Sound of Astronomy

In which we learn about ESA's planned Lagrange mission to send a spacecraft to monitor the Sun's activity so as to give us warning of potentially threatening spaceweather events; why laser beams shine over Sussex skies; how the Royal Astronomical Society will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2020; and how to observe meteor showers, particularly the Leonids and Geminids in November and December 2018.

We hear how a new European space mission will explore exoplanets remotely, and find out what the ExoMars satellite is hoping to discover about life on Mars. There are strange results from the GAIA survey of a billion stars in the Milky Way, so what could be the reason? And we look at the prospects for the total lunar eclipse of 27 July 2018, which is set to be a spectacular event as seen from across the UK.

The latest in a series of astronomy magazines in sound that began in 1966 for three episodes and was resumed in 2018 after a gap. In this issue, we find out what professional astronomers are interested in planetary photos from amateurs, how to observe from a city, what the 'Soniverse' sounds like, and why the man who sent a space probe to Pluto believes that it should be reinstated as a planet. Oh, and a trip down memory lane with the originators of the first episodes.

The second of the historic sound magazines produced by the Junior Astronomical Society. In this issue, excitement over the launch of Lunar Orbiter 1 in 1966, plans to measure lunar-like craters in Iceland, a description of using giant telescopes, and an explanation of black holes before the term was even known.

The Junior Astronomical Society's groundbreaking audio magazine -- forerunner of podcasts -- issued on reel-to-reel tape in 1966. In this issue, Peter Lancaster Brown talks about the Barwell Meteorite which fell on Christmas Eve, 1965, there's an interview with James Muirden about observing conditions in Crete, and we discover how society members held a public partial eclipse observing session in St James's Park, related by Ian Ridpath.

In this third and final issue of the original Sound of Astronomy, prepared by the Junior Astronomical Society in 1968, James Muirden and Patrick Moore talk about their intrepid journey across Siberia to watch a solar eclipse that lasted only 37 seconds; we learn about planetaria in Wandsworth and Greenwich; and legendary space visionary Arthur C Clarke gives an exclusive interview in which he talks about the forthcoming lunar landings and what he imagined would be the prospects for space exploration up to the end of the 20th century.