On Sunday night, Astronomy teamed up with St. Louis radio station KMOX for the first in an ongoing monthly series of informal chats about the night sky, the space program, and other happenings in the universe.

The program is “Reality Check,” and its host, Jon Grayson obviously loves astronomy. We had a wide-ranging discussion on a variety of topics.

The first item we talked about was the recent space-shuttle mission and its results. Later, we reviewed discoveries made by the Cassini spacecraft in its orbit of Saturn. Cassini recently flew within 30 miles of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and sampled material shot into space by one of the moon’s geysers.

Observationally, we discussed the upcoming crossing of the Pleiades (M45) by the Moon on the evening of April 8. This will be a great event to view through binoculars. Jon also asked me about the upcoming Lyrid meteor shower peak taking place April 21–22.

I had a great time chatting with Jon, and look forward to many more installments of “Reality Check.”

You’ll find the entire interview online here.