AstrotalkUK

Coorg Star Party. Credit BAS

Another episode in the current series about space and India. Bangalore Astronomical Society (BAS) is probably the most industrious astronomical societies in India. Founded in 2006, it has nearly 200 paid-up members based in and around Bangalore, but a huge number of national and international followers online.

In this episode, BAS president Naveen Nanjundappa describes BAS's origins, achievements and future goals.

I have added a few links below - if you have others worth sharing, please submit via a comment.

Google Group is the primary online platform, but BAS has a presence on Events Announcement Group, Orkut Community, Facebook Group and of course Twitter.

http://youtu.be/O5uWpZ5U5rE

With a population of 1.2 billion people, India has just one national with first hand experience of spaceflight. Rakesh Sharma, a now retired Indian Air Force wing commander, in 1984 spent eight days in space aboard the Soviet space station Salyut 7. This account of his spaceflight was recorded at his home in the Nilgris region of India in August 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up_ANSNTB-U

Amrita Shah

Vikram Sarabhai  is unanimously accepted across India as the "father" of its space program. Not really known well outside India, he died suddenly and prematurely at age of 52 in 1971. He had studied cosmic ray physics and gained his PHD from Cambridge in 1947 the same year India became an independent nation.  He spent the rest of his life implementing a vision that the prosperity of India and all of its people lay in science. The scientific institutions he built still play key role in India today. Convincing the Indian population that they had the intellectual capacity to rebuild India with their own hands is perhaps his lasting legacy.

The most scholarly biography on his eventful life is Vikram Sarabhai - A life by Amrita Shah. A review of the book is available here. This episode is a recording with Amrita Shah conducted fittingly at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, where Vikram Sarabhai studied physics under C V Raman who in 1930 had won the Nobel Prize for physics.

http://youtu.be/5itIEpIQ_MM

Jim Revis. Credit Jim Revis

A short interview with Jim Revis recorded in London on 24th April during InfoSec 2013. In this interview, Jim talks about the evolving definition of Cloud Computing, the CSA's Star Registry, the CSA's Cloud Computing Security Knowledge certification, and his take on how Cloud Computing has evolved and is evolving.

During the interview, Jim refers to a collaborative program between the CSA and (ISC)2 to create a new  professional certification in Cloud Security. More details here.

For my earlier post on CCSK with a downloadable full text PDF - see here

Reg Turnill with Wernher von Braun 1977

Like so many in the “space community” I was saddened to hear of the passing of Reg Turnill. He was  the BBC’s aerospace correspondent but is  best known  for covering the American Space program  throughout the 60s and 70s that he documents so well in his book Moonlandings: An eye witness account.

He was the BBC’s representative in Moscow at Gagarin’s post flight press conference and told me in episode 41 of his experience when I went to meet him in January 2011.

Reg captures the ambiguity of the brilliant Wernher von Braun who he got to know so well that he called him a friend and yet believed that he was a war criminal and should have been hanged.

In this 30 minute podcast , the first a six minutes is  telephone conversation recorded on 3rd November 2011 followed by extracts from his talk at the UK Space Conference 5th July 2011 “The von Braun that I knew”. Reg shares three of his audio interviews with von Braun, the audio quality of the 2nd and 3rd is better than the first.

Artist’s impression of the SKA-Mid dishes and MeerKAT dishes in South Africa.Credit: SKAO

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a global science and engineering project to build a revolutionary new radio telescope with extraordinary scientific ambitions.

With funding from 10 nations, construction of the SKA will begin in 2016 and be fully operational in 2024. It will tackle some of the profoundest questions of cosmology, including organic molecules, gravitational waves, pulsars orbiting black holes, and light from the earliest stars that illuminated the universe. To do this, the SKA will require supercomputers, innovative new power stations, and high-speed communication links that do not currently exist.

This interview with Professor Michael Kramer was recorded in March 2012 at the National Astronomy Meeting in the University of Manchester, two months before the announcement that the Square Kilometre Array will be built in South Africa, along with  Australia & New Zealand.

Professor Kramer from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, which manages the 100m Effelsberg Radio Telescope, is a former associate director at Jodrell Bank and still a professor there, talks about the technical, political and economic concerns associated with the SKA project.

Nik Szymanek presenting at the National Astronomy Meeting 2012

If you have ever been to London and used the underground Tube service, it may well have been driven by the speaker in this episode. That is his day job, but Nik Szymanek  is one of Britain’s best-known astrophotographers.

This interview was recorded during National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Manchester in 2012. Nik collaborates with Ian King and, in this episode, discusses how he got started, issues to consider for those moving into astrophotography, and how things have changed in this developing field. He also talks about another growing area of interest to amateur astronomers  - a personal remote telescope.

David Ratledge, another accomplished astrophotographer based in the north west of England, has some very useful links for astrophotography on his website http://www.deep-sky.co.uk/links.htm.

The first  interview in this episode is with astronaut Joe Engle was recorded during his visit to the UK in 2008.   Joe Engle was at the front of the queue  to go to the Moon when NASA cut its Apollo program. His place was taken by the geologist Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17 – the last manned mission to the Moon. In this interview Joe talk about his work before and after Apollo - on the X-15 and Space Shuttle programs.

The second short interview with astronaut Ron Garan was recorded at TedXSalford in January 2012 (unfortunately the recording stopped prematurely).  You can see more about the online community offering a “unique orbital perspective of men and women who live and work in Space” online at Fragile Oasis.

 

You can see the video of his talk  on this link http://youtu.be/lJNbjSLvtpI

Launched 15 years ago today, the Cassini-Huygens mission has been one of the outstanding successes of solar system exploration and a model of NASA-ESA collaboration.

Professor Carl Murray. Credit QMC London

In episode 14 Professor John Zarnecki spoke about the science conducted from the surface of Titan by the Huygens lander in January 2005.

The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe had hitched a lift to Saturn aboard the Cassini orbiter. Six years after its arrival at Saturn, Cassini is still making spectacular discoveries about Saturn, its majestic rings and its many moons.

In this episode, Professor Carl Murray from Queen Mary University of London talks about some of those discoveries and how the mission will eventually come to an end.

This interview was recorded during the National Astronomy Meeting in Manchester in March 2012.

As the dinosaurs on the Earth 64 million years ago discovered, comets and asteroids have the potential for unexpected arrival with devastating consequences.

SpaceguardUK. Credit SpaceguardUK

The spectacular collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in July 1994 dramatically raised awareness and, no doubt, a little concern amongst the heads of government across the planet.

Since then, the British government has not really engaged, and so it is left to a handful of skilled and dedicated individuals through Spaceguarduk to provide the UK with its only organisation to address the hazards of Near Earth Objects.

The fireball over Europe in September 2012, demonstrated the risks are with us today.

The Spaceguard Centre was established by Jay Tate in 1997.