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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

Six in Sync

StarDate ·

2024/03/06

A nearby star has one of the largest families of planets yet seen — an even half-dozen. Only two other known exoplanet families are bigger. But this system is different from the others. All of the planets march in time — their orbits are in perfect sync. The star is known as HD 110067. It’s about a hundred light-years away, in the constellation Coma Berenices, which is in the east this evening. The star is a bit smaller and cooler than the Sun. But it’s probably several billion years older. And

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00:02:11

Coma Cluster

StarDate ·

2024/03/05

Descriptions of the Coma Cluster of galaxies sound like bad car-dealership commercials. The cluster contains more than a thousand galaxies. They’re bound together by their mutual gravitational pull. The heart of the cluster is about 330 million light-years away. But the cluster may span as much as two hundred million light-years. But wait — that’s not all! There’s a lot more to the cluster than we can see. In 1933, Fritz Zwicky found that galaxies in the cluster are moving fast — too fast for the

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00:02:11

Coma Berenices

StarDate ·

2024/03/04

A sprinkling of faint stars stands in the east a few hours after sunset right now. It’s to the upper right of brilliant Arcturus, the brightest star in that part of the sky. Those ribbons of stars are the main features of Coma Berenices. The constellation represents Queen Berenice II of Egypt. The legend says that when her husband was about to head into battle, she offered her beautiful golden hair to the gods in exchange for his safety. When he returned undamaged, she cut her hair and placed it in

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00:02:11

Star Structure

StarDate ·

2024/03/03

All stars are big balls of glowing gas, powered by nuclear fusion. But stars come in many different sizes, masses, and colors. And they’re put together in different ways. The Sun is in the middle range. It consists of three main layers — the core, the radiation zone, and the convection zone. The core is where a star generates energy. Stars in the prime phase of life “fuse” hydrogen atoms to make helium, releasing energy in the process. In the Sun, the core is surrounded by the radiation zone, where

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00:02:11

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2024/03/02

The night sky plays tricks. Objects that appear close together in the sky can actually be far apart. As an example, look at the Moon and the star Antares before dawn tomorrow. There’s almost no separation between them. In fact, for some parts of the eastern U.S., there won’t be any separation at all — the Moon will cover the star for a while, hiding it from view. That makes it look like the Moon and Antares are close together in space. But that’s not the case. The Moon is our closest astronomical

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00:02:11

Uncertain Stars

StarDate ·

2024/03/01

Many bright stars highlight the sky this evening: Sirius, the brightest of them all; Regulus, the heart of the lion; several sparklers in Orion, and more. Astronomers know a lot about these stars. But most of what they know is a bit uncertain. So when they pin numbers to a star, they give themselves some wiggle room to compensate. Consider Sirius, which is in the south at nightfall. It’s one of the Sun’s closest neighbors, at a distance of about 8.6 light-years. But that could be off by up to a few

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00:02:15

Leap Year

StarDate ·

2024/02/29

The remaining dates of 2024 will take a big leap. They’ll jump over a day of the week. That’s because this is leap year, and today is leap day — extending the year from 365 days to 366. Leap years are needed to keep the calendar in sync with the seasons. Without it, the equinoxes and solstices would slide across the calendar. So after many centuries, the spring equinox would happen in February, with the winter solstice backing into November. And over the ages, the shift would grow even larger. The

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00:02:15

Nebra Sky Disc

StarDate ·

2024/02/28

Depictions of the sky have been found on walls and ceilings that date back thousands of years. Other depictions are encoded in the layouts of monuments and burial sites. The oldest known portable view of the heavens is ancient as well — at least 3600 years old.The Nebra Sky Disc was discovered 25 years ago, in Germany. It was buried with swords, axes, and other artifacts. The combination allowed archaeologists to date the burial of the cache to at least 1600 B.C., and possibly earlier. The disc is

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00:02:15

Canopus

StarDate ·

2024/02/27

When you’re headed toward the Moon or planets, there are no signposts to keep you on the right track. Fortunately, nature provides its own markers: the stars. Spacecraft orient themselves by sighting on the Sun and one or more other stars. In the early days of space exploration, the most popular of those stars was Canopus. Canopus is a good navigational beacon because of a combination of brightness and location. It’s the second-brightest star in the night sky — only Sirius outshines it. And it’s far

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00:02:15

Adaptive Optics

StarDate ·

2024/02/26

Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is in the south at nightfall. If you keep your eye on it for a few seconds, though, you’ll see that Sirius isn’t steady. It twinkles fiercely. It gets brighter and fainter, and it changes color rapidly — from red to blue to pure white. The twinkling is beautiful — unless you’re an astronomer. Twinkling blurs and distorts the view of stars and other objects. That makes pictures of the universe look fuzzy — not good if you’re trying to see the smallest

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00:02:15

Rigel

StarDate ·

2024/02/25

The brightest star of Orion stands due south at nightfall, marking one of the hunter’s feet. Rigel shines blue-white — a dramatic contrast to orange Betelgeuse, Orion’s second-brightest light. Both stars are supergiants — stars that are among the biggest and heaviest in the galaxy. Rigel, for example, is up to a couple of dozen times the mass of the Sun, and perhaps 70 times the Sun’s diameter. But the different colors tell us that the surface temperatures of Rigel and Betelgeuse are quite

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00:02:15

First ‘Spacecraft’

StarDate ·

2024/02/24

Since the dawn of the Space Age, in 1957, the United States and other countries have sent tens of thousands of objects into space — some into orbit, and others far beyond. Yet the first object known to have reached space did so well before the Space Age — 75 years ago today. It didn’t go into orbit, but it did reach 244 miles — well above the altitude needed to reach “outer space.” The flight was conducted by the U.S. Army, at White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. At the end of World War II,

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00:02:15

Moon and Regulus

StarDate ·

2024/02/23

The United States and China plan to build permanent bases on the Moon. For the people who inhabit those bases, daily life will be quite different from life on Earth. For starters, the Moon’s gravity is only one-sixth as strong as Earth’s. So just walking will take some getting used to — a big step inside the base could result in a bump on the head. There’s no air on the Moon. Without it, there’s an extreme range in temperature. At the equator, it can range from about 250 degrees Fahrenheit at noon,

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00:02:15

Asteroids

StarDate ·

2024/02/22

By far the most numerous objects in the solar system are asteroids — chunks of rock, metal, and ice. Scientists have discovered more than 1.3 million of them. They range from a few feet across to a few hundred miles. Most of them reside in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Until a few decades ago, the number of known asteroids was just a few thousand. But some asteroids can come close to Earth, possibly endangering our planet. So scientists launched big searches to find as

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00:02:15

Vermin of the Skies

StarDate ·

2024/02/21

Attitudes can change. That’s as true in science as in anything else. Today, asteroids are considered some of the most interesting objects in the solar system. But that wasn’t always the case. They went from eagerly sought, to absolutely despised. In fact, one astronomer called them the “vermin of the skies.” Asteroids are chunks of rock, metal, and ice. Most of them reside in a wide belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers first began looking for something in that region in the early

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00:02:15

Moon and Pollux

StarDate ·

2024/02/20

Pollux, the brighter of the “twin” stars of Gemini, is a giant. It’s expanded to about nine times the diameter of the Sun — a beach ball to the Sun’s golf ball. That’s made Pollux much cooler than the Sun, so it looks orange. And it’s more than 30 times brighter than the Sun. Careful measurements of its diameter, combined with measurements of subtle “ripples” across its surface, have yielded the mass of Pollux as well: 1.9 times the Sun’s mass. Astronomers have combined that with measurements of its

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00:02:15

Venus and Mars

StarDate ·

2024/02/19

The planets that flank Earth huddle close together in the dawn sky over the next few days. Venus and Mars are quite low in the east-southeast during the waxing twilight, so you need a clear horizon to spot them. And binoculars wouldn’t hurt. Venus is the second planet out from the Sun, Earth is third, and Mars is fourth. Their orbits are separated by tens of millions of miles. Yet all three worlds are inside the Sun’s “habitable zone.” That’s the distance from the Sun where the temperature is just

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