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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

00:02:15

Moon and Antares

StarDate ·

2025/09/27

Earth has only one moon – one large natural satellite. But it might travel with an entourage of Moon chips – bits of the Moon blasted into space by impacts with asteroids. Some of the chips may share Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Others become “quasi”-moons. They weave around the Sun in a way that looks like they’re orbiting Earth.Astronomers have catalogued a dozen or more quasi-moons in recent years. The smallest is the size of a house. The largest is about

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00:02:15

Avoiding a Collision

StarDate ·

2025/09/26

The closest giant galaxy to the Milky Way is Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy. It’s two-and-a-half million light-years away. But it’s getting closer – by about 250,000 miles every hour. For more than a decade, in fact, it’s looked like the two galaxies were on a collision course. But a recent study says there’s only a 50-50 chance of a collision and merger. And if it does happen, it’ll take place billions of years later than previous estimates. The new study used

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00:02:15

Galactic Empire

StarDate ·

2025/09/25

Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is the largest and most-distant object that’s easily visible to the unaided eye. Under dark skies, it looks like a skinny cloud about as wide as the Moon. Right now, it’s about a third of the way up in the northeast at nightfall. M31 is two-and-a-half million light-years away. In other words, the light you see from the galaxy tonight began its journey across the cosmos two-and-a-half million years ago. The galaxy is roughly 150,000 light-years across

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00:02:15

Geoffrey Burbidge

StarDate ·

2025/09/24

People become astronomers for many reasons: They’re interested in the workings of the stars, or the quest to find life in the universe, or the fate of the universe itself. Geoffrey Burbidge joked that he became an astronomer because he married one. He and his wife, Margaret, were astronomy’s power couple.And they co-authored one of the most important studies of the 20th century. Burbidge was born 100 years ago today, in the English village of Chipping Norton. He first studied history,

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00:02:15

Neptune at Opposition

StarDate ·

2025/09/23

Neptune is one of the giants of the solar system. But it’s so far away that it’s tough to study. We know little about its interior. And much of what scientists think they know comes from lab experiments and computer models.Neptune is the Sun’s most remote major planet. So although it’s almost four times Earth’s diameter, it’s a tiny target for telescopes. And only one spacecraft has ever visited the planet – Voyager 2, in 1989. From those observations,

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00:02:15

Falling into Autumn

StarDate ·

2025/09/22

Earth “falls” into a new season today – astronomically speaking. It’s the September equinox, when the Sun crosses the equator from north to south. It marks the start of autumn in the northern hemisphere, and spring in the southern hemisphere. On the equinoxes, neither the north pole nor the south pole tips toward the Sun, so night and day are roughly the same length in both hemispheres – about 12 hours between sunrise and sunset. We say “roughly” because

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00:02:15

More Saturn at Opposition

StarDate ·

2025/09/21

Officially, Saturn has 274 known moons. Un-officially, it has billions upon billions of them – the bits of ice and rock that make up the planet’s rings. They range from the size of dust grains to giant boulders. All of them orbit the giant planet like tiny moons.The system consists of three main bands, which are easy to see. Together, they span about three-quarters of the distance between Earth and the Moon. But there are some thinner, fainter bands as well. One is closer to Saturn than

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00:02:20

Saturn at Opposition

StarDate ·

2025/09/20

Happy Saturn’s Day – the day of the week named for Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system. And the name is especially fitting today, because the planet is at its best for the entire year. It looks like a bright star, shining all night long. The seven-day week was created in ancient Babylon. The days were named for the seven known “planets.” The list included the Sun, Moon, and the five true planets that are easily visible to the naked eye. The day was split

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00:02:20

Listening to Mars

StarDate ·

2025/09/19

These are the sounds of Mars: a dust devil … a rover trundling across the surface … the steady sigh of the wind. All of these sounds were recorded by the Perseverance rover – the first craft to carry microphones to Mars. Scientists have used the recordings to learn more about how sound carries on Mars. The planet’s atmosphere is less than one percent as thick as Earth’s atmosphere, so it’s much quieter on Mars. It’s especially quiet around noon, when sound

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00:02:20

Moon, Venus, Regulus

StarDate ·

2025/09/18

There’s an extraordinary conjunction in tomorrow’s early morning sky – a tight grouping of the Moon, the planet Venus, and the star Regulus. They’re quite low at first light, so you may need a clear horizon to spot them. Venus is the brilliant “morning star,” just a fraction of a degree from the Moon. Regulus is a bit farther from the Moon. It’s much fainter than Venus, but its proximity to the brighter bodies will make it pretty easy to pick out. This

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00:02:20

New Dwarf?

StarDate ·

2025/09/17

A third of a century ago, we knew of only two solar-system bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune: Pluto and its largest moon. Today, the known population of such bodies is in the thousands. And quite a few of them are in the same class as Pluto itself: dwarf planets. One of the newest members of that class is 2017 OF201. It was discovered in 2017. A recent study found that it may be about a third the size of Pluto. If so, then it most likely would qualify as a dwarf planet. The object follows a highly

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00:02:20

Dwarf Planets

StarDate ·

2025/09/16

The roster of “dwarf planets” keeps growing. But it’s not official – there’s no league office to tell us who’s on the roster and who’s not. Various groups keep their own lists, but they don’t agree on which objects belong. The dwarf-planet category was formalized a couple of decades ago. Astronomers had discovered some new Pluto-like objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. They had to decide whether to add those objects to the roster of planets, or to put

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00:02:20

Moon and Companions

StarDate ·

2025/09/15

A bright star and planet team up with the Moon early tomorrow to form a tight, beautiful triangle. Pollux will stand close to the lower left of the Moon, with much brighter Jupiter about the same distance to the lower right of the Moon. Pollux is the brightest star of Gemini, while Jupiter is a planet. Jupiter is by far the giant of the solar system. It’s more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. And it’s about 11 times the diameter of Earth. That makes it big enough

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00:02:20

Death Spiral

StarDate ·

2025/09/14

A star that may be in a death spiral wants the universe to know about it. Every four and a half days it creates a burst of X-rays. The cause of those outbursts may be leading to the star’s demise. The possibly dying star is in a galaxy that’s about 300 million light-years away. During evening twilight now, that spot is quite low in the west, below the bright star Arcturus. According to a recent study, the story probably involves the star; a black hole, nicknamed Ansky, that’s a

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00:02:20

Moon and Elnath

StarDate ·

2025/09/13

There’s a season for everything, from football to Broadway to allergies. There are seasons in the heavens as well. And the next act in one of those seasons plays out early tomorrow: an occultation by the Moon of the star Elnath – the tip of one of the horns of Taurus. An occultation takes place when one object covers up another. The Moon occults a few fairly bright stars every month. And the occultations occur in seasons. That’s because the Moon’s orbit is tilted with respect

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00:02:20

Nuclear Cluster

StarDate ·

2025/09/12

The Milky Way is packed with star clusters – thousands of them. They contain anywhere from a few dozen stars to more than a million. And the most impressive of them all is right in the middle – it surrounds the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy. The Nuclear Star Cluster contains up to 10 million stars. They extend a couple of dozen light-years from the black hole in every direction. But most of them are packed in close. If our part of the galaxy were that densely

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00:02:14

Venus Flyby

StarDate ·

2025/08/30

A spacecraft that’s on it way to Jupiter is “pinballing” around the solar system, getting an extra “kick” as it zips close to the planets. It’ll get the next kick tomorrow, from Venus.The spacecraft is JUICE – Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. It’s scheduled to arrive at Jupiter in 2031. But it needs help to get there. And it gets that help from the gravity of Venus, Earth, and the Moon. During each encounter, the craft “steals” a bit of

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00:02:14

Seeing Planets

StarDate ·

2025/08/29

Only a few of the thousands of known planets in other star systems have ever been seen. Most exoplanets are discovered through their effects on their parent stars. But a system in Pegasus is a major exception. Astronomers have discovered four planets in the system – and they’ve seen all of them. HR 8799 is about 130 light-years from Earth. The star is bigger, brighter, and heavier than the Sun. And it’s much younger – tens of millions of years, versus four and a half billion

en-US

00:02:14

Vanishing Planet

StarDate ·

2025/08/28

A recently discovered planet is facing its final days. It’s evaporating, leaving a trail of debris that stretches halfway along its orbit. The planet is known by a catalog number – BD +05 4868 Ab. It’s only the fourth evaporating planet ever seen. It orbits the main star in a binary system in Pegasus, which is in the eastern sky at nightfall. The star is smaller and fainter than the Sun, and more than twice the age of the Sun. The planet was discovered by TESS, a planet-hunting

en-US

00:02:14

Moon and Spica

StarDate ·

2025/08/27

The Sun isn’t bothered by much. That’s because it travels through the Milky Way on its own. But most of the stars in the galaxy have at least one companion star. And the interactions between them can have a big impact. Consider Spica, a bright star near the Moon tonight. Although it looks like a single star, it’s really at least two stars. One of them is more than 11 times the mass of the Sun, while the other is about seven times the Sun’s mass. That makes Spica one of the

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