Here we are, another week, and it's time to release episode 15 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast.  This week's episode features an interview with Australian astrophotographer and science defender Dylan O'Donnell, who landed on my radar after he released a video of an interview with a man who believes that the world is flat.  Since flat-earthism seems to be growing in popularity in what is probably the most baffling display of intellectual laziness I've ever seen, and since so many flat-earther's on the Internet seem to take a combative "NASA is evil and we must fight their minions" stance, I was surprised that his interviewee had agreed to be interviewed in this way.  I had to speak to him, and a mutual friend was kind enough to put us in contact.  I called Dylan and you can hear the resulting interview in this week's podcast.  I've also embedded the video of his interview with the flat-earther at the end of this post.

We've also got a preview of an interview I did with Patricia Skelton.  Patricia is one of my old astronomy lecturers from the University of South Africa.  I don't normally do this, but she has been working hard on an open day at UNISA's science campus for National Science Week (which starts today). I decided to put her plugging of the event early, so that you'll hear it while it's still relevant.  She also gave me a press release which I've pasted below:

In celebration of National Science Week, the Science Campus (Florida) of the University of South Africa will be hosting two days where members of the general public can come and explore the campus.  In keeping with the theme of NSW, “Advancing Science Tourism”, visitors will have the opportunity to go on a guided tour of the campus, see some Lego robots in action and explore an exhibition hall.  The two days open to the public are Wednesday the 9th and Saturday the 12th of August from 10:00 – 15:00 and booking is essential.  If you are interested in attending, please send an email to Ms Patricia Gouws ([email protected]) or to Ms Patricia Skelton ([email protected]).

The university tends to be bad at publicising its events, so please spread the word and go pay them a visit on the public holiday, or on the weekend, and see for yourself the cool things that real life scientists at one of the world's largest universities get to do!

Links

* Dylan O'Donnell on Twitter

* ... and Facebook

* Deography.com

 

 

Welcome to the 14th episode of the Urban Astronomer podcast, after a long and sustained quiet spell. Now I know how this looks: New podcast pumps out a bunch of episodes, and then loses steam before eventually just going silent one day. We've all seen it, we all know the signs. But don't worry, I've been very busy behind the scenes, lining up a whole stack of interesting people to interview, and you'll be able to hear them all in the coming weeks. We've got some top-shelf astrophotographers coming up, a guy who suddenly got a little bit famous by taking on the flat earth crowd in a live interview on YouTube, and even one of my old astronomy lecturers from university!

Today's guest, though, is a lot less interesting: We'll be talking to me. My darling wife and occasional co-host grabbed a microphone over the weekend and sat me down to ask me about myself, my website, my podcast, and what I'm trying to do with it all.

But then disaster struck:  While recording the intro segments, I forgot to check my inputs!  Everything except the interview itself got recorded through the nasty microphone built into my webcam, so you'll have to pardon the sub-standard audio quality. We'll try not to let that happen again!

Errata

At one point, while discussing ancient historical astronomers, Allen says that he wrote an article on Aristarchus who was the first person to have measured the diameter of the Earth. He was actually thinking of Eratosthenes, who was mentioned here: How do we know that the Earth is round?  Also, a stadia is closer to 170 meters in length!

Here it is!  Episode #13 of the Urban Astronomer podcast!  This week we turn our steely gaze upon the red planet Mars, but we haven't forgotten our promise to share some highlights from our time at the ICON Comics and Games Convention.  We even indulge in a little hoax busting, picking a fight with an old scam that just won't die.The first segment is the next in Cathrine's series on The Planets.  In these recordings, she talks first about the mythology behind the names of the planets, and then discusses the actual worlds themselves.  Mars, as it turns out, was a little more complex than our usual "God of War" image.  And when we look at the science, it turns out to be a spectacularly badly named planet.

Then we cut to our time at ICON 2017.  As previously mentioned, we ran a stand on behalf of the ScopeX telescope and astronomy expo, to promote it and get people to come visit in September.  While there, we got to chat to a lot of people, who had quite a varied range if interests.  A few of them consented to let me record our conversations, and I've tried to stretch my editing muscles a bit in the way I presented them.  I'm reasonably happy with how it came out, and hopefully you'll like it too.  If you'd like to see the photos referenced, they're part of Dawie Venter's gallery on the ASSA website.

We then return to Mars, addressing a 14-year-old (at time of recording) hoax email that says that Mars will be passing extra close to Earth, and will appear as large as the full Moon.  It's nonsense, of course, and I first wrote about it years ago.  If you'd like to see the original Powerpoint presentation that set this whole thing running, you'll find a link here: Mars as big as the Moon

What a week! What with preparing my booth for ICON 2017 and interesting new projects at the day job, it's taken me this long to finally finish editing and releasing this interview with Jen Millard.  I'm hoping you'll find it well worth the wait, though, as Jen describes a whole new way of studying exoplanets observation that I'd never heard of before.  But in case you're worried about too much high-level technical science talk, don't worry.  She was able to simplify it and explain it in a way that I could understand, live in the interview, so I'm sure you'll do just fine!

I mentioned the ICON Comics and Games convention above. This is one of South Africa's largest geek-friendly events, packed with, well, comics and games!  As I write this, I'm home in bed recovering from the first day of the con.  Although I spent most of the time in my booth promoting ScopeX, I got a few chances to wander around, sampling the games (card, board, and more!), pop into a few workshops and talks, admiring the cosplayer's handiwork. and doing my best to not get hooked into the Nickelodeon cinema (kids cartoons are my guilty pleasure...)!

If you read this soon enough, I'd strongly recommend heading over to the ICON website and picking up a day pass.  Bring the kids, and prepare for a fun day of geeking out!  And if you'd like to appear on the podcast, come find me at the ScopeX stand. I'll have a microphone on the table for you to ask your space or astronomy question, which I can answer for you live!

Links

* Jen Millard on Twitter and on Email

* The Awesome Astronomy Podcast

* 365 Days of Astronomy

* ICON Comics and Gaming Convention

Welcome to the 11th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast!  Following recent trends, this is another interview episode.  The guest is Martin Heigan, of Johannesburg, South Africa.  Martin works in the field of 3D VisualFX and motion capture, providing these services for both local and foreign TV and film productions.  But I was more interested in his astrophotography, so I called him about two weeks ago to record this interview.

In this recording, we discuss Martin's relatively new career as an astrophotographer, his background in the world of computer graphics, and how a lifetime's experience in photography helped him skip over most of the early learning curve of astrophotography.

There's also mention of the Urban Astronomer's upcoming appearance (disguised as a ScopeX representative!) at the ICON Comics and Gaming Convention from 16 - 18 June 2017 - be sure to pop in and say hi!

Links

* Martin Heigan's website

* Martin on Flickr

* Martin on Facebook

* Martin on Twitter

* Photography Gallery

* 3D and Motion Capture

Thanks for waiting!  Episode 10 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast has finally arrived, and this week we feature an interview with Deon Bester.  Deon is an engineer, who worked on the Southern African Large Telescope for many years, designing the control systems that keep the telescope working through the night.

In our conversation we cover many topics.  Deon's experience as a test engineer, working with Labview, led to him getting employed by the SALT project.  We discuss the teething troubles that plagued the telescope when it was first built, and how multi-element mirrors such as used in modern big telescopes present their own engineering challenges.  We chat about whether software engineers are the same as real engineers, and look to the future: Once you've worked on a big telescope, is it ever possible to move on to something else?

Also, if you're going to be in Johannesburg, it's time to mark the 16th of September in your diary.  ScopeX is back, and this time I'll be there to capture the whole thing on tape.  It's obviously no substitute for actually being there in the flesh, but if you can't make it, you can enjoy it via podcast!

Links

* Deon on Twitter

* The official SALT twitter account

* The South African Large Telescope's website

* ScopeX

Welcome to the ninth episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, featuring South African science communicator and journalist Sibusiso Biyela.  I am on holiday with my family at the moment, so in order to find a quiet spot away from chattering kiddies, this episode was recorded next to an icy mountain stream in the Central Drakensberg mountain range. Sadly, despite the time of year, it's been consistently overcast so no astronomical observing for me!

I was at least able to put together this episode of the podcast, though, even if it's coming out a little late. Last week I recorded an interview with Sibusiso Biyela, a journalist and science communicator who lives on the east coast of South Africa. We spoke for about half an hour, about his own astronomy interests, about the need for more science communication in African languages, and South Africa's place in world astronomy. You can listen to our conversation by clicking the play button below, and don't forget to use the social media icons to share it with your friends and colleagues!

Links

Here's how to find some of the resources mentioned in the podcast

* SciBraai

* Sibusiso on Facebook

* ... and on Twitter

* ... and on Google Plus

* Ninjastronomy

Welcome to the 8th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast!  This week, Cathrine continues her series on The Planets with the hottest world in our Solar System: Venus.  Allen then reports on the discovery, by a telescope at SAAO's facility in Sutherland, of KELT-11b, an unusually inflated exoplanet.  And finally we look at what is apparently a common question in parts of the world: Is it safe to watch a Lunar Eclipse, while pregnant?

This is Cathrine's second appearance in the podcast, and she wants to be sure everybody knows that she fully intends to be a regular fixture.  We fully intend to hold her to it, and are already deciding what to do with her once she's finished her series on The Planets!

There is no interview, this week, leaving us with a nice short episode that you won't need to set aside a lot of time for.  Isn't that nice!  If you miss the episodes, though, don't worry:  We've got plenty more lined up, and as soon as we can get our guests in the same room as a microphone, you'll get to hear everything they had to share with us!

 

Links

* SAAO press release om the discovery of KELT-11b

* Paper describing the discovery of KELT-11b

Hi and welcome to the 7th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast! This episode was dropped in the middle of the Easter weekend, so in deference to the season we've got a brief segment based on one of Urban Astronomer's religiously themed articles: How is astronomy used to calculate the dates of religious festivals? And our feature item is another interview! This time around, I managed to get a hold of Neil Viljoen, who owns Telescope Shop, one of the few dedicated telescope and astronomy suppliers in Southern Africa. We met under the pretext of having him troubleshoot my primary telescope, and he very kindly agreed to let me record an interview with him in his workshop.

Neil is not only a telescope salesman, but also a dedicated and hard-working astrophotographer - The judges at ScopeX awarded him the first prize in the 2015 astrophotography contest for his image of the famous HorseHead Nebula in Orion.  I have linked to the image below

Links

* Telescope Shop

* Neil on Twitter

* Neil's winning astrophotography image

* Amateur Radio Astronomy project

Welcome to the 6th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. This is the second part of our interview with Chris Stewart, one of the names behind the Amateur Telescope Making class in Johannesburg, one of the organisers of the annual ScopeX telescope and astronomy expo, and director of the Astronomical Society of South Africa's Instrumentation section.

In this part, he talks about the pros and cons of different telescope designs, how to make them, how to select an eyepiece, and also offers solid advice for those who'd rather just buy a telescope.

If you missed part one, you can download or listen to it here.