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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

Mars Equinox

StarDate ·

2024/11/11

It’s springtime – on Mars, anyway – because today is the spring equinox for the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere. Like the seasons on Earth, the seasons on Mars are the result of the planet’s tilt on its axis. In fact, the two planets are tilted at almost the same angle. So the north pole dips toward the Sun at the start of northern summer, while the south pole dips sunward at the start of northern winter. The equinoxes are half way between those points. But there are

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00:02:14

Twin Cover-Ups

StarDate ·

2024/11/10

The Moon will stage a pair of cover-ups over the next couple of nights. The first happens tonight, when the Moon covers up the planet Saturn. And the second happens just 24 hours later, when it covers the planet Neptune. The cover-ups are known as occultations. They occur because the Moon and planets all stay close to the ecliptic – the Sun’s path across the sky. But they all stray a few degrees to either side of the ecliptic. So most months, the alignment is off by a bit, so the Moon

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00:02:14

Vanquished Pictures

StarDate ·

2024/11/09

The bright Moon washes out the fainter stars tonight. One that shines through is Hamal, the leading light of Aries, the ram. It’s in the east at nightfall. It’s about 65 light-years away. And it’s a giant – bigger, heavier, and brighter than the Sun. The other stars of Aries are tougher to see. And some stars that once formed separate constellations around it are impossible to see. In fact, they were tough to spot even when they were first outlined. To the left of Hamal is

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00:02:14

Capella

StarDate ·

2024/11/08

Capella is a big mismatch. It’s a system of four stars, divided into two widely separated pairs. The members of one pair are both about two and a half times the mass of the Sun. But the members of the other pair are only about half the Sun’s mass. As a result, the two pairs face quite different futures. Capella is the brightest star of Auriga, the charioteer, and the sixth-brightest star in the entire night sky. It climbs into good view in the northeast in early evening and soars high

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00:02:14

The Big Freeze

StarDate ·

2024/11/07

Scientists don’t have a crystal ball to help them foretell the future of the universe. But they can devise ideas about the future based on their understanding of the history of the universe and the laws of nature. Based on that, perhaps the leading idea about the fate of the universe is the Big Freeze: The universe will get colder and darker, and eventually disintegrate into a soup of particles. The key ingredient of the Big Freeze is dark energy. Scientists don’t yet understand its

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00:02:14

Keeping It Going

StarDate ·

2024/11/06

A faint glow fills the entire universe – the “afterglow” of the Big Bang. The glow was created when the first atoms formed – 380,000 years after the Big Bang. But the glow isn’t smooth – it has tiny ripples and bumps. That’s because the universe itself wasn’t smooth – there were slight differences in the density of matter. Without those differences, we wouldn’t exist. The denser regions had a slightly stronger gravitational pull, so they

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00:02:14

Getting Started

StarDate ·

2024/11/05

Our universe has a long and complicated history. And scientists are still trying to understand it all. The general picture says the universe was born 13.8 billion years ago, in the Big Bang. For the first tiny fraction of a second, the universe expanded at many times the speed of light – an epoch known as cosmic inflation. When inflation ended, the expansion slowed dramatically. But a lot happened over the following few minutes. During the first second, the basic forces of nature took shape:

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00:02:14

Moon and Venus

StarDate ·

2024/11/04

It’s hard to imagine a less comfortable place for life than the clouds of Venus. They’re made mainly of sulfuric acid – something you wouldn’t want to dip your fingers into. Yet studies in the past few years are raising at least the possibility that microscopic life could inhabit those clouds. There’s almost no way for anything to live on the surface of the planet. The atmosphere is too hot, dense, and toxic. But the clouds are about 30 miles high, where the conditions

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00:02:14

Stellar Pearls

StarDate ·

2024/11/03

Star clusters line up in the evening sky at this time of year like pearls on a necklace. As the sky gets nice and dark, they climb straight up the northeastern sky. They stretch from the bright star Capella, which is quite low; up through the “W” of Cassiopeia; then to Cygnus, the tail of the swan, high overhead. There’s a good line of clusters because that path outlines the Milky Way – the subtle glow of the disk of our home galaxy. Most of the clusters are classified as

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00:02:14

Daylight Saving Time

StarDate ·

2024/11/02

Many people gripe when we “spring forward” in March, at the start of Daylight Saving Time. And many studies suggest they have reason to complain. For a few days after the switch, there’s an uptick in car accidents, workplace injuries, and even heart attacks. And a recent study shows other consequences: more junk food and less time at the gym.Daylight Saving Time is observed across most of the United States and more than 70 other countries. Originally, it was designed to save

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00:02:14

Ninth Month

StarDate ·

2024/11/01

To look at a modern calendar, you’d think the early Romans couldn’t count very well. Today, for example, is the first day of November, the eleventh month of the year. But the name “November” means the ninth month. The name is a holdover from the earliest Roman calendar, in which the year began with March. The start of the year was moved to January a century before the time of Julius Caesar. He affirmed that order when he set up the basic calendar we use today. But the names

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00:02:15

Halloween Monsters

StarDate ·

2024/10/31

Some “monstrous” stars decorate the Halloween sky this evening. They’re in Perseus, which is low in the northeast at nightfall but passes directly overhead in the wee hours of the morning. The constellation is marked by a couple of ribbons of moderately bright stars. In mythology, Perseus rescued the princess Andromeda from a nasty sea monster. In one version of the story, he turned the monster to stone by showing him the head of Medusa, one of the Gorgons – monsters in their

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00:02:15

Triangulum

StarDate ·

2024/10/30

Autumn’s evening skies offer some constellations with great names, intriguing back-stories, and beautiful star patterns. And then there’s Triangulum. As the name suggests, it consists of three main stars that form a triangle – an accurate if dull description of one of the smallest constellations. The triangle looks like a thin wedge. And there’s an odd coincidence involving the stars at the base of the wedge: One of them is precisely third magnitude, while the other is

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00:02:15

Dark Skies II

StarDate ·

2024/10/29

The skies above most cities and towns are glowing. Artificial light sources beam a lot of their light into the sky. That makes it harder to see the heavens. And it can cause health problems, endanger wildlife, and waste both energy and money.One big contributor to the problem is streetlights. They can be improved by adding shielding that directs their light downward, and by using the right kind of fixtures. One type of fixture that could help is L-E-Ds. They use less energy than most other types of

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00:02:15

Dark Skies

StarDate ·

2024/10/28

There are many reasons you might feel tired, irritable, and headachy when you wake up in the morning – illness, allergies, noisy neighbors. But you might also blame it on too much light – especially blue light. Looking at your phone or TV before bedtime can mess with your natural sleep cycle. Another source of trouble is outdoor lighting. Streetlamps, billboards, car headlights, and other sources fill the night with light. That creates a dome of light over most cities and towns – a

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00:02:15

Seeing Stars II

StarDate ·

2024/10/27

When you walk from a brightly lit room into a dark one, you might stumble for a while until you can see what you’re doing. And the same thing happens when you step out under a dark night sky – it takes some time to see its full glory. When you enter the darkness, your eyes adapt in several ways. First, the pupil opens wider, letting in more light. Second, the eye’s cones become more sensitive. They see color and detail, but they’re not very helpful when it’s

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00:02:15

Seeing Stars

StarDate ·

2024/10/26

Late-October evenings are great for skywatching. The nights are fairly long and cool. And there’s a lot to see. The Summer Triangle is still high in the west, and Taurus is climbing into view in the east. And this year, three planets are visible before midnight: Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter. One thing that’s not visible for the next few evenings is the Moon. It doesn’t rise until the wee hours of the morning. So if you can get away from city lights, you should be treated to a

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00:02:15

Moon and Leo

StarDate ·

2024/10/25

The Moon goes face to face with the lion early tomorrow. At first light, Regulus, Leo’s brightest star, stands close to the lower right of the Moon. And a star in the lion’s mane is a little farther to the left of the Moon. It’s part of the curving pattern of stars known as the Sickle. Algieba is about 125 light-years away. It’s the fourth-brightest star in the constellation. And like Regulus, there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. It consists of two stars, plus

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00:02:15

Falling Skies

StarDate ·

2024/10/24

Satellites spend most of their time high above Earth. But getting to orbit and coming back down can have big impacts on Earth’s atmosphere. Booster rockets add a lot of water vapor and other compounds to the atmosphere, which could have an impact on the climate. And a recent study found that satellites burning up in the atmosphere could be a problem for the ozone layer, which protects us from the Sun’s harmful radiation. The study looked at the number of satellites in orbit today, and

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00:02:15

Middleweights

StarDate ·

2024/10/23

Everything about black holes is extreme. That includes the range of their masses – from a few times the mass of the Sun, to a few billion. But there’s not much in the middle – between about a hundred and a hundred thousand times the Sun’s mass. Those middleweights are known as intermediate-mass black holes. And they’re extremely rare – astronomers have cataloged no more than a few dozen of them. But some recent work has solidified the cases for two of them. One of

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