AstrotalkUK

Scroll to the bottom for the audio and video. Since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, thousands of unmanned spacecraft have been launched, mostly to Earth orbit, but many have gone to the inner and outer planets, and four of them have pretty much left the Solar System altogether. European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft arrived at Mars in 2003 and is still operating almost a decade later. It...

Scroll to the bottom of this post to play the audio or watch the video. Going in to space was nothing more than a dream for many of us for such a long time. But things are changing profoundly and fast. Once, human spaceflight was only possible as part of a national government project. Then, a decade ago, Denis Tito (on 28th April 2001) became the first self-funding astronaut by signing a cheque fo...

On November 3rd this year, Professor Jim Al-khalili was to give three lectures in Liverpool on the same day (Quantum Physics, Advances in Mathematics in Medieval Islam and On the Shoulders of Eastern Giants: the Forgotten Contribution of the Medieval Physicists). I did feel a bit of a stalker, I attended all three, but fortunately I was not alone. It is not often that I get to witness the scientif...

Next year, April 12th  2011, marks the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's,  mankind's,  first steps into space. It was a product of the accumulated technology of many countries over many years, but particularly driven by the political landscape resulting from the 2nd world War. Since then, successful robotic missions have visited the planets, asteroids and comets. 24 men have gone to the moon and...

A man playing golf on the moon is one of the images permanently etched into the collective memory of humanity's first exploration of the moon. The so called “golf player” was Alan Shepard the guy with him was Dr Edgar Mitchell whilst Stuart Roosa orbited the moon in the command module. Today, Ed Mitchell, two months away from his 80th birthday is the only remaining member of the Apollo 14 crew. On...

Nestling in a valley amongst the rolling green hills of the Eifel region of western Germany is the 100m Effelsberg steerable radio telescope. Similar to the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank which is on the plains of Cheshire in northwest England which can be seen from miles away. The  Effelsberg telescope  is situated in a valley so it easy to pass close by and not see it. It is an international f...

If you had the task of gathering all of humanity’s knowledge of cosmology in one place, how would you do it? Answers to questions such as, How big is the Earth? At what date and time will the Moon be full again? What makes the Sun shine? How old is the Universe? Today a good place to start the project would be to scour the sources online. In about 150AD Claudius Ptolemaeus, better known as Ptolemy...

Sir Patrick Moore is primarily known for his work on the long running TV series, The Sky at Night but he is an author, musician and an observational astronomer, too. He is also a former director of the Armagh Planetarium, a co-founder of the Society for Popular Astronomyand a former president of the British Astronomical Association. His autobiography was published when he was Eighty in 2003. It is...

Today’s episode is a special recording with Professor Barrie Jones of the Open University. Special because during the Eighties, I studied several of the courses which he helped to develop and presented on the the late night OU TV programs. Professor Jones joined the Open University in 1972 and since 2006 is the emeritus professor of astronomy. He recalls people he worked with at Cornell including...

In size, mass and orbit Venus is the nearest Earth has to a twin in the Solar System. It is the brightest object in the sky after the sun and moon, hottest planet in the solar system, has a day longer than its year, is named after the Roman goddess of love and yet it has a deadly atmosphere and its the one planet that gets closer to the Earth than any other. In this episode, recorded in late 2008,...

On this day 40 years ago the crew of Apollo 11 fulfilled one of mankind’s longest held dreams and walked on the surface of the Moon. One of them Buzz Aldrin in episode 12 of ATUK, recalled a little of that experience. Today’s episode is a short recording with Fred Haise when he visited Pontefract as arranged by Ken Willoughby. Incidentally, Jim Lovell is also visiting Pontefract in Yorkshire on Oc...

A different, interesting and at times a little silly episode this week. Professor Pamela L Gay from the Southern University Edwardsville Illinois (SUEI) and Swinburne Astronomy Online but you will may be familiar with her voice on the probably most popular Astronomy podcast Astronomy Cast. This recording was made in Oxford during her visit in March this year. ==================================== T...

Antikythera mechanism Everyone who comes across the Antikythera mechanism goes through an initial phase of disbelief, then the awe-inspiring realisation that something almost from another world actually exists in ours. Imagine William Shakespeare writing Hamlet using a laptop. Surely a ridiculous proposition, he was about 300 years too early for that. He didn’t but today’s topic is just as incredi...

Science is the product of human intellect, creativity and imagination. It helps answers the profoundest of all questions. Where did life come from? How old is the Earth? What is the structure of the universe? How did humans come to be? As the history of science shows, as it progresses so does the nature, accuracy and reliability the answers to such questions. The scientific picture of the physical...

Chris Lord  of Blackpool & District Astronomical Society continues the story of the telescope leading up to its use by Galileo for astronomical observations. Ibn Sahl and Ibn al-Haythem were two scholars who during the 10th and 11th century developed the fundemental mathematical principles of refraction, reflection and dispersion and kick started the science of optics. Chris concludes this 2nd par...

Hans Lipperhey's patent application in the Netherlands for a telescope was formally denied on 2nd October 1608. Nonetheless, it is that individual, that place and that date which history associates with the invention of the telescope. Most of us are aware of the fundamental astronomical discoveries Galileo went on to make with it in the following year but could they have been made earlier? Three t...

As episode 21 indicated, the power of science fiction to motivate the imagination is perhaps as strong as science itself. 1957 is known for the launch of Sputnik but it was also the year that the scientist Fred Hoyle published a science fiction novel called The Black Cloud. One of its readers in Italy would be inspired by it to  become an astronomer and embark on a career which involves the scient...

Professor Mark Brake from the University of Glamorgan has an eclectic interest. An academic, broadcaster and author of science and popular science books, he is the organising chair for the the third conference of the Astrobiology Society of Britain: ASB3: The Living Universe, will take place in Cardiff between July 1-4, 2008. We spoke about the relationship between science & science fiction and as...

As the European city of Culture, Liverpool has more than its fair share of activities this year. Many have an astronomy connection. In today's episode Andy Newsam from Liverpool John Moores University, Joanne Coleman from the British Association for the Advancement of Science talks about the Science Festival between 6th and 11th of September and Gary Evans from the sciencephoto library on a unique...

There are many ways to participate in and learn about astronomy online. In today’s episode, three examples of how the web is being used to share resources and build communities around Science http://www.sciencefile.org Space http://www.space.co.uk and Astronomy http://www.fedastro.org.uk . Many astronomical societies are preparing or have already completed a program of speakers for the 2008/9 seas...

Since the days of Sputnik and Apollo, Space technology has matured to an extent that it is almost a routine commercial activity. China, India, and Japan are well-established players, along with the USA and Russia. Next year, Virgin Galactic will embark on space tourism. Since its establishment in 1975, the European Space Agency ( ESA) has come a long way. The original 10 founding member countries...

As the most energetic photons, gamma rays are rare, difficult to observe, require special telescopes & detectors, and not many of them make it to the surface of the earth anyway. So why is gamma ray astronomy important? Its not an area of astronomy that amateurs usually dip even their big toe in and something entirely new for me. Talking jointly with a Dr Stella Bradbury and Dr Joachim Rose at the...

You can’t think of Darwin without Wallace, Laurel without Hardy. In UK astronomy, there is no more enduring and familiar partnership than Henbest and Couper. Nigel and Heather have been writing, broadcasting, supporting and publicising astronomy for decades. Their most recent project is a series of daily radio programs for BBC Radio 4 called Cosmic Quest, and an associated book, History of Astrono...

Astrobiology is the study of life outside the earth. Paradoxically, it is advanced by understanding how life started here on earth. More about Astrobiology in the UK at the Astrobiology Society's website. In the famous Miller Urey experiment to discover the origin of life, the experiment did not result in primitive life but succeeded in creating organic molecules from inorganic constituents. The s...

After a 7 year journey, Cassini/ Huygens arrived at Saturn in 2004 and Huygens landed on the surface of Titan on January 14th 2005. The only moon within the solar system known to have a substantial atmosphere. On Monday 3rd of July 1989 it was possible to study the atmosphere of Titan from here on Earth when it occulted a 5.8mag star 28 Sagittarius. Ken Irving from Salford Astronomical Society des...