The Jodcast

Tick, tick, tick. Forty years on from the first observations of pulsating neutron stars we talk to the discoverer of pulsars, Jocelyn Bell-Burnell. She tells us about her PhD and how an 'annoying bit of scruff' turned into a fascinating area of research. We also hear about the Jodrell Bank First Move Literary Festival happening in June. As always, we have the latest news with Megan and Ian tells us what we can see in the night sky from the northern hemisphere.

This is the first of our new mid-month shows. First we get some breaking news from the Hubble Space Telescope, we listen to the second half of our interview with Carole Mundell about active galactic nuclei and supermassive black holes, and we put your questions to Tim in the Ask an Astronomer segment. For the extra shows we won't be having the normal format intros and outros but we still won't take them too seriously. As a start we work out how many rice crispies you could fit in the 76m diameter Lovell Telescope. Can you work it out?

May 2007 is when everything changes. Well, not quite everything. The Jodcast may have gone twice-monthly, but we remain in roughly the same cheesy format as before. This month we've gone international with Nick joining us from New Zealand and Tim from Chile. In our main interview, Nick chats with Carole Mundell about the Liverpool Telescope and how it is being used to observe hugely energetic gamma-ray bursts. Later we find out what Tim is doing with the New Technologies Telescope at La Silla in Chile. As usual we get the latest astronomy news from Megan and Ian tells us what we can see in the northern skies during May. Now, we must go and sort out our containment fields as they seem to be on the blink. It's probably something to do with phase variances in the deflector grid.

We're on the road in Preston at the UK's National Astronomy Meeting. Our first special show describes what NAM is and what happened on the first day. In our second show we catch up with Chris Wareing who announced results about the wakes left by dying sun-like stars as they pass through the interstellar medium. On the third day David Boyce (University of Leicester) and Paul Steele (University of Leicester) join us to chat about the various sessions that took place. We find out about the organisation of the conference from Dr Stewart Eyres, chat to Dr Monica Grady and find out about the International Heliophysical Year from Dr Lucie Green. On day four Neil Phillips (University of Edinburgh) joins us in our attempt to coherently link interviews about the dangers of solar ejections to astronauts, the possibility of making force-fields to protect them, the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission, the Herschel Mission, the fiftieth anniversary of the Sky At Night and exoplanets. The last day of the NAM sees us talking to Dr Chris Davis about the STEREO mission, Dr Helen Walker about Mars Express and Prof Mike Bode about RS Ophiuchi.

Aliens have landed at Stonehenge! Actually they haven't, and we aren't serious about horoscopes either, but we nearly had you fooled there. Luckily, the rest of our April show has real astronomy in it. We find out some more about gravitational wave detectors and we talk about quasars and black holes. As always we have the news with Megan, get Tim to answer your questions, get a roundup of other podcasts from Stuart and Ian tells us what we can see in the night sky.

This month we took our brand new recording kit to Astronomy Now's Astrofest 2007 to talk to some of the exhibitors and visitors. Back at base, Nick catches up with Ciska Markwick-Kemper to talk about dust in space. As always we ask Tim your questions, get the latest astronomy news from Megan, Stuart gives us a round up of other astronomy podcasts and Ian tells us what we can see in the night sky during March. We also get an alert about a total lunar eclipse taking place on 3rd March 2007 (check out the links in the show notes for more details).

This month we look back to the past, at the present and into the future; you'd almost think we stole the plot from A Christmas Carol. Ian Morison talks to Sir Bernard Lovell about the origins of Jodrell Bank Observatory. We catch up with Chris Davis of the spacePod podcast to get the latest news on NASA's STEREO mission. Stuart talks to David Boyce about the possibility of ultraviolet astronomy from the Moon and of course we ask Tim your questions, get the news from Megan and Ian tells us what we can see in the night sky during February.

Happy New Year and welcome to the first Jodcast of 2007. We start, as always, with a round up of the past month in astronomy. We talk to Martin Hardcastle about active galactic nuclei and radio galaxies (see the fantastic cover art by Aurore Simonnet for an idea of what they look like). We also gate-crashed a recent meeting about the proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA) to find out what it is as well as finding out about the two proposed sites. We have no ask an astronomer this month but Ian is here to tell us what we can see in January's night sky. We also get a round up of interesting astronomy podcasts and set our first ever competition. You'll have to listen to find out what the question is!

The last Jodcast of 2006 has arrived with Dave, Nick and Stuart all presenting via the wonders of the Internet. We start, as always, with a round up of the past month in astronomy which can now be downloaded in six languages if you feel like practicing your Chinese, English, Farsi, French, Hindi or Portugeuse! We talk to Cormac Purcell about the microwave equivalent of lasers (masers) that are found in space and discover what they can tell us about the evolution of stars. In Ask an Astronomer, Tim explains why the Moon often appears to be larger when near the horizon and Ian tells us what we can see in December's night sky. As we were feeling festive this month, we suggest some great, free, astronomy software (Stellarium, Google Earth and Celestia) that nobody should be without. We've also replaced our usual sci-fi style intro/outro with a Jodcast pantomime. It's certainly a long way from Kansas...

We have another packed show for you this month. Megan tells us the latest news in astronomy including exciting news about the STEREO mission, the Nobel Prize for physics 2006, ice on the Moon, extrasolar planets, damage to the Faulkes Telescopes, the re-opening of Mt Stromlo and the future of the Hubble Space Telescope. Nick and Stuart talk to Robert Nemiroff about the great internet resource that is astronomy picture of the day. We find out about an exciting ESA/NASA mission that will attempt to detect waves in space-time (gravitational waves) using three spacecraft named LISA. We also get a spooky edition of Ask an Astronomer where Tim O'Brien tells Nick about the variable star Algol and Ian Morison tells us what we can see in the November night sky.