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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

00:02:14

Lunar Eclipse

StarDate ·

2026/03/02

Life is all about cycles: birth and death, the rise and fall of the seasons, Taylor Swift tour eras. Many cycles play out in the sky as well. One of them is in view in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, as the Moon and Sun stage a total lunar eclipse. All or most of it will be visible across most of the United States. A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes through Earth’s long shadow. The Moon’s orbit is tilted a bit, so most months the Moon passes above or below the shadow. When

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00:02:14

Moon and Regulus

StarDate ·

2026/03/01

The Moon stalks the heart of the lion tonight. And seen from Hawaii, it’ll catch it. The Moon will “occult” the heart, blocking it from view. The lion’s heart is Regulus, the brightest star of Leo. The name Regulus means “the little king.” It was introduced 500 years ago. But the star’s association with royalty goes back much farther. In ancient Persia, Regulus was one of the four “royal” stars – four especially bright stars near the

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00:02:14

Missing Planets

StarDate ·

2026/02/28

The planets in our solar system fit into two groups. Four of the planets are small and rocky; Earth is the largest. The other four are big and bloated; Neptune is the smallest. But there’s nothing between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. And that’s a bit odd. Two of the most common types of planets elsewhere in the galaxy are somewhere in the middle: super-Earths and mini-Neptunes. Astronomers have confirmed more than 6,000 planets in other star systems. Only one system has as many known

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00:02:14

Moon and Gemini

StarDate ·

2026/02/27

You might forgive Pollux if it feels disrespected. It’s the brightest star of Gemini – twice as bright as Castor, its “twin.” But the designation that’s most often used by astronomers is Beta Geminorum. And the Greek letter “Beta” usually is applied to a constellation’s runner-up. That naming system was created by German astronomer Johann Bayer, in 1603. He used the Greek alphabet to name most of the stars in a constellation. Usually, the brightest

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00:02:14

Moon and Jupiter

StarDate ·

2026/02/26

If you head for orbit around Jupiter, you might want to take along your dust mop. Wide but thin rings encircle the planet. And they’re made of tiny particles of dust. Jupiter’s rings are nothing like the magnificent set that encircles Saturn. The rings are so faint, in fact, that they weren’t discovered until 1979, when the Voyager 1 spacecraft flew close to Jupiter. The system consists of four main rings. The inner ring, known as the halo, contains especially tiny particles, like

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00:02:14

Dangerous Storm

StarDate ·

2026/02/25

The first solar flare ever observed was also by far the biggest yet seen. But such a monster storm will happen again. And when it does, it’s unlikely that even a single spacecraft in Earth orbit will come out unscathed. And many could be destroyed. The benchmark storm so far was the Carrington Event. It was observed by British astronomer Richard Carrington, in 1859. He saw a brilliant flash of light erupt from a dark sunspot. The eruption produced beautiful displays of the northern and

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00:02:14

Danger Zone

StarDate ·

2026/02/24

Anything that’s in Earth orbit faces the constant threat of radiation – energy and charged particles from the Sun and beyond. It can cause instruments to glitch or fail, and even destroy a satellite. And it poses a health risk for astronauts. The threat is greatest in a zone in the southern hemisphere – the South Atlantic Anomaly. It covers several million square miles above South America and South Atlantic Ocean. It’s a weak spot in Earth’s magnetic field that allows

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00:02:14

Moon and Pleiades

StarDate ·

2026/02/23

To the eye alone, the Pleiades cluster looks like a small dipper of about seven stars – a few more if you have nice, dark skies. But when Galileo Galilei looked at it with his first small telescope, he saw a few dozen stars. It was one of the first indications that there’s far more to the universe than meets the eye. You can share Galileo’s view with a basic pair of binoculars – no telescope required. They’re especially helpful tonight because of the Moon. It passes

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00:02:14

Cruel Star

StarDate ·

2026/02/22

Stars aren’t always nice to their offspring – especially at the end. As a star dies, it expands. It can get big enough to engulf some of its planets. The Sun, for example, is likely to swallow Mercury and Venus, and might get Earth as well. A star in Cygnus might have engulfed one of its planets fairly recently. Two others might be doomed as well. Kepler-56 isa red giant – a dying star that’s much bigger than the Sun. It has three known giant planets. Two of them are quite

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00:02:14

Mystery Lights

StarDate ·

2026/02/21

Things sometimes flash in the night sky. That includes some weird and wonderful astronomical objects. Some of them shine for a few minutes or even seconds, then vanish. So it can be tough to understand just what caused them.Thousands of these “transients” showed up in a decade-long look at the night sky. And a recent study found a statistical link between some of those transients and both nuclear weapons tests and reports of UFOs. The study analyzed thousands of nights of observations

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00:02:20

Deep Dives

StarDate ·

2026/02/20

Long-term missions to the Moon and Mars will need a good understanding of the machines, the environment – and the people. Friction among crew members could make a mission much less productive – or even endanger lives. To minimize the risk, scientists are trying to understand how people get along during long periods of isolation. They’ve conducted test runs in laboratories. They’ve set up habitats on volcanoes and remote islands. They’ve studied research bases in

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00:02:20

Moon and Saturn

StarDate ·

2026/02/19

If you stepped off a spacecraft onto the surface of Titan, you might experience a little dj vu. Saturn’s largest moon has many of the same features as Earth. That includes rivers and seas, clouds, and even rainfall – it’s the only world in the solar system other than Earth with bodies of liquid on its surface. What wouldn’t seem familiar is the temperature – almost 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. In that icebox, water is frozen as hard as granite. So Titan’s

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00:02:20

Moon and Planets

StarDate ·

2026/02/18

The planet Mercury is putting in a decent appearance in the evening sky now. It looks like a bright star low in the west during twilight. And tonight it has a prominent companion: the crescent Moon. In fact, they’ll look like they’re almost touching each other.Mercury is tough to see because it’s the closest planet to the Sun. Because of that, it never moves far from the Sun in our sky. At best, it’s visible for an hour or two after sunset or before sunrise. Right now,

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00:02:20

Evening Mercury

StarDate ·

2026/02/17

Car wrecks aren’t all alike, so there’s a wide range in the results.The same principle may apply to the bodies of the early solar system, when the planets were taking shape. In fact, a recent study says the modern appearance of the planet Mercury could be explained by a glancing blow between two bodies of similar size. Mercury is an oddball among the rocky planets of the inner solar system. Its metallic core accounts for about 70 percent of its mass – a far higher ratio than for

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00:02:20

Busy Merger

StarDate ·

2026/02/16

There’s nothing like a merger to stir things up. That applies not only to companies and families, but to galaxies as well. One example is Messier 61. A recent merger with a smaller galaxy has brought its central black hole to life, triggered the birth of thousands of new stars. It also kicked out a ribbon of stars that’s as long as the galaxy itself. Messier 61 is a lot like our home galaxy, the Milky Way. It’s about the same size and mass, and it looks about the same – a

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00:02:20

Grandfather

StarDate ·

2026/02/15

A celestial grandfather strolls low across the south on winter evenings. He’s represented by two stars. In the western world, they’re part of the constellation Columba, the dove. But in ancient China they were known as the Grandfather. The stars are Alpha and Epsilon Columbae. Coincidentally, they’re about the same distance from Earth – about 280 light-years. And both are much bigger and brighter than the Sun. But there’s a big difference in their ages, so the stars

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00:02:20

Winter Milky Way

StarDate ·

2026/02/14

On summer nights, Earth faces the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. That part of the Milky Way features dense clouds of stars. Under dark skies, it’s quite a sight. But during the long, cold nights of winter, we’re facing the opposite direction – toward the galaxy’s edge. So the Milky Way looks thin and faint – a bare ghost of its summer glory.No matter which direction you face, the hazy band of light known as the Milky Way represents the combined glow of millions of

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00:02:20

Friday the 13th

StarDate ·

2026/02/13

If you walk under a ladder after breaking a mirror, does that make your day doubly unlucky? Since we’re a science program, we’ll say no. But that double-trouble philosophy underpins the superstitions about Friday the 13th. Both Friday and the number 13 have been considered bad luck. Put them together, and you have what may be the most feared of any day-and-date combo. The individual superstitions both have religious and mythological origins. In Christianity, for example, the Last Supper

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00:02:20

Deep Ocean

StarDate ·

2026/02/12

The surface of Ariel looks like a sheet of paper that’s been loosely crumpled. It’s covered with ridges, wrinkles, and gashes. That may be telling us that Ariel once had a deep ocean of liquid water. Ariel is one of the larger moons of the planet Uranus. It’s about 720 miles in diameter – a third the size of our moon. It orbits just a hundred thousand miles from the planet – much closer than the Moon is to Earth. It’s roughly a 50-50 mix of ice and rock. Our only

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00:02:20

New Identity

StarDate ·

2026/02/11

Ursa Major III is doomed. It’s falling apart, and may vanish completely in a couple of billion years.There’s not much to it even now. It’s so faint that it wasn’t discovered until 2023. It contains about 60 stars – all of them ancient, and all much smaller and fainter than the Sun. They add up to only about 16 times the Sun’s mass. They’re packed into a loose ball about 20 light-years wide. But the total mass is about 2,000 times greater than the mass of

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