The Skyentists Angel Lopez-Sanchez & Kirsten Banks

In today's episode of The Skyentists, astronomers Kirsten Banks and Ángel López-Sánchez talk about exotic stellar objects: white dwarf stars, neutron stars, pulsars, magnetars, and stellar black holes! They summarise what are the nature and origin of each of these exotic little beasts as well as discuss their differences. For "Space News", Kirsten announces that she is now the official "Tiktoker" of SpaceAustralia.com and that she's having a lot of fun with it. Ángel talks about the 3rd Data Release of the "SAMI Galaxy Survey" (he is part of the team), that includes the dissection of more than 3000 galaxies obtained using the Anglo-Australian Telescope. Ángel also discusses the discovery of the most distant quasar known so far, J0313-1806, which is observed when the Universe was only 690 million years old! The Skyentists bring the bright, famous, red giant star Aldebaran ("the Eye of the Bull") for "What's Up!" Keep sending your questions and feedback, we are expecting to record another episode very soon!

After a long break, The Skyentists, astronomers Ángel López-Sánchez and Kirsten Banks, are back! We start our Season 4 with a special episode with two main topics: the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn happening on Monday 21st of December 2020 (that is actually our "What's up!") and summarising some of the most important astronomy news that have happened in 2020 while we were away (our extended "Space News" for this episode). We talk about the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020, merging black holes, exoplanet candidates in other galaxies, the first all-sky radio map obtained with the Australia SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and, of course, the issue of the phosphine gas in Venus. Ángel also explains why some people have connected the Jupiter and Saturn conjunction with the "Christmas Star". As we recorded this episode "on the fly" and without any script we have not included any feedback, but we are eager to hear from you!