Lecture 2: Astronomical Numbers

Welcome to the Astronomy 161 Lecture Podcasts. This is a brief message from me explaining the podcasts, and welcoming new and old listeners. University. Lectures will begin on Wednesday, 2006 Sept 20, and run through Friday, 2006 December 1. New lectures will appear shortly befor ...  Show more

What are the constellations, and how have they be named and used by many different cultures throughout human history? We will review the most basic feature of the night sky, the 6000 visible stars sprinkled about the sky, and introduce the idea of constellations, reviewing their ...  Show more

What is Astronomy? What is Science? What is the course all about? Brief introductory remarks after going over course mechanics on the first day of Astronomy 161 for Autumn Quarter 2007. Recorded 2007 Sep 19 in 1000 McPherson Lab on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University ...  Show more

This year marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of the first telescope. On this week’s show, we reflect on how telescopes have shifted our perspective on how small we are in size, space, and time. We also discuss how they help astronomers discover new and interesting as ...

Are we alone in the Universe? This lecture explores the question of how we might go about finding life on planets around other stars. Rather than talking about speculative ideas, like the Drake Equation or SETI, I am instead taking the approach of posing it as a problem of what t ...  Show more

Since astronomers can't actually travel to a star, they rely on two ingenious methods to measure a star's distance from earth. Listen in as Marshall Brain breaks down the science of space measurement in this editor's choice podcast from HowStuffWorks.