Allen is an amateur astronomer, an IT professional, a podcaster, a father of five growing kids, a barely competent chess player, and the owner and publisher of the Urban Astronomer podcast and website. He has formerly served as Director of the Astrophotography and Citizen Science sections of the Astronomical Society of South Africa. You can find his personal social media feed on Mastodon!
Welcome to 541st Carnival of Space! This should technically have been a Christmas edition, but the thing about Christmas is that it’s usually a holiday, so it was a little hard to put together this edition of the carnival when the schedule dictated. I’m sorry to keep you all waiting, but on the other hand I’m not sorry to have spent the day at home with my family, so I guess my conscience is clean! As it happens, though, it … Continue reading →
Welcome to episode 23 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast! This week we feature the third in our series of public lectures given at ScopeX earlier this year, which was presented by Phila Sibandze of the South African National Space Agency (SANSA). Phila Sibandze Phila works for SANSA as an earth observation scientist, and his talk was titled “A journey through the life of a satellite”. In it he walked us through the process of designing, building, launching and operating a satellite, … Continue reading →
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Welcome to episode 22 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. We’re in the middle of a series of public lectures given by various speakers at ScopeX, earlier this year, but this episode is a break from all that. Some time ago, I was listening to Paul Sutter’s excellent “Ask A Spaceman” podcast and he did an episode on what it takes to become an astrophysicist like him. Since one of the reasons the Urban Astronomer podcast exists is to encourage young … Continue reading →
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Welcome to episode 21 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast! This week we feature the second in our series of ScopeX lectures, and plug an exciting new citizen science project. Next week we’ll be bringing you the third lecture in the series, although we might sneak in a special guest episode before then! Lee Annamalai Lee spoke in his capacity at the CSIR (Center for Scientific and Industrial Research), where he manages their Earth Observation ICT systems group. He spoke about … Continue reading →
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Welcome to the 20th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, featuring a public talk given by Edwin le Grange at ScopeX 2017. This episode has been a long time coming, because I’m doing something new that I’ve never done before and it’s taken me way longer to figure out that I’d really anticipated, but I finally got there, we’re here, and your patience is about to be rewarded. As you’ll know from previous episodes, the annual ScopeX telescope and astronomy … Continue reading →
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