Topic: Pamela Gay
Closer Look: Intermediate Mass Black Hole Caught Moving Stars

Closer Look: Intermediate Mass Black Hole Caught Moving Stars

Image credit: Interstellar/R. Hurt/CALTECH My entire life researchers have been asking, are there blackholes in the hearts of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters? We know they lurk in the centers of large galaxies, and their sizes are proportional to the sizes and motions of the spheroids of stars they occupy. It has long been hoped that the relationship would extend down to smaller spheres of stars, but we just haven't been able to find any evidence… until now. As the story goes so far, astronomers have found binary star systems where only one star is visible and its motions indicate an...

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Calculating Pluto’s Oceans

Calculating Pluto’s Oceans

While amazing data is the start of amazing research, it takes a lot of calculations and models to truly understand what the data mean.  Nine years after the New Horizons mission flew past Pluto and discovered it has mountains of ice, and a strangely cracked landscape,...

Lucy’s Discovered Dinkinesh Throws Rocks

Lucy’s Discovered Dinkinesh Throws Rocks

We often find ourselves saying that science moves at that rate of technology. With new telescopes and spacecraft we can get new views on the universe. And some of them are weirdly unexpected. Back in November 2023, the Lucy mission flew past the asteroid Dinkinesh on...

Euclid Releases First Science Images

Euclid Releases First Science Images

While the 33 year old Hubble struggles, the not yet 1 year old Euclid space telescope has released its first science images. Euclid is a 1.2 m telescope with a wide-angle camera that is designed to survey galaxy shapes and study dark matter and dark energy. It is...

Hubble Down to One Gyro

Hubble Down to One Gyro

In a June 4 telecon with the press, NASA shared that due to recent issues, they have made the decision to operate HST in single gyro mode. This isn’t expected to have any impact on the quality of individual science images, however Hubble will need significantly more...

Robotic arms may rescue clumsy astronauts

Robotic arms may rescue clumsy astronauts

I have a delightfully weird tech story related to future lunar exploration. Research has shown that astronauts working on the moon are most likely to fall over when using tools, and once they fall over, getting up while wearing a space suit that restricts their motion...

Closer Look: The cost of the climate of academia

Closer Look: The cost of the climate of academia

We are recording this episode about a week in advance of our normal recording date. This is because our producer Ally Pelphrey and I will be at the Balticon science fiction and fantasy convention over Memorial Day weekend and I’m then flying to Orlando where I’ll be...

Hubble Resolves star formation

Hubble Resolves star formation

Image credit: NASA / ESA One of the things I personally enjoy most about working in astronomy is the way yesterday’s empty star fields and faint smudges resolve into spectacular vistas and amazing nebulae as we build better telescopes and find the time to point them...