Paul Hill, Ralph Wilkins and Jenifer Millard host. Damien Phillips and John Wildridge produce.

The Discussion: Recording from the Mars/Earth-analogue biome cottage at the AstroCamp starparty in the Welsh Brecon Beacons, we start off by discussing stargazing during a hurricane(!) and get ready for Jeni’s Pint of Science events this month.

The News: Rounding up the astronomy news this month we have:

- The rate of the universe’s expansion is 9% greater than we thought?

- Greater understanding about the lakes of methane on Saturn’s moon Titan.

- LIGO gets its jiggy on; giving us gravitational wave detections EVERY week!

- The value of occultations to modern astronomy

- A possible discovery of an exocomet!

- And a round up of some of the best astronomy April Fool’s gags from last month, including how winter would come on a Game of Thrones type world.

Main news story: The first ever image of a black hole

The Sky Guide: Covering the solar system and deep sky objects on offer to amateur astronomers in May:

An unwelcome dearth of solar system objects with Jupiter, Mars and Saturn low on the horizon, but dwarf planet Ceres is at opposition and we also have a few nice conjunctions to enjoy in May.

Messier 5 and Palomar 5 globular clusters in Serpens and Messier 57, and the Ring Nebula, and the Double Double in Lyra.

Main Object: the much-overlooked Northern Star, Polaris.

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Bio: Awesome Astronomy is a podcast beamed direct from an underground bunker on Mars to promote science, space and astronomy (and enslave Earth if all goes well).

 

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