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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

00:02:15

Superflares

StarDate ·

2025/03/27

Those are the sounds of cosmic attacks – massive storms on the Sun firing energy and particles into Earth’s magnetic field. Such outbursts can damage orbiting satellites, cause radio blackouts, foul GPS signals, and even knock out power grids on the surface. And there are indications that we haven’t seen the worst the Sun can produce. The outbursts are generated by magnetic storms on the Sun. Lines of magnetic force get tangled up, then snap, creating a solar flare. Such an

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00:02:15

Messier 3

StarDate ·

2025/03/26

The star cluster Messier 3 is a beautiful sight – a sparkly ball of half a million stars. But the view from the cluster would be even more spectacular. M3 is high above the plane of the Milky Way, so the galaxy would spread out below it like a brilliant pinwheel. M3 is a globular cluster – a dense ball a few hundred light-years in diameter. Its stars are among the oldest in the entire galaxy. They formed just a couple of billion years after the Big Bang. All of the cluster’s heavy

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00:02:15

Cosmic Voids

StarDate ·

2025/03/25

The universe is put together like Swiss cheese – some regions are the cheese; others are the holes. The “cheese” consists of clusters and superclusters of galaxies. The “holes” are just that – cosmic voids. The largest voids span more than a billion light-years.Cosmic voids were discovered half a century ago. Astronomers were looking deep enough into the universe to map its structure on the largest scale. They’d expected the universe to look the same in all

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00:02:15

Virgo Cluster

StarDate ·

2025/03/24

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, belongs to a small cluster of galaxies – the Local Group. It has fewer than a hundred known members. But most galaxies reside in much more impressive clusters. And the closest of these is centered in the constellation Virgo, which steps up the eastern sky this evening. The Virgo Cluster contains roughly 2,000 galaxies. They move through space together, bound by their mutual gravitational pull. The cluster’s most impressive member is Messier 87. It marks

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00:02:15

Lost Cluster

StarDate ·

2025/03/23

It might seem hard to lose a star cluster. But that’s what happened with Messier 48. It was cataloged by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771. When other astronomers looked for it, though, they couldn’t find it. In the early 1780s, Johann Bode and Caroline Herschel did see a cluster five degrees from the position that Messier reported. So they sometimes get credit for the discovery. What all of these folks actually discovered was the nature of the cluster. Under especially dark

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00:02:15

Pyxis

StarDate ·

2025/03/22

If you have a compass – physical or virtual – let it point you to the southeast as night falls for the constellation Pyxis – the celestial compass. It’s a short line of faint stars, aiming toward the remnants of the Argo – the ship that carried Jason and the Argonauts. In fact, Pyxis represents the Argo’s compass. You need a pretty dark sky to see even its brightest star. But that’s only because the star is about 900 light-years away. If you moved it to the

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00:02:20

Fast Radio Bursts

StarDate ·

2025/03/21

Almost two decades ago, astronomers detected a little “squeak” of radio energy from the stars – a blip that lasted a fraction of second. Since then, hundreds more have been detected. But they’re more than just little squeaks. They’re massive outbursts of energy that can be heard across the universe. Fast radio bursts last from less than a thousandth of a second to about three seconds. They come from galaxies that are millions or billions of light-years away. At that

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00:02:20

More Equinox

StarDate ·

2025/03/20

On a map of Earth, coordinates zero-zero are in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, near the coast of Africa. All the other latitudes and longitudes are marked from that point. On a map of the sky, those coordinates are in the constellation Pisces. And that’s just where the Sun appears early today – at the moment of the spring equinox. Confusingly, though, that spot is known as the First Point of Aries. More than 2,000 years ago, the Sun appeared against the stars of Aries at the equinox. That

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00:02:20

Spring Equinox

StarDate ·

2025/03/19

The Maya of Central America were careful skywatchers. They built observatories for tracking the Sun, Moon, and stars. They developed accurate calendars, and could predict the motions of astronomical bodies. There’s even evidence that they could predict eclipses with a fair degree of accuracy. One example of their astronomical prowess may be found in the ancient city of Chichen Itza, in the Yucatan Peninsula. A shadowy snake appears to descend one side of a massive pyramid there on the

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00:02:20

NGC 4383

StarDate ·

2025/03/18

A busy galaxy is puffing out material like a factory smokestack. The “plume” is 20,000 light-years long, and it contains enough gas to make 50 million stars as massive as the Sun. NGC 4383 is about 60 million light-years away. It’s a member of the Virgo Cluster – a collection of hundreds of galaxies. Like our home galaxy, the Milky Way, NGC 4383 is a spiral. Bright “arms” of hot, young stars wrap around the galaxy’s heart. The galaxy is a hotbed of star

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00:02:20

Coma Berenices

StarDate ·

2025/03/17

The sky is divided into 88 constellations. They’re named for animals, places, characters from mythology, and even scientific instruments. But only one is named for a real person. Coma Berenices represents the hair of Queen Berenice II of Egypt. She reigned more than 2200 years ago. Her husband was King Ptolemy III. When he headed off to war, she pledged to sacrifice her beautiful hair to the gods if he returned safely. He did, so she placed her hair inside a temple. It vanished. A court

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00:02:20

Cosmic Bar

StarDate ·

2025/03/16

A long, wide bar of stars crosses the middle of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. And the center of the bar might be a good place for – well, a bar. A study published 50 years ago yesterday reported that a huge cloud near the galaxy’s heart contains vast amounts of ethyl alcohol – the form that people drink. Of course, it’s spread across tens of thousands of cubic light-years, so it might take a while to fill a frosty mug or a warm snifter. Sagittarius B2 is about 27,000

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00:02:14

Moon and Planets

StarDate ·

2025/03/01

Our three closest celestial neighbors highlight the early evening sky tonight – the Moon and the planets Venus and Mercury. Venus is the brilliant “evening star.” Fainter Mercury stands well below the Moon. It looks like a bright star, but it’s so low in the sky that it’s easy to miss.The Moon is the closest neighbor. It orbits Earth once every four weeks, at an average distance of less than a quarter of a million miles. Venus and Mercury are our closest planetary

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00:02:15

Valles Marineris

StarDate ·

2025/02/28

The Grand Canyon is impressive – a multi-colored chasm that’s 275 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and more than a mile deep. But compared to the largest canyon system on Mars, it’s like something a toddler dug in a sandbox. Valles Marineris extends a quarter of the way around the planet – almost 2500 miles from end to end. At its widest, it spans 120 miles – so far that you couldn’t see from one rim to the other. And it’s more than four miles deep. Valles

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00:02:15

Martian Stroll

StarDate ·

2025/02/27

A stroll on Mars would be quite different from one here on Earth. It would look different, feel different, and sound different. The surface of Mars features many of the same landforms as Earth – mountains, canyons, sand dunes, and wide-open plains. But much of the surface is coated with orange dust. A lot of it is lofted into the sky by the winds. The dust colors the sky in shades of pink and yellow. The winds also stir up dust devils – rotating columns of dust that resemble tornadoes

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00:02:15

Lafayette Meteorite

StarDate ·

2025/02/26

Vomitoxin is as nasty as the name suggests. It’s produced by fungus that grows in damp conditions on corn, wheat, and other grains. It can cause an upset stomach for anything that eats it – animal or human. But it helped geologists work out the history of a meteorite from Mars, which was born in its own wet conditions. The Lafayette meteorite was discovered more than a century ago. No one kept a record of the date, but it probably was found in 1919. A student at Purdue University in

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00:02:20

Martian Ocean

StarDate ·

2025/02/25

Water covers more than 70 percent of the surface of Earth. It’s the only world in the solar system with liquid water on its surface. But that hasn’t always been the case. Water once filled rivers and lakes on Mars. And it might have filled an ocean that covered a third of the planet. If the ocean existed, it filled a large basin in the northern hemisphere. Today, the elevation of that region is thousands of feet lower than average – a good “bowl” for holding

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00:02:20

Stirring Things Up

StarDate ·

2025/02/24

Most of the little moons of Jupiter and Saturn are oddballs. Their orbits are stretched out and tilted at odd angles. And some of them orbit in the opposite direction from the planets’ major moons. A study last year proposed that Jupiter and Saturn captured those moons thanks to a passing star. Researchers used computers to study the orbits of many objects in the Kuiper Belt – a broad region beyond the realm of the planets. Many of their orbits are odd as well. The work showed that all

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00:02:20

Messier 41

StarDate ·

2025/02/23

A young star cluster trots along with the Dog Star, Sirius – the brightest star in the night sky. They’re in the south-southeast at nightfall, and due south by about 9 p.m. The cluster stands directly below Sirius at that hour. Under dark skies, it’s just visible to the eye alone as a small, hazy patch of light. Messier 41 is about 2300 light-years away. And it’s about 25 light-years across. That volume is packed with hundreds of stars – as many as eight hundred,

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00:02:20

Marine Nightlights

StarDate ·

2025/02/22

When a sea turtle hatches, it heads toward the light. Under natural conditions, that means the ocean. But if the beach is near a bright city, it might head inland, where it can be nabbed by a predator, hit by a car, or die of exhaustion. Baby turtles aren’t the only sea creatures affected by artificial light. Among its many impacts, the light can throw off the reproductive cycles of corals and others, make it harder for fish to hide from predators, and endanger beds of kelp by providing extra

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