George's Random Astronomical Object is a biweekly astronomy podcast featuring science discussions about astronomical objects at randomly selected locations in the sky. The wide range of topics discussed in the show include stars, variable stars, variable variable stars, supermassive black holes, ultracool dwarf stars, exoplanets, howler monkeys, infrared radiation, acronyms, more acronyms, starbursts, measurements of less than 12 parsecs, jellyfish galaxies, diffuse ionized gas, and general ...
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NGC 4261 was made famous when Hubble Space Telescope observations in the 1990s showed that this elliptical galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.Bởi George Bendo
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The very small Pyxis Cluster orbits the Milky Way in such an extremely extended orbit that it travels further away than many of the dwarf galaxies orbiting our galaxy.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 128: The Dwarf Living Inside the Bridge
6:58
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The NGC 6221/NGC 6215 Group of galaxies contains a bridge-like structure of hydrogen gas connecting the two spiral galaxies within the group as well as a dwarf galaxy that looks like it formed within the bridge.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 127: The Nebraska Blue Straggler Special
12:59
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The open cluster NGC 188 is peculiar not only because it is very old for an open cluster but also because it contains an unusual number of blue stars for a cluster of its age.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 126: Do Not Mention Exoplanet b Again
10:10
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HD 181433 has three exoplanets, two of which are gas giants with very unusually elongated orbits that have been very challenging to properly measure.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 125: The Business Form Variable Star System
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HR 1099 (also known as V711 Tauri) was instrumental in showing that magnetic fields play a major role in causing the variability of stars within the RS CVn class of variable star systems.Bởi George Bendo
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Most people would associate Castor with Pollux, which are the two brightest stars in the constellation Gemini, but Castor by itself is very interesting because it is actually a very complex system containing six stars.Bởi George Bendo
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The quasar QSO 1331+170 is best known for having a darker galaxy in front of it that is absorbing its light.Bởi George Bendo
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The cluster of galaxies MACS J1149.5+2223 is so massive that it has gravitationally bent (or lensed) the light from multiple things behind it, including one of the most distant galaxies in the universe and a supernova.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 121: Can You Find the Supermassive Black Hole?
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NGC 34 (also known as NGC 17) is a chaotic-looking galaxy that formed from two smaller galaxies merging together, and it is a place where astronomers have easily found lots of stars forming in a starburst but where they have had difficulty concluding whether the galaxy also contains a supermassive black hole.…
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Object 120: A Possible Source of the Cosmic Rays that Gave the Fantastic Four Their Superpowers
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The Monogem Ring, which is one of the largest sources of X-rays in the Earth's sky, was created by a supernova explosion about 86000 years ago, and the core of the star that exploded has been identified as the pulsar PSR B0656+14 at the center of the ring.Bởi George Bendo
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Even though Alpha Mensae is in one of the faintest and dumbest constellations in the sky, it's an intriguing star system because it is very close to the Earth, because one of the stars is very Sun-like, and because it may contain an exoplanet or a disk of dust in orbit around that Sun-like star.Bởi George Bendo
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The Type Ia supernova SN 2005cf was observed at multiple wavelengths for three months after its appearance, allowing astronomers to create templates of its spectrum that could be used to measure distances to other Type Ia supernovae.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 117: No Shockingly Dumb Jokes in This Episode
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Kappa Cassiopeiae is a large blue variaable star that is most potentially interesting because of the bow shock between its stellar winds and the interstellar medium.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 116: The Really Really High Expectations Exoplanetary System
8:40
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47 Ursa Majoris is a nearby Sun-like star that astronomers have intensely studied in an effort to find an Earth-like exoplanet, and while three exoplanets have been found orbiting the star, none of them are remotely similar to the Earth.Bởi George Bendo
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While the planetary nebula NGC 1501 is a popular amateur astronomy target, the newly formed, hot, pulsating white dwarf at its center is much more interesting to professional astronomers.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 114: George's 2020 Data Processing Project from Hell
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As the second closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, Messier 33 has been a very popular observing target for both amateur and professional astronomers, and even I have made images of the galaxy.Bởi George Bendo
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The white dwarf GD 394 seems to have an abnormal amount of heavy elements in its outer atmosphere and also varies in brightness with a period of 1.146 days, and no one understands why.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 112: Imagine Marilyn Monroe in a Movie Named the Great Attractor
9:37
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The Norma Cluster lies near the center of a giant supercluster of galaxies that is pulling in everything else in the local universe, including our galaxy.Bởi George Bendo
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The classical nova RR Pictoris was one of the brightest and closest to ever appear in the sky.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 110: We Came, We Saw, We Measured
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The spiral galaxy Markarian 766 contains an active galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole, which means that everyone needs to apply their favorite technique to measure the black hole's mass.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 109: A Water World without Kevin Costner
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The Kepler-138 star system contains at least four exoplanets, one of which may be a "water world" covered in a very deep ocean.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 108: Objects in the Mirror May Be More Complicated Than They Appear
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The protostellar object PDS 70 has a very complicated protoplanetary system that includes a disk of gas and dust and two protoexoplanets.Bởi George Bendo
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The Red Rectangle (yes, the Red Rectangle) is a uniquely weird protoplanetary nebula formed by a uniquely weird binary star system.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 106: A Tale of Two Binary Star Systems
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While some astronomers are interested the globular cluster NGC 6712 because it appears to have been severely tidally disrupted by orbiting too close to the center of the Milky Way, other astronomers are interested in the cluster because it contains a couple of weird yet similar binary star systems.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 105: Super-Slow Star Formation
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Located at the edge of the Local Group, the Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy has some of the stars with the fewest elements other than hydrogen or helium in the known universe.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 104: Going Cross Country for a Supermassive Black Hole
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Observations with a telescope as large as the Untied States were needed to prove that J16021+3326 is a blazar, a type of galaxy containing a supermassive black hole.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 103: The Pulsar within the Cosmic Hand
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PSR B1509-58 is a relatively young pulsar that sits within a supernova remnant that looks like a giant hand.Bởi George Bendo
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The spiral galaxy NGC 7552 is best known for its relatively small but bright starburst ring.Bởi George Bendo
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The star Eta Corvi is surrounded by a disk of dust with a rather complex structure and rather complex origin.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 100: The Self-Descriptive Nebula
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The Taurus Molecular Cloud is exactly what it sounds like it is, a cloud made of mulecular gas (mostly molecular hydrogen) in the constellation Taurus, but it is also much more than that.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 99: No References to the Six Wives of Henry VIII
9:41
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Abell 514 is a cluster of galaxies that contains six radio galaxies, and the polarized radio emission from those six radio galaxies can be used to probe the magnetic fields within the cluster.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 98: Double the Black Holes for Double the Fun
11:50
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Markarian 266 is a pair of merging galaxies that now contains two supermassive black holes.Bởi George Bendo
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Mu Columbae is a bright, blue star that was ejected from the Orion Nebula in a complex gravitational interaction involving three other stars.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 96: The Proof-Of-Concept Exoplanet
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WASP-1 was the first star identified as having an exoplanet by the Wide Angle Search for Planets and thus helped to validate the techniques used by that survey.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 95: Two Non-Archaeological Relics
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The cluster Abell 168 formed from the merger of two smaller clusters, and this had many weird effects on the intracluster gas between the galaxies.Bởi George Bendo
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WD 2211-495 is a small, hot white dwarf with a rather unusual amount of heavy elements in its outer atmosphere, implying that something from a surrounding planetary system occasionally falls into the star.Bởi George Bendo
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UGC 7321 is an unusually flat (or superthin) spiral galaxy, which is indicative of how it has avoided gravitational interactions with other galaxies that could alter its shape.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 92: Look at This Elliptical Galaxy Instead
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The elliptical galaxy contains an abnormal amount of interstellar dust with no accompanying interstellar gas, which is weird.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 91: The Second Air Pump Galaxy
11:26
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Antlia 2, which was recently found orbiting the Milky Way, is the most diffuse galaxy that anyone has ever discovered up to this point in time.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 90: The Globular Cluster in a Forest Fire
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UKS 1 probably lies on the far side of the Milky Way, and the light from the cluster is heavily obscured by interstellar dust, but even though it's hard to see, astronomers are still really interested in it.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 89: Relationship Status - It's Complicated
8:57
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R Aquarii could be described as one of the closest symbiotic binary star systems to Earth, but it's more complicated than that.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 88: Some Sort of Weird, Ultraviolet Freak of Nature
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NGC 6052 looks like a spiral galaxy smashing into a wall of stars, which is more or less what is actually happening.Bởi George Bendo
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Although at first NGC 6781 may look like a spherical planetary nebula, it actually has a cylindrical shape, which has rather complex scientific implications for analyzing this object.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 86: Two Hellscapes Orbiting a Red Dwarf
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The red dwarf HD 260655 has two large, hot, rocky planets orbiting very close to it.Bởi George Bendo
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Object 85: The Swedish Stellar Superstore
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As the largest open cluster that anyone has found in the Milky Way, Westerlund 1 contains a lot of rare and weird stars.Bởi George Bendo
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The evolved red star HD 214362 is orbiting the center of the Milky Way in a very eccentric way (as in either its orbit is a very elongated ellipse or its orbit is just plainly strange).Bởi George Bendo
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In 1970, the quasar 4C 05.34 was the most distant known object in the universe, but this is not the only interesting fact about this object.Bởi George Bendo
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A large mass of gas fell into the lenticular galaxy NGC 3593 about 2 billion years ago, and this gas both changed the appearance of the galaxy and also created new stars that now orbit the galaxy in the opposite direction from the older stars.Bởi George Bendo
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What may be most interesting about the pulsar PSR J2124-3358 is not that it is spinning very rapidly but that stellar winds from the pulsar have collided with the interstellar medium, producing a glowing bow shock.Bởi George Bendo
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