Backyard Observatories: Tony is Finally Building His, Should You?

In recent decades, our knowledge of what black holes are, how many and what types, has exploded.  Coupled with the brand-new field of gravitational wave astronomy, we are poised to learn even more.  Let's take a tour of what black holes are, the different kinds and how many of these enigm…

We've been listening for signals from the galaxy hoping to detect another civilization out there.  What are the actual chances we'll hear anything?  Let's take a look at this paper and find out: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1007.0850.pdf Dustin and Tony also talk about APO refractors and catadi…

The study of planets around other stars, exoplanets, is a brand new field, one that closely tracks my career as a software engineer in professional astronomy.  I've had the privilege to watch our knowledge about exoplanets explode: in just a few decades, we've gone from not being sure there we…

This episode was prompted by an email from Matt who wanted to sort out WHY different telescopes are better than others.  In this episode, I'll break down all the different telescope types and try to answer the question of why you should want one. Also, Dustin and I discuss camera resolution: …