Tag Archives: Equipment

Podcast #33: Jean-Pierre Grootaerd

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Welcome to the 33rd episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. This is a special release, featuring an interview that I recorded for ScopeX, the biggest astronomy and telescope event in South Africa. Jean-Pierre Grootaerd, through SSVI (which translates in English to Stars Shine for Everyone), has donated a pair of 90mm refracting telescopes to ScopeX, for us to hand over to whoever is best able to use them to advance science education in South Africa. Since he isn’t able to come … Continue reading →

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Podcast #24: Willie Koortz at ScopeX 2017

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Welcome to Episode 24 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, and a Happy New Year to each and every one of you.  This episode features the keynote lecture from ScopeX 2017, delivered by Willie Koortz.  Willie is an electronic technician working for the South African Astronomical Observatory, and is one of South African astronomy’s more interesting characters. ScopeX Lecture In his talk, he discusses South Africa’s role in the early days of the Space Age, looking at professional-amateur collaborative projects like … Continue reading →

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Podcast #10: Engineering SALT with Deon Bester

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Thanks for waiting!  Episode 10 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast has finally arrived, and this week we feature an interview with Deon Bester.  Deon is an engineer, who worked on the Southern African Large Telescope for many years, designing the control systems that keep the telescope working through the night. In our conversation we cover many topics.  Deon’s experience as a test engineer, working with Labview, led to him getting employed by the SALT project.  We discuss the teething troubles … Continue reading →

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Podcast #7: Interview with Niel Viljoen of Telescope Shop

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Hi and welcome to the 7th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast! This episode was dropped in the middle of the Easter weekend, so in deference to the season we’ve got a brief segment based on one of Urban Astronomer’s religiously themed articles: How is astronomy used to calculate the dates of religious festivals? And our feature item is another interview! This time around, I managed to get a hold of Neil Viljoen, who owns Telescope Shop, one of the … Continue reading →

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Podcast #6: Building telescopes

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Welcome to the 6th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. This is the second part of our interview with Chris Stewart, one of the names behind the Amateur Telescope Making class in Johannesburg, one of the organisers of the annual ScopeX telescope and astronomy expo, and director of the Astronomical Society of South Africa’s Instrumentation section. In this part, he talks about the pros and cons of different telescope designs, how to make them, how to select an eyepiece, and … Continue reading →

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