Astronomy Cast

Astronomy Cast (http://www.astronomycast.com/) is a weekly podcast put on by Fraser Cain, the editor of Universe Today, and Pamela Gay, professor of astronomy at Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville.  Each show is about 30 minutes long and explains some sort of astronomical phenomenon or idea.  Fraser and Pamela not only explain some astronomy facts, but they also try to clear up common myths and misconceptions.  Additionally, they try to explain "how we know what we know", so the listener ends up learning about common astronomy techniques and various aspects of the scientific method.

This might make it sound as if Astronomy Cast is intended for somebody without an astronomy background, and it is appropriate for people who are curious about astronomy, but haven't had any formal training; however, it is definitely not boring if you have already have some background knowledge.  In fact, I just listened to their episode about the sun, solar flares and cycles, and and the effects they might have on the Earth, and I found that I could appreciate it more now that I've taken most of Ay 20.  They actually covered many of the same basic stellar principals that we have in class, including the idea that the sun is approximately made out of an ideal gas and how hydrostatic equilibrium plays a part in governing the sun's behavior.  So having a bit of an astronomy background actually made the show even better!

Some of my favorite episodes have been on particular astronomy missions, like the Kepler mission.  Fraser and Pamela tend to do a two part series for prominent or future missions.  The first episode in the series is about the scientist the mission or technology is named after and the history of his or her research.  The second episode then covers what the mission is and how it works.  They generally try to explain the link between the scientist's historical contributions and how it inspired a new mission or new technology, and so why the mission was named after that particular scientist.

For the Kepler mission episodes (numbers 189 and 190) they didn't have a particularly strong link between the name of the mission and the scientist, but they did go into detail on how Kepler became interested in astronomy, why he had to become a theorist instead of an experimentalist, how astronomy had been progressing until he met Tycho Brahe, and how he developed his theories.  And in the second episode they did a great job explaining the objective of the Kepler mission, how stars are eliminated as candidates for hosting  Earth-sized planets, and how the telescope utilizes the transit method to discovers planets.  If you want the actual information I guess you'll just have to go listen to the podcast yourself at http://www.astronomycast.com/.