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 weirdness.
- Update frequency
- every 14 days
- Average duration
- 10 minutes
- Episodes
- 157
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
Object 157: Something More Interesting than Three Exoplanets
The nearby Sun-like star HD 69830 may have three exoplanets orbiting it, but astronomers seem more focused on trying to understand a hard-to-explain dust disk in the star system.
00:08:23 |
Mon 01 Sep 2025
Object 156: Dust Puffs
Z Ursa Minor belongs to a class of variable stars that occasionally produce puffs of dust, but this is not the weeirdest thing about them.
00:07:56 |
Mon 18 Aug 2025
Object 155: Pinwheel
The nearby face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 is one of the most popular galaxies in the sky for astronomers to study, particularly in terms of studying the relative abundances of various elements wit…
00:11:21 |
Mon 04 Aug 2025
Object 154: The Binary Star System That Needed to Go on Hiatus
A 0535+26 is a rather unusual star system called a Be high mass X-ray binary that periodically produces bursts of X-ray emission.
00:08:47 |
Mon 21 Jul 2025
Object 153: A Wolf Within a Wolf
Hen 2-113 is a rather unusual planetary nebula that formed not when a Sun-like star died but when a large, massive, and extraordinarily hot Wolf-Rayet star blew away its outer hydrogen layers.
00:07:17 |
Mon 07 Jul 2025
Object 152: The Spiderweb Flashlight
The quasar PKS 2126-158 has been popular to observe because astronomers can see many different things between the quasar and Earth, including an entire cluster of galaxies, that are absorbing light f…
00:08:39 |
Mon 23 Jun 2025
Object 151: A Magnetic Whale
Beta Ceti is a relatively close giant star where helium fusion has been triggered in its core, but it's a bit unusual compared to other stars that have reached this stage in their evolution.
00:07:11 |
Mon 09 Jun 2025
Object 150: And Now for Something Completely the Same
Wolf 1069 is another nearby red dwarf with an exoplanet, but this time, the exoplanet is more likely to harbor life than other nearby red dwarfs with exoplanets that I may have discussed in previous …
00:09:50 |
Mon 26 May 2025
Object 149: Spaghetti Leftovers
The globular cluster Messier 54 is not part of our galaxy but actually the nuclear stellar core of a dwarf galaxy that has nealy been completely gravitationally torn apart by the Milky Way.
00:09:42 |
Mon 28 Apr 2025
Object 148: Problem Solving
DI Pegasi is a star system with two eclipsing stars in its center that orbit each other every 17 hours and 5 minutes and two smaller stars on very wide orbits that gravitationally tug on the central …
00:08:01 |
Mon 14 Apr 2025
Object 147: Nothing But Gas
Abell 1142 is a peculiar cluster of galaxies that has formed from the merger of two smaller clusters, and its center contains nothing but gas.
00:08:21 |
Mon 31 Mar 2025
Object 146: The Prototype of Peculiar
SN 2002cx was the first supernova ever identified in a subclass of objects now called Type Iax supernovae.
00:08:05 |
Mon 17 Mar 2025
Object 145: Neutron Numbers Time
PSR J1518+4904 is one of the very few identified double neutron stars, and it has provided opportunities to perform unique measurements on the objects.
00:10:56 |
Mon 03 Mar 2025
Object 144: Heavy Metals
The stars in the open cluster NGC 6253 contain abnormally large amounts of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, and no one is quite certain why.
00:08:05 |
Mon 17 Feb 2025
Object 143: Almost Absolutely Awesome
GJ 887 is a very close red dwarf with two exoplanets (and a potential third) that almost look like they could harbor life except for one potential problem.
00:10:52 |
Mon 03 Feb 2025
Object 142: The Littlest Galaxy Ever Found
The awkwardly-named Segue 2 is (as of the time of the publication of this episode) the smallest galaxy anyone has ever found.
00:10:31 |
Mon 20 Jan 2025
Object 141: Just a Very Nice Spiral
Messier 74 is just a very nice looking face-on spiral galaxy, which has made it quite useful for many different types of astrophysical analyses.
00:12:32 |
Mon 06 Jan 2025
Object 140: Imagine All the Dust
Infrared observations of SN 1995N indicate that the material ejected by the explosion may have produced a huge amount of dust.
00:09:44 |
Mon 23 Dec 2024
Object 139: Recoil
The galaxy 3C 186 features a supermassive black hole with a mass several billions of times the mass of the Sun that has been ejected 36000 light years out of the galaxy's nucleus.
00:08:16 |
Mon 09 Dec 2024
Object 138: A Weird Example of a Weird Subclass of a Weird Class of Objects
4U 1850-087 is an ultracompact binary star system consisting of a whtie dwarf and a neutron star orbiting each other so closely that the neutron star can strip the outer layers off of the white dwarf…
00:08:40 |
Mon 25 Nov 2024
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