iowa in the heart of downtown Des Moines.

And today I'm very excited to present to you our planetarium program called Iowa Skies Tonight where we'll be seeing some of the things that you might be able to see in Iowa's sky tonight.

So, let's take a look at our dome.

♪♪ Now, if, you and your friends or family have ever looked at the nighttime sky, perhaps you were looking for particular things.

Maybe you were looking for constellations or different stars.

Maybe you were looking for planets.

Or maybe you were looking for deep space objects like galaxies or nebula.

Of course, if you're looking for those things you're going to need a little extra equipment, like perhaps a telescope or binoculars.

Regardless of what you're looking for, though, you need to wait until a particular time, nighttime.

♪♪ So if we take a look at our dome now, this is what the sky will sort of look like on a typical spring afternoon in Des Moines.

Let me direct your attention to the Sun, the biggest and brightest star in our sky.

Now it's not the biggest and brightest star in the whole universe, it's just the closest star to Earth.

It's so bright that that light that is coming from the Sun refracts through our atmosphere creating this lovely blue color that we call the daytime sky.

♪♪ While the daytime sky is indeed a lovely color, it makes it impossible to see all the other stars.

What we're seeing here is actually light pollution, which is the same thing you experience when you can't see stars very well when you're near, bright lights, only this is happening on a global scale and takes up the whole sky.

♪♪ So we need to wait until our half of the Earth is no longer facing the Sun, which is what we call nighttime.

As the Earth rotates the Sun appears to move through the sky.

Eventually the side of the Earth opposite ours faces the Sun blocking its light and creating the night sky.

♪♪ Among the things you might look for are constellations.

And if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, which if you're looking at a globe is the top half of the Earth, you might have looked for the Big Dipper.

I'll give you a moment to try to look for the Big Dipper in our sky.

It is located in the northern area.

Try to look for a shape that resembles a spoon or a ladle.

If you're with somebody watching this video, maybe work together to try to find it.

♪♪ ♪♪ So if you haven't found the Big Dipper yet I'll highlight it for you.

It's over here in the northern part of the sky.

It is made up of seven stars.

These three stars make up the handle and these four stars make up the cup.

Let me outline it for you so you can see it a little more clearly.

♪♪ Now, you might be wondering, how did he know that that was the northern part of the sky?

Well, I can show you how you can figure it out for yourself.

In order to do this, what you'll want to do is point to the first star over here, this is named Merak.

Next, you're going to trace a line from Merak all the way to this star over here, which is named Dubhe.

We've created this nice line between these two stars and now we want to extend that line all the way to this star over here, which is named Polaris.

You might know Polaris by another name, the Northern Star.

But why is it called the Northern Star?

Because it always stays in the northern part of the sky.

♪♪ As I accelerate the time here, you might notice that the sky moves in a counterclockwise motion around Polaris.

But why does that happen?

If you've ever looked at a globe on a stand before, you might have noticed the pole going through it.

That is the Earth's axis.

Now, the Earth obviously doesn't have a pole going straight through it, right, but you can imagine that it does.

You can also imagine that if you extend that pole out of the top of the Earth, that pole, the top of it, might end up near Polaris.

So, as the sky and all the constellations appear to go around Polaris, Polaris appears to stay in the same spot.

But, of course, it doesn't stay in the same spot.

Stuff in outer space is moving all the time.

The Earth orbits the Sun along with all of the other Sun's planets.

The Sun flies around the center of our galaxy and our galaxy flies through outer space.

Because of all this movement, Polaris hasn't always been our Northern Star.

This star over here named Thuban a few thousand years ago was our Northern Star.

And a few thousand years from now this star over here named Vega will be our Northern Star.

Eventually Thuban will be our Northern Star again, then Polaris, then Vega and the cycle will continue.

♪♪ So now that we know how to use the Big Dipper to find Polaris, we can figure out where north is, and from there we can figure out where south is, east is and also west.

This is really useful if you're trying to navigate in the nighttime and for some reason you forgot your GPS.

But also it makes it a lot easier to find different things in the night sky as well.

♪♪ Polaris is part of another constellation called Ursa Minor, also known as the Little Dipper.

You might recognize this one as well.

♪♪ Before I get much further here I've got to let you know that I've been using some incorrect words.

The word constellation doesn't actually describe these different images we've been seeing on the dome, they're actually called asterisms.

An asterism is just an image that we've created playing connect the dots with the different stars in the sky.

So, the Little Dipper is an asterism.

The Big Dipper is also an asterism and it is an asterism within another asterism called Ursa Major.

There are countless asterisms that our ancestors from many different cultures have created over the thousands of years that we have existed.

♪♪ So, when you hear the sentence, all the constellations in the sky, this is an image that you might think of.

But when an astronomer thinks of that sentence, all the constellations in the sky, this is actually what they envision.

An astronomical constellation is actually a border region, almost like a map dividing a continent into countries.

Now, here are the actual astronomical constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

♪♪ Where did all these asterisms come from in the first place?

As we saw earlier, the Big Dipper could be used to find Polaris and help find our different directions.

Mapping the night sky is almost like creating a map because night after night the constellations appear pretty much in the exact same spot.

♪♪ Our ancestors would look at these different images that they created in the night sky and spin whimsical stories about what they were, why they moved through the night sky, how they affected each other and how they even affected people on Earth.

Now, the wilder the story that they would tell, the more easily they could remember it.

And some of these stories that they told became so important that they got incorporated into their time honored spiritual practices.

♪♪ Now, Ursa Major means the Big Bear or the Great Bear in Latin.

And this asterism has been observed by cultures from around the world for thousands of years.

The Ancient Greeks saw this bear and its stretched out tail marked by these three stars.

The reason its tail got stretched out is because Zeus used it to throw it into outer space.

Cultures native to North America saw those three stars as the hunters that would chase the bear as it circled around Polaris.

The cultural pervasiveness of this asterism can only mean that it dates to pre-history.

So as we're looking up to the night sky, not only are we looking to astronomical phenomena, but we're also looking at human history.

How exciting is that?

♪♪ Ursa Major means the Big Bear.

So Ursa Minor means the Little Bear.

♪♪ Its tail is also stretched out because it got thrown into the heavens the same way that Ursa Major did, by its tail.

Now, these two constellations are two of six circumpolar constellations.

Let me show you the other four.

As I accelerate time, you'll notice that these six constellations go in a circle around Polaris, hence the name, circum, circle, polar, Polaris, circle Polaris.

Now, these six constellations you can either see in their entirety or partially regardless of the season, unlike seasonal constellations.

♪♪ These other four constellations are Draco the Dragon, inspired by the serpent guardian of Hera's garden and its golden apples.

Cassiopeia, the Queen of Ethiopia sitting upon her celestial throne.

Cepheus, Cassiopeia's husband, the King of Ethiopia.

And Camelopardalis, the giraffe.

♪♪ If you spend enough time looking at the sky you might notice some of those dots wind up in different spots night after night.

The reason those wind up in different spots is because they're actually much closer to the Earth.

They're actually within our very own solar system.

These objects are known as planets.

They wander through the sky.

♪♪ Of the eight planets in our solar system, we can only see five of them with our naked eye, four of them we'll actually be able to see on a spring night.

♪♪ Now, on this particular spring night, Venus should be visible right as the Sun goes down around 9 p.m.

and it will go under the horizon around 12 a.m.

just on the western part of the sky.

And since the Earth rotates eastward, all new objects including planets, will be arriving on the eastern horizon.

♪♪ While we won't be able to see Mercury this night, you will be able to see the other three planets as they arrive.

They'll be arriving in the wee hours of the morning in the eastern sky like I mentioned.

Those planets are Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.

♪♪ Now, if you're not colorblind like me, you might be able to identify Mars pretty easily because of its red hue.

Mars has actually been a hot astronomical topic lately so let's leave Earth's surface and get a closer look at the Red Planet.

♪♪ Most of the news you might have heard about Mars has been about sending people to Mars.

It's a big goal but we have a lot of research and exploration to do before we can achieve it.

Much of this research and exploration is being done by super sophisticated robots calls rovers that drive over the Martian surface.

♪♪ Currently exploring Mars' surface is NASA's Curiosity rover.

It landed in Gale Crater in 2012 and has been studying Mars' climate and geology.

It has also been doing some of the preliminary research for what was going to be NASA's Mars 2020 mission which was recently renamed Perseverance.

♪♪ The newly titled mission was originally set to launch sometime in July or August of 2020 from Cape Canaveral.

However, concerns over COVID-19 have unfortunately delayed the mission to 2022, which is when the next time Mars and Earth are going to be ideally aligned for efficient travel, which will take about six months.

Perseverance's current target is Jezero Crater, highlighted by the yellow marker here.

Let's get a closer look.

♪♪ As you can see from the mission patch here, Perseverance's main goals are to search for signs of past life on Mars, collect rock samples and prepare for human exploration.

It will be doing this by studying Mars' geology and climate.

The Perseverance rover is about the size of a car and weighs about 2,000 pounds on Earth.

As you can see from the picture here its general design is based off of the Curiosity rover.

But it has some new and exciting features and instruments.

♪♪ Among these instruments is a drill on the end of its large arm for digging out core samples of rock so we can get a look at their insides.

At the end of that arm is also a tool called Sherloc, like Sherlock Holmes and his magnifying glass that he uses to search for clues.

Perseverance's Sherloc will use UV spectrometers, a laser and a camera to search for organic chemicals and minerals that may provide clues about whether there used to be microbial life on the planet.

On the bottom of the rover is a tool called RIMFAX and it will use radar waves to search the ground under the rover for water and ice.

Now, why is it looking for water?

Well, where there's water, there might also be life, just like on Earth.

Water below the surface might indicate if life ever lived on Mars and where it might have been.

And located near RIMFAX is one of the most exciting instruments on the rover, its MOXIE unit.

MOXIE will convert Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen, almost like a tree.

This SOXE unit, pictured here, is what will actually split the carbon dioxide and extract the oxygen.

This oxygen can be used for breathing as well as fuel and propellant for rockets.

Once MOXIE is tested on the surface, it will need to be scaled 100 times, which is the size needed to support a single human.

I hope you're as excited as I am about all the news that will soon be coming from Mars and NASA.

♪♪ Thank you for joining me in this opportunity to check out some of the things that you'll see in Iowa's sky.

Maybe use some of the things that you learned in this program.

First, try to find the Big Dipper.

Once you've found the Big Dipper, trace that line to find Polaris.

From there you can find the Little Dipper.

And if you look opposite the Little Dipper of the Big Dipper, you can find Cassiopeia, which is really easy to see.

It is outlined by five distinct stars that make a very easy to see W shape.

And once you find those circumpolar constellations, maybe try to find the other three, Draco, Cepheus and Camelopardalis.

♪♪ And just as people have done throughout history, look at the dots in the sky, create your own images and write your own stories and even share them with your friends and family.

♪♪ Thanks for tuning in and remember, stay curious and wonder as you wander.

♪♪ As the Sun goes down tonight, challenge your parents and your family to go outside and see if you can find some of those constellations.

Impress each other with which ones you can name.

Thank you for going beyond with Iowa PBS and the Science Center of Iowa.

Always remember to ask questions and wonder.

That's what science is all about.

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