May 30, 2022
Astronomy Cast Ep. 644: Is Earth… Normal?
by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay
We've now discovered thousands of exoplanets, we're learning more and more about the kinds of planetary systems there are out there across the Universe. But are planets like Earth unique or totally rare?
May 17, 2022
Astronomy Cast Ep. 643: Sagittarius A*
by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay
All the waiting is over, we've finally seen the image of the event horizon from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. Different shaped blobs! And a black circle in the middle. What are we looking at? Today we're going to explain...
May 16, 2022
Astronomy Cast Ep. 642: Is the Sun... Normal?
by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay
We've always assumed that we lived in a perfectly normal star 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 Sun, anyway?
May 9, 2022
Astronomy Cast Ep. 641: Can Planets Be Alive?
by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay
The Earth is teeming with life, but the upper atmosphere to kilometers underground. There's no question that our planet has life. But is our planet itself alive? This is a question posed back in the 1970s as the Gaia hypothesis, and it got...
May 2, 2022
Astronomy Cast Ep. 640: Survey Science: Newest Projects & Results
by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay
There are general-purpose telescopes and missions that astronomers can use to study specific objects. And there are the survey missions that look at the entire sky, which astronomers can use to answer questions about the...