... is finally online and available here. Sorry for the technical snafus during this program, but I was thankfully able to remove most of them before posting the radio show here. On this program, I discussed:
- News: A model for the Mid-InfraRed Instrument that will go on the James Webb Space Telescope is ready for testing, the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager which will go on NASA's upcoming Solar Dynamics Observatory now ready for final pre-launch testing, Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates together donate $30 million to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, Deep Impact spacecraft flies by Earth on New Year's Eve for last course correction, initial results released by the COROT satellite - which has measured very precisely the brightness of 12000 stars at the same time every second for over a year.
- Solar System: Detection of sunspot heralds the beginning of Solar Cycle 24, large cyclones discovered at both the North and South pole of Saturn, new estimate of the mass of Saturn's rings imply that they are old - though much debate continues on this subject.
- Milky Way: Planet discovered orbiting a very young star - TW Hydrae, dust disk surrounding star HR 4796A is rich in organic molecules believed to have been present on the Earth when our Solar System was very young, pulsar-like X-ray pulses discovered from a white dwarf for the first time.
- Extragalactic: Lack of gravitational waves detected from a short Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) which probably occurred in the nearby Andromeda Galaxy (M31) implies it was not caused by the merger of neutron stars or black holes - though is unlike to be the result of aliens as jokingly theorized by Gregg Easterbrook in his weekly ESPN column.
- Calendar
- Interview with Tom Rankin of the Mid-Hudson Astronomy Association on what to look for when purchasing an amateur telescope.
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