Space Junk

Astrophotography is an amazing hobby, but it's also full of very busy work: setting up, focusing and aligning telescopes, taking calibration images, finding dark skies, all of this is very time consuming.  In today's episode, we talk with astrophotographer Jimmy Nguyen who takes a simple approach both to his equipment choices and his methodology.  Keeping it simple, with Jimmy Nguyen...

Tim Morrill is one of the foremost amateur imagers of the Sun.  In this episode, Dustin and Tony talk with him about how he got started, what equipment he uses and his techniques for processing.

This week's episode features astrophotographer and outstanding Moon imager Andrew McCarthy.  He's been imaging the Moon, planets and deep sky objects for many years, but is known as the "Moon Guy" on his @cosmic_background account on Instagram.

Listen to his story and get his imaging secrets and advice in this week's episode!

Athena Brensberger, aka @AstroAthens, is a model and science communicator.  She embarked on her modelling career while she was a researcher at the Hayden Planetarium studying proto-planetary disks, the embryos of solar systems around other stars.

As her modelling career advances, she also uses her platform to communicate one of her passions: astronomy.  Her Instagram account has hundreds of thousands of followers and her YouTube channel garners thousands of views.  In this episode Dustin and Tony talk with Athena about everything from modelling, astrophysicists in fashion and how she approaches communicating to her audience, many of whom may not be aware of how great space is!

Diana Alsindy, "The Arabian Stargazer" is an Iraqi immigrant whose love of science and engineering is contagious.  In this episode, Diana shares her passion for space and engineering as well as her dream to start space camps in the middle east. 

We spend a lot of time looking up at the night sky with our telescopes and every once in a while, it's great to take a moment to wonder aloud at some of the amazing things going on up there "behind the image in the eyepiece".  In this episode, Dustin, Tony and OPT Telescope Tech Shawna Sullivan take some time to talk about some of the things going on up there that are particularly impressive.  

Robert Reeves is an author, amateur astronomer and astrophotographer.  Over his long career he has many interesting stories to tell and Dustin and Tony sat down to discuss some of the more interesting things he's done, including shining bright lights and lasers at the ISS for his astronaut friend, Don Petitt to see.

Dustin and Cat Machin talk with Bryce Allen of Virgin Orbit, a company that uses air launches to reach low Earth Orbit.

Because you're a Space Junk Podcast listener, you know astronomy matters but we want to tell you why WE think it does.  OPT's Ian Lauer joins us for opinions and discussion on why we think astronomy matters and makes our lives better.

Jupiter Joe is amazing and inspiring.  He travels the streets of New York City and surrounding areas introducing people to the night sky.  Dustin and Tony talked with this amateur astronomer whose love of the sky is contagious.