365 Days of Astronomy - Weekly Edition

Ep. 582: Building Bigger Black Holes

19 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Did you hear the news? Nobel prizes for Black Holes! Now, we know there are stellar mass black holes and supermassive black holes, but how do you get ...

Ep. 581: Other Kinds Of Novae

12 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Don't ever accuse us of not comprehensively covering every kind of exploding star. This week we gather up all the left over ways that stars partially ...

Ep. 580: Exploding Dwarfs

05 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

So you think that a white dwarf star is the end of a stellar life, and it's all downhill from there, a long, slow cool down towards the end of everyth...

Ep. 579: White and Black Dwarf Stars

28 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I've got some bad news for you. Stars die. At some point in the next few billion years or so our Sun is going to start heating up, using up all the fu...

Ep. 578: Venus Updates - or - Life on Venus?!?

21 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

So have you heard the news? Of course you have. Evidence of phosphene on Venus. Which could be a biosignature of life on our evil twin planet. There h...

Ep. 577: Mars in Opposition

14 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Every 2 years or so Mars lines up nicely with the Earth. It takes only 2 minutes to communicate with the rovers. You can see the polar ice caps in a s...

Ep. 576: Summer Stargazing Special

29 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It's time once again for Astronomy Cast to go on hiatus. You've got a couple months on your own to explore the night sky. But before we say goodbye, w...

Ep. 575: Observing The Moon

22 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As amateur astronomers, we curse the Moon every month. Seriously! Why doesn't someone get rid of that thing! This week, something occurred to us. What...

Ep. 574: Trojan Asteroids

15 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We imagine the asteroid belt as a place where all the rocks hang out in the solar system. But there are 2 huge bands of asteroids that orbit the Sun w...

Ep. 573: Exoplanet Atmospheres

08 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Astronomy Cast Ep. 573: Exoplanet Atmospheres Not only have astronomers discovered thousands of exoplanets, but they're even starting to study the atm...

Ep. 572: Twists in Planet Formation

01 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Astronomy Cast Ep. 572: Twists in Planet Formation by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay We're all looking to the next generation of exoplanetary research w...

Ep. 571: Extreme Binaries

25 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Streamed live on May 22, 2020. So we're familiar with regular binary stars. Two stars orbiting each other. Simple. Of course the Universe has come up ...

Ep. 570: Discovering Comets

18 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Streamed live May 15, 2020. Discovering comets is one of the fields that amateurs can still make a regular contribution to astronomy. But more and mor...

Ep. 567: When Satellites Need A House Call

27 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Space is really far away, so when you send a satellite out into the void, that's pretty much the last you're going to be able to work on it. And if a...

Ep. 566: When Comets Fall Apart

20 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As everyone knows, the Universe owes us a bright comet. There have been a lot of promising candidates, but in the end, they always fail to live up to ...

Ep. 565: When Worlds Collide

13 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

So much of our Solar System has been shaped by enormous collisions early on in our history. Seriously, the nature of every planet in the Solar System ...

Ep. 564: Mini Moons

06 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Last month astronomers announced that they had detected a tiny asteroid that had been captured by the Earth's gravity well and had been sharing our or...

Ep. 563: White Dwarf Mergers

30 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

White dwarfs are usually about 60% the mass of the Sun, so it was a bit of a surprise when astronomers found one that was almost exactly twice that. W...

Ep. 562: Dealing with COVID-19 and the Changes it will Bring

23 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Pamela and Fraser discuss the implications of COVID-19 and it's changes on the world, and what we all can do during this time.

Ep. 561: Remembering Katherine Johnson

06 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We lost a bright star here on planet Earth last week. NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson passed away at the age of 101, after an incredible career o...

Ep. 560: Betelgeuse

24 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

You might be surprised to hear that we've never done an episode of Astronomy Cast featuring Betelgeuse. Well, good news, this is that episode. Let's t...

Ep. 559: The Surface of the Sun

17 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A brand new telescope has completed on Maui's Haleakala, and it has just one job: to watch the Sun in unprecedented detail. It's called the Daniel K. ...

Ep. 558: Supernova SN 2006gy

10 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We've been following this story for more than a decade, so it's great to finally have an answer to the question, why was supernova 2006gy so insanely ...

Ep. 557: Red Dwarfs: Friend or Foe

03 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On the one hand, red dwarfs are the longest lived stars in the Universe, the perfect place for life to hang out for trillions of years. On the other h...

Ep. 556: Multi Messenger Astronomy

27 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For the longest time astronomers could only study the skies with telescopes. But then new techniques and technologies were developed to help us see in...

Ep. 555: Satellite Constellations and the Future of Astronomy

19 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The other big issue at the AAS was the challenge that astronomy is going to face from all the new satellite constellations coming shortly. There are a...

Ep. 554: Big Telescope Controversy in Hawai'i

13 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week we're live at the American Astronomical Society's 235th meeting in Honolulu, Hawai'i. We learned about new planets, black holes and star for...

Ep. 553: What To Look Forward To In 2020

30 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It's hard to believe it, but we survived another trip around the Sun. Now it's time to take the whole journey all over again, but with new news. Let's...

Ep. 552: Boyajian's star (and other strange stars)

23 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Huge surveys of the sky are finding more and more planets, stars and galaxies. But they're also turning up strange objects astronomers have never see...

CosmoQuest Hangoutathon Promo

20 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Hi everyone, Producer Susie here. This weekend, December 21-23, 2019, we will be having our CosmoQuest Hangoutathon.  For 40 straight hours, our team...

Ep. 551: Missing Epochs - Observing before the CMBR

16 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is the earliest moment in the Universe that we can see with our telescopes, just a few hundred thousand year...

Ep. 550: Missing Epochs - Observing the Cosmic Dark Ages

07 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Powerful observatories like Hubble and the Very Large Telescope have pushed our vision billions of light-years into the Universe, allowing us to see f...

Ep. 549: Stellar nucleosynthesis revisited: In and on and around dead stars

02 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Last week we gave you an update on the formation of elements from the Big Bang and in main sequence stars like the Sun. This week, we wrap up with a b...

Ep. 548: Stellar nucleosynthesis revisited: In stellar cores & atmospheres

25 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Universe started out with hydrogen and helium and a few other elements, but all around us, there are other, more proton-rich elements. We believe...

Ep. 547: Why Astronomy Still Needs Humans

18 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Few sciences have been able to take advantage of the power of computers like astronomy. But with all this computing power, you might be surprised to l...

Ep. 546: Weird Issues: Planetary Migration

11 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Before we discovered other planets, our Solar System seemed like a perfectly reasonable template for everywhere. But now we see massive planets close ...

Ep. 545: Weird Issues: Are comets asteroids or are asteroids comets?

05 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Things used to be so simple. Comets were snowballs from the outer Solar System, and asteroids were rocks from the inner Solar System. But now everythi...

Ep. 544: Weird Issues: Biosignatures

28 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Once again, another place where the Universe is going to make this difficult for us. Proving, once and for all that there's alien life on another wor...

Ep. 543: Weird Issues: The Habitable Zone

20 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Our series on Universe weirdness marches on. This week we take a look at the habitable zone, and how things aren't as simple as we thought.

Ep. 542: Weird Issues: The Age of the Universe

14 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Our series on Universe weirdness continues, this time we learn how astronomers are struggling to make sense of the age of the Universe.

Ep. 541: Weird Issues: Expansion Rate of the Universe

07 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Just when the Universe was starting to make sense, the cosmos throws a curve ball at us. Astronomers have been trying to accurately measure the expan...

Ep. 540: Weird Issues: How Do (or Don't) Planets Form?

30 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As astronomers started to discover planets orbiting other stars, they immediately realized that their expectations would need to be tossed out. Hot ju...

Ep. 539: Weird Issues: Why We Don't Know the Age of Saturn's Rings

23 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How old are Saturn's rings? They could be brand new, or they could be as ancient as the Solar System itself. Planetary scientists thought they knew th...

Ep. 538: Asteroids: Rubble piles of the Solar System

16 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Thanks to all the work from Hayabusa 2 and OSIRIS-REx, astronomers are getting a much better look at the smaller asteroids in the Solar System. It tur...

Ep. 537: Reusable Rocket Revolution

09 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We took a hiatus this summer, but SpaceX sure didn't, with the tests of the Starhopper prototype. Today we're going to talk about the revolution in re...

Libsyn Survey Request

10 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Please help us keep bringing you content by going to http://survey.libsyn.com/astronomycast and filling out the survey, so Libsyn can find us sponso...

Astronomy Cast on Hiatus until Sept 2019

01 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Astronomy Cast will be on hiatus for July and August. Don't worry, we'll be back in September, and we might just have surprises for you all along this...

Ep. 536: Everyday Relativity

01 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Relativity is used in more day to day situations than you may realize. In this episode, we will count (some of) the ways. This episode is brought to ...

Ep. 535: Astronomy-Related Things To Do This Summer

24 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It's summertime, and time for our annual Astronomy Cast hiatus. But that doesn't mean that the astronomy adventure has to end. Today we'll give you s...

Ep. 534: Modern South African Astronomy

17 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Last week we talked about some ancient south African astronomy, so this week we'll talk about the state of modern astronomy in the southern part of A...

Ep. 533: Indigenous South African Astronomy

10 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Let's move to another continent this week, and look at the astronomy that was going on in southern Africa in ancient times.

Ep. 532: Modern Astronomy of Australia

03 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Last week we talked about how well the indigenous Australians followed the night sky. Well, it turns out, Australia is still an amazing place for astr...

Ep. 531: Australian Indigenous Astronomy

27 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This week, we focus on the archaeoastronomy of another part of the world, this time from the indigenous people of Australia. Another group of people w...

Ep. 530: Astronomy of the Andes - Then and Now Pt. 2

12 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

South America, especially the Atacama Desert in Chile has become one of the best places in the world to put a telescope. It's dry, high, and the night...

Ep. 529: Astronomy of the Andes - Then and Now Pt. 1

06 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Andes mountains in South America are a hotspot of astronomy today, but ancient peoples knew it was a great place for astronomy and lived their liv...

Ep. 528: Modern Astronomy of the American Southwest

29 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Last week we talked about the ancient astronomy of the American Southwest. But this is actually Pamela's stomping grounds, and she's spent many a nig...

Ep. 527: Ancient Astronomy of the American Southwest

22 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ancient peoples had no light pollution, and they knew the night skies very well. In fact, they depends on them to know when to plant and when to harv...

Ep. 526: Event Horizon Telescope and the Black Hole at M87

15 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Today, of course, we're going to talk about the announcement from the Event Horizon Telescope and the first photograph of a black hole's event horizon...

Ep. 525: 100 Years of the International Astronomical Union

08 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Even though they might be scattered around our planet, astronomers have way to come together to work out issues that face their entire field of study....

Ep. 524: Judging Age & Origins, part 3 - Beyond Our System

01 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We learned how to figure out the ages of objects in the Solar System, now we push out into the deeper Universe. What about stars, galaxies, and even t...

Ep. 523: Judging Age & Origins, Pt. 2 Across the Solar System

25 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Today we push our aging curiosity out into the Solar System to ask that simple question: how old is it and how do we know? What techniques do astronom...

Ep. 522: Judging Age & Origins, part 1 - Earth Rocks

18 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

People always want to know how old everything is. And more specifically, they want to know how we know how old everything is. Well, here at Astronomy ...

Bonus Episode: Dust with Dr. Paul Sutter

17 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Recorded during the Astrotour to Costa Rica, Fraser talks to Dr. Paul Matt Sutter about the nature of dust and BICEP 2's claim of discovering primordi...

Ep. 521: The Deep Space Network

11 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We always focus on the missions, but there's an important glue that holds the whole system together. The Deep Space Network. Today we're going to talk...

Ep. 520: Transients: What They Are and Why They Matter, Part 2

01 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This is our second episode in a two part series where we look at Transients in astronomy. In last week's episode, we talked about things that change ...

Ep. 519: Transients: What They Are and Why They Matter

25 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Astronomers have found that sometimes the Universe changes. Things move, things explode, things get brighter or dimmer. In fact, knowing this has help...

Ep. 518: When the Universe tried to Declare War

18 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We always say the Universe is trying to kill us. But there was this one time, when the Universe used our own fear of nuclear attack against us, nearly...

Ep. 517: Fritz Zwicky and the Zwicky Transient Facility

11 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most influential astronomers in the 20th Century was Fritz Zwicky. He had his hand in the discovery of dark matter, gravitational lensing, ...

Ep. 516: Polar Vortices

04 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

It's cold right now. Okay, fine, here on Vancouver Island, it's actually pretty warm. But for the rest of Canada and big parts of the US, it's terrify...

Ep. 515: Space Radiation

28 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Space is a hostile environment in so many ways. But one of its worst features is the various kinds of radiation you can find. When astronauts go back ...

Ep. 514: Planetary Protection Protocols

21 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As we send rovers and landers to other worlds, we have to think about the tiny microbial astronauts we're sending along with us. In fact, NASA is so c...

Ep. 513: Stellar Fusion

14 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Sun. It's a big ball of fire, right? Apparently not. In fact, what's going on inside of the Sun took us some time and knowledge of physics to fina...

Ep. 512: Direct Imaging of Exoplanets

07 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Finding planets is old news, we now know of thousands and thousands of the places. But the terrible irony is that we can only see a fraction of the pl...

Ep. 511: Predictions for 2019

31 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We did it, we made it through 2018 in space. Now let’s look forward to the incredible launches, discoveries and astronomical events happening in 201...

Ep. 510: 2018 - Year in Review

23 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

2018 was an incredible year in space news. Rockets launched, landers landed, spacecraft were born and died. We learned tremendous new things about Uni...

Ep. 509: Fiction to Fact: 3D Printers

10 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The technology of 3D printing is taking off. From tiny home-based 3D printers to larger manufacturing. And of course, 3D printing is going to space wi...

Ep. 508: 2018 Holiday Gift Guide

03 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We did it, we made it to the end of another year. Once again it's time to wonder what gifts to get your beloved space nerds. We've got some suggestion...

Ep. 507: From Fiction to Fact : Ion Drive

28 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Ion engines are a mainstay of science fiction, featured in both Star Trek and Wars. But this is a very real technology, successfully used on several m...

Ep. 506: It's not Aliens, Unless it's Aliens

18 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Did you hear that astronomers from Harvard think that the interstellar asteroid Oumuamua was actually an alien solar sail? Is it aliens? Of course it'...

Ep. 505: Seismology

12 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We're always interested in the surface features of the planets and moons in the Solar System, but that's only skin deep. It turns out, these worlds ha...

Ep. 504: Radar, Lidar, and Sonar

05 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

To really study something, you want to reach out and touch it. But what can you do if you're separated by a huge distance? You reach out with electrom...

Ep. 503: Gravity Mapping

29 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Earth looks like a perfect sphere, but down here on the surface we see that there are mountains, rivers, oceans, glaciers, all kinds of features w...

Ep. 502: No Touching: Determining Composition of Worlds Remotely

22 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

How do you know what something is made of if you can't reach out and touch it? How do we know what planets lights years away have in their atmosphere?...

Ep. 501: Water Worlds Revisited

10 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We're not learning that the vast majority of potentially habitable worlds out there are actually icy moons like Europa and Enceladus. Good news, there...

Ep. 500: Live Celebration!

18 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to episode 500 of Astronomy Cast. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we're going to look back 500 years into the past to see what we learne...

Ep. 499: What is the proposed Hubble-Lemaitre Law?

10 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We started out Astronomy Cast with the controversal decision to de-planet Pluto. And here we are, more than a decade later, at the brink of recording ...

Ep. 498: Dwarf Galaxy Update

01 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Milky Way has gobbled up dozens of dwarf galaxies and added them to its structure. Today we're going to look at the ongoing hunt for the wreckage ...

Ep. 497: Update on Globular Clusters

25 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Is it globular clusters or is it globeular clusters? It doesn't matter, they're awesome and we're here to update you on them.

Ep. 496: Update on Stellar Populations (I, II, & III)

18 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Another update show, this time on the various generations of stars, let's get into it.

Ep. 495: Update on Asteroids & Prospects of Asteroid Mining

12 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Our knowledge of space is starting to match up with our ability to get out there an explore it. There are several companies working on missions and te...

Ep. 494: Icy Moons Update 2018

04 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Thanks to Cassini and other spacecraft, we've learned a tremendous amount about the icy worlds in the Solar System, from Jupiter's Europa to Saturn's ...

Ep. 493: Mars Update 2018

28 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

If there's one place we've learned more about in the last 10 years, it's Mars. Thanks to all those rovers, orbiters, landers which are flying overhead...

Ep. 492: Comets, Asteroids and KBO’s

21 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Another topic with plenty of updates. Since we started Astronomy Cast we’ve visited many smaller objects in the Solar System up close, from Ceres an...

Ep 491: Exoplanet Update 2018

14 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Finally, a big update. Have there been news in the realm of exoplanets? More news that we can possibly cover. But we'll try our best.

Ep 490: What's New with Supernovae

07 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Time for another update, this time we're going to look at what's new with supernovae. And once again, we've got good news, lots of new stuff to report...

Ep 489: Black Hole Update

30 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Another update episode, this time we look at what’s new and changed in the research of black holes. And it’s here that we find a lot of substantia...

Ep 488: Dark Energy: 2018 Edition

24 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The updates continue. Last week we talked about dark matter, and this week we continue with its partner dark energy. Of course, they're not really par...

Ep 487: Dark Matter: 2018 Edition

16 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, we gave you an update in particle physics. This week it's time to see what's new in the world of dark matter. Spoiler alert, we still have ...

Ep 486: Particle Physics Update

09 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It's time for a news update. This time from the field of particle physics. It turns out there have been all kinds of new and interesting particles dis...

Ep 485: Docking, Refueling, and Transferring

30 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It's one thing to get to space. But once you've made it there, what do you want to do? You'll probably want to dock with another space ship, deliver c...