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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

A Good Comet?

StarDate ·

2024/09/02

Comets are some of the most beautiful objects in the cosmos – balls of ice and rock with tails that can stretch for millions of miles. But they’re also some of the most fickle objects in the cosmos – they don’t always meet expectations. And some fall apart – vaporized by the Sun. All of that is a preamble to the story of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-Atlas. Over the next few days, it might be visible through binoculars in the dawn sky, mainly from more southerly

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00:02:15

Intersection

StarDate ·

2024/09/01

Two important sky paths intersect on the eastern and western horizons as night falls now: the ecliptic and the celestial equator. The ecliptic is much easier to trace. It marks the Sun’s path across the sky. That path held great significance for many cultures, so they gave extra weight to the constellations it crossed – the constellations of the zodiac. As night falls, the ecliptic arcs near a couple of the zodiac’s more prominent star patterns. It passes close above the

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00:02:19

Dawn Mercury

StarDate ·

2024/08/31

One popular sci-fi trope is invasion by alien “bugs” – microscopic organisms from other worlds that could harm life on Earth. But scientists also are concerned about things working the other way around: Earth bugs contaminating other planets. So landers are sterilized to prevent them from carrying any hitchhikers. And when the life of an orbiter ends, it’s targeted to crash into a place where it won’t cause any harm. One world where that’s not a concern is

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00:02:19

Moon and the Beehive

StarDate ·

2024/08/30

Star clusters are packed with stars, but not with planets. So far, only a few dozen of the more than 5600 confirmed exoplanets have been found in clusters. And two of those orbit a single star, in the Beehive Cluster. The dearth of planets could simply mean that planets are hard to find. Only a small fraction of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy reside in clusters, and not many clusters are close to us. And clusters can be tightly packed, making it hard to study their individual stars. But because

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00:02:19

Moon and Gemini

StarDate ·

2024/08/29

No matter which system you go by, the names of the two brightest stars of Gemini aren’t quite right. In mythology, the stars are named Pollux and Castor. They represent a pair of twin half-brothers. They had the same mother, but one had a mortal father, while the other was the son of Zeus, the king of the gods of Olympus. But the stars don’t look like twins. Pollux is almost twice as bright as Castor, and it looks orange, versus Castor’s pure white. They were called the twins

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00:02:19

Sulafat

StarDate ·

2024/08/24

Stars aren’t always what they seem. Consider the two brightest stars of Lyra. The constellation’s leading light is Vega. It looks 20 times brighter than the second-ranked star, Sulafat. But that’s only because Vega’s much closer. If you lined them up at the same distance, Sulafat would look 60 times brighter than Vega.The difference is caused by their stage in life. Vega’s in the prime of life. It’s “fusing” the hydrogen atoms in its core to make

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00:02:19

Listening to Mars III

StarDate ·

2024/08/23

In the early 20th century, much of the world had “Mars fever.” Percival Lowell had mapped what he called “canals” on Mars, built by a dying civilization. H.G. Wells published “War of the Worlds,” about a Martian invasion. Inventor Nicola Tesla reported hearing possible signals from Mars. So there was a lot of interest in the Red Planet. In 1901, Richard Taylor wrote this march to capture the enthusiasm – “A Signal From Mars.” People listened for

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00:02:19

Listening to Mars II

StarDate ·

2024/08/22

Army and Navy radio stations around the world had something extra to listen for 100 years ago this week: Mars. The Red Planet was passing closer to Earth than it had in centuries. A retired astronomer thought that Martians might take advantage of the encounter to beam greetings to the neighbors. So he organized an effort to hear the transmissions. David Todd had led the astronomy program at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Most scientists of the day said there was no chance of a Martian

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00:02:19

Listening to Mars

StarDate ·

2024/08/21

A century ago, most scientists thought Mars was devoid of animal life. Many thought it might contain plants, or at least primitive life such as lichens.But in popular culture, Mars was abuzz with life. That was thanks to Percival Lowell. He saw “canals” crisscrossing the planet – structures built to save a dying civilization. Lowell was born to a distinguished family in Boston. He worked in the family business, then traveled around Asia. But during that time he developed an

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00:02:19

Moon and Saturn

StarDate ·

2024/08/20

The Moon will squeeze past the planet Saturn tonight. They climb into view about 9:30 or 10. Saturn looks like a bright star. As seen from most of the United States, it’ll pass just a fraction of a degree from the Moon. One of Saturn’s moons is one of the more interesting objects in the solar system. Geysers of water and ice erupt from cracks in its crust. The geysers feed one of Saturn’s rings. And the source of the geysers – a global ocean of liquid water – is

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00:02:19

Helping Hands

StarDate ·

2024/08/19

A European mission to study the moons of Jupiter is getting some help. Even though it was launched on Europe’s most powerful rocket, it’s so heavy that it needs some extra “kicks” to reach the Jovian system. It’ll get two of those kicks this week – one from the Moon, the other from Earth. The mission is JUICE – Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. It’ll study Jupiter’s largest moons – Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. All three are made of ice and

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00:02:19

Volcanic Planets

StarDate ·

2024/08/18

Jupiter stands high in the east at daybreak. It’s the brightest point of light in the sky at that hour, so you can’t miss it. Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanic world in the solar system. But some planets in other star systems could give Io some competition. Their daysides could feature hundreds of giant volcanoes, and be paved with molten rock. One example is LP 791-18d. It’s about the same size and mass as Earth. It orbits a small, cool star. But it’s so close to

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00:02:19

Summer Triangle

StarDate ·

2024/08/17

The stars of the Summer Triangle look a lot alike. Vega, Deneb, and Altair are among the 20 brightest stars in the night sky, and they all shine almost pure white. Vega and Altair really are alike. But except for the way it looks to our eyes, Deneb is nothing like the other two. The triangle is high in the eastern sky at nightfall. It’s easy to see even through the glare of the almost-full Moon. Vega is the highest and brightest of the three stars. Deneb stands to the lower left of Vega, with

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00:02:19

Complex Molecules

StarDate ·

2024/08/16

As far as we know, there are no giant ants at IRAS 2A, an embryonic star system almost a thousand light-years away. But the system does contain the compound that makes an ant sting hurt: formic acid. It’s one of dozens of complex molecules found in young star systems across the galaxy. The list includes such well-known molecules as ozone, cyanide, formaldehyde, methane, and ethanol. Many of the compounds are key ingredients for life, such as tryptophan – an amino acid that’s

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00:02:19

Binary Pulsar

StarDate ·

2024/08/15

50 years ago this summer, astronomers Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor went pulsar hunting. And they bagged a real trophy – a binary system that contained a pulsar and another dead star. The discovery, and their later analysis of the system, earned Hulse and Taylor the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics. Both members of the binary are neutron stars – the crushed cores of once-mighty stars. Each is about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, but only about as big as Earth. One of the stars rotates

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00:02:19

Bigger Sun

StarDate ·

2024/08/14

Our Sun has been doing the same thing for the past four and a half billion years – converting the hydrogen in its core to helium, producing huge amounts of energy in the process. And it’ll keep on doing that for billions of years more. Over the eons, that slow, steady change produces major consequences: The Sun gets bigger and brighter as it ages. That trend has important consequences for Earth and the other planets. As a star converts more and more hydrogen into helium, the core

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00:02:19

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2024/08/13

The Moon creeps up on the bright star Antares this evening. Depending on your location, you might see them pass less than a degree from each other – less than the width of your finger held at arm’s length. Because the Moon will be so close to Antares, it’ll wash out the star’s reddish orange color.Astronomers have been tracking that color for thousands of years. And they haven’t seen much change. Antares is a red supergiant – it’s many times bigger and

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00:02:19

Moon Messages

StarDate ·

2024/08/12

The Moon “shines” by reflecting sunlight. But it’s not a great mirror – it reflects only about one-tenth of the sunlight that strikes it. So it’s actually quite dark. Even so, it reflects enough radio waves that it served as the first communication satellite. In the late 1950s and early ’60s, the United States Navy used the Moon to relay signals between bases, and to some ships at sea. That developed from an earlier project that listened for radar transmitted from

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00:02:19

Mars and Jupiter

StarDate ·

2024/08/11

Mars and Jupiter are staging an especially close encounter in the early morning sky. They climb into good view by 2 or 2:30, and stand high in the east at dawn, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding them. Jupiter is by far the brighter of the two. In fact, it’s the brightest object in the early morning sky now other than the Moon. It shines almost 20 times brighter than Mars. But the Red Planet is pretty bright on its own. And it’ll only get brighter as the year

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00:02:19

Eltanin

StarDate ·

2024/08/10

Starlight sprinkles down on Earth like raindrops in a summer shower. And like raindrops, the sprinkles of starlight can appear to change direction. This effect is known as aberration of starlight. It was discovered three centuries ago by an astronomer who was trying to measure the distance to Eltanin, the brightest star of Draco, the dragon. James Bradley was looking for the star’s parallax. The idea is to observe a star when Earth is at opposite sides of its orbit. That causes stars that are

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