LIVE FROM THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE 
March 14th  Telecast: Making Your Observations

The following is a draft rundown and script, as of Friday March 8 1996
that was provided to help prepare students for 
participation in the live broadcasts: 

TEACHERS please let us know how useful this material proves 
to be for you in building "Anticipatory Set"
SUBJECT TO FACT CHECKS!

***

Sequence 1: HUMANS AND THE HEAVENS
Astronomical images, timelapse clouds and stars, the Hubble Space 
Telescope in orbit and some of its discoveries

Around their campfires, long before history was written down, 
humans have wondered about the stars. As civilization began, 
astronomy drove mathematics and became a science which turned 
our Universe from a place of random events into one in which the 
return of the constellations and the predictable orbits of the planets 
gave life some certainty. 

But the heavens have also always summoned humans from everyday 
concerns to ponder ultimate questions about where we come from, 
where we're going... 

Now, almost every week, the Hubble Space Telescope brings new 
answers about planets, stars and galaxies, providing astonishing 
beauty as well as amazing facts... and prompting still more 
questions.

Now, in >this< PASSPORT TO KNOWLEDGE project, for the first time 
ever, students around the world can get their "hands on" the Hubble, 
and begin add >their< contribution to humanity's endless quest to 
understand the Universe around us.


Sequence 2: THE STRUCTURE OF THIS PROGRAM
Live introduction of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center; the Space 
Telescope Institute/STScI, Baltimore, Maryland; the ESO/Hubble 
European Coordinating Facility/ECF, Munich, Germany; Washington 
State, and the people and presenters who will participate at each 
location.


Sequence 3: PASSPORT TO KNOWLEDGE and LIVE FROM THE HUBBLE 
SPACE TELESCOPE titles


Sequence 4: WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN
We meet Planet Advocates Heidi Hammel and Marc Buie at STScI, as 
well as NASA's Dr. Ed Weiler, HST project scientist. Our hosts give 
the e-mail address which -- during the live program only -- can be 
used to send questions (onair-hst@quest.arc.nasa.gov)


Sequence 5: HOW THE PROJECT BEGAN (videotape = "VTR")
Scenes from Buhl Planetarium, in Pittsburgh, PA., (taped 12/15/95) 

Narrative script:
Students were in the driver's seat last November and December, in 
Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center and elsewhere.

December 15, 1995 -- The "Great Planet Debate" was drawing to a 
close, just before the end of school. Now youngsters like these 
would help select targets for the first-ever student observations 
using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Buhl Planetarium presenter, sync: "Now decide!"

It had begun in November 1995 with a "Passport to Knowledge" 
broadcast announcing this unprecedented opportunity. 

The Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble 
for NASA and the European Space Agency, had offered three Hubble 
orbits for student-directed observations. Four planets would be in 
favorable positions in March 1996 -- Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and 
Pluto -- and it would take from December to March to make final 
plans.

HST observation time is a precious commodity and choices had to be 
made. To help design the observations four world-class astronomers 
agreed to serve as "Planet Advocates", introducing each planet.

Reta Beebe argued that Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar 
system, offered a dramatic, dynamic atmosphere, with colossal 
storm systems exemplifying weather elsewehre in our solar system.

Carolyn Porco spoke up for Uranus, saying that Hubble could perhaps 
discover the chemical composition of its faint rings.

Heidi Hammel proposed that since Neptune had bright and dark clouds 
that seem to appear and disappear very quickly, students might be 
the first to see some brand-new features.

Marc Buie is a fan of distant Pluto, the only planet not yet explored 
by spacecraft. He argued that our Hubble orbits could help determine 
whether Pluto's climate has begun to change as it retreats from its 
closest approach to the Sun. 

The "Great Planet Debate" continued online. With E-Mail coming from 
across America and around the world, students like these at the Buhl 
Planetarium researched the options and interacted with the Planet 
Advocates. Messages poured in from Florida and Alaska, from Maine 
to Hawaii. Classes participated from Germany, England, Greece, the 
Ukraine, Japan, Croatia, even remote Nizhny Novgorod in Russia.

Finally in late December, students reached a consensus: One orbit 
would be devoted to Pluto, in the hope of contributing a little more 
knowledge about this mysterious place, and two orbits -- eight 
hours apart -- would be used to study the dynamic atmosphere of 
Neptune. 

As a generous pre-holiday (Christmas) "gift", Planet Advocate Reta 
Beebe volunteered one orbit from her continuing research on mighty 
Jupiter to showcase the kind of image processing Marc and Heidi 
would use to analyze the Neptune and Pluto results, slated to be 
announced during the April 23 Passport to Knowledge broadcast.

CHANGE OF ORDER: SEQUENCE 6 PRECEDES SEQUENCE 5-A!!!

Sequence 6: HST -- THE STAR OF OUR SHOW
LIVE from Goddard, we see the current status of the telescope


5A   TARGETING THE PLANETS: STScI Program Coordinator Tony 
Roman shows how some planets are safe to view, and some are not 
(VTR)

How do you plan observations using the Hubble Space Telescope? 
Last month, students visited Mission Planner Tony Roman for a quick 
introduction to hitting "Moving Targets."  He began with an example 
from the LFH Teacher's Guide.

Roman, sync (NOT EXACT!): "The HST is very sensitive... you don't 
want to look at the Sun... in fact you can't look much closer than 50 
degrees... a fist at arm's length is about ten degrees and takes up 
about this much of sky."

To find the positions of the Sun and planets for March 14, Tony 
showed his visitors how to read tables of Right Ascension and 
Declination, as found in the Teacher's Guide. These are what 
astronomers use as latitude and longitude, coordinates for 
navigating the heavens. 

>Right Ascension< is measured in hours of Universal Time...

Tony, sync (NOT EXACT): "It tells when an object will be overhead 
in the sky". 

>Declination< indicates how far above or below the Earth's equator 
the object appears. 

First, they found the position of the Sun against the background of 
fixed stars, and marked it on their charts. 

For March 14 the Sun is at 23.6 hours Right Ascension and 2.5 
degrees Declination.

Then, each student found the position of a planet: Renee Villard 
located Saturn, Fredrick Bailey... Neptune and Kristen Polizzi... Pluto. 

Tony showed them how to use the "Zone of Solar Avoidance" disk 
found in the Teacher's Guide. They now saw why Neptune and Pluto 
would be safe to observe in early March, and other interesting 
planets would not. 
  
(Renee and Tony interact about why Saturn is too close to the Sun.)

But there are many more constraints on what Hubble can observe. 
The Moon is also too bright, and planners must consider the positions 
of communications satellites and Hubble's 95 minute orbit. You need 
a sophisticated computer program to plot what you >can< observe.   

Tony, sync, describes what can be targeted. 

To find its targets, Hubble uses "Guide Stars" as a kind of road-map 
for the heavens. The trick is to find stars that will stay inside the 
"pickles" during the entire exposure. [Tony, sync, "These will work..."] 

Tracking Pluto is not much of a problem: it's very far away and 
doesn't appear to "wander" much. After all, it takes nearly 250 years 
to circle the Sun! 

Once safe observing times and useable guide stars are identified, 
programmers prepare software commands that tell the telescope 
exactly what to do and when to do it

(NOTE: SEQ. 6 HAS BEEN MOVED EARLIER)

Sequence 7: LIVE Q&A re HST ITSELF, AS SPACECRAFT AND 
TELESCOPE 
3 questions total, from Washington State, Munich, and online, likely 
directed to Ed Weiler.

Sequence 8: THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE SCENES, (or "IT TAKES A WHOLE 
SPACE AGENCY TO RUN A SPACE TELESCOPE!") VTR
(Teachers, please note there are a LOT of acronyms in the following 
sequence, as there are throughout any and all NASA programs. People 
use them because they are useful, but you might want to make this 
into a "jargon-detection" contest for your students. Who can catch 
the definitions live, on the fly, or on tape? The acronyms are HST, 
STScI, STOCC, DOCS, DCF, TDRS, ECF, ESO, ESA, NASA, COSTAR, etc. 
etc.)

Narration:
The HST is both a >Telescope< AND a >Spacecraft<... and it takes a 
whole far-flung space agency to operate it. 

Dreams of an orbiting observatory date back at least to 1945, but 
real planning began during the years of the first Apollo missions to 
the Moon.

Actual construction began in the early 1980's...

The 2.4 meter primary mirror was supposed to be the most 
carefully-constructed astronomical device ever built.

April 25, 1990 -- the space shuttle Discovery delivers HST into 
orbit. 

During its first years, the telescope was hampered by a problem 
with its main mirror, which turned out to be slightly -- but 
critically -- mis-shapen. But in 1993, the shuttle Endeavour and the 
"First Servicing Mission" brought corrective optics, COSTAR -- 
contact lenses for the telescope -- which were installed during 
several heroic and successful space walks. 

Now Hubble began to achieve its full potential. 

WE'VE PROBABLY ALL SEEN THE ASTRONAUTS IN ORBIT, BUT DOWN 
HERE ON EARTH, THERE ARE MANY MORE THOUSANDS OF DEDICATED 
MEN AND WOMEN, HARD AT WORK BEHIND THE SCENES, THOUGH 
USUALLY UN-SEEN...

Hubble requires 24-hour a day monitoring by a skilled team of 
engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center near Greenbelt, 
Maryland.  

[Some Nat Sound]

This is STOCC, the Space Telescope Operations Control Center, 
nicknamed the "cockpit", where HST's "Flight Crew" monitors the 
position and attitude of the Space Telescope, the status of data and 
power systems, and myriad details of its science instruments, on-
board computers and 
mechanical and electrical sub-systems. 

Elsewhere at Goddard, NASCOM -- NASA's Communication Network -- 
links Hubble and other spacecraft such as the Shuttle to more than 2 
million miles of cable and fiber optic links, in more than 200 
locations. (CHECK!)

Data from the Hubble is relayed by TDRS ("TeeDris") -- the Tracking 
and Data Relay Satellite -- some 23,000 miles above Earth in "geo-
sync"... down to White Sands, New Mexico... then back up to a 
domestic satellite... and finally back down to Goddard. Commands to 
Hubble travel back along the same pathway.

Incoming data arrives at DOCS, Data Operations Control, a massive 
computer facility located right beneath STOCC. 

Here, science information is separated from engineering data and 
routed to DCF, the Data Capture Facility where error-checking 
systems verify signal quality before it's recorded and relayed on to 
the Space Telecope Science Institute. 

At STScI the signals are checked once more to ensure the 
observations were correctly performed. The raw data is re-
calibrated to compensate for known variations in the instruments. 

Final science data is recorded on optical discs, each the equivalent 
of a dozen CD-ROMs, for archiving and distribution to the 
astronomers who may have first designed the observations years and 
months before!

There's a duplicate archive in Garching, Germany, at the European 
Coordinating Facility, ECF, which is where our German participants 
in today's broadcast are located. This is part of the European South 
Observatory, ESO. 

Meanwhile, Engineering Support Specialists at Goddard analyze 
records of all spacecraft systems -- they've got data on more than 
7,000 engineering measurements taken every few seconds (CHECK), 
24 hours a day, since HST was first launched in 1990! 

This team looked on with special interest as STS-75 (CHECK!) 
launched in February 1996. They're now getting ready for the 
>Second< Servicing Mission, sometime in Spring 1997, which will 
upgrade more of Hubble's systems. 

SOON THE ASTRONAUTS WHO WILL CREW THAT MISSION WILL BEGIN 
REHEARSALS FOR THEIR COMPLEX SPACEWALKS, USING HUGE "WET 
TANKS" AT JOHNSON SPACE CENTER AND ELSEWHERE FOR PRACTISE.

Future activities are planned by the Programming and Scheduling 
team. Weeks in advance they prepare software commands which 
specify both science observations and "housekeeping chores" for 
each orbit for upload to HST via TDRS.

Competition is keen for HST observing time. Only one of every ten 
proposals is accepted, so every observation is special.

And the far-flung HST support team is there, every second of every 
day, to ensure spacecraft "health and safety" and spectacular 
science returns!

[Nat Sound]

During unique events like the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 
with Jupiter in 1994, things can get pretty frantic as well as 
spectacular, as you can see when astronomers Heidi Hammel and 
Reta Beebe got their first look at the huge black eyes the comet 
punched in Jupiter's clouds.


Sequence 9: QUESTIONS FROM STUDENTS TO STScI/GSFC: LIVE
about the HST as a NASA/ESA project, HST as tool, the people, the 
process, the astronomy: Seattle 3 questions, and Munich, 3 questions

Questions are routed to Weiler at STScI and guests in STOCC/GSFC.


Sequence 10: HOW HST HAS ADDED TO OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOLAR 
SYSTEM: VTR  HST compared to other telescopes, spacecraft, etc., and 
its role as a "weather satellite for our solar system", providing 
decades-long monitoring of planets such as Mars.

In 1609,  Galileo raised his simple telescope to the night skies and 
saw a universe tenfold greater than any human had seen before. 

Bigger, more sophisticated telescopes were built to track and 
observe  fainter, dimmer objects. But because we live beneath a 
constantly moving ocean of air, even the most modern instruments 
cannot resolve substantially finer detail than those early 
telescopes. Earth's turbulent water-laden atmosphere makes the 
stars twinkle, and blurs and limits fine detail.

Orbiting above the atmosphere, HST avoids this problem and offers 
resolving powers ten times sharper than any ground-based 
system,1/10th of an arc second, sharp enough to spot a dime ("coin" 
for our international audiences), edge-on, 20 miles away!

HST is the size of a school-bus, and has two camera systems, two 
spectroscopes, and all the support systems a spacecraft needs for 
power, communications, and navigation, with an attitude control 
system that can track a human hair five miles away!

The 2.4 meter primary mirror gathers "photons", faint light from 
celestial objects, and concentrates them onto a smaller secondary 
mirror, which -- in turn -- reflects the light down again onto the 
science instruments package. From here, beam splitters redirect the 
light to particular detectors. 

Our project used the Wide Field and Planetary Camera system, "Wiff-
Pick 2", to image Neptune. The high-resolution Faint Object Camera, 
FOC, built by the European Space Agency, was used for our Pluto 
observations.

Within our Solar System robot spacecraft have brought us 
spectacular images of distant planets, but the fly-bys can only 
record snapshots in time, after long, risky and expensive journeys.  

HST complements these observations by allowing >ongoing< surveys 
over longer periods. Hubble shows us weather and climate, making 
our solar system a set of real places we can monitor, compare and 
contrast, finding out, for example, that temperatures on Mars have 
dropped on average some 20 degrees in the years since our Viking 
spacecraft landed on its surface in 1976. 

The Hubble Space Telescope -- the "ultimate interplanetary 
weather satellite"...


Sequence11  HST: THE STAR OF OUR SHOW LIVE from GSFC
"What's up" with Hubble, right now... perhaps the transition from 
"orbit night" to "orbit day"


Sequence 12 HEIDI HAMMEL ON NEPTUNE: STScI LIVE 
Introduction to Neptune


Sequence 13 NEPTUNE: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW: 
VTR 

August, 1989... Planetary scientists at NASA'S Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory, JPL, waited expectantly as Voyager 2 approached 
Neptune, its last port of call in our Solar System. 

Few were prepared for the startling images of this beautiful blue 
world, four times the size of Earth.

Voyager photographed Neptune's strange system of ring arcs. The 
brightest ring circles more than 30,000 miles above the atmosphere.

Neptune's moons displayed strange and varied details -- ice geysers 
on Triton, a large moon with a complex surface, in size and density 
much like Pluto.

For atmospheric scientists, Neptune was a special treat as Voyager 
skimmed barely 3,000 miles above the cloudtops. Its atmosphere 
proved tremendously dynamic, much more so than predicted for a 
planet so far from the warmth of the Sun. 

Neptune had a "Great Dark Spot", a storm system larger than the 
Earth, and driven by 700 mile per hour retrograde winds -- 
jetstreams moving opposite to the direction of Neptune's rotation!
 
There were smaller, fast-moving light clouds, one nicknamed 
"Scooter"...
Whoah!!! -- there it goes again! Gotcha!

In this view Voyager's images are timed to freeze Scooter's 
position, while the other banded wind and cloud currents race by at 
differing speeds.

But Voyager could not linger. In a few days it had come and gone.
 
Then in 1994 and five, HST provided new views of Neptune. Though 
nearly 3 billion miles away, our interplanetary weather satellite 
could still clearly resolve cloud and weather patterns.

But now there was no sign of the Great Dark Spot! Instead, other 
storm systems had appeared in the opposite hemisphere!

Planet Advocate Heidi Hammel:

Heidi interview on tape, sync, (not exact): "It turned upside down... 
always different! If we were to observe Neptune we would see 
things that would belong to these students..."

Sequence 14: Q&A TO HEIDI
One question each from Seattle and Munich
On-camera students at STScI relay on-line questions from USA and 
Brazil

Sequence 15: HST: THE STAR OF OUR SHOW 
LIVE at GSFC What's happening with HST RIGHT NOW!

Sequence 16: MARC BUIE ON PLUTO: LIVE 
Introduction to Pluto

Sequence17: PLUTO: WHAT WE KNOW AND WANT TO KNOW VTR

The Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Arizona, was originally built 
to study Mars, during the conjunction of1894 -- a time when 
knowledge of the Red Planet was not much better than our current 
knowledge of Pluto. 

We spoke with Planet Advocate Marc Buie at the "Pluto Dome" -- so 
called since it was also here, on February 18, 1930, that a young 
assitant astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, then-CHECK years old, first 
sighted a trans-Neptunian planet.

[Buie Nat Sound  " This is the Telescope..."]

This is the "discovery plate", the very first image of Pluto!
 
Clyde Tombaugh, the only American to discover a planet, recently 
celebrated his 90th birthday, along with Planet Advocates Marc Buie 
and Reta Beebe and some "Passport to Knowledge" students, at New 
Mexico State University. They presented him with greetings and 
birthday cards which our LIVE FROM project had invited students to 
send, via the Internet, from around the world.

Pluto is still very mysterious. Artists imagine a dark, icy world, but 
scientists have very little hard information about Pluto and its moon 
Charon. Pluto itself is only about 2/3's the size of Earth's Moon, but 
Charon is 1/2 the side of its parent planet, making it relatively the 
largest planetary off-spring in our solar system (CLEAR ENOUGH???)

Pluto was closest to the Sun in 1988, when its atmosphere was 
discovered during a stellar occultation, and scientists monitored 
how starlight gradually faded and returned as the planet passed in 
front of it. 

Now Pluto is moving outwards again, to an eventual distance fifty 
times further from the Sun than Earth. As it cools still more, its 
atmosphere may freeze out onto its surface until, 240 years from 
now, Pluto returns to the warmth of the Sun.

Pluto's "North Pole" is tipped downwards relative to Earth and it 
rotates on its side. Charon's orbit is also canted, in line with Pluto's 
equator. 

During the period from 1985-1990, Charon periodically crossed in 
front of Pluto, as seen from Earth. Using the 88-inch telescope of 
the University of Hawaii, Marc Buie and colleagues were able to 
measure reflected changes in surface brightness, as Charon's shadow 
eclipsed Pluto. They created these computer maps of bright and dark 
regions, but these are not direct images of the actual surface, but 
rather inferences drawn from changes in brightness. 

Now Pluto has moved on in its orbit and such eclipses are no longer 
visible from Earth. Robot space probes are being studied, but no 
formal project has yet been approved. So it's the Hubble which now 
offers the best chance to learn more about Pluto and its atmosphere.  

In 1994, Marc Buie and colleagues used HST observations to make 
this improved map of Pluto. The LIVE FROM HUBBLE orbit was 
directed at the largest white patch on this brand-new map, and if all 
goes well, may help determine if any changes in brightness are 
occurring as Pluto's atmosphere cools to form growing patches of 
frost and ice.  

Any change at all will be a significant contribution to our knowledge 
of this lonely planet.


Sequence 18: THE "LIVE FROM THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE" PLUTO 
OBSERVATION: FIRST LOOK... LIVE
Date comes in... Marc responds with first impressions of "what does 
this mean?" Marc and STScI image processor begin to work with the 
data...


Sequence 19: Q&A TO MARC, LIVE 
Washington State, 4 questions -- RESPOND TO LIVE DATA
Munich, 2 questions -- RESPOND TO LIVE DATA


Sequence 20: JUPITER: WHAT RETA SAW VTR
A sequence which demonstrates how image processing of HST data 
turns pixels into pictures: Jupiter and Reta's data as a case-study in 
using the HST archive and new data, and as an example of what will 
happen to the Pluto and Neptune images.

TAPED IN NEW MEXICO, MARCH 8, 1996, TO BE EDITED IN LOS 
ANGELES, MARCH 9 1996. SCRIPT WILL BE POSTED IN THE NEXT FEW 
DAYS!


Sequence 20A: HOW STUDENTS CAN DO IMAGE PROCESSING, AS 
SUGGESTED BY THE PRINTED TEACHER'S GUIDE, AND THE ONLINE 
ACTIVITY TO BE UNVEILED MARCH 15 1996. 


Sequence 21: HST: THE STAR OF OUR SHOW LIVE from GSFC
What's happening with HST right now!


Sequence 22: THE "LIVE FROM THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE" 
NEPTUNE OBSERVATION: FIRST LOOK... LIVE
Data comes in... Heidi responds with first impressions of "what does 
this mean?" Heidi and STScI image processor begin to work with the 
data...


Sequence 23: Q&A TO HEIDI, LIVE 
Washington State, 4 questions -- RESPOND TO LIVE DATA
Munich, 2 questions -- RESPOND TO LIVE DATA
Kids at STScI relay on-line questions, USA, Brazil and Japan, to 
MARC and/or HEIDI

Sequence 24: HST RIGHT NOW! AND "GOODBYE" LIVE
Goodbye from GSFC 

Sequence 25: NEXT PROGRAM TEASE, AND WHAT STUDENTS CAN BE 
DOING ONLINE AND IN-CLASS

Sequence 26: CREDITS and acknowledgments

note: total running time MUST not exceed 59:30, so there will be 
revisions to reflect GSFC mission realities, running time and LIVE 
events!

end

***