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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

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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00:02:19

Sedna

StarDate ·

2024/07/11

A dwarf planet far from the Sun may spend most of its time outside the Sun’s influence. In fact, it might have come from interstellar space – from another star. Sedna takes more than 11,000 years to orbit the Sun. It’s passing through the Kuiper Belt – a wide “doughnut” far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the Sun’s most distant major planet. Right now, Sedna’s almost eight billion miles from the Sun – about as close as it ever gets. At its most

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00:02:19

Eris

StarDate ·

2024/07/10

Pluto is the largest known member of the Kuiper Belt – a wide zone beyond the orbit of Neptune, the Sun’s most remote major planet. But Pluto isn’t the most massive member of the belt. That distinction goes to Eris – a fellow dwarf planet that may be a lot like Pluto. Eris was discovered almost 20 years ago. It wasn’t noticed earlier because it’s a long way from the Sun – almost three times Pluto’s distance. At that range, it looks quite faint. And it

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00:02:19

Dwarf Planets

StarDate ·

2024/07/09

The planets of the solar system come in three varieties: the rocky planets, like Earth; the giant planets, like Jupiter; and dwarf planets, like Pluto. The first two groups are well known. Except for Pluto, though, the third group is pretty much anonymous to everyone except scientists who study them.Astronomers created the dwarf-planet category in 2006, after they began finding bodies similar to Pluto in the outer system. A dwarf planet must orbit the Sun and not some other object, and it must be

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00:02:19

Moon and Regulus

StarDate ·

2024/07/08

If astronomers at the star Regulus could pick up radio broadcasts from Earth, right about now they’d be hearing something like this: [1945 audio clips] They’d just now be hearing about the final days of World War II because Regulus is a bit more than 79 light-years away. That means it takes more than 79 years for light – including radio waves – to travel from Earth to Regulus, or from Regulus to Earth. So the light we see from Regulus tonight actually left the star in 1945

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00:02:19

Cygnus Loop

StarDate ·

2024/07/07

About 10,000 years ago, a massive star in Cygnus, the swan, blew itself to bits. For a few days or weeks, it blazed as the brightest object in the night sky other than the Moon – bright enough to see even during the day. Today, its glowing remains are still visible – a colorful bubble that’s more than a hundred light-years across and growing. The bubble is known as the Cygnus Loop. It’s a supernova remnant – the debris from a star that was about 20 times the mass of the

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00:02:19

Little Guys

StarDate ·

2024/07/06

Three tiny constellations are stacked up in the eastern evening sky this month: the arrow, the dolphin, and the little horse. There’s not a single bright star among them. But under moderately dark skies, at least one of them is pretty easy to make out. The arrow is at the top of the stack. It’s the third-smallest of the 88 modern constellations. In ancient times, it represented a weapon used by Hercules, but there were different takes on his target. All of its stars are faint, but under

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00:02:19

Brown Dwarfs

StarDate ·

2024/07/05

The Sun and the planet Jupiter are the heaviest objects in the solar system. But there’s a huge gap in their masses – the Sun is more than a thousand times heavier. There’s a class of objects between those masses. Known as brown dwarfs, they’re much heavier than Jupiter, but no more than seven or eight percent of the Sun’s mass. A brown dwarf probably forms in the same way as a star – from the collapse of a cloud of gas and dust. The heat of that collapse makes

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00:02:19

Aphelion

StarDate ·

2024/07/04

It may sound strange to hear during the heat of the summer, but Earth is farthest from the Sun for the entire year right now. Our planet is receiving almost seven percent less energy from the Sun than it did when it was closest to the Sun, in January. The average distance to the Sun is 93 million miles. But the distance varies by about one and a half million miles in either direction – a result of the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit. It defines how lopsided the orbit is. And it varies over

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00:02:19

Unsteady Giant

StarDate ·

2024/07/03

Betelgeuse grew dramatically fainter a couple of years ago. The supergiant star blasted out a giant blob of gas, which cooled to form a dust cloud that blocked part of the star from view. And a similar star might recently have gone through the same process. RW Cephei is at least 900 times the diameter of the Sun, making it one of the larger stars in the galaxy. It’s also hundreds of thousands of times brighter than the Sun. In late 2022, though, it dropped to a third of its usual brightness

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00:02:19

Moon and Jupiter

StarDate ·

2024/07/02

The four big moons of Jupiter probably are all about four and a half billion years old. But two of them look much younger. That’s because their surfaces are constantly repaved – one by fire, the other by ice.The fire moon is Io. It’s the most volcanically active body in the solar system, with more than 400 volcanoes on its surface. Some of them release gas or lava, while others produce big explosions. That activity covers up any impact craters – the scars of collisions with

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00:02:19

Moon and Planets

StarDate ·

2024/07/01

Mars and Jupiter are siblings. They were born at the same time, from the same cloud of material that encircled the embryonic Sun. Yet there’s absolutely no family resemblance – they could hardly be more different. Both planets appear near the Moon at dawn tomorrow. Mars looks like a bright orange star to the upper right of the Moon. Jupiter is even brighter, and crouches below the Moon, low above the horizon. Mars is small – about half the diameter of Earth. It’s made of rock

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