This episode of Astronomy Cast is brought to you by Swinburn Astronomy Online, the world's longest running online astronomy degree program.

Visit astronomy.swin.edu.au for more information.

Astronomy Cast Episode 191 from Monday, May 24, 2010. Chandra Seagar.

Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly facts based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know.

My name is Fraser Cain, I'm the publisher of the universe today, and with me is Dr. Pamela Gaia Professor at Southern Illinois University, Everett'sville.

Hi Pamela, how are you doing?

I'm doing well, how are you doing, Professor?

I'm doing very well also, and we don't normally do this, but I wanted to send a special message to Ali who wrote us in, and congratulations on getting a B.

On your test, so we're gunning for you.

All right, let us move on to today's show.

So the first half of the 20th century was a productive time for astronomy, with theorists working out much of the science that we take for granted today.

And one of these astronomy stars, pardon the pun, was Subra Manian Chandra Seagar, who determined the maximum mass of a white dwarf star, and won a Nobel Prize.

So Pamela, another duo partnership, the person and the robot.

So today we're going to talk about the person, who was the inspiration for the robot, which is actually I guess, you know, it's up there doing work today.

So there's a lot to talk about the Chandra mission, but let's talk about the person.

Sounds good, they're both full of a lot of high energy, so it works out.

And we were talking about this before, trying to sort of work out how to pronounce his name.

Now, now Subra Manian, that is, that's right, so that's almost like a last name, so it's, it's.

It's a different way of handling names than we used to in Western languages.

It's not your friend, a friend name first, and then your family name or your patronomic second or third, but rather they start with the patronomic.

And then do the friendly person to person, so calling Chandra, say, car Chandra is, is much like calling Elizabeth Beth.

It's, it's a nickname for the person's name.

...