(Article originally written by our member Ángel López-Sánchez in his personal blog)
Last December I was contacted by journalists from radio SBS Australia in Spanish to be interviewed about my work and my life as a Spanish astronomer in Australia. The interview was prepared by Anna Sagristà, who included it in the section “Latinos en Australia” (Latins in Australia) and released on Sunday 13th December in radio SBS2 97.7 FM. Here is the podcast, in case you want to practice your Spanish:
http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/api/radio/player/podcast/441762?node=381058
Thanks to this interview I had the chance to talk to them about Astronomy and how scientific research in astronomy works. They were indeed really interested about listening to me talking about stars, planets, galaxies and more, and they liked the way I was answering their questions. Just a couple of days after the interview they phoned me again to talk about a new exoplanets discovery plus the results of the IAU NameExoWorlds contest (yes, we did it! “Estrella Cervantes” is already on the skies!). You can listen to this interview, released on 17th December 2015, here:
http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/api/radio/player/podcast/442632?node=381786
In early 2016 they asked me to start a collaboration with them. And this way the section “Astronomía para Principiantes” (Astronomy for Beginners) in radio SBS Australia in Spanish was born. This is just a ~monthly 6-8 minutes section talking about an interesting astronomy topic or some recent news about Astronomy. The first podcast was released on Sunday 8th February, we talked about the “predicted IX Planet in the outer parts of the Solar System”. You can listen to it here:
http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/api/radio/player/podcast/479670?node=408532
Additionally last Friday I was also interviewed, of course, about the first observation of gravitational waves, detected by the LIGO experiment in September 2015, but announced in a very expected press conference last Thursday 11th February. The podcast of this interview, which was prepared by Marcia de los Santos, can be found in this podcast:
http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/api/radio/player/podcast/482376?node=410434
So if you want to practice your Spanish and at the same time know a bit more about Astronomy, you’ll have a chance to listen to me in radio SBS Australia en Español FM 97.7 every month in “Astronomía para Principiantes”. This will be at around 1:15pm on Sundays, but I’ll announce exactly when these are happening via Twitter.
Finally I want to thank journalists at radio SBS Australia in Spanish, and in particular to Anna Sagristà, for the opportunity they are providing me to communicate astronomy to the general public in Australia.