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Astrobites for your ears. Three grad students bring you cutting-edge research findings in astronomy and connect the dots between diverse subfields.
Episodes
Saturday Oct 22, 2022
Saturday Oct 22, 2022
Halloween is in the air! Get ready for a spoooooky episode where we take a stroll through the haunted side of the Universe. Alex takes us on a trek through a graveyard to investigate the skeletons the Milky Way is hiding - and no, we’re not talking about the candy! Then Will tells us a ghost story about the old blue monsters hiding under our extragalactic beds, but don’t worry too much. He reassured us that they only eat dust.
Astrobites:
https://astrobites.org/2022/06/22/galactic-skeletons/
Space Sound:
Monday Oct 10, 2022
Monday Oct 10, 2022
The gang is back! In this episode, we take a trip to the largest and the smallest astronomical scales to learn about all the exciting new ways that JWST is transforming the field in its first 100 days. Sabrina zooms out to find some sparkly galaxies and catch a glimpse into the dazzling high-redshift Universe. Then Kiersten zooms into JWST’s first directly imaged exoplanet to figure out why it’s making us all so hungry. We round out the episode with an interview from York University Professor Sarah Rugheimer, who tells us all about the science to get excited about in the years to come.
Astrobites:
https://astrobites.org/2022/09/06/sparkling-stars/
https://astrobites.org/2022/09/01/jwsts-first-directly-imaged-exoplanet/
Space Sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=49&v=La9DB-bcy5Y&feature=emb_title
Monday Aug 15, 2022
Monday Aug 15, 2022
We’re herded into a crowded auditorium for a press conference held by our very own Sabrina Berger. The breaking news? We’re going on break! But not just that, we’re launching our second sonification challenge! This challenge is focused on using sound for instruction, so submit a sound that teaches us about an astronomy concept in two minutes or less. Click the link below for details. To get inspired, we hear from Jendaya Wells, a music major at Lincoln University and a member of the team using sonification to explore data from the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory! Both her and her sonifications are very bright.
Links:
Astro[sound]bites Sonification Contest: https://astrosoundbites.com/astrosoundbites-sonification-challenge-2022/
Rubin Rhapsodies: https://lsst-tvssc.github.io/RubinRhapsodies
Sound Effects: https://sound-effects.bbcrewind.co.uk
Tuesday Aug 02, 2022
Tuesday Aug 02, 2022
It’s time for our jam-packed sonification sequel, which includes two interviews, 5 (!) space sounds, and a critical fourth “i” for how sonification is used in astronomy! We’re first joined by Paul Green and Afra Ashraf, the creators of the new sonification project Sensing the Dynamic Universe. Then Sarah Kane, a senior undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania, joins us to talk about her journey in astronomy and sonification while being legally blind. We round things out by listening to kilonovae, radio interferometers, and the atmosphere of Uranus! Is there anything we didn’t discuss?
0:00 First 3 “i”s
5:05 Sensing the Dynamic Universe interview (4th “i”)
29:17 Reflections on SDU
32:14 Sarah Kane interview
55:31 Our educational sonifications
Sensing the Dynamic Universe: https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/sdu/index.html
Our sonification astrobite from last year: astrobites.org/2021/06/17/getting-started-in-sonification/
An article about Sarah Kane (isn’t she so fashionable?): omnia.sas.upenn.edu/story/disability-advocacy-and-sciences
SonoUno:sion.frm.utn.edu.ar/sonoUno/
Astronify:astronify.readthedocs.io/
Twotone: twotone-midiout-beta.netlify.app
Miditime (for advanced users): github.com/cirlabs/miditime
Tuesday Jul 05, 2022
Tuesday Jul 05, 2022
Is it Halloween yet? This week, Alex, Kiersten, and Sabrina zoom out to stare at the spookiest voids on the most massive scales. Alex tells us how we can use baryonic acoustic oscillations, or BAOs – the astrophysical counterpart to the delicious buns – to study the shapes of these voids. Sabrina turns up the power for her space sound, and we turn on the lights while listening to Kiersten describe a chilling cold spot in the CMB.
Astrobites:
https://astrobites.org/2022/06/11/stare-into-the-void/
https://astrobites.org/2021/12/21/eridanus-supervoid/
Space Sounds:
Sunday Jun 19, 2022
Sunday Jun 19, 2022
To take a break from the summer heat, Sabrina, Will, and Kiersten don their floaties and take a dive into some space fluids. Sabrina plays in the sandbox of granular instabilities, explaining how solids can behave like fluids. Then Will teleports everyone to a planet with an ocean where you’re guaranteed not to get a sunburn, but getting zapped by galactic Cosmic Rays™ might be worse.
Astrobites:
https://astrobites.org/2022/02/11/giant-impacts-small-moons/
https://astrobites.org/2021/10/07/liquid-water-on-exomoons-beneath-sunless-skies/
Space Sounds:
https://www.system-sounds.com/5000exoplanets/
Rayleigh Taylor Instability Video:
Saturday Jun 04, 2022
Saturday Jun 04, 2022
Break out your swim suits and fire up your Weber Spirit II 3-Burner Liquid Propane Grills, it’s summer vacation for those of us in the states! With their time off, Will, Kiersten, and Alex take a trip around the solar system in search of the best sunbathing spots. Will takes us to a molten Earth in search of the planet’s first “little dudes”, while Kiersten surfs on metallic Venusian lava flows. Alex made our road trip playlist, but it’s more ominous than we wanted.
Astrobites:
https://astrobites.org/2022/04/19/how-a-moon-sized-deep-impact-affected-early-life-on-earth/
Space Sounds:
https://astrosom.com/Mar2018.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egmmYxXhScQ
Geological Time Scales Poster:
https://www.geosociety.org/documents/gsa/timescale/timescl.pdf
Saturday May 21, 2022
Saturday May 21, 2022
Episode 56: Overpowered in the Universe
In this episode, Sabrina teaches Will gamer lingo and the gang applies it to astronomy. Alex discusses a class of super-charged supernovae with bumpy and clumpy physics, and Sabrina shows us how to use pulsars to upgrade our data security (once we figure out how to uninstall Norton Antivirus).
Then we discuss whether objects in the universe really can be OP (overpowered) and Alex begins to question if he ever really understood the definition (spoiler: he didn’t).
Astrobites:
https://astrobites.org/2022/02/05/slsne-show-bumps-and-wiggles-at-late-times/
https://astrobites.org/2022/03/03/pulsars-the-key-to-secure-encryption/
Space sound: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/sgra/animations.html#audio
Sonification Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida); Image Credit: Radio: EHT Collaboration; X-ray (NASA/CXC/SAO); Infrared (NASA/HST/STScI)
Saturday May 07, 2022
Saturday May 07, 2022
Our astro[sound]bites family has grown! New co-hosts Kiersten Boley and Sabrina Berger join Alex Gagliano and Will Saunders as the four moving forward. From now on, you’ll be hearing from three of us in each episode, so get ready to mix and match your favorite a[s]b combo pack.
In this mini-episode, we get to know our new co-hosts a little and share some of the things we’re excited about in the coming year. We also learn that Kiersten’s voice is smooth as silk, Sabrina definitely doesn’t hate radio astronomy, Will is ready to be a 3am disc jockey, and Alex sleeps soundly at night, unafraid of the carnivorous cosmos.
Space sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESz8Cvirh00&ab_channel=ChandraX-rayObservatory (NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGXCRtMzdSE&ab_channel=atzan
(NASA/STScI/Lightkurve Collaboration
More about sonification: https://astrosoundbites.com/2021/04/11/episode-33-scintillating-sounds-of-science/
Sunday Apr 24, 2022
Sunday Apr 24, 2022
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. In her final episode as co-host, Malena reflects on her graduate school experience, research interests, and celebrity crushes. Will brings us Malena’s research to unlock the mysteries of planet formation through interstellar aliens, and Alex shifts the conversation and stacks together Malena’s results on the hunt for Planet 9. He also spends way too long making the space sound.
Astrobites: