Recorded in late October, Chris and Edward discuss recent proposals for an all-British mission to space, the launch of Psyche to...erm...Psyche, and Edward's involvement with the detection of something called a Synestia - planets bashing together. Cardiff University also hosted Prof Duncan Lorimer, who was jointly awarded the 2023 Shaw Prize for the detection of "Fast Radio Bursts". These mysterious cosmic events seemingly come form nowhere, but provide an intersting way of investigating energetic processes in the Universe. They also make a nice "dipstick of the Universe". Prof Lorimer spoke t ..read more

Chris and Edward discuss some recent stories, such as tantalising possible (emphasis on the possible) detections by JWST of interesting molecules on an exoplanet which coul (emphasis on the could) indicate signs of life. There's also new data on Europa, also from JWST, showing carbon dioxide on its surface - what does this mean? And further afield, astronomers have used ALMA to measure magnetic fields in incredibly distant galaxies, opening a potential new way to study the early Universe ..read more

Dr Ian Harrisonreports from the National Astronomy meeting, which we held in Cardiff back in July. You can hear a couple of interviews we conducted on the previous episode, but in this episode we have a bit of a deep dive into machine learning with Ashley Spindler, what we mean by a modelling in astrophysics with Niall Jeffrey, and what we're learning from the cosmic microwave background with Dr Susanna Azzoni ..read more

July marked the UK's annual National Astronomy Meeting, which this year took place in Cardiff. Chris North, Edward Gomez and Ian Harrison discuss a few recent stories from this month and at the conference, including the Euclid space telescope launch, India's Chandrayaan 3 moon mission, gravitational waves from supermassive black holes, feeding black holes and exoplanets with metal rain. We also have interviews with University of Manchester's Dr Emma Alexander and University of Bristol's Dr Hannah Wakeford ..read more

In 2020 astronomers spotted an object slowly getting brighter, but it wasn't until 2021 tha they quite understood how unusual it was. In 2021, they studied it in more detail, and found that it was something we don't think has ever been seen before. It was also the most energetic single event ever witnessed. Going by the catchy name of AT2021lwx, or simply "lwx" to its friends, this month we learn more about it. Dr Phil Wiseman, from University of Southampton, and Dr Cosimo Inserra, from Cardiff University, explain more. Elsewhere in the news, Chris North and Edward Gomez discuss how the JUICE ..read more

A news roundup of the last couple of months with Chris North and Edward Gomez. With a few failures - the SpaceX Starship launch, iSpace's moon landing and Virgin Galactic's bankruptcy, it might seem things are going wrong. But it's not all bad news - ESA's JUICE spacecraft has successfully launched on its way to Jupiter! Elsewhere in the Solar System, archives of data from the Magellan mission to Venus have revealed further evidence of a volcanic activity on the hard-to-reach surface of Earth's evil twin planet. And there's Phaethon, the unusual asteroid that is the source of the Geminid meteo ..read more

In terms of what might be called “pure science”, there’s one topic that tends to get people excited, and that's black holes. A few weeks ago, in February 2023, a pair of papers came out that linked theories about black holes to dark energy – something we really don’t understand. If correct, this could mean that black holes, by their very nature, could explain the accelerating expansion of the Universe. Black holes, of course, are often mis-understood. To find out a little more about them, Chris spoke to Dr Becky Smethurst, from University of Oxford. We also get into a few of the details about ..read more

It's not often that a new astronomical phenomenon is named, but this month we have a new one. The name might not be that original, but there have been the first observations of something known as a "micronova". Lasting just a few hours, a micronova is much fainter than a typical "nova", making them much harder to detect, and much less likely to be picked up. Chris North and Edward Gomez discuss what causes these events. Coming closer to home, spaceflight has been busy, with two missions to the Space Station in April - one part of the normal rotation of astronauts, and the other a privately-fun ..read more

With the invasion of Ukraine casting a shadow over the world, Chris North and Edward Gomez look at the impact of the war on astronomy and space science, mindful that these pale in importance when compared with the death and destruction taking place on the ground. From the international collaboration taking place on board the International Space Station, to the use of Russian rockets. Also at stake is the future of the Rosalind Franklin Rover, a European-Russian collaborative mission that was due to launch later this year. Elsewhere in the world, NASA have shown off their newest rocket - the Sp ..read more

The first interstellar object to be discovered was 'Oumuamua, detected in 2017. Joined by Comet 2I/Borisov a couple of years later, astronomers are eagerly awaiting further discoveries of such objects, which were ejected from other solar systems. We explore what the link is between these interstellar objects and the history of star formation around the galaxy, thanks to new research by Prof Chris Lintott, Dr Ted Mackereth and Dr Michele Bannister. Chris and Ted explain how these two seemingly disconnected fields have led to new hypotheses about what we might learn from future observations ..read more