Govert Schilling

Chasing Pluto's Earthly shadow

Schilling talks about SOFIA, a converted Boeing 747SP which is the largest airborne observatory in the world. The refiners have been busy: gone are the familiar rows of airline seats and overhead bins, ripped out to make room for a multitude of computer monitors--and a 2.5--meter telescope. SOFIA is flying for a special reason. Tonight--29 June-Pluto will pass in front of a star in the constellation Sagittarius.

How I'm going to photograph a black hole

Astronomer Heino Falcke plans to use a global network of radio telescopes to snap the black hole at the Milky Ways heart

Making cosmic waves

Schilling interviews Andrei Linde, a physicist at Stanford University in California. Among other things, Linde talks about the detection of gravitational waves.

Reviving Kepler: ‘I'd give it a 150 per cent chance’

Kepler space telescope project scientist Steve Howell is confident that a new method of aiming the crippled instrument will convince NASA to keep it alive

Mystery radio bursts blamed on black hole ‘blitzars’

Fast radio bursts have baffled astronomers since their discovery six years ago, but now more examples have been found, and they are giving up their secrets

The mystery of Planet X

Something weird is going on beyond Neptune, but Pluto is too puny to blame. Time to call in the planet hunters, says Govert Schilling

Venus atmosphere is surprisingly Earth-like

The European Space Agencys Venus Express team say the atmospheric circulation of Venus is much like Earths

Saturn's satellites reveal their secrets

On its trip through the icy satellite system of Saturn, NASAs Cassini spacecraft reveals the secrets of Enceladus, Titan and Iapetus