Episode 03: Holding Our Breath For TESS!
After a quick listener question from Graham in Highfields, Australia, this week’s show is all about TESS: The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.
TESS is a brand new space telescope that, at the time of recording, was sitting atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, preparing for launch. Once in orbit, TESS will spend two years scanning almost the entire sky searching for exoplanets around stars in our local area of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Emily is particularly excited because the data TESS will send back will also contain loads of info for astronomers interested in variable stars, her own area of expertise.
So keep your fingers and toes crossed for a safe launch and successful mission. Go TESS go!
Episode 02: Dark Matter Is Out There, Even When It's Not
In the 1960s and 70s, astronomers measured the speed of stars and gas clouds orbiting at the edge of our galaxy, and discovered something strange: their rotational velocities were too fast. Way too fast. So fast, there’s no way the gravity from the visible mass in the galaxy could possibly keep them in orbit.
There was clearly some mass out there across the galaxy that astronomers couldn’t see. Like, more than three quarters of it. Awkward!
Astronomers call this invisible stuff Dark Matter, and fro decades the evidence has mounted for its existence across the universe. But in March 2018 astronomers found a galaxy with no Dark Matter at all … which, in a wonderful leap of logic, gives them even more confidence that this mysterious material exists.
Episode 01: Planets, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Over the last few decades astronomers have found hundreds — no, thousands — of exoplanets: planets around other stars in our galaxy. But we’re just getting started: in February 2018, researchers found a whole bunch of planets in a galaxy far, far away. How they did that, is a pretty amazing story.
Episode 00: A Syzygy Sneak Peek
Syzygy is a brand new podcast, in which science nerd Chris Stewart and York astronomer Emily Brunsden talk about the latest news from across the universe. Here's a sneak peek at what's coming.