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 117: No Shockingly Dumb Jokes in This Episode
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.
00:06:38 |
Mon 05 Feb 2024
Object 116: The Really Really High Expectations Exoplanetary System
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 t…
00:08:40 |
Mon 22 Jan 2024
Object 115: Oyster?
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.
00:09:35 |
Mon 08 Jan 2024
Object 114: George's 2020 Data Processing Project from Hell
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.
00:15:51 |
Mon 25 Dec 2023
Object 113: The Mystery Spot
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.
00:08:10 |
Mon 11 Dec 2023
Object 112: Imagine Marilyn Monroe in a Movie Named the Great Attractor
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.
00:09:37 |
Mon 27 Nov 2023
Object 111: The 1925 Classic
The classical nova RR Pictoris was one of the brightest and closest to ever appear in the sky.
00:07:23 |
Mon 13 Nov 2023
Object 110: We Came, We Saw, We Measured
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.
00:10:01 |
Mon 30 Oct 2023
Object 109: A Water World without Kevin Costner
The Kepler-138 star system contains at least four exoplanets, one of which may be a "water world" covered in a very deep ocean.
00:12:14 |
Mon 16 Oct 2023
Object 108: Objects in the Mirror May Be More Complicated Than They Appear
The protostellar object PDS 70 has a very complicated protoplanetary system that includes a disk of gas and dust and two protoexoplanets.
00:10:43 |
Mon 02 Oct 2023
Object 107: The Red Rectangle
The Red Rectangle (yes, the Red Rectangle) is a uniquely weird protoplanetary nebula formed by a uniquely weird binary star system.
00:10:57 |
Mon 18 Sep 2023
Object 106: A Tale of Two Binary Star Systems
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 …
00:12:09 |
Mon 04 Sep 2023
Object 105: Super-Slow Star Formation
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.
00:11:21 |
Mon 21 Aug 2023
Object 104: Going Cross Country for a Supermassive Black Hole
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.
00:09:15 |
Mon 07 Aug 2023
Object 103: The Pulsar within the Cosmic Hand
PSR B1509-58 is a relatively young pulsar that sits within a supernova remnant that looks like a giant hand.
00:08:35 |
Mon 24 Jul 2023
Object 102: Another Ring Thing
The spiral galaxy NGC 7552 is best known for its relatively small but bright starburst ring.
00:07:14 |
Mon 10 Jul 2023
Object 101: Warm and Cold
The star Eta Corvi is surrounded by a disk of dust with a rather complex structure and rather complex origin.
00:11:48 |
Mon 26 Jun 2023
Object 100: The Self-Descriptive Nebula
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.
00:13:52 |
Mon 12 Jun 2023
Object 99: No References to the Six Wives of Henry VIII
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.
00:09:41 |
Sat 27 May 2023
Object 98: Double the Black Holes for Double the Fun
Markarian 266 is a pair of merging galaxies that now contains two supermassive black holes.
00:11:50 |
Mon 15 May 2023
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