Astronomy Astrophiz Podcast

Astrophiz 112: Dr Ian ‘Astroblogger’ Musgrave’s September/October SkyGuide A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers. Dr @ianfmusgrave gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, including a guide on how to observe Mars in opposition and it’s current nearby companion, the variable star Mir...

Astrophiz 111: Katherine Johnson - Paving Apollo’s way to the moon and back This episode is a special feature on the life achievements of Katherine Johnson, the African American mathematician who hand calculated many mission trajectories for NASA, including the iconic Apollo 11 mission. She lived to be 101, born in 1918 and passed away in February this year. She is remembered forever as an integra...

Astrophiz 110: Dr Ian ‘Astroblogger’ Musgrave’s August/September SkyGuide A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers. This month, Dr @ianfmusgrave gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, including a guide on how to observe Ceres in opposition. In 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he gives us t...

Astrophiz 109: Dr Thea Kozakis - Fingerprinting Exoplanets Dr Thea Kozakis is a pioneering researcher who is a NASA Space Grant recipient and postdoc researcher at the Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University, soon she is moving to Europe and starting a postdoctoral position at the Technical University of Denmark with their exoplanet group. In this fabulous episode, Thea explains her techniques to...

Astrophiz 108: July/August SkyGuide  A monthly treat for naked eye observers, telescopers and astrophotographers. Dr Ian 'Astroblog' gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, including an update on Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) and in 'Ian's Tangent’ this month he gives us the lowdown on Comets, their unpredictable nature an...

Astrophiz 107: Dr Joe Callingham – Astounding Apep I read an exciting paper in Nature Astronomy about a rare discovery in our galaxy, and I did some follow-up and so today we are very fortunate to be speaking to lead author Dr Joe Callingham, an Aussie astronomer now based in the Netherlands who has been using radio telescopes to probe the inner workings of a unique system in our own Milky Way gal...

Astrophiz 106: June/July SkyGuide: Dr Ian 'Astroblog' gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month, and in 'Ian's Tangent' he gives us an insight on the achievements of amateur astronomers imaging the idiosyncrasies of Venus and her atmosphere '

Astrophiz 105: Kat Ross – Baby Black Holes #IncludeHer Today I am very pleased to be speaking with PhD candidate Kat Ross, who researches Compact Active Galactic Nuclei and galaxy evolution, and is an activist for Women In STEM and who works as a science communicator when not staring at distant baby black holes or fleeing from space poop. Kat is based at Curtin University and ICRAR, The Internatio...

Astrophiz 104: May/June SkyGuide: Dr Ian 'Astroblog' gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month, and in 'Ian's Tangent' he gives us an insight on the astronomical 'Eye of Sauron'

Astrophiz 103 - Clint Jeffrey - 'First Light' @ASV Amateur Radio Telescope Our fabulous feature interview for May 2020 is with Clint Jeffrey, an amazing ham radio veteran and radio technician who has been collecting, connecting, testing and calibrating the RF and digital technologies for the newly constructed 8.5 metre radio telescope for the Astronomical Society of Victoria. They have just achiev...

Dr Ian 'Astroblog' gives us his fabulous guide to the morning & evening skies for the next month, and in Ian's Tangent he reveals the excitement and disappointment provided by a bevy of disintegrating comets.

Astrophiz 101: Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt - Directing the Murchison Widefield array Our feature interview this month is with Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, Director of the Murchison Widefield Array & Research Professor based in Western Australia. Melanie manages large-scale, multinational research infrastructure, is regularly involved with international science diplomacy, and she regu...

Our featured guest for this special 100th episode is Dr Vanessa Moss, astronomer and Head of CSIRO’s ASKAP Science Operations. CSIRO is Australia’s leading science organisation and ASKAP is the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope array in Western Australia. Vanessa tells us about her PhD  ‘The Galactic ecosystem: Outflow and infall in the halo of the Milky Way” and her wor...

Today in Astrophiz we have our regular presenter Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave giving us is a special report on 'The Return of Betelgeuse' . Ian also previews the excellent observing opportunities over the next two weeks, especially in the morning skies, and a report on a captured 'mini-moon' IN THE NEWS: ASTRONOMERS DETECT BIGGEST EXPLOSION IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE Scientists studying a dista...

Karlie Alinta Noon has just completed her Master's degree in radio astronomy looking at gas accretion onto the Milky Way and is the Indigenous Heritage Office with the Federal Department of Environment & Energy in Canberra, Australia. Karlie is a Gamilaraay astrophysicist, animal lover, greeny & gamer grl with a rich background in science communication including a stint working with the CSIRO. Kar...

Today’s feature interview is with planet hunter Dr Belinda Nicholson, Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Oxford, Department of Physics. Belinda’s current research involves exoplanet hunting using exotic telescope data. Previously she has investigated the behaviour of ‘teenage’ stars, and her work has taken her all over Australia and the world, from presenting her work at conferen...

Over the holiday season we are taking a break, and we are producing a couple of ‘Holiday Specials’ where we reprise some episodes as ‘double headers’ where we provide 2 feature interviews from our 2019 playlist. We have stripped out Dr Ian Musgrave’s ‘What’s Up’ segment and my ‘In the News’ segment, giving you two uninterrupted interviews. In this reprised episode we have interviews with Dr Ashley...

Our feature interview today is with Dr Geraint Lewis who a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sydney, whose research includes cosmology and galactic archaeology. and today he is going to help us look at the existential question “Are We Alone” . Also I’ll remind listeners that this is our last episode for 2019 before we take our holiday break, but we’ll be back in early February 2020, a...

Astrophiz 95: Steve Olney: From Ham Radio to Radio Astronomy - "The 2019 Vela Glitch" Feature Interview: This amazing interview features Steve Olney who has established the Hawkesbury Radio Astronomy Observatory in his backyard. Steve has constructed a Yagi antenna array, coupled it with a receiver and observed a pulsar 900 LY away and generated data that has enabled him to be the only person on t...

Astrophiz 94: Amanda Wherrett: ANU Siding Spring Observatory This wonderful episode features Amanda Wherrett from the Australian National University and who conducts wonderful tours of the Siding Spring Observatory in remote New South Wales in Australia. Amanda shares with us the absolute best observing tip you will hear in your whole life, and she tells us all about this stunning mountain and it’...

Astrophiz 93: Dr Jim Palfreyman: The Vela Glitch This episode features astrophysicist Dr Jim Palfreyman, who is a data analyst and casual researcher at the University of Tasmania. Today he tells us about his celebrated Nature paper revealing the way he analyses Vela’s glitches and how that came to tell us about the inner structures of neutron stars/pulsars. In the sky for observers and astrophotog...

Astrophiz 92: Dr Ivo Seitenzahl ~ Optical Tomography in Type Ia Supernova remnants. Today’s featured guest is originally from Germany and is now a Future Fellow in the School of Science at the University of New South Wales in Canberra. Ivo introduces us to his new technique using optical telescope integral field spectrograph data to analyse the different elements present in the remnants and the ef...

Astrophiz 91: Dr Chenoa Tremblay – “Molecules in Space & Dark Magnetism” Listen: Our fabulous featured guest today is Dr Chenoa Tremblay, who is a Postdoctoral fellow in Dark Magnetism with the CSIRO and a member of the Commissioning team for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) facility in remote Western Australia. Chenoa introduces us to Polarisation and Dark Magnetism and As...

Astrophiz 90: Sophia Nasr – Self Interacting Dark Matter and Galaxy Clusters This episode’s featured guest is Sophia Nasr, who is a fabulous graduate physics student at University of California, Irvine who is working on her PhD in cosmology and astroparticle theory with a focus on researching Self-Interacting Dark Matter. She brilliantly explains all forms of dark matter research and her passion f...

Astrophiz 89- Dr Andy Tomkins-Meteorites by Brendan O'Brien: Astronomers, Astrophysicists & Space Scientists