Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage

Send us Fan MailBeyond our Solar System there’s an incredible variety of alien worlds, many unlike anything we see in our own planetary neighbourhood. From rocky Super-Earths and Mini-Neptunes to enormous Hot Jupiters, molten lava planets and rogue worlds drifting through space without a star, exoplanets challenge our ideas about what a planet can be. We explore the remarkable diversity of planets orbiting distant stars, how astronomers classify them, and what their characteristics reveal about planetary formation and evolution. Could some of these strange worlds also hold the conditions needed for life? Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special contentX.com/CosmicCoffTimeEmail us! [email protected] can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.

Send us Fan MailNASA has launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, opening a new chapter in our exploration of the universe. We discover who Nancy Grace Roman was, and the remarkable career that led her to become one of NASA’s most influential astronomers. We follow Roman’s spectacular launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy and its journey towards the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point. We explore how this powerful infrared observatory will survey enormous areas of sky, investigate dark energy and dark matter, discover thousands of exoplanets, and search for clues that could fundamentally change our understanding of the universe.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special contentX.com/CosmicCoffTimeEmail us! [email protected] can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.

Send us Fan MailThe James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful space telescope ever built, designed to look deeper into the universe and further back in time than ever before. Let's check out the technology behind Webb, from its enormous 6.5-metre mirror and infrared vision to its extraordinary location in space. We'll see some of Webb’s remarkable discoveries, including ancient galaxies, newborn stars and the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. Most importantly, Webb is helping answer some of astronomy’s biggest questions: how the universe began, how galaxies and planetary systems formed, and whether the ingredients for life are common throughout the cosmos.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special contentX.com/CosmicCoffTimeEmail us! [email protected] can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.

Send us Fan MailThere are a few really interesting coincidences in space science. From Earth, the sun and moon appear the same size, that’s super unlikely. Earth seems to made for us, well, if it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here have the discussion I guess. And our lifetimes overlap with the Apollo Moonwalkers, the first humans to set foot on another world. The chances of that were incredibly slim. These coincidences don’t have any special meaning, in fact it would be weird if there weren’t a few interesting coincidences. Just for a few minutes, let’s set aside the billions of things that aren’t coincidences, and look at some amazing things that are! Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special contentX.com/CosmicCoffTimeEmail us! [email protected] can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.

Send us Fan MailNASA has announced the four astronauts who will fly Artemis III, the first crew assigned to test the lunar landing hardware in Earth orbit. They’ll test the rendezvous, docking and spacecraft systems that future lunar landings will depend on. In this episode, we take a closer look at the newly announced crew, why these astronauts were chosen, what Artemis III will actually accomplish, and why the announcement has already sparked debate about the future of human space exploration.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special contentX.com/CosmicCoffTimeEmail us! [email protected] can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.

Send us Fan Mail66 million years ago, an asteroid smashed into Earth and caused a mass extinction, including nearly all of the dinosaurs.What would we do if another extinction level asteroid was heading to Earth? The good news is we’re monitoring the skies to identify them early. And there are some incredible strategies for managing high risk objects, and we look at a dramatic test from 2022.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special contentX.com/CosmicCoffTimeEmail us! [email protected] can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.

Send us Fan MailParticle physicist and author Dr. Sarah Alam Malik stops by for an expansive conversation about astronomy, the history of scientific discovery, and our endless fascination with the night sky. In her new book, A Brief History of the Universe, And Our Place in It, Dr. Sarah explores how our understanding of the cosmos has evolved from ancient observers tracking the stars, through the revolutionary ideas of Copernicus and Newton, to modern discoveries about dark matter and the origins of the universe itself.Why do humans feel compelled to explore? What does it mean to confront the scale of the universe, and how can astronomy change the way we see ourselves here on Earth. Dr. Sarah also reflects on her own path into physics, the moments of awe that still stay with her, and the discoveries she hopes for in the coming decades.This is a conversation about curiosity, perspective, and the incredible human need to understand where we came from, and what the distant future of the universe might hold.Check out A Brief History of the Universe at Harper Collins (USA)Check out A Brief History of the Universe at Simon & Schuster (UK)Check out A Brief History of the Universe at Simon & Schuster (Australia)sarahalammalik.comEmail us! [email protected] can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.

Send us Fan MailArtemis 2 was was a breathtaking moment for us all. We were mesmerised by the four astronauts and the images they sent back to Earth. But so much lies ahead, and that’s the really exciting part. Artemis 3 will orbit the Earth and try out some of the equipment and manoeuvres that we just can’t test on Earth.Artemis 4 will be truly amazing. That’s the mission that’s going to take people back to the surface of the Moon for the first time since 1972.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special contentX.com/CosmicCoffTimeEmail us! [email protected] can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.

Send us Fan MailChris Stockdale is an award winning astronomer in the Gippsland area of Australia. His contribution to NASA's exoplanet research earned him the Berenice and Arthur Page Medal from the Astronomical Society of Australia. And he's an amateur. Chris uses an observatory in his own backyard to monitor candidate stars from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and studies their brightness over time. If the light dims by as little as half a percent, he's found another exoplanet, a planet that orbits a star in another part of the galaxy.His exoplanet data also helps guide the James Webb Space Telescope, 1.5million km away in solar orbit. Incredible!We had a chat with him about his observatory, NASA's TESS program, and some of the most fascinating planets in the solar system

Send us Fan MailWe instinctively think of planets as rocky or gaseous bodies orbiting a star like our sun, with sunrise, sunset, heating and maybe even seasons. But what if a planet didn't orbit a light source? What if it just floated through space vaguely orbiting the centre of the galaxy, but tugged this way and that way by nearby stars and stellar systems. These are rogue planets. No sunrise, no sunset, no heat from an outside source. Just starlight and blackness as it wandered aimlessly through lonely interstellar space. And they just might be the most common type of planet in our galaxy.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special contentX.com/CosmicCoffTimeEmail us! [email protected] can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.