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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

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Nereid

StarDate ·

2024/05/01

One of the larger moons of the planet Neptune has been through a lot. It might have started as an asteroid, and was captured by Neptune’s gravity. Or it might have started as a moon, but was hurled into a wild orbit when Neptune grabbed its largest moon. And since then, it’s been battered by impacts with other space rocks. Nereid was discovered 75 years ago today, by Gerard Kuiper. It was only the second moon seen around the giant planet, and it’s the third-largest of Neptune’s 16 known

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00:02:20

Magnetic Flip-Flop

StarDate ·

2024/04/30

Earth’s magnetic field sometimes does a flip. The north magnetic pole becomes the south pole, and vice versa. On average, it happens once every few hundred thousand years. But sometimes, it’s more of a flip flop — the field flips right back over. One flip-flop took place about 42,000 years ago. Known as the Laschamps Excursion, the flip lasted only a few hundred years. And a recent study said the transition could have been a major problem for Earth’s environment. The magnetic field protects us from

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00:02:20

Magnetic Anomalies

StarDate ·

2024/04/29

Earth’s magnetic field is a protective blanket. It keeps charged particles from the Sun and beyond from hitting the surface and much of the atmosphere, where they could cause a lot of problems. But it’s a lumpy blanket. It doesn’t provide the same level of protection for the whole planet. Instead, the magnetic field has peaks and valleys. Today, there’s a deep “valley” over parts of South America and the South Atlantic Ocean. Known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, it allows particles in Earth’s

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00:02:20

Frances Baily

StarDate ·

2024/04/28

Be careful what you say — a single phrase can define a legacy. Consider Frances Baily. He served four terms as president of the Royal Astronomical Society and compiled some of the most important star catalogs in history. But he’s best known for five little words: “like a string of beads.” Baily was born 250 years ago today, in England. As a young man, he traveled to the wilds of North America, then joined the London Stock Exchange. He was especially good at the mathematical side of things, compiling

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00:02:20

Izar

StarDate ·

2024/04/27

Russian astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm von Struve discovered and catalogued thousands of binary stars — pairs of stars that are gravitationally bound to each other. But a system that he first saw in 1829 was so striking that he gave it a special name: Pulcherrima — “the most beautiful.” It honors the contrasting colors of the two stars. One looks pale orange, while the other looks blue-white or even green. The system is also known by an even older name: Izar, “the girdle,” because it represents the

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00:02:20

Sirius Disappears

StarDate ·

2024/04/26

The brightest star in the night sky is getting ready to leave it for a while. Sirius, the Dog Star, is low in the southwest as night falls. Over the next few weeks, it’ll sink deeper into the twilight, then disappear from view. Sirius is almost nine light-years away. And it actually consists of two stars, not one. The one we see is a good bit bigger, brighter, and heavier than the Sun. The other is about the same mass as the Sun, but a whole lot smaller — only as big as Earth. That star is a white

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00:02:20

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2024/04/25

Stars are huge — anywhere from about 10 times the diameter of Earth to a hundred thousand times or more. Such a scale is just hard to fathom. One way to envision it is to consider how long it would take you to make one turn around such a giant body. An extreme example is Antares, the bright orange heart of Scorpius. It’s to the lower left of the Moon as they climb into good view tonight, after midnight, and about the same distance to the upper right of the Moon tomorrow night. Antares is a

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00:02:20

Zosma

StarDate ·

2024/04/24

Over the millennia, stars acquire a lot of names. Some make sense, some don’t. And some of them might have gotten mixed up along the way.An example is the fourth-brightest star of Leo, the lion, which is about 58 light-years away. It represents the lion’s hip. A few centuries ago, it was assigned the name “Delta Leonis” — an indication of its ranking within the constellation. But it also has some older names, including Zosma and Duhr. Zosma comes from ancient Greek. It means “the girdle.” But that

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00:02:20

Immanuel Kant

StarDate ·

2024/04/23

Immanuel Kant is best known for his ideas about philosophy, from ethics to the nature of knowledge. But he also played a role in the development of an idea about how planets are born. And while many of the details were off, his basic idea was sound. Kant was born 300 years ago this week, in the German state of Konigsberg. And during his 80 years, he never left it. He enrolled in the University of Konigsberg at age 16. But his father died, and he was forced to leave the university. He became a tutor

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00:02:15

Moon and Spica

StarDate ·

2024/04/22

Few constellations have as many backstories as Virgo, the virgin. In ancient Greece and Rome, it was linked with several goddesses, each with her own story. In one story, she was Dike, the goddess of justice. She lived when the gods known as the Titans ruled the land. Everything was peaceful, it was always spring, and living was easy. But after Zeus and the Olympians defeated the Titans, life got much more complicated. The goddess had to work a lot harder to maintain peace. Eventually, things got so

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00:02:15

Looking Up

StarDate ·

2024/04/21

If you look straight up as the sky gets dark this evening, you won’t see much of anything. The region that’s high overhead is populated by some especially faint stars and constellations. But there’s a ring of brighter stars around it. The point directly overhead is called the zenith. And most of the time, unless you’re lying on a blanket and just watching the stars, you’re not likely to pay it much attention. It’s just too uncomfortable to tilt your head back that much. Instead, most of us look at

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00:02:15

Kochab

StarDate ·

2024/04/20

The Little Dipper is famous for the star at the tip of its handle: Polaris, the North Star. Earth’s axis points in that direction, so all the other stars in the night sky appear to circle around it. The second-brightest star in the dipper is Kochab, at the lip of the bowl. It isn’t nearly as famous as Polaris, but it’s almost as bright. Kochab is a giant — more than 40 times the Sun’s diameter, and almost 400 times its brightness. It’s so big because it’s nearing the end of its life. The nuclear

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00:02:15

Lyrid Meteors

StarDate ·

2024/04/19

The Lyrid meteor shower is building toward its peak, on Sunday night. The Moon will be almost full then, so its glare will wash out all but the brightest of the “shooting stars.”The shower is the offspring of Comet Thatcher 1861. The comet orbits the Sun once every 415 years or so. As Thatcher approaches the Sun, some of the ice at its surface vaporizes. That releases small bits of dirt and rock into space. This debris spreads out along the comet’s path. Earth flies through this path every April

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00:02:15

Galactic ‘Twin?’

StarDate ·

2024/04/18

The Small Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It’s about 200,000 light-years away, it contains hundreds of millions of stars, and it’s easily visible to the eye alone — from the southern hemisphere. And it may actually consist of two separate but related halves — two galaxies for the price of one. Astronomers had suggested that possibility almost four decades ago. And a recent study provided the best evidence yet to support the idea. It found two large star-forming regions that

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00:02:15

Moon and Leo

StarDate ·

2024/04/17

The heart of the lion stays close to the Moon the next couple of nights. The bright star that marks the lion’s heart is Regulus. It’s to the lower left of the Moon at nightfall this evening, and to the upper right of the Moon tomorrow evening. Regulus is impressive. It’s a system of four stars, but only one shines bright enough to see. Known as Regulus A, it’s almost four times the Sun’s mass, and more than 300 times the Sun’s brightness. But the Moon is even closer to another star of Leo that’s

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00:02:15

Jupiter and Uranus

StarDate ·

2024/04/16

Two giants of the solar system huddle close together in the evening twilight the next few days. The viewing window is short, so you need to time it just right to see them.Jupiter and Uranus are low in the west as twilight fades. Jupiter is easy to pick out — it looks like a brilliant star. Uranus is just above it tonight, by about the width of your finger held at arm’s length. But you need binoculars to pick it out. The planets will slide past each other on Sunday night. Uranus is the Sun’s

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00:02:11

Arcturus

StarDate ·

2024/04/15

The star Arcturus is a little bit heavier than our own star, the Sun. Yet that small difference has a big effect on the star’s evolution: Arcturus entered a late stage billions of years earlier than the Sun will. Arcturus is one of the brighter stars in the night sky, and shines yellow-orange. Both of those traits are a result of its stage in life, which was triggered by its mass. Mass is the key to how quickly a star consumes the hydrogen in its core. The gravity of a heavier star squeezes its core

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00:02:11

Moon and Gemini

StarDate ·

2024/04/14

The Moon creeps up on the twin stars of Gemini this evening. As night falls, Pollux and Castor are above the Moon. Pollux is on the left, and is a bit brighter than its “twin.”There’s a lot more to Gemini than just the twins — or even the other stars that are visible to the unaided eye. In fact, one of its most intriguing objects produces most of its energy in the form of X-rays and gamma rays, which are far beyond the range of the human eye. The object is known as Geminga — short for “Gemini

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00:02:11

Vanishing Hunter

StarDate ·

2024/04/13

This time of year is pretty inviting for some evening skywatching. The evening hours are warm but not usually too hot, and spring storm activity generally hasn’t reached its peak — pleasant conditions for watching the stars.Unfortunately, one of the most beautiful star patterns is dropping from view, so there aren’t many more weeks to enjoy it. Orion the hunter is low in the west as night falls. Its three-star belt stands almost parallel to the horizon. And its two brightest stars bracket the

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00:02:11

Vaporized Planets

StarDate ·

2024/04/12

Planetary systems can be violent. In our own solar system, for example, the Moon probably was born from the debris left over when a planet as big as Mars rammed into Earth billions of years ago. And the giant planet Uranus probably was knocked over on its side by a similar collision about the same time. A more recent example comes from ASASSN-21qj — a star system that’s about 1800 light-years away, in the constellation Puppis. In December of 2021, astronomers noticed that a Sun-like star there

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