the Planets - NPR

Today, while driving to work, I tuned into my favourite radio station: NPR, my local station is KQED-FM 88.5. The current show was "Talk of the Nations: Science Friday": A Sightseeing Tour of the Solar System with guest Andrew Fraknoi, where he addressed the hypothetical question of where in the Solar system would you want to go for a tour?

They also referred to the NASA photo gallery site for *fantastic* pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

I know that I am nerdy, because I find this show really interesting, I will post a part of the transcript here in a few hours.... stay tuned!

Okey, I just downloaded the audio stream for last Friday's show, and here are some of the notes I'd taken:

Where would you like to go for a vacation this summer? How about somewhere in the Solar system? (Ground rule: money is of no object; no worry about safety)

- Planet Venus: lava tube about a mile wide,

- Mars - tallest mountain on Mars, Mt. Olympus, 3 times the height of Mt. Everest, big enough to cover the state of Washington

- "take a walk in the rings of Saturn", Prof. suggested using a bumper car instead to leap amongst the pieces of ice.

- Pluto: odd cousin you don't want to invite to Thanksgiving dinner, the only planet which human spacecraft so far has not reached to take photos.

- Submarine on Europa - very intriguing world. Europa is an ice-covered moon of Saturn, where there are a huge ocean of water under the cover of ice. Most likely to have life forms (??)

- Titan: very cold, Saturn's moon. Methane exists there in the 3 natural forms, vapor, liquid, and solid states.

- Lagrange Point - beautiful view of Earth, the most beautiful planet.

- NASA has taken amazing pictures from the space station, Google "photo journal" and NASA for beautiful images.