365 Days Of Astronomy - Weekly Edition

So with a sample of asteroid Bennu firmly inside OSIRIS-REx's return capsule, it's time to bring this treasure home. So scientists can study the composition and history of the space rock. But it's not the only sample return mission out there, with Japan's Hayabusa II mission also bringing asteroid debris home. So today, let's talk about the missions and what we've learned so far.

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three brilliant researchers who worked out some of the secrets of black holes. Today we're going to talk about the chain of discoveries that led to this award.

Did you hear the news? Nobel prizes for Black Holes! Now, we know there are stellar mass black holes and supermassive black holes, but how do you get from one to the other? How do black holes get more massive?

Don't ever accuse us of not comprehensively covering every kind of exploding star. This week we gather up all the left over ways that stars partially or fully explode or don't. Probably. Enjoy!

So you think that a white dwarf star is the end of a stellar life, and it's all downhill from there, a long, slow cool down towards the end of everything. But in some situations even dead stars can get exciting again, briefly becoming some of the brightest objects in the Universe. And maybe, just maybe, the last exciting thing that'll ever happen in the Universe.

I've got some bad news for you. Stars die. At some point in the next few billion years or so our Sun is going to start heating up, using up all the fuel in its core, and then eventually die, becoming a white dwarf. It'll then slowly cool down to the background temperature of the Universe, becoming a black dwarf. Let's learn about this fascinating process.

So have you heard the news? Of course you have. Evidence of phosphene on Venus. Which could be a biosignature of life on our evil twin planet. There have been a lot of surprising stories about Venus, so let's get you all caught up!

Every 2 years or so Mars lines up nicely with the Earth. It takes only 2 minutes to communicate with the rovers. You can see the polar ice caps in a small telescope. And it's the best time to send your spacecraft to the Red Planet.  Oct 3rd: Moon & Mars conjunction, 1.1° separation. Oct 6th: Mars opposition. Dec 21st: Jupiter/Saturn conjunction, 0.1° separation! Feb 18th "Percy" lands on Mars' Jezero crater.

It's time once again for Astronomy Cast to go on hiatus. You've got a couple months on your own to explore the night sky. But before we say goodbye, we'd like to make a few suggestions.

As amateur astronomers, we curse the Moon every month. Seriously! Why doesn't someone get rid of that thing! This week, something occurred to us. What if we actually pointed our telescopes at the Moon? What would we see? The Lunar "X" that Fraser talked about will be visible this Friday, June 26th! So go out with binoculars or a telescope and enjoy!

We imagine the asteroid belt as a place where all the rocks hang out in the solar system. But there are 2 huge bands of asteroids that orbit the Sun with Jupiter called the Trojans. And soon we may actually get a chance to see them up close!

Astronomy Cast Ep. 573: Exoplanet Atmospheres Not only have astronomers discovered thousands of exoplanets, but they're even starting to study the atmospheres of worlds thousands of light years away. What can we learn about these other worlds and maybe even signs of life.

Astronomy Cast Ep. 572: Twists in Planet Formation by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay We're all looking to the next generation of exoplanetary research where we get planets directly. But astronomers are already making great strides in directly observing newly forming planets help us understand how our solar system might have formed.

Streamed live on May 22, 2020. So we're familiar with regular binary stars. Two stars orbiting each other. Simple. Of course the Universe has come up with every combination of things orbiting other things, and this week we look at some extreme examples.

Streamed live May 15, 2020. Discovering comets is one of the fields that amateurs can still make a regular contribution to astronomy. But more and more comets are getting found by spacecraft, automated systems and machine learning. This week we'll talk about how comets are discovered and how you can get your name on one!

As everyone knows, the Universe owes us a bright comet. There have been a lot of promising candidates, but in the end, they always fail to live up to our expectations. Comets keep on breaking up with us.

So much of our Solar System has been shaped by enormous collisions early on in our history. Seriously, the nature of every planet in the Solar System has some evidence of massive impacts during some point in its history.

Last month astronomers announced that they had detected a tiny asteroid that had been captured by the Earth's gravity well and had been sharing our orbit for a few years. Today, let's talk about the smallest moons in the Solar System.

White dwarfs are usually about 60% the mass of the Sun, so it was a bit of a surprise when astronomers found one that was almost exactly twice that. What happens when white dwarfs merge?