Looking Up

Sara de la Fuente is the Science Operations Manager for a very interesting mission that was launched on 14th April to visit the icy moons of Jupiter. The mission will involve many different science instruments. For example, it will take detailed images and measure the magnetic fields around Jupiter's moons.

Two important rockets to talk about. Firstly the launch of the JUICE mission last Friday to the moons of Jupiter, and secondly Space-X's gigantic Starship.

The Earth, and every other object we know in space, could be bobbing around on an ocean of low frequency gravity waves. Kechil explains something about what this means.

More NEOs, or Near Earth Objects. An asteroid passed by at 175,000 kms. A close shave! What can we do about these threatening lumps of rock?

How is your cosmological coupling? What has this to do with Dark Energy? What are black holes up to? What is Cold Death and when might it occur? These and other questions may have nothing to do with your daily life, but they are fascinating. Kechil talks to Dr Chris Pearson who has the answers, or, as a true scientist, knows more of what we don't know.

Dr Chris Pearson tells Kechil about the scary Event Horizon, the point of no return when you get near a black hole. Hear it from the expert!

Black holes! What are they? How many are out there? How do we know they are there? Kechil talks to Dr Chris Pearson who was in Cape Town with the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope project.

There is a big meeting happening right now in Cape Town at the South African Astronomical Observatory, where engineers, technologists and scientists have flown in from the four corners. Kechil talks to Louisa Quartermaine from Perth about the Australian component of the Square Kilometre Array, the biggest telescope being built in the world, in South Africa and Australia.

There is a pretty conjunction of Venus and Jupiter you might like to take a look at in the evening or just before sunrise, if you have a clear western aspect. Kechil motors through conjunctions, alignments and other geometric features of our position in the solar system.

A reminder that the observatory has open nights on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month at 8pm. You need to book which you can do from their website saao.ac.za. The Very Large Telescope and the European Space Agency's space telescopes have combined strengths and produced images of an exoplanet orbiting around a star in the constellation of Lepus. You can see this for yourself either on sp...

There is a pretty chain of planets to be seen after sunset at this time, if you have a clear western horizon. Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has been visible in the southern hemisphere - a green blob that won't be back here, if at all, for a very very long time. And three more objects have been shot down by the US militia.

Last Sunday the US shot down a Chinese balloon which had made its way across US territory. What is special about balloons? What sort of balloon was it? Are we all living in a spy novel?

Kechil unpacks the Skittles image from the James Webb Space Telescope which she and astronomer Pamala Klassen were chatting about last week.

Pamela Kassen, an astronomer from Edinburgh, is here in Cape Town and talks to Kechil about the latest from the James Webb Space Telescope, a telescope up in space whose data she works with. Here she describes that the universe has far more galaxies than originally thought, and it is a colourful place.

A satellite launch recently failed from the UK on 9th January. Satellites were to be released from a rocket fired from a jumbo jet which took off from Cornwall, a southern county in England. This was the first ever satellite launch from the UK, but they will try again. Learn about some other failures, and how bad space can be for your teeth!

There is a comet arriving in our neighbourhood, listen out for announcements in early February. There are new lunar landers created by private industry, on their way to the Moon. These pave the way for more ambitious undertakings.

How is it that the Earth is not the center of the solar system? It does look like the Sun, Moon and planets move around us. Retrograde motion, epicycles, these are explained in 5-minutes, with some history thrown in.

The Orion capsule splashed down last Sunday, as part of NASA's Artemis programme, which will send humans back to the Moon. Find out how it's going.

Sumari Barocci-Faul, a Masters student at the University of Cape Town, tells Kechil about her research in cataclysmic variable stars: exploding stars - more great balls of fire.

Great balls of fire! A fireball, or bolide, was seen by many above Kirstenbosch Gardens at the concert last weekend. And other fiery topics: the eruption of Mauna Loa in Hawaii and volcanism on other planets in, and out of, our solar system.

Chris Forder has spent a lifetime building telescopes, a very worthy hobby. He tells Kechil about the changes that have occurred in telescope design and materials over the last 60 years.

South Africa is to host a ground station for NASA to communicate with the Artemis lunar exploration programme at Matjiesfontein. This is great news for SANSA. Also a plug for the 2023 Sky Guide Southern Africa published by Penguin Random House / Struik Nature.

Explore the big and the small questions in astronomy, cosmology, and space science. Hosted by Kechil Kirkham, no subject is too big or too small, and experts are regularly brought on board to illuminate and excite. Cape Town is the place to be for astronomy, with some of the largest telescopes in the world housed or being built not too far away. Looking Up takes advantage of the shoals of scientis...

Kechil mentions a couple of new space engineering endeavours: how to get heavy objects through tricky atmospheres on other planets, and launching hypersonic planes from other massive planes. Also something scary for Halloween: a large asteroid missed us. Phew!

An ancient text has been found and accurately dated, to the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in 129 BCE. This is a major historical breakthrough as it shows that people were accurately measuring the stars at that time, and using charts to predict their positions and movements.