Tag Archives: 2019

Podcast “Astronomía para Principiantes” in SBS radio Australia in Spanish

Posted on April 5, 2019 | 1 comment

Since the beginning of 2016 I collaborate with  SBS Radio Australia en español (SBS Radio Australia in Spanish) with a section about Astronomy. The idea came from the journalist Anna Sagristà who, after interviewing me for the section “Latinos in Australia” (*), invited me to have an informal conversation of ten minutes about some Astronomy facts of interesting news.

That was the birth of “Astronomía para Principiantes” (Astronomy for Beginners), a monthly section on SBS Radio Australia in Spanish, that I also upload as a podcast in iVoox.

It is redundant to say that this podcast is in Spanish, but it is conducted in Australia, and that is why I think it is convenient I talk about it in this blog, as one of the many science communication activities I do in this country.

With the return of Anna to Spain in mid-2016, it is my friend the journalist Rocío Otoya who has been conducting the section.

Astronomy for Beginners is usually released on the last Sunday of every month.
The most recent episode (number 31) was aired on Sunday, 31st March 2019 and it was dedicated to the Milky Way and its “weight”. However, on my iVoox channel I have uploaded so far only to Episode 23 (ApP23: The Blue Blood Supermoon, January 28, 2018). I’ll be uploading the rest of episodes during the next weeks.

Besides publicizing this science communication podcast in Australia, I’m compiling here the list with all the episodes of “Astronomía para Principiantes” that are published in iVoox:

I added one of the “special episodes” on the first detection of gravitational waves, I should upload the other two that we recorded (one on “Estrella Cervantes” and the aforementioned interview on the SBS section “Latinos in Australia”).

I will update this entry when I publish new episodes.

I hope you like it! Some English-speakers have told me they use it for practicing their Spanish, which is always a good thing!

(*) I am not responsible for the title given to this interview …

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Posted in Outreach

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Visiting the Macarthur Astronomical Society

Posted on March 17, 2019 | 1 comment

Yesterday I was visiting my friends at the Macarthur Astronomical Society (MAS), which is based in Campbelltown, at the south of Sydney. I have had the privilege of visiting them several times in the last years, where I talked about different aspects of Astronomy, from the “Light of the Universe” to the “Colour of the galaxies” till “Amateur Spectroscopy“.

This time I was presenting my very own research, the Hi-KIDS project (the “HI KOALA IFS Dwarf galaxy Survey“, that I have to eventually publicize here too.

My talk was entitled “Dissecting Dwarf Galaxies with The AAT“. The abstract  was:

Dwarf galaxies provide fundamental clues about galaxy origin and evolution. Many of them have irregular shapes and have processed little their gas, although they possess many old stars born billions of years ago. Still, many dwarf galaxies are very gas-rich and are currently forming stars, sometimes in a spectacular way. With these new observations using the powerful KOALA+AAOmega instruments at the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope we are “dissecting” these dwarf galaxies to characterize the properties of the gas and the stars within them. Combining these new data with deep radio observations at 21 cm of the diffuse, cold gas within and surrounding these dwarf galaxies we will get a better understanding of the local and global star-formation processes in galaxies, the feedback of the newborn stars into the galaxies, the importance of inflows and outflows of gas, and the chemical evolution of nearby dwarf galaxies.

You can find some photos of the talk in the Facebook webpage of the Macarthur Astronomical Society.

I have to say that this is a very welcome audience and that I have always enjoyed a lot the visit to MAS. They have an invited speaker almost every month, getting many Australian (and overseas) astrophysicists to talk to them. You can have a look to the full list in the MAS webpage.

Thanks for having me and see you in another astronomy event or talk soon!

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Posted in Outreach

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Luke and the Moon

Posted on February 20, 2019 | 3 comments

During the last few months my 6 years old son, Luke, and me have been taking photos of the Moon using my telescope (a Skywatcher Black Diamond 80, f=600mm) and my CANON 5D Mark III camera. We are trying to get all phases of a full lunation of the Moon compiled in ~28 images.

I’ve been compiling some of those images in a Twitter thread, let me include here some of these images:

I hope that we can show you the result of this work soon! I’m so happy Luke is showing that enthusiasm taking the photos and helping me to combine the data. That seems a very nice project for kids!

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Posted in Amateur, Astrophotography, Moon, Observation, Outreach, Personal, Solar System

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