Listening to the Stars: In Conversation with Jaymie Matthews

The Blue Hour: Stellar Music, Exoplanets, and Canada’s MOST Telescope My third interview of the spring season of The Blue Hour is now available as a podcast. In this conversation, I speak with Dr. Jaymie Matthews about stellar seismology, exoplanets, space telescopes, and the hidden lives of stars. Jaymie Matthews is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia, and played a leading role in MOST — the Microvariability and Oscillations of STars telescope — Canada’s first space telescope. We discuss how astronomers study the vibrations of stars, what tiny changes in starlight can reveal about stellar interiors and distant worlds, and how a small Canadian space telescope helped open new ways of listening to the universe. The conversation also touches on Matthews’s long career as a scientist and public communicator, his recognition as an Officer of the Order of Canada, and the larger question of how astronomy brings together…