Author: Damien Phillips

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The Discussion: A dismissal of paranoid woo-pedalling, following what seems be an upsurge in space-based pseudoscience this month, and we introduce you to the first in our series of astronaut interviews recorded at Cosmiccon.

The News: This month we get a little disappointed at the lack of news from the New Horizons team after the initial press releases of NASA’s Pluto flyby. We take a look at the nearest confirmed rocky exoplanet to Earth, at 21 light years away, and ask ‘could we send a probe there within the span of a human lifetime?’ New evidence from many of the world’s most productive telescopes that shows the steady heat death of the universe. And a happy story to end on as NASA are offering the public the opportunity to send their names to Mars encoded on a microchip on the Insight Mars Lander next year.

The 5 Minute Concept: We follow up on last month’s first back-to-basics 5 Minute Concepts with an introduction to what you can expect to realistically achieve with amateur telescopes – and Paul gives you his own ‘patent pending’ formula to help you decide if you’re likely to resolve that faint fuzzy.

The Interview: This month we wrap the whole show around our interview with 4 time Shuttle astronaut, Dr Don Thomas. Veteran of 4 Space Shuttle missions (STS-65, STS-70, STS-83, STS-94), Don tells us about how he never gave up in his pursuit to become an astronaut, the incredible views from space (including Mount Everest, meteors and Comet Hale Bopp!), what’s in the Lake Eerie water that Ohio produces to many astronauts, flying through the Challenger & Columbia disasters, the future direction of NASA to the moon, asteroids and Mars and hanging out with Neil Armstrong in the run up to a launch.

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 Ralph & Paul answer:

· This blew my mind! With a small telescope you can track some binary stars orbiting each other over the years. If I was going to watch a double star year to year looking for movement, what would be my best bet?Andrew Burns, from Reading, England & Randy Anokye from Kumasi, Ghana via the Facebook Group

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A longer episode this month as we have so much to discuss and cram into the show!

The Discussion: Upcoming full-length interviews with 4-time Shuttle astronauts Kathy Thornton & Don Thomas, Skylab 3 & STS-3 astronaut Jack Lousma and Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden. Dragging Sokol spacesuits around the UK for educational endeavours, promoting astronomy with the UK Space Agency at the Harwell campus and enjoying Nelly Ben Hayoun’s asteroid movie, Disaster Playground, at the British Film Institute.

The News: This month we take a look at NASA’s historic close up of the outer most classical planet as the New Horizon’s spacecraft flies by the Pluto system. CERN’s discovery of a new particle using the Large Hadron Collider – the Pentaquark. The possibility that those mysterious white spots on dwarf planet Ceres are creating a localised atmosphere. A Neptune-sized exoplanet orbiting so close to its parent star that its atmosphere is being blown away like a comet’s tail and Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft continues to attempt re-contact with the functioning Philae comet lander.

The 5 Minute Concept: We kick off a series of back-to-basics 5 Minute Concepts for practical astronomers with a look at what those numbers on your telescope mean. This is a tour of aperture, focal length and focal ratio.

The Interview: This month we welcome back Dr Joe Liske for the final time to tell us about the future of the European Southern Observatory and their exoplanet hunting, dark energy characterising European Extremely Large Telescope.

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 Ralph & Paul answer:

· What’s excited you more: Rosetta or New Horizons? For me, the latter.Eric Emms, London UK, via Twitter

Sci-fi Wars: Matt Kingsnorth & Phil St Pier join us again to go through the listeners’ results in our Sci-Fi Wars series. You voted for your Top Ten Sci-fi TV Series, books and movies. We present the results!

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The Discussion: This month’s Awesome Astronomy comes from the magnificent Cosmic Con event at the Manchester Airport Hilton. While looking forward to speaking with the stars of Meteorite Men and four astronauts, Paul recalls a fun June letting the public try on a genuine Russian Sokol suit at a multitude of astronomy outreach events, while Ralph’s been experimenting with ways to take deep sky images in heavily light polluted skies.

The Walkaround: No news, 5 minute concept or Q&A this month but you won’t be disappointed as we tour Cosmic Con. The plethora of fascinating meteorites brought by Geoff Notkin and Steve Arnold from the Meteorite Men and space rocks from the British and Irish Meteorite Society gives Paul an opportunity to explain what a treasure trove of science and history meteorites are. Ralph’s in seventh heaven perusing The Space Collective’s NASA memorabilia – a signed Buzz Aldrin action man anyone?

The Interviews: A whole host of interviews this month as we talk to astronauts, space agency workers, meteorite enthusiasts & organisations hoping to save humanity from extinction.

Jane MacArthur – STEM ambassador and PhD student of Martian meteorites and comet samples, explaining the variety of space rocks and what they can tell us about the early solar system.

Martin Goff – member of the British and Irish Meteorite Society, talking about incidents of impacts from Chelyabinsk to the unfortunate Cow Killer meteorite

Andrea Boyd – European Space Agency’s Astronaut Centre, exploring ESA’s new astronaut intake, British astronaut Tim Peake, life on orbit and an offer to try the joy that is Italian designed space food!

Cristina Stanilescu – Project presenter for the Emergency Asteroid Defence Project, telling us about ways to prevent city obliterating asteroids from hitting Earth before they get here.

Don Thomas – Space Shuttle veteran of STS-65, STS-70, STS-83 & STS-94 revealing his experiences of riding rockets and the woodpecker that delayed a launch!

Kathryn Thornton – Space Shuttle veteran of STS-33, STS 49, STS-61 & STS-73, telling us about fixing the Hubble Space Telescope and the possible rosy future for Hubble.

Jack Lousma – Veteran of Skylab 3 & STS-3, reliving tales of America’s first space station and test flying the space shuttle.

Al Worden – Veteran of Apollo 15, one of only 24 people to orbit the moon, tells us about how to get to the moon & back and flying in perpetual freefall.

So, a huge thanks to Richard and Yolande, the organisers of Cosmic Con for inviting us to record from their wonderful astronomy-laden event. We hope you enjoyed the atmosphere even if you couldn’t make it this year. And we hope to see you there next year.

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The Discussion: A cloudy but fun-filled AstroCamp dominates the discussions this month with glimpses of the planets and a hurried Messier Marathon in between gaps between the clouds. Nick Howes’ talk inspires reflections on the threat of asteroids and comets and how amateur astrophotographers can contribute to science.

The News: This month we take a look at NASA’s new draft 2015 Technologies Roadmap and discuss the advances in robotics, space propulsion, power transfer and nanotechnology that NASA hope to seed. Next up is some research from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that suggests the discolouration on Europa’s surface might be irradiated salt from the moon’s subsurface ocean. Finally, we take a look at the discovery, using ESO’s VLT, that globular clusters in the Centaurus A galaxy are far heavier than they should be – perhaps harbouring vast amounts of dark matter.

The 5 Minute Concept: Just a hundred years after Newton’s notion of Universal Gravitation, John Mitchell proposed an idea so futuristic that it was barely even noticed until Einstein showed the universe has space-time geometry. Then, in 1972, the predictions of Newton, Einstein and Mitchell were revealed as the mind-bending reality of black holes.

The Interview: This month we welcome back Dr Joe Liske from the European Southern Observatory to talk about the New Technologies Telescope that tested new ways to build ever larger telescopes and paved the way for the monster observatories we see today.

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 Ralph & Paul answer:

• If there is life elsewhere in the solar system, where do you think it is most likely to be?Louisa Martin, Brisbane Australia, via email.