Ep. 89: Adaptive Optics

Since the dawn of humanity, astronomers have wished to destroy the atmosphere. Oh sure, it’s what we breathe and all, but that stupid atmosphere is always getting in the way. Since destroying the atmosphere is out of the question, astronomers have figured out how to work with it. To distort the mirror of the telescope itself though the magic of adaptive optics.

Student Questions: Curtis High School

This is our second installment in our series of student questions shows and these questions come to us from Curtis High School.
Thanks to GLAST, Astronomy Cast is now able to provide equipment to send to high school teachers who want to Pamela and Fraser to do a special questions show just for their class. We will be making this shows available on the feed on days other than Monday (that’s still reserved for your regularly scheduled Astronomy Cast).
To find out how your class can participate, check out our new Education page for details or drop us an email to info@astronomycast.com

Ep. 73: Questions Show #8

We’ve been so crazy following our own whims through the universe that we’ve neglected your questions. That ends today. It’s time to dig deep into our overflowing email box to retrieve the puzzling questions our listeners have sent in.

Student Questions: Farmersburg

Thanks to GLAST, Astronomy Cast is now able to provide equipment to send to high school teachers who want to Pamela and Fraser to do a special questions show just for their class. We will be making this shows available on the feed on days other than Monday (that’s still reserved for your regularly scheduled Astronomy Cast). This is the first one available and comes with questions from Farmersburg School.
To find out how your class can participate, check out our new Education page for details or drop us an email to info@astronomycast.com

Ep. 60: Questions Show #7

It’s about time for a question show again, so we’ll have one last interruption to our planetary tour, to deal with the questions that arose from our inflation show (episode 58).
So if you still don’t understand inflation, take a listen to this week’s show and as always, send us your questions.

Ep. 54: Questions Show #6

It’s been a while, so let’s catch up with the listener questions. We’ve got some easy ones, some hard ones and probably some impossible ones. We talk about our universe as a black hole, tidal locking of planets like Uranus, colours of stars at different ages, our universe’s birthday and more.

Listener Survey

Thank you for your interest in the survey, but we have completed gathering data. If you would like to see the results of this survey, check out our paper in Communicating Astronomy with the Public
It’s time to answer questions again, but this time we hope that you’ll take a minute and answer ours. We’ve written a brief survey that we hope you’ll take a minute to fill out. This survey will allow us to collect some general demographic information about our audience so we can make the show even better. We promise it doesn’t even ask your email address – and, if you fill it out, we’ll give you a link to a special, full-length episode that does not appear on our feed.
So please, please – do us a favour, and fill out our listener survey

Ep. 43: Questions Show #5

It’s time to answer the questions again. And this time we’ve got some doozies. Is the Universe rotating? Is space something, or is it nothing? Is dark energy evenly distributed? What would happen if an astronaut went out the airlock, without a spacesuit. Want to know the answers? Well, you’ve got to listen.

Ep. 35: Questions Show #4

We know there’s matter, and we know there’s anti-matter. If there’s dark matter, is there an anti-dark matter? How come gravity can escape from a black hole? Do black holes capture dark matter? Can a moon have a moon? Can a planet have two stars? If you’ve had any of these questions, you’ll want to listen to this week’s show.

Ep. 27: Questions Show #3

The questions are piling up, so it’s time to get through them. We’ve got a great collection this week. How can our eyes collect so many photons? What’s the speed of gravity? Shouldn’t the light from the cosmic microwave background radiation passed us by?

Ep. 21: Questions Show #2

Our episode on black holes generated many many questions from listeners. We dip into this bottomless pool of questions and start dealing with them. Are really big black holes like the Big Bang? How can black holes evaporate? What would it look like to stand on a black hole? And just how large would a rock have to be before its gravity is so strong that a human can’t escape?

Ep. 15: Questions Show #1

We finally get organized enough deal with several listener questions: isn’t dark matter just regular stuff we can’t see? how can parts of the Universe be expanding faster than the speed of light? what will Betelgeuse look like when it explodes as a supernova? what’s the speed of gravity? All these and more questions are answered.

iPod Issues Fix

Several of you have reported problems getting your iPods to play our show and other podcasts. Unfortunately, the latest version of iTunes has some new features that are making iPods behave oddly when they try to play podcasts that aren’t in stereo. To fix this problem, go into the Settings menu of your iPod and set EQ to off. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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