Best McDonald Observatory Podcasts (2025)

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Moon and Regulus 2:15

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2d ago2:15

2:15

For decades, Regulus had astronomers fooled. The star is bright, hot, and blue – an indication that it was quite young. Most estimates put its age at no more than a hundred million years – about two percent the age of the Sun. Instead, it’s at least a billion years old. But like a vampire, it’s been rejuvenated by taking the life’s blood of a compa…

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Giant Radio Galaxies 2:15

3d ago2:15

2:15

The Milky Way is a giant among galaxies – a hundred thousand light-years in diameter. But a few galaxies make the Milky Way look like a mere bauble by comparison. They span millions of light-years – puffed up by the action of supermassive black holes. These monsters are known as giant radio galaxies. Not only are they large, but they produce enormo…

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Cygnus A 2:20

4d ago2:20

2:20

Deneb, the brightest star of Cygnus, stands high overhead as night falls at this time of year. And it really is a brilliant star – tens of thousands of times brighter than the Sun. But if we could tune our eyes to see radio waves, Deneb wouldn’t even register. Instead, the swan’s leading light would be Cygnus A – one of the brightest radio galaxies…

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Moon and Companions 2:20

5d ago2:20

2:20

Floating through the clouds at Jupiter’s equator sounds like a celestial carnival ride. The equator spins at about 28,000 miles per hour – 28 times faster than Earth’s equator. So the Sun, moons, and stars would zip across the sky in a hurry. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system – 11 times Earth’s diameter. It also spins faster than an…

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Lucky Stars 2:20

6d ago2:20

2:20

If you’d like to thank your lucky stars for a bit of good fortune, we have two stars for you to look at. They’re the brightest stars of Aquarius. Both of them have names that mean “lucky.” The brighter of the two is Sadalsuud. The name comes from an Arabic phrase that means something along the lines of “luckiest of the lucky.” When the name was bes…

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Moon and Aldebaran 2:20

7d ago2:20

2:20

Stars like the Sun go through several distinct phases of life, from embryo to corpse. Consider Aldebaran, the bright eye of Taurus, which accompanies the Moon tonight. It’s more than six billion years old – older than the Sun. And it’s well into “old age.” Aldebaran was born when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed. For millions of years, it shined a…

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Moon and Pleiades 2:20

8d ago2:20

2:20

The Moon barrels through the Pleiades star cluster this evening. It’ll pass directly in front of the cluster, briefly blocking most of its stars from view. The Pleiades is the most famous of all star clusters. It’s also known as the Seven Sisters, but under dark skies – with no Moon in the way – you might actually see nine stars or more. But that’s…

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T Tauri 2:20

9d ago2:20

2:20

An embryonic star may be about to vanish – perhaps for a century. It’s not going anywhere. Instead, it’ll be cloaked by a dense cloud that encircles two companions. T Tauri is the prototype for a class of proto-stars. The gravity of such a star is causing it to collapse, making it hot and bright. But its core isn’t hot enough to ignite the fires of…