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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

00:02:11

Vaporizing Planet

StarDate ·

2024/04/11

Planets like Earth live in the “Goldilocks zone” — the region around a star where conditions are most comfortable for life. But most planets aren’t so cushy. They’re either far away and cold, or close in and hot. And some are so close that they’re being vaporized by their star. One example is WASP-69 b. It orbits a cool, faint star about 160 light-years from Earth. The system is in the constellation Aquarius, which is in the southeastern sky at dawn tomorrow. WASP-69 b is only a few million miles

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00:02:11

Seeing Giants

StarDate ·

2024/04/10

If you heat up some alphabet soup, you shouldn’t end up with all the letters clumped together — they should be fairly evenly spread throughout the pot. According to the current understanding of the universe, the same thing should apply to galaxies. They may clump together on smaller scales, forming clusters and even super-clusters. But when you look at the universe as a whole, the galaxies ought to be evenly spread. Yet astronomers have found giant galaxy structures that seem to defy that idea —

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00:02:11

Moon and Planets

StarDate ·

2024/04/09

Europa is one of the more intriguing bodies in the solar system — and one that scientists are especially eager to land a spacecraft on. The big moon of Jupiter may have a global ocean below its icy crust — an ocean that could host life. But landing on Europa won’t be easy. It’s hundreds of millions of miles away, and it’s embedded in Jupiter’s powerful radiation belts. And the surface near its equator could be mottled by fields of icy spikes that are up to five stories high. Such structures are

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00:02:11

Future Eclipses

StarDate ·

2024/04/08

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big event this afternoon — a total eclipse of the Sun. Totality is visible along a narrow path from Texas to Maine. The parts of the country outside that path will see a partial eclipse. If you miss it — well, let’s just say it’ll be a long wait until the next great eclipse over the United States. The next total eclipse visible anywhere will take place on August 12th, 2026. Its path will cross parts of Europe, but most of it will cross the high Arctic. The

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00:02:14

Total Eclipse

StarDate ·

2024/04/07

It’s almost time for the year’s big celestial event: a total eclipse of the Sun. Tomorrow afternoon, the Moon will pass directly between Earth and the Sun. That will block the Sun’s disk. The sky will grow dark, with a pink glow around the horizon. Stars and planets will pop into view. And the Sun’s faint outer atmosphere, the corona, will look like silvery ribbons around the Moon. Totality will be visible along a narrow path. In the United States, it’ll stretch from Eagle Pass, Texas, to Houlton,

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00:02:14

Eclipse Flights

StarDate ·

2024/04/06

In the mythology of ancient Egypt, Apep was the serpent god — the rival of Re, the sun god. He chased Re, and sometimes briefly caught him — creating a solar eclipse.NASA plans to launch an experiment named for the serpent god to study the eclipse on Monday. Instruments will fly on three different rockets. They won’t look at the Sun, though. Instead, they’ll study the effect of the eclipse on the ionosphere — a high-altitude layer of Earth’s atmosphere. The ionosphere carries an electric charge

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00:02:14

Eclipse Animals

StarDate ·

2024/04/05

Colonial orb-weaver spiders may have some extra work to do on Monday, during a total solar eclipse. During an eclipse in 1991, scientists watched as spiders in Mexico began tearing down their webs as the sky darkened — something they do every evening. When the Sun returned, most of them rebuilt their webs, just as they do every morning. That’s just one example of how life reacts to eclipses. Like the spiders, many daytime animals start their evening rituals. And many nighttime animals wake up when

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00:02:14

Eclipse Legends

StarDate ·

2024/04/04

A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes in front of the Sun, briefly blocking it from view. Before people understood the science, however, they created legends to explain the Sun’s disappearance. Many of those legends involved animals or mythical monsters. In China and elsewhere, it was thought the Sun was being devoured by a dragon. People in Vietnam blamed a hungry frog. In Scandinavia, it was a giant wolf set loose by the god Loki. In India, it was the severed head of a monster. Still

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00:02:14

Eclipse Forecasts

StarDate ·

2024/04/03

The Great North American Eclipse is coming up on Monday. The Moon will briefly cover the Sun. That will turn day to night along a narrow path across Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The timing of the eclipse is known down to the second, and has been for decades. And today, astronomers can predict eclipses far into the future. But making such predictions isn’t easy. It requires a detailed knowledge of the Moon’s orbit around Earth, Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and even the shapes of Earth and

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00:02:14

Corona

StarDate ·

2024/04/02

On Monday, millions of people will see something they’ve never seen before: the Sun’s corona — its hot outer atmosphere. It extends hundreds of thousands of miles from the surface of the Sun. But it’s so faint that it’s overpowered by the Sun’s brilliant disk. The only time we can see it is during a total solar eclipse. The corona is made of super-heated gas known as plasma. In fact, the corona is heated to a couple of million degrees Fahrenheit, and sometimes hotter. By comparison, the Sun’s

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00:02:14

Solar Eclipse

StarDate ·

2024/04/01

Many people dread Mondays and the start of the new work week. But there’s something to look forward to next Monday: the Great North American Eclipse. The Moon will completely cover the Sun, turning the sky dark. Tendrils of light will extend away from the Moon — the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere, the corona. If you can find a way to get to the eclipse path, it’s worth the effort. For this eclipse, the Moon is a little closer to Earth than average. So the period of totality, when the Sun is fully

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00:02:14

The Cup

StarDate ·

2024/03/31

In Greek mythology, you didn’t have to actually do anything to incur the wrath of the gods. One example is the constellation Crater, the cup, which is in the southeast at nightfall. The story says the god Apollo sent a crow to fetch a cup of water. The crow devoured figs instead, then blamed his delay on a snake. Apollo hurled all three of them into the sky, including the cup — the constellation Crater. It isn’t much to look at. You need fairly dark skies to see even its brightest stars. But that

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00:02:14

The Crow

StarDate ·

2024/03/30

The stories behind the constellations don’t always match the pictures we see in the sky. Consider Corvus, which rises in the southeast in mid-evening. In Greek mythology, it represented a naughty crow. The god Apollo sent the crow to fetch a cup of water. Instead, Corvus spent days gorging on fresh figs. He then grabbed a water snake and told Apollo that it had kept him from completing his task. Apollo knew the crow was lying, so he flung Corvus, the cup, and the snake into the sky.To modern eyes,

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00:02:14

Mars Simulations

StarDate ·

2024/03/29

No one knows for sure what living on Mars might be like. The planet is bitterly cold and almost completely dry. The atmosphere is less than one percent as thick as Earth’s. And Mars is a long, long way from home. So scientists and engineers are trying to figure it all out by creating Mars-like conditions here on Earth. So far, they’ve built habitats in labs, on a volcano in Hawaii, on an island in the Arctic, and even under the sea. Astronauts and others spend weeks or months inside those

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00:02:14

Mars on Earth

StarDate ·

2024/03/28

A couple of dozen missions have studied Mars. And they’ve told us a lot about the history of the Red Planet. We know that it was much warmer and wetter in the distant past. And there might have been pockets of warm and wet conditions much more recently. Those conditions could have supported microscopic life. Future missions may target some of those locations. To know which sites might be most promising, scientists are looking at Mars-like locations here on Earth. They’re studying spots that are cold

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00:02:14

Struggling Mars

StarDate ·

2024/03/27

Mars is working hard to climb into view in the dawn sky. But for much of the country, it’s not quite there yet. It’s low in the east-southeast as twilight brightens the sky. It looks like a moderately bright star. Mars is fairly easy to spot from the southern latitudes of the U.S., but harder to see as you go farther north. In fact, it’s almost impossible to see from places like Minneapolis or Seattle. The planet is struggling because of the time of year. Mars passed behind the Sun in November,

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00:02:14

Soggy Observatories

StarDate ·

2024/03/26

Most astronomical observatories are up high. That gives them a clearer view of the heavens. But some go deep. They’re submerged in the oceans, or buried deep in the ice at the south pole. They use the water, ice, and the solid Earth to screen out most energy and particles. That occasionally allows them to catch a neutrino — a “ghostly” particle that’s raced far across the universe. Huge numbers of neutrinos are produced by the Sun and other stars. The most powerful appear to come from some of the

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00:02:14

Moon and Spica

StarDate ·

2024/03/25

The Moon passes by the star Spica the next couple of nights. The brightest star of Virgo is below the Moon as they climb into good view this evening, but closer above the Moon tomorrow night. One prominent lunar feature is the Sea of Crises. It’s a dark round patch near the top of the lunar disk as the Moon climbs up the sky. It’s the target site for a robotic lander scheduled for launch later this year. Known as Ghost 1, the lander will carry a suite of experiments. Some of them will study the

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00:02:20

Penumbral Eclipse

StarDate ·

2024/03/24

Anyone standing on the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon tonight would see a partial solar eclipse, with Earth covering part of the Sun’s disk. From here on Earth, however, all we’ll see is a penumbral lunar eclipse. The eclipse is so faint that few will notice a difference — the full Moon will have only a slight shading. A penumbral eclipse occurs when the alignment of the Sun, Earth, and Moon isn’t perfect. The Moon catches only the outer part of Earth’s shadow, the penumbra, which isn’t very

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00:02:20

Moon and Denebola

StarDate ·

2024/03/23

The star that marks the tip of the lion’s tail appears to be a loner. It doesn’t have a companion star. And so far, it doesn’t appear to have any planets, either. But it does have the raw materials for making planets. And one or more worlds could have taken shape from those building blocks.Denebola is the second-brightest star of Leo, the lion. It’s to the upper left of the almost-full Moon this evening, by about the width of your fist held at arm’s length. Denebola is 36 light-years away — just

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