The 365 Days of Astronomy
Asking questions and not always answering them. Is there hope? Well, sure. The question arises where the Drake Equation, aiming to quantify the likely number of detectable intelligent civilizations out there includes a term representing the inherent risk of any intelligent civilization destroying itself. It is just a risk, could be low could be high, but its wide acceptance as a part of the whole equation does suggest we have some pessimism about our own future. Could dark matter be black holes? Well, no. Firstly. we've discussed before how black holes can't really be dark matter. Dark...
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Hosted by Tony Darnell. From Oct 11, 2023. Over the course of this show, we’ve talked many, many times about the Transit Method for detecting exoplanets. It is simply the measure of a star's decrease in brightness as the star passes through our line of sight. This once difficult measurement has now become commonplace and can even be done with advanced amateur astronomy equipment under a reasonably dark sky. From this measurement, we can infer a few things about the planets passing by: we can get an indication of its size and if we measure several transits, we can...
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From February 9, 2009. This week Bob Novella of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast is going to pepper Pamela with questions, testing her ability to leap from tides to gravitational waves to Higgs bosons. We’ll see where this takes us on this skeptical journey through what is known and what we’re trying to learn about this Universe. [Editor’s note: A small bit of audio at the start of two of Bob’s questions was lost due to a technical glitch. So I inserted a coo-coo clock sound effect. Things were going coo-coo after all…] We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of...
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Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. From October & November 2024. Today's 2 topics: - An example that a relatively large space rock can approach the Earth suddenly started with what appeared as a bright star moving across the images that I had just obtained with the Catalina Sky Survey's 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona. It was about 100 times brighter than most of Earth approaching objects asteroid hunters discover. Over the next 64 hours it was...
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In January 2025, astronomers woke up to an alert of a mysterious event that occurred 2.8 billion light years away from Earth. As such things go, this was fairly close to Earth and was an opportunity for detailed observation of the event’s evolution. It was a powerful burst of X-rays, known as a fast X-ray transient or FXT. This burst was named ‘EP 250108a’, after the Einstein Probe, that’s the EP part, that detected the event. Let’s call it 108a. Just between us… FXTs are generally hard to detect and occur far from the Earth. They only last between a few seconds to a...
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From August 31, 2020. Join us today as we examine observations for dual quasars in the process of merging and a star being torn apart by its supermassive black hole. Plus, Hubble data used to map a halo around the Andromeda galaxy. We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest...
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Hosted by our Director, Avivah Yamani. Today's podcast guides you through the slow-motion meeting of the Milky Way and Andromeda. Learn why stars mostly miss each other, how gravity sculpts tidal tails, and how colliding gas and dust spark starbursts—turning two spirals into one remixed galaxy. Epic? Yes. Doomsday? Nope. We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you!...
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From Sep 8, 2017. Astronomers have been searching for mid-weight black holes, and now they’ve found one, right here in the Milky Way. We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! This show is made possible through your...
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Hosted by Tony Darnell. From Apr 26, 2016. Black holes have been largely theoretical until the LIGO observations announced earlier this year. Thanks to those observations, we now have another way to study and observe these amazing celestial objects. Original Music by Mark C. Petersen, Loch Ness Productions We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank...
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From April 14, 2008. Have you ever wondered what it takes to get a spacecraft off the Earth and into space. And how managers at NASA can actually navigate a spacecraft to another planet? And how does a gravity assist work? And how do they get things into orbit? And how do they land? So many questions… We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you!...
info_outlineMessengers Of Time And Space with Dr. Alan Strauss!
The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, released its first imagery at an event in Washington, D.C. The imagery shows cosmic phenomena captured at an unprecedented scale. In just over 10 hours of test observations, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory has already captured millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars and thousands of asteroids.
The imagery is a small preview of Rubin Observatory's upcoming 10-year scientific mission to explore and understand some of the Universe's biggest mysteries. In this podcast, Rubin Observatory’s Dr. Alan Strauss discusses the observatory, the first look images and how the public and students can interact with the data.
Bios:
Rob Sparks is in the Communications, Education and Engagement group at NSF’s NOIRLab in Tucson, Arizona.
Dr. Alan Strauss is the Head of Education and Public Outreach (EPO), at the NSF-DOE Vera C Rubin Observatory, where he leads an interdisciplinary team of astronomers, writers, designers, educators, and developers building web-based astronomy experiences for students, teachers, and the general public.
We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.
Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can!
Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!
Every bit helps! Thank you!
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu
Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].