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 37: Blowing Bubbles (or Cavities)
Hickson Compact Group 62 contains hot intracluster gas with two large cavities (which I want to call bubbles) that formed from gas that was blown out of the galaxy at the centre of the group.
00:09:46 |
Mon 28 Dec 2020
Object 36: Seventeen Ways to Oscillate
HD 60435 is a nearby example of a class of stars called rapidly oscillating Ap stars that can change brightness in just a few minutes.
00:11:17 |
Mon 14 Dec 2020
Object 35: The Ursa Major Eye Test
Mizar and Alcor have been visible as a double star since ancient times, but as technology has progessed over the centuries, astronomers have discovered that Mizar and Alcor are not just one pair of s…
00:14:20 |
Mon 30 Nov 2020
Object 34: Longer Than This Podcast Episode
The gamma ray burst GRB 111209A was notable for being almost seven hours long, which is much longer than gamma ray bursts normally last as well as much longer than a typical Ariana Grande concert.
00:09:55 |
Mon 16 Nov 2020
Object 33: Part of a Vegetarian Sausage
Messier 56 is a particularly old globular cluster that attracts a lot of attention from professional astronomers, although amateur astronomers have a tendency to overlook it.
00:12:12 |
Mon 02 Nov 2020
Object 32: Synonyms for Large
As a large elliptical galaxy with a supermassive black hole and supersized jets of gas emerging from its nucleus, NGC 6251 inspires some astronomers to use thesauruses.
00:09:30 |
Mon 19 Oct 2020
Object 31: Jelly Bean Analysis
The red dwarf GJ 3470 has a gaseous exoplanet orbiting it in such a way that the planet passes between the star and the Earth, allowing astronomers to examine the atmosphere of the exoplanet.
00:10:10 |
Mon 05 Oct 2020
Object 30: Measure the Correct Distance and Win a Prize
NGC 3621 is one of a few galaxies where its distance has been measured with high accuracy using Cepheids and other stars with known brightness, thus making it very important for measuring the expansi…
00:13:13 |
Mon 21 Sep 2020
Object 29: High Contrast
A project using an interesting combination of methods was able to find a very faint red dwarf in orbit around the bright, nearby star Zeta Virginis.
00:09:37 |
Mon 07 Sep 2020
Object 28: Stellar Assassination
PGC 43234 was a relatively uninteresting galaxy until its central supermassive black hole shredded a star in an event known as ASASSN-14li.
00:09:09 |
Mon 24 Aug 2020
Object 27: More Powerful than a Football Player with a Rocket Launcher
WR 40 is one of the brightest and best-studied Wolf-Rayet stars, a class of stars that are so hot that they are blowing themselves apart.
00:11:52 |
Mon 10 Aug 2020
Object 26: Cold at 14 Million Degrees Celsius
The group of galaxies called the IC 1860 Group looks like it was recently disturbed by a spiral galaxy falling into it.
00:09:31 |
Mon 27 Jul 2020
Object 25: The Ultracool Neighbor
The nearby star DENIS J104814.7-395606 is cool (in the sense that it is awesome) because it is so cool (in the sense that it has a very low surface temperature for a star).
00:09:35 |
Mon 13 Jul 2020
Object 24: Too Fast but Not Too Furious
PSR 0820+02 is the second pulsar ever discovered to be in a binary star system.
00:09:27 |
Mon 29 Jun 2020
Object 23: The Counterrevolutionary from Centaurus
A number of peculiarities about the lenticular galaxy NGC 5102 indicate that a dwarf galaxy fell into it several hundred million years ago.
00:10:00 |
Mon 15 Jun 2020
Object 22: Above and Below or Something Like That
NGC 55 has the interesting distinction of being the closest galaxy to Earth that is seen edge-on, and it also contains an ultraminous X-ray source (ULX) uncreatively named NGC 55 ULX.
00:14:59 |
Mon 01 Jun 2020
Object 21: Retro Gaming and Star Formation
NGC 281, which is also called the Pacman Nebula, is a place where star formation has been triggered two different ways, although the stars are not chased by any Ghost Nebulae.
00:09:43 |
Mon 18 May 2020
Object 20: A Classic Non-Comet
Even though it may be rather ordinary from a scientific standpoint, the open cluster Messier 23 is a very popular with amateur astronomers.
00:10:39 |
Mon 04 May 2020
Object 19: Probably Not the Y2K Bug
Everything about the triple star system V505 Sgr looked normal aside from an abrupt change in the orbits of the stars sometime around the year 2000.
00:09:33 |
Mon 20 Apr 2020
Object 18: 0.2 Seconds of Gamma Rays
The short gamma ray burst GRB 100206A was found in a luminous infrared galaxy, which is very unusual place to find such gamma ray bursts.
00:07:34 |
Mon 06 Apr 2020
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