#52 - October 2016

The Discussion: If you enjoy our attention to scripting, our
professional quality audio and our stringent editing, then you’re
bang out of luck! This show comes from our AstroCamp stargazing
event in Wales and we’re making it up as we go along.


This month we take you through the delights of dark sky
stargazing among friends, Jeni becomes a paid scientist and we
get the reactions of the gang as we reveal signed movie poster
mock ups that we’re emailing to listeners.


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


Gravity Spy – hunt for gravitational waves in this new
citizen science project

More details on NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission

The first data from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft wows us all



The Interview: This month we welcome back writer, broadcaster and
researcher Dr Chris North from Cardiff University to discuss
Gravitational Waves: what this means for the future of
professional astronomy and what we can expect from this new field
of astronomy in the future.


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 exoplanet detections with a back
of the envelope calculation – and Jeni’s making Ralph do the
maths. It’s fair to say, he’s not happy about it:


A big hello from your Antipodean fan from Melbourne to all
Martian superior beings in the UK (or something like that)…
Whilst listening to your eagerly awaited last instalment of the
show I was intrigued by Jeni's (who I believe has been to
Australia…) exoplanet research. I am familiar with the concept of
observing transits and teasing the dip of brightness out of the
data flood. So far so good. That means that we, Earth and Mars of
course have to be in the same plane in order to be able to get an
observable transit. Is there any data or knowledge if there is a
general orientation of planetary systems in relation to us or the
galactic plane? Meaning if we know that can we extrapolate
somehow how many planets are really out there as we obviously can
only observe a fraction of the existing systems? Bit hard to
explain but with your superior minds I am sure you will get the
idea… :)? Clem Unger, Melbourne, Australia.