Star Stuff

Star Stuff sits down with Alaina Levine, an award-winning professional speaker, STEM career coach, science writer, TEDX speaker, and entrepreneur. Hear directly from Alaina how you can create your perfect career in STEM — and it isn’t always through the traditional educational track. We have a direct and honest conversation about complicated and difficult-to-navigate educational environments, the different kind of value you can bring to STEM roles, and challenges that people face in STEM fields. Alaina is offering 15 minutes free for career consulting, STEM education tracks, and networking in STEM https://calendly.com/alaina-levine/15min.

Star Stuff chats with Lowell research scientists Dr. Joe Llama and Dr. Kyler Kuehn about how they got into astronomy, where their studies took them, and why they didn’t like math in school but majored in science. They also chat about how they got interested in their current studies: searching for exoplanets that could contain intelligent life and dark energy studies. Recorded on Mars Hill in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Learn about how eclipses have been represented in history and in lore, and find out some fun facts about the moon.

In this episode of Star Stuff, we talk to Grand Canyon “Dark Sky Ranger” Rader Lane about International Dark Sky Week (April 22 – 30) and how our neighbors at the Grand Canyon got their park named the first ever “International Dark Sky National Park.” Located just 80 miles north of Lowell Observatory, the Grand Canyon shares Flagstaff, Arizona’s enjoyment of incredible dark skies — but they worked hard to earn their designation and help preserve the incredible dark skies of Northern Arizona. Transcript available at lowell.edu.

Star Stuff joins Todd Gonzales (Lowell Education Manager) and Ed Finn of ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination to talk about what it means to imagine, and how we may imagine a better future for our species. Listen as we explore ideas about how imagining the future of space exploration may help change our future for the better. Ed Finn is the featured speaker for the April 16 special event in the ongoing program, “Lowell42.”

Star Stuff sits down with Lowell Astronomer Dr. Gerard van Belle to talk about the life cycle of stars. Find out why Gerard lovingly refers to our sun as a “lump of screaming plasma” and how a star can to turn into a black hole.

On this episode of Star Stuff, the crew and Lowell Cosmologist Dr. Kyler Kuehn sits down with Dr. Roedolph Opperman to talk about what life in outer space may look like — and what NASA is really looking for on Mars.

In this episode of Star Stuff, the crew talks to Dr. Dan Durda about his art, his research, and life on other planets. Dr. Dan Durda has a biography that is too long for our character count in this description, but in summary he is an astronomer, artist, and the 2015 recipient of the “Carl Sagan Medal” for excellence in public communication in planetary science. We talk about his interest in astronomy, his research crashing asteroids together, his incredible art, and what he thinks about life on other planets.

Hear about Dr. Donald Johanson — the man who traversed Africa in his late 20s, slept with the lions, narrowly escaped helicopter crashes and a bout of Malaria, and through it all discovered the Lucy hominid fossil. This real-life Indiana Jones shares his incredible stories and discoveries with the Star Stuff crew, ahead of his appearance in Flagstaff at The Orpheum for Lowell Observatory’s “Night of Discovery” evening event. This episode was made possible thanks to Lowell Observatory members and donors.

Famous engineer and planetary scientist Dr. Alan Stern joins the Star Stuff crew to share his experience leading the New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond. Listen as we discuss why Dr. Stern considers Pluto to indeed be a planet based on his coined definition of the “Star Trek Test.”

Star Stuff – Episode 03: “The Secrets of Lowell Observatory” Star Stuff discusses the “Secrets of Lowell” — all the best stories and lore you wouldn’t normally hear on a public tour of the campus. Hear about the 11-year-old girl who named Pluto, the stories surrounding our founder’s mausoleum, and the discovery of Pluto and dark matter. [View transcript here.]

"Star Stuff Episode 01: Black Holes, Spacetime, and Bread" is now available wherever you get your podcasts! Listen in as Cody Half-Moon, Hailey Osborn, and Wesley Sonnemaker discuss how black holes affect our universe, the fabric of spacetime, and how it all relates to a bowling ball, a ping pong ball, and bread.