The GLEAM Survey

We’ve got a lot of news items to discuss this month. In the outer Solar System, Edward Gomez and I discuss the Cassini spacecraft, which has made its final major orbital manoeuvre, and the Juno spacecraft, which has had a few issues getting into its main science orbit. Further from home, we’ve got the first “official” star names from the International Astronomical Union, and the discovery of the roundest known star.

Our main guest this month is Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker, based at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) at Curtin University. Natasha works on the Murchison Widefield Array, and has produced GLEAM: an all-sky image of the sky at radio wavelengths at very high resolution and in a wide range of radio “colours”, or wavelengths. This gives us a better understanding of some of the most energetic processed taking place in the centres of nearby galaxies, but the end goal is somewhat further afield. Natasha tells me all about the MWA, the GLEAM project, and even how you can view it – on the interactive GLEAMoscope site (or using the GLEAM Android app)

Originally broadcast on 28th November 2016 as part of Pythagoras’ Trousers on Radio Cardiff.