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PODCAST

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder

Single Malt Sky

Star Trails is a weekly astronomy podcast that begins in your backyard and expands outward to the edge of the universe. Each episode features a guide to the night sky visible across North America — constellations, planets, moon phases, and celestial events — along with deeper explorations of the science, history, and perspective that make astronomy one of humanity’s greatest adventures.From ancient skywatchers to modern spacecraft, from quiet stargazing to the violent deaths of stars, Star Trails

science astronomy

All Episodes

24:41

Space Oddity: The Harmony of Isolation

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/04/08

What makes a song feel like space? In this special bonus episode of Star Trails, we take a deep dive into the song "Space Oddity," not just as a piece of music, but as a story of distance, disconnection, and drift.Released in 1969 at the height of the space race, Bowie’s breakout hit arrived alongside humanity’s first steps on the Moon. The BBC even used it during their coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, a strange pairing for a song about an astronaut who never makes it home.But the real story

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25:43

Photon by Photon: A Journey Through Observatories

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/04/05

This week we step inside one of astronomy’s most iconic spaces: the observatory.Drew visits Melton Memorial Observatory and sits down with director Martin Bowers to explore what a nearly 100-year-old, urban observatory still offers today. From public viewing nights to hands-on learning, we look at how these classic domes continue to connect people with the night sky, even under city lights.Then, we zoom out to the bigger picture.From Mount Wilson Observatory and Palomar Observatory to Mauna Kea

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17:56

The Edge of the Solar System

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/03/29

This week we leave the familiar planets behind and venture into the farthest reaches of our Solar System, into regions where the Sun’s influence begins to fade and the boundaries of our cosmic neighborhood grow uncertain.We explore the Kuiper Belt, a vast disk of icy remnants left over from the formation of the planets, and travel even farther into the mysterious Oort Cloud, a distant, spherical halo of objects that may extend halfway to the nearest stars. Along the way, we uncover the discoveries

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25:53

Moons: The Solar System’s Secret Worlds

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/03/22

The most intriguing places in our solar system might not be planets at all. This week we turn our attention to some of the most fascinating and unusual worlds in our solar system: its moons.For most of human history, we assumed moons were quiet, lifeless companions like our own. But as spacecraft ventured deeper into the outer solar system, a very different picture emerged.Some moons erupt with volcanoes. Some hide vast oceans beneath miles of ice. Some have weather, rivers, and lakes, made not of

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26:28

The Case of Pluto: Discovery, Demotion, and Redemption

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/03/15

In 2006, a group of astronomers gathered in Prague and made a decision that shocked the world: Pluto was no longer a planet.But the story of Pluto is far more complicated—and far more fascinating—than that single vote.In this episode of Star Trails, we reopen the case. From Percival Lowell’s search for the mysterious “Planet X” to Clyde Tombaugh’s painstaking discovery using a blink comparator, we trace the strange history of the ninth planet. We’ll examine the discoveries that led to Pluto’s

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30:31

Beyond the Frost Line: The Giant Planets of Our Solar...

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/03/08

This week we leave the rocky inner planets behind and journey into the deep cold of the outer solar system. From the storm-wracked atmosphere of Jupiter to the ringed elegance of Saturn and the mysterious ice giants Uranus and Neptune, these distant worlds reveal how strange and varied our planetary neighborhood truly is.Along the way we explore how the solar system formed, why the inner planets are rocky while the outer planets became giants of gas and ice, and why the distant ice giants remain

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27:45

Four Worlds, One Sun; Plus, a Total Lunar Eclipse

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/03/01

In this milestone 100th episode of Star Trails, we bring the cosmos back home.After months of exploring distant stars, nebulae, and black holes, March begins with a tour of our own neighborhood: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, four rocky worlds born from the same protoplanetary disk 4.5 billion years ago, yet shaped into radically different outcomes.We’ll visit Mercury, the tiny planet that helped confirm Einstein’s General Relativity and inspired the hunt for a phantom world called Vulcan. We’ll

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22:56

How Stars Die (Including the One That Keeps Us Alive)

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/02/22

In this episode, we wrap up our month-long series on stars by exploring their final acts.Most stars don’t explode. They grow old. We’ll follow the Sun’s future as it swells into a red giant, sheds its outer layers, and becomes a dense white dwarf held up not by heat, but by quantum mechanics itself. Along the way, we’ll examine planetary nebulae like the Ring Nebula and the Dumbbell Nebula, and look at real red giants such as Betelgeuse and Aldebaran that foreshadow stellar endings.Then we turn to

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29:29

The Quiet Majority of Stars

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/02/15

This week we take a nerdy detour into the lives of stars by building a tiny simulated galaxy in Python. We form half a million stars, roll the clock forward 10 billion years, and discover something counterintuitive: nearly all of them are still shining. The stars that dominate our constellations, the bright, showy ones, are statistically the least likely to survive. The night sky, it turns out, is a biased sample.From there, we leave the realm of statistics and tour a handful of “highlight reel”

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18:12

What Stars Do While They’re Alive

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/02/08

Stars are easy to take for granted. They rise, they set, and they seem unchanged from one night to the next. But in this episode of Star Trails, we shift our focus to what stars are actually doing right now, shaping nebulae, building solar systems, regulating star formation, and quietly organizing the structure of galaxies around them.We explore stellar nurseries like the Orion and Eagle Nebulae, where young stars actively sculpt their birth clouds, and look at star clusters, both open and globular,

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30:03

What a Star Is (and What It Isn’t)

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/02/01

This week, we begin a month-long exploration of the most familiar objects in the night sky, and wonder why they’re still so often misunderstood.In this episode, we take a deep dive into what a star really is, and just as importantly, what it isn’t. We’ll talk about how stars form, why they live such turbulent lives, how light escapes their interiors over immense spans of time, and why the stars we see from Earth are not representative of the galaxy as a whole.Along the way, we’ll challenge common

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23:13

The Myth of the Perfect Night

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/01/25

What if the problem isn’t the sky, but our expectations?In this episode we step back from targets, charts, and techniques to talk about something every stargazer eventually encounters: the myth of the perfect night. Clear horizons, steady seeing, and flawless gear. Astronomy culture often presents these moments as normal, when in reality they’re exceptions. Most nights are compromised, interrupted, or quietly frustrating. It’s the nature of the hobby.We explore how social media and memory itself

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21:44

Choreography of the Cosmos: Why the Sky Never Stands...

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/01/18

In this episode, we continue our January series for new stargazers by exploring one of the most quietly mind-bending truths in astronomy: everything is moving, including you. Even when you’re standing motionless in your backyard, you’re traveling through space at extraordinary speed, carried along by Earth’s rotation, its orbit around the Sun, the Sun’s journey through the Milky Way, and the motion of the galaxy itself.From that realization, we peel back the layers of motion that shape the night

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25:37

Night of the Hunter: A Deep Dive into Orion

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/01/11

This week we slow down and spend the night with one of the sky’s most iconic constellations: Orion. We'll use the mighty hunter as a guide, learning how his stars can point the way to other landmarks in the winter sky, from blazing Sirius to Aldebaran and the Pleiades. Along the way, we explore Orion’s rich mythology, his role in ancient cultures, and the remarkable deep-sky objects hidden within his outline, including stellar nurseries, dark nebulae, and the vast structures shaping this region of

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22:49

How to Begin (or Begin Again) With the Night Sky

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2026/01/04

The first episode of a new year is a good time to slow down, zoom out, and reset. In this episode, we welcome new and returning listeners alike for a thoughtful reintroduction to stargazing, one that sets aside checklists, gear anxiety, and the pressure to “do it right,” and instead focuses on patience, curiosity, and learning the sky where you are.Along the way, the episode explores the idea of the sky as a clock, the power of naked-eye and binocular observing, and the winter night sky anchored by

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11:27

Winter’s Beacons (And a Holiday Gift)

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2025/12/21

As the year winds down, we make one last stop beneath the night sky for the week of December 21–27, marking the arrival of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year and a quiet turning point in Earth’s journey around the Sun.In this short holiday episode, we reflect on what the solstice means from an astronomical perspective, why ancient cultures saw it as a rebirth of light, and how it gifts modern stargazers with long, early nights and some of the most iconic sights in the sky.We tour the

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29:21

How to Build a Time Machine

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2025/11/30

For the season finale of Star Trails, we’re building a “time machine” the only way we know how: with physics, not plot holes. Drew takes a tour through the time-travel stories that shaped his 80s childhood—Back to the Future, Star Trek IV, The Time Machine, Bill & Ted, and even Disney’s wonderfully unhinged The Black Hole—and then sets them beside the actual rules of our universe. We’ll look at the real ways you can travel into the future using speed and gravity.Along the way we’ll ride with

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26:13

Eras of the Universe (Taylor’s Version)

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2025/11/23

This week, we’re doing something chaotic: we’re mapping the entire history of the universe onto the musical eras of Taylor Swift. And yes, the science is absolutely real.From the Big Bang to the heat death of everything, each of Taylor’s albums becomes a chapter in the cosmic timeline. We’ll travel through the Primordial Universe, the formation of the first stars, galaxy evolution, black hole fireworks, the rise of dark energy, and the long, cold future of the cosmos — all through a Swiftian

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23:36

Sad Astronomy: Reflections on Distance, Death, and...

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2025/11/16

This episode begins with auroras and interstellar objects and ends somewhere much closer to the heart. After catching up on the week’s sky – dark moonless nights, Mercury in the dawn, meteor activity, and the quiet unraveling of comet 3I/Atlas – we shift into something different.We’ll explore the idea of “sad astronomy”: the loneliness of deep space, the slow death of stars, the fragility of spacecraft, the silence of the cosmic void, and why so many stargazers feel a mix of awe and melancholy when

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26:10

Playing Dice with the Universe

Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder ·

2025/11/09

This week on Star Trails, we let the universe decide.We fire up a real quantum computer to generate pure randomness — the seed for a million-universe simulation of the famous Drake Equation. Each run explores how many intelligent civilizations might exist in our galaxy, from barren voids to thriving cosmic metropolises. The results are startling, the implications profound, and the method delightfully nerdy.Along the way, we revisit the roots of the Drake Equation, the strangeness of quantum

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127 results

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