Category Archives: Outreach

One of my favourites stories in my blog is “Seasons: Astronomy vs. Australia” that I published exactly 8 years ago, on the 1st September 2014. In this post I described how seasons are defined using Astronomy using equinoxes and solstices. And that I was very surprised to see that in Australia that is not what people think.

Indeed, you have probably heard me complaining for years about how Australia and New Zealand use the meteorological definition of season instead of using the astronomical definition, that is the one that is followed almost in the rest of the world.

Last week I raised the issue during a meeting at the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Macquarie University (MQ). And with that Angie Kelly, Editor of MQ’s The Lighthouse, put me in contact with science journalist Fran Molloy to prepare this article: “Think spring has officially sprung? Not so fast“, published yesterday, Aug 31st,

Interestingly, in the last 24 hours I’ve been contacted by several journalists across Australia, and being interviewed in radio. Everybody seems so surprised to know this!

That’s again an important reason of why researchers have to talk to people and to society, to let them have better understanding of the universe we are living in.

Update on 23 September: It was… interesting to get this interview out, as it triggered 5 or 6 radio interviews across Australia, the last one this very morning at radio ABC South Australia 🙂 But also in National SBS !