#57 - March 2017

The Discussion: Jeni’s been teaching the teachers of Wales how to
include astronomy in their classroom exercises as part of the
school curriculum. Ralph takes us on a historical tour of the
King’s Observatory in Richmond which was the original Prime
Meridian before it found its home in Greenwich. While Paul and
Jen have a date this month at the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham.


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


Hubble spies a comet breaking up around a distant white dwarf
star

A very special exoplanet discovery

The Event Horizon Telescope takes aim

Isolated extremophiles on Earth help with our search for
alien life

Is NASA accelerating its manned spaceflight programme?



The Interview: This month we welcome back the European Space
Agency’s project scientist on the Rosetta mission to Comet
Churyumov Gerasimenko, Matt Taylor, to discuss the end of the
mission, the data gathered, the discovery of Philae and what’s
next for ESA.


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’re tackling a question about the Allais Effect which claims to
have observed strange happenings during eclipses:


I need help understanding something called the Allais Effect.
This is a phenomenon that supposedly causes pendulums to get
funky during solar eclipses Matt Minter, Chicago, Illinois.