Ep. 560: Betelgeuse
You might be surprised to hear that we’ve never done an episode of Astronomy Cast featuring Betelgeuse. Well, good news, this is that episode. Let’s talk about the star, why it might be dimming, and...
View ArticleEp. 563: White Dwarf Mergers
White dwarfs are usually about 60% the mass of the Sun, so it was a bit of a surprise when astronomers found one that was almost exactly twice that. What happens when white dwarfs merge? Download MP3|...
View ArticleEp. 579: White and Black Dwarfs
I’ve got some bad news for you: stars die. At some point in the next few billion years or so, our Sun is going to start heating up, using up all the fuel in its core, and then eventually die, becoming...
View ArticleEp. 580: Exploding Dwarfs
You’d think that a white dwarf star is the end of a stellar life. It’s all downhill from there. A long, slow cool down towards the end of everything. But in some situations, even dead stars can get...
View ArticleEp. 581: Other Kinds of Novae
Don’t ever accuse us of not comprehensively covering every kind of exploding star. This week we gather up all the leftover ways that stars partially or fully explode, or don’t. Probably. Enjoy....
View ArticleEp. 642: Is the Sun… Normal?
We’ve always assumed that we lived in a perfectly normal system with a normal star and normal planets. It’s all… normal. But with our modern understanding of billions of stars, just how normal is our...
View ArticleEp. 664: The First Stars
The Sun is a third-generation star, polluted with the metals from long-dead stars. Astronomers have also discovered second-generation stars, with very low metallicity. But theories suggest there must...
View ArticleEp. 679: High(per) Velocity Stars
Most stars in the Milky Way are trapped in here with us, doomed to orbit around and around and around. But a few have found a way out, an escape into the freedom of intergalactic space. How do stars...
View ArticleEp. 681: Kilonovae
In 2017, astronomers detected the gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation from colliding neutron stars. This had been long theorized as one of the causes of a certain type of gamma-ray...
View ArticleEp. 683: Cosmic Dawn
After the cosmic microwave background radiation was released, the Universe returned to darkness, cloaked in this clouds of primordial hydrogen and helium. Gravity pulled these vast clouds into the...
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