#83 - May 2019 Part 1

U: Recording from the Mars/Earth-analogue biome cottage at the AstroCamp starparty in the Welsh Brecon Beacons, we start off by discussing stargazing during a hurricane(!) and get ready for Jeni’s Pint of Science events this month. The News: Rounding up the astronomy news this month we have: The rate of the universe’s expansion is 9% greater than we thought? Greater understanding about the lakes of methane on Saturn’s moon Titan. LIGO gets its jiggy on; giving us gravitational wave detections EVERY week! The value of occultations to modern astronomy A possible discovery of an exocomet! And a round up of some of the best astronomy April Fool’s gags from last month, including how winter would come on a Game of Thrones type world. Main news story: 1) The first ever image of a black hole The Sky Guide: Covering the solar system and deep sky objects on offer to amateur astronomers in May: An unwelcome dearth of solar system objects with Jupiter, Mars and Saturn low on the horizon, but dwarf planet Ceres is at opposition and we also have a few nice conjunctions to enjoy in May. Messier 5 and Palomar 5 globular clusters in Serpens and Messier 57, and the Ring Nebula, and the Double Double in Lyra. Main Object: the much-overlooked Northern Star, Polaris.