George's Random Astronomical Object

LGS 3 (also known as the Pisces Dwarf Galaxy) is a nearby but faint dwarf galaxy that has provided some interesting clues as to how stars formed in the early universe.

While not many professional astronomers have spent much time looking at the open cluster Messier 103, it is still a spectacular object to see in an amateur astronomy telescope.

Astronomers have been studying the radiowave emission from the cluster of galaxies Abell 4038 quite intently and have provided both conventional and unconventional explanations for its origin.

The southern open cluster IC 2602, also known as the Theta Carinae Cluster or the Southern Pleiades, may not be as famous as some open clusters visible from the Northern Hemisphere, but it is still a good place for professional astronomers to study young stars, and it's also a good amateur astronomy target.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.