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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

Moon and Gemini

StarDate ·

2025/04/04

The first-quarter Moon is gliding across the constellation Gemini tonight. Gemini’s twin stars and the planet Mars form a bright arc above and to the upper left of the Moon at nightfall. Mars is the brightest member of the arc. It’s roughly twice as bright as the star Pollux, which is twice as bright as Castor. Pollux is just 34 light-years away. And it hosts a giant planet – one of our closest planetary neighbors. The planet isn’t likely to be inhabited, though – the

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00:02:15

Snapshot

StarDate ·

2025/04/03

The United States has launched a couple of dozen nuclear-powered space missions. But only one used nuclear fission – the process that powers commercial power plants on Earth. Called Snapshot, it was launched 60 years ago today. The Atomic Energy Commission had been experimenting with nuclear power systems for space for years. It came up with a couple of alternatives. One used the decay of radioactive elements to generate heat, which is converted to electricity. That system has powered many

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00:02:15

Moon and Jupiter

StarDate ·

2025/04/02

Io, one of the big moons of Jupiter, might be the toughest solid body to map in the entire solar system. That’s because its surface is constantly changing – the result of major volcanic activity. Io is about the same size as our own moon. And it’s the “rope” in a tug-of-war between Jupiter and two of its other big moons. They pull at Io, squeezing and heating its interior. That’s created about 400 major volcanic features – mountains, lava flows, and lakes of

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00:02:15

Moon in Taurus

StarDate ·

2025/04/01

The Moon is taking a journey through time the next couple of nights. It’s crossing the constellation Taurus. It’ll pass close to several of the bull’s most prominent features, plus another visitor – the planet Jupiter. Jupiter looks like a brilliant star well to the upper left of the Moon. The bull’s brightest stars, Aldebaran and Elnath, line up below and above Jupiter. And the Pleiades star cluster is close below the Moon. These objects are at different distances from

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00:02:15

Close Black Hole

StarDate ·

2025/03/31

Black holes are creeping up on us. A space telescope has discovered several black holes in recent years that are much closer than any found before. The closest is just 1,560 light-years away – right in our cosmic back yard. The black hole is a member of a binary system known as Gaia BH1. Gaia is a European space telescope that’s been looking at more than a billion stars. It’s plotting the distances to those stars with amazing accuracy. And that’s how it found BH1. Gaia was

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00:02:15

Algenubi

StarDate ·

2025/03/30

The star at the top of Leo’s head has lots of aliases. Its formal name is Algenubi – from a longer Arabic name that means “the southern star of the lion’s head.” But most astronomers call it by its “Bayer” name – Epsilon Leonis. That naming system was devised centuries ago, using letters of the Greek alphabet to indicate a star’s priority in its constellation – its brightness or position. But Algenubi has several dozen other designations

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00:02:15

Denebola

StarDate ·

2025/03/29

The lion springs high across the sky on spring evenings. Leo is led by Regulus, one of the brighter stars in the night sky. It represents the lion’s heart or one of his front paws. And it really is an impressive star – bigger, brighter, and heavier than the Sun.The star at the lion’s tail is no slouch, either. Denebola also is bigger, brighter, and heavier than the Sun. It spins much faster than the Sun – so fast that it bulges outward at the equator. And it’s billions

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00:02:15

Solar Eclipse

StarDate ·

2025/03/28

A partial solar eclipse will dim the skies over the northeastern United States early tomorrow – weather permitting, of course. Other parts of the world will have a slightly better view, including much of Europe and Asia. A solar eclipse happens when the new Moon passes directly between Earth and the Sun. During a partial eclipse, the alignment isn’t perfect, so the Moon covers only part of the Sun’s disk. This eclipse begins in the wee hours of the morning in the northeastern

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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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