Media – Physics and Astronomy outreach: Recent Episodes
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Chris North and Edward Gomez discuss the first attempt to launch a rocket from UK soil, albeit via a piggyback on (or under) a plane. There’s also an interesting supernova, the first exoplanet confirmation from JWST. Meanwhile, on Mars, does no news mean bad news for China’s Zhurong rover? We also speak to Dr Ian
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The 25th December marks an anniversary in the world of astronomy (as well as Sir Isaac Newton’s birthday, of course) – the launch of JWST, the infrared space telescope launched to explore the Universe in unprecedented detail. One year on from launch, Chris North and Edward Gomez look at a few of the results that
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With the Artemis I mission mid-mission (at the time of recording), Chris North and Edward Gomez look at what this means for the future of human space exploration, and more ambitious missions to the Moon (and beyond). Meanwhile, back here on Earth, the European Space Agency have announced their next crop of astronauts. The list
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At the end of September, NASA’s DART mission was deliberately crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos. Not carelessness, but a deliberate act with a view to testing planetary defense. After all, if we discover something large heading towards Earth, we might want to be able to nudge it off course. Here in Wales, the Comet Chasers
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This is the second part of a gravitational field trip to the LIGO Hanford Observatory in Washington State, in the US. Last month we talked about how the detectors work, and the scientists and engineers who operate them. This time, we take a longer-term look, not just into the future but also into the past,
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This month, we go on a field trip to the LIGO Hanford Observatory, one of a number of detectors that are searching for gravitational waves. In part one of this trip, we hear from a number of people working at the detector. Dr Mike Landry, Head of the LIGO Hanford Observatory, explains how – and
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Amateur astronomers regularly make important contributions to astronomy research. That can be through observations of meteor showers, or images of solar system objects. But it’s not always about pretty pictures, and some amateurs also make measurements that feed into our understanding of a broad range of astronomical phenomena, providing a network of telescopes that far
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In the 65 years since Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957, the number of artificial satellites in orbit has been increasing. In the last two years, the number of satellites has doubled, largely thanks to the huge “constellations” launched by companies such as SpaceX. The number of satellites has a detrimental impact on astronomical observations,
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It’s not often that a new astronomical phenomenon is named, but this month we have a new one. The name might not be that original, but there have been the first observations of something known as a “micronova”. Lasting just a few hours, a micronova is much fainter than a typical “nova”, making them much
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With the invasion of Ukraine casting a shadow over the world, Chris North and Edward Gomez (returning from a long hiatus!) look at the impact of the war on astronomy and space science, mindful that these pale in importance when compared with the death and destruction taking place on the ground. From the international collaboration
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Back in September 2020, the new broke that an unexpected gas, phosphine had been discovered in the atmosphere of Venus. While plans for making further measurements are progressing, the theoreticians have been hard at work modelling the atmosphere, and trying to explain how life could possibly exist in such a harsh environment Dr William Bains,
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When a mysterious signal was found by an undergraduate student, Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker was perplexed. It was hiding in archival data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a large network of radio antennas in Western Australia. Based at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Natasha started to loop deeper. Repeating every 18 minutes, and
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The first interstellar object to be discovered was ‘Oumuamua, detected in 2017. Joined by Comet 2I/Borisov a couple of years later, astronomers are eagerly awaiting further discoveries of such objects, which were ejected from other solar systems. We explore what the link is between these interstellar objects and the history of star formation around the
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The world of astronomy is eagerly awaiting the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope later in December. The telescope is not without controversy, but is set to revolutionise observations of the cosmos. Prof Pete Hargrave was responsible for building a calibration source for MIRI, the Mid-Infrared Imager, while Dr Tim Davis will be observing
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Back in 2015 the New Horizons spacecraft whizzed past Pluto on its way out of the Solar System. A few years later, as it continued on its way through the Kuiper Belt, it passed by a snowman-shaped object called Arrokoth. More recently, it’s discovered two objects that are in fact four – binary objects comprised
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Way back in 1181 AD, astronomers in China and Japan recorded a “guest star” – something that we’d now call a supernova. Over 800 years later, astronomers made a connection between this ancient observation and more recent studies of a very unusual object that goes by the name of “Parker’s Star”. Prof Quentin Parker, from
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The last month or so has seen several cases of small things being discovered. The first is an asteroid, 2021 27PH, which gets closer to the Sun than Mercury. What could we learn about fundamental science from such an object? The second is one of the smallest exoplanets detected, at less than half the mass
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In late June an interesting object was discovered heading inwards from the outer solar system, identified in archival images from a survey of the sky. It was initially thought to be worth keeping an eye on over the next decade or so, as it approaches the orbit of Saturn before heading back out to the
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Our understand of the Universe has changed a great deal in the last 100 years. From Einstein’s theories of relativity and measurements of the expanding Universe, to the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background and the mysterious Dark Energy. But what are the current mysteries and unknowns that we still want to uncover? And how
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This month, we’re joined by two people who’ve just been elected to prestigious roles in science here in the UK. Professor Mike Edmunds has just become President-elect of the Royal Astronomical Society, while Professor Bernard Schutz has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Both these societies have a long history, and we
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Last September, a team of scientists led by Professor Jane Greaves announced the detection of a rare gas, phosphine, in the atmosphere of Venus. With no plausible explanations of how it could be there, one possibility remaining was that it was being produced by some sort of microbial life floating in the cloud decks of
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