Musical Astronomy Shows by Prof. Kevin Krisciunas

Prof. Krisciunas has created two musical shows. These will both be posted here in streaming video within the next month. For now, we have the first two parts, the "All Star Revue" (get the pun?), and the libretto for the other: "Total Eclipse".

Better video quality coming soon!

All Star Revue: Program
Part 1 (streaming video)
Part 2 (streaming video)
Part 3: coming soon (this is the part with most of the physics songs in it)
Summary of part 1:

0:00 Opening Slide
0:45 "The Galaxy Song"
4:40 Begin lecture: Stellar Spectra
6:35 Mass and life stories of stars

8:46 Doppler shifts
10:30 The early universe
13:20 Formation of heavy elements
14:36 Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram (including some new mnemonics!)

18:38 Planetary nebulae & Chandrasekhar
21:14 Supernovas
25:38 Supernova 1987a
27:09 Looking Back in Time

 28:14 Betelgeuse: The next supernova
29:57 Black holes

 

Libretto and production photos for "Total Eclipse", an astronomy-oriented comic opera.

Prof. Krisciunas has also written several other songs about astronomy. Here are lyrics to 1 song about the constellations, and 7 other songs about supernovas, quasars, etc.. My favorite line from the constellations song (set to Gilbert & Sullivan's "Major General" song): "The constellations in the sky were not put there to bore us / There's Antlia, Andromeda, Aquarius, and Taurus".

Return to PhysicsSongs.org main page

Background image of supernova remnant E0102-72 courtesy of NASA