365 Days of Astronomy - Weekly Edition

Spinney things!
Streamed live 18 Oct 2026.
Hosted by: Fraser Cain (@frasercain) and Dr. Pamela L. Gay (@CosmoQuest)
Our journey through space exploration technology continues! Today we look at the things that spin: gyros, reaction wheels, servos. Newton’s laws are large and in charge today as spinning has a very useful benefit when you’re in weightlessness! Today we are going to understand the nemesis of space exploration missions everywhere, get to the bottom of this, how these things works, why they fail, and maybe what’s being done about it, or maybe not!

Hosted by: Fraser Cain (@frasercain) and Dr. Pamela L. Gay (@CosmoQuest)
Streamed live on Oct 3, 2026.
Mission Tech Part 3.
Instead of sending up an entire space station for every mission, you can just send up a tiny can filled with astronauts. But that takes docking. And today we’re gonna talk about what it takes to connect two spacecraft together. How to keep a cargo safe to get into orbit, and how to get in and out of your spacecraft without killing everyone!

Hosted by: Fraser Cain (@frasercain) and Dr. Pamela L. Gay (@CosmoQuest)
Streamed on October 3, 2026.
Today our series continues with our deep dive into rockets, their engines & stages. We fall into the tyranny of the rocket equation and discover what it takes to escape Earth’s gravity and head off into deep space.
 
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Streamed live on Sep 21, 2026
Hosted by: Fraser Cain (@frasercain) and Dr. Pamela L. Gay (@CosmoQuest)
Today we begin a new series on rockets and spacecraft, dealing with each of their components. It’s a big job, so it’ll take us a bunch of episodes to get through. Today let’s do an introduction about what we’re gonna talk about in this series: rockets from tip to tail, soup to nuts.

Streamed live on Sep 7, 2026.
Hosted by: Fraser Cain (@frasercain) and Dr. Pamela L. Gay (@CosmoQuest)
This show is supported through people like you on Patreon.com/AstronomyCast
Today we do the sequel to our 2-part series. We jump to the end of the Universe, and all the major moments that will occur from now until the heat death of the Universe. The end of everything.
 
- The fate & future of the Milky Way
- Cosmic isolation
- The cosmic microwave background
- The end of star formation
- The degenerate era
- Proton decay and entropy
- Black hole evaporation & entropy
- Alternate endings, cosmic rip, new beginnings
- Closing thoughts and updates