I have the cover feature of July’s Sky At Night Magazine with an article entitled ‘Return to the Moon’, about NASA’s Constellation programme and the plans to send astronauts back to the Moon. In the feature I look at the how the programme is progressing, the various stages in a Constellation lunar mission, as well as how some of the key bits of new/proposed hardware and rocket technology compare to their counterparts of the Apollo era. Meanwhile if you want to look back on Apollo’s great achievements, what better place to start than the BBC’s own archive of footage about the first manned Moon missions.
Archive for the 'media' Category
New S@N Magazine article: ‘Return to the Moon’
Published Thursday, 25 June, 2009 media Leave a CommentTags: Constellation programme, NASA, Sky At Night Magazine
Part II of the S@N Magazine vodcast from JENAM…
Published Thursday, 4 June, 2009 media Leave a CommentTags: JENAM, Sky At Night Magazine
…is now online. In this last episode of the special report from the 2009 Joint European Astronomy Meeting, we meet the prototype rover model for the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission.
New asteroid article in Sky At Night Magazine
Published Friday, 22 May, 2009 media , science writing Leave a CommentTags: asteroids, Sky At Night Magazine
I have a new article in Sky At Night Magazine this month, about asteroids, addressing a topic that I’ve often wondered about and one I’ve heard asked about quite a lot recently (especially after things like this happen) — “why do we miss some spacerocks and why do we spot some of them so late?”. It turns out there are a few reasons, and thankfully there are several things that are being done about it. If you want to get the whole story though you’ll have to see pages 39-43 of the June issue.
Special S@N vodcast from the JENAM 2009
Published Monday, 11 May, 2009 media Leave a CommentTags: E-ELT, ESO, JENAM, vodcast
Video credit: Sky At Night Magazine. Click ‘HD’ for high quality version.
A few of us from Sky At Night Magazine visited the 2009 Joint European National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Hertfordshire, in late April. Whilst there we filmed two special episodes of the magazine’s vodcast, the first of which (an extended 10 minute episode) has just been released. In it we talk to Prof Michel Mayor, who tells us about a new extrasolar planet he and his colleagues recently discovered, and we chat with Prof Bruno Liebundgut from ESO about the European Extremely Large Telescope. Part 2 will be along next month with a special interview with another one of the JENAM’s wheely interesting delegates!
Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks to Google
Published Thursday, 16 April, 2009 astronomy outreach , media 1 CommentTags: Neil deGrasse Tyson
In February the folks at Google invited astrophysicist Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson to their New York offices to speak about his latest book The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet. Tyson is the Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and a wonderfully engaging and humorous public speaker. Last week Google uploaded the video of his talk, which I’ve embedded below.
In the video Tyson explores the historical context of Pluto’s re-classification, the controversy surrounding the ‘demotion’ of Pluto and what it means to be a planet today. The Q&As after, not necessarily relating to the book, are interesting too; his description of the smoothness of the Earth for example, towards the end of the video, is just brilliant.
Whatever your views on Pluto’s status today, Tyson’s ability to eloquently and enthusiastically communicate science, in particular astronomy, is something we can all really enjoy.
