Audio Guide to the Galaxy

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Audio Guide to the Galaxy is back for season 2!

In the final episode for season 2, we’re taking a look at the two largest planets in our solar system. Jupiter and Saturn just happen to be rising in the east just after sunset for the next few weeks – and that gives us the chance to take explore just how much they’ve shaped our solar system’s story. You can listen to this episode at 7:30pm, any night for the 17 July – 31 July.

Keep an eye out for new episodes every Saturday night at 7.30pm.

Past Episodes

You can still listen to past episodes of our podcast as some elements may be visible in the night sky all year round.

Are you ready to get Sirius about space? In this week’s stargazing session, join Leon as we look for the brightest star system in our night sky.

What’s really interesting is that Sirius is not just one star, it is an example of a binary star system. The stars in the Sirius system orbit each other every 50 years – but they couldn’t be more different. What makes it so bright?
Then we look at the constellation that Sirius is part of: Canis Major. Canis for dog and major meaning big. So we’ll be looking at ‘the big dog in the sky’.

It’s looking to be a cloudy weekend, but don’t worry, this guide to the galaxy will be relevant for the next few weeks.

In this week’s stargazing session, join Leon from the Scitech Planetarium to explore our beautiful Moon.

For this weekend, it’s in its waxing gibbous phase – gibbous means its is more than half way lit up, and waxing means it is getting brighter. So tomorrow night more of the moon will be lit up, and the next night even more, until we will have a full moon on Thursday 7 May.

This week, we’re heading out a little earlier to catch the planet Mercury as the Sun sets in the West, then sticking around to watch the constellation Scorpius rise in the East. We’ll also hear some stories about each – despite being on opposite sides of the sky right now, these two phenomena have more in common than you might think…

In this week’s Audio Guide to the Galaxy, we’re looking at the Sun. Not directly at it though!

Join Leon to learn about a syzygy, the winter solstice and why we see eclipses. We’ll also have a go at spotting the International Space Station as it flies overhead – visit the Scitech Facebook Page for a sky map showing where to look. You’ll need to head outside at 5pm on Sunday June 21 to spot the sunset and the station.

It’s breakfast time! This week we’re looking out through a cosmic pancake, and finding a teapot with a black hole on its spout.

You can listen to this episode at 7pm, on any day over the next week or so. The objects we’re looking at this week are especially impressive if you’re outside the city – so if you’re headed out camping soon, make sure you’ve got this episode downloaded and ready to go.

This week we have a special school holiday edition of the Audio Guide to the Galaxy called ‘Walking Guide to the Solar System’. This episode is intended to be listened to while you go for a walk or get out and about outside. We’re going to start at the Sun and walk all the way to Mars – and beyond – into the asteroid belt. Yes really! Each step you take will be the equivalent of travelling at 175,000 km per second. See how far you can go!

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