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#48 – June 2016




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The Discussion: Exam season is well underway for Jeni, Paul & Ralph ran the AstroCamp dark sky star party in Wales and the jet stream causes frustration for sky watchers in the UK. But the big event last month was the transit of the planet Mercury with a full day of observing this phenomenon for many parts of the world.

The News: Rounding up the space and astronomy news this month we have:

  • A possible new particle that threatens the foundation of physics discovered at CERN
  • Is the life-hunting Exomars 2 ever going to get off the ground?
  • 1,284 exoplanets discovered: 550 are rocky, 100 are earth sized, with 9 in their habitable zones
  • The May 2016 transit of Mercury and witnessing the black drop effect
  • DIY carbon nanotubes among 56 patents released by NASA and space elevators
  • SpaceX make Paul look silly (again)

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 Paul’s Big Hat of Woo, is Flat Earth (heaven help us!)

The Interview: For the interview this month we welcome the University of Oxford’s Professor Daniela Bortoletto who helped build the Large Hadron Collider and researches the findings of the world’s largest atom smasher. We take the opportunity to discuss:

  • What is the Higgs boson and why it’s so important
  • Why was the Higgs so hard to discover
  • Daniela’s construction of LHC sensors & detectors
  • The possible detection of a new particle that breaks the Standard Model
  • Is the Standard Model broke or is this new particle a false discovery
  • How much certainty is needed for a new discovery at CERN

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 get a question about our own observing and imaging of the skies:

Loved the astrophotography verses visual conversation. Maybe you could talk about what astronomy set up you use and what you prefer, ie telescope type? @CosmicBeach from Norwich, United Kingdom

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Sky Guide June 2016




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What to look out, and up, for in June.

Our tour of the highlights of this month’s skies begins with the planets on offer to observers and imagers:

  • Jupiter
  • Mars
  • Saturn

Next up is the meteor showers and we have quite a few daytime showers that can be spotted in the pre-dawn sky as well as some more usual showers in June:

  • Arietids
  • Zeta Perseids
  • June Lyrids
  • June Bootids

Then we each take a deep sky pick from our list of favourites for this time of year:

  • Ralph – M13 The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
  • Paul – M8 The Lagoon Nebula
  • Jeni – M57 The Ring Nebula

And we finish this sky guide with June’s moon phases and planetary conjunctions.

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Extra: AstroCamp Spring 2016




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Welcome to this AstroCamp podcast extra episode to tell you what you can expect from the weekend’s festivities and listen to on the way to Cwmdu:

The Discussion: An introduction to star parties and enjoying practical astronomy under pristine dark skies away from the city.

As the podcast crew run the AstroCamp star party, which many listeners attend, in the Brecon Beacon’s international dark sky reserve twice a year, we take you through the events, tutorials and workshops we run to help you hone your stargazing skills and win astronomy prizes from the Tring Astronomy Centre. As the focus of this AstroCamp is the Transit of Mercury, we will also have two talks on the celestial event, from the University of Kent’s Dr Rebekah Higgitt and solar astronomer Eric Emms.

The Sky guides: In readiness for 3 nights of stargazing in the Welsh valleys, Ralph, Paul and John choose objects to look out for this time of year. If you’re not coming to AstroCamp, these are still great night sky treats to try and locate wherever you are in the northern hemisphere.

  • Ralph’s top choices are for beginner astrophotographers, armed only with a DSLR camera and a telescope, and focuses on the Leo Triplet
  • Paul takes five deep sky galaxy treats for visual astronomers in May and throughout spring. The prime pick is a tricky tricky double galaxy to test your skills and help develop your averted vision.
  • John takes a look at the solar system objects available a little closer to home this month as he runs through the best of the planetary offerings and whets our appetites for the coming transit of Mercury on 9th May.

So welcome to AstroCamp and we’ll see you very soon!

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#47 – May 2016




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In this month’s show:

The Discussion

Revision season as Jeni finishes her masters in astrophysics and preparations for AstroCamp in the Welsh Brecon Beacons.

The News

  • SpaceX make Paul look a right fool
  • Stephen Hawking backs an attempt to send spaceships to Alpha Centauri
  • More insight in to gravitational waves
  • A new galaxy is discovered orbiting the Milky Way
  • Narrowing down the whereabouts of Planet Nine

Paul’s Big Hat of Woo

This month we look at planetary alignments and all those crazy notions that tsunamis or weightlessness might occur if the planets are in certain alignments, or something.

Q&A

Our question this month comes from Clemens Unger in Melbourne, Australia who helpfully suggested:

If you’re looking for a topic to chat about in the show, how about the recent well publicised case of image theft in the Astro imaging community? A chap used a Damien Peach image and presented it as his own. But, as it’s a small world, Damien saw it by chance. There seems to be so much pressure on these days to show better and better images and that seems to overtake the fun of astronomy a bit for some and peer pressure is getting to some.

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Sky Guide May 2016




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What to look out, and up, for in March.

We start a new look (listen?) sky guide this month.

We begin the show with a discussion around the highlights to observe this May:

  • The Transit of Mercury on 9th May
  • International Astronomy Day on 14th May
  • Mars at opposition on 22nd May
  • Three meteor shower peaks, Eta Aquariids (6th), Eta Lyrids (8th) & Camelopardalids (24th)

Next we each suggest and help you find a deep sky favourite to observe in May:

  • Ralph – M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy
  • Paul – M3 Globular cluster in Canes Venatici
  • Jeni – M27 The Dumbbell Nebula

Finally we round up the moon phases and a couple of nice planetary and lunar conjunctions.

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Podcast Extra: CERN




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During a visit to Geneva in September 2016, the Awesome Astronomy team stopped looking out into the universe for a while to delve into the impossibly tiny world of subatomic particles and fundamental forces that fuels the heartbeat of the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Dr Steven Goldfarb, an experimental particle physicist from the University of Michigan, led a tour of the ATLAS Control Room, a few metres above the largest and most advanced engineering experiment the world has ever seen – the Large Hadron Collider. Then we sat down to enjoy a light lunch and discuss the ground-breaking work, detections and knowledge building that only CERN can accomplish.

Naturally, we also delve into the big issues in astronomy today – such as dark matter, the matter/antimatter imbalance and extra dimensions, all of which are being explored by CERN.

So, for anyone who’s excited by the frontiers of physics or puzzled by what CERN is or does, we’ve recorded a special podcast extra to shed some light on the impossibly complex and tantalisingly exciting world of particle physics, right on the very cutting edge.

This podcast extra should explain in simple terms:

  • What are the Large Hadron Collider and CERN
  • The International collaboration required
  • The significance of the Higgs Boson
  • Why gravity causes us so many problems
  • The frontiers of our understanding of the universe
  • The search for unified fundamental forces, extra dimensions and exotic new matter

With special thanks to CERN and Dr Steve Goldfarb

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#46 – April 2016




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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

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Sky Guide April 2016




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What to look out, and up, for in April 2016!

For the beginners this month Ralph takes a look at the Leo Lion who leaps across the sky all April. Leo hosts some nice colour contrasting binary stars (one with a gas giant planet of its own) and some galaxies to hunt down.

Next Jeni rounds up the planets that are visible in December: Jupiter Mars and Mercury at one of its most favourable viewing opportunities. The moon makes a not-to-be-missed passage through the Hyades Cluster on 10th April. And we round off with the Lyrid meteor shower and a last gasp chance of comet Catalina.

As spring is galaxy season, for the deep sky challenge Paul slews a scope through Virgo in a hunt for entire galaxies that can be seen with amateur telescopes. While the constellation of Virgo is quite indistinct it harbours a wealth of elliptical and spiral galaxies, culminating with the unique treat, Markarian’s Chain.

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#45 – March 2016




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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

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Sky Guide March 2016




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What to look out, and up, for in March.

For the beginners this month we take a look at perhaps the most recognisable constellation of them all: Ursa Major, the Great Bear. In the Great Bear we go hunting for the easiest binary star in the sky and a host of big bright galaxies.

Next Jeni rounds up the planets that are visible in December: Mars, Jupiter & ever more brief views of Saturn, before taking a look at this month’s moon phases – with a few conjunctions with Mars Saturn & bright star Antares.

Finally we take the ultimate tour of easy and more difficult galaxies as we explore the rich bounty of the constellation Leo the Lion.