Astrophiz Astronomy Podcasts: Recent Episodes
Astrophiz
Astrophiz Astronomy podcast: Brendan sometimes even gets how and why science works, and conducts in-depth interviews with leading astro and space researchers. In each episode we feature Astrophysicists, Space Scientists, Particle Physicists, Instrument scientists, optical & radio astronomers, Satcomm engineers, project leaders and aurora hunters. For Astrophotographers, we also hear from Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave who tells us when, where and what to look for in the sky over the coming weeks and explains astronomical phenomena in ‘Ian’s Tangent’. This ongoing series has taken us through the history, theory and practice of radio astronomy from Faraday to Gravitational waves. Each episode includes the latest news roundup in this golden age of astrophysics. Enjoy! (& donate if you wish to help keep this podcast ad-free)
Dark Matter: The invisible forces shaping our galactic neighborhood.Whether you are a student of astrophysics or a casual stargazer, this conversation offers a unique, charming, and deeply insightful window into the forensic evidence of our universe.Read the full transcript and see the show notes at: https://astrophiz.com/2026/03/18/galaxy-forensics-with-dr-elisabete-da-cunha-astrophiz-230/Subscribe to Astrophiz for your monthly dose of space science, telescope technology, and expert interviews.
Astrophiz 239: August 2026 Sky Guide — Venus at Greatest Elongation, Mars Meets the Crab Nebula, and the Eagle of AquilaDr. Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave returns with your essential guide to the August night sky. This month the planetary action shifts to the morning sky, with Mars sweeping past the Crab Nebula and open cluster M35, while Saturn begins opening its rings ahead of September opposition. Venus dominates the evening twilight on its way to greatest elongation, and the Moon occults El Nath (Beta Tauri) on the 9th.In this episode:Moon Phases: Last Quarter, New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, and the Lunar XA Total Solar Eclipse crosses the Northern Hemisphere (not visible from Australia)Evening Skies: Venus approaches greatest elongation; Jupiter absent until next monthMorning Skies: Mars passes the Crab Nebula and M35; Saturn's rings begin openingDeep-Sky Spotlight: Scorpius, Sagittarius, and the constellation Aquila the EagleIndigenous Astronomy: Aquila in Koori, Boorong, and Muurrbay sky-loreThe Occultation of Elnath by the Moon, August 9The Perseid Meteor Shower (best from the Northern Hemisphere)The Tangent: How sugar and other organic molecules survive the birth of a new starRead the full transcript and see the show notes at: astrophiz.comSupport independent science: Astrophiz is free, ad-free, and unsponsored.#Astrophiz #Astronomy #Stargazing #SciencePodcast #AugustSkyGuide #IanMusgrave #Venus #Mars #Saturn #Aquila #NightSky #Astrophotography
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In Astrophiz Episode 237, Dr. Ian Musgrave joins host Brendan O'Brien to deliver your comprehensive July 2026 SkyGuide, detailing a spectacular month of naked-eye astronomy and astrophotography targets.Today we celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Ian's Skyguides.
RESOURCES:• For full episode transcripts, back-catalogues, and planetarium updates, visit our website: https://astrophiz.com• Listen to our special live recording piano, violin, and cello tribute to Jack Musgrave: https://tinyurl.com/jackstributeAstrophiz is an independent, completely free, ad-free, and unsponsored science podcast produced on Yorta Yorta, Pangerang, and Kahuna Country.
Welcome to Astrophiz! In this episode, host Brendan O'Brien sits down with the brilliant Dr. Gabriela Ligeza, an Internal Research Fellow at the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands. Dr. Ligeza works at the absolute cutting edge of planetary exploration, bridging the gap between orbital maps and physical alien terrain. As a key scientist for ESA’s ExoMars mission, she is developing the science sampling strategies that will guide the Rosalind Franklin rover in its high-stakes hunt for ancient morphological biosignatures (fossilized signs of microbial life) in the 4-billion-year-old clays of Oxia Planum.We also dive deep into her incredible work for NASA’s Artemis program at the Johnson Space Center, where she mapped the lunar South Pole to establish the landing and geological sampling sites for the next human footprints on the Moon.In this episode, we explore:• The childhood spark: How a postcard from a NASA astronaut geologist changed her life.• Martian lighting secrets: How light and shadow in the Mars Lab reveal (or hide) the true history of alien rocks through the CLUPI (Close-Up Imager) instrument.• Four-legged space dogs: Why autonomous legged robots can conquer steep crater rims and lava tubes where traditional wheeled rovers fail.• Training Astronauts: What it takes to teach pilots and engineers to think like field geologists on the lunar surface.• The mystery of Noachian iron/magnesium phyllosilicates—the ancient Martian mud that could hold the key to answering: Are we alone?Whether you are an aspiring researcher or a casual stargazer, Dr. Ligeza’s journey from a small village in Poland to the forefront of solar system exploration is profoundly inspiring.Subscribe to Astrophiz for more interviews with the world's leading space scientists. Join us as we fight for a greener future and explore how our universe works.#Astrophiz #SpacePodcast #ESA #ExoMars #Artemis #MarsRover #PlanetaryGeology #Astrobiology
with the stars, explaining how to observe and calculate actual orbital progression.For the full, human-curated transcript of this episode and links to resources mentioned by Ian, visit our website: https://astrophiz.comAstrophiz is an independent, ad-free, and unsponsored science podcast produced on Yorta Yorta, Pangarang, and Kaurna country. If you enjoy our monthly sky guides and deep-dive interviews with global space scientists, please subscribe, leave a review, and share the universe with a friend. Keep looking up!
to measure atmospheric density.• Retasking the Melacom and Electra antennas for deep-space science.• Processing the data: From raw waveforms to Python and SPICE simulations.Read the full transcript and see the images at: https://www.Astrophiz.com
via SOHO and STEREO spacecraft imagery.Citizen Science: Tips on how to hunt for comets using online archives.Upcoming: Join us on May 15th as we speak with Dr. Jacob Parrott from the ESA Space Research and Technology Centre about the Mother's Day solar storm and Mars' atmosphere.Support Independent Science:Astrophiz is free, ad-free, and unsponsored. For full transcripts, show notes, and celestial charts, please visit: https://astrophiz.com#Astrophiz #Astronomy #Stargazing #SciencePodcast #MaySkyGuide #IanMusgrave #CitizenScience #Space #CometHunting #AstronomyPodcast
Resources:AstroPhiz Website: https://astrophiz.com/Follow us on Twitter: @AstroPhizKeywords: Astronomy, Aurora Borealis, Northern Lights, Space Weather, Physics, NASA, Dr Maria-Theresia Walach, Science Podcast, Ionosphere.
Space Scientists.Guest: Dr. Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave.#Astronomy #SkyGuide #Comet #Space #Stargazing #SciencePodcast #PlanetParade #STEM
Welcome to the Astrophiz March SkyGuide, where Ian tells us about the Total Lunar Eclipse and all the observation and astrophotography tips that go with it.Also you get highl;ights of the morning and evening skies and how to find the Variable star, Mira.
A fantastic interview with an amazing pulsar astrophysicist who is unravelling the secrets of misbehaving pulsars using his phenomenal coding skills.Subscribe and/or Listen here... or read the transcript on Astrophiz.com
Dr. Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave give us 'February' in his monthly SkyGuide series. This month you get moon phases, the Beehive Cluster, nice planetary action, Lunar X, the Pleiades and the Southern Pleiades.Our audio files and transcripts are available on our website at Astrophiz.com, and our MP3 files can be freely streamed or downloaded to your favourite device from our SoundCloud channel, our free Amazon Audible stream, YouTube podcasts, Podbean, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Evening skies are good for planetsEvening Skies:Mars is very low in NW skies setting about an hour after sunset.Mercury is above Mars also down in the Sun’s glare.Mercury and Mars are 1° apart on 13 NovemberSaturn is high in the NE, the rings are almost edge on, but becoming more obvious over the next few years until they reach maximum tilt again in 2032.Uranus, high near Pleiades, binocular viewing. Morning Skies:Jupiter (and its 4 Galilean moons) is always beautiful to look at, and can be seen for about 4 hours from about 2am till sunriseComets:C/2023 R2 Swann – currently in Aquarius, fading, about Mag 5.6, high in evening skies, binocularsC/2025 A6 (Lemmon) – Magnitude 4, near horizon, so difficult.Leonid Meteor shower will be quite poor this year, despite the absence of the moon ☹Astrophotography Challenge1. Take photos of the moon at apogee and at perigee using the same camera settings to measure the difference in the moon’s apparent size when it is at its closest and furthest from earth2. Capture the Lunar XIan’s TangentComet Atlas is being misrepresented by ‘conspiracy theorists’ on social media who claim, without a shred of evidence, that Comet Atlas is an “Interstellar Spacecraft reversing its thrust”There is a long history of comets inducing panic and fear in humans. Sad.Next Episode:Our next episode, coming as soon as I finish the edit … features Dylan Grigg, a fabulous PhD from Perth in Western Australia.Dylan has been doing amazing work that impacts on the effectiveness of every radio telescope on the planet.He has revealed the presence of unintended radio frequencies leaking from the tens of thousands of low earth orbit satellites above us , and these leaking frequencies are threatening to drown out the very faintest of frequencies that tell us what was happening at the very dawn of time.This is important work, and it was great to speak with Dylan.You’ll enjoy his stories!See ya soon
Welcome to episode 223 of the Astrophiz podcasts. October is a fabulous month with lots of highlights for telescopers, astrophotographers, binocular and naked eye observers.We have 'The International Observe the Moon' night, the Orionid Meteor Shower and some fine planetary action.There is also a new comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN)Comet C/2025 R2 (Swan) is a very recently discovered comet that is around magnitude 7 (which means it is binoculars only), but it is well placed near some very bright guide stars so it will be easy to find. Ian’s Comet R2 page shows where you can find its locations up till October 10, and there is some evidence the nucleus has split. What this means for brightness is uncertain, but it might either get brighter of disintegrate. You can find Ian’s Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) page at tinyurl-DOT-com/cometr2 < all lowercase all one word with the number 2>Comet watchers will also hunt for Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) which will be visible to the Southern Hemisphere low in the evening sky from mid-November 2025, with the best chances for viewing in the northern parts of Australia. While the comet will pass Earth in October, it remains a northern hemisphere object during that time; however, observers in the Southern Hemisphere can still catch it after sunset in mid-to-late November. and finally TCoronaBorealis still hasn’t gone nova, so keep watching it,
We are honored to meet Jenni Häkkinen, a fabulous PhD candidate from Finland who has been working with an amazing small team who have done a very big thing. They have turned science on its head with their new paper in Nature Astronomy that changes our understanding of the fate of the Andromeda Galaxy and our very own Milky Way Galaxy. Enjoy!
September Moon Phases:September 8 - Full Moon and Total eclipse of the moon around 2am for those who will be getting up very early to see it (Best viewed in WA)September 8 - Saturn close to the Full Moon (4° apart) in evening sky (also close during the Lunar eclipse in the early hours of the morning.2am central max 4am. wa has best view 2am max 3amSeptember 10 – Moon at perigee (closest to earth)September 14 – Last Quarter Moon – Ideal for StargazingSeptember 22 – New Moon – ideal for Stargazing all nightSeptember 26 – Moon at apogee (furthest from earth)September 30 – 1st Quarter MoonSeptember Highlights:Mars is still in the early evening North-Western skies.1 September - ‘The Eyes of Clavius’ shadow effect on the moon is visibleSeptember 20 - Venus very close to Regulus in the morning twilight (0.5° apart) and close to the thin crescent Moon (4° apart). Will need binoculars and a level horizonSeptember 17 - Jupiter near crescent moonSeptember 22 - Earth at Equinox29 September - ‘Luna X’ is quite visible for about 4 hours in the early evening starting on the East Coast from 6:45pm, Central States from 5:25pm and on the West Coast from 4:45pm ========================Evening Skies:Mars is still in the early evening North-Western skies, setting around 9pmSaturn at Opposition (biggest and brightest) and very nice viewing in evening skies from now till late October.TCoronaBorealis still hasn’t gone nova, so keep watching it,========================Morning Skies:Uranus in the morning twilightVenus is falling in the east as the month progresses and gibbous in shapeJupiter is climbing higher in morning skies in the east========================Ian’s Tangent: A 3rd interstellar comet visits our system, and its tail is pointing in the wrong direction! . Arriving from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, the interstellar comet has been officially named 3I/ATLAS.And Ian introduces us to the nature of cometary ‘ices’ as revealed by spectroscopy, and the chemical/metal composition of Comet 3I/ATLAS.The comet, 3 Km in diameter, poses no threat to Earth and will remain at a distance of at least 1.6 astronomical units (about 150 million miles or 240 million km). It is currently about 4.5 au (about 416 million miles or 670 million km) from the Sun. 3I/ATLAS will reach its closest approach to the Sun around Oct. 30, at a distance of 1.4 au (about 130 million miles or 210 million km) — just inside the orbit of Mars.The interstellar comet’s size and physical properties are being investigated by astronomers around the world. 3I/ATLAS should remain visible to ground-based telescopes through September, after which it will pass too close to the Sun to observe. It is expected to reappear on the other side of the Sun by early December, allowing for renewed observations.========================Ian’s Astrophotography Challenge:Capture the Lunar Eclipse Top Tip: As the eclipse progresses you will need to adjust your exposure settings as the brightness of the moon changes.
Today we're bringing you a fabulous interview with an amazing astrophysicist, Dr. Emil Lenc, who works on commissioning new capabilities on telescope arrays like the ATCA, the MWA, ASKAP, and the beautiful new SKA-Low Array over in the harsh scrublands in outback Western Australia, which is part of the multi-billion dollar Square Kilometer ArrayHe has some great stories and insights into this golden age of radio astronomy.
Astrophiz Astronomy 219 ~ Dr Ian Musgrave’s August SkyGuide & Astrophotography ChallengeAugust Moon Phases:August 1 - 1st Quarter Moon August 2 - Moon at apogee (furthest from earth)August 9 - Full MoonAugust 15 - Moon at perigee (closest to earth)August 16 - Last Quarter Moon - Ideal for StargazingAugust 23 - New Moon - also ideal for StargazingAugust 30 - Moon at apogee again! (furthest from earth)August 31 - 1st Quarter (Blue) Moon again!'Luna X’ is quite visible in early evening on August 1st 3 August - Occultation of 2 Scorpii and 3 Scorpio by the moonEvening Skies:Mars is fading, but obvious in the Western evening sky, setting around 9PM3 August - Mars and Beta Virginis are extremely close ( <1° apart)12 & 13 August: Saturn rising very close ro the waning Moon 26 August: Mars near to thin crescent Moon (just 4° apart)Morning Skies:All of August: Saturn is lowering close to Neptune (1-2°) in morning sky 3 & 4 August:Venus close to star Propus (𝝶 Geminorum, 1°)19 August - Lineup of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury 20 August: Jupiter near crescent Moon (6° apart) 5:45am East21 August: Venus near thin crescent Moon (7° apart)TCoronaBorealis still hasn’t gone nova, so keep watching it,Two Novae are currently observable in Southern Skies.Nova V462 Lupi is still visible in the constellation Lupus, just above the constellation Scorpius, it’s quite obvious if you age a chart and binoculars (see Ian's ‘Astroblogger’ website for the chart) Nova V572 VelorumA nova has erupted in the constellation of Vela, the sail. Known as Nova V572 Velorum it is faint (around magnitude 5.7-5.8, at the unaided eye threshold) and may be glimpsed by those with good visual acuity under dark sky conditions. However, it is best with binoculars of a small telescope. It is well placed for southern hemisphere observers and visible from the early evening on. It is close to the Southen Pelaides (Theta Carina) and the eta Carina nebula. (see Ian's ‘Astroblogger’ website for the chart) Ian’s Tangent: Bogong Moths using the Milky Way to navigate 1000 kilometre flightsIan’s astrophotography Challenge: ’Shooting the Core'
VALE: Nancy Grace Roman ~ 16 May 1925 ~ 25 December 2018I'm your host, Brendan O’Brien, and today we're taking a journey through the life and achievements of a truly remarkable astronomer who quite literally changed how we see the universe. Today we're enjoying examining the legacy of Dr Nancy Grace Roman, who spent over 30 years fighting, and winning, to give humanity the greatest space telescope ever built. She's the woman who literally changed how we see the universe.Her name is Nancy Grace Roman, though she's probably better known by a title that would make any scientist proud: the Mother of Hubble.
July SkyGuide:Moon Phases:July 3 - 1st Quarter MoonNote: July 4 - Earth is at aphelion (furthest) with respect to our sunJuly 5 - Moon at apogee (furthest from earth))July 10 - Full MoonJuly 18 - Last Quarter Moon - Ideal StargazingJuly 20 - Moon at perigee (closest to eart)July 25 - New Moon - also ideal StargazingEvening Skies:Mercury is high in the early evening twilightJuly 3 - Mercury close to the Beehive cluster (in binoculars)Mars is getting lower in the North-west, and close to the crescent moon on 28 and 29 July.Morning Skies:Uranus (in binoculars) near to the Pleiades clusterVenus is falling back to the horizon, and is a distinct half-moon shape and is near Uranus 3-6 JulyTowards the end of the month, Venus comes close to Jupiter.Saturn is very high in the morning sky and near Neptune (in binoculars)TCoronaBorealis still hasn’t gone nova, so keep watching it,A new Nova V472 Lupi is now visible in the constellation Lupus, just above the constellation Scorpius, it’s quite obvious if you age a chart and binoculars (see Ian's ‘Astroblogger’ website for the chart) Occultation of Antares on July 8 (best seen in Perth)Southern Delta Aquariid Meteor shower peaks 3am in the NE five handspans west of Saturn on the morning of Sunday July 31st ( active 12 July - 23 August)Ian’s Tangent:Observing the Dark Emu and understanding how different cultures record ‘dark constellations’.Ian's Astrophotography Challenge:‘Backyard Astrophysics’ Capturing Nova V472 Lupi, and recording how it fades over time.
10th Anniversary Special ~ The history of satellites from Sputnik 1 to mega-constellations of Satellites Swarming Our Once Quiet and Dark Skies - Dark Sky Parks are fighting back
Astrophiz 215: Dr Ian Musgrave’s June SkyGuideSummary: Mars close to thin crescent moon.Occultation of Antares behind the moon in the early evening sky.The moon comes close to some of the bright planets.… and Mars is close to the moon again at the end of the month.Moon Phases:June 3 ~ 1st Quarter Moon, and another time to catch the ‘Lunar X’ late in the night, about 11pm for Australian Eastern states. 10:30 for central states and 9pm in the West.Lunar X Tip: take an image each 1/2 hour from moonrise.June 7 ~ Apogee, furthest from earthJune 11 ~ Full MoonJune 19 ~ Last Quarter Moon ~ ideal for stargazingJune 23 ~ Perigee, closest to earthJune 25 ~ New Moon ~ ideal for stargazingJune 21 ~ Solstice: shortest day in Southern Hemisphere. longest day in Northern HemisphereEvening Skies:Jupiter is lost into the twilightMercury returns to evening skies mid-month, on the 27th it’s 3°from the moon an hour after sunset, and will continue to be excellent until mid-July.Mars is low in the NW evening skies, and is still readily visibleT Coronae Borealis is visible in late evening skies and still has not ‘Gone Nova’ so the challenge is still … to capture a Nova before and after it blows! This Nova iswell ‘overdue’ so all eyes are on it!Tuesday 10 June ~ The Occultation of Antares by the Moon is easily seen in binoculars and telescopes (for times, check Ian’s Astroblogger website)Also June is a great opportunity to see The Dark Emu in the south, the Southern Cross and the magnificent globular cluster Omega Centauri is also at it’s highest in the south.Morning Skies: Venus is furthest from the sun on 1 June, and is a half-moon shape in telescopes, and beside the crescent moon on 22 JuneSaturn is climbing higher in the morning sky, Scorpius is a feature in the dark morning sky in the eastSaggitarius and the Heart of the Milky Way are also rising, a good opportunity to catch the Triffid and Lagoon nebulas in Saggitarius.Ian’s ’Tangent’Ian discusses long-lived aspects of Indigenous astronomy like The Eagle, Stingray and Dark Emu, and how Western constellation names have changed over time. eg Argo was declared obsolete in 1930.Ian’s Astrophotography Challenges:1. Capture The Occultation of Antares on June 10th (almost full moon)2. Then on a dark night with no moon, have a go at The Dark Emu, with your mobile phone/DSLR/camera, conveniently at 8pm in the south near Scorpius, the Pointers and the Southern Cross.Tips: Use your device's highest ISO (ASA)Under urban skies, take 10 x1second exposures, and stack them using a free stacking program or app.Under dark skies, you can take longer exposuresIf stacking in RAW, do a ‘dark frame’ subtractionIf stacking in JPEG, don’t use dark frame subtraction.
Please meet Dr Anya Nugent … she is amazing … and she has some beautiful stories for us … let’s hear all about unbelievably powerful Gamma Ray bursts and their host galaxies from an amazing Harvard and Smithsonian astrophysicist who uses incredible observatories like CHANDRA, XMM-Newton, ALMA, CHIME, MEERKAT, the VLA and even our old friend Hubble … to reveal new understandings of how our universe works.
May Moon Phases:May 4 ~1st QuarterMay 11 ~ Moon at ApogeeMay 13 ~ Full Moon May 20 ~ Last Quarter Great for star gazingMay 26 ~ Moon at PerigeeMay 27 ~ New Moon Great for star gazingWhat’s Up in May?Planets:Evening SkiesJupiter is difficult to see this monthMars is visible, and nice to see just an hour after sunsetUranus will return in a couple of monthsMost of the planetary action is in the morning sky, Mercury Saturn and Venus are the standouts, but Mercury is lost in the twilight by mid month, returning to evening skies in June.May 2 ~ Asteroid Vesta (almost a dwarf planet) is at opposition (closest to earth) May 8 ~ Eta Aquariids Meteor Shower should be pretty good this year (debris from Halley’s Comet) Great meteor spotting tips in the audioWill TCrB go Nova this month? Keep watchingIan recommends VESTA watching with naked eye under dark skies, in Binocs & ’scopes in the ‘Burbs. See his Astroblog, the Astrophiz FB page or Southern Skywatch for photos and easy finder chartsIan’s Tangent: The Clouds of Mars.Ian tells us how earth's clouds were named, and about the clouds on other planetsWebsites to visit: https://cloudatlas.wmo-DOT-int/en/home.html https://europlanet-society-DOT-org/cloud-atlas-of-mars-showcases-array-of-atmospheric-phenomena/( * copy & paste, then replace the DOT with an actual dot)Ian’s Astrophotography Challenge: Capture asteroid VESTA on your phone or camera. Great tips in the audio_______________________________Next Up on Astrophiz:In two weeks were zooming over 14 timezones to speak with Dr Anya Nugent who is an enthusiastically awesome astrophysicist who does exciting research into some of the most powerful phenomena in our universe. You’ll love her stories about how she uses some of the world's most powerful optical and near-infrared observatories to hunt down the host galaxies of supernovae, kilonovae, and gamma-ray bursts to understand their unique origins … see you in two weeks
In Astrophiz 212, 'Space Governance’ we are speaking with Space Lawyer, Ciara Guy, who has worked in the Justice system and Magistrates Courts. After completing her first law degree, she is now an assistant astronomer at Battlesteads Observatory and is majoring in Space Law for her Master's Law degree at Northumbria University. Her specialties are Dark Skies and Mega-constellations of proliferating low earth-orbit satellites.
Dr Ian Musgrave’s April SkyGuideApril SummaryJupiter & Mars are dominating the NW skiesVenus, Saturn & Mercury dominate the morning skies.TCr Borealis is ‘lurking’ … ready to go NovaThe ‘Lunar X’ is coming upApril Moon Phases:First Quarter: April 5 Lunar X is visible on the 5thDaylight saving ends on Sunday 6 AprilMoon at Apogee April 13Full Moon: April 13Last Quarter April 21 Moon at Perigee April 28New Moon: April 28 Evening Skies:Jupiter is high in the north-western evening sky when the sky is fully dark. Jupiter forms a line with the stars Aldebaran and Elnath. The Moon joins the line-up Jupiter on the 3rd, and on the 8th, Jupiter is 8 degrees from the crescent moon.Mars is high in the evening sky, setting just after midnight. Mars was at opposition, when it is biggest and brightest as seen from Earth, earlier in the year on January the 16th. Mercury is lost in the evening twilight, but is moving to morning skies.… AND HAVE A HUNT FOR VESTA!Morning Skies:Saturn returns to the morning twilight. It is near the crescent Moon on the 28thMercury is pretty easyVenus - EasiestVesta is difficult, but getting easier as the month progressesHighlights:3 April Crescent Moon near Jupiter in Evening twilight.5 April "Lunar X" visible 5-6 April Mars around 5° from waxing Moon13 April Apogee Full Moon16-25 April The Lyrid meteor shower will be visible 25 April Saturn and Venus close in the morning twilight forming a triangle with the thin crescent Moon26 April Crescent Moon close to Mercury in the morning twilightAstrophotography Challenges: 1.CHASING the ‘Terminator’ on the Moon. Hint: 1/250 sec at ISO 400 every 30 minutes, and making a simple animation.2.CATCHING The T Coronae Borealis Nova.The challenge is still … to capture a Nova before and after it blows!This Nova is ‘overdue’ so all eyes are on it!Ian’s Tip: use 1sec stacksT Coronae Borealis last brightened in 1946, and astronomers initially predicted it would brighten again by September 2024.It’s a variable star in Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, a backward-C-shaped constellation east of Boötes. T Coronae Borealis, dubbed the “Blaze Star” and known to astronomers simply as “T CrB,” is a binary system nestled in the Northern Crown constellation some 3,000 light-years from Earth. The system is comprised of a dense white dwarf – an Earth-sized remnant of a dead star with a mass comparable to that of our Sun – and an ancient red giant slowly being stripped of hydrogen by the relentless gravitational pull of its hungry neighbour.Ian’s Tangent:
You'll be astounded when you listen to A/Prof Elizabeth Tasker as she takes us on an astonishingly brilliant 600million kilometre rollercoaster ride on the JAXA Hayabusa missions to collect the very first Asteroid samples and bring them back to earth for analysis, to reveal the primordial origins of our solar system.Elizabeth also gives us an update on JAXA's 2026 Mars Moons mission ~ MMXYou'll marvel at this triumph of ingeniously designed and executed science and engineering!Great science stories of discovery are essentially ... great human stories.
March Moon Phases:Moon at Perigee March 2 First Quarter: March 7 Full Moon: March 14Moon at Apogee March18<
Meet Dr Alex Cameron from Oxford University who is making fantastic discoveries about the earliest and most distant galaxies in our universe using the James Webb Space Telescope …
Dr Ian Musgrave brings us his February SkyGuide … telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies this month, with some great astrophotography tips. Listen: Summary: February is again a wonderful month for celestial observers with a great lineup of planets in your evening skies/February Moon Phases: Feb 2 Moon at perigeeFeb 5 First quarter moon. Feb 13 Full Moon Feb 18 Moon at apogee Feb 21 Last quarter moonFeb 28 New moon February’s Observing Highlights:All the action in Morning Skies has now moved to the Evening Skies where we have a fabulous line-up of planetary action all month.Saturn, Venus, Jupiter and Mars are putting on a marvellous visual display for us and blue Uranus is also relatively easy to find.Venus, even though it is in crescent phase, is at its brightest this month,As usual Ian gives us ‘Ian’s Tangent’ … and this month it’s all about present and future ‘Planet Parades’and in two weeks we're zooming over to Oxford University to speak with Dr Alex Cameron, an amazing astrophysicist who has used the JWST to discover a new and most unusual class of galaxies in the very early universe, just after the big bangKeep looking Up!
Today we’re zooming over 16 time zones from rural Australia to Toronto Canada where we are a guest on The York Universe Podcast with Dr Elaina Hyde and Julie Tomé where we are talking about What’s Up in the Skies Down Under.
Dr Ian Musgrave gives us his fabulous Holiday SkyGuide where he tell us all the fabulous sights that are in store for us over December and January.Most of the planetary action is at family-friendly times in the evening skies.We have Venus Jupiter and Saturn all at their best these holidays, a meteor shower still worth a look despite the full moon mid-December, an occultation of Saturn by the moon, and a re-appearance of the 'Lunar X' phenomenon.In Ian's Tangent he reveals the latest advances in the science of tracing the origins of meteors. It's beautiful Science!For those celebrating festive occasions with friends and family in December and January, have a happy and safe festive season.
In this our two hundred and fourth episode of Astrophiz, we’re going to listen in to another fabulous Astro podcast that you should subscribe to.Regular listeners will remember back to Episode 57 in 2018 where we interviewed a wonderful data scientist and astrophysicist, Dr Elaina Hyde. Elaina speaks four languages, has four undergraduate degrees in astronomy, physics, optical engineering and planetary sciences; two masters degrees in engineering and astronomy and astrophysics; and a Ph.D. in astronomy and physics.Now back then, Doctor Hyde was an post-doc research fellow at Western Sydney University and data science consultant …. and right now she is at York University in Toronto Canada where she is the director pf the Allan I Carswell Observatory and is an associate professor who has also developed wonderful outreach programs One aspect of Elaina’s outreach repertoire is where Doc Hyde and her York University colleagues regularly produce a fabulous podcast! In this episode we are re-broadcasting today they take us on a deep dive into science and science fiction with space launches from the past. We travel through the 70s (and a bit of the 50s) with space launches from Mariner, Voyager, Pioneer, to mention a few …. Join Elaina and her co-hosts, as well as Professor Mary-Helen Armour for this literal blast into space!Here we go !!
Astronomy- The Astrophiz podcast with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ MusgraveMoon Phases for November:1 November - New Moon - ideal for stargazing9 November - 1st Quarter Moon14 November - Moon at perigee (closest)16 November - Full Moon23 November - Last Quarter Moon, also ideal for stargazing 26 November - Moon at apogee (furthest)Most of the planetary action is in the evening skies and late evening skies. Evening Skies:Venus is very high in early evening skies in the west Mercury is at its best in the evening twilight this month, near thin crescent moon on 3 November.Saturn is still quite good in the west this month. Jupiter is visible rising in the east in the late evening skiesMars enters evening skies later in the month, but still at its best in the mornings.In mid-month, Mercury, Venus and Saturn will be seen close to each other an hour after sunset.Uranus is in opposition at Mag5.7 so is actually an unaided eye object under dark sky conditions. Easy to find about 2 degrees above the PleiadesComet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is climbing higher and fading, but for the start of the month is still a nice binocular object in evening western skies before fading from most binoculars.The Leonid meteor shower is a waste of time this year due to a blazing moon.Morning SkiesMars is higher in the twilight in the EastJupiter is best in the mornings right now, as it slowly moves back to Aldabaran.AstrophotographyVenus is in the heart of the galaxy, but you’ll need dark skies to have the long exposures needed to bring out the Milky Way’s heart.Comet C/2024 S1 is a possible (but not probable) ‘Lovejoy-type object’ to keep an eye out for.
Astronomy ~ Astrophiz 202: Dr Genevieve Schroeder ~ Radio Eyes on Gamma-ray Burst SkiesMeet Dr Genevieve Schroeder a fabulous astrophysicist who does exciting research into GRBs … Gamma Ray Bursts.A Gamma Ray Burst is the undisputed brightest-ever radiation coming from the most extreme events in the universe … Specifically, Genevieve hunts down and understands how Gamma-ray Bursts are generated by the most cataclysmic events in our universe
Astrophiz 201: Dr Ian Musgrave’s October SkyGuideHighlights:Comet C/2023 A3 has been observed and photographed embedded in the eastern morning twilight over the past week, but is now (1 October) below the horizon and skimming behind the sun. The Comet emerges and becomes visible in the western evening twilight around 11 October, so we can look forward to catching it, and it could be quite bright before rapidly fading, but no one really knows how it will emerge after it’s closest approach to the sun. Could be spectacular or a fizzer … So Ian’s best advice is to go out just after sunset after 11 October and check out your western horizon.Watch this space!Planetary Action:Mainly moving to the evening skies.Mercury is returning and will be quite high in the sky later in the month.Saturn is easy to observe now in the mid-evening sky.Jupiter can be seen in evening skies by mid month, but still best and prominent in morning skies.Mars is getting brighterThe Orionids meteor shower will be significantly affected by the moon :(Moon Phases:October 3 is the New Moon … Great for stargazing under dark skies.October 11 is 1st Quarter moon October 17 is the Full moonOctober 24 is the Last Quarter moonCorona Borealis is setting, no bang yet :/Ians Tangent:All about Earth’s temporary 2nd Moon - 2024 PT5… and Quasi-Moons.
Today, to celebrate our 200th episode, we're bringing you a sensational interview with Larissa Palethorpe, a young PhD from Edinburgh University who has discovered the most Earth-like planet yet.You'll love Larissa and her Earth-shattering research.
Dr Ian Musgrave brings us his September SkyGuide … telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies this month.As usual Ian also gives us his ‘Tangent’ ... this time al about Full Moons, Apogee moons and Perigee moons, and how an astrologer made a typo leading to how our understanding of 'Blue Moons' has been somewhat flawedAlso Ian is continuing his ‘Astrophotography Challenge’ where he presents us with not one, but a trio of achievable and challenging tasks to undertake with our cameras in September.This month our challenge is to capture a Comet, a Nova and capturing a perigee and apogee moon with the same zoom settings, and an occultation.Moon Phases for September New Moon - 3 September - best for seeing the faint fuzzies and clustersApogee Moon furthest from Earth - 6 September1st Quarter Moon - 11 SeptemberFull Moon - 18 SeptemberPerigee Full Moon is also closest to Earth -18 SeptemberLast Quarter Moon - 25 SeptemberEvening SkyVenus in the evening twilight, close to thin crescent moon on the 5th, and close to Spica on the 18th. Saturn - almost edge on in the late evening, and for those in Northern Australia north of Alice Springs, an occultation on 17 September at about 6:20 in the evening.... and the centre of our galaxy is directly overhead this month, so when the sky is very dark this week (New Moon) and around to 25th (last quarter moon), please do get out and have a look at our magnificent Milky Way!Morning SkyMercury has returned, low in the morning sky.Saturn rising ... always beautiful!Mars is moving into Gemini, and Jupiter getting higher also prominent in the morning sky, and may be joined by Comet C/2023A3 later on in the month,Comet C/2023A3 is closest to the sun on September 27, in the early morning if it doesn't disintegrate, but comets are like cats ... "they have tails and do as the please"Corona Borealis still hasn't banged, but is still expected to pop off before the end of September.Occultation of Antares best from Perth 10-11 SeptemberIan's September Astrophotography Challenges:1. Capture the apogee and perigee with same zoom.2. Capture the comet oround the 13th or 14th,3. Occultation4. Corona Borealis Nova explosion Next Episode:In 2 weeks, to celebrate our 200th episode, we are bringing you a sensational interview with Larissa Palethorpe, a young PhD from Edinburgh University who has discovered the most earth-like planet yet … and it’s only 40 Light years awayYou’ll love Larissa and her earth-shattering research.Keep looking up!
Meet the amazing Dr Tessa Vernstrom!Tessa is the Project Scientist for the Evolutionary Map of the Universe aka EMU survey using the ASKAP telescope. She is also the co-chair of the SKA Magnetism Science Working Group as well as lead in the POSSUM survey of the polarized radio sky.In this fabulous episode, Tessa introduces us to a fun and engaging Citizen Science Project ~ The Radio Galaxy Zoo: EMUIn summary, you will hear how Tessa is using the world’s most powerful and sensitive instruments to unlock the secrets of the faintest and furthest objects and most mysterious phenomena in our known universe, and she has chosen to work on the most difficult research areas possible.You'll love her stories ...
Astrophiz 197: Dt Ian Musgrave’s August SkyGuideMoon Phases for AugustNew Moon - 4 August - best for seeing the faint fuzzies and clustersApogee Moon furthest from Earth - 9 August1st Quarter Moon - 13 AugustFull Moon - 20 AugustPerigee Moon closest to Earth - 21 AugustLast Quarter Moon - 26 AugustEvening SkyComet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan is binocular-visible in Leo.Mercury is a fine sighting early in the evenings in August near the Western horizon.Mercury, Regulus and Venus are visible till an hour after sunset On the 6th, Mercury, Regulus and Venus form a triangle with the thin crescent moon.Venus is climbing higher and becoming more prominent as the ‘Evening Star'Saturn is rising about 8:30 in the evening and is best telescopically a few hours later when it is higher.Saturns Rings are almost edge on at the moment.Morning SkyMars has been heading towards Jupiter and the horizon, and in the first week of August lands in the constellation Taurus, forming a second red ‘eye’ with Aldabaran in the bull's head.Between the 12th and 17th Mars and Jupiter are less than a finger width apart, and on the 15th, less than half a finger width apart.Looking East and North East in the morning, the Pliades Cluster, Hyades Cluster, Mars, Jupiter and Aldabaran are making interesting patters throughout the month.Capturing a recurrent Nova ExplosionAbout an hour and a half after sunset when the sky is completely dark, you look North and a little bit West, you’ll spot the bright star Arcturus, then if you look down and a little to the right, you’ll see a circle of stars called Corona Borealis.The Astrophotography ChallengeTake a photo of Corona Borealis every clear night during August-September to capture the pre-Nova view and then continue till after TCR-B has gone Nova.Ian’s Tangent : How do we define a planet?We have a definition of a solar system planet:Forms a sphere under its own gravity.It must orbit our sun.It must have cleared its own orbitNow because we cannot yet determine if an exoplanet is a sphere, we now have a proposed definition of an exoplanet,It must orbit a sun, or suns.Its mass must be smaller than can have fusion occurring Its mass must be enough to clear its orbit. Yesterday the ESA released an image of a ‘Cold Jupiter’ named Epsilon Indi Ab.The planet is several times the mass of Jupiter and orbits the K-type star Epsilon Indi A (Eps Ind A), which is around the age of our Sun, but slightly cooler. The team observed Epsilon Indi Ab using the coronagraph on Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Of the 5000+ exoplanets known to date, only a few tens of exoplanets have been directly imaged previously by space- and ground-based observatories."This discovery is exciting because the planet is quite similar to Jupiter — it is a little warmer and is more massive, but is more similar to Jupiter than any other planet that has been imaged so far,” quoted lead author Elisabeth Matthews of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.
Today we have a brilliant interview for you as we speak with a fabulous Early Career Researcher, Dr Lauren Rhodes from the University of Oxford.Lauren has just published a paper on the BOAT … the Brightest Object of All Time … a “Once in 10,000 year event” The blast, called GRB 221009A, was over 100 billion times brighter than the sun.Lauren works in powerful collaborations which use a variety of radio interferometers, such as MeerKAT and e-MERLIN to study the radio emissions from explosive celestial events including jets from X-ray binaries and gamma ray bursts.She is using multi wavelength observations of these sources to understand each event's jet physics and its surrounding environment. This stunning episode is available free from Audible Podcasts, Soundcloud, Apple podcasts and YoutubeMP3 links and a full transcript for those who may prefer to read our interview, is published on Astrophiz.com
Astrophiz 195: Dr Ian Musgrave’s July SkyGuideDr Ian Musgrave brings us your July SkyGuide … telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies this month.And July is again also a wonderful month for celestial observers, especially the early risers amongst us :)As usual Ian gives us 'Ian's Tangent' … and this month it’s all about the ‘Comet Ferret’, Charles Messier, and his famous catalog of 13 comets and 110 iconic ‘Messier Objects’ now known to be galaxies, nebulae and globular clusters. See if you can spot the ‘False Comet’ in the tail of Scorpius.Then Ian gives us his ‘Astrophotography Challenge’ where he presents us with an achievable and challenging task to undertake with our cameras.This month our challenge is to capture the occultation of the Mulayndynang/Pleiades cluster by the moon on Tuesday July 30PLUS: July's Observing Highlights:
Today we have a brilliant show for you as we speak with Associate Professor Duncan Galloway from Monash University in Australia. His research involves the rarest, most powerful and cataclysmic events that occur in our universe ... Neutron stars colliding!
Astrophiz 193: Dr Ian Musgrave’s June SkyGuideDr Ian Musgrave brings us his June SkyGuide … telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies this month.And June is also a wonderful month for celestial observers, especially the early risers amongst us :)As usual Ian gives us his ‘Tangent’ … and this month it’s all about how animals respond to celestial appearances and then he gives us his ‘Astrophotography Challenge’ where he presents us with an achievable and challenging task to undertake with our cameras.This month our challenge is to capture Saturn as it is occulted by the moon.
Today we're speaking with Dr. Marcus Lower, who is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Australia's National Science Agency, the CSIRO. His research primarily focuses on pulsars … rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from their magnetic poles. He's the principal investigator of a Pulsar Timing Project, which uses the CSIRO, Parkes Murriyang radio telescope to understand the long-term behaviour of neutron stars and how they can be used to study the interstellar medium.Marcus is the lead author in a just-published Nature Astronomy paper using the 64-meter Parkes-Murriyang dish and also the monster 76-meter Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Manchester to reveal really mystifying behaviours of Pulsar XTE J1810-197, which we have never seen anything remotely like this before.
Astrophiz 191: May SkyGuideDr Ian Musgrave brings us his May SkyGuide … telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies this month.And May is a wonderful month for celestial observers, especially the early risers amongst us :)As usual Ian gives us his ‘Tangent’ … and this month it’s all about the depiction of Comets throughout history and then he gives us his ‘Astrophotography Challenge’ where he presents us with an achievable and challenging task to undertake with our cameras.This month our challenge is to capture Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks as it passes through the majestic Orion ’The Hunter’ Constellation,
Enjoy this great interview with Professor Katie Auchettl, who is the Associate Professor of Astrophysics and Physics at Melbourne University. Katie is an observational astrophysicist whose research focuses on the extreme death of stars.Katie has worked with a team of young astronomers on a sensational book for aspiring astrophysicists that’s just been freely published on the Archive (ArXiv) Server.The book is called:“Astronomy as a Field: A Guide for Aspiring Astrophysicists” … and it is sensational …. and I can't recommend it highly enough for any student … any person …. who has an interest in astronomy …. It’s a springboard to the stars and sure to be ground zero to many brilliant careers for aspiring astrophysicists … Get your free pdf copy at tinyurl-DOT-com/aspiringastroKatie is also currently the PI of a large Australian Research Council grant project looking at Tidal Disruption Events … known affectionately as TDEs, where stars get ripped apart by supermassive black holes.We even get to hear what spaghettification is.Enjoy Katie’s fabulous stories!
Welcome to the April SkyGuide:Dr Ian Musgrave is telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies in April.He also gives us his ‘Tangent' about Fungi and Lichen on the ISS.This month Ian continues his 'Astrophotography Challenge’ where he presents us with an achievable and challenging task to undertake with simple cameras. Our target for April is Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks ... and he gives us some excellent tips to capture this celestial Dragon.Are you up for it?
Professor Orsola De Marco is a Professor at Macquarie University and Deputy-Director of the Astrophysics and Space Technologies Research Centre at Macquarie University in Sydney. She obtained her PhD at University College London as a Perren Scholar, after which she was a Swiss National Science Foundation research fellow at ETH Zurich, a FUSE Fellow at University College London and Asimov Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She was an ARC Future Fellow. Her research focusses on stellar interactions and how they alter the structure and evolution of stars in multiple systems.
Dr Ian Musgrave brings us his March SkyGuide … telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies this month.He also gives us his ‘Tangent’ about perigee and apogee Moons.Also Ian is continuing his ‘Astrophotography Challenge’ where he presents us with an achievable and challenging task to undertake with our cameras.This month it's imaging Vesta and learning how to use the free Deep Sky Stacker software
Dr Ian Musgrave kicks off 2024 with his February SkyGuide telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies in February.He gives us a Tangent about perigee and apogee Moons.This year Ian is introducing his 'Astrophotography Challenge' wher ehe presents us with an achievable and challenging task to undertake with our cameras.
Astrophiz 184: Hyerin ChoMeet Hyerin Cho, an inspiring young astrophysicist from Korea who is doing her PhD at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Hyerin uses her formidable computational skills to simulate still-mysterious black holes using supercomputers, as well as revealing the mysteries and enigmatic fast radio bursts AKA FRBs.For her main research, she produces simulations of plasma accreting onto black holes and is on an already successful quest to discover what really makes these wonderful phenomena tick and how galaxies and their central black holes interact with each other, regardless of their relative size.An amazing researcher making supermassive discoveries!
Dr. Rebecca Davies is an Astro3D postdoctoral researcher and has just been awarded an ARC-DECRA fellowship at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. Rebecca researches the stuff that flows out of Galaxies AKA ‘Galactic Outflows’ … and she looks across the majority of the history of the universe from right now and right back through time to less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Rebecca uses spectroscopic data from Hubble, JWST … the Awesome James Webb Space Telescope and the VLT, the Very Large Telescope which consists of a optical array of four 8.2 m telescopes high up in the Atacama desert in Chile.From these data, Rebecca is creating new understandings of how Galaxies evolve, filling in some of those gaps in our knowledge, and her Honours and PhD students are in multiple research groups on related quests to understand galactic evolution. Now, when not doing Astrophysics. Rebecca can most likely be found bike riding or playing violin … and she's currently a violinist with the brilliant Zelman Memorial Symphony Orchestra in Melbourne.
Moon Phases:November 5 - the Last Quarter Moon is Sunday, good time for evening skygazing.November 7 - The Moon is at apogee, when it is furthest from the EarthNovember 13 - New Moon, good time for skygazing the entire night.November 14 - The very thin ‘day old’ moon is near Mercury in the west just after sunset. A genuine challenge to catch this.November 20 - First Quarter Moon, great binocular moon gazing time, with Saturn nearby.November 22 - The Moon is at perigee, when it is closest from the Earth.November 25 - Jupiter is only 2 degrees away from the waxing moon.November 27 - Full Moon.Evening Sky:Saturn is nice and high in evening skies and always a joy to observe in the north. On 23 November, Saturn casts its deepest shadow over its rings …. well worth a look, or a photo.Jupiter is bright all night long all the month, and on November 2 - Opposition of Jupiter, Mercury returns to evening skies from mid-month onwards, and easily visible in the west towards the end of the month.Morning Sky:Venus is high and highly visible, and on the 10th, just 4 degrees from the crescent moon. As the month progresses Venus approached the bright star Spica.Stars to watch out for:Scorpius begins to sink below the western horizon.Orion, Canis Major, Carina, Puppis and Vela are beginning to rise in the east, but quite visible by the end of the month, and even easier to see in December.It’s a great time to also observe the Magellanic Clouds and the double stars in Tucanae, and the beautiful Tarantula Nebula.December::Dec 22 - Earth is at SolsticeGeminids Meteor Shower - combining with the New Moon, the Geminids will be very nice this year, peaking on Dec 14, but in Australia, best on the morning of Dec 15th, with a show of about 60 meteors/hour expected in Northern Australia, and about 30/hr in the south, depending on the darkness of your sky, from about 1am onwards. Expect to see some very bright ones.Ian’s Tangent: Hand-held ‘pocket portable’ sundials
Today’s special episode is from your host, Brendan O’Brien, and is all about the amazing James Webb Space Telescope: “Unveiling the Cosmos”Our story begins in a remote, microscopic corner in the vast expanse of the cosmos, where humankind has always yearned to uncover its deepest mysteries.The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) represents a monumental leap in our quest to explore the universe.From its conception as an ambitious dream in the early 1990's … to its launch on Christmas Day 2021, … it’s successful deployment and calibration has resulted in the mind-boggling imagery that it is constantly beaming back down to us; the JWST has already been a testament to human ingenuity, perseverance, and the unquenchable pursuit of new knowledge. This is for our regular listeners, new listeners, space enthusiasts, and those with a curious heart.
Show Notes:Morning SkyTwo beautiful bright planets will reward those who get up early in the mornings this month.Jupiter is is rising before midnight but is still best in the morning sky, it is close to the Moon on October 1 and on the 29th.Venus is moving from crescent to half moon phase and climbs higher the morning twilight coming very close to the bright star Regulus by weeks end. Partial penumbral lunar eclipse on October 28 is difficult to observe in central Australia and impossible in eastern states, but is fully visible from WA where the maximum eclipse is at 5:13am.The Moon occultation of the Pleiades (the 7 Sisters, not far from the bright star Aldabaran between about midnight and 01:24 am on 31 October depending on your location.Stars & ConstellationsScorpius is setting in the west.Sagittarius is still a featureThe globular cluster M22 is always worth catchingSouthern Cross is also a great feature to view.The LMC is reasonably high in the sky, and there is a move to have the Magellanic Clouds renamed because of Ferdinand Magellan’s treatment of indiginous peoples during his voyages.For astrophotographers, the Southern pole star Sigma Octantis is a nice magnitude 5 star challenge for those wanting a perfect circle of star trails.Ian's TangentThe Russian probe crashed on the moon on August 19, which is a reminder that there may be future problems with spacecraft and landers contaminating the moon’s water deposits with dust, regolith, hydrazine and other rocket exhaust products.
Today we are speaking with Dr Daniel Palumbo, from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Daniel is an astrophysicist and data scientist with the Event Horizon Telescope who worked on those amazing black hole images using data from the planet-sized telescope, the EHT, the Event Horizon Telescope. He is involved in ongoing work on the Next Generation EHT consortiumIn this episode he shares his science journey, how the EHT works and how he worked with the imaging teams to produce those two historic and stunning black hole images from our Milky Way Galactic Center, Sagittarius A and the more distant supermassive black hole in Messier 87Brilliant science beautifully explained.Thanks Daniel.
Your planetary action is split between the evening and morning skies.
Venus and Mercury return to the morning twilight. Mars is a dim glowing ember in the evening skies. Saturn is just past opposition and still high in evening skies Jupiter enters evening skies, but still look better in morning skies.
Moon Phases:
Last quarter moon: September 7, ideal for stargazing Moon at apogee: September 15. New moon: September 16, also ideal for stargazing First quarter moon: September 23. Moon at perigee: September 28. Full moon: September 29.
Earth is at its Spring Equinox on September 23 for the Southern Hemisphere and the Autumn/Fall Equinox for the Northern Hemisphere.
Evening skies
Saturn is still nice and high, big and bright in the evening sky.
Mars is sinking lower and will be near the moon on the 16th and 17th of September
Mercury is only visible in the evening twilight in the first week of September, before returning to the morning twilight and will be down close to the horizon thus difficult to see.
Jupiter returns to the evening skies in the eastern horizon by the end of the month.
Sagittarius, at the centre of our galaxy is high in the sky and a perfect hunting ground for globular clusters like M22, so get those binoculars and telescopes out on those dark nights.
Morning skies:
Venus is climbing higher in the morning twilight and a distict crescent in telescopic views.
On September 11 and 12, crescent Venus is relatively close to the crescent moon, down low an hour before sunrise.
Jupiter is climbing higher in the morning skies, looking magnificent and will be close to the waning moon on the 4th.
In this extended and enthralling interview, Associate Professor Michelle Cluver from Swinburne University's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing reveals the captivating world of mid-infrared research. With boundless enthusiasm, she unravels the mysteries of this innovative field, igniting our imagination and highlighting her powerful results and the immense potential of being able to peer deep through previously unseeable interstellar dust clouds. Her contagious passion for discovery is palpable as she reveals the astonishing understandings obtained through powerful instruments like Spitzer, WISE, MeerKAT, SKA pathfinders and the JWST, and as Co-PI, the promise of the 4MOST survey in cataloging the spectral properties of 6 million distant galaxies.
Dr Cluver unveils the cutting-edge radio and optical technologies used to explore the depths of the mid-infrared spectrum, enabling fellow scientists to delve into uncharted territories of the universe.
You will also love her insights into the nature of collaborative science, and her commitment and style in nurturing the learning and research trajectories of her graduate and undergraduate students.
Highlights: Blue Moon Opposition Of Saturn We lose Venus from Evening skies Mercury is at its best this month
Moon Phases
August 2nd Perigee Full Moon August 8th Last Quarter Moon (ideal for observing galaxies and globular clusters in the early evening) August 16th New Moon is ideal for stargazing anytime August 24th First Quarter Moon August 31st Perigee Full (Blue) Moon ie the 2nd Full Moon for the month and the best perigee full moon of the year.
Mercury is best seen at the start of the month rising higher and higher in the evening sky and passing above the sinking Venus, which will reappear in the east in the morning twilight at the end of the month as the ‘Morning Star’.
Mars is getting further away from us and dimming
Saturn is at its closest to earth (in opposition) on 27 August and will be excellent viewing in the northern/north east evening skies all of August and well into next month. Saturn is close to the moon on the 3rd and the 30th.
Sagittarius and the centre of our Milky Way galaxy (look for the upside down Teapot) are directly overhead and M22 is a brilliant globular cluster galaxy of millions of stars often seen as a faint cotton ball in binocs and smaller telescopes. Also nearby are the lovely Triffid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula.
Highly recommended: Get out your telescope See when you local astronomical society or club is having an ‘open day’ or public viewing night, because seeing Saturn through a telescope is truly amazing!
Morning Skies.
Jupiter (and its moons) is easily seen in the north as the brightest object in morning skies and looks great even in binoculars.
Ian’s Tangent
Ian tells a tale about Solar System objects with tails, how they are formed and how they can be detected.
Well comets of course … but that’s not all!
Mercury has a sodium tail. The moon also has a very faint tail which has been detected. The asteroid Phaethon has a sodium tail, raising all sorts of questions for further research.
Thanks Ian …. that’s a great tale!
In this fabulous episode of Astrophiz, Greg Sleap, the Software and Systems Team Leader at CIRA, the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, a node of ICRAR (The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research) discusses the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and its role in capturing radio data from the cosmos. The MWA is a low-frequency radio telescope array located in remote Western Australia. It is used for various scientific studies, including the search for the signals of the Epoch of Reionization, detecting black hole radio jets, studying supernova remnants, and monitoring space junk. The MWA has been successful in producing over 300 journal papers and is preparing for future developments, including the use of all 256 tiles and collaboration with the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) telescope.
Astrophiz 174: Dr Ian Musgrave’s July SkyGuide
Moon Phases: The Full Moon is Monday, July 3. Last Quarter is July 10. New Moon is July 18. First Quarter is July 26.
The Moon is at perigee, when it is closest to the Earth, on the 5th.
Summary:
Most planetary action is in the evening skies, apart from Jupiter looking magnificent in the mornings, and Venus and Mars are nice in the evenings this month, with Mercury returning to evening skies later in the month. Till then, Mercury is lost in the morning twilight.
Evening Skies:
Venus is prominent from the evening twilight to early evening, is closest to Mars on the 1st and remains close to Mars for the rest of the first week of July.
Venus and Mars are both coming closer to the bright star Regulus.
Saturn is now rising around just before 10 pm local time and is close to the moon on the 6th.
Sirius is still prominent low in the western sky. Scorpius is readily visible in in the east.
Morning Skies:
Jupiter is prominent in the morning sky.
Saturn climbs higher in the morning skies and is rising just before 10 pm local time. Saturn is close to the Moon on the 6th.
On July 7 the Earth is at aphelion, the waning Moon near Saturn in the morning sky
Southern Delta Aquariid Meteor Shower:
The Southern Delta Aquariids meteor shower runs from 12 July to 23 August, peaking on Sunday 30 July, with faint meteors visible about every 4-5 minutes.
Best time will be 2am-3am on Sunday 30 July when the moon is sufficiently low in the sky.
For Charts maps and more text info, always check out Ian’s ‘Astroblog’ and ‘Southern Skywatch’ websites via your fav search engine.
Dr Jesse Van De Sande is the ASTRO3D research fellow at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. He is an observational astronomer who uses many of the world's most iconic and powerful telescopes, including the four 8 meter telescopes that comprise the VLT, the Very Large Telescope high up in the Andes in Chile. He is researching galaxies at low and high Redshift up to 15 billion light years away, and his research focuses on how massive galaxies form, evolve, and die.
Jesse co-leads a team which has published new and amazing discoveries about our very own Milky Way Galaxy, which some say are destined to re-write the astronomy textbooks …. And he has a long history with the famous SAMI survey.
In his generous in-depth interview we hear about his journey from a small village in northern Netherlands to researching the largest structures in our universe. He brings us up to date with the SAMI and GECKO surveys, his outreach work, his latest research and collaborations and his work on the promotion of Nuclear Fusion energy and our need to solve pervasive social problems.
You will love how Jesse showcases his perfectionist approach to complex and sky-breaking science with absolute and approachable clarity.
From this interview you will come away with a rich and clear understanding of both this exceptional scientist and his wonderful science.
Enjoy!
Astrophiz 172: Dr Ian Musgrave’s June SkyGuideWhat's up in the Southern Sky in the month of June? The dates for the Moon Phases for June, Evening Sky Highlights and all the beautiful Morning Sky Highlights.Planetary action: Mars, then Venus, meets the Beehive cluster, The moon occults Delta Scorpii, then forms attractive patterns with Jupiter, Mars and Venus.More details, times plus charts on Ian’s ’Southern Skywatch'+ Ian’s Tangent - Comets & Dyson SpheresBonus: Using binoculars effectivelyNext Episode: Dr Jesse Van De Sande with new Galactic discoveries
Dr Rodolfo Montez Jr is better known as Rudy. Rudy is an astrophysicist working at the Chandra X-Ray Centre at the famous Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He has wide research interests and among them he does amazing work using NASA’s flagship X-ray space telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory to research some of the hottest regions of our universe. He is also known for his mentoring and championing of undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds. In this episode you will hear how X-rays from high energy events billions of light years away are cleverly captured by Chandra’s unique design and the resulting data is distributed to astrophysicists world wide for analysis to build an unprecedented understanding of our universe.Rudy is a legend who lays bare the secrets of Chandra.You will love his explanations as you develop a clearer understanding of how X-ray astronomy works!Thank you Dr Rodolfo Montez Jr!
Moon Phases for MayFull Moon - 6 May (with penumbral eclipse in the early morning)Moon at Perigee - 11 MayLast Quarter - 12 MayNew Moon - 20 MayFirst Quarter - 28 May (also apogee moon)Evening Sky HighlightsVENUS - moving from Taurus into gemini and getting brighter and climbing higher in the West. From the 9th to 10th Venus is closed to the open cluster M35. On the 23rd Venus is just 3degrees from the crescent moon, and on the 30th Venus will be right next to the Mag 3 double star Kappa Geminorum.Venus is in it’s ‘half-moon’ phase at the moment.MARS - shrinking as it moves further away from earth in its orbit, but still easily visible, but you’ll need a serious large telescope to pull in deatils of Mars.On the 31st Mars is next to the Beehive Cluster.On the 24th Mars, Venus and the waxing moon make a neat little triangle in the West.Morning Sky HighlightsOn the 18th MERCURY the thin crescent moon with Jupiter above will be a nice capture for astrophotographers and naked eye observers.On the 29th Mercury is at its highest in Eastern morning skies and easily found.SATURN in morning skies is a decent telescopic object again and angled just right to feature the maximum amount of shadow from Saturn’s rings.The Heart of the MILKY WAY is beginning to rise again with Scorpius very visible.The Eta Aquariid Meteor Shower is strong and reliable, however this year the Full Moon will play havoc for meteor watchers.Of course some meteors will be observed on the morning of the 5th if you choose your time wisely.Ian’s Tangent - Betelgeuse is brighteningScorpius is now down close to the Western Horizon taking Betelgeuse with it.After the 2019 ‘dimming’ of the red giant, caused by outgassing, we are observing the brightening of Betelgeuse again.Ian also gives us great tips on how to start observing variable stars.Next Episode: Dr Rodolfo (Rudy) Montez Jnr gives us a brilliant expose of X-Ray astronomy and the astonishing science of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory
I am really excited to be speaking again with Dr Laura Driessen, who is now recognised as one of Australia’s Superstars of STEM!You first met Laura 5 years ago back in 2018 when she was doing her PhD at the University of Manchester and Jodrell Bank.Laura’s back story is all there in Astrophiz Episode 54. You heard about her obsession with space starting at age 4 and her natural yet meandering academic Astro journey up to the point where she was using commensal searches on the MeerKAT array in South Africa for pinpointing and localization of FRBs, Fast Radio Bursts. Today we’re taking up that story from where we left off, and we hear of her first post-doc with the CSIRO in Perth, her FRB and Radio Star research and her outreach work in the outback with indigenous school kids who live near the iconic Murchison Widefield Array and the ASKAP Array. Laura tells us about her current research and her work as the joint Science lead on the VAST project and you will love the clarity of her description of the power and nature of Commensal Searches, and how she uses archival data to verify that her radio data is actually coming from her targeted star and not from a radio galaxy hiding behind it. Another gift Laura gives us is her brilliant explanation of how scientists establish and maintain collaborations both big and small, and how scientists often begin with a large number of hypotheses to explain observed phenomena and how the null hypothesis is such a powerful tool in developing an accurate understanding of our universe.On social media you’ll find Laura, she’s @AstroLauraD on Twitter. And her non-astro work can be found on Etsy at Oomigoomi ….. and her Whippet dog is astro.the.whippy on Instagram
ShownotesIn Australia Daylight Saving ends on April 2ndMoon Phases:Full moon April 6thSo for those out camping over Easter, you’ll have very nice dark skies to see lots of clusters and nebulae as well as Venus and Mars without any interference from the moon.Last Quarter April 13thPerigee moon April 16thNew Moon April 20th First Quarter (apogee) Moon appears in evening skies on April 28th.In the Evening SkiesMercury is a very difficult target even for those with very low western horizons.Venus is very easily observed in the West in the early evening just after sunset for an hour and a half.Over April Venus is moving closes and closer to the iconic open cluster the Pleiades and between the 10th and the 12th Venus and the Pleiades close together will make great binocular viewing.On the 23rd Venus is just 3 degrees from the crescent moon.Mars is still prominent, but is shrinking and fading and moving from the Taurus constellation into Gemini.At the start of April is close to the open cluster M35 and within binocular distance from the 1st to the 4th.On the 26th Mars is close to the waxing moon.The Emu dark constellation is always great to see around 10pm when the sky is fully dark.In the Morning SkiesJupiter is lost to view in evening skies and won’t turn up in morning skies till May.Saturn is climbing higher and higher in the morning skies, easily seen an hour before sunriseOn the 16th and 17th Saturn is near the thin crescent moonOrion the Hunter is sinking to the West and Scorpius is rising in the EastApril’s Signature Event ~ A Total Solar EclipseA Total Solar Eclipse in remote Western Australia is on the April 20, but all accomodation and campsites have been fully booked out years in advance, so if you’re not booked in, you’re best to see totality happen by watching online. Other parts of Australia will experience a partial solar eclipse.On April 20, the shadow of the moon will graze in a 40-kilometre-wide trackover one of the most beautiful parts of the world – the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo region near Exmouth. The website at Ningalooeclipse-DOT-com is highly recommended.For Western Australia start to look about 10amPerth residents will see 71% of the sun covered at 11:20amDarwin gets 80% of the sun covered at 1:50pmFor Central Australia and Northern Territory their partial eclipse begins around 12 noon.For Eastern States it’s round about 1pm, with only a small percentage of the sun covered.DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. You WILL go blind. Specialist astronomical solar glasses from astronomical supply shops are OK for viewing,and NEVER used ’smoked glass’ or ‘filters’ or you will lose your vision.Ian describe how to make a pinhole projector to safely observe an image of the eclipse which is projected onto a flat surface Further safe observing tips can be found on Ian’s Astroblog at astrobloggerDOTblogspotDOTcomIan’s TangentThe Colours of SpaceOur eyes can only see the visible spectrum ROYGBIV Bees can see in the ultra violet.The famous Hubble images are obtained by using filters and assigning colours using the Hubble Pallette.Most meteorites do not have striking colours, some comets and meteors can have spectacular colours.Gases in space can predominantly be Hydrogen, Helium, Methanol and Ethanol, and many complex molecules have been observed and identified.The Orion Nebula’s colour is due to ethanol, and Ian goes on to explain how the spectacular colours of space are out of this world.Next Episode:And in 2 weeks find out all the latest in X-ray astronomy and high energy astrophysics from Dr Rodolfo Montez from The Harvard-Smithsonian Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Recently I had the privilege of interviewing Mia Walker, an accomplished Radio Telescope Engineer and Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) Project Officer at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy in Western Australia. Mia's passion for astronomy and engineering is the driving force behind her successful career in this field, where she has contributed to the development of one of the most advanced radio telescopes in the world.Mia works to keep incredibly complex antenna arrays running, and does a lot of communications and meticulous translating of engineering and science jargon into something that humans can understand - so she’s been described as the Uhura of the telescope.Without Mia and the engineering and development teams she works with, the astronomers and astrophysicists hungry for MWA data would all be staring at blank screens. LolDuring this interview, Mia shares her experiences and insights about her work with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope, in a remote a project that has captured the imagination of astronomers and the public alike. As the MWA Project Officer, Mia has played a pivotal role in the development of this state-of-the-art telescope, which is helping to unlock some of the mysteries of the universe.Mia describes her work with the deployment, testing and repair of Instrumentation for the MWA, both in the lab and in the field, which is far out in an extremely remote region of Western Australian desert and scrubland, where battles with the elements are commonplace. (You saw what I did there ;)Mia speaks about the challenges of designing and building a radio telescope that can capture radio waves from distant galaxies and stars, and how the MWA is overcoming these challenges with its innovative design and cutting-edge technology.Mia also shares her thoughts on the role of women in STEM fields, and how her own experiences have shaped her career path. She speaks about the importance of mentorship and support networks in encouraging young women to pursue careers in science and engineering, and how she is aiming to inspire the next generation of female scientists and engineers.Overall, this interview with Mia is a fascinating insight into the world of radio astronomy and the incredible work being done at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy. Mia's passion and expertise in the field are inspiring, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have learned so much in such a short time from her experiences.You will love looking into this window of Mia’s wonderful world!
This month the planetary action is still largely in the western evening skies.Earth is at equinox on Tuesday, 21 March. At this time day and night are roughly equal in duration.March 2; Venus and Jupiter at their closest. March 3; Mercury and Saturn close low in the twilight. March 4; apogee Moon. March 7; Full Moon. March 15; Last Quarter Moon. March 20; the thin crescent moon near Saturn in the morning twilight. March 20; Moon at perigee. March 22; New Moon. March 24; the crescent Moon is very close to Venus in the twilight. March 29; First Quarter Moon. March 28; the Moon is close to Mars. March 30, Mars close to open cluster M35. March 31; Venus is just 1.5 degrees from Uranus.MERCURY:Mercury falls back towards the eastern horizon and is lost to view early in the month, reappearing in the evening twilight late this month. On the 3rd Mercury and Saturn are about 1 degree apart, deep in the twilight. You will need a level, unobstructed horizon and binoculars to see the pair at their best.VENUS: Venus climbs yet higher in the evening sky this month; the low angle of the ecliptic means it never gets really high although it is prominent at nautical twilight by end of the month when Venus is (just) visible when the sky is full dark. Venus has three close encounters this month. The stand out is on the 2nd when Venus and Jupiter are just 0.5 apart, visible well before nautical twilight, difficult telescopically. On the 24th Venus will be just 1° from the crescent moon, making a fine binocular sight. Venus currently looks like a gibbous Moon. On the 31st Venus is just 1.5 degrees from Uranus. MARS:Mars is making a line with Aldebaran and Beta Taurii. At the beginning of the Month Mars also forms a triangle with Beta and Zeta Taurii (the tips of the horns). Mars is shrinking in telescopic view but is still a worthwhile telescopic object this month. By the end of the Month Mars is close to the open cluster M35, an excellent sight in binoculars. On the 28th Mars is around 4° from the waxing moon (very obvious as the brightest object near the moon), mid power binocular fields will just fit the pair in.JUPITER:Jupiter is lowering in the north-western evening sky. Jupiter and Venus have been approaching each other all February, and on the 2nd on March they are just 0.5° apart. Jupiter continues to sink towards the horizon and is lost to view around mid month.SATURN:Saturn enters the morning skies but is only really visible from mid-March. On the 3rd Saturn is about 1 degree from Mercury deep in the twilight. You will need a level, unobstructed horizon and binoculars to see the pair at their best. On the 20th Saturn is close to the thin crescent moon low in the morning twilight.
"Are We Alone? In an exclusive interview, Dr. Vishal Gajjar, a leading researcher on the Breakthrough Listen project, discussed his groundbreaking work using machine learning and AI to facilitate the detection of technosignatures on the project's search for Extraterrestrial life.The Breakthrough Listen project, led by the University of California Berkeley and the SETI Institute, is one of the most ambitious efforts to search for intelligent life in the universe. Using some of the world's largest radio telescopes, the project scans the cosmos for signs of intelligent civilizations, such as radio signals and other technosignatures.Dr. Gajjar, who is a principal investigator on the project, is using AI to help analyse the vast amounts of data generated by the telescopes. "The amount of data we collect is enormous, and it would be impossible for humans to go through it all," he explained. "Using machine learning algorithms, we can sift through the data much more efficiently and identify patterns that might indicate the presence of a technosignature."One of the key challenges of the project is distinguishing between signals that are truly indicative of Extraterrestrial life and those that are just background noise. Dr. Gajjar's AI algorithms are able to filter out false positives, making the search for technosignatures more accurate.The use of AI in the Breakthrough Listen project is not only increasing the efficiency of the search for Extraterrestrial life, but it's also pushing the boundaries of what we can do with this technology. "We're using AI in a way that it's never been used before," said Dr. Gajjar. "It's exciting to think about the potential implications of this work, not just for our understanding of the universe but also for other fields like medicine and finance."The Breakthrough Listen project is a 10-year initiative with funding from the Breakthrough Initiatives, a program founded by internet investor and philanthropist Yuri Milner. Currently we have purchased time on the GBT in Virginia in the US and the Parkes telescope in Australia and we have time on about a dozen other radio telescopes around the world and we have also purchased time on optical telescopes. This is an exciting time for the search for Extraterrestrial life, and Dr. Gajjar's work with AI on the Breakthrough Listen project is a major step forward in this quest. As Dr. Gajjar put it, "The potential discovery of intelligent life beyond Earth would be one of the most profound discoveries in human history. I'm honoured to be a part of this effort and can't wait to see what we'll find."`
Moon Phases:Feb 6 Apogee Full moonFeb 14 Last Quarter moonFeb 20 New moonFeb 27 First Quarter moonEvening SkyVenus and Jupiter in the West half an hour after sunset, some nice planetary action in morning skies and beautiful signature stars and constellations throughout the month Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has already been a great sight in the Northern Hemisphere and now having passed by the sun, will now be best seen in Northern Australia in places like Darwin and Cairns around the 3rd of February. For those further South, you’ll have to wait for the morning of the 6th of February, however with the full moon over in the west, you’ll need binoculars to see the comet to compensate for the moonlight. On the 14th the comet is close to Aldebaran.In Ian’s Tangent we find out all about the water and alcohol content of comets and the obscure fact (according to some media outlets) that Comet C/2022 E3 is 1000 penguins wide.In two weeks we bring you an amazing interview with Dr Vishal Gajjar who is a project scientist for Breakthrough Listen, the search for extraterrestrial technosignatures. He is based at UC Berkley and has developed novel AI algorithms to interrogate the immense data sets from the worlds largest radio telescopes. This interview is pure science and right out of this world. You’ll love it!The team’s latest paper has just been published in Nature and a preview is available at https://tinyurl.comFORWARDSLASHtechnosigs
Many cultures around the world and throughout history have staged festivals events and celebrations around this time. Here in Australia our summer holidays occur now and with Christmas and New Years Eve approaching it’s a great time to spend time with family and friends.As I’ve been reminded by our resident observation guru Dr Ian Musgrave, this is a great time of year to see some great planetary action and some special stars and introduce younger family members to the splendour of the night sky.There’s a lot to see over the next week, even with naked eyes, but if you have binoculars even better, and a telescope better still.Many households will have a pair of binoculars somewhere and I’d encourage you to go and find them, and while there is an 8 dollar adapter available from online stores that will easily attach your binocs to a tripod, a great idea is to use gaffer tape or duct tape to attach your binocs to a broom handle or your tripod.Why? Doing this reduces arm fatigue remarkably and will hold your binoculars much steadier so you can easily have a good long look at things like craters on the moon and Jupiter and its 4 Galilean moons.So what I’ve done here is have a look at the free Stellarium website that let’s you look forward in time and see exactly what is visible in the sky from whatever your location on earth, and I’ve also checked out Ian’s Southern Skywatch December predictions and his weekly ‘Astrobloggger’ website. Both of these great sites come up first in the search engines.So on NYE 31st of December we have a 65% moon which will be quite bright but will not spoil a magnificent line of objects along the ecliptic and this time I’ll sweep from west to east and see Saturn, Jupiter, Moon, the Piades, Mars, then Aldaberan, the red eye of Taurus the bull, above orange Mars and further to the right is Orion with red Betelgeuse sitting on Orion’s shoulder, then to finish our tour, higher up in the East is the magnificent of Sirius, the brightest star in our skies, held firmly in the jaws of Canis Major, the Big Dog, the fastest Dog in the world.So that’s it from us at Astrophiz for 2022, I hope you had a great year with us and we’ll be back again in 20923 after out traditionally Australian long summer break, but with luck I’ll be able to post some observation tips during our holidays.And remember, Astrophiz is free and ad-free and for observers who like the print version, Dr Ian Musgrave’s Astroblog and Southern Skywatch websites are always there to let you know what to look for in the coming weeks.Till next time …. it’;s a big sky up there …. keep looking up. See ya!
Meet an amazing researcher and astrophysicist Dr Manisha Caleb …Manisha has used the world’s most powerful instruments to unlock the secrets of some of the most powerful and puzzling objects in our known universe.For her PhD she took a very deep dive and most productive research program into the phenomena of Fast Radio Bursts using the MOST and Parkes radio telescopes, and along the way, helped refurbish and reconfigure the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope situated not far from Canberra in Australia.Since then, her post-doc took her to Manchester and the famous Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank and further FRB discoveries using Jodrell facilities and the MeerKat SKA precursor array in South Africa. Now back in Australia, Manisha continues her FRB quest and recently discovered a new class of slowly spinning neutron stars, and soon she also begins lecturing in Physics at the University of Sydney.In this episode we hear about Manisha’s discoveries and the very latest updates on Fast Radio Bursts and their still mysterious origins.
Astrophiz 161: Dr Ian Musgrave’s December SkyGuide Enjoy your regular monthly treat of viewing tips for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr @IanfMusgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist.
Ian gives us all the viewing highlights and what planets to look out for in our morning and evening skies. This special month also brings you all 5 bright planets viewable in the dusk twilight and later in the evening, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars are bright beacons for the naked eye and easily examined in detail with binoculars and telescopes. Mars is right in opposition now, being closest in its orbit to earth, nice and bright orange to the naked eye and a polar ice cap visible for those with telescopes. Get out there on 8 December for the best opposition view of Mars till 2033. In Ian’s Tangent …. Mars Quakes, meteor impacts, ejecta and subsequent glass tektites landing on earth, and how the blast from mighty rockets like the SLS and Saturn V can fuse sand into glass. It’s all linked by science.
Astrophiz 160: CSIRO-ASKAP Recap: The journey so far with Australia’s newest radio telescope
Australia's ASKAP (Australian SKA Pathfinder) radio telescope array has had an amazing decade since first light, breaking records, receiving awards and finding new objects, all whilst still in its pilot phase.
In this fabulous episode you will hear from the scientists using ASKAP every day to conduct groundbreaking research to further their studies, and from those working to shape ASKAP into a truly remarkable national facility and international resource.
You will discover how this Earth-based telescope assists astronomers in ways we didn't know was possible a decade ago. As a precursor instrument to the SKA project - what will be continent spanning arrays comprising the largest telescope the world has ever seen - the lessons we've learnt from ASKAP are informing the next stages of radio astronomy.
This program is hosted by Rachel Rayner, whose enviable job is to bring you the best stories about the telescopes that make up the Australian Telescope National Facility.
You will hear from four wonderful speakers working with ASKAP.
Dr Karen Lee-Waddell, Director, Australian SKA Regional Centre Dr Tessa Vernstrom, Senior Research Fellow, ICRAR/UWA Prof Tara Murphy, Chair of the ATNF Steering Committee Dr Vanessa Moss, Head of ASKAP Science Operations, CSIRO
Astrophiz 159: Dr Ian Musgrave’s November SkyGuide ~ Total Lunar Eclipse & Dung Beetle Navigation. Enjoy your regular monthly treat of viewing tips for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr @IanfMusgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist. Ian gives us all the viewing highlights and what planets to look out for in our morning and evening skies. This special month also brings you a total lunar eclipse, an excellent view of Uranus right next to the eclipsed moon, and a hint of a meteor shower.
In Ian’s tangent we hear about the fascinating celestial navigation skills of Dung Beetles that are being impaired by light pollution. Enjoy!
Astrophiz 158: Ana Maria Delgado – Machine Learning & Galaxy Halos
Today you will be hearing a wonderful story from Ana Maria Delgado and her entry into Science and the Arts and some of her highlights as an inspiring ‘career changer’, accomplished astrophysicist, cosmologist, coder and PhD researcher …
Ana Maria is a CUNY (City University of New York) Alumnus and now a Harvard Astronomy graduate and PhD student who is using her novel machine learning techniques on supercomputers to clarify our understandings of dark matter halos around massive galaxies
Ana Maria’s career began as a photography teacher and then as a Special Education teacher in NY Public Schools. You will hear about her student-inspired career change which involved her first Degree in physics at CUNY and followed by her innovative PhD research which is coupled with her collaborations on *CAMELS projects involving galaxy evolution simulations with over 100 billion particles and fluid elements.
This is a fabulously inspiring interview you are guaranteed to thoroughly enjoy
- CAMELS = Cosmology and Astrophysics with MachinE Learning Simulations.
CAMELS is a gigantic collection of different Universes, each with a different cosmology and different astrophysics. The simulations of the CAMELS project are run using supercomputers at New York and San Diego using thousands of cores for months.
Astrophiz 157: Dr Ian Musgrave’s October SkyGuide & Smashing Spacecraft Enjoy your regular monthly treat of viewing tips for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr @IanfMusgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist.
Ian gives us all the viewing highlights and what to look out for in our morning and evening skies and the dates to best observe Jupiter’s closest approach since 1963 and Jupiter’s beautiful Galilean moons.
In Ian’s tangent we hear about Smashing Spacecraft, including those that have accidentally or deliberately smashed into planets, those that have smashed into asteroids like the recent DART mission, and those that have smashed projectiles into asteroids to collect and return dust particles back to earth for analysis. It’s a long and interesting smashing history that Ian reveals. Enjoy!
Astrophiz 156 - Amirnezam Amiri - Metallicity and Galaxy Evolution Amirnezam Amiri is a PhD student at the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Florence and a PhD researcher at Italy’s famous National Institute for Astrophysics and Astronomy (INAF) in Arcetri, Florence, Italy, and the focus of his research is on metallicity measurement in both star-forming and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) galaxies. Amirnezam was awarded the Summer Internship Prize in Tenerife, at the Canary Islands Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. Also, Amirnezam is doing fabulous science outreach. He has translated more than 8 books into the Persian language and he has written over 75 public articles in different popular journals and newspapers.
In this wonderful interview, Amirnizam tells us the breakthroughs by ancient Iranian and Persian astronomers and scientists and about the famous Persian Maragheh Observatory which was first established in 1259 and which became the model for later observatories in the 15th, 16th and 18th centuries at Samarkand, Constantinople and Jaipur.
Then Amirnezam walks us through metallicity, emission lines, the nature of ionised gases and their influence on galaxy evolution and the instruments he uses to further his PhD research.
Join us in following Amirnezam’s fabulous astrophysics journey.
Astrophiz 155: Dr Ian Musgrave’s September SkyGuide. Enjoy your regular monthly treat of viewing tips for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr @IanfMusgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist. Ian gives us all the viewing highlights for our morning and evening skies and the dates to observe Jupiter’s beautiful Galilean moons and their shadows passing over Jupiter’s surface and for binocular observers, when to catch Jupiter’s moons strung out like a stunning string of pearls all on one side of our magnificent gas giant. In Ian’s tangent we hear about variable stars including the recent exceptional behaviour of Betelgeuse, and how historical records show both brightness and colour of stars like Betelgeuse and Antares can display dramatic changes. Enjoy!
Astrophiz 154: Dr Emily Moravec - Active Galaxies in Galaxy Clusters
Emily is a postdoctoral fellow at Green Bank Observatory.
She is an AGN researcher who works on active galactic nuclei, radio galaxies, galaxy clusters, and radio interferometry.
She is active in a number of radio AGN and cluster collaborations and does wonderful outreach work supporting early career astronomers. For her PhD at the University of Florida, Emily researched Radio Galaxies in Massive Galaxy Clusters up to 10 billion light years away at redshift 1, then her first post-doc was in the Czech Republic where she worked at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, and was also an ALMA Support Scientist working with the Czech ARC Node.
Now Emily is back in the States up in West Virginia where she works at the famous 100m Green Bank Observatory, the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope.
Dr Moravec's research, outreach and insights into science policy through her work with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine make this episode a great listen. Enjoy!
Astrophiz 153: Dr Ian Musgrave’s August SkyGuide. Enjoy your regular monthly treat of viewing tips for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr @IanfMusgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist.
In Ian’s Tangent, we are given solid tips on how we can observe orbital motion in Alpha Centauri with quite modest equipment, and Ian references comparisons with the apparent motions of Barnard’s star and 61 Cygni. Enjoy!
Astrophiz 152 Dr Sofia Gallego ~ The Cosmic Web.
Dr Sofia Gallego paints the clearest picture of the Cosmic Web you will ever hear.
Originally from La Serena in Chile, growing up near some of the world’s most awesome telescopes, Sofia is now a postdoc researcher at Caltech in Pasadena and has her PhD in Astrophysics. She has a strong interest in cosmology and extragalactic astronomy from both the theoretical and observational perspectives. Sofia has also studied musical theory, violin, singing, and acting, but today’s focus is on the detection, extent and nature of the Cosmic Web and she also introduces us to the wonders of UV Astronomy and we are thrilled to have her on the show.
You will love to listen in as Sofia takes us on this astronomical journey of discovery as we reiterate that it is curious and creative people with inquisitive and determined minds that make such powerful telescopes and their attendant instruments sing so loudly and clearly. Enjoy!
Astrophiz 151: Dr Ian Musgrave’s July SkyGuide. Enjoy your regular monthly treat for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr @IanfMusgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist. Listen: Ian gives us the dates of the moon phases and the best times to observe planets, clusters and deep sky objects along with the exact time to view the fully illuminated full moon. Morning skies continue to be a treat worth getting up early for, and Saturn begins is now visible in evening skies. Reddish Mars is easily viewed as it is brightening as it approaches opposition later in the year and Mars and Uranus have a close encounter at the end of the month and will be very close together on the 1st of August. In the evening skies, Scorpius is a highlight, looking magnificent with Antares as its red centrepiece, and below the Scorpion’s sting, you can identify the centre of the galaxy via the ’Teapot of Sagittarius’. Ian also talks you through the opportunity to view area around the Pre-cataclysmic spectacle of Eta Carina.
For Northern hemisphere listeners, Ian introduces ‘Galaxy Season’ and our closest galaxy, the Andromeda nebula.
Watch out for the Southern Delta Aquariid meteors from the 12th of July to the 23rd of August, peaking on Sunday July 30th with a rate of about 1 meteor about every 4 or 5 minutes under good conditions.
In Ian’s Tangent, we discover what it would be like if the moon was made of compressible green (unripened) camembert cheese. A thought experiment for astronomy and gastronomy lovers.
A great listen and lots to see in the sky in July. Thanks Ian
Astrophiz 150: Floor Broekgaarden~Gravitational Waves Floor is an amazing astrophysicist doing her PhD at Harvard in Massachusetts in Gravitational Wave research. She is a prolific and effective ambassador for early career astronomers. Floor is a well-established mentor and supervisor for astrophysics students and has been published in highly respected journals. You will hear about her most recent papers where she investigates the first two black hole–neutron star mergers detected in gravitational waves as well as her paper on binary black hole mergers. Floor does beautiful GW research and powerful outreach and has done a wonderful interview here for your enjoyment.
Astrophiz 149: Dr Ian Musgrave’s June SkyGuide. Enjoy your regular monthly treat for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr @IanfMusgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist. Ian gives us the dates of the moon phases and the best times to observe planets, clusters and deep sky objects. Morning skies continue to be a treat worth getting up early for, and Saturn begins to be visible low in the East in evening skies by mid-June, but is still best for telescopic viewing high in the morning skies for a while In Ian’s Tangent, he continues his theme to discuss the diverse naming of celestial objects, in this case the way we may be over-hyping and creating misleading expectations in new sky observers with the over-use of terms like ‘Supermoons’. A great and thoughtful listen for June. Thanks Ian
Astrophiz 148 - Massive Stars - Dr Poojan Agrawal Dr Poojan Agrawal is a Postdoc Research Associate at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh USA.
The focus of her research is on the lives of massive stars and their role in determining the evolution of stellar systems/stellar populations and star clusters, and given the rarity and short lives of massive stars, she obviously like a challenge!
In her PhD thesis, “Massive stars and gravitational waves: Bridging the gap with a new method for rapid stellar evolution” she has identified some serious limitations in current modelling systems and has developed a new modelling system that allows fellow researchers to easily use different sets of stellar evolution tracks, computed with different input parameters. You will love this episode and Dr Poojan’s work!
Astrophiz 147: Dr Ian Musgrave’s May SkyGuide. Enjoy your regular monthly treat for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from @IanfMusgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist. Ian gives us the dates of the moon phases and the best times to observe planets, clusters and deep sky objects. A special treat that is worth getting up early for is the Venus-Jupiter conjunction on May 1st, and hear about further opportunities during May to observe planetary lineups in the morning skies as well as seeing a meteor shower provide by debris from Halley’s Comet. In Ian’s Tangent, he continues his theme to discuss the diverse naming of celestial objects, in this case the way the different cultures from both hemispheres have contributed to the naming and re-naming of stars and constellations. In doing so, we give a special shoutout to Krystal DeNapoli and Karlie Noon who have just released their book on Indigenous Astronomy ‘Sky Country’. Highly recommended.
You’ll love this wonderful interview with Accelerator Physicist Dr Suzie Sheehy, who is doing groundbreaking work with particle accelerators to develop compact instruments that are changing the way nuclear medicine is used in clinical treatments worldwide.
Dr Suzie divides her time between her research groups at the University of Oxford where she is Visiting Lecturer, and the University of Melbourne where she is a Senior Lecturer and Baker/ANSTO Fellow in Medical Accelerator Physics.
For Science lovers, get her new book; it’s a ‘must have’ for every library. “The Matter of Everything ~ Twelve Experiments that changed our world” Out online or in your fav bookstore.
Astrophiz 145: Dr Ian Musgrave’s April SkyGuide
Enjoy your regular monthly treat for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr @IanfMusgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist.
Ian gives us the dates of the moon phases and the best times to observe planets, clusters and deep sky objects
In Ian’s Tangent, he continues his theme to discuss the problems with our descriptions of celestial objects, in this case the way the size of these objects are compared with the size of familiar animals. eg recently an asteroid’s size was expressed as ‘the size of a giraffe’.
Not helpful, but Ian suggests an alternative.
Duane is based in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne and is part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3D. This episode covers Duane’s entry into science and culture then his journey as a graduate from the University of Missouri-Columbia who ventured down to Sydney Australia to do his Masters Degree by Research followed by his Doctorate in Cultural Astronomy at Macquarie University, and without too many spoilers on his magnificent book, we cover his epic adventure into Indigenous Astronomy which represents 14 years of research and 4 years of writing for Duane and the co-authors he worked with. With Allen & Unwin, this amazing newly-released book is called ‘The First Astronomers ~ How Indigenous Elders read the Stars’ which he co-authored with 6 First Nations Elders and Knowledge Holders, including Yuwaalaraay Senior Law Man Ghillar Michael Anderson, who is the only surviving member and one of the founders of the original Aboriginal Tent Embassy outside Parliament in Canberra, which still proudly stands there 50 years later. Co-authors are Ghillar Michael Anderson, John Barsa, David Bosun, Ron Day, Segar Passi, Alo Tapim 'The First Astronomers' demolishes the commonly held views that Indigenous ways of knowing do not contain science. Enjoy!
Enjoy your regular monthly treat for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr Ian Musgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist. Ian gives us the dates of the moon phases and the best times to observe clusters and deep sky objects and tips and times around the coming equinox to observe the Zodiacal Light.
We also get a great challenge for those who have infrared filters on their telescopes.
See if you can emulate the Parker Solar Probe and pick out some surface features on the dark side of Venus while it is in its crescent phase.
In Ian’s Tangent, he continues his theme to discuss the problems with our naming of celestial objects, in this case the naming of different sized exoplanets. And there are some peculiarities in the size groupings of exoplanets discovered so far.
Currently with exoplanets we have named Super Earths, Super Jupiters, Hot Jupiters, Hot Super Mars, Super Earths, Mini Neptunes, Hot Mini Earths, and then Ian introduces us to Pulsar Planets and we now have also discovered a real supermoon which is a neptune sized moon orbiting a Jupiter sized exoplanet, Kepler 1625b.
What’s next? Let’s just wait till the JWST starts exposing novel exoplanets!
Astrophiz 142 - Krystal De Napoli ~ Star Formation & Indigenous Astronomy
Krystal is a fabulous indigenous astronomer who is carving out a brilliant career for herself while she improves the educational prospects for indigenous Australians. She is currently based in Melbourne but grew up in the closest town to me here in North-East Victoria. After being awarded her first science degree, she is extending her B.Sc with Astrophysics Honours Research at Monash University.
She was recently awarded the Out for Australia ‘Young Professional of the Year’ prize for her outstanding outreach and contributions to indigenous communities
In this episode we hear about Krystal’s early struggles and how she now works on a regular radio show as she continues her Honours studies, and we get to put our science hats firmly on to hear how Krystal does research into star formation itself and how star formation rates can vary in different galaxies.
You will not hear a better description of what it is like to help passengers to observe auroras on an Antarctic bound 747, which Krystal has done, as well as how various indigenous storylines across Australia interpret auroras depending on their Latitude.
Krystal and Karlie Noon (see Ep 99) have written a book called ‘Sky Country’ which is part of the First Knowledges series published by Thames & Hudson and which will be out soon in April.
Enjoy this extended interview into a brilliant career in the making.
Astrophiz 141: February SkyGuide ~ Dr Ian Musgrave
Here is our regular monthly treat for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr Ian Musgrave, avid amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist.
First up, Ian takes us through the dates of the moon phases for the month, noting the best times for observations of constellations and clusters without the glare of the moon. We can also look forward to some very nice views of the crescent moon ‘dancing’ past planets and viewing some very nice bright planets line up in the mornings before dawn.
In Ian’s Tangent, he explains various ‘star naming’ scams and the ridiculous practice of purchasing exoplanet NFTs and the harms that NFT server farms do to our planet
Meet Dr Natalie Hinkel, who is a Planetary Astrophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Natalie studies the elements in stars and how the stars’ element compositions impact the interior structure and mineralogy of their orbiting exoplanets. She has created an amazing catalog of stellar element abundances, the Hypatia Catalog, a easily searchable database which explores chemical and physical stellar data as well as the likely planetary properties of their exoplanets. You can see it at hypatiacatalogDOTcom The Hypatia Catalog has evolved into an amazing research bonanza for exoplanet, geology, and exobiology researchers now, and for decades to come.
Astrophiz139: Holiday SkyGuide Here is our regular monthly treat for all naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers from Dr Ian Musgrave, amateur astronomer, molecular pharmacologist and toxicologist.
We can look forward to some views of the crescent moon ‘dancing’ past planets and viewing some very nice bright planets over the December and January holiday period.
In western evening skies, magnificent Venus, Saturn, Jupiter are resplendent, and Ian gives us tips on spotting Mercury. He also expertly guides us to observations of a ‘Xmas Comet’ and an occultation of Mars.
In Ian’s Tangent, he continues his theme to discuss the problems with our definitions of celestial objects and the challenge of whether an object in our skies could be a planet, moon, sun, comet, asteroid or minor planet. Our current definitions may be selling us short.
Dr Jill Tarter is Emeritus Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute.
Jill has served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program and has since spent 35 years at the SETI Institute, a non-profit organization she helped launch in 1984. She and the SETI team are scanning space for signals that could reveal intelligent alien life. She recently stepped down as the Director of Center for SETI Research after 28 years and is one of the most lauded and accomplished SETI researchers on our planet. She has been named as one of the Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and the inspiration for the character of Ellie Arroway in Carl Sagan’s Contact, a role played by Jodie Foster in the film.
A monthly treat for naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers. Three nice bright planets again this month. Once again in evening skies, magnificent Venus, Saturn and Jupiter Over in the West, Venus is spectacular. For Norther hemisphere observers, the Andromeda galaxy is looking magnificent under dark skies, while in the Southern Hemisphere the Magellanic Clouds are simply beautiful. In Ian’s Tangent, he continues his comet theme to tell us about spectacular comets and in particular the size of comets and how some comets with a small nucleus can still be magnificent in our skies, depending on their proximity to the sun, how often the comet visits the inner solar system and its proximity to the earth’s orbit. Ian goes on to discuss various definitions and the challenge of whether an object in our skies could be a comet, asteroid or minor planet
Today we bring you the promised Part Two of our interview with Amazing Fullbright Scholar and accomplished exoplanet hunter Jake Clark.
Since Jake.s August interview, he has moved to Cthe US to continue his PhD research with Dr Natalie Hinkel of Hypatia Catalogue fame.
Here in Part 2 of Jake’s Interview, we hear how he looked at 47,000 stars from the GALAH, TESS and Gaia data releases and found that over a third of those stars could host rocky earth-like planets and how Jake has helped discover 12 new exoplanets.
We hear how the spectral signatures of stars can give us a variety of different chemical abundance ratios and thus give us an idea of what sort of rocky worlds we can expect to find orbiting those stars.
Your monthly treat for naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers. Four nice bright planets again this month. Once again in Eastern evening skies, magnificent Saturn and Jupitergrace our skies
Over in the West, Venus is spectacular and Mercury is sinking into the twilight
For early risers, Saturn and Jupiter are still looking fine over in the West.
In Ian’s Tangent, Ian continues on his theme with comets and asteroids, and how explosive collisions between celestial visitors to our solar system have been observed, mis-observed and documented throughout history.
You’ll love this interview with Dr Cherry Ng, who is an amazing researcher at the Dunlap Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto in Canada. For her PhD Cherry discovered an amazing 60 pulsars using the Parkes Dish in Australia, she allocates time on the Murchison Widefield Array, does fabulous outreach work and is now discovering FRBs with the CHIME radio telescope in British Columbia. Dr Ng is also the Project Scientist for the SETI Breakthrough Listen on the MeerKAT Telescope in South Africa, as well as for upcoming systems on the Very Large Array.
In this interview we hear the inside story of Cherry’s science journey, the amazing capabilities of the CHIME instrument and how Cherry uses CHIME for FRB hunting, including the strategies and techniques used to exploit information that is streaming in from CHIME at 13 terabits per second
A treat for naked-eye celestial observers, telescopers, and astrophotographers. Four nice bright planets this month. Once again in Eastern evening skies, magnificent Saturn and Jupiter loom large past opposition, and there’s always a planet dance to watch out for as the Moon meets up with some bright planets and has some nice encounters with bright stars.
Over in the West, Venus is spectacular and if you have a lowish western horizon you’ll see Mercury at it’s best for this year. The centre of our Milky Way galaxy is directly overhead and Ian points out some fine galaxies to watch out for.
For early risers, Saturn and Jupiter are also looking fine over in the West.
In Ian’s Tangent, Ian explains the latest understandings of comets and asteroids, how they can be classified and the emerging importance of sodium as they go on their sun-grazing adventures.
Astrophiz 132: Jake Clark ~ Exoplanet Hunter. Jake has dedicated his career to answering the question ”Are we Alone?”. Hear how he uses the NASA_TESS Space Telescope, the GALAH Survey, ESA’s Gaia data and the MINERVA-Australis telescope array to confirm TESS's candidate exoplanets. He explains eloquently the difference between the Transit Method and the Radial Velocity Methods of detecting exoplanets.
August Skyguide with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave In Eastern evening skies, magnificent Saturn and Jupiter loom large in opposition. Over in the West, Venus has a nice encounter with a fine crescent moon on the 11th. Also in the west, brilliant but half-phased Venus dominates our evening skies for everyone, and if you have a low western horizon you’ll see Mercury catching up with Mars on the 19th and counterintuitively is actually brighter than Mars for a while. The centre of our Milky Way galaxy is directly overhead (and Ian has tips for avoiding getting a crick in your neck ;)
For early risers, Saturn and Jupiter are also looking fine over in the West.
In Ian’s Tangent, we hear how planets, and even the moon, have have been mistaken for other objects and recommends safe evening walks to re-familiarise ourselves with all the celestial wonders that gaze down on us with their awe-inspiring indifference.
Ian’s ‘Astroblogger' website and ‘Southern Skywatch’ both come up as the first result in all search engines.
Astrophiz130: Isobel Romero-Shaw
Enjoy a deep look into the history and nature of black holes and the work being done to improve gravitational wave detectors with Isobel Romero-Shaw, an amazing young scientist. Isobel is a member of both the LIGO collaboration and the OzGrav organisation, and is a PhD candidate in Astrophysics at Monash University in Melbourne Australia. You’ll also hear about Isobel's life in lockdown as an etymologist, author, artist, runner, Spanish language enthusiast and being selected to visit Antarctica with the STEMM Women in Leadership Homeward Bound program.
Astrophiz 129: Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave’s July SkyGuide.
For astrophotographers or naked eye observers with or without telescopes and/or binoculars, Ian gives us a comprehensive guide on what to look up for the month of July, and Venus beaming brightly in the NW twilight is just one of the wonders that awaits our gaze this month.
In Ian’s July Tangent he gives the inside story on Seal Telescopes (yes, you read that correctly)
A bonus for those in the Southern Hemisphere, winter has arrived, the night skies are crisper with much less dust in the air and cooler air means much less thermal distortion, so it’s a brilliant idea to rug up and step outside with friends and family to share the celestial wonders overhead.
Astrophiz128: Richard Stephenson ~ Talking with Spacecraft Pt2
This is an amazing interview where we hear first hand how distant spacecraft are controlled from Earth.
Richard Stephenson is the Operations Supervisor at the CDSCC, The Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex at Tidbinbilla, jointly run by NASA and Australia’s CSIRO.
Richard explains how he can lock onto and send commands to Voyager2 about 20Billion kilometres away, using the newly refurbished transmitter on the 70m DSS-43 dish, and can then capture the telemetry data that V2 sends back to earth, by controlling an array of 4 Tidbinbilla dishes.
Then Richard gives us the inside story about sending commands out to the New Horizons Pluto Mission about 7billion kilometres away.
Also in this stunning episode: VPN command systems. How spacecraft have virtual channels and labelled telemetry so science data can be automatically sent to project primary investigators. How data from all the missions converging on Mars can be acquired and packaged to it’s required destination. How the recent vision from the Ingenuity Helicopter ended up on your computer or smartphone screen. How two antenna dishes can talk with all the Mars missions from NASA/ESA and Emirates at the same time. How NASA coordinates all the DSN dishes at Canberra, at Goldstone and at Madrid using ‘Follow the Sun’ How signals from the Solar Polar Probe (aka the Parker Solar Probe) are captured via eccentric orbits which counteract the huge radio noise emitted from our sun. How the ingenious use of Software Defined Radio and 'HackRS’ allows us to deal with the increased radio traffic coming from fleets of CubeSats and eavesdrop on the Voyager Missions at the crossed the Heliopause.
and …. How new progress is being made with RF-Optical-Hybrid systems to deal with growing data loads coming from spacecraft.
Lasers-in-Space …. what’s not to love!
Thanks Richard …. you paint fantastic pictures for us as you describe so clearly how we talk with spacecraft!
Astrophiz 127: June SkyGuide with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave.
For astrophotographers or naked eye observers with or without telescopes and/or binoculars, Ian gives us a comprehensive guide on what to look up for this month.
In Ian’s tangent this month he takes us on a tour of shadows that are constantly eclipsing satellites, our moon , and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn
A bonus for those in the Southern Hemisphere, winter has arrived, the night skies are crisper with much less dust in the air and cooler air means much less thermal distortion, so it’s a brilliant idea to rug up and step outside with friends and family to share the celestial wonders overhead.
Also shoutouts to @SpaceAusDotCom and @drspacejunk
Today our fabulous feature interview is with Debatri Chattopadhyay, an amazing OzGrav researcher and Doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne Australia. She is about to complete her Astrophysics PhD by publication and is working on Gravitational-wave astrophysics. Debatri uses the OzSTAR supercomputer to model gravitational waves resulting from high-energy collisions between heavy mass binaries like pulsars and black holes. She is a keen proponent of Manipuri dance and has also been awarded a place in Homeward Bound, a global leadership program for women in STEM. She’s off to Antarctica next year.
Astrophiz 125: May SkyGuide with dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave.
For astrophotographers or naked eye observers with or without telescopes and/or binoculars, Ian gives us a comprehensive guide on what to look up for. We have planets to see in the morning and evening skies, planets lining up with the moon, a fabulous total lunar eclipse and the ever reliable eta Aquariid Meteor Shower.
In ‘Ian’s tangent’ this month he gives us the skinny on powered and unpowered flights of robotic craft, including the Ingenuity helicopter, on Mars. We hear about the proposed Dragonfly Quadcopter mission that has been approved for Titan, and Ian also points out the challenges inherent in future missions which will involve controlled flights on Venus and Titan, and he also reminds us of the 1985 Soviet Vega mission with balloons on Venus.
Out now, Astrophiz124 ~ Shanika Galaudage - Gravitational waves and population studies
Listen:
Shanika Galaudage is riding the crest of the wave of Gravitational Wave Astronomy with zest and a clear vision to make the complex science of GW astronomy accessible and understandable to her audience.
Shanika is a remarkable early career Gravitational Wave astrophysicist who is doing fabulous population studies with gravitational wave data from the most recent LIGO/Virgo observation runs as a Monash University PhD candidate and OzGrav Researcher based in Melbourne, Australi
A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers.
Dr @ianfmusgrave gives us his fabulous guide to what to observe in the morning & evening skies for the four weeks including moon phase dates and when and where you can catch some wonderful planetary action
In 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he give us a great insight into the optimal viewing of Zodiacal Light this month and the new discovery of the origins of the dust that causes Zodiacal Light. Great sciencing is evident.
We include shoutouts to the usual suspects at @SpaceAusDotCom aka @RamiMandow
Astrophiz122: Chayan Chatterjee - Gravitational Wave AI Detective
Continuing our Gravitational Wave series, we have a great interview with OzGrav researcher and PhD candidate Chayan Chatterjee, who develops Machine Learning algorithms to analyse gravitational wave data to locate the origins of the ‘Chirps’ that signal cataclysmic events that warp the very fabric of Space-Time. Chayan is based at the University of Western Australia. You will love the clarity of Chayan’s depiction of Gravitational Wave astronomy, AI and Machine Learning.
Astrophiz 121: Dr Ian ‘Astroblogger’ Musgrave’s March 2021r SkyGuide A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers.
Dr @ianfmusgrave gives us his fabulous guide to what to observe in the morning & evening skies for the Month of March including when and where you can catch some wonderful planetary action, and Vesta makes a welcome appearance
In 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he give us a great insight into how many cultures have incorporated the Pleiades into their storylines and how the Seven Sisters are now the Six Sisters
We include shoutouts to the usual suspect at @SpaceAustraliaDotCom aka @RamiMandow
For this Episode we are featuring the life and remarkable achievements of Dr Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who lived for 80 years from the start of the 20th century, and gave the world a legacy of astronomical breakthroughs that forever changed the way that we understand stars and what they are made of. We remember her as producing "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in Astronomy and the most eminent woman astronomer of all time.” During a time when science was largely a men’s club, she had figured out the chemical makeup of the stars, and her work is also credited with paving the way for us to develop our understanding of stellar evolution.
Vale Dr Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin 1900-1979
Dr Fiona Panther is a gravitational wave astronomer and OzGrav postdoctoral researcher at the University of Western Australia. As this new era is now upon us with gravitational wave astronomy, we are very privileged to get the full inside story from a most passionate researcher working on the front edge of GW astronomy.
With amazing clarity and unbridled enthusiasm, Fiona tells us all about the early predictions of gravitational waves as derived from Einstein’s famous relativity equations, the LIGO and Virgo interferometry instruments that have been successfully designed and constructed to detect gravitational waves, the extraordinary explosive events that trigger the production of gravitational waves and the 50 or so subsequent confirmed detections of GW.
Then we are invited to put our propeller hats on and hear and understand some of the detail of how gravitational wave astronomy is conducted worldwide now in the 2020’s, and then beyond with the scheduling of space bound instruments. Then Fiona ties it all together with the big picture of some of the places that GW astronomy research will be taking us to in the future. Enjoy!
Astrophiz 118: Dr Ian ‘Astroblogger’ Musgrave’s Holiday SkyGuide
Listen:
A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers.
Dr @ianfmusgrave gives us his fabulous guide to what to observe in the morning & evening skies for the next two months over the holiday break, including when and where you can catch some wonderful planetary action with Jupiter and Saturn, and some great observing strategies and challenges to have a go at.
In 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he give us a great insight into how we experience our connections with space robots.
We include shoutouts to the usual suspects at @SpaceAusDotCom aka @RamiMandow plus @TheSkyentists Podcasters Dr Ángel López-Sánchez aka @El_Lobo_Rayado and @KirstenBanks
Dr Shivani Bhandari <@shivibhandari> is a fabulous CSIRO research postdoctoral fellow who searches for and tracks down the location of fast radio bursts and other transients using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP).
She tells us a wonderful story of growing up in New Dehli, how she came to love the sky and her education and her Bachelor’s degree, her short stint in industry, then learning how to image the sky at radio wavelengths and her move to Australia for an ICRAR internship then achieving her PhD from Swinburne University in Melbourne supervised by Professors Tara Murphy and Matthew Bailes.
Shivani invites us to put our propellor hats on as she reveals the novel real-time techniques she uses to detect and pinpoint the locations of extragalactic FRBs using the ASKAP array in an absolute radio quiet zone in outback Western Australia, then within minutes calling on instruments from all over the world to examine the same patch of sky at X-ray, gamma-ray photons and neutrinos on timescales ranging from an hour to a few months post-burst.
We discuss the conclusions that have been drawn from studying the environments of both singular and repeating FRBs and how magnetars are becoming the prime suspects for the genesis of FRBs.
Her descriptions of her visits to ASKAP and the rewards of her outreach work in the local schools in this remote region are simply wonderful. Enjoy
Astrophiz 116: Dr Ian ‘Astroblogger’ Musgrave’s November/December SkyGuide
A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers.
Dr @ianfmusgrave gives us his fabulous guide to what to observe in the morning & evening skies for the four weeks including when and where you can catch some wonderful planetary action, a penumbral moon some annual meteor showers
In 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he give us a great insight into how we now know how dark, and ‘fluffy’ comets are. Hint: Think Asphalt and Cappuccino froth
We include shoutouts to the usual suspects at @SpaceAustraliaDotCom aka @RamiMandow plus @TheSkyentisits Podcasters @El_Lobo_Rayado and @KirstenBanks
Astrophiz 115: Rami Mandow ~ Planet X
Our featured guest for November is the fabulous Rami Mandow, the founder of SpaceAustralia.com, the creator of an amazing Citizen Science project that has teams from all over the world constructing amateur radio telescopes and Rami is doing his Masters in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Swinburne University.
In this episode we are treated to all his innovative work and his research into the existence (or not) of Planet X and we hear hints about the release of his Parkes Pulsar timing research with prominent astrophysicists from Swinburne.
Rami also gives us the inside story on 'science and social media' and his special mate Max.
Astrophiz 114: Dr Ian ‘Astroblogger’ Musgrave’s October/November SkyGuide
A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers.
Dr @ianfmusgrave gives us his fabulous guide to what to observe in the morning & evening skies for the next month, including tips on observing the Orionid meteor shower.
In 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he gives more on Mars and challenges us to try sketching (like Galileo) and you’ll be surprised at how accurate you can be.
We include shoutouts to the usual suspects at @SpaceAustraliaDotCom aka @RamiMandow plus @TheSkyentisits Podcasters @El_Lobo_Rayado and @KirstenBanks
Astrophiz113 - Adelle Goodwin - Neutron Stars in accreting Systems
In this fabulous episode Adelle gives us amazing insights into her neutron star research with brilliant clarity as she takes us through her research techniques using accreting systems to see the unseeable, and to understand the inner workings and surface phenomena of neutron stars. For her PhD, Adelle has published a series of fantastic first author papers, and her Baysian paper is groundbreakingly remarkable!
If you can’t access Adelle’s Bayesian paper at The Astrophysical Journal Letters, you can get the pdf freely from the ArXiv server at tinyurl.com/adellegoodwin (that’s all lower case) and make sure you follow Adelle at @astro_del on twitter.
This is a career to watch very closely and we wish Adelle the very best for her PhD, which she is submitting this coming week.
Astrophiz 112: Dr Ian ‘Astroblogger’ Musgrave’s September/October SkyGuide
A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers. Dr @ianfmusgrave gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, including a guide on how to observe Mars in opposition and it’s current nearby companion, the variable star Mira. Mira (Omicron Ceti), is a red giant star with a white dwarf companion (Mira B) around 400 light-years from the Sun in the constellation Cetus.
In 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he gives us the lowdown on how amateurs can observe the tail of Mercury (Yes! Mercury has a tail).
We include shoutouts to the usual suspects at @SpaceAustraliaDotCom aka @RamiMandow plus @TheSkyentisits Podcasters @El_Lobo_Rayado and @KirstenBanks
Astrophiz 111: Katherine Johnson - Paving Apollo’s way to the moon and back This episode is a special feature on the life achievements of Katherine Johnson, the African American mathematician who hand calculated many mission trajectories for NASA, including the iconic Apollo 11 mission. She lived to be 101, born in 1918 and passed away in February this year. She is remembered forever as an integral part of NASA history and for standing up for the rights of black Americans. In popular culture, she is portrayed lovingly in the film “Hidden Figures,” about pioneering black female aerospace workers, and her autobiography ‘Reaching for the moon’ is a best seller that was published just last year.
Katherine calculated the trajectory for the May 5, 1961 space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. She also calculated the launch window for his 1961 Mercury mission. She plotted on board navigation charts carried by astronaut missions in case of system and comms failures. When NASA used electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit around Earth, Katherine was relied on to verify the computer's numbers. John Glenn refused to fly unless Johnson verified the calculations and he asked for her specifically to verify his proposed orbit. Katherine Johnson not only helped calculate the trajectories that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon, she was also a crucial contributor to the start of the Space shuttle program. — she was a constant champion for women and minorities in the space program and in the world as a whole, breaking down racial and social barriers. Throughout her long and brilliant career she received many awards, including her country’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Barack Obama.
Now brought to light, Johnson's legacy won't be forgotten and will hopefully lead to recognition for other black women too-long overlooked due to racism and sexism.
We honor her memory and her great legacy in this special episode.
Astrophiz 110: Dr Ian ‘Astroblogger’ Musgrave’s August/September SkyGuide
A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers.
This month, Dr @ianfmusgrave gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, including a guide on how to observe Ceres in opposition. In 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he gives us the lowdown on the discovery of Ceres and its remarkable bright spots.
We include shoutouts to the usual suspects at @SpaceAustraliaDotCom aka @RamiMandow plus @TheSkyentisits Podcasters @El_Lobo_Rayado and @KirstenBanks
Astrophiz 109: Dr Thea Kozakis - Fingerprinting Exoplanets
Dr Thea Kozakis is a pioneering researcher who is a NASA Space Grant recipient and postdoc researcher at the Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University, soon she is moving to Europe and starting a postdoctoral position at the Technical University of Denmark with their exoplanet group.
In this fabulous episode, Thea explains her techniques to study the atmospheres of exoplanets, biosignature modelling and detection.
With new instruments constantly coming online, Thea’s work is a boon for the exciting field of exoplanet research.
We give our usual shoutout to Dr Ian Musgrave and his Astroblogger blog for observers and astrophotographers, to Rami Mandow at SpaceAustralia DOT com and to Dr Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks at the Skyentists podcast.
Astrophiz 108: July/August SkyGuide A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers. Dr Ian 'Astroblog' gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, including an update on Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) and in 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he gives us the lowdown on Comets, their unpredictable nature and the conditions necessary for great comets like Hale-Bopp, McNaught and Neowise.
Astrophiz 107: Dr Joe Callingham – Astounding Apep I read an exciting paper in Nature Astronomy about a rare discovery in our galaxy, and I did some follow-up and so today we are very fortunate to be speaking to lead author Dr Joe Callingham, an Aussie astronomer now based in the Netherlands who has been using radio telescopes to probe the inner workings of a unique system in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Also, check out Joe’s Nature Research Astronomy paper at tinyurlDOTcomFORWARDSLASHapep2018 and follow Joe at @AstroJoeC on Twitter.
Astrophiz 106: June/July SkyGuide: Dr Ian 'Astroblog' gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month, and in 'Ian's Tangent' he gives us an insight on the achievements of amateur astronomers imaging the idiosyncrasies of Venus and her atmosphere '
Astrophiz 105: Kat Ross – Baby Black Holes #IncludeHer Today I am very pleased to be speaking with PhD candidate Kat Ross, who researches Compact Active Galactic Nuclei and galaxy evolution, and is an activist for Women In STEM and who works as a science communicator when not staring at distant baby black holes or fleeing from space poop. Kat is based at Curtin University and ICRAR, The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, Western Australia.
Astrophiz 104: May/June SkyGuide: Dr Ian 'Astroblog' gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month, and in 'Ian's Tangent' he gives us an insight on the astronomical 'Eye of Sauron'
Astrophiz 103 - Clint Jeffrey - 'First Light' @ASV Amateur Radio Telescope
Our fabulous feature interview for May 2020 is with Clint Jeffrey, an amazing ham radio veteran and radio technician who has been collecting, connecting, testing and calibrating the RF and digital technologies for the newly constructed 8.5 metre radio telescope for the Astronomical Society of Victoria.
They have just achieved ‘First Light’ and are making their science data available to researchers world-wide.
Dr Ian 'Astroblog' gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month, and in Ian's Tangent he reveals the excitement and disappointment provided by a bevy of disintegrating comets.
Astrophiz 101: Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt - Directing the Murchison Widefield array
Our feature interview this month is with Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, Director of the Murchison Widefield Array & Research Professor based in Western Australia. Melanie manages large-scale, multinational research infrastructure, is regularly involved with international science diplomacy, and she regularly gives advice and consultancy for Governments. Her research specialises in Radio Astrophysics, Telescope Design, and Scientific Visualization.
You will love hearing about her work using the sky as a big data archive, the cosmic web, chasing the EOR, colliding galaxy clusters and science as a human endeavour!
So cool & exciting
In a world that’s changing rapidly, we are making a change to our podcast format so you’ll keep getting a fresh Astrophiz every 2 weeks.
We are splitting our content so one episode each month will be dedicated to a new guest interview, from the fields of radio astronomy, optical astronomy, space science or particle physics,
Also each month you will get to hear from your regular presenter Dr Ian ‘Astroblog' Musgrave, who will preview a sky Guide for you for the coming month, and he will also take you on an astronomical journey of discovery in ‘Ian’s Tangent’.
In our next interview-only episode, we talk with Clint Jeffrey, an amateur radio astronomer who works on the technologies for an 8,5metre dish constructed by the radio astronomy section of the astronomical society of Victoria in Australia. The dish is located in a quiet zone in a rural area about 130km north of Melbourne, and they have just achieved ‘First Light’ with a successful observation of the redshift of the Small Magellanic Cloud, and captured the galactic hydrogen inside the Milky Way.
Our featured guest for this special 100th episode is Dr Vanessa Moss, astronomer and Head of CSIRO’s ASKAP Science Operations. CSIRO is Australia’s leading science organisation and ASKAP is the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope array in Western Australia.
Vanessa tells us about her PhD ‘The Galactic ecosystem: Outflow and infall in the halo of the Milky Way” and her work at Sydney Observatory.
We hear about her move over to Dwingeloo in the Netherlands to work as a telescope scientist with ASTRON, working with the Apertif upgrade on the WSRT and LOFAR, We look at the Big Data issues growing in radio astronomy and her vision to harness VR as a way of visualising both data, workflow and instrument training. We hear about her current Milky Way Halo research, the SEAFOG project and working on the FLASH team.
Today in Astrophiz we have our regular presenter Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave giving us is a special report on 'The Return of Betelgeuse' . Ian also previews the excellent observing opportunities over the next two weeks, especially in the morning skies, and a report on a captured 'mini-moon' IN THE NEWS: ASTRONOMERS DETECT BIGGEST EXPLOSION IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
Scientists studying a distant galaxy cluster have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the Universe since the Big Bang. The blast came from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy 390 million light-years away in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Next up, the FRB mystery intensifies
We’ve been reporting on FRB’s since 2016 and interviewed leading FRB researchers, starting with Dr Manisha Caleb and her work using the Molonglo Synthesis Telescope. Since then, many new and old instruments like FAST, OVRO, CHIME, Greenbank, Arecibo, ASKAP and Parkes have all successfully joined in the search for FRBs.
A paper on the 16-day repeater is on the archive pre-print server at tinyurlDOTcom/frbrepeater
Karlie Alinta Noon has just completed her Master's degree in radio astronomy looking at gas accretion onto the Milky Way and is the Indigenous Heritage Office with the Federal Department of Environment & Energy in Canberra, Australia.
Karlie is a Gamilaraay astrophysicist, animal lover, greeny & gamer grl with a rich background in science communication including a stint working with the CSIRO. Karlie is the first Indigenous student on the east coast to obtain a double degree in Maths and Science and also the first aboriginal person to graduate with a Masters of Astronomy and Astrophysics Advanced Degree from the Australian National University.
In the sky for observers and astrophotographers:
Our regular feature ‘What’s Up Doc’ is with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave. He previews the excellent observing opportunities over the next two weeks, and he gives us a the latest news on Betelgeuse and it’s suite of variability rhythms
In the News: More FRB News. For the first time, astronomers from CHIME have found a fast radio burst (FRB) that repeats on a regular cycle every 16.35 days, Next … More SETI news.. Two days ago Breakthrough Listen released 2 petabytes of data from SETI survey of the Milky Way.
Today’s feature interview is with planet hunter Dr Belinda Nicholson, Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Oxford, Department of Physics.
Belinda’s current research involves exoplanet hunting using exotic telescope data. Previously she has investigated the behaviour of ‘teenage’ stars, and her work has taken her all over Australia and the world, from presenting her work at conferences in Europe and the United States, to collecting data on mountains in New South Wales and South America. Right now, she’s in Oxford / London.
In the sky for observers and astrophotographers: Our regular feature ‘What’s Up Doc’ is with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave. He previews the excellent observing opportunities over the next two weeks, and he gives us a good look at fernickety Betelgeuse.
In the News: 1. More light polluting satellite constellations 2. Vale Spitzer IR Space Telescope
Over the holiday season we are taking a break, and we are producing a couple of ‘Holiday Specials’ where we reprise some episodes as ‘double headers’ where we provide 2 feature interviews from our 2019 playlist. We have stripped out Dr Ian Musgrave’s ‘What’s Up’ segment and my ‘In the News’ segment, giving you two uninterrupted interviews.
In this reprised episode we have interviews with Dr Ashley Ruiter – Supernova scientist and Steve Olney – Amateur Radio Astronomer.
Dr Ashley Ruiter is ARC Future Fellow and senior lecturer in the School of Science at UNSW Canberra, Australia. She specializes in Type Ia supernovae. Steve Olney has established the Hawkesbury Radio Astronomy Observatory in his backyard. Steve has constructed a Yagi antenna array, coupled it with a receiver and observed the Vela pulsar glitching, 900 LY away.
Our feature interview today is with Dr Geraint Lewis who a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sydney, whose research includes cosmology and galactic archaeology. and today he is going to help us look at the existential question “Are We Alone” . Also I’ll remind listeners that this is our last episode for 2019 before we take our holiday break, but we’ll be back in early February 2020, and if you are not already, there is another great Astronomy podcast you should listen to and that is The Skyentists with our friends Dr Ángel López-Sánchez, a Spanish-Australian astrophysicist working at the Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO) and in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Macquarie University in Sydney and the wonderful indigenous astrophysicist Kirsten Banks, who has just completed her Honours year and embarking on her PhD. Listen In, you’ll love their work!
In the sky for observers and astrophotographers:
Our regular feature ‘What’s Up Doc’ is with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave. He previews the excellent observing opportunities over the next two months, and he gives us a good look at our interstellar comet 2IBorisov
Astrophiz 95: Steve Olney: From Ham Radio to Radio Astronomy - "The 2019 Vela Glitch" Feature Interview: This amazing interview features Steve Olney who has established the Hawkesbury Radio Astronomy Observatory in his backyard. Steve has constructed a Yagi antenna array, coupled it with a receiver and observed a pulsar 900 LY away and generated data that has enabled him to be the only person on the planet to observe Vela’s 2019 glitch in radio waves as it happened.
In the sky for observers and astrophotographers:
Our regular feature ‘What’s Up Doc’ is with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave. He previews the excellent planet viewing opportunities over the next two weeks, and Venus and Jupiter have close encounters with the moon. Ian gives tips on observing the little known Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower which has a predicted rate of 400 per hour this year on Thursday night, November 21-22, from a radiant near the star Procyon. It peaks around 04:50 UT (around 3 pm in Australia) and while this is during daylight hours for us, it is possible the peak may arrive early or late so observations on the morning of the 21st and 22nd from around 1 am are encouraged. Observations in the Northern hemisphere are favoured with a higher radiant. In the UK the peak is a 4:50am before dawn, and on East coast USA at 11:50pm and on the West coast at 8:50pm
In the News:
On Nov. 11, SpaceX launched 60 more "Starlink" satellitesand has just asked the International Telecommunication Union to arrange spectrum for 30,000 additional Starlink satellites. Our Next Episodes:
Our very next and final 2019 episode is our ‘Are We Alone’ feature episode with Professor Geraint Lewis, and then we take a well-earned summer holiday break over the festive season.
In the New Year, we will talk with Dr Belinda Nicholson over in the UK, Wael Farah on his use of AI to capture FRB signals from MOST in real time, and we have lined up alien communication specialist researcher Daniel Oberhaus, who is the author of his new book ‘Extraterrestrial Languages’. We’re also hoping to have Clint Jeffrey on the show to talk about ‘First Light’ for the Astronomical Society of Victoria’s new 8m Radio Telescope up in a quiet zone in central Victoria.
And then in March 2020 we will have our milestone 100th episode and we are thrilled to confirm Dr Vanessa Moss will be our guest for this special episode.
Astrophiz 94: Amanda Wherrett: ANU Siding Spring Observatory This wonderful episode features Amanda Wherrett from the Australian National University and who conducts wonderful tours of the Siding Spring Observatory in remote New South Wales in Australia. Amanda shares with us the absolute best observing tip you will hear in your whole life, and she tells us all about this stunning mountain and it’s remarkable array of observatories, research telescopes and instruments and the astronomers who work there. Listen: https://soundcloud.com/astrophiz/astrophiz-94-amanda-wherrett-anu-siding-spring-observatory In the sky for observers and astrophotographers: Our regular feature ‘What’s Up Doc’ is with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave. He previews the excellent planet viewing opportunities over the next two weeks, and in ‘Ian’s Tangent’ he tells us about Asteroid Hygiea, the 4th largest body and possibly soon to be promoted to ‘dwarf planet’ in the asteroid belt. Ian explains our classification criteria for dwarf planets and upcoming viewing opportunities for Hygiea and Vesta. In the News: .1. Dr AG Suvorov, University of Tubingen in Germany in ArXiv gives more hints about the mechanism for repeating FRBs. No definitive answers yet, but definitely edging closer. Watch this space.
.2. “Nasa's Voyager 2 sends back its first message from interstellar space”
.3. A final word: If anyone has an answer to the current debate about the Hubble Constant, please let me know. Next Episodes: Our very next episode is a fabulous interview with Steve Olney, the amateur radio astronomer who captured the 2019 Vela Glitch in radio frequencies as it happened, and who we talked about in Episode 93 with Dr Jim Palfreyman. This is Citizen Science writ large and another great episode to look forward to. Following Steve, you can look forward to our first ‘Are We Alone’ feature episode with Professor Geraint Lewis, and then we take a well-earned summer holiday break over the festive season. In the New Year, we will talk with Dr Belinda Nicholson over in the UK, Wael Farah on his use of AI to capture FRB signals from MOST in real time, and we have lined up alien communication specialist researcher Daniel Oberhaus, who is the author of his new book ‘Extraterrestrial Languages’.
And then we have our milestone 100th episode and we are thrilled to confirm Dr Vanessa Moss will be our guest for this special episode.
Astrophiz 93: Dr Jim Palfreyman: The Vela Glitch This episode features astrophysicist Dr Jim Palfreyman, who is a data analyst and casual researcher at the University of Tasmania. Today he tells us about his celebrated Nature paper revealing the way he analyses Vela’s glitches and how that came to tell us about the inner structures of neutron stars/pulsars. In the sky for observers and astrophotographers: Our regular feature ‘What’s Up Doc’ is with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave. He previews the excellent planet viewing opportunities over the next two weeks under moonless skies, how to find Vesta at its brightest, the variable star Mira approaches maximum and he gives us an update on our first interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, reaching maximum brightness in early December In the News: We have news from the grave. Two years ago we all watched sadly and triumphantly as Cassini speared into a fiery death into Saturn, and you might want to listen again to Episode 43 where we were guests at the NASA tracking station at Tidbinbilla. The news is that Cassini legacy just keeps on sciencing on. There’s a new paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by Khawaja et al about a data analysis that revealed that Saturn’s moon Enceladus is erupting a plume of gas and ice grains from its south pole. Now we already knew that an that these plumes originate in the moon’s subsurface global ocean, and plume material travels through cracks in the icy crust and is ejected into space. What’s new is that the Cassini spacecraft’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) detected volatile, gas phase, organic species in the plume and the Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA) discovered high-mass, complex organic material in a small fraction of ice grains. Now these amines, carbonyls, and aromatic compounds could be ideal precursors for organic compounds in the warm depths of Enceladus’ ocean. So Life on Enceladus? We don’t know yet, but Cassini’s legacy doesn’t just live on, it’s shouting science very loudly. Stay tuned to Cassini’s echoes, there’s more to come! Next Episodes: Our very next episode is a fabulous interview with Amanda Wherrett who is a magnificent storyteller who paints a vivid picture of the Dark Sky Siding Spring Observatory, its amazing array of research telescopes and instruments, and the research happening there high on top of the Warrumbungle Ranges in remote New South Wales in Australia. And the episode after that we have Steve Olney, the amateur radio astronomer who captured the Vela Glitch that we talked about in this episode, as it happened. And he did it from his home-made radio telescope in his back yard. This is Citizen Science writ large and another great episode to look forward to. You can also look forward to our first ‘Are We Alone’ feature episode with Professor Geraint Lewis, over in the UK we will talk with Dr Belinda Nicholson and hopefully soon we will also have Suzy Jackson on a show for you, to talk about her work as an engineer on the MRO, ASKAP and the New Norcia tracking station. Stay tuned!
Astrophiz 92: Dr Ivo Seitenzahl ~ Optical Tomography in Type Ia Supernova remnants. Today’s featured guest is originally from Germany and is now a Future Fellow in the School of Science at the University of New South Wales in Canberra. Ivo introduces us to his new technique using optical telescope integral field spectrograph data to analyse the different elements present in the remnants and the effects of shocks and reverse shocks.
Our regular feature “What’s Up Doc” for Astrophotographers and Observers is presented by Dr Ian Musgrave, where he tells us what to look for in the night and morning skies for the next two weeks, and in ‘Ian’s Tangent for this episode, he tells us about cheese and the Moon.
In the news:
.1. Listen to the Insight Lander Seismograph recording of a Marsquake.
.2. Icecube Collaboration traces a single high energy neutrino back to it’s host galaxy where a jet-jet collision produced the neutrino.
.3. Dr Jim Palfreyman puts us right on the logic of having our seasons change on the first of the month, rather than on the solstices and equinoxes.
Next Episode: Dr Jim Palfreyman “How he detected a glitch in the Vela pulsar and how that led to a new understanding of the internal structure of Pulsars.
Astrophiz 91: Dr Chenoa Tremblay – “Molecules in Space & Dark Magnetism” Listen: Our fabulous featured guest today is Dr Chenoa Tremblay, who is a Postdoctoral fellow in Dark Magnetism with the CSIRO and a member of the Commissioning team for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) facility in remote Western Australia. Chenoa introduces us to Polarisation and Dark Magnetism and Astrochemistry and tell us how she uses the ASKAP array to detect and identify complex molecules in space. We also take a look at some of her earlier research where she provided proof that high-mass stars can form in isolation.
Her most recent research as a CSIRO Fellow involves using the SKA precursor ASKAP telescopes to conduct observations of our Galaxy at 724 MHz to detect and characterise the polarimetric properties of carbyne in the Milky Way, and we also hear about her work with the GASKAP Spectral Line Survey
Chenoa also does an array of fantastic outreach work in the community and schools and is the contact person for the CASS biennial Radio Astronomy School at the Australia Telescope Compact Array near Narrabri, NSW. Listeners who are physics graduates are too late for this year’s school, but can look forward to next time in 2021.
Follow @Chenoachem on Twitter
Our regular feature "What’s Up Doc” for Astrophotographers and Observers is presented by Dr Ian Musgrave, where he tells us what to look for in the night and morning skies for the next two weeks, and in ‘Ian’s Tangent for this episode, he tells us about Tardigrades on the Moon.
Follow @ianfmusgrave on Twitter
In the news:
.1. We report on a Nature paper about Giant Bubbles (as in freaking GINORMOUS!) found at the centre of our galaxy by astronomers using the MeerKAT (SKA precursor) telescope in South Africa.
.2. The film Ad Astra has triggered some science purists. It’s a film. It’s entertainment. There is no rule that says films have to be scientifically accurate. Just go and enjoy the film.
Astrophiz 90: Sophia Nasr – Self Interacting Dark Matter and Galaxy Clusters
This episode’s featured guest is Sophia Nasr, who is a fabulous graduate physics student at University of California, Irvine who is working on her PhD in cosmology and astroparticle theory with a focus on researching Self-Interacting Dark Matter. She brilliantly explains all forms of dark matter research and her passion for cosmology, equity, diversity and outreach.
In the sky:
Observation notes for September include Saturn, Jupiter, the Moon and Uranus.
For those who enjoy watching Live Rocket launches on the internet put September 25 at 1357GMT into your calendar to watch a Soyuz rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan launch to take the crewed Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft to the International Space Station with members of the next Expedition crew. The capsule will remain at the station for about six months, providing an escape pod for the residents.
For citizen scientists there is a nice opportunity to participate in the Globe at Night dark sky project, which is concerned with light pollution. For those in the Northern hemisphere you’ll be asked to report on what you can observe in the constellation Cygnus between Sept 20 and 29 and for Southern Hemisphere citizen scientists you be asked to report on what you can observe in the constellation Sagittarius on the same date range. To contribute to this worthwhile project, Northern observers can go to tinyurl.comFORWARDSLASHdarkskynorth And Southern observers can go to tinyurl.comFORWARDSLASHdarkskysouth And they are both all lowercase, all one word.
In the News.
First up it looks like we have an amazing new interstellar visitor, Congratulations to Gennady Borisov, for his discovery of comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov). The first interstellar comet ever found and a truly skybreaking discovery! The Minor Planet Center has published the official announcement.
Reports have also just come in today that water has been detected on a distant exoplanet. The reporting on this discovery is all over the Internet and all over the place in terms of accuracy. No, it’s not an earth-like planet. It doesn’t have water ‘on’ it because it’s most likely a Neptune-like planet with no actual surface, and you wouldn’t survive long enough if you were there to develop any habits. it’s becoming clearer and clearer that terms like ‘habitable’ and ‘goldilocks zone’ aren’t really effective tools for accurately communicating science to the public audiences. If you want to get the lowdown on habitability and exoplanets, you couldn’t do better than to follow Prof Jonti Horner and Dr Elizabeth Tasker on Twitter, or hear from them directly by checking out their episodes at AstrophizDOTcom
It was also sad to hear that ISROs moon landing has run into problems but our fingers are crossed for them and other news from the moon is that the Chinese Rover has detected some strange gel-like substance in a crater.
Next from the Xinhua news agency in China a discovery that may help unravel the long standing mystery of FRBs
Chinese astronomers have detected over 100 repeated fast radio bursts (FRB) – These particular FRBs are mysterious signals believed to be from a source about 3 billion light years from Earth
Astrophiz 88: Cate MacQueen – The Dark Photon + ‘What’s Up Doc’ with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave
Listen: Today we are speaking with experimental particle physicist Cate MacQueen, who conducts analyses searching for dark matter at particle accelerators. Cate is currently based at The University of Melbourne and is part of the Dark Sector Physics team who are using the Belle II detector, which is attached to the SuperKEKB accelerator in Tsukuba, Japan.
In ‘What’s Up Doc’ Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells observers and astrophotographers what to look for in the skies for the next two weeks and in ‘Ian’s tangent’ he tells us about comets captured crashing into Jupiter.
In the News
,1. This latest report is assembled from a Nature article 2 days ago and a 9 August ArXiv preprint from Anderson et al available at tinyurlDOTcom/frbrepeaters
Astronomers closer to cracking mystery of fast radio bursts Canadian CHIME radio telescope finds another eight repeating blasts
These findings mean that there are now enough repeaters to start comparing these with one-off blasts, to find out whether the two kinds of FRB are produced in similar environments. Many, although not all, of the latest haul also share a feature of the first two repeaters. Rather than being a simple blast with a narrow frequency, the signals descend in frequency in a way that the team compares to a ‘sad trombone’ sound, and explaining them poses a challenge to theorists. So there you go. I bet you never thought astrophysicists would ever publish the phrase “Sad Trombone” .2. From Swinburne University of Technology, more exciting FRB news. Swinburne uses AI to detect fast radio bursts in real-time
Wael Farah, a Swinburne PhD student has built an automated system that uses artificial intelligence to capture fast radio bursts (FRBs) in real-time from the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope. Five bursts were captured using the machine learning system and published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society What this means is that with real-time detection and breakthroughs in localisation, it should be possible for other instruments to quickly examine FRB environments.The mystery of FRB mechanisms is unravelling as we speak. Watch this space.
.3. Finally we have a great explanation from asteroid hunter and mathematician Daniel Bamberger on ‘Why couldn’t we use a network of radar equipped satellites to monitor asteroid threats?’ Go to: tinyurlDOTcom/noradar Have a read. It’s fabulous!
In Part 3 of an extended three part interview, our featured guest is again Professor Jonti Horner, the Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. With thousands of citations, he is an esteemed Astronomer and Astrobiologist who researches Exoplanets, Exoplanet Habitability and the evolution of our Solar system. Jonti has lead the construction of the newly commissioned MINERVA-Australis exoplanet search and follow-up facility at the USQ Mt. Kent Observatory. In todays episode we hear about how the media needs to stop speculating about Earth II until we actually find one, and how often we can expect meteor impacts on earth cities. Jonti explains the origins and causes of meteor showers
Our regular host Dr Ian Musgrave tells us what to look for in the night skies for the next two weeks, and in ‘Ian’s Tangent’ we find out about XXXXXXXX
Now our news is truncated today, because I’m pretty determined to keep our podcasts under 60 minutes, so I’ll just give you the summary and provide the weblink for you.
.1. Ironically, given Jonti’s presentation today about rogue asteroids, we hear that we had a ‘near-miss’ asteroid transit between the earth and the moon’s orbit, which was not detected till after the fly-by. Ooops! No need for Bruce Willis and the nuclear option. Lol That article is at tinyurl-DOT-com/hahamissed
.2. The MINERVA-Australis exoplanet search and follow-up facility led by Professor Horner at the USQ Mt. Kent Observatory has seen first light and been commissioned. That story is at tinyurl-DOT-com/minervaDASHaustralis
.3. Congratulations to the people in the Australian outback who thought they witnessed an alien spacecraft, and to Jonti again, who explained in the media how they had actually seen the Indian Moon mission launch. That rather amusing story is at tinyurl-DOT-com/sorrynotaliens
.4. Bigger congratulations to the Indian space agency ISRO for their fabulously successful launch for their mission to put their rover and lander on the south pole of the moon. There's a great story about the trajectory they are taking at tinyurl-DOT-com/indianmoonlaunch
Astrophiz 86: Professor Jonti Horner – Exobiology Part 2 ‘Fingerprinting Exoplanets, NASA, TESS & MINERVA-AUSTRALIS’ + ‘What’s Up Brendan’ because Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave is away at a conference in Hawaii.
In Part 2 of an extended three part interview, our featured guest is Professor Jonti Horner, the Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. With thousands of citations, he is an esteemed Astronomer and Astrobiologist who researches Exoplanets, Exoplanet Habitability and the evolution of our Solar system. Jonti is leading the construction of the MINERVA-Australis exoplanet search and follow-up facility at the USQ Mt. Kent Observatory.
In todays episode we hear about not contaminating space with our earthly bacteria as we explore the cosmos with robotic spacecraft, the history of exoplanet discovery, the different techniques used to discover exoplanets and fingerprinting exoplanet atmospheres, and how he is in a team working with NASA to confirm TESS’s exoplanet discoveries with the new MINERVA telescope facility using 'off the shelf' optical instruments at the University of Southern Queensland
Astrophiz 85: Professor Jonti Horner - Exobiology Part 1 'The Myths of Jupiter, Comet impacts & the search for life elsewhere’ + ‘What’s Up Doc’ with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave Listen:
In Part 1 of an extended three part interview, our featured guest is Professor Jonti Horner, the Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. With thousands of citations, he is an esteemed Astronomer and Astrobiologist who researches Exoplanets, Exoplanet Habitability and the evolution of our Solar system. Jonti is leading the construction of the MINERVA-Australis exoplanet search and follow-up facility at the USQ Mt. Kent Observatory.
In today’s episode, we glimpse Jonti's great career trajectory and he introduces us to some of the complex myths and realities surrounding Jupiter, and Jupiter’s role in the development of life on earth. Another highlight to listen for is how astrobiology could have begun with Giordano Bruno being burnt at the stake in 1600 for maintaining that the thousands of stars were like our sun, also with planets revolving around them. Then Jonti gives us a crystal clear view of the development of astrobiology research and the current searches for water beyond our earth, ‘because that’s the best place to look for life’.
You will also love his analysis of why the future is likely to see silicon-based ‘life’ representing humanity in space, and you’ll be introduced to the term ‘Panspermia’.
In our regular feature of observers and astrophotographers, ‘What’s Up Doc’ with Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave, we set our sights mainly on the evening skies, and in ‘Ian’s Tangent’ we hear about upcoming eclipses and with the imminent 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing, how ’Snoopy’ the lunar lander may have finally been found, lost in space.
Astrophiz 84: “The Dark Energy Science Collaboration and the LSST” In this episode we are speaking with Venezuelan-born astrophysicist and observational cosmologist Dr Anais Möller. Anais is currently based in France and is part of the team who are the science drivers of the Dark Energy Science Collaboration attached to the LSST (the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) which is under construction at Cerro Pachón on the Andes Mountains of Northern Chile. For observers and astrophotographers, in ‘What’s Up Doc’, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us what to look out for in the morning and evening skies.
In the News: .1. Press release from the University of Bath, UK Published yesterday on Wednesday 19 June 2019
“Astronomers make first detection of polarized radio waves in Gamma Ray Burst jets”
Good fortune and cutting-edge scientific equipment have allowed scientists to observe a Gamma Ray Burst jet with a radio telescope and detect the polarisation of radio waves within it for the first time - moving us closer to an understanding of what causes the universe’s most powerful explosions.
.2. Via the Max Planck Institute and the German space agency DLR
“A new set of eyes heads for space”
A massive piece of kit called the “extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array’ (eROSITA) X-ray telescope”, is currently being attached to a spacecraft called the Spektrum-Röntgen-Gamma (SRG), set to be launched from the Kazakh steppe any day now.
.3. via the SETI Institute and Breakthrough Listen. “The Largest data set in SETI history has been released to the public.”
Breakthrough Listen—the astronomical program searching for signs of intelligent life in the Universe—has submitted two publications to leading astrophysics journals, describing the analysis of its first three years of radio observations and the availability of a petabyte of radio and optical telescope data.
Today we’d like to welcome Tommy Marshman, an early stage researcher who is completing his Masters of Research at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia. Tommy explains his research comparing the effectiveness of CPU and GPU pipelines when working with galactic plane surveys using Parkes data.
In ‘What’s Up Doc’ for astrophotographers and observers, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us what to look out for in the morning and evening skies. In ‘Ian’s Tangent’ he looks at the controversy surrounding Elon Musk's Starlink 'constellation' of satellites. ere is the Astrophiz news.
News: .1. In a paper published today in Nature, another fabulous example of how archival data can be cleverly interrogated to lead to great new discoveries. The paper is titled: A cool accretion disk around the Galactic Centre black hole Lead author, PhD student Lena Murchikova and her colleagues used data gathered in 2015 by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to discover a thin rotating accretion disk of material extremely close to the black hole that is sending streams of material spiraling inward. Earlier studies had revealed a more distant disk of warm gas farther away from the black hole which may feed the newfound cooler disk.
We have detected a number of supermassive black holes with bright hot disks of orbiting gases around them, but up till now, SagA, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way has not shown much at all, so while there is still so much more to learn about SagA kudos to Murchikova and her team.
.2. A group of international astronomers say they have observed a "forbidden" planet closely orbiting a star. The discovery of the exoplanet NGTS-4b was revealed in a study published by the Royal Astronomical Society and has challenged our understanding of stars and solar systems. Key points: A team of international astronomers found the exoplanet NGTS-4b by using the transit method and looking for a dip in light in front of the star The planet NGTS-4b exists in a "Neptunian Desert" zone where previous studies found no gaseous planets
It was found in the "Neptunian Desert", a zone previously thought to be inhospitable to gaseous Neptune-like planets. This area receives such strong heat and radiation, it was thought planets would not be able to retain their gaseous atmosphere — it would simply evaporate, leaving only a rocky core. But NGTS-4b still has its gaseous atmosphere. The researchers believe the planet may have moved into the zone relatively recently, in the last 1 million years It's about three times the size of Earth and 920 light-years away from our planet.
.3. For those who want to have a look for the starlink satellites passing over their home, go to tinyurl.com/starlinkme
Astrophiz 82: Dr Ashley Ruiter - Supernova scientist Today we are speaking with Dr Ashley Ruiter, ARC Future Fellow and senior lecturer in the School of Science at UNSW Canberra, Australia. She specializes in Type Ia supernovae and other transient phenomena from stars, in particular their origin, evolution history, and birth rates. Basically she researches anything that erupts, explodes, or merges, and also make predictions about which of these sources may be seen with gravitational waves using LISA. Dr Ruiter is currently looking for graduates to work under her supervision. Prospective PhDs can find out about this opportunity at TinyUrl-Dot-Com/ashleyastro
In ‘What’s Up Doc’ for astrophotographers and observers, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us what to look out for in the morning and evening skies. In ‘Ian’s Tangent’ he introduces us to a great citizen science project ‘Globe at Night’ which involves us measuring light pollution with our eyes and an app.
In the News:
.1. Via NASA.gov — NASA’s Fermi Satellite Clocks ‘Cannonball’ Pulsar Speeding Through Space
Astronomers found a pulsar hurtling through space at nearly 2.5 million miles an hour — so fast it could travel the distance between Earth and the Moon in just 6 minutes. The discovery was made using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation’s Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA).
.2. Via Nature Letters
In a paper titled ‘Massive white-dwarf merger product before final collapse’, Dr Vasilii Gvaramadze and Dr Götz Gräfener report observations of a hot star with a spectrum dominated by emission lines, which is located at the centre of a circular mid-infrared nebula. The widths of the emission lines imply that wind material leaves the star with an outflow velocity of 16,000 kilometres per second (that’s almost six million KPH)
.3. The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) is appealing to members of the public interested in astronomy to climb onboard one of the biggest scientific projects of the next 10 years, AstroQuest (just google AstroQuest)
Volunteers are needed to study images of far-off galaxies and figure out which light is coming from which galaxy as part of the citizen science project.
.4. Our next episode is from early career researcher Tommy Marshman, who used this podcast to find his astrophysics supervisor for his CAASTRO pulsar research for his Masters degree. So stay tuned into Astrophiz.
Astrophiz 81: Dr Ivy Wong - 'Star Formation, Galaxy Evolution & Radio Galaxy Zoo"
Our feature interview is with Dr Ivy Wong, who researches supermassive black holes, star formation and the evolution of galaxies. Her research is sensational and you will love the questions she asks about galaxy evolution and how she goes about answering those brilliant questions. As one of the initial co-leaders of the Radio Galaxy Zoo project she also gives us the heads-up on this fantastic opportunity for Citizen Scientists all around the globe. Follow Ivy on Twitter: @owning_ivy
Then for observers and astrophotographers Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave , in ‘What’s Up Doc’, tells us what to look for in the morning, evening & night skies. And then Ian takes us on an astronomical tangent to talk about how other planets in our solar system have meteor showers and how exoplanet discoveries using Kepler and TESS has led to the discovery of exocomets and the likelihood of exoplanet meteor showers. Follow Ian on Twitter: @ianfmusgrave
We finish up the show with some news: FRBs, 'Asteroid Strikes Earth' disaster scenario conference, and Black Holes in the news again. Enjoy!
In this fabulous episode we are speaking with Dr JJ Eldridge, who is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland.
Their general research concerns the lives and deaths of stars and particularly the effects of binary interactions on the lives of binary stars and how these change the appearance of galaxies, alter the rates of different types of supernovae and impact on gravitational wave events.
Then for observers and astrophotographers Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave , in 'What's Up Doc', tells us what to look for in the morning, evening & night skies. And then Ian takes us on an astronomical tangent to talk about a 'stream' of 309 stars discovered by the Gaia spacecraft arcing out from Omega Centauri, and the tails and material shedding from Asteroid Gault,
In the news:
.1. LIGO Observation Run #3 started last week and has already detected a new gravitational wave event, the hunt is on for multi-wavelength counterparts. If it is, as indicated, a NS-NS event, the universe just got a whole lot more gold and platinum.
.2. NASA's InSight robot detects first clear Marsquake, ushering a new scientific discipline. Martian Seismology.
.3. An international team find the earliest building block of our universe, the helium hydride ion (HeH+) in the direction of the planetary nebula NGC 7027.
In this episode we are speaking with Dr Stas Shabala, who is an international astrophysicist and a Lecturer in Physics at the University of Tasmania. Stas researches using powerful radio telescopes from all over the world and at the nearby Mt Pleasant facility, he investigates AGN Radio Jets & galactic evolution, and we are going to dive deep into Geodetic VLBI, (Very Long Base Interferometry) and we talk about the Radio Galaxy Zoo Citizen Science Project that Stas has been involved in right from the start.
Then for observers and astrophotographers Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave , in 'What's Up Doc', tells us what to look for in the morning, evening & night skies. In 'Ian's Tangent' he tells us more about Hyabusa 2 on Ryugu and Osiris Rex on Bennu.
In the news: There's can only one item this week. The astonishing image of the first ever silhouette of a Black Hole at the centre of M87* and how Dr Katie Bouman wrote an algorithm and led a team to crunch the data from 8 Event Horizon telescopes spread all over the planet. The data was contained in 5 petabytes of data which was too large to send over the internet, so was airlifted to her in 500kg of hard drives. Congratulations to Dr Katie and the 200+ researchers who worked on this project. The images of both the M87 Black Hole and Dr Katie are guaranteed a place in both history and your children's and grandchildren's Science, Astronomy & Physics text books.
For a great explanation of the science of the image watch this short video that can be found at Tinyurl-DOT-Com/explainblackhole
Astrophiz 78: High Altitude UV Astronomy ~ Ryan Ridden Today we are speaking with Ryan Ridden, a PhD student at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University in Canberra. His research investigates cataclysmic events by launching UV telescopes attached to helium balloons high above the atmosphere!
For observers and astrophotographers, in ‘What’s Up Doc’, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us what to look for in the morning, evening & night skies, and in ‘Ian’s Tangent’ he tells us about a cool Citizen Science experiment by Terry Lovejoy to use parallax to measure the distance from earth observers to the moon with remarkable accuracy using basic equipment and a little trigonometry.
In the News: 1. Name That Moon! 12 Jovian moons were discovered in 2018, and the public have been invited to name five of them. Suggestions can be submitted until April 15, 2019, by sending a tweet to @JupiterLunacy, with written or video recorded reasons for the name chosen. Include the tag #NameJupitersMoons. 2. SKA News: The formation of the intergovernmental organisation for the SKA Observatory (SKAO) was signed off this week 3. Announcement time! @jdelhaize and @DanielCunnama are launching a podcast called The Cosmic Savannah!
In this episode we feature a fabulous interview with Dr Christine Redman, who is an Honorary Fellow with the Melbourne Graduate School for Education at the University of Melbourne. She is going to give us the big picture on the state of Science Education in the Primary (Elementary) Secondary and Tertiary sectors in Australia, and how Science Education is the key to Australia’s ambition to nurture its newly formed Australian Space Agency.
For observers and astrophotographers, in ‘What’s Up Doc’, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us what to look for in the morning, evening & night skies. In this episode all the action is in the morning sky and in 'Ian's tangent' he tells us about robots snorting asteroid dust with Tantalum bullets.
In the news:
Academic & Scientific Publishing: A short intro to predatory publishing
Observations of Radio Magnetars with the CDSCC Deep Space Network at Tidbinbilla.
Astronomers love big numbers.
Today we are speaking with Dr Shari Breen, who holds a research fellowship at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney.
She has been awarded the prestigious Bolton Fellowship and has worked on some of the world’s and Australia’s most powerful instruments, including the Parkes Dish and the ATCA. In 2015 she was named a L’Oreal-UNESCO forWomen in Science Fellow for her work on understanding how the largest stars in our galaxy are formed.
For observers and astrophotographers, in ‘What’s Up Doc’, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us what to look for in the morning, evening & night skies.
Today we are at the NASA/CSIRO Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex at Tidbinbilla in Australia, and we are speaking with Glen Nagle, who is the CSIRO’s outreach and administration lead and NASA operations support officer.
Glen tells us how the technicians crewing the 26m dish at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station were the only ones capable of receiving and re-transmitting clear images of the first 8 minutes of Neil Armstrong's descent from the Eagle Lunar Module and his first small steps on the moon on July 20 1969. It's a fabulous story, and Glen then continues to tell us how the CDSCC is using the 70m and 43m dishes to talk to missions doing science around sun, most of the planets in our solar system and beyond.
For observers and astrophotographers, in 'What's Up Doc', Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave tells us what to look for in the morning, evening & night skies. In this episode all the action is in the morning sky and an easy-to-find comet for binocular and possibly naked eye viewing. He also outlines some of the highlights of the coming year.
Please enjoy this ‘Best of 2018 Astrophiz’ double episode where we have our two most popular astrophotography interviews for 2018, Dr Ian Musgrave @ianfmusgrave and Doug Ingram @douggyi . I have removed my ’News’ ramblings and our ‘What’s up Doc’ segments from these two episodes so you can enjoy excellent advice from these two astrophotographers, without any distractions, in a single episode. (62minutes)
Astrophiz 73: ‘Best of 2018’ Astrophysics
Please enjoy this ‘Best of 2018 Astrophiz’ episode where we have our 3 most popular astrophysics interviews for 2018. I have removed my ’News’ ramblings and Dr Ian Musgrave's ‘What’s up Doc’ segments from these three episodes so you can listen to these three astrophysicists without any distractions in a single episode. (51min)
Today’s first feature interview is with Dr Jane Kaczmarek, ( @jfKaczmarek ) who gives us the state of play on the new receivers on the 64m Parkes dish and what it’s like to work climbing way up above the dish to do her work in the focus cabin. Back in June in Episode 60, Jane told us about growing up in Wisconsin and how her love of astronomy developed, and how her penchant for asking questions and her serendipitous move out to Australia and how her PhD on immense magnetic fields spanning the Magellanic Clouds has lead her to work with the CSIRO as the commissioning scientist for the UWL receiver on the 64m Parkes dish that bought us vision of the Apollo moon landing. In the last couple of weeks, Jane has steered the Parkes dish to receive the tenuous signals from Voyager II, as it departs the heliosphere for interstellar space.
Or next interview features one of the icons of modern astronomy, Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith, ( @lisaharveysmith ) Astronomy researcher, author and presenter of ABC television's Stargazing Live. She uses the world's largest radio telescopes to study the life cycle of stars and develops new world-leading precursor telescopes building the Square Kilometre Array. We find out how she left school at 11 and now has a Doctorate in radio astronomy and Masters in Physics with Honours in Astronomy & Astrophysics. She has scores of refereed journal papers to her name and her first book: "When Galaxies Collide" was recently released and you can order the paperback or digital version from Melbourne University Press. She has won the Eureka Prize and CSIRO Chairman's Medal and runs a popular international astronomy distance learning course. She has just returned from a sold-out national speaking tour.
In our final interview in this ‘ Best of 2018' series we are speaking with astrophysicist and Indigenous Astronomer Kirsten Banks who is a proud Wiradjuri woman and the Indigenous Astronomy Educator at the Sydney Observatory. She is a highly respected scientist and advocate for indigenous astronomy. Listen to Kirsten's wonderful ’The Skyentists’ podcasts with Dr. Ángel López-Sánchez @El_Lobo_Rayado
Astrophiz 72: Dr Brad Tucker ~ SUPERnova Space Detective
Brad tells us about his research using the Keppler Space Telescope and how its successor TESS is generating great science already. He tells us how astrophysicists use a variety of tools to measure how the universe is changing over time. He explains how remote observing has radically changed the way astronomy is done around the world and how we now use telescopes with 100 times the light collecting area of the Hubble telescope and use lasers to correct for disturbances in the atmosphere. If you thought your 12 inch Dobbie was big, and it is, consider that researchers are now building telescopes with 25 to 30 metre mirrors.
In our regular segment for astrophotographers and observers, Dr Ian 'Astroblog’ Musgrave presents ‘What’s Up Doc?’. In this episode he tells us about the planets, the geminid meteor shower and comets currently visible to the naked eye. In the News: .1. Dr Brad Tucker & team find a unique Type 1A Supernova. .2. Australian Home for our National Space Agency announced. .3. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft aimed three of its science instruments toward asteroid Bennu .4. China's Chang’e 4 launched to the far side of the moon. .5. Virgin Galactic had a successful Space flight. .6. Parker Solar Probe made the closest-ever approach to a star. .7. JAXA’s Minerva II-1 rovers, have sent back 200 photos in the search for a suitable landing site on asteroid Ryugu. .8. NASA’s Insight lander is sending home some great selfies as it prepares to drill 5 metres down into Mars to check its pulse with seismograph readings. .9. Do a simple search on the internet for ’the sound of Martian winds’ Thank’s to Insight, it’s the first time we have eavesdropped on the breath of another planets winds. It’s pretty eerie. .10. The Parkes Telescope and the NASA/CSIRO DSN at Tidbinbilla have confirmed that Voyager II has powered on beyond the heliosphere.
Astrophiz 71: John Sarkissian ~ ‘Aliens are cool!’ AKA SETI, PAFs & Cryogenics PLUS: 'What's up Doc', direct from Dr @ianfmusgrave ’s Astroblog Listen here: This is the fourth of 6 ‘Astrotour’ episodes of Astrophiz, where we are publishing recordings of interviews I did on a two and a half thousand kilometre tour of five of Australia’s finest Eastern state radio and optical observatories. Today’s feature interview is with John Sarkissian at the CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory (Yes, he works with Dr Jane Kaczmarek who we featured in Episode 68) John tells us how ‘The Dish’ is contracted to work on the Breakthrough Listen project to search for extraterrestrial intelligences. It’s a SETI project involving some of the world’s most powerful radio telescopes. He explains beautifully why and how cryogenics is incorporated into the Parkes and other dishes and how their next upgrade after the amazing UWL (ultra wide band) receiver will be the design, build and installation of PAFs (Phased Array Feeds) In our regular segment for astrophotographers and observers, Dr Ian 'Astroblog’ Musgrave usually presents ‘What’s Up Doc?’. However due to a bandwith fail on our Skype link, I read from his fabulous ‘Astroblog’. In this episode he tells us what to look for in the night sky and I give a brief report on viewing the Geminid Meteor shower that peaks on December 14. In the News: .1. NASA InSight Mission successful Mars landing + what else in on and orbiting Mars. .2. Barnard's Star possibly has a cool exoplanet
Astrophiz 70: Dr Jamie Stevens ~ The ATCA PLUS: 'What's up Doc' with Dr @ianfmusgrave Listen here: Astrophiz – Astrophiz70
This is the third of 6 ‘Astrotour’ episodes of Astrophiz, where we are publishing recordings of interviews I did on a two and a half thousand kilometre tour of five of Australia’s finest Eastern state radio and optical observatories.
Today’s feature interview is with Dr Jamie Stevens, CSIRO’s Senior Systems Scientist for the Australian Telescope Compact Array, a unique mobile array of 6 x 22 metre dishes. Jamie tells us all about this beautiful facility, it’s technology and how it creates rich data sets for a huge number of researchers and gives us an idea of some of the current ATCA projects.
In our regular segment for astrophotographers and observers, Dr Ian 'Astroblog’ Musgrave presents ‘What’s Up Doc?’. In this episode he tells us about the planets and comets currently visible to the naked eye and in his tangent he reveals a comet is approaching the Parker Solar Probe.
IN THE NEWS:
.1. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is slowly dying. .2. Via The Chinese Academy of Sciences Newsroom: Fusion reactor reaches 100 million degrees Centigrade, enough to initiate hydrogen fusion (for a very short amount of time). It’s a breakthrough in the quest to produce clean, inexhaustible fusion energy. .3. Finally, with Opportunity not phoning home from Mars, I’ve just booked another interview for early next year with Richard Stephenson who leads the control room at Australia’s DSN station at Tidbinbilla. NASA has three DSN stations, one at Tidbinbilla in Australia managed by the CSIRO, one at Madrid and one in California, sited about 120 degrees apart so NASA can schedule contact with missions throughout the day and night as the earth rotates. For new listeners didn’t hear our first interview about operations at the Deep Space network with Richard, go to tinyurlDOTcomFORWARDSLASHrichardnasa all lower case, all one word, it’s a fabulous episode called ‘Talking to Spacecraft’
This is the second of 6 ‘Astrotour’ episodes of Astrophiz, where we’ll be publishing recordings of interviews I did on a two and a half thousand kilometre tour of five of Australia’s finest Eastern state radio and optical observatories.
Dr Chris Lidman, who is the first Director of the ANU Siding Spring Observatory, which is deep in a pristine dark sky parkin the Wurrumbungle ranges in North Eastern New South Wales in Australia. Chris was a member of the team which shared the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics andhas more than 30,000 citations from 197 research papers and more than 100 other publications. So apart from being a very active researcher, he has responsibility for many of the telescopes based on site, from the powerful Skymapper right up to this immense 3.9m AAT
We also extend our condolences to Dr Ian Musgrave, whose 96yo mother passed away recently. He will be back with us in two weeks.
So in Ian’s absence for this episode, I’ll give a shortened version of Ian’s expert commentary “What’s Up Doc” and I’ll try to give you an idea of some things to watch out for in the sky over the next couple of weeks.
Now because I’m doing an Ian here, I’ll go off on one of his astronomical tangents about Mercury. The BepiColombo Mercury mission was launched from French Giana.
In the news:
The search for FRBs is turning up some really interesting results. A new paper from ICRAR is published.
This is the first of our series of 6 ‘Astrotour’ episodes of Astrophiz, where we’ll be publishing recordings of interviews I did on a two and a half thousand kilometre tour of five of Australia’s finest Eastern state radio and optical observatories. Astrophiz 68: Dr Jane Kaczmarek -Ultra wide band receiver commissioning scientist PLUS: 'What's up Doc' with Dr @ianfmusgrave
Today’s feature interview is with Dr Jane Kaczmarek, @jfKaczmarek, who gives us the state of play on the new receivers on the 64m Parkes dish and what it’s like to work climbing way up above the dish to do her work in the focus cabin. Back in June in Episode 60, Jane told us about growing up in Wisconsin and how her love of astronomy developed, and how her penchant for asking questions and her serendipitous move out to Australia and how her PhD on immense magnetic fields spanning the Magellanic Clouds has lead her to work with the CSIRO as the commissioning scientist for the UWL receiver on the 64m Parkes dish that bought us vision of the Apollo moon landing.
In our regular segment for astrophotographers and observers, Dr Ian 'Astroblog’ Musgrave presents ‘What’s Up Doc?’ we congratulate hime on his latest Award for promoting Reason in the media and then he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks. In this episode he tells us about the planets and comets currently visible to the naked eye, and his meeting with famed indigenous astronomer Dr Kirsten Banks. (see Ep 53)
In the News:
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Australian ICRAR researchers using the CSIRO ASKAP radio telescope in remote Western Australia have nearly doubled the known number of ‘fast radio bursts’— powerful flashes of radio waves from deep space.
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Some ingenious sciencing from a remote desert region in Western Australia. Imaging the Moon with MWA spider antennas may be the key to unlocking how the first stars and galaxies shaped the early Universe. See video at https://tinyurl-DOT-com/radiomoonshine
Astrophiz 67: Doug Ingram ~ DSLR Astrophotography 201
Today’s feature interview is with DSLR 'Nightscapades' astrophotographer Doug Ingram of Nightscapades fame, and he encourages us to dust off our DSLR cameras and learn how to start snapping the night sky, and for more experienced astrophotographers, he has some great tips and challenges.
In our regular segment for astrophotographers and observers, Dr Ian 'Astroblog’ Musgrave presents ‘What’s Up Doc?' where he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks. In this episode he tells us about the planets currently visible to the naked eye, dust on the Apollo missions and Ryugu, and Comet 21P is fading in binoculars,.
In the News:
A rare long-period pulsar has just been discovered by the LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS) with a period of 23.5 seconds. (the fastest known pulsar spins at 716 times/second)
Next week your host is heading interstate and taking a personal Astrotour to conduct a series of interviews with researchers and directors at the Parkes Dish, Siding Spring Observatory, ATCA at Narrabri, Mt Stromlo Observatory near Canberra and the NASA/CSIRO Deep Space Network tracking station at Tidbinbilla. As a result we will delay publication of our next episode by one week, so our next episode will be on Friday 26 October. So “See you in 3 weeks!"
Astrophiz 66: Professor Steven Tingay “Building the world’s biggest radio telescope”, ICRAR, the MWO and the SKA. https://soundcloud.com/astrophiz/astrophiz66-prof-steven-tingay This episode features an extended interview with John Curtin Distinguished Professor Steven Tingay, who is the Deputy Executive Director of ICRAR and leads the Curtin University node of ICRAR. ICRAR is the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. Whilst with ICRAR, he was also the Director of the $50M Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) project, the fully operational precursor radio telescope for the Square Kilometre Array which is already producing some astonishing SKA science.
In our regular segment for astrophotographers and observers, Dr Ian “Astroblog’ Musgrave presents ‘What’s Up Doc? where he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks. In this episode he tells us about the planets currently visible to the naked eye, and Comet 21P no visible in binoculars, and for asteroid hunters he explains about about the Yarkovsky effect and a great example as detected by Guy Wells and Daniel Bamberger at Northolt Branch Observatory
In the News: AI machine learning algorithm discovers new FRBs in old data Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell awarded A$4.2 million dollar breakthrough Initiative Prize and donates it to support under-represented research students instead of buying a Ferrari.
Next Episode: Doug Ingram ‘DSLR Astrophotography 201'
Astrophiz 65: Dr Andrew Cameron
This episode features an extended interview with a pulsar radio astronomer, Dr Andrew Cameron, who was awarded his Doctorate from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the University of Bonn. Andrew has just returned from China where he is working with the world’s largest instrument, the FAST radio telescope. It’s a massive 500m Spherical Telescope, and currently holds the record for the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world. He also uses the Parkes radio telescope for his pulsar research, and explains an exciting new pulsar search technique.
In our regular segment for astrophotographers and observers, Dr Ian “Astroblog’ Musgrave presents ‘What’s Up Doc? where he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks. In this episode he tells us about the planets currently visible to the naked eye, and for Aurora Hunters who recently enjoyed an unexpected visit from ‘the lady’ Ian explains the ongoing mystery of ‘Steve’, how the name originated and how the previous explanation of this intriguing phenomena was completely wrong, and citizen science may provide some answers.
In the News: Most distant galaxy discovered by the Gemini Observatory at 12.5B LY Ruby Payne-Scott’s obituary finally in the NY Times
Astrophiz 64: Dr Shi Dai ~ Pulsar Hunter This episode features a fabulous radio astronomer, Dr Shi Dai, who is on a very exciting quest, to find elusive pulsar-black hole binary systems. To continue his search he is working with the CASS pulsar group which is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, a division of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science. Dr Shi Dai has his Doctorate in radio astronomy from Peking University, a major Chinese research university located in Beijing. and has recently been awarded the coveted Bolton Fellowship to continue his research which he takes up later this year. He researches many aspects of pulsar astronomy including pulsar timing, pulsar emission properties and mechanisms, gravitational wave research, scintillation studies and pulsar searching. Shi uses the Parkes radio telescope for the majority his pulsar research but is also involved with collaborations with the SKA and the new FAST instrument in China.
Then Dr Ian “Astroblog’ Musgrave presents his regular segment ‘What’s Up Doc? where he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks. In this episode he tells us about the four planets currently visible to the naked eye, and about the launch of the Parker Solar Probe.
In the News:
- More on NASA's Parker Solar Probe
- Arecibo radio telescope observatory upgrade
- TESS downloads and releases first tranche of data in the search for a billion exoplanets
Astrophiz 63: Prof Lisa Harvey-Smith ~ When Galaxies Collide This episode features one of the icons of modern astronomy, Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith, Astronomy researcher, author and presenter of ABC television's Stargazing Live. She uses the world's largest radio telescopes to study the life cycle of stars and develops new world-leading precursor telescopes building the Square Kilometre Array. We find out how she left school at 11 and now has a Doctorate in radio astronomy and Masters in Physics with Honours in Astronomy & Astrophysics. She has scores of refereed journal papers to her name and her First book: "When Galaxies Collide" was launched yesterday and you can order the paperback or digital version from Melbourne University Press. She has won the Eureka Prize and CSIRO Chairman's Medal and runs a popular international astronomy distance learning course. Then Dr Ian “Astroblog’ Musgrave presents his regular segment ‘What’s Up Doc? where he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks. In this episode he tells us about the four planets currently visible to the naked eye, Mars opposition is still a good sight, the Perseid Meteor shower is great in Northern Latitudes and the sad demise of the Iridium Satellite fleet and the imminent loss of those lovely bright Iridium flares.
In the News: Congratulations to the CHIME/FRB collaboration for it’s fabulous discovery of a 400Mhz FRB whilst in the commissioning phase of this exciting new Canadian instrument.
Astrophiz 62: Prof Peter Coles 'Why the Universe is Extremely Overrated'~ on Soundcloud & iTunes
Our feature story for this episode ‘Why the universe is extremely overrated’ from the blog at telescoper.wordpress.com by Dr Peter Coles, who is a Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Cardiff University in Wales and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University in Ireland. His research is in the area of cosmology and the large-scale structure of the Universe.
His fabulous blog is named 'In the Dark', where he writes under the name Telescoper, covering a range of topics including astronomy, science funding, opera, jazz, rugby and crosswords. Since 1999 it has been considered one of the greatest long-running physics blogs, and we wish him the best for his 20 year anniversary next year. Unfortunately we were not able to find a time for a live interview, but he has kindly given permission to read you this thought-provoking blog entry of his. I have made a couple of small edits just to making the reading more natural for audio format. Here goes:
Then Dr Ian “Astroblog’ Musgrave presents his regular segment ‘What’s Up Doc? where he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks. In this episode he tells us about the five planets currently visible to the naked eye, Mars opposition, the eminent total lunar eclipse and his report from an Astrocamp from the Atherton tablelands near Cairns in Queensland, Australia, and how ‘Dobbos’ are awesome. Dr Ian is a University pharmacology and toxicology lecturer, amateur astronomer and astrophotographer.
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In the news: .
MeerKAT radio telescope inaugurated in South Africa – reveals clearest view yet of centre of the Milky Way
Overdue Obituary: Dr Beatrice Tinsley, Astronomer Who Saw the fate of the Universe and more than challenged the establishment.
NEXT EPISODE: Iconic astrophysicist, Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith
Astrophiz 61: Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker ~ Seeing the Universe in Radio Colour ~ on Soundcloud & iTunes
Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker is a GaLactic and Extragalactic MWA Survey Scientist who earned her PhD in Radio Astronomy at the University of Cambridge and is currently a Curtin Early Career Research Fellow who helped to commission the low-frequency SKA precursor radio telescope, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), located in outback Western Australia. Today in our feature interview we hear about some of her amazing research projects, including her all-sky survey of 300,000 galaxies and her Gleamoscope App. Last year she was named the WA Tall Poppy Scientist of the year, and right now we congratulate her for just being recognised as one of the 5 brightest science communicators in Australia for 2018.
Then Dr Ian “Astroblog’ Musgrave presents his regular segment ‘What’s Up Doc? where he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks, and in his tangent Ian explains how Earth, Mars, Titan and Comet 67P each has very different sands and yet very similar sand dunes.Dr Ian is a University pharmacology and toxicology lecturer, amateur astronomer and astrophotographer.
Follow @Astrophiz on Twitter, FB & Insta. Follow @ColourfulCosmos, @ICRAR and @ianfmusgrave on Twitter. Get your Android Gleamoscope App from the Google Play Store. See the Gleamoscope webpage on any device: gleamoscope.icrar.org
Then just put Astroblogger and Southern Skywatch into your search engine. Ian’s blogs come up #1 in searches.
Subscribe to our fabulous podcast on iTunes or Soundcloud or via your fav podcatcher
In the news: (via Nature, ASTRON and Australia’s science Channel)
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity has passed its biggest test yet, when even phenomenally dense neutron stars fall like a feather
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity has faced its most extreme test yet, with a neutron star and two white dwarfs found to orbit together in agreement with his predictions one thousand times more exacting than ever before.
A weak field test would see a feather and a hammer being dropped on the moon will both hit the surface at the same time, which is exactly what happened in the famous Apollo Experiment by Commander David Scott At the end of the last Apollo 15 moon walk,
But theorists asked would Einstein’s GR hold true in the most extreme conditions, in a strong gravitational field.
The researchers from ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy lead by by lead author Anne Archibald, and by Adam Deller from Swinburne OzGrav and 7 others from various research facilities around the world found the perfect naturally occurring system for a strong-field test,.
PSR J0337+1715 is a tight binary system of a neutron star and white dwarf orbiting each other every 1.6 days, with a more distant second white dwarf orbiting this binary in a 327-day orbit.
Astrophiz 60: Dr Jane Kaczmarek ~ 'The Dish’ Intensified ~ on Soundcloud & iTunes A full-length feature episode on the installation of revolutionary receivers on the famous CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory ‘The Dish’, featuring Dr Jane Kaczmarek who led the commissioning of the Ultra Wideband with Low receiver, the UWL.
Dr Jane is a CSIRO research scientist and post-doctoral fellow who has her BSc in Physics and Astrophysics from the University of Wisconsin and her Doctorate in Physics from The University of Sydney.
Then Dr Ian “Astroblog’ Musgrave presents his regular segment ‘What’s Up Doc? where he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks, and in his bizarre tangent he explains how gravity waves interfering with the rings of Saturn can tell us how fast it rotates and many of Saturn’s internal properties. Dr Ian is a University pharmacology and toxicology lecturer, amateur astronomer and astrophotographer.
Follow @jfkaczmarek, PULSE@Parkes and @ianfmusgrave on Twitter. Then just put Astroblogger and Southern Skywatch into your search engine. Ian’s blogs come up #1 in searches. Follow @Astrophiz on Twitter, FB & Insta Subscribe to our fabulous podcast on iTunes or Soundcloud or via your fav podcatcher
In the news:
- Here’s our latest SKA UPDATE adapted from a story in Science By Daniel Clery on Jun. 19, 2018 Today, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a continent-spanning radio astronomy project, announced that Spain has come on board as the collaboration’s 11th member. That boost will help the sometimes-troubled project as, over the next year or so, it forms an international treaty organization and negotiates funding to start construction. In Australia, in an extreme radio ‘quite zone’ where the MWA SKA-precursor has already produced some amazing science using revolutionary ‘spider’ antennae arrays, Phase 1 of SKA will add about 130,000 antennas in Australia. Phase one of the SKA in Africa will add more than 130 dishes to South Africa’s 64-dish MeerKAT precursor telescope, on the wide-open plains of the Karoo desert. The last of 64 13.5-meter dishes was installed late last year, and next month South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will officially open the facility. Spread across 8 kilometers, the dishes have a collecting area similar to that of the great workhorse of astrophysics, the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) near Socorro, New Mexico. But with new hardware designs and a powerful supercomputer to process data, MEEKAT could have an edge on its 40-year-old northern cousin.
So while this partnership announcement with Spain is new, though to be fair, Spain has been collaborating and contributing to SKA through their industry, institutions and scientific teams for many years already. Welcome abourd Spain. ¡Bienvenido a bordo de España!
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And here’s an update on the latest FRB or Fast Radio Burst News from an accepted paper by Vikram Ravi in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society also on the 19th of June. Here’s an abstract of his abstract: He presents an empirical study of the properties of fast radio bursts (FRBs) and focussed his investigation on a sample of seventeen FRBs detected at the Parkes radio telescope, and concludes that it is uncertain at present whether they share a common class of progenitor object, or arise from a selection of independent progenitors.
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And to add to the FRB mystery, check out this recently revised paper in ArXiv by Joao G. Rosa, Thomas W. Kephart who hypothesise that FRBs may be a result of spinning Black Holes creating dark matter lasers. Read it for yourself at tinyurl.com/blackholefrb The mystery of FRBs lives on. Watch this space.
Astrophiz 59 Dr Ian Musgrave ~ Astrophotography 101
A full-length feature episode on astrophotography and astroimaging with Dr Ian Musgrave of Astroblogger fame.
Ian is a University toxicology lecturer, amateur astronomer and astrophotographer, and he explains how to plan for a shoot, using telescopes, point&shoot cameras, and smartphone astrophotography, some worthwhile targets, some imaging software to try, and the sky visualisation softwares he uses.
Then he presents his regular segment ‘What’s Up Doc? where he tells us what's up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks, and how, when and where to look to find the asteroid Vesta as a naked eye object.
In the news:
Mars Curiosity Rover discovers organics on Mars, and Mars methane levels are found to be seasonal, and we inch closer to a conclusion that life may be ubiquitous. However we are reminded that ‘organics’ means carbon compounds that are also found in comets, asteroids, Ceres, Titan, Pluto, meteorites and in interstellar space. So no, Washington Post, NASA did not find ‘traces of ancient life on Mars’
Follow @ianfmusgrave on Twitter and get his weekly observation tips on his astrobloggger website and on his Southern Skywatch blog. Just put Astroblogger and Southern Skywatch into your search engine. Ian's blogs come up #1 in searches.
Follow @Astrophiz on Twitter, FB & Insta Subscribe to our fabulous podcast on iTunes or Soundcloud or your fav podcatcher
Astrophiz 58 Dr Jessie Christiansen ~ Flying with @NASA_TESS to a billion planets Today our feature interview is with Dr Jessie Christiansen who started out in rural Queensland in Australia and is now a NASA Staff Scientist and working on exoplanet discovery with the just-launched TESS Mission. Follow @aussiastronomer on Twitter
And that’s followed by university toxicology lecturer, amateur astronomer and astrophotographer Dr Ian Musgrave of Astroblogger fame, who will tell us ‘What’s Up Doc? Whats up in the evening, night and morning skies for the next two weeks, and in ‘Ian’s Tangent’ we hear about how lasers are used in astronomy. Follow @ianfmusgrave on Twitter
In the news:
- The just-launched relay satellite for the Chang’e 4 lunar mission to the ‘dark side’ of the moon.
- A new hypothesis to explain repeating FRBs
- An exciting supernova discovery live during the ABC/BBC Stargazing show. Follow @Astrophiz on Twitter, FB & Insta
Astrophiz 57: Dr Elaina Hyde ~ Data Science & Astrophysics
Our feature interview is with Dr Elaina Hyde. Dr. Hyde speaks four languages, has four undergraduate degrees in astronomy, physics, optical engineering and planetary sciences; two masters degrees in engineering and astronomy and astrophysics; and a Ph.D. in astronomy and physics. She is an artist, a cool coder, and shares her code on Github. She uses data creatively to understand how our universe works.
Follow on @AstroHyde on Twitter
For observers and astrophotographers Dr Ian Musgrave gives us ‘What’s Up Doc’ and he tells us what to look for in our morning and evening skies, what planets, galaxies and nebula to look for and what occultations are happening. In Ian’s Tangent, we look at CO2 on Mars and Comet PanSTARRS
In the news:
The Breakthrough Listen Initiative has signed up for 1500 hours of observation time in 2018 with the multi-beam receivers on ‘the Dish’, CSIRO’s famous Parkes telescope and the recent tech upgrade with the multi-beam receivers will see scientists processing about 130 gigabits per second of observational data from deep space.
Meekat Update: The 64-dish South African radio telescope, MeerKAT, which is a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is complete, having achieved ‘first light’ some time ago and already generating exciting observational data.
NASA’s Mars Insight mission was launched last Saturday from Vandenburg Airforce Base because the launch queue at Cape Canaveral was too long. Insight arrives at Mars on 26 November later this year after several Rich Purnall manoeuvres.
And finally the Australian Government has allocated $40 odd million dollars for a Space Agency. The policy has not been released yet. It’s a piddling amount, but it’s a start. We will dissect this policy when it arrives and look at the local implications for both industry and education.
Next episode: We speak with Jessie Christiansen, a NASA scientist working with the KEPLER and TESS Exoplanet missions
In this episode we hear about weird Magnetars, Supercomputers and Gravitational Wave discoveries from Professor Matthew Bailes.
Dr Bailes is the founder and Director of the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav). He is an advisor to the Breakthrough Listen project as well as leading the MeerTIME project. His team also developed a supercomputer for the 50 year-old Molonglo telescope to transform it into a pulsar timing and FRB discovery machine.We should note here that Duncan Lorimer and Professor Bailes were the original discoverers of FRBs, Fast Radio Bursts, which we have featured in a few previous episodes. Dr Bailes has a huge number of papers published with 16 thousand professional citations in Astrophysics journals. Most recently he is co-author of a paper about some puzzling discoveries about a re-awakening magnetar, using instruments including the new SKA precursor MeerKAT telescopes in South Africa, the iconic Parkes dish in Australia and the Chandra and Swift space-based instruments.
For astrophotographers and amateur astronomers, Dr Ian 'Astroblug' Musgrave tells us what's currently up, and what to look for in the night and morning skies. In 'Ian's tangent' we look at the reprisal of 'Lost in Space' and how pulsars can be a real-life GPS system for spacecraft anywhere in the universe.
In the News: SKA updated with a doubling of MWA antennas China's upcoming soft landing of rovers on the 'dark side of the moon' The mystery of the origins of pulsar pulses uncovered by Russian team
Our feature interview is with Kathryn Neugent, who is PhD Astronomy student researching massive stars at the University of Washington in Seattle, research associate at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, discoverer of an amazing runaway Yellow Supergiant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, Photographer, Backpacker, and animal lover pretty much anywhere and everywhere!
Follow @KathrynNeugent on Twitter and her blog at http://kathrynneugent.com
Find out about massive Wolf-Rayet stars and Kathryn's team's discovery of a new class of WR Stars, and a new mystery for astronomers to grapple with. This is a wonderful example of how great science, while answering one question, will point to new avenues of discovery.
For observers and astrophotographers Dr Ian Musgrave gives us ‘What’s Up Doc’ and he tells us what to look for in our morning and evening skies, what planets, galaxies and nebula to look for and what occultations are happening. In Ian's Tangent, we look at a solar flare likely to eliminate the possibility of life (as we know it) on exoplanets orbiting our nearest neighbour, Proxima Centauri B.
In the news; ICRAR - Interstellar visitor found in MWA data Hubble produces image of a star 9 billion light years away, using a combination of gravitational lensing and microlensing.
In this episode our feature interview is with Laura Driessen who is an astrophysicist and PhD candidate based at Manchester University who is working with the MeerTRAP team using radio and optical data from the SKA precursor MeerKAT array to pinpoint the sources of mysterious Fast Radio Bursts.
For observers and astrophotographers Dr Ian Musgrave gives us ‘What’s Up Doc’ and he tells us what to look for in our morning and evening skies, what planets, galaxies and nebula to look for, what occultations are happening, strategies for imaging both faint and bright objects, and how various imaging and stacking softwares can be used to do this. We mention how sometimes Mars can be ‘ rediscovered’ and in Ian’s Tangent, we talk about the reasons for the premature demise of Humanity Star and the much anticipated re-entry of Tiangong I over the upcoming Easter Weekend, which coincides with a very rare second Blue Moon in one year.
In the News: 1. Launch preparations for the Parker Solar Probe 2. Brendan has a gentle dig at the Australian Space Agency & orders a t-shirt
Follow @AstroLauraD, @Astrophiz and @ianfmusgrave on FB & Twitter.
And check out Laura's blog at Astrolaura.com and Ian’s Astroblog at astroblogger.blogspot.com.au
In this episode we are speaking with astrophysicist and Indigenous Astronomer Kirsten Banks who is the Indigenous Astronomy Educator at the Sydney Observatory. She is a multiple award winner and CSIRO STEM Award finalist. For observers and astrophotographers Dr Ian Musgrave gives us ‘What’s Up Doc’ and tells us what to look for in our morning and evening skies. What planets, galaxies and nebula to look for, what occultations are happening, and in Ian's Tangent, we talk about the demise of Tiangong I and when and where it may fall to earth. In the News: 1. A brief tribute to Prof Stephen Hawking 2. All galaxies take the same time to rotate 3. The brightest FRB is discovered by ICRAR/Parkes/Swinburne team
Today we are at FRB2018 speaking with Dr Emily Petroff who is a Post-doc Researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy in Dwingeloo.
Hosted at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne and sponsored by CAASTRO, this conference was dedicated to the still mysterious Fast Radio Bursts and attracted FRB researchers from all over the world. Among the first to conduct diagnostic research into FRBs and Perytons, Emily presented her most recent research at the conference and gives us a fascinating insight into this ongoing cosmic mystery.
For observers and astrophotographers Dr Ian Musgrave gives us ‘What’s Up Doc’ and tells us what to look for in our morning and evening skies. He tells us how to observe some of Jupiter’s moons visible to the naked eye. In ‘Ian’s tangent’ he challenges us to use Calsky or Heavens-above websites to observe the ‘disco ball in the sky’ Humanity Star.
In the news: * Earliest signals from the very first stars detected by a simple antenna at the Murchison Radio Observatory Quiet Zone. * Iconic Arecibo Observatory saved from destruction
Astrophiz 51: Dr David Gozzard - Telescope pilot taking the pulse of the Universe. In this episode we are speaking with Dr David Gozzard who is a Post-doc Researcher at the The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research and lecturer at the University of West Australia. He is also a surf lifesaver, a 3D printer and model aircraft pilot, Astrophysics blogger and recipient of the 2017 West Australian Student Scientist of the Year Award. His work on synchronising multi-signal systems has been successfully tested on SKA precursor radio telescope arrays in Australia and Africa.
Then Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells astrophotographers, naked eye observers, binocular and telescope wranglers, what to look for in the skies over the next two weeks.
We're baaack, after a fabulous EuroTour, with our second Asteroid Hunter show where we talk with Daniel Bamberger in Marburg Germany, then Guy Wells in London UK, who are the founders of the Northolt Branch Observatories, who are our most prolific confirmers of Asteroids, comets and NEOs. Then we cross to Adelaide in Australia to speak with regular presenter Dr Ian Musgrave, who features the upcoming eclipses and tells us what to look up for in 2018.
Have a fabulous Festive Season and Happy New Year Everyone!
Some of the Astrophiz team is off on a jaunt through Europe/UK over December/January, so we will not be posting as usual. We are doing some interviews on our trip so we'll have some more fabulous Astrophiz episodes for you early in 2018.
Today we leave you a beautiful festive tune, arranged by my daughter Lara for Piano, Cello & violin. Lara's friends Emma (violin) and Tom (cello) work together beautifully for this classic Led Zeppelin composition "Stairway to Heaven"
Astrophiz 48: Dr Jacinta Delhaize 'Star-forming frenzy' In this fabulous extended 60min episode we feature Dr Jacinta Delhaize who is a Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Zagreb, Faculty of Science in Croatia. Jacinta has devolved a ‘stacking technique’ to combine data to overcome the problem of detecting weak hydrogen signals from distant galaxies. She has been using data from the Parkes Dish and the Hershel instrument to helps us understand the role of hydrogen in the evolution of galaxies. After recently moving from ICRAR in Western Australia to Croatia, her research is now looking at how black holes at the centres of galaxies can effect star formation, and is now using data from the Jansky VLA to continue this collaborative research.
For observers and astrophotographers, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tell us what to look for in our morning and evening skies over the next days and weeks, and how to best observe the imminent Geminid Meteor Shower. In ‘ian’s tangent’ he tells us about Australia’s early eminence in Space with the 50th Anniversary of the launch of our first satellite, WRESAT
Jacinta has an excellent youtube vid and you can see her describe her research on the infrared-radio correlation of galaxies at tinyurl.com/jdelhaize
Her website is at www.jacintadelhaize.com and she also has a public twitter and instagram account. Both are @jdelhaize
In the news: Teams of Radio astronomers and optical astronomers both research the Magellanic Clouds in the Southern hemisphere, and both teams come up with exciting discoveries.
Astrophiz 47: Dr Phil Edwards - The SKA Today we are speaking with Dr Phil Edwards, Australia’s SKA leader from the CSIRO. He is now Head of ATNF (Australia Telescope National Facility) Science at the CSIRO and SKA Project Scientist. Phil is originally from South Australia and did his BSc, BScHons and PhD at the University of Adelaide, and he gives some great insights on the often meandering career paths of scientists. As well as giving us an inside look at the Square Kilometre Array (the SKA), he explains about a recent discovery of high energy neutrinos from beyond our galaxy. He is one of the Australian members of an international team that follows up some neutrino detections that came about by bugging a cubic kilometre of ice down in the Antarctica. This is big science, using monstrous detectors looking for the tiniest particles that give us new understandings of our cosmos.
For observers and astrophotographers, Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us what when and where to look for objects in the morning and evening skies, including current meteor showers.
In the News: A newly published paper that casts further light on those mysterious FRBs
Astrophiz 46: Dr Tamara Davis “The Dark Universe"
Today we are speaking with Professor Tamara Davis from the University of Queensland. Tamara is a renowned and extensively cited cosmologist who has won numerous prizes for her research. Dr Davis talks us through our understanding of dark energy and it’s role in the accelerating expansion of our universe and what it means for the ultimate fate of our cosmos.
For observers and astrophotographers, Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us what when and where to look for objects in the morning and evening skies, and in ‘Ian’s Tangent’ he introduces us to some spooky Halloween phenomena and the rare interstellar comet that flashed past our home star a few days ago.
In the News: A follow-up from our last episode on Gravitational waves and ‘multi-messenger astronomy’ we look into what may be inside neutron stars … apart from neutrons … enjoy!
This week will be remembered as the ‘first light’ of the emerging science of Gravitational Wave Astronomy. To explain this breakthrough we speak with research astronomer, science communication and outreach officer Dr. Ángel López-Sánchez from the AAO, the Australian Astronomical Observatory, which played a key role in detecting and verifying radio wavelength observations of the neutron star kilonova collision which sent both electromagnetic waves and gravitational waves from this nearby event 130 million years ago.
Then we cross to Adelaide to speak with Dr Ian Musgrave to discover ‘What’s Up Doc’ … what’s up in the morning and evening sky and in ‘Ian’s Tangent’ he gives us the skinny on the recent ring system discovery and the fine prospects of catching some Orionid Meteor from Halley’s Comet this year.
In the news: There is no other news this week! It’s wall to wall Gravity Waves and Neutron Star Kilonovae and how your bling was created. Enjoy!
To understand how galaxies evolve, Dr Rebecca Allen uses Hubble and Keck images to study star-forming galaxies and galaxies that are not forming stars. Rebecca’s passion for both outreach and research makes for a exceptional episode as she paints a clear picture of galactic evolution. to help us understand some of the fundamental elements of our cosmos.
For observers and astrophotographers, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave continues with ‘What’s Up Doc’ and tells us when, where and what to look for in morning and evening skies. In Ian’s Tangent, Ian helps us understand more about the new discovery of Binary Comets.
In the news: The discovery of the 4th Gravitational Wave announced as a result of a collaboration between researchers at the Italian GW facility and the LIGO detector. The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to 3 men (out of the hundreds of) researchers who created LIGO and the first GW detection. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnett still not recognised by the Nobel Committee for her discovery and analysis of Pulsars. That honour was snagged by the bloke who ‘supervised ’her research.
Astrophiz 43 – Cassini’s Legacy. As one of 30 very lucky Astrogeeks, Andrew P Street was a guest of the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex on Friday 15 September 2017 to witness first hand the #GrandFinale of the astonishing 20 year Cassini Mission to Saturn.
In this episode: With permission, we read Andrew P Street’s great article published in the Guardian the next day.
Then Dr Ian Musgrave and I discuss my awed impressions of this amazing night at Tidbinbilla CDSCC as a guest of CSIRO/NASA, and my new understanding of the importance and capabilities of the 3 NASA/JPL Deep Space Network earth stations at Goldstone USA, Madrid Spain and Tidbinbilla Australia. Ian recounts some of Cassini’s iconic achievements.
For observers and astrophotographers, Ian continues with ‘What’s Up Doc’ and tells us when, where and what to look for in morning and evening skies. In Ian’s Tangent, Ian helps us understand why the end of the Cassini Mission was such an emotional event compared with other famous missions.
For Aurora Hunters, we include the spooky sounds of Saturn’s aurorae, as captured by Cassini.
In the news: 1. In many previous episodes we have talked about how the sheer enormity of radio telescope data caches presents challenges for effective analysis. Today we quote from a review of the ‘ Big Data Boom’ in Nature Astronomy by Professor Ray Norris, School of Computing, Engineering, & Maths, Western Sydney University.
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We report on the May 2018 launch of the NASA InSight Mission to Mars
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A game-changing discovery by a Japanese team reveals Black Hole evolution.
Today we are speaking with Glen Nagle from the CSIRO/NASA Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC) at Tidbinbilla near Canberra in Australia.
Glen takes us through the genesis of NASA missions and the astonishing achievements of the Cassini mission since the launch in 1997. He explains how the CDSCC establishes two-way communication with about 40 spacecraft, how command sets from JPL are transmitted to Cassini and how science data and images are received. Glen then tells us why and how Cassini will be smashing into the atmosphere of Saturn next week on Friday 15 September, and how the Tidbinbilla dishes will be capturing the final science data from Cassini. Watch this amazing event live on NASA TV at nasa.gov/ntv
Dr Ian Musgrave in ‘What’s up Doc’ tells us what to look for in the morning and evening skies and covers this week’s fabulous discoveries about Asteroid Florence and how amateurs can track this asteroid with its two moons. Yes, asteroids can have moons!
In the News: 1. New understanding of novae explosions from backyard astronomy 2. Repeating FRB’s (Fast Radio Bursts) from distant galaxy 3. New kind of Gravity Waves detected
Today we are speaking with Dr Hayley Bignall. Hayley is an astrophysicist for Australia’s CSIRO in their Astronomy & Space Science Division.
After her studies, she spent 5 yrs working at the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe and is now based in Perth, Australia. After spending about 7 years at The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at Curtin University, she joined CSIRO in 2016. Hayley explains how a team she works with have made some fabulous discoveries about blazars and quasars and ‘scintillations’ in intergalactic space.
Dr Ian Musgrave in ‘What’s up Doc’ tells us what to look for in the morning and evening skies and explains how an occultation project lead to the discovery of a comet with a binary cross-section
In the News: Amazing new gravity wave source could be visible neutron stars rather then ‘invisible’ black holes.
Today we celebrate our 40th episode and 10,000+ downloads into 50+ countries. In this episode we feature Dr Alice Gorman ('Dr Spacejunk') who is a Space Archaeologist and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Archaeology, Flinders University in South Australia. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Space Industry Association of Australia. Alice casts a new focus on WRESAT-1, Australia's first satellite launch, positioning Australia as the third nation in space in 1967. She explains how the Voyager probes and the 'Golden record' are cultural milestones which mark humanity's place in the solar system. As one of the few space archeologists on planet earth, she gives fabulous and new insights into the ISS and the treasure it has become. Follow Alice on Twitter @drspacejunk
In 'What's up Doc', Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave tells us what to look for in the evening and morning skies, the skinny on the Perseid Meteor Shower, and in 'Ian's Tangent' he shines the light on the Osiris REx mission, occultations, the imminent US eclipse and gravitational lensing. Follow @ianfmusgrave on Twitter.
In the news: How big is space? (Yuge!) Latest NASA missions
Follow @Astrophiz on Twitter
In this episode Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave gives us an insightful approach to amateur astronomy, introduces us to basic equipment and cameras and iTelecope.net remote telescopes, tells us what to look for in the evening and morning skies and in his Tangent, give us more detail on occultations and how some asteroids can become comets. Ian is someone very familiar to Astrophiz listeners. For the last 12 months he has presented his ‘What’s Up Doc’ segment where he tells us what to look for in the night sky, astrophotography tips and in ‘Ian’s Tangent’ he gives us a deeper understanding of astronomical phenomena. Today he will do all that, but first we’re going to find out more about this erstwhile producer of the fantastic ‘Astroblog’.
In the News: SKA update, the Voyager Missions, Non-Optical Telescopes and what to look forward to in our next couple of episodes.
Astrophiz 37: Robert Arrowsmith 'The 8metre Dish' For our special anniversary episode, we are re-interviewing our very first guest, Robert Arrowsmith from Melbourne, Australia, who is now leading the construction of an 8 metre radio telescope for the Astronomical Society of Victoria. Rob is one of the leaders in the Radio-Astronomy arm of the ASV and in Episode #1 he described the work being done at the ASV Leon Mow Radio Observatory, which is located in a RF quiet zone site about 90 minutes north of Melbourne in SE Australia
In this episode we're also celebrating our first 12 months of Astrophiz, so we have reprised our intro from Episode #1 which was posted on 29 June 2016. Since then we have published 37 episodes and it looks like our diversity and social media policies are working well, for we’ve featured 15 male and 22 women astrophysicists, astronomers, rocket scientists, mission scientists and instrument scientists from the UK, Spain, India, Norway, Japan, Russia, Romania, Germany, Canada, the US and Australia and had well over 8000 downloads to listeners in more than 50 countries.
In our regular astrophotography and observations segment, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us what to look for in the night sky and reports on ideal viewing conditions for Saturn and Mercury. In ‘Ian’s Tangent’ he tells us about a very rare discovery where a white dwarf and a brown dwarf are dancing in a very closely orbiting binary star system called a cataclysmic variable.
Next Episode: Richard Stephenson from the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex explains the technologies he uses to talk with Spacecraft like Cassini and the Voyagers.
Our feature interview is with Danielle DeLatte who is a PhD Student in Aeronautics & Astronautics, University of Tokyo. Danielle is an aerospace engineer who has worked at NASA Goddard as part of the Satellite Servicing Projects Division working on instruments for the Canada arm on the ISS. She runs ISU Space Cafe Tokyo, a monthly public space talk in Shimokitazawa where the themes range from space science/engineering to space policy and business strategies.
In our regular observing and astrophotography segment Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave tell us what's up in the night sky this week, and how we are starting to discover ringed exoplanets.
In the news this week: The 'Wow signal', and how it was probably not caused by a comet
Our feature interview is with Dr Jean-Pierre Macquart – Senior research fellow at Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Perth, Australia. He explains new discoveries about the mysterious FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts) and his team's use of the CSIRO ASKAP array to use the latest FRB discoveries to better understand the properties of the intergalactic medium.
Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave - For astrophotographers and naked-eye and binocular observers, 'What's up Doc' tells us what to look for in the night sky this month, and includes an update on the recent impact of an object on Jupiter, and the 'apogee moon'.
News update: NASA's Parker Solar probe, Citizen Scientists Identify Prehistoric Supernova and astrophysicists solve mystery of how most anti-matter in the Milky Way forms.
Our feature interview is with Dr. Anthony Horton – Instrument Scientist at the AAO who tells us all about life as an Instrument Scientist for AAO and the Huntsman Telescope and the Space-Eye CubeSat telescope project.
In our regular Astrophotography and observing feature, Dr Ian ‘astroblog’ Musgrave gives us the skinny on the great current conditions for observing our Gas Giants.
In the News: 1. Vale Harold Weaver, 99, discoverer of Masers in space. 2. Renegrade Supermassive Black Hole hunted down 3. The smallest (oxymoronic) Supermassive Black Hole 4. The first image of a black hole (almost)
Our feature interview is with Dr Elodie Thilliez. Elodie is a Data Scientist at the Deakin University Software and Technology Innovation Laboratory in Melbourne Australia, and completed her PhD at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University. Elodie tells us about her research into debris disks and the role of big data in modern astronomy. Follow Elodie on Twitter as @ET_Astro
Dr Ian Musgrave in his regular feature “What’s Up Doc” tells us when and where to find our planets, how to catch the Eta Aquariid meteor shower this weekend, exoplanets and rings around asteroids. Check out Ian’s excellent Astroblog (just google it) or follow @ianfmusgrave on Twitter.
In the News: With the Cassini mission all over the internet, we instead give you the background on Cassini the scientist.
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Astrophiz32: Manisha Caleb Nails Fast Radio Bursts ~ Dr Ian Musgrave “What’s Up Doc?" Out now on iTunes and Soundcloud. Our special guest is PhD candidate Manisha Caleb who has just made a wonderful breakthrough by using the revamped Molongo Observatory Synthesis Telescope to bring us breakthrough knowledge about mysterious FRB’s - Fast Radio Bursts
In our regular segment, we feature Dr Ian Musgrave of ‘Astroblog’ fame, and he tells us what to look for in the night and morning skies over the next few weeks. Watch for Jupiter, Saturn, Comets and rogue asteroids! And for Australians … get thee to the Warrumbungles.
In the News:
Supermassive black holes collide revealing baby stars, by guest reporter Lara O’Brien, Dark Matter in the Bullet Cluster, via Cosmos magazine
Astrophiz 31 is out now on iTunes and Soundcloud.
Our feature interview is with Dr Elisabetta Barberio who explains a new Dark matter Experiment deep in a goldmine in South Eastern Australia. Elisabetta is a member of the Experimental Particle Physics Group at the University of Melbourne. Previously, she was a staff researcher at CERN, the European laboratory of Particle Physics. She was involved with data analysis in the OPAL experiment at the Large Electron Positron Collider at CERN, and has worked on the Higgs Boson and ATLAS, which is a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Dr Ian Musgrave in our regular feature, ‘What’s up Doc?’ tells us what to look for in the night sky this week using naked eye, binoculars or telescopes, and Jupiter is ruling our skies. In the news: Dr Brad Tucker and ANU astronomers launch a Citizen Science project and public search of the southern skies for the elusive 'Planet Nine’ using data from the Skymapper telescope at Siding Springs in Australia.
2.The largest magnetic fields ever found in the universe are caused by collisions between immense galaxy clusters, and these giant magnetic fields are millions of light years across and 100 times larger than the Milky Way.
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How to hunt for a black hole with a telescope the size of Earth. How do you photograph a black hole? Impossible you say? Inventive researchers have plans to do exactly that, and hope to grab the first images of an event horizon — the point of no return from the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way.
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Using the Australian AAOmega+2dF Spectrograph and the Southern African Large Telescope astronomers have just discovered one of the most massive superclusters in the universe hiding behind the Milky Way in the constellation of Vela. This is a massive group of several galaxy clusters, each one containing hundreds or thousands of galaxies. The researchers estimate that this Vela supercluster could contain somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 trillion stars. Their calculations also show Vela is about 800 million light-years distant and zooming farther and farther away from us at a speed of about 40 million mph (18,000 kilometers per second).
Astrophiz30: Out now on iTunes and Soundcloud. Dr Elizabeth Tasker Debunks Earth 2.0 is in the Trappist1 system, Dr Ian Musgrave “What’s Up Doc" Our feature interview is with Dr Elizabeth Tasker who gives a reality check to the claims that ‘7 earth-like planets' have been found around TRAPPIST-1, a small star about 40 light years away, and in her most recent paper, calls for a more accurate definition of our use of the term ‘habitability'. Elizabeth is a British astrophysicist who works at JAXA, the Institute of Space and Astronomical Science, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Our regular segment features Dr Ian Musgrave of ‘Astroblog’ fame, and he tells us what to look for in the night and morning skies over the next few weeks.
In the news:
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The Explosive beginnings of a supernova spotted for the first time (via Amy Middleton reporting for cosmosmagazine) and she writes about a new paper in Nature Physics about the spectacular transformation of a star, assumed to have been a red supergiant, into a supernova, just three hours after it began.
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The unexpected discovery of young stars in old star clusters may send scientists back to the drawing board and change our understanding of how stars evolve (via Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, posted in phys.org/astronomy)
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A White Dwarf star X9, is the closest star ever found orbiting a black hole, and it’s orbiting at an astonishing 12 million km/h. The stellar dance between these two objects is taking place inside a globular cluster 47 Tucanae, a group of about a million stars orbiting the galactic centre about 15,000 light years from Earth. (reported by Marcus Strom for the Sydney Morning Herald)
Next episode: Dark Matter with Dr Elisabetta Barberio (out on 6 April)
Our feature interview is with Dr Ángel López-Sánchez, who is originally from the beautiful city of Córdoba in Spain, and now with the Australian Astronomical Observatory and Department of Physics and Astronomy of Macquarie University, Sydney”.
He researches galaxies with star-formation activity, and even the features of the very massive Wolf-Rayet stars are detected sometimes.
He was the first Spanish astronomer to host an astronomy blog. It is fantastic, and our listers can find it easily just by googling ‘the lined wolf’. It comes up as number one in search results (in Spanish and in English). Ángel is passionate about outreach and amateur astronomy.
Dr Ian Musgrave in our regular feature, ‘What’s up Doc?’ tells us what to look for in the night sky this week using naked eye, binoculars or telescopes. This week, Jupiter and Saturn, and a chance encounter with a comet. Just google ‘Astroblog’ to see his fabulous weekly observing blog.
In the News: In the News: 1. ‘Big Data’ Updating the supercomputing that is evolving from the SKA, (the Square Kilometre Array is based in Murchison West Australia and South Africa, with headquarters at Jodrell Bank UK) 2. Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) hit mainstream astronomy after their original discovery using 2001 pulsar data from Parkes 'The Dish' Radio Telescope
Astrophiz 28 is out now on iTunes and Soundcloud. Our feature interview is with Fiona Panther who is a PhD student and the Joan Duffield Scholar at the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Canberra, Australia. Fiona is using computational astrophysics and working on using peculiar supernova to try and understand how positions are created in excess in our Galaxy. Fiona also explains Fermi Bubbles
Dr Ian Musgrave in our regular feature, ‘What’s up Doc?’ tells us what to look for in the night sky this week using naked eye, binoculars or telescopes, and all the action is currently down near the horizon.
In the news: NASA, working with Spitzer, Hubble and the ESO’s VLT, have just announced that 7 exoplanets have been discovered in the habitable zone around TRAPPIST-1, a dwarf star only 39 light years away. Galaxies being stripped of their star-forming matter
Astrophiz 27 out now on iTunes and Soundcloud. Our first feature interview after our fabulous summer break is with Dr Amanda Bauer, who has just been appointed as the new Head of Education and Public Outreach at the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope which is high up in the mountains in Chile in South America. Amanda has worked at the Max Planck Institute and on the famous Sloan Digital Sky Survey and she now specialises in Galactic Evolution and Astronomical Outreach.
Dr Ian Musgrave in our regular feature, ‘What’s up Doc?’ tells us what to look for in the night sky this week using naked eye, binoculars or telescopes. Comet 45P and Vesta observations.
In the news: Our Milky Way is being pushed and pulled around every which way, Orphan Black Holes and a ‘Red Nova’ predicted for 2022.
While we are on our summer holiday break we are reprising a few of our previous episodes. Listen as Dr Elizabeth Tasker debunks the over-hyped 'habitability' claim for Proxima Centauri b, and explains what we actually know about this nearby exoplanet.
Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov explains the ‘Radio Window’ Part 11 and for Aurora Hunters she plays the sounds of Jupiter's Auroras from NASA's Juno mission.
In the news: NASA's JUNO pics of Jupiter's North Pole, Worst Science 'journalism' Ever, Brightest Magnetar detected, NASA designs sub to send to Titan, Another 'Dyson Sphere' star detected.
This week over our summer break, on the heels of the sad news of Vera Rubin's passing, we reprise the segment from Episode 11 which features Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov, where she tells us about Vera Rubin’s historic discovery of Dark Matter and how she is still being denied a well-deserved Nobel Prize.
Astrophiz 24 is out now on iTunes and Soundcloud. Solstice Special and Cuberider Liftoff.
Feature interview: We interview Solange Cunin, CEO of Cuberider, an Edutech company which has just launched 100 experiments up to the ISS via JAXA, stoking the dreams, imagination, hard work and Python coding of hundreds of Australian students and teachers from 54 schools. Congratulations! More info at cuberiderDOTcom
Dr Nadeshzda Cherbakov Skypes in from Tver in Russia to tell us more about stellar evolution and explains the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram
Dr Ian Musgrave in ‘What’s up Doc?’ tell us what to look for in the night sky this week using naked eye, binoculars or telescopes.
In the news: 6 brief items and we elaborate on solstices
See you next on February 9 2017. Happy Holidays everyone!
Yay! Astrophiz 23 is out now on Soundcloud or subscribe in iTunes. Meet Asteroid Hunters Daniel Bamberger and Guy Wells. Astrophotographer Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave in ’What’s up Doc’ tells us what to look for in the night sky this week.
Feature Interview: Daniel Bamberger & Guy Wells, who have set up the rapidly expanding and recognised Northolt Branch Observatory, explain how they image and verify orbits of asteroids and other NEOs. (Near earth Objects)
Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov has been incommunicado, so we will have to wait for next week to look at the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram
“What”s Up in the Sky this Week” with Dr Musgrave: The planets of the morning sky, the evening sky and the Geminids meteor shower under a full moon.
In the News: 1. The Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR), the antennas are receiving radio signals that have travelled billions of years to get here, from the depths of the cosmos. 2. Another citizen science project turns up remarkable pulsar science via the einstein@home project.
- Daniel Ung, a Masters student at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, has won the 2016 FEKO Student Competition, with implications for SKA and the MWA, the Murchison Widefield Array.
Astrophiz 22 is out now on Soundcloud or subscribe in iTunes
Part II: The Parkes ‘Dish’ interrogates pulsars to expose gravity waves. We interview Operations Scientist John Sarkissian at the CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory. He explains how the ‘Spider Dipoles’ that make up the Murchison Widefield Array in remote Western Australia contribute to SKA, how Parkes chase down gravity waves and has detected most of the world’s FRBs (fast radio bursts of unknown origin), after being distracted by ‘perytons’ and microwave ovens. And yes, ‘The Dish’ is searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the international SETI ‘Breakthrough Listen’ project. We’re not saying they’re searching for Aliens ….. but Aliens!
Dr Nadezhda in Part I of Stellar Evolution explains how the mass of a star determines its evolutionary path, and next week we will look at the Hetsprung-Russell Diagram
“What”s Up in the Sky this Week” for Northern Hemisphere observers and astrophotographers, and for Southern Hemisphere Listeners, December is the best time to see the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud. We also expose Procyon and curse the moon for demolishing the Geminids Meteor Shower
In the News: 1. The Spiderweb galaxy 2. Imaging a Black Hole Event Horizon 3. ICRAR tells us the Universe is slowly becoming less energetic (Well, who isn’t ;)
Astrophiz 21: Track deleted due to our policies. Check the Astrophiz website for policy details
Black Hole Investigator and Norwegian-born PhD candidate Natalia Sommer explains her novel technique of interrogating the echoes from active galactic nuclei to develop a standardisable candle to measure the distances to galaxies far far away. Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov Skypes in from Tver in Russia to tell us about Red Shift, Blue Shift and the Doppler Effect. In the News: Fast Radio Bursts and the oldest woman in space and most travelled NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. What to look for in the night sky this week, the ecliptic explained and the Astrophotography Challenge.
It is with profound sadness that we announce that Jack, the eldest son of Dr Ian Musgrave, has died as a result of an accident. We will not be presenting our regular podcast this week, and we do not expect Ian will be on the podcast for the foreseeable future.
This week’s program is a simple tribute to Jack, in the form of my daughter Lara’s arrangement of the Led Zeppelin classic ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on piano. She is accompanied by her friend Emma Amery on violin, and her brother Tom on Cello.
We extend our deepest condolences to Ian and Peta, Mikey and their youngest son, from Astrophiz listeners and the O’Brien family.
The message from Ian is a simple one: Parents, hug your kids.
Astrophiz 18 out now on iTunes and Soundcloud. ‘The Acceleration of the Expanding Universe’ is beautifully explained by Dr Brad Tucker. Brad is an Astrophysicist/Cosmologist, and currently a Research Fellow and PhD supervisor at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mt. Stromlo Observatory at the Australian National University.
Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov Skypes in from Tver in Russia to tell us more about the Cosmic Microwave background Radiation.
Dr Ian Musgrave in ‘What’s up Doc?’ tell us what to look for in the night sky this week using naked eye, binoculars or telescopes. Oh yes, and he takes down ’Suuupermoons’
In the news: An update on the SKA, the Square Kilometre Array, our planet’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope
Astrophiz Podcast 17 is out now for Space lovers, Sciencers, Aurora Hunters, and Astrophotographers on iTunes and Soundcloud.
We talk with John Sarkissian, who is the Operations Scientist at the CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory. It’s a sensational interview celebrating 55 years of amazing observations from the iconic dish that bought the Apollo moon landings to 600 million viewers in 1969
Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov tells us about Cosmic Background Radiation.
Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave in 'What's Up Doc?' tells us what to look for up in the sky this week and how to temper your discovery of new rogue planets
Next Week:
We talk about the accelerating universe controversy with the Mt Stromlo Research Fellow, Cosmologist and Type Ia Supernovae researcher Dr Brad Tucker.
Astrophiz Podcast 16 is out now for Space lovers on iTunes and Soundcloud. At the Australian Space Science Conference we talk with Ian Whitechurch, CEO of Neumann Space, which has just secured a contract to test their solid state ion space drive on the International Space Station.
Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave in 'What's Up Doc?' tells us what to look for up in the sky this week, the ‘blue’ new moon, earthshine, trans-neptunian object Sedna, Planet 9, how to use Heavens-above and Calsky to get email alerts for overhead satellites, Iridium flares, the ISS, comets and novas as they become visible over your own house.
In the news: 1. Schiaparelli Lander wrap up 2. Eta Carinae imaged in incredible detail 3. Proxima Centauri’s 7 year ’starspot’ cycle discovered
Next Week: We talk with John Sarkissian, who is the Operations Scientist at the CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory. It’s a sensational interview. In two weeks: We talk about the accelerating universe controversy with the Mt Stromlo Research Fellow, Cosmologist and Type Ia Supernovae researcher Dr Brad Tucker.
Glen Nagle describes how the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex listens to and sends commands to 40 spacecraft actively on missions throughout our solar system and beyond. Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave in 'What's Up Doc?' tells us what to look for up in the sky this week, auroras and astrophotography of the moon. In the news this week; 1.Successful ESA Mars Exo mission orbit insertion, TGO spacecraft sciencing successfully but possible LOS for Schiaparelli lander 2. Congratulations to Chinese Taikonauts for successful docking with their new space station 3. There are at least 10 times more galaxies than we thought The number of galaxies in the observable universe is 2 x 10^12 galaxies. This is roughly a factor of ten more than previous estimates and This also implies that we have yet to detect a large population of faint distant galaxies. 4. ESO’s VISTA finds a dozen ancient RR Lyrae stars at the heart of the Milky Way that were previously unknown, and indicates that remnants of ancient globular clusters are scattered within the centre of the Milky Way’s bulge, firming our understanding of galaxy evolution 5. There are at least 10 times more galaxies than we thought and the number of galaxies in the observable universe is 2 x 10^12 galaxies. This is roughly a factor of ten more than previous estimates and also implies that we have yet to detect a large population of faint distant galaxies.
Our feature interview is from the Australian Space Research Conference where we spoke with Dr Alina Donea from Monash University who is using maths and solar satellite data to detect sun quakes and using phase shifting can accurately predict the appearance of active regions appearing around the eastern limb of our sun as it rotates,
In ‘What’s Up Doc?’ this week, Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave tells us about viewing Venus, Mars and Saturn, a brief report on the Orionid Meteor Shower and in ‘Ian’s Tangent’ he tells us about using photometry to do meaningful research on variable stars.
In the news this week: 1. The Max Planck Institute releases a paper and stunning images of a protoplanetary disk captured by the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA), which has profound implications for our understanding of planet formation around young stars
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The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) uses ALMA to explore the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and also releases amazing images and uncovers insights into the 'Golden Age' of Galaxy Formation 10 billion years ago
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ESO and The International Centre for Radio Astronomy in Perth have shared their revolutionary NGAS data management system with the giant 500m FAST radio telescope facility in China to manage the petabytes of data it generates each year.
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We describe how the construction of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is completed with a unique 8000 square metre radio telescope design which is investigating the key mysteries of dark energy.
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We report on the NASA Mars 2020 Rover’s MOXIE instrument which will produce Oxygen on the Red Planet and will be launched atop an Atlas V booster, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in July 2020.
Apologies from Dr Cherbakov, who is taking a little break at her dacha near Tver.
In this week’s fabulous show Dr Caroline Foster tells us about the SAMI galaxy survey using spectrographs, voids in space and how science corrects mistakes and misconceptions
Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov tells us about the discovery of Rosetta’s Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 1969 by Klim Churyumov and Svetlana Gerasimenko
Dr Ian (Astroblog) Musgrave features in 'What's Up Doc?' where he tells us what to look for in the sky this week, and in 'Ian's Tangent' he tells us about tells more about Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and for astrophotographers, how to use a CCD webcam for astrophotography
In the news: We summarise the scientific achievements of the Rosetta/Philae Mission by the European Space Agency.
Astrophiz Podcast is a free, not-for-profit podcast that aims to build public understanding of science.
This week’s feature is from Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov, where she tells us about Blackbody Radiation. Dr Ian Musgrave in’What’s Up Doc?’ tells us what to look for in the sky this week, and the gunpowder smell of moondust and its inherent dangers.
In the news this week: 1. A team at the Large Hadron Collider reports a new particle dubbed the Madala boson. 2. The Gaia mission is mapping the nature and movements of a billion stars in the Milky Way. 3. For our aurora watchers the European Space Agency has solved a problem that was preventing us from closely observing the sun’s corona. 4. Watch the Milky Way's birth in a lovely Caltech simulation at tinyurl.com(ForwardSlash)astrophizgalaxy 5. Australian OzGRav teams to embrace the new era of gravitational wave astronomy in $31.3M project 6. 16th Australian Space Research Conference in Melbourne 26-30 September, 7. The venerated Dish at Parkes serves up the answer to one of life’s greatest mysteries with the discovery of the most complex chiral molecules found in space.
This week’s feature is from Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov, where she tells us about Vera Rubin’s historic discovery of Dark Matter and how she is still being denied a well-deserved Nobel Prize.
Dr Ian Musgrave in’What’s Up Doc?’ tells us what to look for in the sky this week and for astrophotographers, how to use a simple point-and-shoot camera on a telescope. Ian's Tangent: #TweetYourResearchAsAHarryPotterNovel
This Week’s News: 1. The Philae spacecraft, lost since 2014, has finally been found in a crevice on comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko 2. OSIRIS-REx NASA's first asteroid sampling mission successfully launched into space last Thursday 3. Evidence for Planet 9 may already exist. The search for Planet X heats up. 4. New view of the Milky Way’s evolution. Using colors to identify the approximate ages of more than 130,000 stars in the Milky Way's halo, Notre Dame astronomers have produced the clearest picture yet of how the galaxy formed more than 13.5 billion years ago. Their Animation tinyurl.com/astrophizmilky clearly shows older stars at the centre of our galaxy, supporting a new theory of the Milky Way’s evolution.
Dr Elizabeth Tasker debunks 'habitability' claim for Proxima Centauri b, and explains what we know about this nearby exoplanet.
Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov explains the ‘Radio Window’ Part 11 and for Aurora Hunters she plays the sounds of Jupiter's Auroras from NASA's Juno mission.
Dr Ian (Astroblog) Musgrave features in 'What's Up Doc?' where he tells us what to look for in the sky this week, and in 'Ian's Tangent' he tells us about the famous SETI 'WOW! Signal'
In the news: NASA's JUNO pics of Jupiter's North Pole, Worst Science 'journalism' Ever, Brightest Magnetar detected, NASA designs sub to send to Titan, Another 'Dyson Sphere' star detected.
Dr Julie Banfield introduces the Radio Galaxy Zoo Citizen Science Project, Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov on the 'Radio Widow' and 'Sorry, no aliens there!' Dr Ian Musgrave tells us about 'Starshot' and what to look for in the sky this week, and in 'Ian's Tangent' he tells us about the stars in the Centaur - Alpha, Beta and Proxima. In the news: Proxima Centauri b, Astrophotography tips, New SKA HQ, Dark Matter Galaxy, Black holes, SETI 'signal' unconfirmed.
Dr Cherbakov tells us about the discoveries, achievements and passing of (Owen) Bruce Slee, and explains how neutron stars form, and how some become pulsars. Dr Ian Musgrave continues ‘the dance of the planets’, and introduces ‘Ian’s Tangent’ a new segment, and this week it is about observing the moons of Jupiter using binoculars and 'What's up in the sky this week'. In the news this week: the LOFAR Array, @Astrokatie nails some misconceptions, a 5th force of nature? … and exploding white dwarf stars.
Dr Lisa Harvey-Smith on building the world's biggest radio telescope, sciencing with indigenous communities and national science Week. Dr Ian Musgrave wraps up the Perseids, explains magnitudes and 'What's up in the sky this week'. Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov introduces Pulsars, and their discoverer, Dame Jocelyn Bell. In the news this week: Science week, Primordial Black Holes, a trip to Proxima Centauri and building a home radio telescope to study the sun.
Dr Karen Lee-Waddell tells us about her research with CSIRO on tidal dwarf galaxies. Ian tells us more about the Perseid Meteor Shower, the 'Dance of the Planets' and what's up in the sky this week. Dr Nadezhda tells us about the discovery or radio waves from Jupiter. In the news: Help find black holes by joining a citizen science project at radio.galaxyzoo.org and we explain how the colours of auroras happen.
Dr Nadezhda tells us about pioneering Australian astrophysicist and ardent women's rights advocate Ruby Payne-Scott, and I explain EM waves and the many colours of light. Ian tells us about the 'dance of the planets' and what's up in the sky this week. In the news: Jupiter's Red Hot Spot, New type of Binary Star. MWA eavesdrops on old supernova. Juno drops a donut. Brightest object in our universe (so far). How to listen to the Perseids on your FM Radio. And yes, last week said the word 'universe' instead of 'galaxy' ... her bad
Interview: Professor Sarah Maddison - Dust and Protoplanetary Disks History & Theory of radio astronomy: Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov from Tver tells us about Grote Reber. "What's up in the sky this week": Ian Musgrave tells us what, when & where The News Roundup: Magdalena Ridge Optical Interferometry, WIMPS and Kepler Reborn.
Interview: Dave 'the grave ' Hunter - Magnetometers and interpreting heliophysical satellite data. History & Theory of radio astronomy: Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov from Tver tells us about Karl Jansky. Dr Ian Musgrave tells us "What's up in the sky this week" - The News Roundup: MeerKat and Dark Matter, and astronomy news snippets.
Each week, the news, guest astrophysicist interviews, history and theory of radio astronomy and 'what's in the sky this week'. This week's episode features Professor Nadezhda Cherbakov from Tver talking about the RATAN-600 radio telescope Tom Browder, particle physicist and spokesperson for the Belle II Project. We talk about how particle physics enhances our knowledge and understanding of matter and anti-matter in the early universe.
Astrophiz Podcast 1 is here for your listening pleasure. Astrophiz 101, interview with Robert Arrowsmith, History & Theory from Dr Nadezhda Cherbakov: James Clerk Maxwell. News about The Australian Compact Array and Murchison Widefield Array and what's in the night sky via Dr Ian Musgrave's Astroblog site, and reference to Adelaide Radio Astronomy Group. Thanks to Michael Roberts for the opening theme backing track