Astronomy Cast

This week we're going to study some of the most ancient objects in the entire Universe; globular clusters. These relics of the early Universe contain hundreds of thousands of stars, held together by their mutual gravity. Since they formed together, they give astronomers a unique way to test various theories of stellar evolution.

With all the enthusiasm that’s being generated with astronomy, it’s had a bit of a strange side-effect. We’ve been causing some of our listeners to have midlife crises about their careers. We’ve had other people who just want advice – they’re moving into college for the first time and they want to direct the courses they’re going to be taking into astronomy. Some other people already have skills that are very useful and have wondered how they can help up or even change their career to be working in the field. We thought we’d try and answer everyone’s questions all at once and just run through the major career paths you can take that relate to astronomy and space, and the kinds of things you’ll need to do to actually make yourself a good candidate for that field.

Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs make meaningful contributions to discoveries. Many professional researchers work hand-in-hand with teams of amateurs to make discoveries that just wouldn't be possible without this kind of collaboration. In fact, Pamela regularly relies on dedicated enthusiasts for her data on variable stars.

All good things come to an end - we now find ourselves in the outer reaches of the solar system where our Sun is hard to distinguish from the other bright stars in the sky. But we're not done with the solar system, there's some stuff that's leftover. This week, we look at the outer reaches of the solar system and how it interacts with the rest of the universe.

It's been a long journey, 64 episodes, but now we're back where we began: Pluto. Last time we talked about how Pluto lost its planethood status, so we won't go over all that again. This time we're going to talk about Pluto, its moons, the Kuiper belt, and the other icy objects that inhabit the outer Solar System.

We’ve reached Neptune, the final planet in our tour through the solar system – but don’t worry! The tour’s not over, but after this week we’ll be all out of planets. Neptune has a controversial story about its discovery, some of the strongest winds in the solar system and some weird moons.

This week, we're on to the next planet in the solar system. We don't know a whole lot about this blue gas planet, but today we'll cover some of the neat stuff we do know, including it's faint rings, sideways axis of rotation and its rocky core - a first in the gas planets we've encountered so far in our tour.

We know that delaying this show one more week would be too dangerous, so here you go: Saturn's moons. These are some of the most interesting objects in the Solar System, from the spongy Hyperion, to the geysers on Enceladus, to the rainy, misty, oceany Titan. They've kept Cassini busy for years, and scientists will likely be pondering them for decades.

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.So if you still don’t understand inflation, take a listen to this week's show and as always, send us your questions.

Returning to our journey through the solar system, let's voyage away from the largest planet to the second largest, Saturn. Once again, we'll break up our visit because there's lots to talk about. This week, we talk about Saturn and its famous rings. Next week, we'll discuss its many moons.