syzygy
Join astronomer Dr Emily Brunsden and enthusiastic not-astronomer Dr Chris Stewart as they explore the universe.
- Update frequency
- every 13 days
- Average duration
- 47 minutes
- Episodes
- 135
- Years Active
- 2018 - 2025
89: Diverting Dimorphos with DART
Every year, thousands of decent-sized chunks of rock hurtle past — and often into — the Earth. Of the ones that do hit, most burn up leaving a pretty trail. Occasionally, a bigger one explodes with a…
00:59:11 |
Sun 05 Dec 2021
88: Galaxy Munchies
When a galaxy eats another galaxy it's called "Galactic Cannibalism". But what if a galaxy eats a galaxy that ate another galaxy, which maybe ate another ... we're getting into Russian nesting dolls …
00:49:39 |
Tue 23 Nov 2021
87: Star Go Boom!
Some stars go out with a whimper, but others go with a bang — and what a bang! Supernovae are ludicrously energetic explosions, so you wouldn't want to see one up close. Astronomers to do spot them, …
00:54:55 |
Tue 16 Nov 2021
86: Extragalactic X-Ray Exoplanet
We've spotted thousands of planets around other stars in our own Milky Way. But when we look at other galaxies, it's mostly impossible to see individual stars — let alone any planets orbiting them. R…
00:48:14 |
Tue 02 Nov 2021
85: Lucy In The Sky With Trojans
We're going back to Jupiter again — or, near Jupiter anyway. Like the Lucy space probe we're zooming off to the 4th and 5th Lagrange points of Jupiter's orbit, where a whole pile of Trojan asteroids …
00:49:22 |
Tue 26 Oct 2021
84: Spot Speeds Up
There are few things in the Solar System more iconic then Jupiter's Great Red Spot, that swirling vortex staring out from the giant planet like a huge eye. Ever since Cassini (or was it Hooke?) first…
00:53:17 |
Tue 19 Oct 2021
83: James Webb Set For Launch (Honestly!)
We've been waiting. And waiting. And ... waiting. Finally — *finally!* — the James Webb Space Telescope is ready for launch on 18 December this year. Which is Chris's birthday, so things better go sm…
00:57:27 |
Tue 12 Oct 2021
82: Billionaires In Space!
Branson's done it. Bezos is going to do it. Elon's doing it for sure, if only to find out where he parked his car. All the rich kids are heading to space — but where is that, exactly? How high to you…
01:10:26 |
Mon 19 Jul 2021
81: To Infinity And Beyond!
Live and online at the York Festival of Ideas 2021, Emily and Chris discuss infinities. Is the Universe infinite? What does that even mean? Does it go on forever in all directions? Does it bend back …
00:59:48 |
Tue 29 Jun 2021
80: Mapping the Unseeable
Hundreds of scientists have carried out the largest survey of dark matter in the universe, and released the first tranche of results. It's a staggering bit of research, involving observations 100 mil…
00:56:18 |
Tue 22 Jun 2021
79: Voyager Hears A Hum
Our farthest-flung object, little Voyager 1, is still hurtling through the cosmos, 21 light hours away in interstellar space. And decades into its mission it's still measuring stuff! Voyager 1 sent b…
00:52:12 |
Tue 01 Jun 2021
78: Muons broke my physics!
An esoteric particle called the muon wobbles weirdly in a magnetic field, and physicists around the world go a frothing frenzy of excitement ... because maybe these wobbles mean new physics! The expe…
01:08:29 |
Tue 11 May 2021
77: A Night In The Life Of An Astronomer
Emily is up a mountain in New Zealand, observing stars and doing astronomer-y things. Or, she would be, if the weather was behaving better. In this episode, recorded on site at the University of Cant…
01:03:42 |
Thu 18 Mar 2021
76: Everybody's Going To Mars
China's doing it. The United Arab Emirates are doing it. The USA as well, of course they're on it as well — seems everyone is going to Mars these days. Emily takes a good hard look at each of the cur…
01:02:46 |
Fri 05 Mar 2021
75: Story of the Sun
The Sun, our star. So easy to take for granted. But it's had an interesting few billion years so far, with several billion more to go. Emily tells the story of the Sun from dust cloud rocked by a sup…
01:02:00 |
Fri 12 Feb 2021
73: Blanets & Squeezars
We'll always happily talk about black holes — and today we'll extend that to things that go around black holes: blanets (black hole planets), and squeezars (stars so close to a black hole, they're sq…
00:59:34 |
Tue 15 Dec 2020
72: Nobel Black Holes
October is Nobel Prize month, and this year the Physics Nobel was shared by three amazing physicists: one who took Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and wrapped some bonkers Escherian mathemati…
01:13:15 |
Tue 20 Oct 2020
71: Penguins on Venus?
OMG life on Venus!!! Well, now, hold on there Tex. Yes, astronomers announced this month that they'd found phosphine in the atmosphere of our planetary neighbour. And yes, phosphine is a pretty decen…
00:48:26 |
Tue 22 Sep 2020
70: Syzygy Summer Spectacular
OK, maybe not *spectacular* as such — but a laid-back summery edition anyway. Emily and Chris share their fave summertime astro-related reads, films, TV shows and podcasts, as well as their go-to sit…
01:05:25 |
Tue 28 Jul 2020
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