3 mins read
14 Dec 2019
The Skyentists 23: - A shadow of darkness
Skyentists: 23 - A shadow of darkness
Introduction
After a long hiatus because of a combination of professional and personal reasons, The Skyentists, Ángel López-Sánchez, and Kirsten Banks, are back. This is a kind of special episode as it is all focused in just one main topic: the amazing image of the "shadow" of the supermassive black hole in the center of giant elliptical galaxy M 87 (aka M87*, but it is not a star) obtained with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
Space News is this. The main topic is this. The feedback is this. And "What's Up!" is also this... well, for "What's Up!" it is actually the galaxy hosting the supermassive black hole, M 87, in the centre of the Virgo cluster.
They provide an overview of the properties of this fantastic image, give some insight into the radiotelescopes used by the EHT project, the techniques used to create the image, summarise the science and research papers released, and more! Please enjoy it and send your feedback for the next episode, which will be in ~1 month's time.
The Skyentists
Kirsten Banks is a proud Wiradjuri woman, astrophysicist and science communicator. She’s always had her eyes on the skies and loves to share her passion for space and astronomy. Kirsten jumps at almost every opportunity to share the wonders of the Universe with a wide range of people, from speaking to students at schools to sharing her love for space on national television programs such as ABC’s Q&A. In the years to come, Kirsten looks forward to completing a Ph.D. and becoming Dr. Kirsten Banks.
Dr. Ángel López-Sánchez is an astronomer and science communicator at the Australian Astronomical Optics and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Macquarie University. He studies how the gas is converted into stars in nearby galaxies and how this affects galaxy evolution. He also provides support for visiting astronomers to the Anglo-Australian Telescope. He is a globally-recognised science communicator, with visibility in Spanish and Australian printed, broadcast, and social media (one of the Top-100 most-followed astrophysicists on Twitter). His stunning astronomy timelapse videos have received 1/4 million views on YouTube and have been used by ABC (Australia), BBC (UK), TVE (Spain) and in Science Museums worldwide. He is very active in social media, his Twitter feed is @El_Lobo_Rayado.
This podcast is syndicated with permissions.
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