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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

Alderamin

StarDate ·

2025/06/16

If you sit on a big beachball, it gets mashed down. That makes it a little wider through the middle, and a little narrower from top to bottom. And that makes it look a lot like Alderamin, the brightest star of the constellation Cepheus the king. The star is about a third wider through the equator than through the poles. That’s not because some cosmic giant is sitting on it. Instead, it’s because the star spins like crazy. Alderamin is about 50 light-years away, so it’s a fairly

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00:02:19

Moon and Sea Goat

StarDate ·

2025/06/15

Capricornus may be the most inventive constellation of the zodiac. For one thing, all of its stars are faint, so it takes some work to see any kind of pattern there. And for another, it represents the oddest creature in the heavens: a sea-goat – the front half of a goat plus the tail of a fish.It’s easy to find the sea-goat’s location early tomorrow, because the Moon passes quite close to its brightest star. Unfortunately, the Moon will overpower most of the nearby stars, so you

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00:02:19

Messier 81

StarDate ·

2025/06/14

A perfect spiral galaxy would include a bright, round “bulge” of stars in the middle; glittering spiral arms wrapping around it; dark lanes of dust lacing through the arms; and bright star clusters sprinkled about like lights on a Christmas wreath. In other words, it would look just like Messier 81, one of the best examples of a “grand design” spiral galaxy. It’s about 12 million light-years away, and appears close to the bowl of the Big Dipper. It’s a bit smaller

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00:02:19

The Great Serpent

StarDate ·

2025/06/13

The stars look like they’re stuck in position – like fairy lights thumbtacked to a giant black canvas overhead. And over the course of a human lifetime – or many lifetimes – that’s true – there’s no way to see any motion without the help of sensitive instruments. But that’s only because the stars are so far away. Every one of those little lights is moving – fast. They’re all orbiting the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, for example. And

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00:02:19

Mars and Regulus

StarDate ·

2025/06/12

Two fairly bright lights are headed for an especially close meet-up: the planet Mars and the star Regulus, the heart of the lion. They’re a few degrees apart tonight, but they’ll draw even closer over the coming evenings. Right now, Mars and Regulus are almost the same brightness. One way to tell them apart is their color – Mars looks pale orange, while Regulus is white with a hint of blue. Binoculars accentuate the colors. Another way to tell them apart is to look for them to

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00:02:19

Twilight

StarDate ·

2025/06/11

Anchorage, Alaska, isn’t quite the “land of the midnight Sun.” Tonight, there are about five hours between sunset and sunrise. But it is a land of midnight sunlight, because twilight never completely fades. Twilight is the transition between day and night. Earth’s atmosphere scatters sunlight from the dayside to the fringes of the nightside. But when, exactly, does twilight end? When is the sky really dark? As you might expect, astronomers have their own

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00:02:19

Short-Night Moon

StarDate ·

2025/06/10

Cold hands, warm heart. Still waters run deep. Feed a cold, starve a fever. The list of pithy old sayings goes on and on. But here’s a new one for you: long Sun, short Moon. It means that the full Moon does the opposite of what the Sun does. So when the Sun is in the sky for a long time, the full Moon makes itself scarce. And that’s the case tonight. The full Moon of June has many names, including Flower, Strawberry, and Honey Moon. But it’s also known as the Short-Night Moon

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00:02:19

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2025/06/09

On average, Antares is the fifteenth-brightest star in the night sky. It looks like an orange-red gem at the heart of the scorpion. Tonight, though, it looks a little feeble. It hasn’t gotten any fainter. Instead, it stands especially close to the almost-full Moon. It looks a little washed out in the powerful moonlight. Antares really is one of the more impressive stars in the galaxy. It’s probably 12 to 15 times the Sun’s mass, hundreds of times the Sun’s diameter, and tens

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00:02:19

Divided Rings

StarDate ·

2025/06/08

The rings of Saturn are among the most beautiful features in the solar system. They’re wide enough to span the distance between Earth and the Moon. And they’re made of bits of ice and dust – like tiny “moonlets” orbiting the giant planet. The first person to propose that idea was Giovanni Cassini, who was born 400 years ago today. He worked in several fields, from astrology to engineering. But Cassini’s greatest love was astronomy. He became director of the Paris

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00:02:19

Giovanni Cassini

StarDate ·

2025/06/07

The world has known many great astronomers, but only a few great astronomy dynasties. One of those celebrates an anniversary tomorrow – the birth of its patriarch 400 years ago.Giovanni Cassini was born in a small Italian village just across the border from Nice, France. Cassini the first, as he’s often called, was the first of four generations of Cassini astronomers. And he definitely was the most productive. He’s best known for his discovery of a gap in the rings of Saturn

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00:02:19

Close Visitors

StarDate ·

2025/06/06

There was a lot of talk earlier this year about an asteroid with the highest odds of hitting Earth ever calculated. The chances of an impact by asteroid 2024 YR4 in December of 2032 peaked at about three percent. The asteroid is big enough to cause major damage if it hit. As astronomers tracked it a little longer, though, they realized that’s not going to happen – the asteroid will miss by at least 60,000 miles. Such close calls aren’t rare. Hundreds of asteroids pass within a few

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00:02:19

Ancient Scar

StarDate ·

2025/06/05

The Pilbara region of Western Australia is big, dry, and wide open. And it may contain the oldest cosmic “scar” on Earth: an impact crater gouged three and a half billion years ago. Scientists discovered evidence of the crater during a brief expedition in 2021. They found some rock formations called shatter cones. Some of the cones are as tall as a house. The only known way to make them is in giant collisions with space rocks. Follow-up work last year revealed many more of these

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00:02:19

Vera Rubin Observatory

StarDate ·

2025/06/04

You can’t tell just by looking, but the universe undergoes constant change. Stars explode. Quasars flare up. Asteroids zip past Earth. And soon, astronomers will be able to generate super-high-definition movies of those changes almost every night of the year. That’s because a new telescope dedicated to “time-domain” astronomy is about ready to take its first looks at the heavens. The telescope is the centerpiece of the Vera Rubin Observatory. It’s named for an

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00:02:19

Gemini IV

StarDate ·

2025/06/03

Before astronauts could land and walk on the Moon, NASA had to be sure they could do three things: live in space for days at a time, catch and link up with other spacecraft, and work outside their ship. And it took stabs at two of those goals 60 years ago today, with a mission called Gemini 4. [AUDIO: 3, 2, 1, Ignition … Liftoff …] Astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White were scheduled to spend four days in space. That was longer than the first seven American missions combined. And

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00:02:19

Morning Venus

StarDate ·

2025/06/02

If you step outside at dawn on June third of 2033, you’ll see the planet Venus standing due east – the brilliant “morning star.” But if you don’t want to wait that long to experience that beautiful view, then take a look at dawn tomorrow – Venus will be standing in the same spot in the sky. Not only that, it stands at that spot in the sky every eight years. In fact, anytime you see Venus – whether as the morning star or evening star – you can find it

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00:02:19

Moon and Regulus

StarDate ·

2025/06/01

The Moon has regular dates with the stars. It returns to the same position relative to the stars every 27 days and eight hours. As an example, the Moon cozied up to Regulus, the bright heart of the lion, on May 5th, and it does so again this evening – 27 days, eight hours later. This encounter is especially close as seen from the United States – the Moon and Regulus will appear to almost touch each other. That time span is known as the lunar sidereal period – “sidereal”

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00:02:19

Moon and Mars

StarDate ·

2025/05/31

To the more poetic among us, summer is a time of soft breezes, warm nights, and fireflies: The livin’ is easy, the breeze makes us feel fine, the warm Sun shines kindly upon us.But there’s less poetry in the summers on Mars – especially in the northern hemisphere, where summer began on Thursday. It stays cold, and the only fireflies are occasional meteors blazing through the night. Like the seasons on Earth, those on Mars are caused by the planet’s tilt on its axis. Northern

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00:02:19

Lost Moon

StarDate ·

2025/05/30

The United States plans to send astronauts to the Moon later in this decade, aiming toward a permanent lunar base. But experience shows that plans come and go. In fact, if all the plans for lunar exploration had actually come about, we’d be skittering all across the Moon today. In 1958, for example, the Air Force developed Project LUMAN, a comprehensive plan for human spaceflight. It would culminate with a single astronaut landing on the Moon. Later, the service developed another plan –

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00:02:19

Messier 13

StarDate ·

2025/05/29

Globular clusters are the oldest members of the galaxy. They’re tight balls of hundreds of thousands of stars, most of which were born when the universe was no more than a couple of billion years old. Their most-massive stars have long since died. And most of the stars that remain are cool and faint. So a globular tends to be fairly quiet and calm. But that doesn’t mean that things don’t change. Consider Messier 13. It’s in Hercules, which is high in the east at nightfall

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00:02:19

Moon and Jupiter

StarDate ·

2025/05/28

Three of the four big moons of Jupiter appear to have something in common: oceans of liquid water below their crusts. For Europa, the ocean is considered a slam dunk. The case is also strong for Ganymede. But the case for the third moon, Callisto, is the weakest. Callisto is about 3,000 miles in diameter – bigger than our own moon. And it’s more heavily cratered than any other large body in the solar system. That indicates that the surface of Callisto is pretty much dead. But things

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