Looking up - 01 March 2019

Professor Paul Groot talks to Kechil about the mysteries of Gamma Ray Bursts, what are they and something about the history of their detection and his involvement in that history. You may find out something new about black holes.

Things that go bang in the night - Astronomer Professor Paul Groot talks again to Kechil about exotic stars and black holes that orbit around each other. The universe is a fascinating place.

As humans we have several senses with which to make sense of our environment. In Astronomy it's the same: we use different instruments to find out more about the same object or phenomenon, and this is called multiwavelength astronomy. It's all the rage now, and to tell us more about it is Professor Paul Groot from the Universities of Cape Town and Radboud in The Netherlands.

I feel sorry for the dinosaurs. It seems that Saturn's rings were only created during the time they stomped and flew about the Earth, some 10-100 million years ago. Latest data analysis from the Cassini mission proves this to be the case.

Looking up - 25 January 2019

There are many new large funky telescopes coming online at the moment and one of them is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile. This is like a giant sophisticated camera taking thousands of pictures of the night sky each night. The really interesting thing is what it's looking at. Jeff Kantor who has been working on this project for many years talks to Kechil about this new telescope and one of the things its designed to detect. Astonishingly, it will look 13 billion years into the past.

Galaxies are not arranged in a nice grid formation in the sky, nor are they random. Galaxies form part of very large-scale structures or clusters, and some of these clusters are pretty massive. At least two known superstructures lie in the zone of avoidance, where it's difficult to see as the Milky Way obscures the background galaxies. Professor Renee Kraan-Kortweg of the University of Cape Town talks about the Great Attractor and the Vela Supercluster, solving puzzles about how galaxies are moving in space.

Looking Up - 14 December 2018

Looking Up - 07 December 2018