StarXiv: a podcast discussing the latest astronomy papers
Episodes
Episode 33 - Bananas, blueberries, planet eating stars and the fate of the Milky Way
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Payel delve into the story of UV bright galaxies at high redshifts, hints of population III stars, black hole binaries, ...
Episode 32 - Ancient star clusters and growing black holes
16 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Nicole were on-theme with their paper choices. They discuss whether and how stars from ancient globular clusters populat...
Episode 31 - Near Earth Objects, Little Red Dots, bursty star formation and life around massive stars
02 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Payel discuss the latest theories of little red dot formation, bursty star formation at high redshift, triple-double rad...
Episode 30 - Direct collapse black holes, nuclear stellar discs, and machine learning merger histories
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Payel and Nicole delve into more JWST discoveries and the frontier of machine learning in astronomy - an ultra-deep view of the cosmi...
Episode 29 - Exploding stars, carbon stars, and starbursting pseudo little red dots
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Nicole hit the arXiv and dig into the latest on Thamnos - an ancient Milky Way merger, carbon stars in the Large Magella...
Episode 28 - Fading stars, digesting planets and dark matter conundrums
12 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Payel both dissect interesting results from varying stars, including follow up on Betelgeuse's elusive companion. They a...
Episode 27: Making a Milky Way, searching for dwarfs, and elusive black holes
22 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, Payel and Nicole discuss how to generate alpha-bimodalities in Milky-Way-like galaxies without major mergers or radial migration, a new ...
Episode 26: A tail of tales, little galaxies, and starspots
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, Payel and Nicole discuss streamer-like structures around protostellar sources, a multiply imaged Little Red Dot with an apparent blue co...
Episode 25: Extragalactic exoplanets, simulating individual stars, and galaxy mergers as cosmic ray factories
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, Michelle, Payel, and Nicole discuss simulating individual stars, exoplanets born outside of the Milky Way, the intracluster medium as a ...
Episode 24 - Strong lenses, Solar Flares and young, high alpha stars
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, Michelle and Payel discuss the Solar birth cluster, young stars with high alpha abundances, the formation of intermediate mass black hol...
Episode 23 - Failed galaxies, faint galaxies, and the proto-Galaxy
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Nicole discuss what sets the chemistry of the faintest galaxies and RR-Lyrae stars, how to trace the proto-Galaxy, why s...
Episode 22 - ORCs, rings, and Galactic histories
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Payel and Nicole discuss what happens to the metallicity gradient of a satellite galaxy after it merges with its host, the existence ...
Episode 21 - Mercury, chemistry and quasi periodic eruptionsÂ
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Nicole discuss merger debris around a distant spiral galaxy, metal-mixing around pop III stars, quasi-periodic eruptions...
Episode 20 - Dark galaxies, black holes, star formation and life in the faintest galaxies?
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the StarXiv Michelle and Payel talk about very massive and less massive black holes, the possibility of feedback free star formatio...
Episode 19 - Peering into the Local Universe, distant black holes, forming planets and alien signatures
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, Michelle and Payel reunite to discuss the chemistry of nearby M-dwarf stars, where the majority of stars form in the Milky Way, whether ...
Episode 18 - disks, disks and more disks!
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Nicole dissect 5 papers, and accidentally find a common theme: disks! Whether in low mass galaxies, giant low surface br...
Episode 17 - detecting dark matter, unusual black holes and speedy stars
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Payel discuss the claimed detection of a starless dark matter subhalo, speedy, puffy white dwarfs, super massive black h...
Episode 16 - interstellar visitors, molten planets and faint, dark galaxies
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Payel squash in more papers than ever, as Michelle delves into a flurry of papers about new newly discovered interstella...
Episode 15 – Flare-inducing planets, avoiding catastrophe, and accreted star clusters
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, Michelle is back and she and Payel discuss long period pulsars, population III galaxies, latent variables in Galactic archaeology, accre...
Episode 14 - A cosmic owl, misaligned planetary systems, and the Milky Way as an outlier
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we had Payel and Nicole filling in for Michelle who’s away on holiday. Nicole is a PhD student, also at the University of Surrey As...
Episode 13 - Missing Europium, Pluto's craters, 43,000 Goblins and some Pop III stars
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Payel discuss why dark matter halos have a Universal density profile, how to age-date Pluto's surface with craters, dela...
Episode 12 - Signs of life, little red dots and the links between star clusters and high redshift galaxies
25 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, Michelle and Payel are very on-theme as they discuss whether Little Red Dots can be explained by super Eddington accretion; the high abu...
Episode 11 - Whirling planes, wandering black holes and alien supernovae
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Michelle and Payel discuss whether wandering intermediate black holes are mythical or not, how planes of satellites may form from cos...
Episode 10 - Mixing dark matter, surviving black holes and hunting for planets
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode, Michelle and Payel delve into the latest constraints on mixed dark matter from the Lyman alpha forest, what happens to stars that get a ...
Episode 9 – Slowing bars, growing black holes, pasta sauces and AI
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Payel and Michelle discuss how you can slow down a galaxy’s bar, scaling relations for black holes, whether we can use intracluster...
Episode 8 – Cosmology, pulsars and dark matter in disk galaxies
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Payel and Michelle discuss the longest period pulsar, the formation of nuclear star clusters, the recent data releases from ACT and D...
Episode 7 - Black holes, stealthy satellites and the distance to DF2
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of The Starxiv, Michelle and Payel discuss a revised distance for the controversial ultra-diffuse galaxy, DF2; a discovery of a superm...
Episode 6 - Einstein rings, black holes, and ringed galaxies
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Payel and Michelle delve into the arXiv and discuss standard sirens, gravitational lenses, a very metal poor stellar stream and a cos...
Episode 5 - Galaxies, gas accretion, and aliens
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Arriving in your ears on February 10th, our latest installment includes transfer learning to detect low surface brightness galaxies, hot and cold gas ...
Episode 4 - January
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this month’s edition, Michelle and Payel dive into the New Year with papers on machine learning, star formation in low mass galaxies and working ...
Episode 3 - December
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Payel and Michelle discuss six papers covering topics like ultra-diffuse galaxies, the Omega Centauri cluster, and insights from JWST...
Episode 2 - October
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This month, Payel and Michelle sit down to discuss a range of exciting new results, including a disappearing star, news moons of Uranus, star formatio...
Episode 1 - September
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In our first podcast, we sit down to discuss a few papers from September, including a trio of new galaxies, the initial mass function, the building bl...