George's Random Astronomical Object: Recent Episodes
George Bendo
George's Random Astronomical Object is a biweekly astronomy podcast featuring science discussions about astronomical objects at randomly selected locations in the sky. The wide range of topics discussed in the show include stars, variable stars, variable variable stars, supermassive black holes, ultracool dwarf stars, exoplanets, howler monkeys, infrared radiation, acronyms, more acronyms, starbursts, measurements of less than 20 parsecs, jellyfish galaxies, diffuse ionized gas, and general overall weirdness.
GX Monocerotis is a evolved star near the end of its life that is expelling its outer gas layers, and because the star is in orbit in a binary star system, those gas layers have formed a spiral pattern.
The center of the barred spiral galaxy Messier 71 contains multiple regions where stars are forming as well as an inactive supermassive black home that needs some caffeine.
Eta Aquilae was the first Cepheid variable ever discovered, but this class of stars was named after Delta Cephei instead.
The North Ecliptical Pole points to a location perpendicular to the plane of the Solar System, which makes it a unique place for certain types of astronomical observations.
The spiral galaxy NGC 6814 is a source of strong but variable X-ray emission that astronomers are using to measure the mass of a supermassive black hole at its center.
The abnormal-looking globular cluster Messier 71 is unusual in that its stars contain an excessive amount of heavy elements and in that it is being gravitationally shredded by the Milky Way.
The binary star system b Centauri contains an exoplanet named b Centauri b that, despite its confusing name, has changed astronomers' perspectives on how and where planets can form.
Even though HD 106252 has an exoplanet orbiting it, astronomers are much more interested in the fact that HD 106252 looks very similar to the Sun.
VER J0521+211 is a distant galaxy that produces gamma rays with such high energy that, when the gamma rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, the photons transform into electrons and positrons.
UX Ari is an RS CVn type variable star system, which is a confusing way to classify variable star systems but which means that UX Ari contains two stars very close together with complex, interacting magnetic fields that produce all sorts of weird effects.
NGC 7457 was one of the first things imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, which meant that the images of it were relatively blurry, but this is not the most interesting fact about this lenticular galaxy.
SPT-CL J0546-5345 is an abnormally large cluster that formed very quickly after the Big Bang, which places some strong constraints of models of the formation and evolution of the universe.
UM 425 could be either a pair of very similar quasars at the same distance from Earth or a single quasar that has been gravitationally lensed so that it appears twice in the sky.
VW Cephei is an eclipsing binary star system containing two stars that are so close that they share an outer gas layer.
Chi Cygni is a Mira-type variable star with some of the most extreme variations in brightness among any variable stars in the sky.
3C 147 is not the first object ever identified as a quasar, but it is sort of one of the first two objects ever called a quasar.
Astronomers may not have found an exoplanet orbiting the star HD 191089, but they found the next best thing.
The WLM Galaxy is located at the edge of the Local Group where it is relatively unaffected by everything happening around the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.
Jets of gas that are several light years long are emerging from the blue supergiant MWC 137, and no one knows why.
Most globular clusters are among the first stars to form in the universe, but the globular cluster NGC 6352 seems abnormally young in comparison.
It took 10 years of observations for astronomers to determine that the star HD 154345 had a Jupiter-like exoplanet orbiting it.
While the gamma ray burst GRB 090926A itself might be interesting to some astronomers (particularly desperate gamma ray astronomers), the interstellar gas between the burst and Earth may be even more interesting.
IC 10 is a nearby starburst, a type of galaxy that is forming stars at a very high rate (for its size) that should not be confused with the fruit flavored candy.
The cluster of galaxies Abell S1063 was only reported as a discovery in the 1980s, but it has attracted a lof of attention because of how it gravitationally distorts the light of galaxies behind it.
The S254-S258 Complex is a chain of ionized gas bubbles connected by a filament of cold interstellar gas and dust where star are forming in a complicated (or possibly complex) way.
NGC 3504 contains three rings, two bars, and a supermassive black hole but no locations licensed to sell alcohol (as far as astronomers know).
An exoplanet has managed to stay in a stable orbit around LX Serpentis despite the fact that it is a cataclysmic binary star system with a chaotic past.
Markarian 590 contains an active galactic nucleus with a supermassive black hole, and the region around the black hole has strangely changed in brightness a couple of times in the past 50 years.
When it was discovered, WD 0806-661B was described as a very cool, very low mass brown dwarf, but it could actually be better characterized as a large exoplanet.
The dwarf galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 may be one of the very few galaxies that contains no dark matter, although the non-existence of something we cannot see in this galaxy is still being debated.
The dust disk in the spiral galaxy NGC 891 is so useful for studying interstellar dust that many astronomers show up to conferences with science results specifically about this spiral galaxy.
BoBn 1 is not only a planetary nebula with an odd-to-pronounce name but also one of a very few planetary nebulae that have been found in the Milky Way's halo.
IRAS 16293-2422 is a complex protostellar object that contains multiple objects that are forming into Sun-like stars.
Gas ejected from the center of the quasar 1642+690 looks like it's travelling faster than the speed of light even though it isn't.
HD 220140 is often referred to as a naked young star, and it is a source of both X-ray emission and double entendres.
Hickson Compact Group 62 contains hot intracluster gas with two large cavities (which I want to call bubbles) that formed from gas that was blown out of the galaxy at the centre of the group.
HD 60435 is a nearby example of a class of stars called rapidly oscillating Ap stars that can change brightness in just a few minutes.
Mizar and Alcor have been visible as a double star since ancient times, but as technology has progessed over the centuries, astronomers have discovered that Mizar and Alcor are not just one pair of stars.
The gamma ray burst GRB 111209A was notable for being almost seven hours long, which is much longer than gamma ray bursts normally last as well as much longer than a typical Ariana Grande concert.
Messier 56 is a particularly old globular cluster that attracts a lot of attention from professional astronomers, although amateur astronomers have a tendency to overlook it.
As a large elliptical galaxy with a supermassive black hole and supersized jets of gas emerging from its nucleus, NGC 6251 inspires some astronomers to use thesauruses.
The red dwarf GJ 3470 has a gaseous exoplanet orbiting it in such a way that the planet passes between the star and the Earth, allowing astronomers to examine the atmosphere of the exoplanet.
NGC 3621 is one of a few galaxies where its distance has been measured with high accuracy using Cepheids and other stars with known brightness, thus making it very important for measuring the expansion of the universe.
A project using an interesting combination of methods was able to find a very faint red dwarf in orbit around the bright, nearby star Zeta Virginis.
PGC 43234 was a relatively uninteresting galaxy until its central supermassive black hole shredded a star in an event known as ASASSN-14li.
WR 40 is one of the brightest and best-studied Wolf-Rayet stars, a class of stars that are so hot that they are blowing themselves apart.
The group of galaxies called the IC 1860 Group looks like it was recently disturbed by a spiral galaxy falling into it.
The nearby star DENIS J104814.7-395606 is cool (in the sense that it is awesome) because it is so cool (in the sense that it has a very low surface temperature for a star).
A number of peculiarities about the lenticular galaxy NGC 5102 indicate that a dwarf galaxy fell into it several hundred million years ago.
NGC 55 has the interesting distinction of being the closest galaxy to Earth that is seen edge-on, and it also contains an ultraminous X-ray source (ULX) uncreatively named NGC 55 ULX.
NGC 281, which is also called the Pacman Nebula, is a place where star formation has been triggered two different ways, although the stars are not chased by any Ghost Nebulae.
Even though it may be rather ordinary from a scientific standpoint, the open cluster Messier 23 is a very popular with amateur astronomers.
Everything about the triple star system V505 Sgr looked normal aside from an abrupt change in the orbits of the stars sometime around the year 2000.
The short gamma ray burst GRB 100206A was found in a luminous infrared galaxy, which is very unusual place to find such gamma ray bursts.
4U 1957+115 is a low mass X-ray binary, a binary star system with a normal star about the size of the Sun and a relatively small black hole three times the mass of the Sun, and it also has an unfortunately confusing name.
The extremely bright, point-like emission from J1955+5131 in visible light and radio waves makes it useful for matching up images from different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum as well as an interesting object in its own right.
Despite the variability of the gamma radiation from J0510+1800, this blazar is used as a flux calibrator at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.
WASP-103 has an acronym for a name and also has a gaseous planet orbiting so close to it that the planet is in danger of being destroyed.
BV Centaurus is an unusual example of a class of U Gem cataclysmic variable stars in which a white dwarf is stripping gas from a companion star.
ELAIS N1 is a extragalactic deep field selected specifically for identifying many distant, faint galaxies at infrared wavelengths.
Psi Capricorni was the first star other than the Sun where the phenomenon of differental rotation was ever measured.
Abell 85 is a large, nearby cluster of galaxies with so many things happening inside that it could be called a ball of chaos.
The star HD 214714 contains not only a large amount of carbon in its stellar atmosphere but also a peculiar combination of other heavy elements as well.
II Zw 96 is a luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG) where most of the infrared emission comes from some type of off-center region, which is weird compared to most other LIRGs.
30 Ari contains four stars and an exoplanet all arranged in a rather complex set of nested orbits.
HD 98851 is both an Am chemically peculiar star and a delta Scuti variable star, and it has two different pulsation cycles, which makes it really peculiar.
RV Octantis would be considered a run-of-the-mill RR Lyrae variable star if it wasn't for the unexpected discovery of helium in its atmosphere.
The most interesting thing about the quasar LBSQ 0058+0155 is not the quasar itself but the galaxy between the quasar and Earth.
HD 85512 is a nearby star slightly smaller and more orange than the Sun. It happens to have an exoplanet that could be close to Earth-like.
HS Hydrae is a variable eclipsing binary star, which sounds more unusual than it actually is. However, it's precessing, which is not only unusual but also causes the variability to vary over time.
The Leo IV Dwarf Galaxy is one of several ultra faint dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. Galaxies like this are weird relics of when the universe first formed; they contain very old stellar populations and abnormally large amounts of dark matter.