AWESOME ASTRONOMY

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

For the beginners this month we take a look at the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer with a trio of open clusters from the Messier catalogue and finishing off with the Flaming Star that originated in Orion's Belt.

Next Jeni rounds up the planets that are visible in December: Jupiter, Mars & Saturn, before taking a look at this month's moon phases – with a couple of conjunctions with Venus & Mercury and the occultation of star Xi 1 Ceti.

Finally we go deep into the universe with an open cluster, a beautiful multiple star system and the vast Rosette Nebula in the constellation Monoceros the Unicorn.

The Discussion: In our first invasion of 2016 we discuss Paul's work promoting British astronaut Tim Peake's stay on the International Space Station and his visit to Parliament; Jen's ongoing work in General Relativity and black holes; and John tells us about his trip to visit the Sutherland Astronomical Society in Perth, Australia.

The News: This month we return to NASA's Dawn spacecraft at Ceres where we might just have the answer to those intriguing white spots on the dwarf planet. Then we discuss the findings that put to bed the puzzle about why gas giant exoplanets don't seem to have the right amount of water in their atmospheres. And we finish January's news with a wandering Kuiper Belt object snapped by NASA's New Horizon's spacecraft.

The 5 Minute Concept: We conclude our series of back to basics 5 Minute Concepts with a look at the last essential items in the amateur astronomers toolkit – eyepieces. Whay are they, whey do we need them, how to get the most from them and how to get the balance between cheap stock eyepieces and expensive behemoths.

The Interview: This month we continue to honour 100 years of Einstein's theory of General Relativity as Jen talks to Professor Mark Hannam, Dr Patrick Sutton and Dr Stephen Fairhurst from Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy.

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:

How will the decision in Hawaii to stop the construction of the Thirty Metre Telescope affect progress in commissioning bigger & bigger Earth-based scopes? Eric Emms from London, England via Twitter

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

For the beginners and young astronomers this month we take a look at the magnificent winter constellation of Orion with the belt and sword bordered by four magnificent stars. We take a look at a (cosmologically) near term supernova hopeful, a five star multiple star system, and the finest nebula of them all in small telescopes or binoculars.

Next we round up the planets that are visible in January: Jupiter rising early to show us some lovely transits of its moons, with Mars Saturn and Venus providing breathtaking views for the night owls. Saturn and Venus give us a rare close conjunction too in January.

Next we take a look at the phases of the moon this month and prepare for a conjunction with gas giant planet Jupiter and an occultation with bright star Aldebaran in Taurus.

The Quadrantids provide us with a nice meteor shower early in January which can often give us more meteors per hour than any other meteor shower.

Comet C2013 US10 Catalina continues to reveal itself to northern hemisphere observers and passes some deep sky objects to add to the excitement.

Finally, we end on our deep sky challenge in the constellation of Gemini with a planetary nebula and open clusters to tease out – including the topical Jedi Knight cluster.

This pantomime episode contains some mild bad language and puerile humour

Join us for our yearly round up of our favourite stories & events from 2015 and discuss the most exciting space missions and astronomy events coming up in 2016.

This festive season we welcome you back to our secretive Cydonia bunker - the scene of each Earth invasion attempt - as we share a brandy on the moon and give you a glimpse of the lives of our Earthling slaves at Yuletide.

As tradition now dictates, we round off the show with the best gaffes and outtakes from 2015.

So, happy holiday season, thank you for downloading as listening to us in 2015 and we look forward to spending 2016 with you too.

Ralph. Paul, Jen, John & Damien

The Discussion: In this Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy contrived episode we look back over the movie The Martian, meeting Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, we gloss over the Bayesian statistics in Jen's data analysis work and hear about a mathematics-based nightmare that's been keeping Jen awake but should have mathematicians rolling in the aisles!

The News: This month we revisit that alien megastructure around a distant star with an unusual light curve and reveal what alien signatures SETI have discovered. We take a look at the possible future of cheap access to space as British Aerospace buy a stake in the SABRE engine designed to power spaceplanes of the future, and we finish off with the truly incredible measurements of Mars atmosphere conducted by NASA's MAVEN spacecraft to reveal how much atmosphere Mars is losing on an annual basis.

The Interview: This month we wrap the whole show around our interview with Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot Al Worden recorded at this year's Cosmiccon. We discuss:

Anecdotes from test pilot school in England

Tales of the Harrier and Concorde test pilots

Practical jokes

Riding a Saturn V rocket

Finding organic matter in lunar orbit

Views from 1.5 miles above the mountains of the moon

The history of the moon and the Apollo 15 landing site, Hadley Rille

The bliss of being alone in lunar orbit

The views of space from the far and dark portions behind the moon

The vastness of the universe

Al Worden's view on UFOs, ancient aliens, numerology and the bible

How to explore further out in space

The stupidity of the design of NASA's next generation spacecraft

The 5 Minute Concept: We continue our series of back to basics 5 Minute Concepts as Paul takes a look at perhaps the most important piece of hardware in amateur astronomy – no, not the telescope itself, but the mount. As we ask AZ or EQ?

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 Jen honours the 100th anniversary of Einstein's General Relativity with a beginner's crash course, a bit of mythbusting and answers:

What's inside a black hole? John Barrie from Swansea, Wales via email

For the beginners this month we take a look at the constellation of Gemini with bright star Castor providing a nice easy double star to split with a telescope. We move over to the feet of the Gemini twins to scan for some nice open clusters, including Messier 35, before hunting down the beautiful Eskimo planetary nebula. Finally, we go looking for a star known to have a planet of its own.

Next we round up the planets that are visible in December: Jupiter, Venus & Mars are still around for observers after midnight and we have the possibility of a naked eye visible comet in the early hours of the morning in early December as C2013 US10 Catalina raises northern hemisphere hopes.

We have the Geminid meteor shower peaking on the night of the 12/14th December – which always puts on a great show and then we take you on a tour of the often overlooked deep sky objects in our winter skies around the constellations of Orion, Lepus and Eridanus.

During this spring's AstroCamp event, hosted by the Awesome Astronomy podcast team, our new presenter, Jeni Millard, gave another of her inspiring talks.

We were treated to a history of the much neglected Aboriginal dark sky folklore as we got tour of some of the most interesting objects in the southern hemisphere's sky.

Then we head off into the world of professional astronomy at the Australian Astronomical Observatory as we find out how Jen helped with the science that will enable the Huntsman Eye to investigate faint structures of galaxies using arrays of off-the-shelf Canon camera lenses and sensors.

The Discussion: We welcome astrophysicist Jeni Millard from Cardiff University onto the show as our new co-presenter! We discuss the astronomy lessons, tuition and events we've been involved with over the past month and name drop about an Apollo moonwalker we might have interviewed…

The News: This month we take a look at NASA's completed image collection of the Pluto system from the New Horizons spacecraft; 'Water on Mars' get the very first Awesome Astronomy award for Needing Another Sensational Announcement (the acronym is entirely coincidental); we take a look at Brian May's handling of the estate of dearly cherished Patrick Moore; we despair at the media's handling of 'that' news story about an alien megastucture that isn't around a star with an unusual light curve; and finish up with the European and Russian coalition to explore habitability on the moon for human colonization.

The 5 Minute Concept: We continue our back-to-basics 5 Minute Concepts season with a discussion prompted by many listener questions about the value and use of filters for astronomical observation.

The Interview: This month we bring you our interview with Dr Kathy Thornton, recorded at Cosmiccon. Kathy is a veteran of four Space Shuttle missions and earns our eternal gratitude for fixing the Hubble Space Telescope after launch and giving it back its sight.

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 Ralph & Paul answer:

One thing you might want to look at is the increasing number of remotely accessible telescopes for the "ordinary" amateur. Not sure if I get the same satisfaction from a remote image compared to spending some nights in my dome and freezing my ears off to get a good image. Would like to get your take on this… Clem Unger from Mornington Australia, via email

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

This month we tour a few simple objects that you can show to a child and spark their interest in the night skies.

In our beginners' guide, Ursa Major shows us now to find true north and points out a few galaxies to observe in a small telescope. Then we take a look at the moon, showing us some lovely phases in the middle of the month and finish with two dates on which the moon will help you find the outer most planets, Uranus & Neptune.

Next we round up all the planets visible in October, with a stunning conjunction of Venus, Mars & Jupiter in the early hours. The Northern Taurids and the Leonids provide us with two meteor showers in November while we hold our breath for a naked-eye visible comet at month's end.

We round off the show with our deep sky challenge and encourage you to take a look at the clusters in the constellation of Auriga.

Matt Kingsnorth from the Project Helium Tears debriefs us on his balloon launch to the edge of space, capturing images of the Earth, taking Awesome Astronomy listeners' names onboard and filming a Star Wars X-Wing fighter against the black of space in May 2015.

Quite by surprise, the onboard cameras even managed to capture images of the moon and a meteor streaking through the atmosphere below!

The video (which you can see at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ub0mFVDV0) went viral with more than 400,000 views.

Please help Project Helium Tears achieve Objective 3 by tweeting:

#HeyJJ Can @MattKingsnorth & @TurboBungle come to the Force Awakens VIP Première @Bad_Robot? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ub0mFVDV0