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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

00:02:14

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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00:02:20

Evening Mercury

StarDate ·

2024/03/22

Only two planets in our solar system are moonless: Mercury and Venus, the planets closest to the Sun. But 50 years ago this month, it looked like Mercury might have to drop off the list — but only for a while. The excitement began as Mariner 10 sped toward the planet, in 1974. Mariner was the first spacecraft to visit Mercury. Before then, astronomers were limited to views through telescopes. But Mercury is so close to the Sun that it could be hard to see a moon in a tight orbit around the

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00:02:20

Moon and Regulus

StarDate ·

2024/03/21

It’s been more than half a century since the final Apollo mission left the Moon. But scientists are still learning from it. A few years ago, they started examining samples from Apollo 17 that hadn’t been touched before — a project that’s ongoing. They’re also analyzing observations made by instruments left on the Moon. That work says that lots of little tremors rattle the landing site. Astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmidt set up a quartet of special microphones to “listen” for moonquakes. The

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00:02:20

A Small Search

StarDate ·

2024/03/20

It may be a cliche, but it’s true: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s certainly the case for the scientists hunting for dark matter. They’ve conducted many big experiments over the past few decades. So far, though, they haven’t found a thing. So the hunt is going smaller — looking for extremely light particles known as axions. Astronomers see the effects of dark matter all across the universe. The dark matter itself emits no energy, but its gravity pulls on the visible matter

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00:02:20

March Equinox

StarDate ·

2024/03/19

Spring arrives in the northern hemisphere tonight, at the moment of the March equinox, as the Sun crosses the celestial equator. Day and night are about equal across the entire planet — hence the name “equinox,” which means “equal nights.” The Sun is passing through Pisces, the fishes. In fact, it’s appeared in Pisces at the equinox for a couple of thousand years. Before that, it was in Aries, the ram. The shift is the result of an effect known as precession of the equinoxes. Earth wobbles on its

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00:02:20

Franz Gruithuisen

StarDate ·

2024/03/18

When he was just 14 years old, Franz von Paula Gruithuisen found himself in the middle of the Austro-Turkish War. He wasn’t a prisoner or a refugee. Instead, he was a field surgeon. But just a year later, he was using a small telescope to observe the Moon. Those episodes marked the beginning of a diverse career in science. It featured both important contributions and false starts. Gruithuisen was born 250 years ago tomorrow, in a castle in Bavaria. His father was a servant, so his early education

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00:02:20

Missing Planets

StarDate ·

2024/03/17

The types of planets you have as neighbors may depend on your neighborhood. The planets discovered in our region of the Milky Way Galaxy come in just about every variety: hot Jupiters, super-Earths, mini-Neptunes, lava planets, ocean planets, and others. But that may not be the case for other parts of the galaxy. As an example, there appear to be almost no super-Earths or mini-Neptunes outside the Milky Way’s disk. The disk is about a hundred thousand light-years wide, but only a few thousand

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00:02:15

Moon and El Nath

StarDate ·

2024/03/16

The Moon hangs precariously above a star with a nasty-sounding name tonight: El Nath. The name comes from an Arabic phrase that means “butting” or “goring.” It indicates the star’s position in its constellation — at the tip of one of the horns of Taurus, the bull.The star itself is impressive. It’s about five times the size and mass of the Sun. And it’s much brighter. If you consider just its visible light, El Nath is about 300 times brighter than the Sun. So it looks bright even though it’s more

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00:02:15

Summer Stars

StarDate ·

2024/03/15

If you’re ready for a taste of summer, look no farther than the dawn sky. The constellations in view at first light are just what you’ll see as night falls in July and August. Scorpius is low in the south, with Sagittarius in the southeast. The Big Dipper hangs from its handle in the northwest. And the Summer Triangle — the stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair — stands high in the east. As Earth orbits the Sun, our viewing angle on the stars changes. As a result, each star rises about four minutes earlier

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00:02:15

Moon and Pleiades

StarDate ·

2024/03/14

Two beautiful objects team up this evening: the Moon and the Pleiades. The little star cluster is close above the Moon. Binoculars will help you pick out some of its brighter stars through the moonlight. The Pleiades has more than a thousand stars. They were born from the same cloud of gas and dust. But that doesn’t mean the stars are all alike. They come in many varieties. The brightest of them are much more impressive than the Sun. The brightest of all is Alcyone. It’s about six times the mass of

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00:02:15

Moon and Jupiter

StarDate ·

2024/03/13

Scientists are finding so many moons of the solar system’s giant planets that they can hardly keep up with them. By the end of last year, Saturn was in the lead, with 146 confirmed moons. Jupiter — the biggest planet — came in second, with 95. But some of its moons are the most amazing of all — worlds with giant volcanoes, or hidden oceans that could host microscopic life.Most of the moons of both planets are a lot less interesting. They’re basically big chunks of rock and ice. Some of them could

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00:02:15

Colorful Stars

StarDate ·

2024/03/12

Stars come in a whole spectrum of colors, from icy blue to deep red. But our eyes can see the color in only a few stars — most of them are simply specks of white. That’s because most stars are too faint to show off their palette. The human eye can pick out the colors of only the brightest ones.Our eyes contain two types of light receptors: rods and cones. They’re in the retina, at the back of the eye. There are about a hundred million rods. They’re sensitive to low levels of light, so they allow us

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00:02:15

Planetary Poetry

StarDate ·

2024/03/11

Planetary scientists may see many descriptions this week that are similar to this one:Return to Mimas Blow up the Death Star (moon) and Find hidden oceans. That’s from a presentation about one of Saturn’s moons by Adeene Denton and colleagues at last year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas. It’s become a tradition for scientists to provide a simple description of their work as haiku. The conference has even held a contest for the best one. The winner in 2022 came from Benjamin

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00:02:15

Puppis

StarDate ·

2024/03/10

Sometimes, you can have too much of a good thing. That was the case with a constellation that was created thousands of years ago. It was so big that astronomers eventually split it apart.Argo Navis represented the Argo — the ship that carried Jason and the Argonauts through many adventures. But the constellation was unwieldy. So, in the 1750s, Nicolaus Louis de la Caille divided it into three constellations: Carina, the keel; Vela, the sail; and Puppis, the deck at the stern of the ship. Puppis

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00:02:15

Close Moon

StarDate ·

2024/03/09

The Moon is nowhere in sight the next couple of days. That’s because it’s new — it crosses between Earth and the Sun, so it’s hidden in the Sun’s glare. But coastal residents will definitely feel its presence. That’s because the Moon is closest to Earth for the year. The combination of the lunar phase and the Moon’s distance means that we’ll have some of the highest tides of the year.The tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun. The Moon is closer to us, so its influence is

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00:02:11

Moving Dipper

StarDate ·

2024/03/08

The Big Dipper is on the move. Not just its nightly circle around the North Star. And not even its shifting position from month to month. The stars themselves are moving through the Milky Way Galaxy. And most of them are moving together. The stars of the Big Dipper are in Ursa Major, the great bear. The constellation has given its name to a widely spread group of stars that appear to move together — the Ursa Major Moving Group. It consists of a few dozen stars in all. Its core is in Ursa Major, but

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00:02:11

Solar Soundings

StarDate ·

2024/03/07

The Sun is building toward the peak of its magnetic cycle, probably sometime this year. That’s when it produces more sunspots, flares, and giant clouds of charged particles. All of those can have an effect on our technology — knocking out satellites and power grids, disrupting radio transmissions, and more. So scientists pay close attention during these active times. In fact, they’re planning to launch half a dozen small rockets over the next month. Three of them will look at a flare, while the

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