#96 - June 2020 Part 1

AWESOME ASTRONOMY

The Discussion:

• The wonderful generosity of amateur astronomers
• trying to get the name Pair Instability Supernova changed to your suggestions
• Jen’s talk for Café Scientific, which you can watch here
• Jeni talking about SpaceX’ historic crewed flight with the BBC
• History 101 and looking forward to Space Force on Netflix
• What beginners should and shouldn’t do to get started in stargazing

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

• The first galaxies seemed to form in about half the time we originally thought
• Finding the nearest stellar mass black hole to Earth
• How normal or unusual is our sun?
• A star orbiting a black hole like Mercury does to the sun
• More gravitational waves from a black hole merger

Main News story: Capturing a huge exoplanet – or a low mass star - forming in Auriga.

The Sky Guide: This month we’re taking a look at the constellation of Serpens with a guide to its history, how to find it, a couple of deep sky objects and a round up of the solar system views on offer in June.

Guide to the Electromagnetic Spectrum: In this series we take a look at the electromagnetic spectrum, what, it is, what is shows us and why it’s so important to astronomers. This month we explain the near infrared part of the spectrum and its relevance to astronomy.

Q&A: Is there life on Mars? From our good friend Dave in Australia.