Best George Bendo Podcasts (2025)

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Object 165: A Hole in the Clouds 8:54

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1d ago8:54

8:54

Baade's Window is an unusual hole through the interstellar dust in the Milky Way's disk through which astronomers can very clearly see the stars near the center of our galaxy.By George Bendo

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Object 164: Not Just Any Quasar But The Quasar 11:05

6d ago11:05

11:05

Markarian 231 is now widely recognized not only as the closest quasar to Earth but also as a very bright ultraluminous infrared galaxy.By George Bendo

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Object 163: Ludricous Rotation 8:07

29d ago8:07

8:07

The pulsar PSR J1022+1001 is one of a small subclass of pulsars named millisecond pulsars because they rotate one every few milliseconds.By George Bendo

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Object 162: Slightly More Interesting Than a Medieval Anglo-Gallic Coin 9:26

1M ago9:26

9:26

The lenticular galaxy NGC 1172 contains two different populations of globular clusters, which indicates something about the history of the galaxy.By George Bendo

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Object 161: More Subclassifications 8:14

2M ago8:14

8:14

Dy Pegasi is an SX Phoenicis type variable star, and SX Phoenicis type variable stars are a subset of Delta Scuti type variable stars, and this episode explains why that is confusing but what it also actually means.By George Bendo

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Object 160: A Spiral Galaxy Using a Non-Standard Font 8:47

2M ago8:47

8:47

The spiral galaxy NGC 3718 has an unusually weird spiral shape, which belies its unusual history.By George Bendo

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Object 159: That One Very Famous Double Star 8:58

3M ago8:58

8:58

While amateur astronomers know that Albireo is a very spectacular-looking double star, professional astronomers are more interested in the dynamical complexities of Albireo's two star systems.By George Bendo

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Object 158: Dark Burst 8:11

3M ago8:11

8:11

The gamma ray burst GRB 020819 took place in a galaxy containing so much light-obscuring interstellar dust that people initially misidentified which galaxy contained the burst.By George Bendo

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Object 157: Something More Interesting than Three Exoplanets 8:23

4M ago8:23

8:23

The nearby Sun-like star HD 69830 may have three exoplanets orbiting it, but astronomers seem more focused on trying to understand a hard-to-explain dust disk in the star system.By George Bendo

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Object 156: Dust Puffs 7:56

4M ago7:56

7:56

Z Ursa Minor belongs to a class of variable stars that occasionally produce puffs of dust, but this is not the weeirdest thing about them.By George Bendo

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Object 155: Pinwheel 11:21

5M ago11:21

11:21

The nearby face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 is one of the most popular galaxies in the sky for astronomers to study, particularly in terms of studying the relative abundances of various elements within the galaxy.By George Bendo

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Object 154: The Binary Star System That Needed to Go on Hiatus 8:47

5M ago8:47

8:47

A 0535+26 is a rather unusual star system called a Be high mass X-ray binary that periodically produces bursts of X-ray emission.By George Bendo

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Object 153: A Wolf Within a Wolf 7:17

6M ago7:17

7:17

Hen 2-113 is a rather unusual planetary nebula that formed not when a Sun-like star died but when a large, massive, and extraordinarily hot Wolf-Rayet star blew away its outer hydrogen layers.By George Bendo

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Object 152: The Spiderweb Flashlight 8:39

6M ago8:39

8:39

The quasar PKS 2126-158 has been popular to observe because astronomers can see many different things between the quasar and Earth, including an entire cluster of galaxies, that are absorbing light from the quasar.By George Bendo

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Object 151: A Magnetic Whale 7:11

7M ago7:11

7:11

Beta Ceti is a relatively close giant star where helium fusion has been triggered in its core, but it's a bit unusual compared to other stars that have reached this stage in their evolution.By George Bendo

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Object 150: And Now for Something Completely the Same 9:50

7M ago9:50

9:50

Wolf 1069 is another nearby red dwarf with an exoplanet, but this time, the exoplanet is more likely to harbor life than other nearby red dwarfs with exoplanets that I may have discussed in previous episodes.By George Bendo

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Object 149: Spaghetti Leftovers 9:42

8M ago9:42

9:42

The globular cluster Messier 54 is not part of our galaxy but actually the nuclear stellar core of a dwarf galaxy that has nealy been completely gravitationally torn apart by the Milky Way.By George Bendo

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Object 148: Problem Solving 8:01

8M ago8:01

8:01

DI Pegasi is a star system with two eclipsing stars in its center that orbit each other every 17 hours and 5 minutes and two smaller stars on very wide orbits that gravitationally tug on the central two stars, which has the effect that the variability of the star system's brightness seems to change over decades of time.…

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Object 147: Nothing But Gas 8:21

9M ago8:21

8:21

Abell 1142 is a peculiar cluster of galaxies that has formed from the merger of two smaller clusters, and its center contains nothing but gas.By George Bendo

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Object 146: The Prototype of Peculiar 8:05

9M ago8:05

8:05

SN 2002cx was the first supernova ever identified in a subclass of objects now called Type Iax supernovae.By George Bendo

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Object 145: Neutron Numbers Time 10:56

10M ago10:56

10:56

PSR J1518+4904 is one of the very few identified double neutron stars, and it has provided opportunities to perform unique measurements on the objects.By George Bendo

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Object 144: Heavy Metals 8:05

10M ago8:05

8:05

The stars in the open cluster NGC 6253 contain abnormally large amounts of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, and no one is quite certain why.By George Bendo

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Object 143: Almost Absolutely Awesome 10:52

11M ago10:52

10:52

GJ 887 is a very close red dwarf with two exoplanets (and a potential third) that almost look like they could harbor life except for one potential problem.By George Bendo

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Object 142: The Littlest Galaxy Ever Found 10:31

11M ago10:31

10:31

The awkwardly-named Segue 2 is (as of the time of the publication of this episode) the smallest galaxy anyone has ever found.By George Bendo

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Object 141: Just a Very Nice Spiral 12:32

12M ago12:32

12:32

Messier 74 is just a very nice looking face-on spiral galaxy, which has made it quite useful for many different types of astrophysical analyses.By George Bendo

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Object 140: Imagine All the Dust 9:44

1y ago9:44

9:44

Infrared observations of SN 1995N indicate that the material ejected by the explosion may have produced a huge amount of dust.By George Bendo

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Object 139: Recoil 8:16

1y ago8:16

8:16

The galaxy 3C 186 features a supermassive black hole with a mass several billions of times the mass of the Sun that has been ejected 36000 light years out of the galaxy's nucleus.By George Bendo

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Object 138: A Weird Example of a Weird Subclass of a Weird Class of Objects 8:40

1y ago8:40

8:40

4U 1850-087 is an ultracompact binary star system consisting of a whtie dwarf and a neutron star orbiting each other so closely that the neutron star can strip the outer layers off of the white dwarf.By George Bendo

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Object 137: The Bedtime Story of the Black Hole that was Too Large for its Galaxy 8:17

1y ago8:17

8:17

The elliptical galaxy NGC 4291 contains a supermassive black hole that is unusually massive in comparison to the rest of the galaxy.By George Bendo

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Object 136: Barium 10:43

1y ago10:43

10:43

HD 11397 is one of very few Sun-like stars that might seem ordinary but actually contain abnormally large amounts of heavy elements, most notably barium, that they could not have formed themselves.By George Bendo

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Object 135: Feedback Time 9:01

1y ago9:01

9:01

NGC 3801 is one of the very few nearby galaxies where astronomers can see jets from an active galactic nucleus disrupting star formation in the galaxy in a process known as feedback.By George Bendo

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Object 134: Not Dead Yet 7:24

1y ago7:24

7:24

The star at the center of the planetary nebula NGC 7094 is almost but not quite a white dwarf, making it a rather unusual object for astronomers to look at.By George Bendo

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Object 133: Strong Arm Tactics 9:45

1+ y ago9:45

9:45

One of the spiral arms in the galaxy NGC 3110 is producing unusually huge amounts of new stars as well as unusually huge amounts of infrared emission.By George Bendo

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Object 132: I Need a 2002 Pop Culture Reference 11:21

1+ y ago11:21

11:21

The radio source PMN J0134-0931 created a lot of excitement in 2002 when people discovered that it was a quasar gravitationally lensed by another galaxy in front of it, they were really excited.By George Bendo

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Object 131: Get To Know Your Ultrafaint Neighbors 9:45

1+ y ago9:45

9:45

Hydrus I is a very small, ultrafaint dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way that was accidentally (or, to use the technical term, serendipitously) found by the Dark Energy Survey.By George Bendo

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Object 130: Putting It All Together 7:46

1+ y ago7:46

7:46

NGC 4261 was made famous when Hubble Space Telescope observations in the 1990s showed that this elliptical galaxy contains a supermassive black hole.By George Bendo

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Object 129: Rinky-Dink 9:15

1+ y ago9:15

9:15

The very small Pyxis Cluster orbits the Milky Way in such an extremely extended orbit that it travels further away than many of the dwarf galaxies orbiting our galaxy.By George Bendo

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Object 128: The Dwarf Living Inside the Bridge 6:58

1+ y ago6:58

6:58

The NGC 6221/NGC 6215 Group of galaxies contains a bridge-like structure of hydrogen gas connecting the two spiral galaxies within the group as well as a dwarf galaxy that looks like it formed within the bridge.By George Bendo

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Object 127: The Nebraska Blue Straggler Special 12:59

1+ y ago12:59

12:59

The open cluster NGC 188 is peculiar not only because it is very old for an open cluster but also because it contains an unusual number of blue stars for a cluster of its age.By George Bendo

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Object 126: Do Not Mention Exoplanet b Again 10:10

1+ y ago10:10

10:10

HD 181433 has three exoplanets, two of which are gas giants with very unusually elongated orbits that have been very challenging to properly measure.By George Bendo

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Object 125: The Business Form Variable Star System 7:39

1+ y ago7:39

7:39

HR 1099 (also known as V711 Tauri) was instrumental in showing that magnetic fields play a major role in causing the variability of stars within the RS CVn class of variable star systems.By George Bendo

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Object 124: 6 > 2 11:16

1+ y ago11:16

11:16

Most people would associate Castor with Pollux, which are the two brightest stars in the constellation Gemini, but Castor by itself is very interesting because it is actually a very complex system containing six stars.By George Bendo

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Object 123: More Dampness 11:09

1+ y ago11:09

11:09

The quasar QSO 1331+170 is best known for having a darker galaxy in front of it that is absorbing its light.By George Bendo

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Object 122: Wait For It... 12:57

1+ y ago12:57

12:57

The cluster of galaxies MACS J1149.5+2223 is so massive that it has gravitationally bent (or lensed) the light from multiple things behind it, including one of the most distant galaxies in the universe and a supernova.By George Bendo

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Object 121: Can You Find the Supermassive Black Hole? 8:53

1+ y ago8:53

8:53

NGC 34 (also known as NGC 17) is a chaotic-looking galaxy that formed from two smaller galaxies merging together, and it is a place where astronomers have easily found lots of stars forming in a starburst but where they have had difficulty concluding whether the galaxy also contains a supermassive black hole.…

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Object 120: A Possible Source of the Cosmic Rays that Gave the Fantastic Four Their Superpowers 11:14

2y ago11:14

11:14

The Monogem Ring, which is one of the largest sources of X-rays in the Earth's sky, was created by a supernova explosion about 86000 years ago, and the core of the star that exploded has been identified as the pulsar PSR B0656+14 at the center of the ring.By George Bendo

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Object 119: Alpha Table 8:49

2y ago8:49

8:49

Even though Alpha Mensae is in one of the faintest and dumbest constellations in the sky, it's an intriguing star system because it is very close to the Earth, because one of the stars is very Sun-like, and because it may contain an exoplanet or a disk of dust in orbit around that Sun-like star.By George Bendo

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Object 118: The Golden Standard 10:50

2y ago10:50

10:50

The Type Ia supernova SN 2005cf was observed at multiple wavelengths for three months after its appearance, allowing astronomers to create templates of its spectrum that could be used to measure distances to other Type Ia supernovae.By George Bendo

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Object 117: No Shockingly Dumb Jokes in This Episode 6:38

2y ago6:38

6:38

Kappa Cassiopeiae is a large blue variaable star that is most potentially interesting because of the bow shock between its stellar winds and the interstellar medium.By George Bendo

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Object 116: The Really Really High Expectations Exoplanetary System 8:40

2y ago8:40

8:40

47 Ursa Majoris is a nearby Sun-like star that astronomers have intensely studied in an effort to find an Earth-like exoplanet, and while three exoplanets have been found orbiting the star, none of them are remotely similar to the Earth.By George Bendo