Welcome to episode 35 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast! This week we have a full show for you, with our main feature being an interview with South African astronomer Dr Itumeleng Monageng. We also continue our series on the physics behind the evolution of a star from gas cloud to black hole.  And finally, my new co-host Clem Unger brings us updates on current space missions.

Itumeleng Monageng

Itumeleng is a post-grad researcher working for the South African Astronomical Observatory and talks about his research interests, how he came to be an astronomer, and more. Earlier this year, he was featured in a short promotional video for SAAO, which is how I heard about him. He very kindly agreed to do the same thing for us!

Stellar Physics

Last time we looked at our star, on its journey towards becoming a black hole, we took a detour to categorise different types of stars that form at different masses. Today we see what happens when a medium-sized star, like our own Sun, runs out of Hydrogen

Mission Updates

Clem Unger brings us up to date with news and updates about current space programs and missions. Today he talks about NASA's 60th birthday, the Hayabusa 2 landers, OSIRIS REx, and the Parker Solar Probe. He also mentions some interesting launches coming up in October.

Links

* Itumeleng Monageng on Twitter

* Clem Unger on Twitter

* Allen Versfeld on Twitter

 

 

Welcome to this special Equinox edition of the Urban Astronomer Podcast! This episode I share the microphone with Clem Unger for the first of a quarterly series. Clem has been on the show before, and he'll be back every equinox and every solstice.

In this episode

We start with a look at coming attractions in the sky over the next three months.

Clem discusses the state of current asteroid missions OSIRIS-Rex and Hayabusa 2

Allen and Clem butt heads over whether Pluto should have stayed a planet, and speculate about the Martian provenance of their friends at the Awesome Astronomy podcast!

Links

* Allen on Twitter

* Clem on Twitter

* The Astronomical Society of South Africa on Twitter

* The Southern Comets Homepage

* How to find Comet 21P (Remember to set your location at the top right of the page!)

* Dark Matter Day

Welcome to the 33rd episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. This is a special release, featuring an interview that I recorded for ScopeX, the biggest astronomy and telescope event in South Africa. Jean-Pierre Grootaerd, through SSVI (which translates in English to Stars Shine for Everyone), has donated a pair of 90mm refracting telescopes to ScopeX, for us to hand over to whoever is best able to use them to advance science education in South Africa. Since he isn't able to come to South Africa to hand them over personally, we recorded this interview with him. We will be playing the video version in the auditorium at ScopeX on 15 September (This Saturday!) so if you'd like to say hi, or see us chatting, try not to miss it!

SSVI

SSVI is an initiative of the ATM (Amateur Telescope Making) group of the Public Observatory Armand Pien in Ghent (Belgium) together with the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Ghent University. Lead by Jean Pierre Grootaerd, it is supported by ESA and NASA astronauts (notably Dirk Frimout of Euro Space Society and Frank De Winne of European Astronaut Centre) and by industry (notably Bresser optics in Germany).

The purpose of the project is to promote ATM, astronomy and spaceflight to young people. The reach is global, with an emphasis on developing countries and people of lesser means -  particularly girls, young children and those with disabilities. ScopeX and the ASSA ATM class - whose aims are well aligned with those of SSVI - are very pleased to assist in making South Africa the 12th African country involved.

At ScopeX 2018, two worthy organisations will be presented with telescopes on behalf of SSVI. In the years to come, they - namely Brain Waves Development, and the Girl Guides of South Africa - will utilise the telescopes to introduce many young people to the wonders of the universe, thereby promoting interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects.

Links

* SSVI

* ScopeX

Welcome to the 32nd episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. This episode features an interview with Dr Nicole Gugliucci, whom long time listeners of astronomy podcasts should recognise from her work with Cosmoquest, and her many appearances on various shows in the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast.

This is quite a long-running interview, so we didn't have time to include the next segment of our supernova story. We'll pick that up next week instead, with the thrilling tale of what happens when a massive star leaves the main sequence and starts the next stage of its life cycle.

Nicole Gugliucci

Dr Gugliucci currently works as an assistant professor of physics at Anselm College in New Hampshire, USA. In the interview, we talk about science outreach and education, and her time spent in South Africa, where she helped build the PAPER array as part of her PhD research.

Links

* Dr Gugliucci at Anselm College

* Cosmoquest

* Twitter ( @noisyastronomer )

* ScopeX

Welcome to the 31st episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. This episode features an interview with Clem Unger, an ambassador for the OSIRIS-REx mission who lives in Australia. This is followed by the next part of our series on the evolution of stars, taking us one step closer on our journey to seeing where supernovae come from.

Clem Unger

A few weeks back, I spoke to Clem Unger, who lives in Australia and serves in his spare time in the ambassador program for the OSIRIS-REx mission, which will be arriving at the asteroid Bennu in December this year, although it begins its approach in just over a month from the time this episode airs. Clem is an amateur astronomer like myself, and I'm hoping to bring him back to the show for future episodes.

Stellar Evolution: Different sizes

This is a short segment this week. We revise a few points behind how those big diffuse gas clouds collapse into stars. This leads us to understand how the size of the cloud leads directly to the size of the newly created star. Different size stars burn in different ways, and fit into distinct types. We look specifically at Brown Dwarfs, Red Dwarfs and Yellow Dwarfs.

 

Links

* OSIRIS-REx

* NASA

Welcome to episode 30 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. This week's episode features the 2nd part of our look at how stellar evolution can lead to a supernova explosion, inspired by listener requests to present more serious science and physics explainers. Last time we looked at the formation of a stellar nursery, so today we look inside that nursery at the birth of a new star.

For fans of the interviews with people who have some connection to astronomy in South Africa, the next episode will see a return to that format. Although our guest has no connection that I can find to South Africa, he is an ambassador for one of the more exciting NASA missions out there, and I think it's interesting enough to bend the rules a little!

Announcements

A few months back, I announced a giveaway in which one of you would win a copy of Neville Young's book, Astronomy Within Reach. It turns out that the listeners of the Urban Astronomer Podcast are a small, exclusive crowd, and not many people wrote in to say they would like to win a copy. I'm pleased to announce that I was finally able to select a winner, and his name is Dave Reece. Dave is from Cape Town, and I just yesterday had his book couriered to his door, so he should have received it by the time you're listening to this episode. Congratulations Dave! If you're kicking yourself for not responding, never fear. I have more books to give away, and you'll have plenty chances to get them in the future!

Now, I have an announcement to make. Some of you might know that, in between the day job and doing all things Urban Astronomer, I am also the director of the Astrophotography and Imaging section of the Astronomical Society of South Africa. Well I should say "Was", because I resigned that position a short while ago, in order to accept a nomination as Director of the Citizen Science section. Now this is a brand new section, which I'm basically putting together from scratch, and that's slightly terrifying for me - definitely pulling me way out of my comfort zone. But this is one of my jobs now so you're going to hear a lot about it in future. If you know of a citizen science project, especially one related to space science or astronomy, and especially if you're part of a team running a citizen science project, I'd love to hear from you. I NEED to hear from you! Please drop me a mail at [email protected] and tell me all about it.

Call for Guests

Would you like to be a guest on the show? I'm looking for guests and interviewees, so if you've ever wanted to break into podcasting, here's your chance! I'm looking for basically anybody who has any connection to South African astronomy. Have a look at our previous guest list. We have amateurs who love looking at the stars, and who live in South Africa. We've spoken to Cassini mission scientists who discovered fascinating features of Saturn and its moons, who also happened to have been born here. We've had astronomy lecturers, a science journalist who enjoys looking at the stars, engineers who work on telescope control systems, and more. It doesn't matter how tenuous you think the connection is, if you have a passion for the subject and want to share it with the world, send me an email to [email protected] and we'll see what we can arrange.

Links

* Part one in the Stellar Evolution series: Podcast #29: Stellar evolution - from gas to star

* Urban Astronomer on Facebook

* Urban Astronomer on Twitter

Welcome to episode 29 of the Urban Astronomer podcast.  As you know by now, we mainly feature interviews with people connected to South African astronomy. But since we had no guests lined up for this episode, we decided it was time to keep a promise we'd made a month ago to listener Andrew Botteril, from KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. Andrew is a fan of the show and had asked that we feature a little more basic science, explaining some of the physics behind the astronomy. So, we're starting a series on stellar evolution. This episode looks at the behaviour of gas molecules, and how this causes vast clouds of hydrogen floating in space to turn into stars. The final episode will discuss the ultraviolent supernova explosions that mark the end of life of the very biggest stars, and all the rest will cover the journey between.

Request For Comment

If you are a listener and would like to comment on something you've heard in the show, or if, like Andrew, you have special requests for future topics, please mail us or leave a comment at the end of this page. You might want me to cover some other area of astronomy, or perhaps you'd like me to explore some of the other branches in stellar evolution. You might even want to point out errors and ask me to correct them!

Alternatively, if you are involved in astronomy in some way (researcher, observatory technician, amateur, space artist, science fiction writer...) and have some sort of South African connection (you live here, you used to live here, you work with data from one of our observatories, you once met a South African...), and would like to appear on the show, contact me and we can arrange an interview!

Contact Details

To contact us:

* email: [email protected]

* twitter: @uastronomer

* facebook: Urban Astronomer

Welcome to Episode 28 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast.  This episode features an interview with Dr Stella Kafka, current director of the AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers).  I met Dr Kafka at the 2018 Symposium of the Astronomical Society of South Africa, where she delivered several excellent talks on the AAVSO and citizen science. I was so impressed by what she had to say that I just had to invite her onto the show.  Amazingly, she beat me to the punch by approaching me after my own talk, to talk about podcasting.  Several weeks later, I got hold of her on Skype, and we recorded this episode!

In this interview, we discussed the history of the AAVSO, and the multiple roles available for volunteers and observers. She explained how even in this age of massive survey projects, amateur observers still have the advantage in freedom and range of targets, and the data they submit are often critical in filling the gaps left in the record by professional astronomers using large telescopes.

I was concerned that the serious scientific nature of variable star observing puts it out of reach of more casual observers, but Stella laughed this off as nonsense - as she put it (paraphrased), "Even if you only ever submit one single brightness estimate, that could be the only data point captured worldwide of that object at that time".  If somebody needs that data, and uses it in their research, your name could be included on the resulting paper, which is something of a big deal!

 

Links

* The American Association of Variable Star Observers

* The Variable Star Section of ASSA

* The 2018 Symposium of the ASSA

 

Welcome to the 27th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast!  This is a special episode where I break from tradition and try for something completely new: Unscripted content, delivered solo, with just a few notes to guide me!  In the first segment, I explain how tides work, and in the second I muse on what makes Flat Earther's reject established scientific knowledge.

I recently got back from the 2018 Symposium of the South African Astronomical Society, where I plugged this podcast in a talk titled "Modern Media as an Outreach Tool".  It was a fantastic event, where I made new friends in the International astronomy community, caught up with old, and generally mingled and networked while listening to a long series of interesting talks from both amateur and professional astronomers.  If you have any interest in South African astronomy, I highly recommend attending the next one.  I'll be sure to announce it here when a date and hosting venue is set.  However, all this travel and preparation got in the way with podcast scripting and production, hence he unusual format of this episode!

Related Links

* My earlier writings on How Tides work

* The Astronomical Society of South Africa

Neville Young in his observatory, where we recorded the interview.

This is the 26th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, where we get back to our original focus of interviewing people involved in South African astronomy. Whether they're professional or amateur, South African, or merely visiting to do astronomy under our clear skies through our world-class observatories, we want to talk to them.  In this episode, we chat with Neville Young.

Neville Young

Neville has been a member of the Pretoria center of the Astronomical Society of South Africa since the mid-1980's.  He is a familiar face at local outreach events and makes a range of teaching models to explain the dynamics of the Solar System.  He even wrote a very popular astronomy book that sold extremely well across the country.  He was kind enough to provide me a copy which I'll be giving away to one of you dear listeners!

Neville Young demonstrating his observatory's roof

Neville Young's Meade telescope

Giveaway: Astronomy With Reach

As described in the podcast, I have a copy of Neville's book, Astronomy Within Reach, which I'd like to give away to one lucky listener.  If you want it, just send me an email to [email protected] and tell me a little about yourself and what you enjoy about the show.  I will pick a winner at random, and send off a copy, by 28 February 2018.

Links

* Starwaders

* ASSA Pretoria

* Exoplanet detection with a DSLR camera