AWESOME ASTRONOMY

Welcome to this AstroCamp podcast extra episode to tell you what you can expect from the weekend's festivities and listen to on the way to Cwmdu:

The Discussion: An introduction to star parties and enjoying practical astronomy under pristine dark skies away from the city.

As the podcast crew run the AstroCamp star party, which many listeners attend, in the Brecon Beacon's international dark sky reserve twice a year, we take you through the events, tutorials and workshops we run to help you hone your stargazing skills and win astronomy prizes from the Tring Astronomy Centre. As the focus of this AstroCamp is the Transit of Mercury, we will also have two talks on the celestial event, from the University of Kent's Dr Rebekah Higgitt and solar astronomer Eric Emms.

The Sky guides: In readiness for 3 nights of stargazing in the Welsh valleys, Ralph, Paul and John choose objects to look out for this time of year. If you're not coming to AstroCamp, these are still great night sky treats to try and locate wherever you are in the northern hemisphere.

• Ralph's top choices are for beginner astrophotographers, armed only with a DSLR camera and a telescope, and focuses on the Leo Triplet
• Paul takes five deep sky galaxy treats for visual astronomers in May and throughout spring. The prime pick is a tricky tricky double galaxy to test your skills and help develop your averted vision.
• John takes a look at the solar system objects available a little closer to home this month as he runs through the best of the planetary offerings and whets our appetites for the coming transit of Mercury on 9th May.

So welcome to AstroCamp and we'll see you very soon!

In this month's show:

The Discussion

Revision season as Jeni finishes her masters in astrophysics and preparations for AstroCamp in the Welsh Brecon Beacons.

The News

• SpaceX make Paul look a right fool
• Stephen Hawking backs an attempt to send spaceships to Alpha Centauri
• More insight in to gravitational waves
• A new galaxy is discovered orbiting the Milky Way
• Narrowing down the whereabouts of Planet Nine

Paul's Big Hat of Woo

This month we look at planetary alignments and all those crazy notions that tsunamis or weightlessness might occur if the planets are in certain alignments, or something.

Q&A

Our question this month comes from Clemens Unger in Melbourne, Australia who helpfully suggested:

If you're looking for a topic to chat about in the show, how about the recent well publicised case of image theft in the Astro imaging community? A chap used a Damien Peach image and presented it as his own. But, as it's a small world, Damien saw it by chance. There seems to be so much pressure on these days to show better and better images and that seems to overtake the fun of astronomy a bit for some and peer pressure is getting to some.

What to look out, and up, for in March.

We start a new look (listen?) sky guide this month.

We begin the show with a discussion around the highlights to observe this May:

• The Transit of Mercury on 9th May
• International Astronomy Day on 14th May
• Mars at opposition on 22nd May
• Three meteor shower peaks, Eta Aquariids (6th), Eta Lyrids (8th) & Camelopardalids (24th)

Next we each suggest and help you find a deep sky favourite to observe in May:

• Ralph – M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy
• Paul – M3 Globular cluster in Canes Venatici
• Jeni – M27 The Dumbbell Nebula

Finally we round up the moon phases and a couple of nice planetary and lunar conjunctions.

During a visit to Geneva in September 2016, the Awesome Astronomy team stopped looking out into the universe for a while to delve into the impossibly tiny world of subatomic particles and fundamental forces that fuels the heartbeat of the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Dr Steven Goldfarb, an experimental particle physicist from the University of Michigan, led a tour of the ATLAS Control Room, a few metres above the largest and most advanced engineering experiment the world has ever seen – the Large Hadron Collider. Then we sat down to enjoy a light lunch and discuss the ground-breaking work, detections and knowledge building that only CERN can accomplish.

Naturally, we also delve into the big issues in astronomy today – such as dark matter, the matter/antimatter imbalance and extra dimensions, all of which are being explored by CERN.

So, for anyone who's excited by the frontiers of physics or puzzled by what CERN is or does, we've recorded a special podcast extra to shed some light on the impossibly complex and tantalisingly exciting world of particle physics, right on the very cutting edge.

This podcast extra should explain in simple terms:

• What are the Large Hadron Collider and CERN
• The International collaboration required
• The significance of the Higgs Boson
• Why gravity causes us so many problems
• The frontiers of our understanding of the universe
• The search for unified fundamental forces, extra dimensions and exotic new matter

With special thanks to CERN and Dr Steve Goldfarb

Download Episode!

The Discussion: This month Jeni has a PhD offer that's getting us all excited, Paul's been clocking up the miles to teach science and astronomy to schools and Ralph's just excited because he's got a new telescope.

Mat & Phil from Project Helium Tears join us again on the day they launched their 2nd Star Wars themed balloon to the edge of space.

The News: We start the news with last month's total solar eclipse seen from parts of Asia before explaining the research that suggests an ancient cataclysm caused Mars crust & mantle to shift. Then we discuss the launch of ESA's Exomars part 1. And we finish with a round-up of the news from NASA's Insight mission, the 1st analysis of the atmosphere of a super earth exoplanet atmosphere and the latest SpaceX attempt to bring down the cost of commercial spaceflight.

The Interview: For the interview this month we welcome Apollo 12 lunar module pilot and Skylab 2 commander Alan Bean. We discuss:

• 44 years of humans staying in Low Earth Orbit
• Nearly missing out on walking on the moon due to lightning
• Saving the Apollo 12 mission
• The colourful crew of Apollo 12
• Finding organic matter in lunar orbit
• Competing with smarter astronauts – and not being Clint Eastwood!
• A moonwalker's impressions of the moon
• The feeling of the moon's surface underfoot

And the full hour long interview with Alan Bean will be released in May 2016.

Woobusters: Continuing our quest to debunk the myths and conspiracy theories that persist in every dark corner of the news and the internet. This month's topic, picked at random from the Big Hat of Woo, is The Dead Cosmonauts conspiracy.

Q&A: Listeners' questions via email, Facebook & Twitter take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity. This month we tackle:

When will the Theory of General Relativity become Law? Brad Bell from Texas, United States

What to look out, and up, for in April 2016!

For the beginners this month Ralph takes a look at the Leo Lion who leaps across the sky all April. Leo hosts some nice colour contrasting binary stars (one with a gas giant planet of its own) and some galaxies to hunt down.

Next Jeni rounds up the planets that are visible in December: Jupiter Mars and Mercury at one of its most favourable viewing opportunities. The moon makes a not-to-be-missed passage through the Hyades Cluster on 10th April. And we round off with the Lyrid meteor shower and a last gasp chance of comet Catalina.

As spring is galaxy season, for the deep sky challenge Paul slews a scope through Virgo in a hunt for entire galaxies that can be seen with amateur telescopes. While the constellation of Virgo is quite indistinct it harbours a wealth of elliptical and spiral galaxies, culminating with the unique treat, Markarian's Chain.

The Discussion: We bid a sad farewell to Apollo pioneer Edgar Mitchell who spent 33 hours on the lunar surface in 1971 on the Apollo 14 mission, celebrate the detection of gravitational waves and Paul regales us with his tales of clear skies for some long awaited eyepiece time.

The News: This month the news is dominated by the death of Apollo 14's Edgar Mitchell. We bring you the highs of collecting moon rocks and the lows of a retirement spent promoting pseudoscience. We follow this up with more information on the detection by LIGO of the last confirmed prediction of Einstein's General Relativity, gravitational waves, and what this means for the future of astronomy. And we finish off with the observation by the European Southern Observatory of a flying saucer shaped forming planetary system.

Woobusters: This month we don the tin foil hat of woo to debunk the Nibiru conspiracy theory. The planet predicted to crash into Earth and destroy all life without a shred of evidence to its name!

The Interview: We welcome Canadian Soyuz, Shuttle and Space Station astronaut Chris Hadfield into the chair this month to discuss:

The best and worst things about being in space

The most difficult thing to adjust to in space

What is it about test pilots that lends itself to becoming an astronaut

What was the best aircraft to fly

Is the space station a distraction from deep space missions

What's the next space destination after the Space Station

What will Chris Hadfield do in retirement

Do you wish you'd been a musician

As a positive person, how do you face the bad things in life

Q&A: Listeners' questions via email, Facebook & Twitter take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity.

If nothing can escape from a black hole, not even light, why in the news today is there talk of 'jets' of energy being released by one? And, if nothing can travel faster than light, how can the universe be expanding in excess of this speed and still be accelerating? Jason Paul Smith via Facebook

What to look out, and up, for in March.

For the beginners this month we take a look at perhaps the most recognisable constellation of them all: Ursa Major, the Great Bear. In the Great Bear we go hunting for the easiest binary star in the sky and a host of big bright galaxies.

Next Jeni rounds up the planets that are visible in December: Mars, Jupiter & ever more brief views of Saturn, before taking a look at this month's moon phases – with a few conjunctions with Mars Saturn & bright star Antares.

Finally we take the ultimate tour of easy and more difficult galaxies as we explore the rich bounty of the constellation Leo the Lion.

For anyone who's still a little fuzzy or confused by the enormity of the recent detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO facility, we've recorded a special podcast extra to shed some light on the impossibly complex world of General Relativity, interferometry detectors and gravitational waves themselves.

This podcast extra should explain in simple terms:

• What gravitational waves are
• Why they're so important
• How they were detected
• What this means for the future of physics & astronomy

With special thanks to LIGO, the National Science Foundation and Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy.

The Discussion: As we lament the passing of some great people we remember how lucky we are to live in an age of great discovery. We discuss British astronaut Tim Peake's spacewalk with American Tim Kopra outside the International Space Station and take a look back at the annual festival of TV astronomy StargazingLIVE.

The News: There's a packed news section in this month's show as we discuss:

Have astronomers discovered another planet in our solar system?

LIGO's possible detection of gravitational waves

Does an irregular star host evidence for alien life?

A possible explanation for the 'Wow signal'

The most powerful supernova ever detected

Poor Philae gives up the ghost

Attempting to photograph a black hole

The Interview: This month Jen bags herself an astronaut. While celebrating the launch of Tim Peake, Jen grabs an interview with Spanish/ESA astronaut Pedro Duque: a veteran of two space missions having flown the Shuttle, Soyuz and the International Space Station.

WooBusters: With a long back catalogue to call upon to understand objects and concepts in astronomy, Paul calls it a day on his 5 Minute Concept. In its place comes WooBusters! Send in your suggestions for conspiracy theories, bonkers ideas and general pseudoscientific nonsense and we'll add them to Paul's Big Hat of Woo.

This month we kick off WooBusters with a debunking of alien abductions.

Q&A: Listeners' questions via email, Facebook & Twitter take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity.

If Mars' gravity is too weak to hold onto its atmosphere, how did it ever get one? Andrew Osbourne from the UK via email