Welcome to the 25th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, which is also the 1st episode of 2018. Happy New Year!  Over the past few episodes, I've been running a series of public lectures that I recorded at ScopeX 2017.  ScopeX is an annual telescope and astronomy expo held every year at the Military History museum in Johannesburg.  This is the last lecture in the series, on the topic of the Apollo Program. Clyde Foster was the speaker.

News

Next year's ScopeX will be held on 15 September 2018, at the usual location - for details check out the ScopeX website.  Meanwhile, ASSA are reviving their bi-annual astronomical Symposium in March this year.  I will be presenting a talk at the symposium, so if you're a fan of my work and will be in Cape Town, please come and listen!  Registration is currently open, and I believe the programme has almost been finalised. Even if the thought of spending a weekend sitting through lectures and workshops doesn't appeal, it's always worth going along just to rub  with  amateur astronomers and leading figures in astronomy and observatory engineering!

Links

* ScopeX

* ScopeX lectures on YouTube

* Some of Clyde's astrophotography

* ASSA Symposium

Welcome to Episode 24 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, and a Happy New Year to each and every one of you.  This episode features the keynote lecture from ScopeX 2017, delivered by Willie Koortz.  Willie is an electronic technician working for the South African Astronomical Observatory, and is one of South African astronomy's more interesting characters.

ScopeX Lecture

In his talk, he discusses South Africa's role in the early days of the Space Age, looking at professional-amateur collaborative projects like Moonwatch, and how american tracking stations built in South Africa in the 1960's started South Africa's push into radio astronomy, with telescopes like HartRAO (built from decommissioned NASA tracking hardware) and MeerKAT continuing to contribute valuable scientific research.

The Future of the Podcast

This is the last episode of the year.  The next episode will come out early in January, and will feature the last of the ScopeX lecture series.  That lecture, delivered by Clyde Foster on the Apollo Program, was originally scheduled for this week, but technical issues with adding his slides to the video feed led to Willie's talk being moved forward.

In the new year, we'll continue bringing you the interviews with people related to South African Astronomy, but we'll be adding more general astronomy items - rants about conspiracy theories and fake astro news, explanations on some astronomy basics, and more.  We'll also be doing a few give-aways.  Over the years, I've been given various books and accessories that I never found use for.  So, about once a month, I'll announce a giveaway in the podcast, and one lucky listener will then receive one of these items in the mail.  I'm rather looking forward to seeing how this plays out, and hopefully these items will find new homes with people who can use them.

Links

* Willie Koortz

* SAAO

* HartRAO

* ScopeX

* South Africa's role in the early days of the Space Age - video on YouTube

Welcome to episode 23 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast! This week we feature the third in our series of public lectures given at ScopeX earlier this year, which was presented by Phila Sibandze of the South African National Space Agency (SANSA).

Phila Sibandze

Phila works for SANSA as an earth observation scientist, and his talk was titled "A journey through the life of a satellite".  In it he walked us through the process of designing, building, launching and operating a satellite, with a special focus on South Africa's own satellites over the past few decades.

Links

* ScopeX

* SANSA

Welcome to episode 22 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast.  We're in the middle of a series of public lectures given by various speakers at ScopeX, earlier this year, but this episode is a break from all that.  Some time ago, I was listening to Paul Sutter's excellent "Ask A Spaceman" podcast and he did an episode on what it takes to become an astrophysicist like him.  Since one of the reasons the Urban Astronomer podcast exists is to encourage young South Africans to consider astronomy as a career, or at least as something worth studying, I figured it would be a good match. Paul speaks from an American perspective, but since science is a global business, I think almost everything he says is relevant.  There is a good chance that graduating scientists will travel overseas to find a research job, so much of what he says applies wherever you are.

What I appreciated most about his show is that he doesn't gloss over uncomfortable facts.  A research career is hard. The educational requirements alone are higher than anything else out there, including medicine.  Universities around the world are producing more PhD's than there are jobs, so you may well have to go work in industry, possibly not even in your field of study.  But it's good to know these things, and that doesn't make the education worthless.  Despite not working in astronomy myself, my scientific and astronomical education (incomplete though it may be) has been very valuable to me.

Anyway, if you enjoyed listening to Paul Sutter talk about becoming an astrophysicist, his usual theme is answering questions about time and space, so if you'd like more of that, check him out via the link at the top of the page.

 

Welcome to episode 21 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast! This week we feature the second in our series of ScopeX lectures, and plug an exciting new citizen science project.  Next week we'll be bringing you the third lecture in the series, although we might sneak in a special guest episode before then!

Lee Annamalai

Lee spoke in his capacity at the CSIR (Center for Scientific and Industrial Research), where he manages their Earth Observation ICT systems group. He spoke about plans to use nano-satellites to detect wildfires from orbit, and send alerts to the people who need to be informed. It was a great presentation, but I've unfortunately not been able to get a copy of it, so when I release the video version, you still won't see his slides. Still, he's a good speaker, who makes his points clearly, so it's not that big of a loss.

Image Detective

Astronauts on the International Space Station bring back a LOT of photos of the Earth as it passes beneath them - more than a million and a half so far. Unfortunately, these images are not usually labelled, so it's hard to get any use from them. So, if you join in and donate a little of your time, you'll be identifying Earth features in the photos. The goal of Image Detective is label all the images and making them searchable, and this will make them useful as a resource to study the Earth.  These projects are usually a lot of fun, but you also get the satisfaction of having helped to do real science that matters, and of course the team at CosmoQuest will be extremely grateful for your help as well!

Links

* The CSIR

* Image Detective

Welcome to the 20th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, featuring a public talk given by Edwin le Grange at ScopeX 2017.  This episode has been a long time coming, because I'm doing something new that I've never done before and it's taken me way longer to figure out that I'd really anticipated, but I finally got there, we're here, and your patience is about to be rewarded.

As you'll know from previous episodes, the annual ScopeX telescope and astronomy expo happened at the usual venue back in September, and I was there to record the talks and lectures. I'll be playing you those lectures over the next few episodes, but the new thing that I'm doing with these is Video. Along with the audio recordings, I also filmed the speakers, and grabbed copies of their slide shows, and have been trying to learn how to tie this all together into a set of videos for the ScopeX organisers to show on their website. Those videos will also appear on my (very small!) YouTube channel, once I figure out how to make them look the way I want.

Edwin le Grange

Edwin was the first speaker of the day, and he spoke about the Mars One project.  This is a plan to send a large group of explorers on a one-way mission to Mars, and he hopes to be one of those who get to go along. Now personally I have my doubts about the project -- it all seems a little slapdash to me.  The way the organisers gloss over fundamental questions, like "Do you have a rocket?" makes me wonder how seriously they have thought this through, and I'm certainly not the only person to have my doubts. Still, Edwin himself seems confident, and if there's one thing that the past decade has taught us, it's not to underestimate private companies and individuals when they decide to go to space.

Links

* Urban Astronomer YouTube channel

* Mars One

Welcome to the 19th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, featuring an interview with Cassini mission scientist Dr Michele Dougherty.  We've been up to so much since episode 18, with probably the biggest job being hosting an hour segment about podcasting to a developing market, on the International Podcast Day 30 hours continuous celebrations. Thanks to the guys at IPD for inviting us, and especially thank you to Richard, Chantelle and Andrew from the NAG gaming podcast who shared that space with me and helped keep it filled with interesting conversation. I couldn't have done it without you guys, and owe you big time!

I've also been hard at work processing the recordings I took at ScopeX, South Africa's biggest and most important annual astronomy event. A regular feature of ScopeX is a series of public talks and lectures, open to all who attend. This year, I was allowed to record these talks, and I'll be making the recordings available as episodes on this podcast.

Dr Michele Dougherty

But today we've got something a little more in keeping with our usual format. A few weeks back, shortly before the Cassini spacecraft was de-orbited into the atmosphere of Saturn, Dr Michele Dougherty was in Cape Town for a scientific conference. I had hoped to meet her for an interview, which she very kindly granted me. I couldn't make it to Cape Town though, so we spoke over Skype instead. The recording of that interview is the feature item in this episode. Unfortunately, Skype didn't handle the combination of her hotel WiFi and my mobile data connection, so her voice does fade in and out a bit. I've done my best to make things as legible as possible, but I do apologize in advance if there's anything you aren't able to make out.

Links

* Dr Dougherty at Imperial College London

* Cassini: The Grand Finale

* The JUICE mission (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer)

Welcome to the 18th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast!  This week we interview Simon Fishley, the head of IT at the South African Astronomical Observatory, about the work he does to support the scientists and their data.

Hurricane Harvey Podcast Pack

I can't believe it's been three weeks since the last episode of the Urban Astronomer podcast, although it actually hasn't been that long. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, I recorded a special episode for the Hurricane Harvey Podcast Pack. This is a fundraising project to help deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and it's organised by Justin Corbett, who is a podcaster, and comic editor and creator. The episode I recorded is available, as part of a pack of other specially produced podcasts, for sponsors of the project, so if you want to hear it, you need to donate a bit of money at the link that you'll find on the show notes at www.urban-astronomer.com. All proceeds will be divided between two funds that have been set up for aid and reconstruction purpose, so it's a pretty good cause, and I urge you to support it.

Simon Fishley

Many years ago, I was looking for old school friends on Facebook, and was thrilled to find that one of them now works at the South African Astronomical Observatory. Simon Fishley isn't an astronomer, but he is the head of IT at SAAO, so I gave him a call and asked if he'd like to talk about his job with us. Now I normally only interview people who're directly connected to astronomy in South Africa, either South Africans working in the field, or foreign astronomers who come to South Africa to do their research, but the fact is that astronomy provides a huge range of employment options. It's such a multi-disciplinary field that needs so many different skills, that it's worth talking about ways to have a job working with astronomers and giant telescopes that don't need a science degree.

So, I present Simon Fishley, whose career path matches my own in so many oddly specific ways, and who holds my current dream job!

Links

* Hurricane Harvey Podcast Pack

* The South African Astronomical Observatory

 

This 17th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast might be a little late, but it's extra long to make up for it!  A few weeks back, I took a drive out to the Unisa observatory meet up with my old astronomy teacher, Patricia Skelton, to have a few words about South Africa's role in astronomy, her own astronomical research, and her best advice for students and learners who're thinking of a career in astronomy.

Links

* Patricia Skelton

* Unisa Observatory

* Unisa's College of Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET)

* Unisa astronomy courses

In this 16th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, I finally get to interview two of the people whose astrophotography I've most admired since I first pointed my camera skywards: Cory and Tanja Schmitz.  They were already accomplished photographers before they came together to create their website, Photographing Space. I strongly recommend it as a great place to find tips to improve your space images.

They invited me over to their home a few months ago, back when the podcast was first getting off the ground. I finally made it out there a week or two ago, ready to interview.  I loaded up the recording gear into my car, headed out into deepest darkest Johannesburg, and eventually pulled into their driveway.  They were quite busy preparing for their Great American Eclipse trip, so there wasn't much time for small talk.  Cory made coffee while I set up the microphones in their studio office, and then we got started.

Also in this episode, another rant about Flat Earthers, because I still can't wrap my head around the fact that they even exist.  Also, a reminder about ScopeX, South Africa's largest astronomy and telescope expo.  It is held this year on 16 September at the Military History Museum in Johannesburg.  This will be my first time there as a podcaster and not an exhibitor, so if you you'd like to find me, just look for the guy walking around with a microphone.  If you don't see me on the field, I'll be in the auditorium recording the talks and public lectures.

Links

* Photographing Space

* Eclipse of reason—why do people disbelieve scientists? -- by Bryan Gaensler

* ScopeX