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PODCAST

George"s Random Astronomical Object

George"s Random Astronomical Object is a biweekly astronomy podcast featuring science discussions about astronomical objects at randomly selected locations in the sky. The wide range of topics discussed in the show include stars, variable stars, variable variable stars, supermassive black holes, ultracool dwarf stars, exoplanets, howler monkeys, infrared radiation, acronyms, more acronyms, starbursts, measurements of less than 12 parsecs, jellyfish galaxies, diffuse ionized gas, and general overall

science astronomy

All Episodes

13:58

Object 83: Number 1 in 1970

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/10/03

In 1970, the quasar 4C 05.34 was the most distant known object in the universe, but this is not the only interesting fact about this object.

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09:17

Object 82: Officially Peculiar

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/09/19

A large mass of gas fell into the lenticular galaxy NGC 3593 about 2 billion years ago, and this gas both changed the appearance of the galaxy and also created new stars that now orbit the galaxy in the opposite direction from the older stars.

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09:50

Object 81: Unusually Shocking

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/09/05

What may be most interesting about the pulsar PSR J2124-3358 is not that it is spinning very rapidly but that stellar winds from the pulsar have collided with the interstellar medium, producing a glowing bow shock.

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10:47

Object 80: The Confusing and Controversial Names Episode

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/08/22

The star WR 124 (also called Merrill's Star, although that name ignores two of the people involved in the discovery) is a really hot Wolf-Rayet star that has produced the surrounding nebula M1-67 (which has no relation to Messier 1) and that is hurling through the Milky Way in an unusual direction at an unusual speed.

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11:39

Object 79: The Magic of Circumstellar Semantics

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/08/08

The star HD 131835 had a circumstellar disk of dust and gas that technically is neither a debris disk nor a protoplanetary disk but instead some sort of weird hybrid of these two things.

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12:03

Object 78: A Dwarf Galaxy with Something for Everyone

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/07/25

Located within the Local Group, the dwarf galaxy IC 1613 has been popular with professional astronomers for a variety of reasons, and it is also a notable albeit difficult-to-see amateur astronomy object as well.

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10:30

Object 77: Another 90's Gamma Ray Flashback

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/07/11

GRB 980326 was the first gamma ray burst to be associated with a supernova, which was truly groundbreaking even if the astronomers who discovered it were probably using Netscape at the time.

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08:43

Object 76: A Modern Non-Comet

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/06/27

Sakurai's Object was discovered in 1996 by the amateur astronomer Yukio Sakurai, who had been searching for comets but who had instead found a dying star that had brifly undergone a final burst of fusion, causing it to increase dramatically in brightness.

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09:31

Object 75: The Completely Unconcerned Open Cluster

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/06/13

The open cluster NGC 3680 is 1.4 billion years old, making it unusually long-lived for such a cluster.

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12:33

Object 74: The Brightest Star on the Argo

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/05/30

As the second brightest star in the night sky, Canopus is associated with many different myths, yet as the closest yellow supergiant to Earth, the star is also scientifically important.

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14:04

Object 73: A Very Distant Infrared Smudge

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/05/16

The hyperluminous infrared galaxy IRAS 10214+4724 was the most distant infrared object seen by astronomers in the 1980s.

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08:43

Object 72: No Face Masks Are Needed for Monocerotis

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/05/02

GX Monocerotis is a evolved star near the end of its life that is expelling its outer gas layers, and because the star is in orbit in a binary star system, those gas layers have formed a spiral pattern.

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09:07

Object 71: The Black Hole That Didn't Get Its Morning...

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/04/18

The center of the barred spiral galaxy Messier 71 contains multiple regions where stars are forming as well as an inactive supermassive black home that needs some caffeine.

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08:36

Object 70: The Uncredited Star

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/04/04

Eta Aquilae was the first Cepheid variable ever discovered, but this class of stars was named after Delta Cephei instead.

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11:15

Object 69: How To Avoid Photobombing Asteroids

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/03/21

The North Ecliptical Pole points to a location perpendicular to the plane of the Solar System, which makes it a unique place for certain types of astronomical observations.

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09:52

Object 68: Reflections in Quotation Marks

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/03/07

The spiral galaxy NGC 6814 is a source of strong but variable X-ray emission that astronomers are using to measure the mass of a supermassive black hole at its center.

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12:37

Object 67: The Weird Sphere

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/02/21

The abnormal-looking globular cluster Messier 71 is unusual in that its stars contain an excessive amount of heavy elements and in that it is being gravitationally shredded by the Milky Way.

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14:38

Object 66: This Episode Brought to You by the Letter B

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/02/07

The binary star system b Centauri contains an exoplanet named b Centauri b that, despite its confusing name, has changed astronomers' perspectives on how and where planets can form.

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10:30

Object 65: The Infrared Twin

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/01/24

Even though HD 106252 has an exoplanet orbiting it, astronomers are much more interested in the fact that HD 106252 looks very similar to the Sun.

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11:44

Object 64: An Actual Use for Einstein's Famous Equation

George"s Random Astronomical Object ·

2022/01/10

VER J0521+211 is a distant galaxy that produces gamma rays with such high energy that, when the gamma rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, the photons transform into electrons and positrons.

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163 results

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