Astrophiz 57: Dr Elaina Hyde, Data Science & Astrophysics

Astrophiz 57: Dr Elaina Hyde ~ Data Science & Astrophysics

Our feature interview is with Dr Elaina Hyde. Dr. Hyde speaks four languages, has four undergraduate degrees in astronomy, physics, optical engineering and planetary sciences; two masters degrees in engineering and astronomy and astrophysics; and a Ph.D. in astronomy and physics. She is an artist, a cool coder, and shares her code on Github. She uses data creatively to understand how our universe works.

Follow on @AstroHyde on Twitter

For observers and astrophotographers Dr Ian Musgrave gives us ‘What’s Up Doc’ and he tells us what to look for in our morning and evening skies, what planets, galaxies and nebula to look for and what occultations are happening. In Ian’s Tangent, we look at CO2 on Mars and Comet PanSTARRS

In the news:

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative has signed up for 1500 hours of observation time in 2018 with the multi-beam receivers on ‘the Dish’, CSIRO’s famous Parkes telescope and the recent tech upgrade with the multi-beam receivers will see scientists processing about 130 gigabits per second of observational data from deep space.

Meekat Update: The 64-dish South African radio telescope, MeerKAT, which is a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is complete, having achieved ‘first light’ some time ago and already generating exciting observational data.

NASA’s Mars Insight mission was launched last Saturday from Vandenburg Airforce Base because the launch queue at Cape Canaveral was too long. Insight arrives at Mars on 26 November later this year after several Rich Purnall manoeuvres.

And finally the Australian Government has allocated $40 odd million dollars for a Space Agency. The policy has not been released yet. It’s a piddling amount, but it’s a start. We will dissect this policy when it arrives and look at the local implications for both industry and education.

Next episode: We speak with Jessie Christiansen, a NASA scientist working with the KEPLER and TESS Exoplanet missions