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The Star Spot


The Star Spot, with Justin Trottier, is a space themed podcast and radio show focusing on all aspects of astronomy and space exploration. Episodes feature timely news along with fascinating interviews with guests of wide-ranging background: scientists, engineers, artists, politicians, and entrepreneurs. Topics are broad, from the latest space mission to how the universe began to why humans explore.

Aug 10, 2013

“When beggars die there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”

- William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 2

Feature Guest: David Levy

As we are quickly learning, our solar system is anything but quiet. Today we celebrate the very dynamic and violent place that is our home and immediate neighborhood. In Current in Space we covers the stormy space weather that will greet us shortly when the sun’s magnetic field flips.  Then we ask if supposedly dead comets can be resurrected to continue their adventurous and on rare occasions, disastrous, lives.

Finally David Levy joins Justin Trottier at The Star Spot .The giant of comet hunting, who discovered 22 comets, including Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 which collided with Jupiter in 1994, explains why comets are part of our culture. Following a far ranging interview sprinkled with quotes from Shakespeare, comparisons to cats, and the famous Shoemaker-Levy 9 discovery story, Levy concludes with musings on the grim decline in amateur comet hunting but a hopeful future of comet discovery around extrasolar planets.

About David Levy

Despite the lack of formal training in astronomy or space sciences, David Levy would go on to become a comet hunting legend, discovering or co-discovering 22 comets and publishing 34 books, most on astronomical subjects. He is best known as the co-discover of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 which crashed into Jupiter in 1994.

A literature student, he received a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2010 for his thesis “The sky in early modern english literature.” As I learned during our conversation he enjoys combining his love of comets with his passion for literature, especially Shakespeare, whom he is likely to quote when discussing the importance of comets to our culture.

In 1998 Levy also won a News and Documentary Emmy Award for the script of 3 minutes to impact, a documentary produced for the discovery channel.