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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

Moon and Mars

StarDate ·

2024/06/30

The moons of Mars aren’t much more than big boulders that look a bit like potatoes. Phobos is about 17 miles long; Deimos, only about nine miles. But they’ve been the subject of a big scientific debate for decades — a debate about their origins. One possibility says they’re asteroids that were captured by Mars long ago. Both bodies look like asteroids. And some of the minerals on one of them are the same as those found in some meteorites that probably came from asteroids. The other

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00:02:19

The Shield

StarDate ·

2024/06/29

A small, faint “shield” of stars scoots across the southern sky on early summer nights. It represents the coat of arms on the shield of John Sobieski, a 17th-century king of Poland and one of the country’s great national heroes. The shield is the constellation Scutum. Johannes Hevelius first drew it around 1687, using a few stars from a fairly empty region of the sky. He originally named it Scutum Sobiescianum — the shield of Sobieski. But in more recent times, the last part of the

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00:02:19

Solar Protection

StarDate ·

2024/06/28

Hurricanes and other big storms can cause widespread damage that can take days or weeks to clean up. So can big space weather storms. They can knock out satellites, disrupt radio transmissions, and cause power blackouts. Especially big storms have the potential to knock out power grids for weeks or months. So scientists and power operators are looking for ways to minimize the damage. Space weather is powered by storms on the Sun. Big explosions send particles and energy racing out into the solar

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00:02:19

Nessie Nebula

StarDate ·

2024/06/27

A dark ribbon of gas and dust may be about to light up like a sequence of camera flashes. That’s because it could begin giving birth to new stars, with each star triggering the birth of more stars. The ribbon is called the Nessie Nebula — named for its resemblance to the Loch Ness monster. It’s the longest ribbon of its type yet seen in the Milky Way — about 300 light-years long, but only three light-years across. It’s chilled to about 20 degrees above absolute zero. And for every

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00:02:19

Arrokoth

StarDate ·

2024/06/26

After the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto, in 2015, it still had some gas in the tank and some tread on the tires. Mission scientists wanted to take advantage of that by flying past another object in the outer solar system. But they didn’t know where to send it — there was no roadmap to other destinations.They solved that problem 10 years ago today. Using Hubble Space Telescope, they discovered a new body about four billion miles from the Sun. Eventually, it was named Arrokoth — a

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00:02:19

Moon and Saturn

StarDate ·

2024/06/25

Just like magic, big “islands” appear to come and go on the lakes and seas of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. They first showed up in radar images snapped 10 years ago by the Cassini spacecraft. And planetary scientists have been trying to explain them ever since. Titan is bigger than the planet Mercury. It has a cold, thick atmosphere. Hydrocarbons at the top of the atmosphere create an orange haze — like the smog that blankets many cities. Methane and ethane form clouds. They also

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00:02:19

Morning Planets

StarDate ·

2024/06/24

Almost all of the planetary action is in the morning sky now. Mercury is trying to climb into view in the evening sky, but it’s low and tough to see. It’ll be in slightly better view in a few days. Three planets are in the morning sky. Two of them climb into view a good while before dawn, so there’s plenty of time to look for them. The third is just coming into view after passing behind the Sun. It’s quite bright, though, so it’s pretty easy to pick out. As twilight

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00:02:19

Tarazed

StarDate ·

2024/06/23

Altair is the brightest star in the constellation known as the eagle, and one of the 12 brightest stars in the night sky. But a fainter star that appears just above it as night falls is actually a whole lot brighter. It only looks fainter because it’s a whole lot farther away. Tarazed looks only about one-sixth as bright as Altair. But it’s 35 times farther than Altair. When you take that into account, Tarazed shines a couple of hundred times brighter. Over the past few years,

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00:02:19

Altair

StarDate ·

2024/06/22

A young eagle soars across the sky on summer nights. Right now, it’s low in the east at nightfall, due south in the wee hours of the morning, and high in the southwest at dawn. And it’s easy to spot — it’s the 12th-brightest star in the night sky. Altair represents the breast of the constellation known as the eagle. The name “Altair,” in fact, means “the flying eagle.” According to current understanding, it’s a young eagle — barely more than an eaglet

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00:02:19

Dark Craters

StarDate ·

2024/06/21

There’s an astronomical coincidence today: It’s the first full day of summer in the northern hemisphere, and there’s a full Moon. The exact moments of the full Moon and the summer solstice are a bit more than one day apart — a coincidence that happens, on average, once every couple of decades. At full Moon, it’s daylight across the entire lunar hemisphere that faces our way. But not every location sees the Sun. Some craters near the lunar poles are so deep that sunlight never

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00:02:19

Summer Solstice

StarDate ·

2024/06/20

For many countries in Europe, today is Midsummer Day. It’s marked with bonfires and other celebrations. It marks the middle of summer, which began back in May. Astronomically, though, today marks the start of summer in the northern hemisphere. It’s the summer solstice — the longest day of the year. It marks a turning point for the Sun, which will begin to move southward after today. Regardless of whether it was considered the start of summer or its middle, the solstice had great

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00:02:19

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2024/06/19

You might think that astronomers would know just about everything there is to know about the brighter stars in the night sky. That’s not the case, though. In fact, some of those stars can be especially vexing.An example is Antares, the orange supergiant that marks the heart of Scorpius, the scorpion. The star huddles quite close to the Moon at nightfall, with the gap growing smaller as the night goes on. Antares is the 15th-brightest star in the night sky. And astronomers do know quite a bit

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00:02:19

William Lassell

StarDate ·

2024/06/18

Building the Albert Dock in Liverpool gave a man a powerful thirst. Workers drank up to a dozen pints of beer a day — and that was during the work day, with beer provided by the company. And while the workers drank, beer baron William Lassell got rich.Lassell used some of that wealth to study the stars. He designed and built one of the world’s largest telescopes, and used it to make many important discoveries. Lassell was born 225 years ago today. He made his first telescope by age 21. In the

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00:02:19

Gentleman Astronomers

StarDate ·

2024/06/17

Modern astronomy is a job for professionals. Amateurs discover comets and make many other contributions. But most of the cutting-edge research is done by professional scientists using expensive telescopes and other equipment. In the not-so-distant past, though, many major discoveries were made by “gentleman astronomers” — rich men who built their own telescopes and shared a passion for the stars. That was especially true in Britain. There wasn’t much public money for telescopes,

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00:02:19

Cat’s Eyes

StarDate ·

2024/06/16

A pair of cat’s eyes glows just above the north-northwestern horizon as darkness falls. The glowing eyes drop from sight in a hurry. And they’ll drop even lower during the coming nights, before disappearing entirely in the evening twilight. The “eyes” are the stars Pollux and Castor. They mark the heads of the constellation Gemini. The stars are described as “twins,” but that’s mainly because they’re so close together. Pollux is actually twice as

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00:02:19

Moon and Spica

StarDate ·

2024/06/15

This might come as a bit of a surprise, but no star is perfectly round. A star’s rotation, and the gravitational tug of any companion stars, can distort the shape. So most stars are slightly flattened. The Sun, for example, is about six miles wider through the equator than through the poles. The Sun’s average diameter is about 865 thousand miles, though, so that slight flattening isn’t noticeable. But some stars are so squashed that they look like lozenges. And still others look

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00:02:19

Thuban

StarDate ·

2024/06/14

Archaeologists know of only a few major artifacts of the pharaoh Khufu, who ruled Egypt more than 4500 years ago. The list includes some small statuettes — some of which might have been created long after his reign. But one artifact is at the opposite end of the size scale: the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.The pyramid was built with the help of a guiding light — the star Thuban. At the time, it was the Pole Star. It marked due north in the sky, making it a

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00:02:19

Flat Universe

StarDate ·

2024/06/13

Our universe appears to be “flat” — like a sheet of paper stretching to infinity. If so, that would mean it’s finely balanced — a sort of “just right.” Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, known as General Relativity, allows the universe to assume one of three basic shapes. One shape is “closed” — like a sphere. In such a universe, two lights beamed out parallel to each other eventually would circle all the way around to their starting point. Another

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00:02:19

Vega

StarDate ·

2024/06/12

When it comes to understanding a star, it’s all a matter of perspective. The angle at which you view the star makes a big difference in what you know about it.Consider Vega, the leading light of the constellation Lyra and one of the brighter stars in the northern sky. It’s in the northeast at nightfall, and climbs high overhead later on. For a long time, astronomers thought Vega was about three times as massive as the Sun, and no more than a hundred million years old. So when they

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00:02:19

Moon and Regulus

StarDate ·

2024/06/11

Like a mixed litter of puppies, sibling stars don’t necessarily look alike. That can make it hard to figure out which stars are related to each other.One example is Regulus, the heart of the lion. It’s close to the left or lower left of the Moon as darkness falls. To the eye alone, Regulus looks like a single bright star. Instead, it’s a system of four stars — two pairs of stars that are separated by a third of a light-year. What we see as Regulus is the brightest of the four

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