Pythagorean Astronomy: 2018 – a year in space

Posted on 30 December 2018 by Chris North

Chris North, Mat Allen and Sarah Roberts discuss the highlights of 2018, and look forward to 2019. From missions to the inner Solar System, landers on Mars, and rovers on asteroids, lots has happened. In 2019, we’re looking forward to New Horizon’s flyby of Ultima Thule out in the Kuiper Belt, more results from the
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Kepler’s Legacy

Posted on 29 November 2018 by Chris North

Chris North, Sarah Roberts and Matt Smitth discuss the landing of NASA’s Insight probe, which is set to investigate the interior of Mars and search for Mars-quakes. Closer to home, we’re celebrating 20 years of the International Space Station this month. In astrophysics research, Cardiff researchers, including Matt, were involved in a study of exploding
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Changing with the times

Posted on 1 November 2018 by Chris North

Chris North, Sarah Roberts and Mat Allen discuss the launch of Bepi Colombo, which is on its way to study the planet Mercury. Meanwhile, the Hayabusa 2 mission continues its exploration of the asteroid Ryugu, while the Hubble Space Telescope has experienced a problem with its gyros – we discuss what that means for the
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Vulcans, dust storms, and water on Mars

Posted on 27 September 2018 by Chris North

Chris North, Sarah Roberts and Mat Allen discuss a number of recent news stories. One of the latest planets to be discovered, “40 Eridani A a”, seems to be a lot like the fictional planet Vulcan, home to Spock in Star Trek. The RemoveDEBRIS mission has test-fired its net, and the Hyabusa 2 mission has
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Parking near the Sun

Posted on 30 August 2018 by Chris North

Earlier this month it was announced that an entrepreneur would like to launch an “artificial star” into orbit, adding to the mass of space junk. Chris North and Edward Gomez give their views on the matter, and how missions such as RemoveDEBRIS might help. Further afield, there’s more water on Mars – or in this
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Icy Moons and Ice Cubes

Posted on 25 July 2018 by Chris North

It was announced this month that Jupiter has got even more moons than previously thought, with its total haul now coming in at 79! We discuss why the new moons are odd. The Very Large Telescope in Chile also made a new discovery – a very young planet forming in the dusty disk of material
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Organics, asteroids and Nobel Prize winners

Posted on 28 June 2018 by Chris North

There were new results about organic compounds from two places in the Solar System this month: the planet Mars and the dwarf planet Ceres. We discuss what organic compounds are, and why their discovery doesn’t mean we’ve found life, but is still an interesting find. Further afield, the ALMA telescope has been finding planets orbiting
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In conversation with a Nobel Prize Winner

Posted on 26 June 2018 by Chris North

This is a bonus edition of Pythagorean Astronomy – the regular June 2018 episode will be published on Thursday 28th June. In May 2018 we welcomed to Cardiff a Nobel Prize winner: Professor Barry Barish, who was one of the scientists who founded the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, As regular listeners will remember, LIGO made the
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Missions to Mars and plumes from Europa

Posted on 31 May 2018 by Chris North

This month has seen missions large and small launch towards Mars, and new results from the Gaia satellite. What gets astronomers so excited about such datasets? Meanwhile, astronomers have been using machine learning to address a number of problems – we discuss a couple of examples which have been published recently, one about exoplanets and
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Exoplanet Missions and EWASS roundup

Posted on 25 April 2018 by Chris North

April saw Liverpool host the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science, from which there were a many new developments and discoveries, a few of which we discuss this month. The conference came just days after the NASA and ESA made the announcement that the largest astronomy project in recent times, the James Webb Space
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