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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

00:02:19

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

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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

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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

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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,

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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 –

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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00:02:19

Biggest Black Hole

StarDate ·

2024/07/20

Black holes are everywhere. There could be a hundred million black holes that are the remnants of dead stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. But because they’re completely dark, they’re hard to find. That applies even to the biggest member of the class yet discovered. It’s 33 times the mass of the Sun – more than half again the mass of the galaxy’s previous record holder.The black hole is in a system known as BH3. It was discovered by the Gaia space telescope, which is

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00:02:19

X-Ray Astronomy

StarDate ·

2024/07/19

The human eye is tuned to a narrow band of wavelengths: visible light. But the electromagnetic spectrum extends far beyond our ability to see – from radio waves to gamma rays. Each slice of the spectrum tells us different things about the universe. Consider X-rays. We’re most familiar with them in medical settings. But many astronomical objects produce their own X-rays, allowing astronomers to diagnose their details. The list includes many types of stars. Many stars have hot,

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00:02:19

Evening Mercury

StarDate ·

2024/07/18

If you ever visit the planet Mercury, take along your old eclipse glasses. They’re not for looking at the Sun – you might need something even darker for that. Instead, you might want them just to see your way across the planet itself. Mercury is so close to the Sun that sunlight is more than 10 times more intense than on Earth. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun – an average of about 40 percent of Earth’s distance. But Mercury’s orbit is the most lopsided of any

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00:02:19

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2024/07/17

You don’t have to be an astronaut to see the far side of the Moon – at least some of it. A little bit of that hemisphere wobbles into view every month – an effect known as “libration.” So we can actually see 59 percent of the lunar surface.The Moon is “locked” in such a way that the same hemisphere always faces Earth. That means we see the same features all the time – the same dark volcanic plains, and the same lighter-colored jumbles of mountains,

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00:02:19

Moon and Scorpion

StarDate ·

2024/07/16

The stars that represent the head of the scorpion are impressive families within an even more impressive clan. Each of them looks like a bright point of light. But each one consists of two or more stars, all of which are much bigger, heavier, and brighter than the Sun.The stars align near the Moon this evening. From the top, the stars are known as Pi, Delta, and Beta Scorpii. Pi Scorpii consists of three stars. The most massive of the trio is destined to blast itself to bits as a supernova sometime

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00:02:19

Scorpius Clusters

StarDate ·

2024/07/15

Scorpius is immersed in the Milky Way – the hazy band of light that outlines the disk of the Milky Way Galaxy. Because of that, the constellation is home to a dense variety of star clusters. Some of them are young, so they hold some especially bright stars. Two examples are Messier 6 and 7. M7 is the brighter of the two. Under dark skies, it’s fairly easy to see with the unaided eye. It’s about a thousand light-years away, and it contains hundreds of stars. M7 appears to be about

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00:02:19

Scorpius

StarDate ·

2024/07/14

A few star patterns are easy to pick out. There’s Orion, with his prominent “belt.” There’s the Big Dipper. And on summer evenings, there’s Scorpius. It really does look like a scorpion skittering along the horizon. Some of the stars that outline the scorpion are related – they were born from the same giant complex of gas and dust. That includes Antares, the scorpion’s bright orange heart. Antares and the other family members we can see with our eyes alone

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00:02:19

Moon and Spica

StarDate ·

2024/07/13

The Moon gets especially cozy with the star Spica this evening. From much of the United States, in fact, the Moon will pass in front of the bright star, blocking it from view for a while. Astronomers will keep an eye on the event – called an occultation – to learn more about Spica.In earlier days, occultations also helped scientists map the Moon. The way a star disappeared and reappeared could reveal the contours of lunar mountains, valleys, and craters. We still see those features

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00:02:19

Bediasites

StarDate ·

2024/07/12

It would take a couple of hours to fly from Chesapeake Bay, on the coast of Virginia, to the forests and swamps of eastern Texas. But about 35 million years ago, some brownish-green bits of glass made the trip in just minutes – the result of a massive collision between Earth and a space rock. The rock was an asteroid or comet, and was perhaps two or three miles in diameter. It slammed into the coastline at tens of thousands of miles per hour. The impact gouged a crater about 50 miles across

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