Today I have been interviewed in ABC radio about my research and my passion: astrophotography, as well as the increasing problem of light pollution. I want to thank Shelby Traynor for her time and for the interview.
This is part of my “Residency at Sydney Observatory”, that I was awarded in 2020 but, because of combinations of reasons, I couldn’t start till now. Stay tuned for more news about this!
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,
Screenshot of the article in MQ’s The Lighthouse.
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 !
Celebrating Australia’s National Science Week 2021, I’ve been interviewed for Macquarie University “The Lighthouse” about the science activities I do with my son, Luke, in the article “Stars in their eyes: how to get kids hooked on science“.
I’m honoured of being the host of the next “Southern Sky Livestream” at @sydneyobs@maasmuseum on Saturday, 20th Feb, 8:30pm Sydney local time. FREE online event open worldwide through @sydneyobs´s Facebook Channel. All the info following this link.
UPDATE24 Feb 2021: The link to the full livestream is available in the MAAS YouTube channel:
The sky is open to everybody. Thanks to the advance of the technology, amateur astronomers are obtaining outstanding images of the sky, even from their backyards, using DSLR cameras and small telescopes. In this webinar I provided a very broad introduction to the basics of Astrophotography, from the best settings for getting the images using DSLRs and telescopes to how to process the data.
Please, note that I couldn’t go in deep in almost any aspect of Astrophotography, just providing some very global ideas, enumerating the techniques, providing some key tricks (focusing, stacking images, use RAW) and show some of my best astrophotos.
I want to thank Brad Tucker (RSAA, ANU) for the invitation to give this webinar, also thanks for being the MC for this.
A/Prof. Ángel R. López-Sánchez 