George's Random Astronomical Object

122 episodes - English - Latest episode: 19 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1 rating

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 weirdness.

Astronomy Science Natural Sciences astronomy space science random
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Episodes

Object 121: Can You Find the Supermassive Black Hole?

April 01, 2024 12:00 - 8 minutes - 20.6 MB

NGC 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.

Object 120: A Possible Source of the Cosmic Rays that Gave the Fantastic Four Their Superpowers

March 18, 2024 12:00 - 11 minutes - 25.9 MB

The 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.

Object 119: Alpha Table

March 04, 2024 12:00 - 8 minutes - 20.5 MB

Even 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.

Object 118: The Golden Standard

February 19, 2024 12:00 - 10 minutes - 24.7 MB

The 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.

Object 117: No Shockingly Dumb Jokes in This Episode

February 05, 2024 12:00 - 6 minutes - 15.6 MB

Kappa 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.

Object 116: The Really Really High Expectations Exoplanetary System

January 22, 2024 12:00 - 8 minutes - 20.2 MB

47 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.

Object 115: Oyster?

January 08, 2024 12:00 - 9 minutes - 22.2 MB

While 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.

Object 114: George's 2020 Data Processing Project from Hell

December 25, 2023 12:00 - 15 minutes - 36.2 MB

As 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.

Object 113: The Mystery Spot

December 11, 2023 12:00 - 8 minutes - 19 MB

The 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.

Object 112: Imagine Marilyn Monroe in a Movie Named the Great Attractor

November 27, 2023 12:00 - 9 minutes - 22.3 MB

The 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.

Object 111: The 1925 Classic

November 13, 2023 12:00 - 7 minutes - 17.3 MB

The classical nova RR Pictoris was one of the brightest and closest to ever appear in the sky.

Object 110: We Came, We Saw, We Measured

October 30, 2023 12:00 - 10 minutes - 23.2 MB

The 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.

Object 109: A Water World without Kevin Costner

October 16, 2023 12:00 - 12 minutes - 28.1 MB

The Kepler-138 star system contains at least four exoplanets, one of which may be a "water world" covered in a very deep ocean.

Object 108: Objects in the Mirror May Be More Complicated Than They Appear

October 02, 2023 12:00 - 10 minutes - 24.7 MB

The protostellar object PDS 70 has a very complicated protoplanetary system that includes a disk of gas and dust and two protoexoplanets.

Object 107: The Red Rectangle

September 18, 2023 12:00 - 10 minutes - 25.2 MB

The Red Rectangle (yes, the Red Rectangle) is a uniquely weird protoplanetary nebula formed by a uniquely weird binary star system.

Object 106: A Tale of Two Binary Star Systems

September 04, 2023 12:00 - 12 minutes - 27.9 MB

While 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.

Object 105: Super-Slow Star Formation

August 21, 2023 12:00 - 11 minutes - 26.1 MB

Located 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.

Object 104: Going Cross-Country for a Supermassive Black Hole

August 07, 2023 12:00 - 9 minutes - 21.5 MB

Observations with a telescope as large as the Untied States were needed to prove that J16021+3326 is a blazar, a type of galaxy containing a supermassive black hole.

Object 104: Going Cross Country for a Supermassive Black Hole

August 07, 2023 12:00 - 9 minutes - 21.5 MB

Observations with a telescope as large as the Untied States were needed to prove that J16021+3326 is a blazar, a type of galaxy containing a supermassive black hole.

Object 103: The Pulsar within the Cosmic Hand

July 24, 2023 12:00 - 8 minutes - 20 MB

PSR B1509-58 is a relatively young pulsar that sits within a supernova remnant that looks like a giant hand.

Object 102: Another Ring Thing

July 10, 2023 12:00 - 7 minutes - 17 MB

The spiral galaxy NGC 7552 is best known for its relatively small but bright starburst ring.

Object 101: Warm and Cold

June 26, 2023 12:00 - 11 minutes - 27.1 MB

The star Eta Corvi is surrounded by a disk of dust with a rather complex structure and rather complex origin.

Object 100: The Self-Descriptive Nebula

June 12, 2023 12:00 - 13 minutes - 31.8 MB

The Taurus Molecular Cloud is exactly what it sounds like it is, a cloud made of mulecular gas (mostly molecular hydrogen) in the constellation Taurus, but it is also much more than that.

Object 99: No References to the Six Wives of Henry VIII

May 27, 2023 12:00 - 9 minutes - 22.4 MB

Abell 514 is a cluster of galaxies that contains six radio galaxies, and the polarized radio emission from those six radio galaxies can be used to probe the magnetic fields within the cluster.

Object 98: Double the Black Holes for Double the Fun

May 15, 2023 12:00 - 11 minutes - 27.2 MB

Markarian 266 is a pair of merging galaxies that now contains two supermassive black holes.

Object 97: A Runaway Cow

May 01, 2023 12:00 - 11 minutes - 26.3 MB

Mu Columbae is a bright, blue star that was ejected from the Orion Nebula in a complex gravitational interaction involving three other stars.

Object 96: The Proof-Of-Concept Exoplanet

April 17, 2023 12:00 - 11 minutes - 26.4 MB

WASP-1 was the first star identified as having an exoplanet by the Wide Angle Search for Planets and thus helped to validate the techniques used by that survey.

Object 95: Two Non-Archaeological Relics

April 03, 2023 12:00 - 8 minutes - 18.9 MB

The cluster Abell 168 formed from the merger of two smaller clusters, and this had many weird effects on the intracluster gas between the galaxies.

Object 94: So Hot and So Small

March 20, 2023 12:00 - 8 minutes - 19.5 MB

WD 2211-495 is a small, hot white dwarf with a rather unusual amount of heavy elements in its outer atmosphere, implying that something from a surrounding planetary system occasionally falls into the star.

Object 93: Superthin

March 07, 2023 12:00 - 9 minutes - 21.6 MB

UGC 7321 is an unusually flat (or superthin) spiral galaxy, which is indicative of how it has avoided gravitational interactions with other galaxies that could alter its shape.

Object 92: Look at This Elliptical Galaxy Instead

February 20, 2023 12:00 - 11 minutes - 27 MB

The elliptical galaxy contains an abnormal amount of interstellar dust with no accompanying interstellar gas, which is weird.

Object 91: The Second Air Pump Galaxy

February 06, 2023 12:00 - 11 minutes - 25.6 MB

Antlia 2, which was recently found orbiting the Milky Way, is the most diffuse galaxy that anyone has ever discovered up to this point in time.

Object 90: The Globular Cluster in a Forest Fire

January 23, 2023 12:00 - 9 minutes - 21.5 MB

UKS 1 probably lies on the far side of the Milky Way, and the light from the cluster is heavily obscured by interstellar dust, but even though it's hard to see, astronomers are still really interested in it.

Object 89: Relationship Status - It's Complicated

January 09, 2023 12:00 - 8 minutes - 20.8 MB

R Aquarii could be described as one of the closest symbiotic binary star systems to Earth, but it's more complicated than that.

Object 88: Some Sort of Weird, Ultraviolet Freak of Nature

December 26, 2022 12:00 - 11 minutes - 26.5 MB

NGC 6052 looks like a spiral galaxy smashing into a wall of stars, which is more or less what is actually happening.

Object 87: The Fake Sphere

November 28, 2022 12:00 - 9 minutes - 22 MB

Although at first NGC 6781 may look like a spherical planetary nebula, it actually has a cylindrical shape, which has rather complex scientific implications for analyzing this object.

Object 86: Two Hellscapes Orbiting a Red Dwarf

November 14, 2022 12:00 - 12 minutes - 29.2 MB

The red dwarf HD 260655 has two large, hot, rocky planets orbiting very close to it.

Object 85: The Swedish Stellar Superstore

October 31, 2022 12:00 - 12 minutes - 27.8 MB

As the largest open cluster that anyone has found in the Milky Way, Westerlund 1 contains a lot of rare and weird stars.

Object 84: Eccentricity

October 17, 2022 12:00 - 9 minutes - 21.2 MB

The evolved red star HD 214362 is orbiting the center of the Milky Way in a very eccentric way (as in either its orbit is a very elongated ellipse or its orbit is just plainly strange).

Object 83: Number 1 in 1970

October 03, 2022 12:00 - 13 minutes - 275 MB

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.

Object 82: Officially Peculiar

September 19, 2022 12:00 - 9 minutes - 21.5 MB

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.

Object 81: Unusually Shocking

September 05, 2022 12:00 - 9 minutes - 23.3 KB

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.

Object 80: The Confusing and Controversial Names Episode

August 22, 2022 12:00 - 10 minutes - 24.9 MB

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.

Object 79: The Magic of Circumstellar Semantics

August 08, 2022 12:00 - 11 minutes - 26.8 MB

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.

Object 78: A Dwarf Galaxy with Something for Everyone

July 25, 2022 12:00 - 12 minutes - 27.7 MB

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.

Object 77: Another 90's Gamma Ray Flashback

July 11, 2022 12:00 - 10 minutes - 24.9 MB

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.

Object 76: A Modern Non-Comet

June 27, 2022 12:00 - 8 minutes - 20.8 MB

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.