Packing for a Solar Eclipse

·1 hr 9 min·6 clips

Jenny took over Mars Express from a UK dish, waiting 18 minutes for a signal from the Red Planet.

This episode of Awesome Astronomy, hosted by Paul and Jenny, focuses on the April 2024 total solar eclipse and recent space news. Paul shares his travel plans to view the eclipse from Texas, while Jenny recounts controlling the Mars Express spacecraft from the Goonhilly Earth Station in the UK. The hosts discuss NASA's proposed budget cuts for the 25-year-old Chandra X-ray telescope, which remains operational but faces potential defunding. They cover the Euclid space telescope's issue with ice formation on its optics and the successful initial efforts to clear it. The episode also examines the Hubble tension, where JWST confirmed Hubble Space Telescope measurements of the universe's expansion rate, deepening the mystery. Paul provides detailed advice for safely viewing the solar eclipse, emphasizing the dangers of looking at the sun outside totality. He explains the scientific value of eclipses for studying the sun's corona and Earth's ionosphere. The hosts note the potential visibility of Comet Pons-Brooks during totality and review historical eclipses, like the 1223 BCE Chinese record used to study Earth's rotational changes. They mention Hipparchus using an eclipse to estimate the Earth-Moon distance and the 1919 eclipse that helped validate general relativity. The sky guide for April highlights Jupiter and Mercury becoming difficult to observe, and the Lyrid meteor shower peaking under bright moonlight. The tone is conversational and enthusiastic, blending educational content with personal anecdotes and travel excitement. Listeners interested in solar eclipses, current space telescope missions, and amateur astronomy will enjoy this episode. Those seeking a highly structured or purely news-focused format might find the casual digressions less engaging.

As heard by us

A practical, conversational guide to April skies and safe eclipse viewing.

April 2024 gets a solid, mostly even-handed treatment here. The Starship joke is fine, but the real draw is the eclipse, and the episode knows it. It stays practical without getting dry, which is a harder balance than it looks.

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Why you'd press play

You want eclipse prep before the Moon blocks the Sun and the travel chaos starts, with April astronomy chatter in tow.

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