The 24 hour downtime wasn’t planned. A loss of some config files on Sunday evening at my webshost (IXwebhost) took much longer to recover than I had expected. Infact I am still waiting for them to contact me! I now know much more about cgi-bin folder, .htaccess file and hsphere than is healthy. Thanks to regular automated backups that no data was lost. Nice to be back.
Episode10:Astronomy and Space Broadcasters
The veteran BBC aerospace correspondent Reg Turnill recalls some of the key moments that he personally covered during the height of the space race. Reg has recorded his eye witness account in his book The Moonlandings.
Chris Lintott one of the authors of Bang! and a co-presenters on Sky at Night far too young to have experienced the Apollo program personally, looks forward to the next manned mission to the moon. You have probably heard of Galaxy Zoo but did you know Galaxy Zoo 2 is in the pipeline too.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (11.8MB) | Embed
Episode9:Early Astronomers
About 20 years after Galileo used the telescope for astronomy, William Crabtree and Jeremiah Horrocks used it to observe a transit of Venus in 1639. Carl Barry and Lilian Fletcher researched documented this unique event. If you missed it a 19mb video here.
Former executive Paul Allen (Allen Telescope Array) from Microsoft and Wayne Rosing (LSST Observatory) from Google are modern examples of private investors in space research.
Emerging from the the industrial revolution in the 19th century Lancashire were two similar individuals who contributed to making large mirrors and large telescopes. James Naysmith and William Lassell.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (16.0MB) | Embed
A quick Update
Its been a busy week – Space conference and Buzz Aldrin’s visit – more in coming episodes. Episode 9 should have gone out yesterday. I’m late. You may not be aware but Astrotalkuk uses WordPress (WP). Version 2.5 was released this weekend. So over the next few days I hope to upload Episode 9, upgrade to WP 2.5 and fix the RSS link so Itunes (or other podcast reader) will pick up each episode automatically.