On this episode I’m exploring the stars of our solar system with Professor Lisa Harvey Smith.
Lisa is an Astronomer, Author & Broadcaster. Her career has included maintaining and developing professional astronomical observatories as well as researching and teaching. She has over 50 published papers and you’ll possibly know her from the Stargazing TV shows in the UK and Australia amongst other media appearances. Lisa is currently a professor at the University of New South Wales, and is the Australian Government's Women in STEM Ambassador.
Lisa tells me all about the stars we can find in the milky way as well as a few a bit further from home. We cover:
- What are stars? I didn't know how to answer this question if my niece or nephew asked me, so I thought it would be a good idea to ask such as distinguished expert in the field.
- The sun, which Lisa describes as an average star as well as giving us the gory details of what goes on inside the sun, it's lifecycle as it heads towards becoming a white dwarf, and how it affects us.
- How do we know what's happening inside stars? Lisa explains how we use spectroscopy to not only determine what elements stars are made of, but also tell us the temperature and density of those elements.
- Red Dwarves: not just a great TV show, also the most common star in our solar system. We just can't see them with the naked eye.
- Proxima centauri- the nearest star to earth. It's an example of a red dwarf and is 4.2 light years away. So just around the corner in universe terms.
- Talking about Proxima Centauri brings up discussion of the possibility of being able to fly there and back, and whatthat means for how far int he universe we can really go given the speed of light is probably as fast as we can aim for.
- The search for life: Proxima B orbits Proxima Centauri and seems ot be our best chance of finding a planet similar to Earth.
- Cannibals in the form of binary sars in which one star appears to eat the other.
- Families of stars where stars form groups of 2 or more. This is actually very common in space. In fact, our sun is a bit of an anomaly as most stars live with others.
- Does alien life exist? This comes up when we discuss the theories as to why Przybylski's star contains so much strontium and curium.
- Giant stars: Lisa names the biggest known star Big Ray but his real name is R136a1. Ray is 315 times the mass of our sun, and 8.7 million times as bright. Better get those Ray-Bans
Lisa is offering signed copies of her book The Secret Life of Stars directly from her website so do check that out before her hand cramps up from writing her signature over and over again. I've already ordered mine:
https://lisaharveysmith.com/shop/ols/products/the-secret-life-of-stars-signed-australian-shipping
And you can find out what Lisa is in the following ways:
Website: https://lisaharveysmith.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisaharveysmith
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisa.harveysmith