Author: Damien Phillips

Download Episode!

The Discussion: This month Jeni has a PhD offer that’s getting us all excited, Paul’s been clocking up the miles to teach science and astronomy to schools and Ralph’s just excited because he’s got a new telescope.

Mat & Phil from Project Helium Tears join us again on the day they launched their 2nd Star Wars themed balloon to the edge of space.

The News: We start the news with last month’s total solar eclipse seen from parts of Asia before explaining the research that suggests an ancient cataclysm caused Mars crust & mantle to shift. Then we discuss the launch of ESA’s Exomars part 1. And we finish with a round-up of the news from NASA’s Insight mission, the 1st analysis of the atmosphere of a super earth exoplanet atmosphere and the latest SpaceX attempt to bring down the cost of commercial spaceflight.

The Interview: For the interview this month we welcome Apollo 12 lunar module pilot and Skylab 2 commander Alan Bean. We discuss:

• 44 years of humans staying in Low Earth Orbit
• Nearly missing out on walking on the moon due to lightning
• Saving the Apollo 12 mission
• The colourful crew of Apollo 12
• Finding organic matter in lunar orbit
• Competing with smarter astronauts – and not being Clint Eastwood!
• A moonwalker’s impressions of the moon
• The feeling of the moon’s surface underfoot

And the full hour long interview with Alan Bean will be released in May 2016.

Woobusters: Continuing our quest to debunk the myths and conspiracy theories that persist in every dark corner of the news and the internet. This month’s topic, picked at random from the Big Hat of Woo, is The Dead Cosmonauts conspiracy.

Q&A: Listeners’ questions via email, Facebook & Twitter take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity. This month we tackle:

When will the Theory of General Relativity become Law? Brad Bell from Texas, United States

Download Episode!

The Discussion: We bid a sad farewell to Apollo pioneer Edgar Mitchell who spent 33 hours on the lunar surface in 1971 on the Apollo 14 mission, celebrate the detection of gravitational waves and Paul regales us with his tales of clear skies for some long awaited eyepiece time.

The News: This month the news is dominated by the death of Apollo 14’s Edgar Mitchell. We bring you the highs of collecting moon rocks and the lows of a retirement spent promoting pseudoscience. We follow this up with more information on the detection by LIGO of the last confirmed prediction of Einstein’s General Relativity, gravitational waves, and what this means for the future of astronomy. And we finish off with the observation by the European Southern Observatory of a flying saucer shaped forming planetary system.

Woobusters: This month we don the tin foil hat of woo to debunk the Nibiru conspiracy theory. The planet predicted to crash into Earth and destroy all life without a shred of evidence to its name!

The Interview: We welcome Canadian Soyuz, Shuttle and Space Station astronaut Chris Hadfield into the chair this month to discuss:

The best and worst things about being in space

The most difficult thing to adjust to in space

What is it about test pilots that lends itself to becoming an astronaut

What was the best aircraft to fly

Is the space station a distraction from deep space missions

What’s the next space destination after the Space Station

What will Chris Hadfield do in retirement

Do you wish you’d been a musician

As a positive person, how do you face the bad things in life

Q&A: Listeners’ questions via email, Facebook & Twitter take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity.

If nothing can escape from a black hole, not even light, why in the news today is there talk of ‘jets’ of energy being released by one? And, if nothing can travel faster than light, how can the universe be expanding in excess of this speed and still be accelerating? Jason Paul Smith via Facebook

Download Episode!

The Discussion: As we lament the passing of some great people we remember how lucky we are to live in an age of great discovery. We discuss British astronaut Tim Peake’s spacewalk with American Tim Kopra outside the International Space Station and take a look back at the annual festival of TV astronomy StargazingLIVE.

The News: There’s a packed news section in this month’s show as we discuss:

Have astronomers discovered another planet in our solar system?

LIGO’s possible detection of gravitational waves

Does an irregular star host evidence for alien life?

A possible explanation for the ‘Wow signal’

The most powerful supernova ever detected

Poor Philae gives up the ghost

Attempting to photograph a black hole

The Interview: This month Jen bags herself an astronaut. While celebrating the launch of Tim Peake, Jen grabs an interview with Spanish/ESA astronaut Pedro Duque: a veteran of two space missions having flown the Shuttle, Soyuz and the International Space Station.

WooBusters: With a long back catalogue to call upon to understand objects and concepts in astronomy, Paul calls it a day on his 5 Minute Concept. In its place comes WooBusters! Send in your suggestions for conspiracy theories, bonkers ideas and general pseudoscientific nonsense and we’ll add them to Paul’s Big Hat of Woo.

This month we kick off WooBusters with a debunking of alien abductions.

Q&A: Listeners’ questions via email, Facebook & Twitter take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity.

If Mars’ gravity is too weak to hold onto its atmosphere, how did it ever get one? Andrew Osbourne from the UK via email

Download Episode!

The Discussion:
In our first invasion of 2016 we discuss Paul’s work promoting British astronaut Tim Peake’s stay on the International Space Station and his visit to Parliament; Jen’s ongoing work in General Relativity and black holes; and John tells us about his trip to visit the Sutherland Astronomical Society in Perth, Australia.

The News:
This month we return to NASA’s Dawn spacecraft at Ceres where we might just have the answer to those intriguing white spots on the dwarf planet. Then we discuss the findings that put to bed the puzzle about why gas giant exoplanets don’t seem to have the right amount of water in their atmospheres. And we finish January’s news with a wandering Kuiper Belt object snapped by NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft.

The 5 Minute Concept:
We conclude our series of back to basics 5 Minute Concepts with a look at the last essential items in the amateur astronomers toolkit – eyepieces. Whay are they, whey do we need them, how to get the most from them and how to get the balance between cheap stock eyepieces and expensive behemoths.

The Interview:
This month we continue to honour 100 years of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity as Jen talks to Professor Mark Hannam, Dr Patrick Sutton and Dr Stephen Fairhurst from Cardiff University’s School of Physics and Astronomy.

Q&A:
Listeners’ questions via email, Facebook & Twitter take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity:

How will the decision in Hawaii to stop the construction of the Thirty Metre Telescope affect progress in commissioning bigger & bigger Earth-based scopes? Eric Emms from London, England via Twitter