x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

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

00:02:19

Venus Encounter

StarDate ·

2025/07/26

Zeta Tauri is the kind of star that few of us really notice. It’s at the tip of one of the horns of Taurus, the bull. But it shines at only third magnitude. That’s no problem under dark skies, but tough to see from a light-polluted city. It’ll be much easier to find before dawn tomorrow, though, because it’ll stand just a whisker from Venus, the brilliant “morning star.”Zeta Tauri is actually two stars, not one. They’re separated by a bit more than the

en-US

00:02:19

Pluto at Opposition

StarDate ·

2025/07/25

Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. The line from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is true not only on Earth, but across the solar system. Water is everywhere. But it’s not in a form you could drink. It’s in the clouds of the giant outer planets, frozen in the surfaces and ice caps of planets and moons, or buried far below their surfaces. One example is Pluto. The dwarf planet is billions of miles from the Sun, so its surface is frozen. But there’s evidence

en-US

00:02:19

The Cape

StarDate ·

2025/07/24

The east coast of Florida first heard the roar of a rocket heading toward space 75 years ago today. It failed. But it set the stage for thousands more launches – payloads intended for Earth orbit, the Moon, and targets throughout the solar system. The military had been conducting test flights from White Sands, New Mexico. But it was limited by the land-locked site. So it turned to a piece of scrubland known as Cape Canaveral. The site was chosen because it was isolated, it offered a moderate

en-US

00:02:19

Satellite Troubles

StarDate ·

2025/07/23

A big storm on the Sun in May of 2024 caused big trouble for satellites. And they could face even bigger troubles in the coming decades. The storm was an especially powerful outburst of energy and particles. When the storm hit Earth, it heated the outer atmosphere, causing it to expand. That increased the drag on satellites in low orbit, causing them to lose altitude. A study put the average drop at about 600 feet per day – the length of two football fields. The satellites had to fire their

en-US

00:02:19

Moon and Jupiter

StarDate ·

2025/07/22

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is one of the most intriguing features in the solar system. It’s a storm that’s big enough to swallow Earth – but getting smaller. Winds at its perimeter blow much faster than any hurricane on Earth. And it has a bright reddish orange color. Despite a century and a half of study, though, it’s still mysterious. Scientists don’t know why it’s red, why it’s getting smaller, or how it fired up in the first place. They do know that

en-US

00:02:19

Moon and Planets

StarDate ·

2025/07/21

The three brightest objects in the night sky team up during the early morning twilight tomorrow: the Moon and the planets Venus and Jupiter. Venus is the “morning star,” to the upper right of the Moon. Slightly fainter Jupiter is to the lower left of the Moon. It’s quite low, so you need a clear horizon to spot it. Venus and Jupiter are siblings – they were born from the same disk of material around the newborn Sun. So were Earth and the solar system’s other planets

en-US

00:02:19

Moon and Venus

StarDate ·

2025/07/20

Since the start of the Space Age, we’ve learned a lot about the other planets of the solar system. But perhaps we’ve learned the most about Venus. That’s a bit of a surprise when you consider that Venus passes closer to Earth than any other planet. Venus is the brilliant “morning star.” It lines up close to the crescent Moon before dawn the next couple of days. Venus looks so bright in part because it’s blanketed by clouds that hide the surface. And that’s

en-US

00:02:19

Moon and Pleiades

StarDate ·

2025/07/19

The Moon and the Seven Sisters huddle up in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. The Moon will “occult” the sisters – the brightest stars of the Pleiades star cluster. The stars form a tiny dipper that marks the shoulder of Taurus, the bull.Occultations have been useful scientific tools. The way a star vanishes, then reappears, can reveal details about both the star and the Moon. If the star fades in steps, that probably means it’s a binary – two stars that orbit each

en-US

00:02:19

Scorpius vs. Scorpio

StarDate ·

2025/07/18

There are several ways to envision the celestial scorpion. The main way is to look for the outline of the scorpion, which is low in the south at nightfall at this time of year. Its curving body really does resemble the nasty little arachnids. Its head is to the upper right of the body, the tail and stinger to the lower left, with the bright orange star Antares between them. Then there’s the scientific way. Astronomers have divided the sky into 88 official constellations, including Scorpius

en-US

00:02:19

Apollo-Soyuz

StarDate ·

2025/07/17

Astronauts and cosmonauts have been sharing time in orbit for three decades. But their first mission together began much earlier, with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. An Apollo spacecraft linked up with a Soviet Soyuz capsule in 1975. The craft had launched on July 15th. First up were two cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz, followed by three astronauts aboard the final Apollo. And 50 years ago today, the two spacecraft came together. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov congratulated astronaut Tom Stafford, who’d

en-US

00:02:19

Morning Trio

StarDate ·

2025/07/16

An astronomical trio lines up low in the east at first light tomorrow. Two of its members are easy to pick out: Venus, the brilliant “morning star,” with the true star Aldebaran close to its right. But to see the third member, you need to pull out your binoculars. NGC 1647 is just to the right of Venus, much closer than Aldebaran is. It’s a star cluster – a tightly packed family of hundreds of stars. Most of the cluster’s details are a bit fuzzy, though. Estimates of

en-US

00:02:19

Moon and Saturn

StarDate ·

2025/07/15

If you ever find yourself floating above the clouds of Saturn, gazing upon the planet’s magnificent rings, you might feel like you need to get your eyes checked. Even at noon, when the Sun is highest in the sky, the view will look as dim as the minutes before sunrise or after sunset here on Earth. That’s because Saturn is almost 10 times farther from the Sun than Earth is. At that distance, the Sun shines only about one percent as bright as it does on Earth. And that presents some

en-US

00:02:19

Six Decades

StarDate ·

2025/07/14

Only about one in five Americans was born before the “Mars Era” – before the first spacecraft visited the Red Planet. That first encounter took place 60 years ago today, beginning six decades of Mars exploration. Mariner 4 was launched in late 1964. A sister craft had failed. And early Soviet efforts failed as well. That inspired jokes about a “great galactic ghoul” eating Mars-bound probes. Mariner 4 had eluded the ghoul for seven months. AUDIO: Then, July 14th:

en-US

00:02:19

Brightest Star?

StarDate ·

2025/07/13

A brilliant “new” star blazed into view more than a thousand years ago. It’s the brightest star ever recorded, and may be the brightest ever seen by human eyes. Supernova 1006 first appeared in late April of the year 1006. For a few weeks it shined many times brighter than Venus, which is the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon. It was bright enough to see during the day, and remained visible at night for more than two years. It was recorded by cultures around the

en-US

00:02:19

Lupus

StarDate ·

2025/07/12

A couple of bright cousins of Antares, the heart of the scorpion, skitter to its lower right on July evenings. They’re the brightest stars of Lupus, the wolf.The stars of Lupus originally formed part of the adjoining constellation Centaurus. But they were split off to form a new constellation a couple of thousand years ago. The wolf’s brightest stars are Alpha and Beta Lupi. Both stars belong to the Scorpius-Centaurus O-B association – a complex of stars and star-making

en-US

00:02:19

Busy Disks

StarDate ·

2025/07/11

Newly forming planetary systems are busy and messy. They contain disks of gas, ice, and dust that are broken into wide bands. The supply of dust is replenished by frequent collisions between “exocomets” – balls of ice and rock up to a few miles across. And the bands may be stirred by the back-and-forth shifting of newborn planets. There’s a similar band in our own solar system – the Kuiper Belt. It begins beyond the edge of Neptune, the outermost major planet, and

en-US

00:02:19

Venus and Aldebaran

StarDate ·

2025/07/10

When it comes to the night sky, what you see isn’t necessarily what you get. Consider Venus and Aldebaran, which are low in the east at first light. Venus is the brilliant “morning star.” Aldebaran stands directly below Venus, and shines just one percent as bright. But their apparent brightness is the only way in which Venus outranks Aldebaran. Venus is a planet in our own solar system – a little smaller and less massive than Earth. It’s so brilliant because it’s

en-US

00:02:19

Cosmic Lightning

StarDate ·

2025/07/09

Thunderstorms generate what may be nature’s most impressive displays: lightning. And there’s plenty of it; lightning strikes Earth millions of times every day. Although lightning is common, it’s also mysterious. The electric fields inside clouds don’t appear to be strong enough to power lightning. So for the past 90 years, scientists have pondered whether it might have a cosmic origin – cosmic rays – particles that ram into Earth’s atmosphere at almost the

en-US

00:02:19

Stellar Ripples

StarDate ·

2025/07/08

If you throw a rock into a still pond, waves ripple outward. They jiggle the leaves and bugs on the surface, shaking things up a bit. And the same thing happens in the stars. In fact, a giant region of the sky is still feeling some “ripples” today. The Scorpius-Centaurus O-B Association contains many stars of classes O and B – the hottest and brightest stars in the galaxy. It spans hundreds of light-years, and contains thousands of stars. And more stars are being born there

en-US

00:02:19

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2025/07/07

The star that marks the heart of the scorpion is at death’s door. Sometime in the next million years or so, Antares is expected to explode as a supernova. But astronomers don’t know exactly when that’ll happen. There’s no way to see into its core, which is where the fusion reactions that power the star take place. And with current technology, we can’t tell that the end is near by looking at the surface of Antares. The star is many times the mass of the Sun, so when its

en-US

504 results

Similar Podcasts

X Minus 1 - Old Time Radio Show

Inception Point Ai

Science, Spoken

WIRED

This Week in Space (Audio)

TWiT

DarshanTalks Podcast

Darshan Kulkarni

The Best of Coast to Coast AM

iHeartPodcasts and Coast to Coast AM