In today's episode of The Skyentists, astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez talk about exotic stellar objects: white dwarf stars, neutron stars, pulsars, magnetars, and stellar black holes! They summarise what are the nature and origin of each of these exotic little beasts as well as discuss their differences. For "Space News", Kirsten …

After a long break, The Skyentists, astronomers Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks, are back! We start our Season 4 with a special episode with two main topics: the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn happening on Monday 21st of December 2020 (that is actually our "What's up!") and summarising some of the most important astronomy news that h…

038 - Always was, always will beIn today's episode of The Skyentists, astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez talk about Australian Aboriginal Astronomy. Kirsten provides a general overview of the importance that Astronomy has always had on Earth's longest-living culture: Australian Aboriginal people. In particular, she discusses how Abor…

For this episode The Skyentists, astronomers Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks, bring not 2 but 9 "Space News" (actually, 10 including the last one briefly mentioned at the end of the episode). Of course, some of them are (unfortunately) just mentioned, others will be explored deeper in future episodes. Kirsten discusses the news about the disc…

After a long hiatus consequence of the very unusual times we all are living, The Skyentists, astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez, are back to action. In addition to provide some quick comments about how their work and science communication activities have been affected during the last couple of months they also talk about recent astro…

In this episode of The Skyentists astronomers Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks talk about the basics of astrophotography: what is the equipment you need for getting stunning photos of the sky, what other tricks do you have to use, and what you should consider if you want to start doing astrophotography. It is not the same taking photos of the …

That is the literal meaning of "Globular Clusters", which is the main topic of this episode of The Skyentists. Astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez describe the main properties of globular clusters and why they should not be confused with open clusters or with dwarf elliptical galaxies. Some interesting curiosities about them are also …

In this special episode of The Skyentists astronomers Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks celebrate the "International Day of Women and Girls in Science". They provide their own thoughts about why having women in Science is important and why society (particularly girls) needs role models for this. Prominent women in Science, like Marie Curie, Hen…

In this episode of The Skyentists astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez provide an overview of the many astronomical achievements obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope (NASA), which mission is ending today, 30th January 2020. This small space telescope (its main mirror has a size of only 85 cm!) has observed the Universe in infrared…

Despite what you might have read or heard during the last weeks, Betelgeuse is not going to explode as a supernova... yet... For explaining this in a bit more detail our Skyentists, astronomers Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks, provide an overview of what we know about stellar evolution. Stars are born from cold clumps in molecular clouds. The…

Happy New Year! In this episode our Skyentists, astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez, provide a summary of the main celestial events during 2020... including some infamous "Supermoons", lunar and solar eclipses, planets ephemeris, and meteor showers. For "Space News" Kirsten updates about the very first interstellar comet 2I/Borisov an…

Australia, NSW, and Sydney are on fire! During the last month we are suffering the most dramatic bushfires in more than a decade. They are releasing plenty of smoke that is extremely dangerous for our health, and indeed Sydney has been the city with the most polluted air in the world these days. Is all of this a consequence of climate change? In th…

And we are back for Season 3! For this episode of The Skyentists astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez first provide a very broad summary of our Season 2. This is the "Space News!" section for this episode, as in the last few months there have been some very interesting news that can be connected with the topics we discussed in Season 2…

The Universe is Big, so Cosmology, that is the branch of Astronomy that studies the big picture of the Universe (creation, evolution and fate of the Cosmos, as well as of the stuff it contains) is also BIG. For this episode our Skyentists, Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks, try to provide a general overview of the Cosmology: the discovery of th…

In this episode of The Skyentists astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez talk about artificial satellites: what are they, where are they, how many are there, what they usually do, and more. Of course the reason of talking about satellites is discussing Space X Starlink satellite constellation, as plenty of conversations have happened in …

This a very special episode as our Skyentists, Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks, participated as MCs in one of the Sydney venues of the international science communication festival "Pint of Science". They actually recorded the Astronomy event "Enter the Dead Star!" on Wednesday 22nd May using... wait for it... a mobile phone! Here we present a…

For this episode of The Skyentists, astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez talk about books, more precisely about astro-books, providing a list of 13 interesting books to learn and enjoy Astronomy and Space Science. This topic was recently suggested as a feedback question, so we are very pleased to answer it in a full episode. Besides th…

After a long hiatus because of a combination of professional and personal reasons, The Skyentists, Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks, are back. This is a kind of special episode as it is all focused in just one main topic: the amazing image of the "shadow" of the super massive black hole in the center of giant elliptical galaxy M 87 (aka M87*, …

In this episode of The Skyentists, Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez talk about women in astronomy and, in particular, the fundamental and still not well known work that a group of women, the "Harvard Computers", made between late 19th Century and early 20th Century. They provide an overview and summary of the achievements that Williamina Flemi…

In this episode our Skyentists, Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks, describe NASA's New Horizons spacecraft: the first mission to the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt, in the outskirts of our Solar System. They summarize the main objectives of the mission, the instruments on board of New Horizons, and the results that this small spaceship has pr…

This episode of "The Skyentists" brings the very first guest to the show. We invited our guest to describe the project they are conducting regarding observing the Moon... Well, our guest actually doesn't say too much at the end, but our Skyentists, Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez, can't stop talking. They provide some general overview of what…

For the first episode of The Skyentists in 2019 astronomers Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks jump into the exciting field of finding planets around other stars. They provide a summary of the observational techniques used by astronomers to discover exoplanets, emphasizing the two main methods: the transit (or mini-eclipses) method and the radia…

In this episode our Skyentists, astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez, recommend some good Apps for Astronomy as well as give some few advises if you are considering getting your first amateur telescope. Indeed, Kirsten is very excited (although a bit sleepy) as she just bought a very new telescope and she was able to see comet 46P/Wirt…

This is another long (59 minutes!) episode of The Skyentists, where astronomers Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks talk about Mars with the excuse of the successful landing of NASA's InSight mission. But, how easy is landing on Mars? Actually, not at all, and to show this they play the game "landing on Mars" enumerating the failure or success of…

In this episode our Skyentists, astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez, talk about comets and meteor showers. Ángel tells some few "old stories" about enjoying the big comets of 1996 (Hyakutake), 1997 (Hale-Bopp) and 2007 (McNaught), as well as the very amazing meteor shower of the Leonids in 1999. Kirsten, however, is sad because she ha…