The Discussion:
- Paul becomes the new Vice President of Wycombe Astronomical Society
- Jen gets a date for her PhD viva
- Jen promoting NASA’s Perseverance rover on the BBC
- Get ready for Teentech Live on 5th March
- Emails from listeners highlighting the good and bad in Awesome Astronomy
The News: Rounding up the astronomy news in February, we have:
- The Cygnus X-1 black hole must be much bigger than we thought
- A single neutrino detection reveals a super-supermassive blackhole
- Was the impact that killed the dinosaurs an asteroid or comet?
- Earth’s regular magnetic pole reversals may be catastrophic to life
Main News story: A return to the mythical Planet 9 and a new paper casting further doubt on the evidence in favour of an undiscovered massive object in the outer solar system.
The Sky Guide: This month we’re taking a look at the constellation of Gemini with a guide to its history, how to find it, a couple of deep sky objects and a round-up of the solar system views on offer in March.
Q&A: Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was some sort of collective effort to digitise and share the historic astronomical records held in observatories’ glass plates? From our good friend Tony Horton in the UK.
Hi. I’ve been listening to your Podcast for a couple of years now, and always look forward to it. I was interested in your section on historical images, and thought you’d be interested in a short video I put together comparing two images of part of the Pleiades from 1962 and 2019, best viewed full screen and looped.
https://westwightbackyardastronomy.blogspot.com/2019/02/pleiades-1962-to-2019.html
Keep up the great work.
Regards Mike
Dear Jen,
I too was taken by Ralph’s news story about magnetic pole flipping and sunscreen. I looked for a link to the story on your web site but found none. Undaunted I Googled and found this link:
https://forbetterscience.com/2021/02/22/neanderthals-abused-to-support-bully-alan-cooper/
You might want to have a look and hope you’re not too disappointed!
Kind regards and thank you all for a wonderful podcast, it’s definately not Awful Astronomy but truly Awesome…
Pete Ellinger (peter.ellinger@thefencingcoach.org.uk)