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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

00:02:14

Granulation

StarDate ·

2025/05/08

The surface of the Sun is like a pot of boiling water. Millions of bubbles of hot gas churn across it, constantly rising and falling. But the bubbles are a little bigger than those on your stovetop. The bubbles are known as granules. They form as energy from deep inside the Sun works its way to the surface. That heats the gas in the Sun’s top layer, forming bubbles. As they reach the surface, their gas cools and drops back into the Sun. This non-stop activity creates an easy-to-see pattern of

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00:02:20

Moon and Venus

StarDate ·

2025/05/07

The Gaia spacecraft took its final look at the stars in January. But its work is far from over. Its observations will be producing new discoveries for decades. Above Earth’s blurring atmosphere, the space telescope kept a sharp eye on the heavens for more than a decade. It studied about two billion objects – mostly stars. It measured their temperature, composition, and motion. And it plotted their positions with amazing precision. That’s allowed astronomers to produce the best 3-D

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00:02:20

Windy Planet

StarDate ·

2025/05/06

The gusty winds of spring make it a good season for flying a kite. But you might not want to try it on the planet Wasp-127 b – it would be hard to hang on. Winds high above the surface blow at an astounding 20,000 miles per hour – a hundred times faster than winds in the strongest category five hurricanes on Earth.The star – Wasp-127 – is a lot like the Sun. But the planet isn’t much like any planet in the solar system. It’s much wider than Jupiter, the largest

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00:02:20

Moon and Regulus

StarDate ·

2025/05/05

Over the millennia, every culture has named the bright stars. The names represented characters from mythology, things from the natural world, human traits and values, and more. Different cultures seldom agreed on what to call an individual star. But one exception seems to be Regulus, the brightest star of Leo. Just about everybody saw the star as a symbol of strength and power. The name “Regulus” means “the little king.” The name made its debut in the early 16th century

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00:02:20

Eta Aquarid Meteors

StarDate ·

2025/05/04

No one has seen Comet Halley in decades. Even so, it’s reminding us of its presence about now. That’s because it’s responsible for the Eta Aquarid meteor shower. The shower is predicted to reach its peak tomorrow night, with top rates of about 40 or 50 meteors per hour. A meteor shower occurs when Earth passes through the orbital path of a comet. As a comet nears the Sun, some of the ice at its surface vaporizes in the heat. That releases small bits of rock and dust. Over time,

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00:02:20

Moon, Mars, and Beehive

StarDate ·

2025/05/03

The Moon and Mars are flirting with danger – they’re sneaking up on the Beehive star cluster, in the constellation Cancer. The cluster doesn’t have much of a “sting,” though – it’s about 600 light-years away.The Beehive contains about a thousand stars, which are maybe 700 million years old – fairly young in astronomical terms. That means the Beehive maintains a mixture of stars of different masses. Its heaviest stars have burned out, leaving only

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00:02:20

Timescape

StarDate ·

2025/05/02

The universe can be frustrating. Roughly two-thirds of everything in the universe appears to consist of dark energy. Despite decades of study, though, scientists haven’t been able to explain what dark energy is. Astronomers discovered dark energy by studying a type of supernova – exploding stars. The supernovas brighten and fade in a predictable way. That allows astronomers to measure their distance and their motion away from us. Stars that are farther were moving away faster than

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00:02:20

May Day

StarDate ·

2025/05/01

The modern western calendar tells us that summer arrives in the northern hemisphere this year on June 20th – the summer solstice. It’s the longest day of the year, and the Sun stands farthest north for the year as well. In ages past, many calendars had a less direct link to the solstices and equinoxes. The seasons began not on these dates, but about halfway between them. Such dates are known as “cross-quarter” days. And in the calendars of the ancient British Isles, one of

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00:02:15

Art Deco

StarDate ·

2025/04/30

Telescope domes are designed to keep the telescopes inside safe and on-target. But just because they’re practical doesn’t mean they can’t be beautiful. That’s especially true of some built in the 1930s. They were influenced by the design style that was all the rage – known today as art deco. The event that popularized art deco began 100 years ago this week – the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Modern Industries, in Paris. It was a showcase for

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00:02:15

Moon and Jupiter

StarDate ·

2025/04/29

Until about 30 years ago, Jupiter was the king of the planets – bigger and heavier than any other known planet. Today, it’s not even in the top 500. It’s still the giant of our own solar system – it’s more massive than all the other planets and moons combined. But hundreds of planets in other star systems outrank it. The total number of confirmed exo-planets is up to about 6,000. They range from chunks of rock about as massive as the Moon to super-planets up to about 80

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00:02:15

Jan Oort

StarDate ·

2025/04/28

Trillions of icy bodies mark the edge of the solar system. They form a shell that extends one or two light-years from the Sun in every direction. A passing star may sometimes give some of them a nudge toward the Sun. When they get here, they become comets – visitors from the icy deep. That distant region is known as the Oort Cloud. It’s named for Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, who was born 125 years ago today. He proposed the existence of the cloud in 1950. And today, that’s his

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00:02:15

Cor Caroli

StarDate ·

2025/04/27

Dark spots sometimes dot the surface of the Sun – magnetic storms that can last for days or weeks. But the storms on other stars can make those on the Sun look puny. They can be so monstrous that they can change the star’s brightness by quite a bit. An example is one of the stars of Cor Caroli – the Heart of Charles. As seen by the eye alone, the star is the leading light of Canes Venatici, the hunting dogs. It’s to the right of the handle of the Big Dipper as night falls,

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00:02:15

Guardians of the Pole

StarDate ·

2025/04/26

The stars Kochab and Pherkad serve several roles. They’re part of the body of Ursa Minor, the little bear. They form the outer edge of the bowl of the Little Dipper. And they’re “guardians of the pole” – they circle around Polaris, the star that marks the north celestial pole. Both stars are giants – they’ve puffed up at the end of the prime phase of life. Kochab is about 50 times the Sun’s diameter, and 450 times its brightness. Pherkad looks fainter

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00:02:15

Double Destination

StarDate ·

2025/04/25

A Chinese spacecraft that’s scheduled for launch as early as next month has a double destination: a “quasi-moon” of Earth and an asteroid that acts like a comet. The first destination for Tianwen-2 is an asteroid, Kamo’oalewa. It’s a chunk of rock no more than the length of two or three football fields. What makes it intriguing is that it weaves around the Sun in a pattern that makes it look like a satellite of Earth. The asteroid spends half of its time farther from

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00:02:15

Moon and Companions

StarDate ·

2025/04/24

A beautiful triangle decorates the dawn sky tomorrow. Two of its points are easy to see: the crescent Moon and the planet Venus, the “morning star.” The final point is a bit tougher: the planet Saturn, to the upper right of the Moon. It’s just half of one percent as bright as Venus, but its proximity to the brighter bodies will help it stand out. Saturn is about as faint as it ever looks right now. One reason is that it’s just emerging from behind the Sun, so it’s about

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00:02:15

Lyrid Meteors

StarDate ·

2025/04/20

The mild nights of spring are good times for skywatching. Only one thing is missing: a great meteor shower. The best showers are clustered in fall and winter, with the Perseids of August sometimes joining the list.Although the season doesn’t offer a great shower, a pretty good one should reach its peak tomorrow night: the Lyrids. Under a dark sky, you might see up to a couple of dozen meteors per hour between midnight and dawn. The number of meteors increases closer to dawn, as your part of

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00:02:15

More Messier 3

StarDate ·

2025/04/19

The Sun is four and a half billion years old – a third of the age of the universe. Compared to the stars in globular clusters, though, it’s a youngster. Those stars were born when the universe was young. An example is Messier 3 – a family of about half a million stars. The cluster is about 11.4 billion years old. That means its stars were born just a couple of billion years after the Big Bang. All of the cluster’s remaining original stars are fainter and less massive than the

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00:02:15

Lucy Encounter

StarDate ·

2025/04/18

The Lucy spacecraft is headed for the Trojan asteroids – big chunks of rock and metal that share an orbit with Jupiter. But it’s checking out some other sights along the way. This weekend, for example, it’ll pass just a few hundred miles from a body in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Lucy is named for the fossilized remains of a human ancestor. The name was selected because the Trojans are fossil remnants of the early solar system. The mission’s

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00:02:15

Red Nova

StarDate ·

2025/04/17

A tight pair of stars got a lot tighter a few years ago. The stars merged, forming a single star. And it’s still settling into its new configuration. V1309 Scorpii produced a brilliant outburst in 2008. At first, it was classified as a classical nova. Such an eruption occurs when a small dead star pulls gas from a close companion. When enough gas piles up, it causes a nuclear explosion. Over the months after V1309 erupted, though, it became clear that something else had happened. The two stars

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00:02:15

Sharing Stars

StarDate ·

2025/04/16

If you look up the details of W Ursae Majoris, you’ll find that its two stars are about a million miles apart. The way astronomers figure that distance, though, is from the centers of the two stars. When you measure the distance between their surfaces, the stars are a whole lot closer. In fact, they’re touching. That makes them a contact binary – one of thousands discovered so far. Many stars move through the galaxy with one or more companion stars. Their distances from each other

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