Astrophiz Podcasts

Dr Shivani Bhandari 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 f

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 comput

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 as

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

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