Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage

Recently, we took a look at GPS and the space science that makes it work. This time, we're going back to an era when navigators had nothing but their equipment and the stars to tell them where they were, even on the open ocean.Celestial navigation combined the sextant, almanac and chronometer to make a reliable navigation system that just needed one other thing, the sun and the stars... And some handy astronomical knowledge!  Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special content twitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

In 1978, NASA changed the rules around who could be selected as an astronaut. Civilian engineers, doctors and scientists could be selected to fly on the then brand new space shuttle. Meredith Bagby joins us to talk about this group, whose social backgrounds were as diverse as their professions. For the first time, the group included women and people of colour. There were triumphs with astronauts like Sally Ride and Greg Bluford, and tragedy when four of this talented group were lost in the Challenger disaster.This is a compelling insight from Meredith, who had access to five astronauts from this historic class.Find Meredith Bagby's book The New Guys here You can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.comFollow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTime

We all love GPS. The Global Positioning System helps us navigate across country and across town, and it also shows us where our rideshare car is, or how far away our food delivery driver is. Take a look at what space science makes it work, and why it can still provide your coordinates even if you're miles away from any phone or data signal or Wi-Fi.  Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special content twitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Friend of Cosmic Coffee Time and expert meteoriticist Greg Brennecka returns to talk about the breathtaking detection of a new meteorite impact on Mars. Greg tells us how the impact was detected, and then confirmed with detailed imagery from Mars orbit. What does this tell us about the subsurface geology of Mars, and what does it mean for astrobiology and the future exploration of Mars and beyond?It's a fascinating chat.Find Greg's book 'Impact' at Harper Collins hereFollow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Caroline Herschel is probably best known as the sister of William Herschel, the person credited with the discovery of planet Uranus, but there's a lot more to her than this. Caroline was a great astronomer in her own right, having made numerous discoveries using telescopes she helped make herself. She was also an outstanding musician and was the first female professional astronomer in the world, and was recognised with the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Caroline Herschel achieved all this despite the life long effects of a significant childhood illness.Quite an incredible person.  Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special content twitter.com/CosmicCoffTime You can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi! We'd love to hear from you. Email us! cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

For a long time we speculated that there might have been earthquakes on the moon, we call them moonquakes. How did we eventually detect them, and what makes them so different from earthquakes?Let's take a look and figure out what's going on there.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Expert meteoriticist and friend of Cosmic Coffee Time Greg Brennecka returns to talk about an exciting development in the meteorite impact scene, the Nadir crater. This newly discovered undersea structure off the coast of Guinea in western Africa is a proposed meteorite impact site. How was this discovered? when did the impact happen and how do we know if the impactor hit land or sea.It's a fascinating chat.Find Greg's book 'Impact' at Harper Collins here Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

NASA is planning to fly a drone in the atmosphere of the second largest natural satellite in the solar system, Saturn's Titan. What is that drone going to look like, how is it going to get there and what sort of science is it going to do when it gets there?It's an audacious project, and we take a look here.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Scientists have long held a theory that there was a black hole in the centre of our milky way galaxy. This was proved some years ago but we've finally got an image of it from real observational data. It's a fascinating story.Let's take a closer look.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Sunspots are darker and cooler areas on the surface of the sun. What causes them? How long do they last? And how do they fit into the 11 year cycle of solar activity?Let's take a look.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

You might have heard of pulsars. They're objects that emit regular pulses of radiation. But what are they, how do they form, and what makes them pulse?Let's take a look.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Galileo Galilei Made some incredible observations of the moon and was a real pioneer in calculating the height of some of the moon's geological features. In 1610 he turned the world of planetary astronomy on its head. He described the phases of Venus, came agonisingly close to discovering the true nature of Saturn's rings, and studied what became to be his namesake system, the four Galilean moons of Jupiter.Let's take a look.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twittertwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

As many as 80% of the stars we see in the night sky could be part of a binary system, two or more stars orbiting each other.So what it a binary system and how can we observe them? We know single stars like our own sun can have a system of planets, but what does that look like for stars in a binary system.Let's take a look.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Until the Apollo moon landings, our only samples of material from space were in the form of meteorites. These meteorites gave us an insight into the origins of our solar system, and might even have provided the complex organic molecules that allowed life to develop on our planet. In this episode we have an awesome chat with noted meteoriticist Greg Brennecka. We explore some of the history of meteorite research, the origins of life on Earth and the free samples of Mars rock that arrived on Earth in the form of meteorites. Greg also gives us a highlights package from his new book 'Impact, How Rocks From Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong'.Meteorites might have brought the ingredients of life to Earth, but they've caused some mass extinctions as well. "...the meteorites giveth, and the meteorites taketh away." This is a fascinating insight.Find Greg's book 'Impact' hereFollow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

From Mars rovers that were the size of a microwave oven back in the 90s, we now have the Perseverance rover that's the size of a car. And a helicopter. We take a look at the amazing Mars 2020 project that is taking Mars exploration to the next level.  It's collecting samples for future return to Earth and the Ingenuity helicopter is flying through the Martian atmosphere - carrying a small piece of cloth from the Wright brothers' plane.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

There's a strange gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a gap where Bode's law says we would expect the fifth planet to be. There's no planet there, but there's something else that's just as amazing, it's the asteroid belt. Let's take a look at the four main asteroids and see what makes up the other million identified objects. Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special contenttwitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Voyager 1 took the famous photograph the Pale Blue Dot. It's the furthest travelled machine ever made by people. At 23 billion km, it takes nearly a full day for its radio signals to reach us. Voyager 2 toured all of the gas planets in our solar system and remains the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune.But it gets even better. Both of these 1970s tech spacecraft are still operating in interstellar space and sending data back to earth.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special content twitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email us! cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Neptune. Something was perturbing Uranus' orbit, turns out it was the eighth planet, Neptune. Neptune was the first planet to have its existence and position calculated before it was discovered. Let's take a look at Neptune and its major moon Triton.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special content twitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email it to cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Uranus. Stop giggling, is the first planet to be discovered by telescope. The inner planets have always been known about, but Uranus need to wait until the telescope was invented.Let's take a closer look.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special content twitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email it to cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Jupiter is the first of the gas giant planets. Let's take a look at what makes these planets different from the inner planets. It has a fascinating set of moons that help make up the Jovian system, and we find out how it subtle set of planetary rings were discovered.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special content twitter.com/CosmicCoffTimeYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.Email it to cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com