Hi all. I thought I should let everyone know that the Jodcast is likely to be going through some difficult times soon as Nick's postdoc job is coming to an end. For his day job, Nick uses gravitational microlensing to detect extrasolar planets and was on the team that detected the 5.5 Earth mass planet back in 2006. Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to get any funding to continue his research despite all his attempts over the past few months.

As you might be aware, the Jodcast is run on less than a shoestring budget (quite literally we don't have enough money to buy a pair of shoe laces). It only continues through the time and dedication of those of us on the Jodcast team. Nick is a major part of that and, if he leaves, he is unlikely to be able to commit as much effort as he does now.

As we are just coming to terms with this sad news, we aren't sure what the result will be for the Jodcast. It is unlikely that the rest of us will be able to take over much of what Nick currently does, being stretched ourselves. At a minimum it is likely that we will have to axe the mid-month shows. Of course, nothing is certain but we'll try to keep you all informed if or when anything happens.

Hi,
I am Divya and I am new to this forum. I am glad to share my astronomical views with all you guyz and can also learn back from all you.
thanks.
www.imri.in

couple of days ago I got a e-mail from New Zealand, that place keeps cropping up!
anyway it had some nice pictures of the relative size of planets & stars.

I have put it into a PDF file and put it on a share web side it should last for 90days (from 03feb09) or 10 downloads, feel free to have a look if you are interested. If it gone by the time you see this drop a comment below and I will upload it again.

download link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/193351350/THIS_is_fascinating.pdf.html

Jod On

Comments/corrections/clarifications on the February 2009 show are welcome.

sooo when is the nxt big thing to look at. We had hale bopp a while back. but when is the next on Due? I was young and poor when Hale bopp was here so didnt fully see it.. i feel robbed lol

ok, forgive my post and i hope it doesn't seem like a dumb question (but we all know there is no such thing as a dumb question :-)) but.........

my understanding of einstiens general relativity is that space and time are dimensions and that the speed of time is the speed of light? this is affected by garavity near high mass objects and time slows down...

soooo if i was to go far out in the universe away from any galaxys would time go faster for me than it would on earth as i am far away from any form of gravity....

I'm not sure if this is the place to ask but...would it make any differnce to the astronomy world If Galileo couldn't see and some of the theories and observations didn't add up?

Dear Joders
Listening to the January extra pod cast Dr.Tim O`Brien was talking about how the Earth orbits the Sun, which made me think......... a dangerous thing.

Looking down on the solar system from above the North Pole, planets orbit around the sun anti clock wise, and apart from Venus and Neptune rotate on their axis anti clock wise.

Now with my limited knowledge, the laws of Kepler (or is it Newton) say that the closer you are to the Sun the faster your orbit speed. So as the rocks etc. that collided to form the planet, the bits closer to the sun move faster, and the rocks dust and ice further away from the sun move at a slower speed, which to me should make the planet rotate on its axis in a clock wise direction.

My question is, what law of physics have I forgotten, to make them spin anti clockwise?
Or more likely what have I got completely wrong ?

thanks for any help, Geoff aka EARTHUNIT

The show features a field report from the Herschel Museum by Colin and Ask an Astronomer. As ever, comments, corrections and clarifications are welcome.

A listener has noticed that the high and low bandwidth links (not the files or RSS feeds) were missing from more recent show notes. That's because I introduced a mistake in my website updating script when I started to add more details to the show notes. I've added back links to the alternate versions (along with file sizes so you can see how much you'll be downloading) in the left-hand column on the January show notes. Is this format OK? Let me know what you think.

Also, are there any ways that the show notes can be improved? Any suggestions that don't require too much extra effort on my part are welcome :-)

Happy New Year and welcome to the International Year of Astronomy 2009.

For those of you who have been following the story surrounding the Antikythera mechanism
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism), you might be interested in the working model created by former museum curator Michael Wright.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eUibFQKJqI

Backgrounder here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026861.600-archimedes-and-the-2000yearold-computer--.html

This episode is our Christmas present to you. Please add any corrections, clarifications, or suggestions here.

The front page looks a bit boring, but click on the links to get an idea of what it all looks like. from 12.5 light years from our sun to 14billion, its worth a look
http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/

The Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics is reporting finding from a 16 year study which shows a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

It reportedly has a central mass of 4 million solar masses.

More can be found at the following:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7774287.stm

http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2008/pr-46-08.html

The Jodcast has been covering the upcoming International Year of Astronomy (IYA) since the early discussions at the IAU's General Assembly back in August 2006. The IYA will commemorate 400 years since the first astronomical use of the telescope and it gives everyone the chance to share astronomy with the people around them. There will be plenty of events all over the world (check out www.astronomy2009.org) but if there are none near you it's your opportunity to organise some.

This discussion is for all things IYA-related.

The latest Jodcast video is the second piece recorded at the Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition 2008. Colin chats to a team presenting an exhibit on Gravitational waves, what they are, how they are created and how we can/will detect them.

Anyone else agree with me?

I am currently doing an article (for Slooh.com) about superclusters. Their behavior and structure make me wonder how big a role they play in the future course and structure of the universe. I would welcome comments on this. Here is a great link that maps the presence of the nearest superclusters http://tinyurl.com/5sd43z. Our Milky Way galaxy is part of the Local Group which resides in the center of the Virgo supercluster. Gads, how small we are!

It is December so that means the annual Jodcast pantomime with some of those recurring intro characters back for another outing.

As well as launching the forum on this show, I'm trying to make the show notes a little more coherent than they have been in the past by using links within sentences rather than as lists. You may have noticed that show notes pages now have a comment section at the bottom. This works by using comments from the appropriate discussion page in the forum.