x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

StarDate

StarDate, the longest-running national radio science feature in the U.S., tells listeners what to look for in the night sky.

science astronomy

All Episodes

00:02:14

Distant Visitor

StarDate ·

2026/04/08

A long-distance visitor might put in a good showing in the early morning sky this month. And astronomers will be paying close attention.Comet C/2025 R3 PanStarrs was discovered in September. It probably is falling inward from the Oort Cloud. That’s a huge reservoir of balls of rock and ice that enwraps the solar system. This one might have been nudged inward by the gravity of a passing star. Objects in the Oort Cloud were born when the planets were taking shape. Jupiter’s gravity hurled

en-US

00:02:14

Kepler’s Supernova

StarDate ·

2026/04/07

In October of 1604, a brilliant “new” star blazed to life in the constellation Ophiuchus. It was bright enough to see in the daytime for weeks. German astronomer Johannes Kepler kept a close eye on it until it faded from the night sky, in 1606. So today, it’s known as Kepler’s Supernova. It’s the last known supernova in the Milky Way Galaxy.A space telescope has been keeping a close eye on the aftermath of that event for the past 25 years. That’s revealed a lot

en-US

00:02:14

SMILE

StarDate ·

2026/04/06

The Sun sprays Earth with a constant shower of charged particles – the solar wind. But the shower sometimes becomes a storm – a barrage that can damage satellites, overload power grids, and cause other mischief. Predicting such storms can save a lot of grief. But better predictions require a better understanding of the Sun, Earth’s magnetic field, and how they interact. A mission scheduled for launch as early as this week should help. SMILE is a joint project of Europe and China

en-US

00:02:14

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2026/04/05

If we could send a spacecraft to the supergiant star Antares, it could take a really close look. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine that we could build a probe that could safely plunge into the star’s outer layers. Although those layers are hot, they’re also quite thin – a fairly decent vacuum. So a probe might be able to descend millions of miles below the surface and survive. Antares is a monster. It’s roughly a dozen times the mass of the Sun, and 700 times the

en-US

00:02:14

Beta Monocerotis

StarDate ·

2026/04/04

Eighteenth-century astronomer William Herschel described the star system Beta Monocerotis as “one of the most beautiful sights in the heavens.” It’s one of the hidden beauties of Monoceros, the unicorn. The constellation is well up in the southwestern sky in early evening. It’s wedged between brilliant Orion and the “little dog” star Procyon.There’s not much to see in Monoceros with the eye alone. But telescopes reveal a bounty of beautiful sights. And Beta

en-US

00:02:14

Stellar Interactions

StarDate ·

2026/04/03

We never know everything there is to know about a person from the first glance – or anything else, for that matter. And that includes the stars. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of looks with different instruments, to piece together the whole story. One example is the system Gaia BH2. It consists of two known objects. But there might once have been a third object – a star that was gobbled up. The system was discovered by Gaia, a space telescope. It revealed two objects: a black hole

en-US

00:02:14

Moon and Spica

StarDate ·

2026/04/02

The stars of Spica may be headed for a breakup. One of the two stars is likely to explode as a supernova. That may send the stars careening into the galaxy on their own. Spica is the brightest star of Virgo. It rises just above the Moon early this evening. The system consists of two big, heavy stars. The primary star, Spica A, is about 10 times the mass of the Sun. Spica B is about seven times the Sun’s mass. The stars are so close together that they whirl around each other once every four

en-US

00:02:14

Morning Mercury

StarDate ·

2026/04/01

Mercury is just peeking into view in the dawn sky. The little planet is in the east in the waxing twilight, and looks like a bright star. It’ll stand highest in the sky on Friday. But because of the angle at which it rises, it’s hard to spot. In fact, from much of the United States, you probably can’t see it at all. The view is best from south of about Dallas.That difficulty illustrates how tough it’s been for scientists to study Mercury. It’s never in view for long

en-US

00:02:20

Alioth

StarDate ·

2026/03/31

For skywatchers, tonight’s a time for old friends. There’s an almost-full Moon, so its glare overpowers most of the stars in the night sky. But the brighter stars shine through – the most familiar ones. That includes the stars of the Big Dipper, which are in the northeast at nightfall.The dipper’s leading light is Alioth. It’s the first star in the handle. It’s about 80 light-years away. But it’s an easy target because it’s about a hundred times

en-US

00:02:20

Making Contact

StarDate ·

2026/03/30

Astronomers have been trying to hear from other civilizations for two-thirds of a century. So far, not a peep. But finding E-T might be the easy part. Actually having a conversation might be a lot harder. We wouldn’t know what the other folks were saying – or whether they were interested in talking at all. To gain some insight, scientists have been studying some “non-terrestrial” intelligences here on Earth – whales and dolphins – species that live in the oceans

en-US

00:02:20

Moon and Regulus

StarDate ·

2026/03/29

The star Regulus leads the Moon across the sky tonight. The bright heart of the lion is close to the upper right of the Moon at nightfall, with the gap increasing as the hours roll by. Regulus is about 79 light-years away. That means the light you see from Regulus tonight actually left the star about 79 years ago. So when a particle of light from Regulus hits your eye, it’s ending a journey of 79 years. As with many things astronomical, though, it’s all relative. For the particle of

en-US

00:02:20

Greedy Planet

StarDate ·

2026/03/28

A young planet is getting greedy. It’s gobbling up gas and dust from its surroundings. And observations last summer showed that its appetite got a lot bigger – it was consuming as much as eight times more material than in the spring.The planet is known by a catalog designation – Cha 1107. That indicates it’s in the constellation Chamaeleon, which is too far south to see from the United States. It’s hundreds of light-years away. Most planets are born in disks of

en-US

00:02:20

Circumbinary Planets

StarDate ·

2026/03/27

If you’re looking for a world like Tatooine, good luck. Of the more than 6,000 known planets in other star systems, fewer than 20 orbit both stars of a binary system. So those double sunsets are few and far between. Just to refresh your memory, Tatooine is the home world of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Such planets are called “circumbinaries” because they circle around both stars in the system. Over the past decade, astronomers have searched for such worlds in a project with a

en-US

00:02:20

Moon and Gemini

StarDate ·

2026/03/26

In the lexicon of astronomy, Pollux is known a class K-zero-3 star. That tells us that the star’s surface is a little cooler and redder than the Sun’s. It tells us that the star has puffed up to many times its original size. And it tells us that the star is nearing its end. Pollux is the brightest star of Gemini. It’s quite close to the Moon tonight. Its “twin,” the star Castor, and the brilliant planet Jupiter are a little farther from the Moon. The system that

en-US

00:02:20

Moon and Jupiter

StarDate ·

2026/03/25

Jupiter is the “big boy” of the solar system. It’s more than twice the mass of all the other planets combined. In many other star systems, though, Jupiter wouldn’t seem quite so impressive. Astronomers have discovered hundreds of planets that are heavier than Jupiter – up to 80 times Jupiter’s mass. Astronomers aren’t sure how such monster planets get to be so heavy. But they have a couple of main ideas. One says they grow from the mergers of smaller

en-US

00:02:20

Moon and Elnath

StarDate ·

2026/03/24

Elnath has dual citizenship. Officially, it’s the second-brightest star of Taurus, so it’s known as Beta Tauri. It marks the tip of one of the bull’s horns. But it’s also known as Gamma Aurigae – one of the bright stars that outlines Auriga, the charioteer. That designation is un-official – it’s been considered defunct for almost a century.The dual identity is a result of changes in how astronomers define the constellations. At first, the constellations

en-US

00:02:20

Hyades

StarDate ·

2026/03/23

Just about every star is born in a cluster – a family of dozens to thousands of stars. Most of these families fall apart, with the individual stars going their own way. The Sun’s cluster, for example, dissipated billions of years ago. One cluster that’s in the process of dissipating is the Hyades, which outlines the face of Taurus, the bull. It’s the nearest cluster, at a distance of about 150 light-years. Today, the Hyades contains several hundred stars – probably less

en-US

00:02:20

Solar Temple

StarDate ·

2026/03/22

For the kings of ancient Egypt, the Sun was much more than just a glowing orb in the daytime sky. It was the god Ra, one of the most important of all the gods. Ra was a creator of life, the king’s father, and a representation of the king as a god himself.So the kings of the Fifth Kingdom, about 4500 years ago, built temples to honor the Sun. Archaeologists have recently excavated about half of the largest one yet discovered – a massive complex that might have been topped by a spot for

en-US

00:02:20

The Astronomer

StarDate ·

2026/03/21

An astronomer greets visitors to a science museum in Canberra, Australia. He’s made of riveted iron plates, and he stands atop a wide ring, gazing skyward through a smaller ring in his right hand. He’s the last remnant of an historic telescope that was destroyed in a massive wildfire. The fire blazed across Australia in January of 2003. It destroyed most of Mount Stromlo Observatory, one of the major astronomy research centers in the southern hemisphere. The fire consumed five

en-US

00:02:15

Moon and Venus

StarDate ·

2026/03/20

The crescent Moon and the planet Venus team up in the evening twilight tonight. Venus is the brilliant “evening star.” It’s below the Moon, and it sets by the time the sky gets fully dark. Venus is enveloped by an unbroken layer of clouds – one of the reasons the planet looks so bright. The clouds are a few dozen miles above the surface. And they’re speedy – they race around the planet at up to 335 miles per hour – twice as fast as the winds in a category-5

en-US

688 results

Similar Podcasts

Classic Radio Science Fiction

solgoodmedia.com

Mission to Mars

Inception Point Ai

The 365 Days of Astronomy

365DaysOfAstronomy.org

Creek Devil

william Jevning

UFO Chronicles Podcast

Nik Hunter