Astrophiz Podcasts

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 engine

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 t

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 a

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