Travelers in the Night - Eps. 261 & 262: Cool Star Homes & Shooting Star's Daddy

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. Today's 2 topics: - Dr. Michaël Gillon and his team examined nearby red dwarf stars for exoplanets. They found 3 planets circling a 39 light-year away star now called Trappist 1. - The Geminid meteor shower in December is left over from 3200 Phaethon, an asteroid discovered in 1983. This asteroid may in its own turn be an ejected chunk of asteroid 2 Pallas, the second asteroid that was found, having been discovered in 1802. Phaethon appears to eject the meteorites each time it makes close passes to the Sun in its 523.5 day orbit. Enter the code for this week into this site: https://cosmoquest.org/achievements/code for a chance to win. This week's code is afhcNB. Do go visit http://astrogear.spreadshirt.com/ for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations. Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by Astrosphere New Media. http://www.astrosphere.org/ Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org. While you're at it, do support our Learning Space educator training program by going to this site: https://www.patreon.com/LearningSpace Please help us keep training the trainers! Learning Space is a weekly G+ Hangout on Air about topics in astronomy education, outreach and other ways to share science both in the school setting and outside it. We bring you interviews, hands-on demonstrations, lists of our favorite educational resources and more!