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

Moon and Spica

StarDate ·

2024/08/09

Different stars face different fates. The smallest will shine feebly for trillions of years – many times longer than the current age of the universe – then simply fade away. The heaviest, on the other hand, will blast themselves to bits, briefly shining brighter than billions of normal stars. A bright star that faces such a violent end is in good view tonight. Spica stands to the upper left of the Moon as night falls. Spica actually consists of two stars. The heavier star, Spica A, is

en-US

00:02:19

Marking Time

StarDate ·

2024/08/08

Today, it’s hard not to know the time. Your phone, your TV, your car, and scads of other devices give you the time, accurate to a tiny fraction of a second. But in ages past, telling time wasn’t that easy – especially at night. Fortunately, nature provided a decent nighttime “clock”: the stars. The location of certain stars at different times of year told skywatchers the time of night. A prime example of how that worked comes from ancient Egypt. The Egyptian day was

en-US

00:02:19

Connections

StarDate ·

2024/08/07

The Milky Way has played a key role in the lore of many cultures. Among other things, it’s represented a road, a river, and the path of the dead into the afterlife – and their home in the afterlife.The role of the Milky Way in ancient Egypt is still a bit – well, milky – it’s just not clear. But some studies have suggested that it represented the sky goddess Nut. And some recent work says the summer Milky Way represented her backbone, while the winter Milky Way

en-US

00:02:19

Sirius Rising

StarDate ·

2024/08/06

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. And it’s just starting to peek into view in the dawn twilight. It’s easier to pick out as you go farther south.It’s especially easy to see from Cairo and southward along the Nile River. In ancient times, the star played a big role in Egypt’s religion and its daily life. Egyptians called the star Sopdet – a name that means “skilled woman” – after a goddess of life and fertility. She was the sister and wife

en-US

00:02:19

Moon and Venus

StarDate ·

2024/08/05

Venus is just beginning a slow climb to prominence as the “evening star.” It’s quite low in the west at sunset and sets not long afterward, so it’s hard to spot. Tonight, it’s close to a slightly easier target – the crescent Moon. Even so, you need a clear horizon and good timing to see either one. Venus and the Moon may have something in common: Both of them might have been involved in “big whacks” when the solar system was young. There’s a

en-US

00:02:19

Cygnus X

StarDate ·

2024/08/04

A giant stellar nursery lies just 4500 light-years away. But the complex of brilliant stars and star-making materials is hidden – veiled by clouds of dust. Cygnus X spans more than 600 light-years. It contains enough material to give birth to millions of stars as massive as the Sun. And it’s already spawned several thousand stars that are many times as massive as the Sun, and thousands of times brighter. Astronomers study the region at wavelengths that shine through the dust. They reveal

en-US

00:02:19

Dark Gaps

StarDate ·

2024/08/03

Under a dark sky, the Milky Way is impressive – a milky band of light that outlines the disk of our home galaxy. But the band isn’t smooth. It’s lumpy, with some parts much wider and brighter than others. And a dark lane runs down its middle, bisecting the Milky Way into two bands. It, too, is lumpy. That dark lane is known as the Great Rift, and it looks almost empty – as though a cosmic dragon has swallowed most of the stars. Instead, the darkness has simply swallowed the

en-US

00:02:19

Dark Skies

StarDate ·

2024/08/02

For most Americans, the Milky Way is more of an idea than a reality. Light pollution blocks the view of the Milky Way and much more. So for most, the only way to see the Milky Way is to get out of town – to visit dark locations far from city lights. Fortunately, there are still quite a few places where the skies are dark enough for the Milky Way to shine through. The International Dark Sky Association certifies many “dark-sky” locations – parks, towns, and even entire

en-US

00:02:19

Milky Way

StarDate ·

2024/08/01

The hazy band of the Milky Way arches high across the sky on these mid-summer nights. At nightfall, it stretches from almost due north, high across the east, to almost due south. And it arcs high overhead by midnight. But you need to get away from city lights to see it. The Milky Way is the combined light of millions of stars in the disk of our home galaxy. The galaxy’s busy core is in the teapot-shaped constellation Sagittarius, which is low in the southern sky at nightfall. We can’t

en-US

00:02:19

Big Snapshots

StarDate ·

2024/07/31

Astronomers are about to need a really big photo album to store their new snapshots of the universe. That’s because their newest digital camera is ready to look skyward. Each image will consist of 3.2 gigapixels – almost a hundred times the size of the highest-resolution pictures on most smartphone cameras. It’s the largest camera ever for astronomy.The camera was built for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which will use a giant telescope under construction in Chile. It will

en-US

00:02:19

Double Duty

StarDate ·

2024/07/30

On modern maps of the universe, every star belongs to a single constellation. But in ages past, some stars were known as connecting stars – they belonged to two constellations. And one of those stars is close to the Moon early tomorrow.The star is Elnath. Its name means “the butting one” – a reference to its position at the tip of one of the horns of Taurus, the bull. In fact, a second name for the star is Beta Tauri – an indication that it’s the second-brightest

en-US

00:02:19

Moon and Companions

StarDate ·

2024/07/29

The Moon and three bright companions form a figure that resembles the outline of a sail early tomorrow. Mars is close to the lower right of the Moon, and looks like a bright orange star. Much brighter Jupiter is farther below the Moon. And the star Aldebaran is to the right of Jupiter. It looks like a near-twin of Mars – almost exactly the same brightness and color. Robotic ambassadors from Earth are studying three of the four bodies from close range – all but Aldebaran, which is 65

en-US

00:02:19

Dawn Meetings

StarDate ·

2024/07/28

The Moon dashes through a region packed with bright stars and planets the next few mornings. It’ll pass especially close to Mars, Jupiter, and Elnath, the tip of one of the bull’s horns. Aldebaran, the bull’s eye, will remain a little farther from the Moon. The meetings occur near the ecliptic – the Sun’s path across the sky. The planets all stay close to the ecliptic as they move through the starry background. The stars are in fixed positions relative to the ecliptic,

en-US

00:02:19

The Brick

StarDate ·

2024/07/27

The center of the Milky Way Galaxy is already packed with stars. But in a few million years, tens of thousands more could flare to life in a region known as the Brick. It’s a vast cloud of cold, dark gas and dust that’s shaped like a brick. It may be the biggest future star cluster in the entire galaxy. It’s more than a hundred thousand times the mass of the Sun. And observations in recent years have shown that it contains dozens of dense blobs of material –

en-US

00:02:19

Visiting Downtown

StarDate ·

2024/07/26

You’ll find lots of visitors in the downtown of any major city. That may also be the case with the “downtown” of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. A recent study found that one of the stars in the galaxy’s core probably was born far outside that region. The core contains a supermassive black hole that’s more than four million times the mass of the Sun. Swarms of stars encircle the black hole – some of them quite close. But the black hole’s gravity is so

en-US

00:02:19

Black-Hole Feast

StarDate ·

2024/07/25

The black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is a light eater – at least it is today. But 200 years ago, it could’ve had a feast. That would have made it shine hundreds or thousands of times brighter than it is today. The black hole is called Sagittarius A-star. It’s more than four million times the mass of the Sun. That’s actually pretty small for a black hole in a galaxy as big as the Milky Way. Like all supermassive black holes, it’s encircled by a disk of

en-US

00:02:19

Sagittarius

StarDate ·

2024/07/24

Sagittarius has a bit of an identity crisis. It’s easy to see – just not as what it’s supposed to be. In mythology, Sagittarius was known as the archer. But that title doesn’t tell the whole story. He was actually a centaur – a creature with the head and torso of a man, but the body and legs of a horse. He was holding a bow, however – aimed at the nearby scorpion.To modern eyes, though, the constellation looks like something a little less fearsome: a teapot

en-US

00:02:19

Moon and Saturn

StarDate ·

2024/07/23

The fat gibbous Moon creeps up on the planet Saturn tonight. Saturn is to the lower left of the Moon as they climb into good view, before midnight, and looks like a bright star. If you remove its beautiful rings, Saturn itself looks a bit bland – like a slightly flattened beachball colored in bands of yellow, tan, and white. The bands are formed by clouds. Saturn is a big ball of gas that spins rapidly, so the clouds are stretched into bands that completely encircle the planet. If you look at

en-US

00:02:19

Chandra at 25

StarDate ·

2024/07/22

[Launch Control: 25 seconds…] When space shuttle Columbia headed for orbit 25 years ago tomorrow, it made history. It was the first mission commanded by a woman – Air Force pilot Eileen Collins. And it was carrying the heaviest payload ever lofted by a shuttle: Chandra X-Ray Observatory – the largest X-ray telescope ever flown. [Launch Control: 5, 4, 3, we have a go for engine start, zero. We have booster ignition and liftoff of Columbia! Reaching new heights for women and X-ray

en-US

00:02:19

Pluto at Opposition

StarDate ·

2024/07/21

Pluto is at its best now. It’s lining up opposite the Sun. It rises around sunset and is in the sky all night. It’s brightest for the year as well. Don’t bother looking for it, though, unless you have a good-sized telescope. Clyde Tombaugh was using a good-sized telescope when he discovered Pluto, in 1930. He’d been searching for a possible planet beyond Neptune for about a year, from Lowell Observatory in Arizona. When he found it, the little world was moving through

en-US

642 results

Similar Podcasts

Classic Radio Science Fiction

solgoodmedia.com

Mission to Mars

Inception Point Ai

The 365 Days of Astronomy

365DaysOfAstronomy.org

Creek Devil

william Jevning

UFO Chronicles Podcast

Nik Hunter