Astronomy Cast

Episodes

Ep. 419: DragonCon 2016 Live – Rocket Girls

Sep 15, 2016 | , ,

Welcome back to our new season of Astronomy Cast! This episode is a special live show that took place at DragonCon 2016 in Atlanta, GA. Pamela hosted a panel of amazing scientists and engineers who all happen to be women, and they discussed the unsung women of NASA and the early Space Age and their roles as “human computers”, and the current climate at JPL for women scientists and engineers. The panelists were NASA JPL Senior Science Engineer Trina Ray, Marshall Space Flight Center’s head of Planetary Science Barbara Cohen, JPL engineer for the Mars Science Laboratory Kim Steadman and Science Systems Engineer for NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover Sarah Milkovich. (Please excuse any audio issues, as this was recorded live by remote.)

Ep. 418: Error 418 – I'm a Teapot!

Jun 30, 2016 | ,

One of the most familiar asterisms in the night sky is the Teapot, in Sagittarius. Today we’re going to talk about that and have a bonus conversation about Bertrand Russell’s Teapot Argument.

Ep. 416: Fireballs from the Sky!

Jun 15, 2016 | ,

Every now and then we look up and see bright fiery balls falling from the sky. Don’t panic, these are just bolides. Sometimes they leave trails, sometimes they explode, and sometimes they survive all the way to the ground.

Ep. 415: Temperature of the Universe

Jun 1, 2016 | ,

The temperature of the Universe can vary a dramatic amount from the hot cores of stars to the vast cold emptiness of deep space. What’s the temperature of the Universe now, and what will it be in the future?

Ep. 414: Navigating Far

May 26, 2016 | ,

In our last episode, we talked about what it’ll take to navigate across the Solar System. In this episode we scale things up and speculate how future civilizations will navigate to other stars and even other galaxies.

Ep. 413: Navigating Near

May 17, 2016 | ,

It’s hard enough finding your way around planet Earth, but what do you do when you’re trying to find your way around the Solar System? Today we’ll talk about how spacecraft navigate from world to world.