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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

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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00:02:19

Moon and Mars

StarDate ·

2024/06/01

There might be three ways to build a habitat on the Moon or Mars. You could bring along everything you need for the habitat from Earth. You could build it from local materials. Or, according to one NASA research team, you could grow it — using fungi.The team has been working on the technique for years. It uses mycelia — the part of a fungus that grows out of sight. It’s tough, and it can form large networks of interlocking threads. And it can grow quickly. Researchers have come up with

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00:02:14

Cannibal Stars

StarDate ·

2024/05/31

At heart, just about every star is a potential cannibal. Stars that travel through space alone don’t get the chance to act on that instinct. But those with close companions sometimes do act on it. They can pull gas from the companion, eventually leaving the companion with no more than its hot core. A recent study found a handful of such systems. Three of them are in Cygnus, the swan. One example is called 60 Cygni. Its two stars are about as far apart as Mars and the Sun. The main star appears

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00:02:14

Moon and Saturn

StarDate ·

2024/05/30

Planetary scientists can hardly move these days without splashing into a new ocean — or at least a possible one. They’ve discovered that oceans of liquid water may be hidden below the icy crusts of many smaller bodies: several moons of the giant planets, the largest member of the asteroid belt, and even remote little Pluto. One of the more recent “ocean worlds” may be Mimas, a moon of Saturn. It’s less than 250 miles in diameter. Its main feature is a giant impact crater. It’s so big that it

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00:02:14

The Hand

StarDate ·

2024/05/29

Most people keep their hands as far from snakes as possible. But handling a snake was the job for the mythological serpent bearer. He’s represented in the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus, which is in the east and southeast at nightfall. The head of the snake is above Ophiuchus, with its tail below.In one story, the constellation represented a serpent god. In another, it was a god wrestling with a snake. And in still another, it was an ancient healer who learned the secret of life by

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00:02:14

Slimmed-Down Cluster

StarDate ·

2024/05/28

The giant families of stars known as globular clusters are like carnival rides: They do a lot of bobbing up and down. And they may lose a bit of themselves with every gyration. An example is the cluster Messier 12. It’s probably more than 16,000 light-years from Earth. It contains a couple of hundred thousand stars, all packed into a ball about 75 light-years across. That means the stars are much closer together than the stars in our part of the galaxy. Like all globulars, M12 travels at an

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00:02:14

Messier 5

StarDate ·

2024/05/27

The Sun is about four and a half billion years old, so it’s been around awhile. Compared to some of the galaxy’s oldest stars, though, it’s a youngster. Some stars have been around since shortly after the universe was born. In the Milky Way Galaxy, many of those ancient stars reside in globular clusters — giant balls of stars that may have formed as the Milky Way itself was taking shape. An example is Messier 5. It’s in the southeast at nightfall, in the constellation Serpens. It’s a bit too

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00:02:14

Serpent Rising

StarDate ·

2024/05/26

The head of the serpent slithers into the early evening sky this month, with its tail twisting along a bit later. Serpens is the only constellation that’s split apart. The two halves are separated by Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer. The snake’s head rises first. It’s in the east and southeast at nightfall, marked by a serpentine trail of faint stars. The tail, which is below Ophiuchus, climbs into view about an hour later. The brightest of the stars of Serpens is Unukalhai — an Arabic name that

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00:02:14

Sunny Skies

StarDate ·

2024/05/25

Aiello del Friuli is a village in northern Italy, about 75 miles from Venice. It’s home to about 2200 residents and more than a hundred sundials — so many that it’s known as the “village of sundials.” It hosts a sundial festival every year, in late May.The village began earning the nickname in 1994. A resident created a sundial and hung it on the side of his house. It was more than just a pointer and some numbers, though — it was a work of art. So others in the village asked him to make sundials

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00:02:20

Brightest Black Hole

StarDate ·

2024/05/24

Black holes are the darkest objects in the universe — they produce no light at all. Yet they power some of the brightest objects. Known as quasars, these beacons can outshine entire galaxies of hundreds of billions of stars. In fact, the brightest one seen so far emits more light every minute than the Sun will produce in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime. A black hole’s gravity is so powerful that nothing can escape from it — not even light. But before anything disappears into the black hole,

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00:02:20

Black-Hole Sun

StarDate ·

2024/05/23

Stars like the Sun aren’t massive enough to become black holes when they die. But there’s a possible exception to that rule: if the star is born with a small black hole inside it. The idea was first proposed by Stephen Hawking. And it’s supported by a recent study. Normally, a star like the Sun just isn’t massive enough to collapse to make a black hole. But the universe might be sprinkled with black holes created in the Big Bang. Such black holes could be just about any mass — from almost

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00:02:20

Man in the Moon

StarDate ·

2024/05/22

Our brains can see things that aren’t there. They connect points and shapes to create “pictures.” So we might see a dragon in some puffs of clouds, “canals” on the surface of Mars, or a scorpion in the stars. One of the most persistent pictures is the “man in the Moon” — a face created from features on the lunar surface. Stories about the man in the Moon — or, in some cases, the woman in the Moon — go back centuries, from cultures around the planet. In China, for example, the face represented

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