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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

00:02:20

Stellar Feedback

StarDate ·

2026/01/07

Stars are born when giant clouds of gas and dust break apart and collapse. And if that’s all there was to it, the Milky Way Galaxy would give birth to a couple of hundred stars every year. Instead, thanks to feedback from the stars themselves, it makes only a few.Feedback is a process that clears away the material for making stars, but can also trigger the birth of more stars. Young stars, for example, produce winds and jets that blow away the gas and dust around them. Since stars are born in

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00:02:20

Switching Sides

StarDate ·

2026/01/06

The planet Venus is switching sides today – sides of the Sun. It’s crossing behind the Sun as seen from Earth, so it’s moving from the morning sky to the evening sky. But we won’t be able to see it for several weeks.Venus is the second planet from the Sun, while Earth is third. So Venus crosses both behind the Sun and between Earth and the Sun. It switches between Morning Star and Evening Star appearances each time. Each of these crossings happens every 584 days –

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00:02:20

Moon and Regulus

StarDate ·

2026/01/05

The gibbous Moon soars across the sky tonight. It’s about three days past full, so the Sun lights up about 90 percent of the lunar hemisphere that faces our way. That makes the Moon nice and bright. But it’s not as bright as you might expect. In fact, it’s only about half as bright as the full Moon. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is our viewing angle. The full Moon stands opposite the Sun in our sky, so the sunlight that strikes it is reflected straight back toward

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00:02:20

Vampire Star

StarDate ·

2026/01/04

There’s no fountain of youth to make people look younger. But there is one for stars. It’s a process that sounds like something from a horror movie – “stealing” life from another star. A good example is in Fornax, the furnace, which is low in the south at nightfall. The constellation has only one moderately bright star, Alpha Fornacis. It’s 46 light-years away. To the eye alone, it’s not much to look at. But binoculars reveal two stars. One of them is bigger

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00:02:20

Moon and Companions

StarDate ·

2026/01/03

The Moon sometimes rumbles during “moonquakes.” And according to a recent study in China, those quakes may happen fairly often.The first moonquakes were recorded by instruments left on the lunar surface by Apollo astronauts. Some of the quakes are deep – they’re centered hundreds of miles below the surface. They’re triggered by the tides – the gravitational pull of Earth squeezes and stretches the interior, causing things to clatter about. The other main

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00:02:20

Wolf Moon

StarDate ·

2026/01/02

Nothing symbolizes a cold, moonlit night like the howl of a wolf. The haunting sound can travel for miles. And if you live around wolf territory, you might especially notice it tonight. There’s a full Moon – the Frost Moon, Moon After Yule, or Wolf Moon. Despite what you might think, though, the wolves aren’t actually howling at the Moon. Many cultures have associated wolves and the Moon – ancient Moon goddesses often were depicted hanging with wolves. And biologists say that

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00:02:20

Planetary Discovery

StarDate ·

2026/01/01

At the dawn of the 19th century, the celestial police were on patrol. They were looking for a planet between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. And on the century’s first day, a future squad member found one – sort of. Later discoveries showed that it wasn’t a planet at all, but the first and largest member of the asteroid belt – a wide band of millions of rocky bodies. Astronomers were looking for a planet because of the numbers. There seemed to be a mathematical relationship

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00:02:14

Early New Year

StarDate ·

2025/12/31

By the time the ball drops in Times Square tonight, the people of the Line Islands will be almost a full day into 2026. The islands are in the Pacific Ocean, south of Hawaii. But they’re just across the International Date Line. That makes the islands the first place to see the new year.The Date Line is needed because the time gets an hour earlier for every time zone west, and an hour later for every time zone east. Without a place to reset the date, time just wouldn’t make sense. The

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00:02:14

More Sirius

StarDate ·

2025/12/30

The Sun and similar stars are losing weight – they blow some of their gas into space through strong “winds.” And at the end, they blow away all of their outer layers of gas. That leaves only their hot, dense cores, known as white dwarfs – tiny remnants of their once brilliant selves.An example is Sirius B, the faint companion of Sirius A, the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius climbs into view in the east-southeast by around 8:30 or 9, and arcs across the south during

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00:02:14

Sirius

StarDate ·

2025/12/29

Over the centuries, we’ve given all the visible stars many names – proper names, catalog designations, and others. But only one star is best known not by any of its formal names, but by its nickname: the Dog Star. Its proper name is Sirius, and it’s the leading light of the constellation Canis Major, the big dog – hence the nickname. Sirius is so well known because it’s the brightest star in the night sky – its closest competition is only about half as bright

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00:02:14

Menkalinan

StarDate ·

2025/12/28

The most important thing to know about a star is its mass – how heavy it is. Among other things, the mass reveals how long the star will live and how it will die. Measuring the mass of a single star is tough. It’s a lot easier to get the masses of stars in binary systems – two stars that orbit each other. An example is Menkalinan, the second-brightest star of Auriga. It’s a third of the way up the northeastern sky at nightfall, below the charioteer’s brightest star,

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00:02:14

Orion’s Shield

StarDate ·

2025/12/27

Orion is climbing into prominence in winter’s evening sky. The hunter clears the eastern horizon by about an hour and a half after sunset. He’s led by his shield. It’s not as easy to see as his belt or other features. But the shield’s brightest star does stand out.Pi-3 Orion is in the middle of the shield – where Orion’s hand is holding it. The star is a little bigger, heavier, and hotter than the Sun. That makes it about three times brighter than the Sun. There

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00:02:14

Moon and Saturn

StarDate ·

2025/12/26

Not many planetary spacecraft get to shower off. But the Cassini spacecraft did – more than once. It flew through plumes of ice and water vapor from Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. The encounters helped scientists confirm that an ocean hides below the moon’s icy crust. Enceladus is a little more than 300 miles in diameter – roughly the distance from Los Angeles to San Diego. Its surface is completely coated with ice. That makes it the most reflective large body in the solar system, so

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00:02:14

Christmas Sky

StarDate ·

2025/12/25

A look at the evening sky is a nice way to wrap up your Christmas. It features the Moon, two bright planets, and some of the brighter stars in all the night sky. As twilight drains from the sky, the Moon is well up in the southwest. The Sun lights up more than a quarter of the lunar hemisphere that faces our way, so it’s a fat crescent. It’s waxing toward first quarter, on Saturday. The planet Saturn is to the upper left of the Moon, and looks like a bright star. It shines so brightly

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00:02:14

Alpha Cam

StarDate ·

2025/12/24

For a star, showiness comes with a price. The most massive stars are far brighter than their punier cousins. But they live much shorter lives.An example is Alpha Camelopardalis. It’s the third-brightest star of Camelopardalis, the giraffe. It’s dimmed by its great distance – about 5500 light-years – so you need a dark sky to see it. Even so, it’s one of the most remote stars visible to the eye alone. The star is impressive. It’s more than 30 times the diameter of

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00:02:14

Camelopardalis

StarDate ·

2025/12/23

If you’d like to know how dark your night sky is, then look high in the northeast after the Moon sets this evening for the stars of Camelopardalis, the giraffe. If you can see any of them, then congratulations – your sky is pretty dark.Light pollution wipes out the view for most Americans. The glare of street lights, billboards, and other artificial sources overpowers the stars. None of the stars of Camelopardalis, for example, is brighter than fourth magnitude, which is pretty faint

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00:02:14

Moon Bound?

StarDate ·

2025/12/22

Space agencies are talking a lot these days about sending people to the Moon – and even setting up permanent bases there. But you might not want to be on the Moon seven years from today. A space rock that’s half the size of an NBA arena has a slight chance of slamming into the Moon. Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered last year, two days after Christmas, when the asteroid had flown just half a million miles from Earth. Early observations gave it more than a three percent chance of hitting

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00:02:14

Southern Solstice

StarDate ·

2025/12/21

Today is the December solstice – the start of winter in the northern hemisphere. It’s the darkest time of the year – many hours of darkness for watching the stars. But it’s also a great time for space science in Antarctica, where it’s daylight around the clock. NASA launches high-altitude balloons from a base near McMurdo Station, the continent’s largest settlement. Their payloads can keep an eye on the heavens for weeks as they circle around the south pole. When

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00:02:15

Winter Solstice

StarDate ·

2025/12/20

If you don’t like winter but you live in the northern hemisphere, then give a little thanks to the laws of orbital mechanics. Because of Earth’s lopsided path around the Sun, winter is the shortest season north of the equator. Earth’s orbit around the Sun isn’t a perfect circle. Instead, it’s an ellipse. It looks like a flattened circle, with the Sun slightly away from the center. Because of that shape, our distance to the Sun changes. And that’s where the laws of

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00:02:15

Capella

StarDate ·

2025/12/19

The “she-goat” is a lot more than it seems. What looks like a single brilliant star is actually two sparklers. Both of them are much bigger, heavier, and brighter than the Sun. Capella is the brightest star of Auriga, the charioteer. Its name comes from a Latin phrase that means the she-goat. It’s 43 light-years away – just down the block by astronomical standards. Both stars of Capella are about two and a half times as massive as the Sun. And both are more than 70 times

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