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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

00:02:20

Charging In

StarDate ·

2025/10/07

The bull is charging into the evening sky. Taurus is in full view by about 11 o’clock, low in the east. He stands high in the south before dawn. He’s rising earlier each night, and will be in view all night long by about Thanksgiving. All the stars rise four minutes earlier each night – a result of Earth’s motion around the Sun. Earth makes one full turn on its axis against the background of distant stars every 23 hours and 56 minutes. So, if you looked at the sky every 23

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00:02:20

Harvest Moon

StarDate ·

2025/10/06

The Moon is full tonight, and it’s especially bright as well. And to top things off, it’s the most famous full Moon of them all – the Harvest Moon. Harvest Moon is the full Moon closest to the fall equinox, so most years it falls in September. But once every five years or so it skips into October. This year, September’s full Moon came 15 days and 10 minutes before the equinox, which took place on the 22nd. This month’s full Moon comes 14 days, 9 hours, 29 minutes after

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00:02:20

Moon and Saturn

StarDate ·

2025/10/05

It’s pretty easy to measure the length of a day on Mars or most other solid bodies. Just pick a feature on the surface and see how long it takes to spin back into view. It’s not so easy for planets that don’t have a solid surface. We can track bands of clouds, but different bands can move at different speeds. That’s been an especially tough problem for Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system. Scientists have been trying to pin down its rotation rate – the

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00:02:20

Morning Brackets

StarDate ·

2025/10/04

Saturn and Venus bracket the pre-dawn sky now. As Saturn drops from view in the west, Venus nudges into view in the east. Saturn looks like a bright star, while Venus is the brilliant morning star. The planets are both sliding eastward against the background of distant stars. Saturn lined up opposite the Sun a couple of weeks ago. For a few months around that point, the planet looks like it’s “backing up” against the background of stars – a result of the relative motions of

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00:02:20

Deep Search

StarDate ·

2025/10/03

Scientists don’t know what dark matter is. But they have some ideas of what it isn’t. And they took a big step in ruling out some possibilities with the release of a study last year. Dark matter produces no energy – the reason it’s described as “dark.” But we know it’s there because its gravity pulls on the visible matter around it. In fact, it appears to make up about 85 percent of all the matter in the universe. The leading idea says dark matter consists

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00:02:20

Ceres

StarDate ·

2025/10/02

At first glance, the dwarf planet Ceres doesn’t seem like a friendly home for life. It’s small, dark, and scarred by impact craters. Yet a deeper look presents a more optimistic picture. It has more water than any body in the inner solar system besides Earth. It has an abundance of organic compounds – the chemical building blocks of life. And it should be warm enough below the surface to sustain microscopic life. Ceres is the largest member of the asteroid belt – a wide band

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00:02:15

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2025/09/27

Earth has only one moon – one large natural satellite. But it might travel with an entourage of Moon chips – bits of the Moon blasted into space by impacts with asteroids. Some of the chips may share Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Others become “quasi”-moons. They weave around the Sun in a way that looks like they’re orbiting Earth.Astronomers have catalogued a dozen or more quasi-moons in recent years. The smallest is the size of a house. The largest is about

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00:02:15

Avoiding a Collision

StarDate ·

2025/09/26

The closest giant galaxy to the Milky Way is Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy. It’s two-and-a-half million light-years away. But it’s getting closer – by about 250,000 miles every hour. For more than a decade, in fact, it’s looked like the two galaxies were on a collision course. But a recent study says there’s only a 50-50 chance of a collision and merger. And if it does happen, it’ll take place billions of years later than previous estimates. The new study used

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00:02:15

Galactic Empire

StarDate ·

2025/09/25

Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is the largest and most-distant object that’s easily visible to the unaided eye. Under dark skies, it looks like a skinny cloud about as wide as the Moon. Right now, it’s about a third of the way up in the northeast at nightfall. M31 is two-and-a-half million light-years away. In other words, the light you see from the galaxy tonight began its journey across the cosmos two-and-a-half million years ago. The galaxy is roughly 150,000 light-years across

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00:02:15

Geoffrey Burbidge

StarDate ·

2025/09/24

People become astronomers for many reasons: They’re interested in the workings of the stars, or the quest to find life in the universe, or the fate of the universe itself. Geoffrey Burbidge joked that he became an astronomer because he married one. He and his wife, Margaret, were astronomy’s power couple.And they co-authored one of the most important studies of the 20th century. Burbidge was born 100 years ago today, in the English village of Chipping Norton. He first studied history,

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00:02:15

Neptune at Opposition

StarDate ·

2025/09/23

Neptune is one of the giants of the solar system. But it’s so far away that it’s tough to study. We know little about its interior. And much of what scientists think they know comes from lab experiments and computer models.Neptune is the Sun’s most remote major planet. So although it’s almost four times Earth’s diameter, it’s a tiny target for telescopes. And only one spacecraft has ever visited the planet – Voyager 2, in 1989. From those observations,

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00:02:15

Falling into Autumn

StarDate ·

2025/09/22

Earth “falls” into a new season today – astronomically speaking. It’s the September equinox, when the Sun crosses the equator from north to south. It marks the start of autumn in the northern hemisphere, and spring in the southern hemisphere. On the equinoxes, neither the north pole nor the south pole tips toward the Sun, so night and day are roughly the same length in both hemispheres – about 12 hours between sunrise and sunset. We say “roughly” because

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00:02:15

More Saturn at Opposition

StarDate ·

2025/09/21

Officially, Saturn has 274 known moons. Un-officially, it has billions upon billions of them – the bits of ice and rock that make up the planet’s rings. They range from the size of dust grains to giant boulders. All of them orbit the giant planet like tiny moons.The system consists of three main bands, which are easy to see. Together, they span about three-quarters of the distance between Earth and the Moon. But there are some thinner, fainter bands as well. One is closer to Saturn than

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00:02:20

Saturn at Opposition

StarDate ·

2025/09/20

Happy Saturn’s Day – the day of the week named for Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system. And the name is especially fitting today, because the planet is at its best for the entire year. It looks like a bright star, shining all night long. The seven-day week was created in ancient Babylon. The days were named for the seven known “planets.” The list included the Sun, Moon, and the five true planets that are easily visible to the naked eye. The day was split

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00:02:20

Listening to Mars

StarDate ·

2025/09/19

These are the sounds of Mars: a dust devil … a rover trundling across the surface … the steady sigh of the wind. All of these sounds were recorded by the Perseverance rover – the first craft to carry microphones to Mars. Scientists have used the recordings to learn more about how sound carries on Mars. The planet’s atmosphere is less than one percent as thick as Earth’s atmosphere, so it’s much quieter on Mars. It’s especially quiet around noon, when sound

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00:02:20

Moon, Venus, Regulus

StarDate ·

2025/09/18

There’s an extraordinary conjunction in tomorrow’s early morning sky – a tight grouping of the Moon, the planet Venus, and the star Regulus. They’re quite low at first light, so you may need a clear horizon to spot them. Venus is the brilliant “morning star,” just a fraction of a degree from the Moon. Regulus is a bit farther from the Moon. It’s much fainter than Venus, but its proximity to the brighter bodies will make it pretty easy to pick out. This

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00:02:20

New Dwarf?

StarDate ·

2025/09/17

A third of a century ago, we knew of only two solar-system bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune: Pluto and its largest moon. Today, the known population of such bodies is in the thousands. And quite a few of them are in the same class as Pluto itself: dwarf planets. One of the newest members of that class is 2017 OF201. It was discovered in 2017. A recent study found that it may be about a third the size of Pluto. If so, then it most likely would qualify as a dwarf planet. The object follows a highly

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00:02:20

Dwarf Planets

StarDate ·

2025/09/16

The roster of “dwarf planets” keeps growing. But it’s not official – there’s no league office to tell us who’s on the roster and who’s not. Various groups keep their own lists, but they don’t agree on which objects belong. The dwarf-planet category was formalized a couple of decades ago. Astronomers had discovered some new Pluto-like objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. They had to decide whether to add those objects to the roster of planets, or to put

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00:02:20

Moon and Companions

StarDate ·

2025/09/15

A bright star and planet team up with the Moon early tomorrow to form a tight, beautiful triangle. Pollux will stand close to the lower left of the Moon, with much brighter Jupiter about the same distance to the lower right of the Moon. Pollux is the brightest star of Gemini, while Jupiter is a planet. Jupiter is by far the giant of the solar system. It’s more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. And it’s about 11 times the diameter of Earth. That makes it big enough

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00:02:20

Death Spiral

StarDate ·

2025/09/14

A star that may be in a death spiral wants the universe to know about it. Every four and a half days it creates a burst of X-rays. The cause of those outbursts may be leading to the star’s demise. The possibly dying star is in a galaxy that’s about 300 million light-years away. During evening twilight now, that spot is quite low in the west, below the bright star Arcturus. According to a recent study, the story probably involves the star; a black hole, nicknamed Ansky, that’s a

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