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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

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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00:02:19

Kapteyn’s Star

StarDate ·

2024/06/10

Our home galaxy is a cosmic melting pot. While many of its stars were born in the Milky Way, many others came from outside. They were born in smaller galaxies that were captured by the Milky Way. Over time, the smaller galaxies were ripped apart, and their stars were scattered throughout the Milky Way. And one of the Sun’s close neighbors may be an example. Kapteyn’s Star is about 13 light-years away. Only about 20 other star systems are closer. The star is about a third the size and

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00:02:19

Omega Centauri

StarDate ·

2024/06/09

The biggest globular star cluster in the Milky Way Galaxy may not be a child of the Milky Way. Instead, it may be a sort of orphan — the surviving core of a smaller galaxy that was captured by the Milky Way. Omega Centauri contains perhaps 10 million stars, all packed into a dense ball about 150 light-years across. In the cluster’s middle, the stars are packed so tightly that they’re only about a tenth of a light-year apart. Compare that to our part of the galaxy, where the nearest

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00:02:19

Menkent

StarDate ·

2024/06/08

As you look out into the night sky, you might think that you’re seeing a true sampling of the stars — in other words, a little of everything. That’s not the case, though. Most of what you see is the Milky Way’s equivalent of the one percenters — stars that are among the galaxy’s biggest and brightest. An example is in the constellation Centaurus, which wheels quite low across the south on June nights. It’s so low, in fact, that much of it stays below the horizon for

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00:02:19

Galactic Habitable Zone

StarDate ·

2024/06/07

Earth lies in the middle of the Sun’s habitable zone. That’s the distance from the Sun where conditions are most comfortable for life. And astronomers are concentrating their hunt for life in other star systems in their habitable zones. There’s an idea that galaxies have habitable zones as well. The zones would have a good mix of chemical elements, not too much radiation, and a low risk of exploding stars. Stars consist mainly of hydrogen and helium. But to make planets like Earth,

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00:02:19

Getting Ready

StarDate ·

2024/06/06

A possible new space telescope probably won’t launch for a couple of decades, if at all. But astronomers are already looking for targets for it to study — star systems with planets that could host life. Habitable Worlds Observatory will have several jobs. As the name suggests, one of those jobs will be to scan planets for signs of life. The telescope will screen out the light from a star, allowing it to take pictures of planets around the star. Most important, the telescope will analyze the

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00:02:19

Active’ Worlds

StarDate ·

2024/06/05

Many factors are involved in making a planet habitable: the size and composition of the planet, the stability of its orbit, its distance from its star. But scientists are still trying to figure out which factors are important.An example is plate tectonics. Earth’s surface is divided into large “plates.” They glide along the rocks below the surface. They ram together, slide over each other, and recycle the crust. They allow heat to escape to the surface, and affect the chemistry of

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00:02:19

Martian Traveler

StarDate ·

2024/06/04

It’s pretty remarkable that scientists have figured out that some meteorites come from Mars. What’s even more remarkable is they may know just where on Mars one of them came from.The meteorite is cataloged as Northwest Africa 7034. It was discovered in 2011, in the Sahara Desert. The rock weighs about 11 ounces. And because of its dark appearance, it’s nicknamed “black beauty.” An American bought the meteorite and donated it to the University of New Mexico. Detailed

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00:02:19

Martian Lakes

StarDate ·

2024/06/03

The landing sites of the two most recent American Mars rovers are about 2300 miles apart — roughly the distance from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. Yet the sites are a lot alike. Both are inside impact craters that formed at least three and a half billion years ago. And both craters once held lakes — potential homes for microscopic life. Curiosity landed in Gale Crater, in 2012. The crater is almost a hundred miles across, with a central mountain that’s three and a half miles high. Curiosity

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00:02:19

Zapping Mars

StarDate ·

2024/06/02

The Perseverance Mars rover packs a laser gun. It’s not for defense against Martians. Instead, it’s a scientific instrument — a way to learn about Martian rocks without drilling into them. And the sound of the laser helps in that effort. Perseverance zaps a target rock dozens of times in just a few seconds. That vaporizes some of the rock. The rover’s instruments analyze the composition of the vapor. That reveals the chemistry of the rock. Scientists use that information to infer

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