Dr Brad Tucker | Public figure
Dr Brad Tucker
Phone: +61 2 6125 6711
Reviews
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25.01.2022 Another great celestial line-up of the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn is happening, starting tonight (Thursday) through Saturday! Best visible from about 7:00pm on the nights of Thursday 24 September, Friday 25 September, and Saturday 26 September, they will be visible nearly all night. If you have seen this show during one of the past few months, you may notice this weekend that they look a bit closer. That is because they are! Jupiter and Saturn have been getting closer together... as viewed from Earth! On Thursday, the Moon will be leading the trio across the sky, appearing to the the left of Jupiter, which is to the left of Saturn in the early evening. Friday night, the Moon will be sandwiched in between Jupiter and Saturn and will be an awesome sight. Finally, on Saturday night, the Moon will follow Jupiter and Saturn across the sky. If you notice they appear to be almost in a line, that is because they are! Our Solar System is a giant disc, and the planets (and even the Moon through its mostly circular orbit of the Earth). When you see that disc through the sky, it forms a line or arc across the sky called the ecliptic. So you are seeing the shape of our Solar System! Here is to clear skies!
20.01.2022 It is finally here - #SatelliteSelfie! It has been awhile, but the data is all ready for you to explore! Check it out here: http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/SatelliteSelfie Click the icons at the top to check out other areas of Canberra and surrounds.... There are so many awesome images - from schools, homes, work places, and national institutes! I've included a few of my favourites! - Hot air balloons by the lake - Our sign at Mt Stromlo Observatory which includes a special spiral galaxy - A cool fish at Hawker Primary - "Go Perseverance" which is a message of encouragement for NASA's latest rover to Mars - A love heart next to Earth in a street in Kambah : Maxar This event is presented by National Science Week ACT and the Where You Are Festival with the support of the ACT Government and is co-hosted by The Australian National University #scienceweek #WhereYouAreFestival #risecanberra
18.01.2022 Very excited to now be able to share my favourite satellite selfie image! Congratulations to Brandon Prša and Lily! She said yes! : Maxar
18.01.2022 A cool discovery I was a part of! The closest Tidal Disruption Event - when a supermassive black hole destroys a star! As the star gets near the black hole, the gravity of the black hole starts to suck the star in and rip it apart in a process called spaghettification! The star was a smaller star, about the size of the Sun. About half of the star was lost to the black hole. This was caught early and so we were able to see the stuff from the star flowing out into space!
14.01.2022 Yesterday, the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews announced the grants under the Maker Project. We got one to continue the program (pre-covid) of visiting regional and remote towns to do some awesome Astronomy! The project will visit schools during the day, and run community stargazing events in the evening. So I'm excited that I get to keep up this program in 2021 and 2022, getting on the road to primary and secondary schools across Australia!... Look out for a potential future visit from yours truly :)
12.01.2022 YMCA Canberra Space Squad is something I've been happy to support since its inception and it is running again this January! This year, there are three different camps, suiting students in years 2 - 12! So if you have a space-obsessed kid at home, this is the perfect thing for them for the summer! They will definitely have fun (and probably to get to listen to me rambling on about cool space things :) )
11.01.2022 Another #satelliteselfie sneak peak! How many signs can you see? I spy at least 3 :) Nothing like seeing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags from space! Thanks to Maxar for a great satellite image! Also thanks to National Science Week ACT, the Where You Are Festival with the support of the ACT Government, and The Australian National University for helping to make it happen!
07.01.2022 Last week, scientists announced that two black holes, one weighing about 66 times the mass of the Sun, and the other about 85 times, merged together to form a 142 solar mass black hole. It is an area where a massive amount of matter has been squeezed together into a small area. And where you have mass, you have gravity. Let's put this into scale. You can fit about 1 million Earths inside the Sun. Now imagine a star 10 times bigger than the Sun. Now, take that star, and squeez...e into an area about the size of Canberra. That is a black hole - a small one. Black holes come in three main sizes - stellar mass black holes, intermediate black holes, and supermassive black holes. Stellar mass black holes are the baby black holes, the result of exploding (or rather collapsing) stars about 10 to 60 times the mass of our Sun. There could be upwards of 10 to 50 million of these black holes in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Inside a star, it is smashing elements together (fusion) to create heat and energy. As it does it this, it is adding extra mass in its core. To support this extra weight, it burns more fuel, which in turn, creates more mass. At some point, a star cannot keep up this epic battle, and it starts to collapse in on itself. In doing so, part of the star explodes as a supernova. However, most of the mass of the star comes crashing down, being squeezed into a tiny object. A black hole is born. Over time, we think these black holes merge or collide to form the intermediate mass black holes - between 100 and 100,000 solar masses. Then there are the supermassive black holes. The reside in the centres of big galaxies, and can weigh millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. In our Milky Way, we have Sagittarius A*, weighing about 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Black holes get a reputation for being giant space vacuum cleaners - sucking anything and everything. In other words, they are like dogs in space, swallowing everything they can.
07.01.2022 There are two great astronomical evenings coming up! Tomorrow (Thursday, 19 November) from about 8:30pm, the Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn will be putting on a show! They will be all right next to each other, forming a cool trio in the sky. Jupiter will be the bright object just below the Moon, and Saturn will be the bright object on top. Look towards the West after Sunset and you'll see it! Then, on Wednesday the 25th of November, the Moon will be teaming up with Mars. High in... the sky, Mars will be the bright red object near the Moon. It will be visible a bit after Sunset when it is a bit darker. Be sure to check them out!
06.01.2022 The schedule is approximate: -- 7:00pm Dr Brad Tucker: "Explosions and Collisions in Space" (kid friendly) The Universe is full of the biggest and most powerful objectsand sometimes they explode and collide. Brad will talk about how active our Universe is from exploding stars to colliding galaxies and black holes. There is even crashing space stations and powerful space lasers!... -- 7:25pm Stargazing with Dr Brad Tucker -- 7:40pm Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths: "Getting to know the neighbours: The Magellanic Clouds" The Magellanic Clouds are nearby galaxies visible with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere. As so-called "dwarf galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds are dragged about through their interaction with our much more massive galaxy, the Milky Way. I’ll describe how radio telescopes like the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder and Parkes are helping us understand the past lives of the Magellanic Clouds and maybe even predict the future! -- 8:15pm Wrap up
06.01.2022 Did anyone in Sydney / NSW/ Canberra see that fireball early this evening? It headed south and was a good one! We got this on one of our cameras up at Mt Stromlo Observatory (Credit Geoff Bonning)
