May 15, 2017 9:11 pm

Tuesday on StarTalk All-Stars, celebrate Voyager 1 with Carolyn Porco, Sean Ono Lennon, Maeve Higgins, and Emer Reynolds

This week on StarTalk All-Stars we’re looking back at one of the greatest endeavors in human history. All-Stars host and planetary scientist Carolyn Porco invited comic co-host Maeve Higgins, “Bad-ass Science Groupie” Sean Ono Lennon, and documentary filmmaker Emer Reynolds to help celebrate Voyager 1.

The Farthest is a documentary about The Voyager mission, so who better to discuss it with Carolyn, who worked with Carl Sagan on the Voyager team, than the film’s writer and director, Emer Reynolds? I’m a film geek so listening to Emer talk about her filmmaking process was a treat.

You’ll learn how Emer’s early science background sparked her interest to make The Farthest. Discover what she found most surprising during the filmmaking process, including the two-year-long process of fundraising, along with the biggest challenge she faced when making the film. Emer also discusses all the extra footage that didn’t make it into the final, two-hour cut.

I really enjoyed Carolyn discussing her time spent on the Voyager mission. Emer talks about the emotional connection that the Voyager team had to the spacecraft and it’s really cool to hear from someone who was a part of that mission. Carolyn describes how she, Carl and others had to struggle to get their bosses to let Voyager 1 take the “Pale Blue Dot” photo, and how sometimes tasks that weren’t necessarily scientifically useful became the most iconic parts of the Voyager mission.

Moving on to the Golden Record Voyager took with it to the stars, Sean shares some of his crowdsourcing ideas on how to pick music for a new Golden Record. Maeve, on the other hand, expresses her concerns that Justin Bieber fans would hijack the voting process.

Lastly, our crew takes live Cosmic Queries throughout the episode over a variety of topics, including entangled particles, Enceladus, and how to spark interest in space travel.

Want to learn more about humanity’s farthest-flung emissary to the cosmos? Then please join us tomorrow night for Celebrating Voyager 1, with Carolyn Porco at 7pm EDT right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channels on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn. And if you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Ian Mullen