Category: Main Show

The Discussion:

• The ‘Wiltshire Audio Anomaly’
• 20% off the book Vera Rubin – A Life for US listeners using url: hup.harvard.edu/exhibits/HX7578
• @StargazerRob’s alternative astrophotographer of the year award
• Listeners’ emails

The News:

• April Fools research papers
• Commemorating 60 years since Yuri Gagarin’s 1st Spaceflight
• An update on @NASA’s Mars Ingenuity copter
• Rounding up @SpaceX’s metal toilet roll tube developments & explosions
• NASA’s Artemis program update and presidential priorities for NASA
• Cluttered & congested orbits leading to satellite collisions

Moons of the Solar System: Our show segment exploring the discovery, exploration and our knowledge of the solar system’s moons. And we move onto Jupiter’s 75 less fashionable moons.

Q&A: ‘How are satellite licences awarded and by who? And can/should they make requirements of companies to make them responsible for their space junk and their impact on ground based astronomy?‘ From our good friend Matt Rayment in London, UK.

Download the episode!

The Discussion:

• Jen finally becomes Dr Jen – bow down pitiful Earthlings!
• Binocular astronomy
• Get the book Vera Rubin – A Life by Jacqueline and Simon Mitton with 25% off by emailing cs-books@wiley.com, and quoting the discount code H0350 (mentioning Awesome Astronomy probably wouldn’t go amiss too)
• Emails from listeners correcting a possible error and posing a teasing question about US refractors.

The News: Rounding up the astronomy news in February, we have:

• UCL researchers unravel the mystery of the Antikythera mechanism
• The Event Horizon Telescope improves the image of a supermassive black hole by revealing its magnetic fields
• Confirming the existence of the furthest major solar system object
• An exoplanet that lost its atmosphere and then gained another one!

Main News story: CERN’s LHC spots a quirky quark that hints at a big anomaly in the Standard Model of Physics

The Sky Guide: This month we’re taking a look at the constellation of Coma Bereneces 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 April.

Q&A: You mentioned recently that a comet was a long period comet? What does this mean? How do we know if a comet is a long period comet? From our good friend Arliss Evans in Texas, USA.

Download the episode!

The Discussion:

• Vaccination cometh to Awesome Astronomy
• The UK’s unorthodox meteor sample return mission
• A listener’s email follow up to last month’s Q&A

The News: Rounding up the space exploration news we have:

• SpaceX launch and land a 13 storey Starship
• Japan joins NASA’s moon programme
• NASA releases its science goals for Project Artemis
• Northrop Grumman begins work on NASA’s Mars sample return
• The OSIRIS-REx mission prepares for May asteroid departure

Moons of the Solar System: Our show segment exploring the discovery, exploration and our knowledge of the solar system’s moons. And we move onto Jupiter and the four Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Calisto. Jupiter’s other moons next month.

Q&A: ‘Do you think the first crewed Mars mission will be to land or would it make any sense to do an Apollo 8 (or indeed 10) stylee close approach?‘ From our good friend Alex Bell in Bath, UK.

Download the episode!

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.

Download the episode!

As the European Space Agency gears up to opening its next recruitment campaign from 31 March to 28 May 2021, we take you through:

• The entry requirements
• The selection process
• The missions successful candidates are expected to fly
• The first astronaut recruitment trawl for candidates with physical disabilities

If you want to take a look and see if being an astronaut suits you, go to www.esa.int/YourWayToSpace. 

If you want to apply, applications should be submitted to the ESA Careers website, from 31 March, at https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Careers_at_ESA

Download the episode!

The Discussion:

• Correcting the orbits of Jupiter’s moons
• Welcoming Galaxy Rise’s Dustin Ruoff onto the Podcast Crew
• Causing terrorism scares with telescopes

The News: Rounding up the space exploration news we have:

• NASA provides more details for its lunar space station plans
• China’s space station plans
• Turkey look to become a spacefaring nation
• The European Space Agency looks for more astronauts
• The UAE’s Hope Mission & China’s Tianwen-1 make it into Mars orbit

Moons of the Solar System: Our new show segment exploring the discovery, exploration and our knowledge of the solar system’s moons. And we begin with Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos.

Q&A: ‘Will commercial ventures, render SLS useless at some stage?‘ From our good friend Steven Sean Spyvee in Leeds, UK.

Download the episode!

The Discussion:

• Jeni on the Highbrow Drivel podcast
• More astronomy goodness at Sky Guide
• The amateur astronomy/dogging connection
• A review of George Clooney’s The Midnight Sky
• Listener emails about the birth of amateur astroimaging & ‘Arecedos’

The News: Rounding up the astronomy news in February, we have:

• A hot Jupiter world with a totally transparent atmosphere
• New research suggest the most abundant stars can fuel photosynthesis
• Elliptical galaxies forming new stars hundreds of times faster than our Milky Way
• Citizen scientists creates a 3D map of largely invisible brown dwarf stars

Main News story: @ESA’s #CHEOPS satellite looks at a star with exoplanets and finds even more planets in a system that should be able to exist.

The Sky Guide: This month we’re taking a look at the constellation of Perseus 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 February.

Q&A: Are there any other planets in the solar system that could support geostationary communications satellites? From Steve Carter in Welwyn Garden City, UK.

Download the episode!

The Discussion: If you like your introductions rambling, you’re in for a real treat! We discuss the Jeni’s PhD thesis submission, The Real Right Stuff documentary on Disney+, Jeni’s foray into book writing and read some listeners questions, which devolves into discussions of whether Queen Elizabeth is Elizabeth I in Canada, the colonisation of the New World, the entertainer Nosmo King and insurance fraud.

The News: Rounding up the space exploration news we have:

• Puerto Rico stumps up funds to decommission and scope out a replacement for Arecibo
• China opens up FAST Telescope access to other nations
• Hyabusa 2 asteroid and Chang’e 5’s lunar samples
• Progress update on the 3 Mars-bound missions & where to follow them
• SpaceX accelerate Starship rocket production in Texas

Q&A: ‘How and where did the Awesome Astronomy team first meet?‘ From our good friend Paul Weiler in Pennsylvania USA.

Download the episode!

The Discussion: As we welcome in the New Year, we discuss the holiday season and your suggestions to replace the Guide to the Electromagnetic Spectrum section of the show.

The News: Rounding up the astronomy news at the beginning of 2021, we have:

• Finding exoplanets that have a good chance of being able to see us
• The ‘Missing Lithium Problem’
• Chasing down the Hubble Constant
• A new method for detecting exoplanets
• Was there another dwarf planet in the inner solar system?

Main News story: That intriguing radio signal found coming from the vicinity of Proxima Centauri.

The Sky Guide: This month we’re taking a look at the great winter constellation of Auriga 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 January.

Q&A: We know there is a lower temperature limit (absolute zero), but is there an upper temperature limit? From Matt in California.

Download the episode!

A jolly romp around viruses and tasers!

We look back at the astronomy and space exploration highlights of 2020:

• Phosphine in Venus atmosphere
• The saga of SpaceX
• Chang’e 5 at the Moon
• Comets Atlas & Neowise
• 3 missions to Mars

The lows of 2020 in astronomy and space exploration:

• Cancellation of SPICA
• The loss of the Arecibo radio telescope

We look forward to the anticipated events of 2021:

• Luna 25, Chandrayaan-3 & Artemis 1 to the Moon
• 3 Mars arrivals
• Vera C Rubin telescope & Maybe JWST

And we run through our own predictions for next year before signing off with our customary end-of-year outtakes.

Download the episode!