#71 - May 2018

The Discussion: Jeni, Paul & Ralph survived the wilds of the
Brecon Beacon’s AstroCamp festival of astronomy, Jeni gathers a
whole heap of astronomy interviews from the European Week of
Astronomy and Space Science, and we read out a couple of emails
requesting advice on amateur astronomy mounts, berating us for
our April Fools’ Twitter gag and asking for more content relevant
to the southern hemisphere.


The News: Rounding up the space and astronomy news this month we
have:


A galaxy containing no dark matter

NASA launches its new exoplanet hunting satellite

An exoplanet spotted using amateur astronomy equipment



The Interview: This month Jeni caught up with Dr Jane Greaves
& Dr Phil Cigan from Cardiff University to talk about their
work finding phosphorus in the Crab Nebula – and why phosphorus
is so important to life.


Q&A: Listeners’ questions via email, Facebook & Twitter
take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always
plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity. This month
we take a look at atmospheres & the habitability of
exoplanets:


I thought red-dwarf stars were typically much more volatile than
our g-type star and, as a result, planets in a red-dwarf system
would typically be bombarded by solar storms and radiation
stripping away their atmospheres and making them unlikely spots
for life as we know it to be found. So how is it possible to have
atmospheres around rocky planets in the Trappist 1 system? Dave
Schlaudt in Michigan, USA