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
69: Solar Secrets & Nebulous Neutrinos
Fusion reactions in stars, including our Sun, produce huge amounts of neutrinos. These tiny elementary particles are almost impossibly hard to spot: ludicrous numbers of neutrinos are passing through…
00:56:29 |
Thu 16 Jul 2020
68: Birth Of A Planet
The planets we see around us in the galaxy haven't just been hanging around forever, you know. We're pretty sure they must have formed at some point in the past, and more are forming right now, presu…
00:49:22 |
Fri 03 Jul 2020
67: The Mystery of Dark Matter — Live from the York Festival of Ideas!
Live! from the York Festival of Ideas online programme, a zoomtastic chat about dark matter — the strange, unknown stuff that comprises only, what, 80% or more of the matter in the universe. What is …
01:00:35 |
Wed 24 Jun 2020
66: Inscrutable Neutrons & Perplexing Pulsars
Neutron stars are weird. Pulsars are weird. All pulsars are neutron stars. Are all neutron stars pulsars? Hmmm. How are they born? Do they die? Are they all the same? How big are they? Do pulsars all…
00:57:18 |
Fri 22 May 2020
65: Burbidge Burbidge Fowler & Hoyle
In 1957, a paper was published in Reviews of Modern Physics that changed astrophysics at its core. Well, we say "paper" — it was more of a tome: a hundred pages of research and review that laid out i…
00:55:21 |
Fri 15 May 2020
64: Almost A Good Comet
Everyone's heard of the famous comets: Halley, McNaught, Hale-Bopp, the Great Comet of 1844. Ok, maybe not that last one. Earlier this year astronomers got very excited about a new comet, called Atla…
00:41:48 |
Thu 07 May 2020
63: A Pair Of Delta Scuti Lambda Boos
Weirdest episode title ever! From her lockdown bunker in Preston, Emily joins Chris for a special social-distanced episode, talking about a weird binary system found in the TESS data recently. One of…
00:38:15 |
Wed 22 Apr 2020
62: The Cosmic Sponge
Space is big, as Douglas Adams so succinctly put it. But how big? And what does the Universe look like when you see it at those scales. The structure of the large-scale cosmos is amazing — beyond gal…
00:54:26 |
Sat 28 Mar 2020
61: Biggest Bang Eva!
Astronomers have spotted a void, a cavity, a big hole in the intergalactic stuff in a cluster of galaxies far away. And this thing is big. Very big — fifteen Milky Way Galaxies across. The void was c…
00:45:36 |
Fri 13 Mar 2020
60: Big Moons!
Super Snow Moon. Super Worm Moon. Super Pink Moon. Super Flower Moon. We're tripping over the Super Moons this year, there's so many lying around all over the place. Why so many? And what is a Super …
00:49:08 |
Fri 06 Mar 2020
59: Living With A Star
The Sun — so close, we can almost touch it. (Don't, that would be bad.) Yet astronomers have so much to learn about our nearest star. Just a few weeks ago, the ESA Solar Orbiter launched, off on a mi…
00:46:29 |
Fri 28 Feb 2020
58: Astronomical Pancake Theory
For Pancake Day (mmmmm, pancakes) we celebrate all the pancake-y things in the Universe, from Saturn's rings to planetary systems, from spiral galaxies to black hole accretion discs. It's no coincide…
00:50:54 |
Wed 19 Feb 2020
57: Ancient Stardust and Gaia Sausage
In 1969, a chunk of space rock blasted through the skies above Victoria, Australia, before making in a small, smoking crater near the town of Murchison. Keen-eyed locals grabbed as many bits of the M…
00:45:43 |
Sun 26 Jan 2020
56: No Bang For Betelgeuse?
"Is Betelgeuse About To Explode?" — Forbes. "Is Betelgeuse On The Brink Of A Supernova?" — Washington Post. "Fading star heading for explosive end?" — The Guardian. Betelgeuse, the astoundingly big r…
00:49:05 |
Fri 17 Jan 2020
55: The Starlink Controversy
SpaceX are doing amazing work on the spaceflight and technology stuff, but they could use a bit of work on their consultation and collaboration skills. Starlink, their satellite constellation program…
00:42:03 |
Fri 27 Dec 2019
54: Black Hole Redemption
Our galaxy has a huge — you might even say *supermassive* — black hole at its centre. Turns out, so do most other large galaxies. Typically, black holes are portrayed as monstrous, pitch-black space …
00:39:12 |
Fri 20 Dec 2019
53: ’Tis the season(ality)
Life on Earth changes dramatically with the seasons — so much so that spotting Earth’s seasons from space is easy. Spring and summer are generally green, Autumn turns brown, and winter is white — in …
00:39:24 |
Fri 13 Dec 2019
52: Live from the Podcast Social Club!
Recorded at the first ever Podcast Social Club at Rural Arts, Thirsk, a very special edition of the show — The Great Syzygy Space Off #2! Emily and Chris compete for glory in a series of three exopla…
00:43:40 |
Wed 04 Dec 2019
51: Mercury in Transit!
On 11 November, the littlest planet Mercury wandered bravely across the face of the Sun — and all over the world people watched it happen through their telescopes and solar filters. Chris and Emily w…
00:43:40 |
Sat 16 Nov 2019
50: Imposter Comet!
For only the second time, astronomers have spoptted an interstellar interloper wandering through our solar system. Comet 2I/Borisov was spoitted by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov on 30 August 20…
00:43:52 |
Mon 11 Nov 2019
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