Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures
60 episodes listed below
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Listen to exciting, non-technical talks on some of the most interesting developments in astronomy and space science. Founded in 1999, the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures are presented on six Wednesday evenings during each school year at Foothill College, in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. Speakers include a wide range of noted scientists, explaining astronomical developments in everyday language. The series is organized and moderated by Foothill's astronomy instructor emeritus Andrew Fraknoi and jointly sponsored by the Foothill College Physical Science, Math, and Engineering Division, the SETI Institute, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the University of California O…
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · August 2026
Working astronomers walk through their own discoveries in detail, covering evidence like Planet Nine's orbital tilt and the imaging technique behind the first black hole picture.
Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures records a public lecture series held at Foothill College, and the show keeps that shape on the feed: one guest astronomer per episode talking at length about their own research, with host Andrew Fracknoy opening the topic and closing out an…
You want Planet Nine, black holes, and aliens with auditorium patience and enough equations to make the mystery feel argued, not waved through.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A mission to a possible metal world becomes a thoughtful case for candor as real engineering practice.
NASA's Psyche mission comes through as a story about reaching an unfamiliar world, and about the strain of building a spacecraft for a place that may be metal instead of rock.
Dr. Jeff Moore frames Ultima Thule's scarps, bright regions, and gentle merger as clues in a still-unsettled geological case.
Ultima Thule comes through as distant, odd, and still hard to pin down. Dr. Jeff Moore, a research scientist in NASA Ames' Space Science Division and a leader on the New Horizons imaging team, walks through what the flyby showed and where the case remains open.
A clear, grounded account of how astronomers worked around physics, distance, and weather to image a black hole's surroundings.
A black hole's event-horizon neighborhood sits well beyond what the Hubble Space Telescope can resolve, and this single-episode lecture turns that impossible scale into a lucid story about astronomical problem-solving. Dr.
A clear Drake equation rethink turns cosmic solitude into a bracing probability question.
Dr. Adam Frank frames extraterrestrial life as a question of odds rather than fantasy, asking whether humanity could really be the only civilization to have appeared in cosmic history.
A crisp, suspenseful look at how strange outer-solar-system orbits became a serious hunt for a hidden planet.
Planet 9 takes shape through a curious pattern at the solar system's edge, where distant objects seemed to share an unlikely orbital alignment.
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 of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures celebrates the 100th anniversary of Einstein's general theory of relativity as part of the International Year of Light, featuring host Andrew Fracknoy introducing speaker Dr.
This lecture introduces a talk by Dr.
This episode features an introduction to Dr.
This episode features astronomy educator Andrew Fraknoi discussing two upcoming solar eclipses visible in North America in 2023 and 2024, presented as part of a public lecture series on astronomy.
This episode features a lecture by Dr.
This episode features an interview with Frank Drake, the founder of SETI science, conducted by astronomy educator Andrew Fraknoi, highlighting Drake's work and Fraknoi's background in astronomy outreach.
This episode features an introductory lecture by Andrew Fracknoy setting up a talk by Dr.
This is a lecture by Dr.
This astronomy lecture introduces the topic of near-Earth asteroids, discussing both their potential dangers and opportunities for scientific and economic exploration.
This lecture by Dr.
This episode is a lecture by Professor Jessica Liu on black holes and the technology used to detect them, presented as part of a public astronomy series.
This lecture introduces a public astronomy talk on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, highlighting the frontier nature of the topic and acknowledging a last-minute speaker change.
Andrew Fracknoy hosts a Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture on space weather and human survivability, sponsored by organizations like SETI and featuring historical observatories, with audience questions facilitated via email.
This episode features an introductory lecture from the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures, hosted by Andrew Fracknoy, who welcomes the audience and introduces speaker Dr.
Introduction to the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures series, a non-technical public astronomy talk program.
Introduction to a lecture series on astronomy, featuring a talk by Dr.
Introduction to a non-technical astronomy lecture series, with housekeeping and sponsor acknowledgments.
Lindy Elkins-Tanton, lead of NASA’s Psyche Mission, explains why asteroid 16 Psyche may be the first mostly metallic world humans explore.
Andrew Fraknoi introduces NASA Ames researcher Jeff Moore, whose New Horizons imaging team explored Pluto and Ultima Thule.
Professor Elliot Quoddard of the University of California, Berkeley explains how the Event Horizon Telescope used observations from April 2017 to image the region around the black hole in M87.
Adam Frank traces SETI from Enrico Fermi’s 1950 question “But where are they?” through Frank Drake’s seven-factor Drake equation and the work of Jill Tarter.
Michael Brown traces the search for Planet Nine from William Herschel’s 1781 discovery of Uranus to orbital evidence from distant Kuiper Belt objects.