George's Random Astronomical Object
- Author: Vários
- Narrator: Vários
- Publisher: Podcast
- Duration: 21:33:22
- More information
Informações:
Synopsis
Science discussions about astronomical objects selected at random locations in the sky.
Episodes
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Object 124: 6 > 2
13/05/2024 Duration: 11minMost people would associate Castor with Pollux, which are the two brightest stars in the constellation Gemini, but Castor by itself is very interesting because it is actually a very complex system containing six stars.
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Object 123: More Dampness
29/04/2024 Duration: 11minThe quasar QSO 1331+170 is best known for having a darker galaxy in front of it that is absorbing its light.
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Object 122: Wait For It...
15/04/2024 Duration: 12minThe cluster of galaxies MACS J1149.5+2223 is so massive that it has gravitationally bent (or lensed) the light from multiple things behind it, including one of the most distant galaxies in the universe and a supernova.
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Object 121: Can You Find the Supermassive Black Hole?
01/04/2024 Duration: 08minNGC 34 (also known as NGC 17) is a chaotic-looking galaxy that formed from two smaller galaxies merging together, and it is a place where astronomers have easily found lots of stars forming in a starburst but where they have had difficulty concluding whether the galaxy also contains a supermassive black hole.
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Object 120: A Possible Source of the Cosmic Rays that Gave the Fantastic Four Their Superpowers
18/03/2024 Duration: 11minThe Monogem Ring, which is one of the largest sources of X-rays in the Earth's sky, was created by a supernova explosion about 86000 years ago, and the core of the star that exploded has been identified as the pulsar PSR B0656+14 at the center of the ring.
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Object 119: Alpha Table
04/03/2024 Duration: 08minEven though Alpha Mensae is in one of the faintest and dumbest constellations in the sky, it's an intriguing star system because it is very close to the Earth, because one of the stars is very Sun-like, and because it may contain an exoplanet or a disk of dust in orbit around that Sun-like star.
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Object 118: The Golden Standard
19/02/2024 Duration: 10minThe Type Ia supernova SN 2005cf was observed at multiple wavelengths for three months after its appearance, allowing astronomers to create templates of its spectrum that could be used to measure distances to other Type Ia supernovae.
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Object 117: No Shockingly Dumb Jokes in This Episode
05/02/2024 Duration: 06minKappa Cassiopeiae is a large blue variaable star that is most potentially interesting because of the bow shock between its stellar winds and the interstellar medium.
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Object 116: The Really Really High Expectations Exoplanetary System
22/01/2024 Duration: 08min47 Ursa Majoris is a nearby Sun-like star that astronomers have intensely studied in an effort to find an Earth-like exoplanet, and while three exoplanets have been found orbiting the star, none of them are remotely similar to the Earth.
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Object 115: Oyster?
08/01/2024 Duration: 09minWhile the planetary nebula NGC 1501 is a popular amateur astronomy target, the newly formed, hot, pulsating white dwarf at its center is much more interesting to professional astronomers.
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Object 114: George's 2020 Data Processing Project from Hell
25/12/2023 Duration: 15minAs the second closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, Messier 33 has been a very popular observing target for both amateur and professional astronomers, and even I have made images of the galaxy.
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Object 113: The Mystery Spot
11/12/2023 Duration: 08minThe white dwarf GD 394 seems to have an abnormal amount of heavy elements in its outer atmosphere and also varies in brightness with a period of 1.146 days, and no one understands why.
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Object 112: Imagine Marilyn Monroe in a Movie Named the Great Attractor
27/11/2023 Duration: 09minThe Norma Cluster lies near the center of a giant supercluster of galaxies that is pulling in everything else in the local universe, including our galaxy.
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Object 111: The 1925 Classic
13/11/2023 Duration: 07minThe classical nova RR Pictoris was one of the brightest and closest to ever appear in the sky.
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Object 110: We Came, We Saw, We Measured
30/10/2023 Duration: 10minThe spiral galaxy Markarian 766 contains an active galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole, which means that everyone needs to apply their favorite technique to measure the black hole's mass.
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Object 109: A Water World without Kevin Costner
16/10/2023 Duration: 12minThe Kepler-138 star system contains at least four exoplanets, one of which may be a "water world" covered in a very deep ocean.
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Object 108: Objects in the Mirror May Be More Complicated Than They Appear
02/10/2023 Duration: 10minThe protostellar object PDS 70 has a very complicated protoplanetary system that includes a disk of gas and dust and two protoexoplanets.
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Object 107: The Red Rectangle
18/09/2023 Duration: 10minThe Red Rectangle (yes, the Red Rectangle) is a uniquely weird protoplanetary nebula formed by a uniquely weird binary star system.
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Object 106: A Tale of Two Binary Star Systems
04/09/2023 Duration: 12minWhile some astronomers are interested the globular cluster NGC 6712 because it appears to have been severely tidally disrupted by orbiting too close to the center of the Milky Way, other astronomers are interested in the cluster because it contains a couple of weird yet similar binary star systems.
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Object 105: Super-Slow Star Formation
21/08/2023 Duration: 11minLocated at the edge of the Local Group, the Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy has some of the stars with the fewest elements other than hydrogen or helium in the known universe.