Enjoy this great interview with Professor  Katie Auchettl, who is the Associate Professor of Astrophysics and Physics at Melbourne University.  Katie is an observational astrophysicist whose research focuses on the extreme death of stars. Katie has worked with a team of young astronomers on a sensational book for aspiring astrophysicists that’s just been freely published on the Archive (ArXiv) Server. The book is called: “Astronomy as a Field: A Guide for Aspiring Astrophysicists”  … and it is sensational …. and I can't recommend it highly enough for any student … any person ..read more

Welcome to the April SkyGuide: Dr Ian Musgrave is telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies in April. He also gives us his ‘Tangent' about Fungi and Lichen on the ISS. This month Ian continues his 'Astrophotography Challenge’ where he presents us with an achievable and challenging task to undertake with simple cameras. Our target for April is Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks ... and he gives us some excellent tips to capture this celestial Dragon. Are you up for it ..read more

Professor Orsola De Marco is a Professor at Macquarie University and Deputy-Director of the  Astrophysics and Space Technologies Research Centre at Macquarie University in Sydney. She obtained her PhD at University College London as a Perren Scholar, after which she was a Swiss National Science Foundation research fellow at ETH Zurich, a FUSE Fellow at University College London and Asimov Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She was an ARC Future Fellow. Her research focusses on stellar interactions and how they alter the structure and evolution of stars in m ..read more

Dr Ian Musgrave brings us his March SkyGuide …  telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies this month. He also gives us his ‘Tangent’ about perigee and apogee Moons. Also Ian is continuing his ‘Astrophotography Challenge’ where he presents us with an achievable and challenging task to undertake with our cameras. This month it's imaging Vesta and learning how to use the free Deep Sky Stacker software ..read more

Today listeners, we’re zooming over 10 timezones to Denmark for some cutting edge science …, and you're invited to a very special conversation with Dr Hannah Diamond-Lowe who is a senior researcher in the Exoplanet Group at the National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark … where her groundbreaking research characterizes small exoplanet atmospheres using ground- and space-based observatories. She is also the Principal Investigator of the Hot Rocks Survey, a large observing program using the James Webb Space Telescope to test terrestrial rocky exoplanets for their atmospheres as th ..read more

Dr Ian Musgrave kicks off 2024 with his February SkyGuide telling us when, where and what to look for in the evening and morning skies in February. He gives us a Tangent about perigee and apogee Moons. This year Ian is introducing his 'Astrophotography Challenge' wher ehe presents us with an achievable and challenging task to undertake with our cameras ..read more

Astrophiz 184: Hyerin Cho Meet Hyerlin Cho, an inspiring young astrophysicist from Korea who is doing her PhD at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hyerlin uses her formidable computational skills to simulate still-mysterious black holes using supercomputers, as well as revealing the mysteries and enigmatic fast radio bursts AKA FRBs. For her main research, she produces simulations of plasma accreting onto black holes and is on an already successful quest to discover what really makes these wonderful phenomena tick and how galaxies and their central black holes in ..read more

Dr. Rebecca Davies is an Astro3D postdoctoral researcher and has just been awarded an ARC-DECRA fellowship at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. Rebecca researches the stuff that flows out of Galaxies AKA ‘Galactic Outflows’ … and she looks across the majority of the history of the universe from right now and right back through time to less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Rebecca uses spectroscopic data from Hubble, JWST … the Awesome James Webb Space Telescope and the VLT, the Very Large Telescope which consists of a optical array of four 8.2 m telescopes ..read more

Moon Phases: November 5 - the Last Quarter Moon is Sunday, good time for evening skygazing. November 7 - The Moon is at apogee, when it is furthest from the Earth November 13 - New Moon, good time for skygazing the entire night. November 14 - The very thin ‘day old’ moon is near Mercury in the west just after sunset. A genuine challenge to catch this. November 20 - First Quarter Moon, great binocular moon gazing time, with Saturn nearby. November 22 - The Moon is at perigee, when it is closest from the Earth. November 25 - Jupiter is only 2 degrees away from the waxing moon. November 27 - Full ..read more

Today’s special episode is from your host, Brendan O’Brien, and is all about ­­the amazing James Webb Space Telescope: “Unveiling the Cosmos” Our story begins in a remote, microscopic corner in the vast expanse of the cosmos, where humankind has always yearned to uncover its deepest mysteries. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) represents a monumental leap in our quest to explore the universe. From its conception as an ambitious dream in the early 1990's … to its launch on Christmas Day 2021, … it’s successful deployment and calibration has resulted in the mind-boggling imagery that it is c ..read more