The Cosmic Savannah

By The Cosmic SavannahScience Astronomy

The Cosmic Savannah episodes

March 29, 2019 Episode 3: SETI with MeerKAT
with Dr Griffin Foster In this episode Dr Griffin Foster describes the planned hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence with South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope! Griffin is from the University of Oxford and […]
The post Episode 3: SETI with MeerKAT appeared first on The Cosmic Savannah.
36 min
March 29, 2019 Episode 3: SETI with MeerKAT

with Dr Griffin Foster

In this episode Dr Griffin Foster describes the planned hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence with South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope!

Griffin is from the University of Oxford and is the project scientist for Breakthrough Listen – a program to hunt for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence using radio telescopes.

Griffin explains, in a surprisingly down-to-earth and practical way, why we might expect intelligent extraterrestrial lifeforms to exist elsewhere in the Universe, how they might be trying to communicate and how we might search for these signals.

Griffin and the Breakthrough Listen team plan to conduct part of their search with the new MeerKAT radio telescope. MeerKAT is one of the world’s most advanced radio telescopes and is located in the Karoo in South Africa.

Episode Links:

BL@MeerKAT announcement: https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/news/23

Berkeley SETI Research Center: http://seti.berkeley.edu/

This week’s guest:

Dr Griffin Foster
36 min
March 28, 2019 Episode 2: Instruments and Singing Asteroids
with Dr Amanda Sickafoose and Vanessa Lorenzo In Episode 2, we hear from Dr Amanda Sickafoose who tells us about the complicated instrumentation her team are building for South African […]
The post Episode 2: Instruments and Singing Asteroids appeared first on The Cosmic Savannah.
44 min
March 28, 2019 Episode 2: Instruments and Singing Asteroids

with Dr Amanda Sickafoose and Vanessa Lorenzo

In Episode 2, we hear from Dr Amanda Sickafoose who tells us about the complicated instrumentation her team are building for South African telescopes and some of her fascinating work on our Solar System.

Vanessa Lorenzo also talks to us about her time as artist-in-residence at the SAAO and her installation giving a voice to rocks and asteroids.

Vanessa demonstrating her prototype exhibition at the SAAO.

The performer Mélanie Martinoli explores the augmented rocks in the VR version of ‘Always Calling Home’, by Vanessa Lorenzo, 2018-ongoing. Photo by the artist CC BY 4.0.

Episode Links:

SAAO contributes to MU69 exploration

https://www.hybridoa.org/

This week’s guests:

Vanessa at work in the Southern Hemisphere @VanessaLorenzoT
44 min
March 15, 2019 Episode 1: SALT and Near-Earth Asteroids
with Dr Moses Mogotsi and Dr Nicolas Erasmus Welcome to the very first episode of The Cosmic Savannah! In this episode, we introduce ourselves and our vision for the podcast, […]
The post Episode 1: SALT and Near-Earth Asteroids appeared first on The Cosmic Savannah.
40 min
March 15, 2019 Episode 1: SALT and Near-Earth Asteroids

with Dr Moses Mogotsi and Dr Nicolas Erasmus

Welcome to the very first episode of The Cosmic Savannah!

In this episode, we introduce ourselves and our vision for the podcast, SALT Astronomer Dr Moses Mogotsi describes what it’s like to use the biggest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere and Dr Nicolas Erasmus tells us about the hunt for near-earth asteroids.

The Sutherland Plateau, SAAO.

SAAO Researcher Dr Nicolas Erasmus and his MSc student Petro Janse Van Rensburg observed a large (1-2 km) asteroid passing Earth at about 75 times the distance to the moon. But in the background, a distant spiral galaxy!

The Cosmic Savannah is created and hosted by Dr Jacinta Delhaize and Dr Daniel Cunnama.

Jacinta is a radio astronomer based at the University of Cape Town. She is a South African Radio Astronomical Observatory (SARAO) Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Dan is the Science Engagement Astronomer at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO).

Episode Links:SAAO: http://www.saao.ac.zaATLAS: http://atlas.fallingstar.comSALT: http://www.salt.ac.zaMinor Planet Center: https://minorplanetcenter.net/SARAO: https://www.ska.ac.za/about/sarao/UCT Astronomy: http://www.ast.uct.ac.za/African VLBI Network: https://www.ska.ac.za/science-engineering/avn/

This week’s guests:

Dr Moses MogotsiDr Nicolas Erasmus
40 min
March 10, 2019 Ep 0: The Cosmic Savannah teaser
Welcome to The Cosmic Savannah! The Cosmic Savannah is a new podcast giving you a behind-the-scenes peek into the realm of world-class astronomy and astrophysics happening in Africa. Each episode, […]
The post Episode 0: The Cosmic Savannah teaser appeared first on The Cosmic Savannah.
1 min
March 10, 2019 Ep 0: The Cosmic Savannah teaser
Welcome to The Cosmic Savannah!
The Cosmic Savannah is a new podcast giving you a behind-the-scenes peek into the realm of world-class astronomy and astrophysics happening in Africa.
Each episode, hosts Dr Jacinta Delhaize and Dr Daniel Cunnama will chat to different guests and introduce you to the people, the technology, the science, the research and the fascinating discoveries emerging from African astronomy.
No matter who you are or where you’re from, we welcome you to join us on a safari through the skies!
The Cosmic Savannah is coming soon. Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or where ever you get your podcasts!
1 min