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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

00:02:19

Greenwich Observatory

StarDate ·

2025/06/22

The Royal Observatory at Greenwich has been one of the most important skywatching sites in history – not so much for what it told us about the stars, but for its role right here on Earth. Its location marked the starting point for measuring longitude – the position east and west on the globe. It also marked the time standard for the entire world: Greenwich Mean Time. The observatory was established on today’s date in 1675, by King Charles II. It was built on a hill near London,

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00:02:19

Moon and Venus

StarDate ·

2025/06/21

The only astronomical object most of us notice in the daytime sky is our star, the Sun. Its light makes the sky bright, which overpowers the other stars and almost everything else. But there are a couple of exceptions: the Moon and the planet Venus.During its 29-and-a-half-day cycle of phases, the Moon spends half of its time in the daytime sky – the hours between sunrise and sunset. But it’s so pale compared to the Sun that it can be hard to notice. That’s especially true when

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00:02:19

June Solstice

StarDate ·

2025/06/20

The Sun is at a standstill. Oh, it’s still orbiting the center of the galaxy at an impressive clip – about half a million miles per hour. And it’s still moving across the sky as Earth turns on its axis. But the points along the horizon at which the Sun rises and sets aren’t changing. That’s because today is the summer solstice. It’s a point in Earth’s orbit that marks the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern

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00:02:19

Yo-Yo Planet

StarDate ·

2025/06/19

The number of confirmed planets in other star systems has reached about 6,000. But few of those planets are likely homes for life. Most are too hot, too cold, too “gassy,” or they’re zapped by too much radiation by their star. A few planets are in the “well, maybe” category. They might be suitable for life, but the conditions aren’t perfect. An example is a planet in the star system 82 Eridani. The system is about 20 light-years from Earth, and its star is similar

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00:02:19

Barnard’s Planets

StarDate ·

2025/06/18

Astronomers have been searching for planets around one of our closest neighbor stars for decades. And they’ve reported the discovery of several. But the reports have come to naught – until now. Earlier this year, a team confirmed the presence of four planets – all of them smaller than Earth. Barnard’s Star is six light-years away. Only the three stars of the Alpha Centauri system are closer. The star is much smaller and less massive than the Sun, and less than one percent as

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00:02:19

Moon and Saturn

StarDate ·

2025/06/17

If you stare at one of the giant planets of the outer solar system long enough, with a big enough telescope, you’re likely to find some moons. That was certainly the case a couple of years ago for Saturn. A research team scanned the space near Saturn with a large telescope in Hawaii. And earlier this year, the team reported its results: a haul of 128 previously unseen moons. That brought the planet’s total to 274. That’s three times the number of moons for second-place Jupiter

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00:02:19

Alderamin

StarDate ·

2025/06/16

If you sit on a big beachball, it gets mashed down. That makes it a little wider through the middle, and a little narrower from top to bottom. And that makes it look a lot like Alderamin, the brightest star of the constellation Cepheus the king. The star is about a third wider through the equator than through the poles. That’s not because some cosmic giant is sitting on it. Instead, it’s because the star spins like crazy. Alderamin is about 50 light-years away, so it’s a fairly

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00:02:19

Moon and Sea Goat

StarDate ·

2025/06/15

Capricornus may be the most inventive constellation of the zodiac. For one thing, all of its stars are faint, so it takes some work to see any kind of pattern there. And for another, it represents the oddest creature in the heavens: a sea-goat – the front half of a goat plus the tail of a fish.It’s easy to find the sea-goat’s location early tomorrow, because the Moon passes quite close to its brightest star. Unfortunately, the Moon will overpower most of the nearby stars, so you

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00:02:19

Messier 81

StarDate ·

2025/06/14

A perfect spiral galaxy would include a bright, round “bulge” of stars in the middle; glittering spiral arms wrapping around it; dark lanes of dust lacing through the arms; and bright star clusters sprinkled about like lights on a Christmas wreath. In other words, it would look just like Messier 81, one of the best examples of a “grand design” spiral galaxy. It’s about 12 million light-years away, and appears close to the bowl of the Big Dipper. It’s a bit smaller

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00:02:19

The Great Serpent

StarDate ·

2025/06/13

The stars look like they’re stuck in position – like fairy lights thumbtacked to a giant black canvas overhead. And over the course of a human lifetime – or many lifetimes – that’s true – there’s no way to see any motion without the help of sensitive instruments. But that’s only because the stars are so far away. Every one of those little lights is moving – fast. They’re all orbiting the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, for example. And

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00:02:19

Mars and Regulus

StarDate ·

2025/06/12

Two fairly bright lights are headed for an especially close meet-up: the planet Mars and the star Regulus, the heart of the lion. They’re a few degrees apart tonight, but they’ll draw even closer over the coming evenings. Right now, Mars and Regulus are almost the same brightness. One way to tell them apart is their color – Mars looks pale orange, while Regulus is white with a hint of blue. Binoculars accentuate the colors. Another way to tell them apart is to look for them to

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00:02:19

Twilight

StarDate ·

2025/06/11

Anchorage, Alaska, isn’t quite the “land of the midnight Sun.” Tonight, there are about five hours between sunset and sunrise. But it is a land of midnight sunlight, because twilight never completely fades. Twilight is the transition between day and night. Earth’s atmosphere scatters sunlight from the dayside to the fringes of the nightside. But when, exactly, does twilight end? When is the sky really dark? As you might expect, astronomers have their own

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00:02:19

Short-Night Moon

StarDate ·

2025/06/10

Cold hands, warm heart. Still waters run deep. Feed a cold, starve a fever. The list of pithy old sayings goes on and on. But here’s a new one for you: long Sun, short Moon. It means that the full Moon does the opposite of what the Sun does. So when the Sun is in the sky for a long time, the full Moon makes itself scarce. And that’s the case tonight. The full Moon of June has many names, including Flower, Strawberry, and Honey Moon. But it’s also known as the Short-Night Moon

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00:02:19

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2025/06/09

On average, Antares is the fifteenth-brightest star in the night sky. It looks like an orange-red gem at the heart of the scorpion. Tonight, though, it looks a little feeble. It hasn’t gotten any fainter. Instead, it stands especially close to the almost-full Moon. It looks a little washed out in the powerful moonlight. Antares really is one of the more impressive stars in the galaxy. It’s probably 12 to 15 times the Sun’s mass, hundreds of times the Sun’s diameter, and tens

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00:02:19

Divided Rings

StarDate ·

2025/06/08

The rings of Saturn are among the most beautiful features in the solar system. They’re wide enough to span the distance between Earth and the Moon. And they’re made of bits of ice and dust – like tiny “moonlets” orbiting the giant planet. The first person to propose that idea was Giovanni Cassini, who was born 400 years ago today. He worked in several fields, from astrology to engineering. But Cassini’s greatest love was astronomy. He became director of the Paris

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00:02:19

Giovanni Cassini

StarDate ·

2025/06/07

The world has known many great astronomers, but only a few great astronomy dynasties. One of those celebrates an anniversary tomorrow – the birth of its patriarch 400 years ago.Giovanni Cassini was born in a small Italian village just across the border from Nice, France. Cassini the first, as he’s often called, was the first of four generations of Cassini astronomers. And he definitely was the most productive. He’s best known for his discovery of a gap in the rings of Saturn

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00:02:19

Close Visitors

StarDate ·

2025/06/06

There was a lot of talk earlier this year about an asteroid with the highest odds of hitting Earth ever calculated. The chances of an impact by asteroid 2024 YR4 in December of 2032 peaked at about three percent. The asteroid is big enough to cause major damage if it hit. As astronomers tracked it a little longer, though, they realized that’s not going to happen – the asteroid will miss by at least 60,000 miles. Such close calls aren’t rare. Hundreds of asteroids pass within a few

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00:02:19

Ancient Scar

StarDate ·

2025/06/05

The Pilbara region of Western Australia is big, dry, and wide open. And it may contain the oldest cosmic “scar” on Earth: an impact crater gouged three and a half billion years ago. Scientists discovered evidence of the crater during a brief expedition in 2021. They found some rock formations called shatter cones. Some of the cones are as tall as a house. The only known way to make them is in giant collisions with space rocks. Follow-up work last year revealed many more of these

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00:02:19

Vera Rubin Observatory

StarDate ·

2025/06/04

You can’t tell just by looking, but the universe undergoes constant change. Stars explode. Quasars flare up. Asteroids zip past Earth. And soon, astronomers will be able to generate super-high-definition movies of those changes almost every night of the year. That’s because a new telescope dedicated to “time-domain” astronomy is about ready to take its first looks at the heavens. The telescope is the centerpiece of the Vera Rubin Observatory. It’s named for an

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00:02:19

Gemini IV

StarDate ·

2025/06/03

Before astronauts could land and walk on the Moon, NASA had to be sure they could do three things: live in space for days at a time, catch and link up with other spacecraft, and work outside their ship. And it took stabs at two of those goals 60 years ago today, with a mission called Gemini 4. [AUDIO: 3, 2, 1, Ignition … Liftoff …] Astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White were scheduled to spend four days in space. That was longer than the first seven American missions combined. And

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