Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela L. Gay
313 episodes listed below
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This is the full live stream audio of the Astronomy Cast episodes. The first half hour is the regular episode, and the second half hour is a Q&A session with questions submitted by live viewers and email.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Fraser and Pamela make difficult astronomy legible by testing cosmic ideas against observations and engineering limits while keeping unresolved questions open.
Astronomy Cast Full Raw Feed keeps the working texture of a live astronomy conversation intact. Fraser and Pamela move easily between gravitational waves and rogue planets, then shift from lunar terrain to the practical contest between Moon and Mars missions.
A rogue planet with a partner: exactly the kind of cosmic trouble you came to hear explained.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A cosmic distance question becomes a clear tour of parallax and the first rungs of astronomy's measuring ladder.
A question about cosmic distance gives this episode a clean path into big astronomy: if space has no fixed road between two points, how do observers measure anything at all?
A concise, curious look at unusual planetary systems and the evidence still out of reach.
Planet formation feels less settled when a star-forming cloud may divide into two co-rotating pieces, one becoming a star and the other a planet. This episode uses that possibility to reopen a familiar question: whether any single model of a standard solar system really holds.
A planetary mystery becomes a clear look at how scientists decide what evidence to gather next.
Saturn's rings become a study in how scientific confidence can soften back into open questions. Astronomy Cast traces the age problem from the simple frustration of not knowing whether the rings are young or old to Cassini's data and the more difficult issue of what researchers…
A loose-gravel asteroid opens into a grounded, approachable tour of reusable rocket recovery.
Asteroid Bennu gives this review its cleanest opening image: a body that once looked like a solid ball of rock, then becomes stranger and more fragile once mapping reveals a loose pile of gravel.
A grounded look at how small rockets and recoverable engines are meant to get back to Earth.
Reusable rocketry lands as a practical engineering puzzle, not a victory lap. The episode follows the problem from a reusable first stage to Electron, where limited cargo capacity makes retro rockets a poor fit and pushes the idea toward parachutes and a helicopter catch.
A steady YR4 primer that keeps the uncertainty grounded.
This episode handles the YR4 question with care. The hosts move from orbit refinement to size estimates to the Torino scale, and they keep the uncertainty plain rather than dramatic.
A clear look at the dark-energy puzzle, anchored by the uneasy gap between the best probes.
This episode keeps dark energy at the center of a real measurement problem: whether the early-universe numbers and the nearby-universe numbers actually agree, or whether the universe is signaling change over time.
A clear, approachable look at how invisible waves shape planetary skies.
This episode treats gravity waves as the quiet force behind visible patterns in thin planetary atmospheres. It moves from image to mechanism with a steady hand, using Pluto’s haze layers and Mars cloud bands to show how the same physics can read differently from world to world.
Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-hosts field Cosmic Queries on physics, space, and beyond.
Rotating StarTalk scientist-hosts and a comedian co-host tackle listener-submitted cosmic questions.
ABC Radio National pairs daily Artemis II updates with its five-part Challenger Legacy investigation.
Patient space coverage with real mission context.
This episode explores why the moon's south pole is a key target for space exploration, focusing on water ice deposits that could support human life and fuel.
Fraser and Pamela discuss the impact of AI on content creation and revenue, then explore the use of drones in space and Earth science, including Mars Ingenuity, Titan Dragonfly, and autonomous meteorite collection.
The episode explores dust storms across the solar system and beyond, covering their causes and effects on Earth, Mars, and Titan, and touches on exoplanet atmospheres.
Fraser Cain and Dr.
Fraser Cain and Dr.
Fraser Cain and Dr.
Fraser and Pamela explore vacuum energy, explaining quantum fluctuations, the Casimir effect, and zero-point energy.
Hosts Fraser Cain and Pamela Gay preview key space and astronomy events for 2025, including the Vera Rubin telescope commissioning, rocket launches like New Glenn and Starship, and multiple lunar missions.
This episode explores the Hubble tension, where measurements of the universe's expansion rate conflict, and discusses new evidence from DESI suggesting dark energy may be changing over time.
Lighting chaos starts the tape.
Fast radio bursts are blink-and-miss physics.
Fraser Cain and Dr.
Fraser King and Pamela Gay debate whether humanity should prioritize returning to the Moon or going to Mars next, weighing practical factors like launch windows, radiation, and resources.
Astronomy Cast episode 750 explores the Supernova Early Warning System, a network of neutrino detectors designed to alert astronomers to supernovae before visible light appears.
In this episode of Astronomy Cast, hosts Fraser Cain and Pamela Gay explore the science of gravitational waves, covering discoveries from black hole and neutron star mergers to the potential for detecting primordial waves from the early universe.
The hosts discuss the need for a coordinated lunar time system due to relativistic effects, revealing that clocks on the Moon tick 56 microseconds faster per day.
Astronomy Cast episode 541, "Weird Issues: The expansion rate of the universe," centers on why the Hubble constant still resists a single number nearly 100 years after Hubble.
["Astronomy Cast episode 540, How Do or Don't Planets Form?, asks how exoplanet discoveries rewrote planet-formation rules.", "Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today, and Pamela Gay, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and director of CosmoQuest, use the episode to test old assumptions against new observations.", "The episode asks whether one bottom-up disk model can explain pulsar planets, hot Jupiters, red-dwarf systems, and planets around massive stars.", "Cain and Gay argue that planet formation looks like several pathways shaped by star mass, disk structure, and metallicity rather than one clean recipe."]
AstronomyCast episode 539 asks why Saturn's rings still have no settled age, with Fraser Cain and Dr.
Astronomy Cast focuses on reusable rocketry, from SpaceX's Starhopper tests to the push for a fully reusable two-stage launcher.
["Astronomy Cast episode 537, \"The Reusable Rocket Revolution,\" follows Fraser Cain and Pamela Gay through SpaceX's Starhopper, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship plans for reuse.", "They compare those vehicles with Electron's parachute-and-helicopter idea and United Launch Alliance's Vulcan plan for recovering expensive engine sections.", "The conversation keeps returning to the hard part of reusability: upper stages must survive reentry, manage fuel, and land without saltwater corrosion or a Columbia-style failure.", "Pamela says launch prices could fall from about $10,000 per pound to a few hundred dollars per kilogram, with methane fuel and full-stack reuse shaping the next phase."]