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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

Cosmic Rays

StarDate ·

2025/11/08

In the early 20th century, scientists discovered a mysterious new type of radiation. The higher they went, the stronger it became. They realized that it came from beyond Earth. And 100 years ago tomorrow, it got a name: cosmic rays.Nobel Prize winner Robert Millikan had become fascinated by the rays from outer space in the early ’20s. He coined the name “cosmic rays” in a paper about them, which he presented to a meeting on November 9th, 1925. Millikan thought the rays were a form

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00:02:20

Lunar Excursion

StarDate ·

2025/11/07

Nothing can survive the brutal conditions on the surface of the Moon. But a story that debuted 125 years ago depicted a vast civilization below the surface – a society of insects. First Men in the Moon was written by H.G. Wells. It was published over several months in two magazines – “The Cosmopolitan” in the United States, and “The Strand” in Britain. The first installment appeared in November of 1900. In the story, a man named Bedford befriends a scientist named

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00:02:20

Biggest Black Hole

StarDate ·

2025/11/06

The black hole at the heart of the Milky Way is like the monster lurking under your bed. It’s four million times the mass of the Sun, and about 15 million miles across – just waiting to gobble up anything that gets too close. But compared to the black holes in many other galaxies, the one in the Milky Way is less like a monster and more like a dust bunny. The largest ones yet seen are thousands of times bigger. They’re known as ultra-massive black holes. Informally, they’re

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00:02:20

Oldest Black Hole

StarDate ·

2025/11/05

A Little Red Dot might have a big black hole in its heart. And that’s a bit of a challenge to explain. Little Red Dots are galaxies from the first 1.5 billion years of the universe. The name comes from their appearance – they’re small and red, but they’re especially bright. They don’t appear to have enough stars to make them so bright. So a good bit of their “shininess” could come from giant black holes that are devouring material around them. As they tumble

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00:02:20

Hunter’s Moon

StarDate ·

2025/11/04

With the autumn harvest safely stowed away, many people in bygone centuries turned their attention to hunting. And just as the Harvest Moon helped them bring in the crops, the Hunter’s Moon helped them find game. The moonlight made it easier to track animals through the empty fields and beyond. Although most present-day Americans don’t have to worry about storing food for the winter, we still keep the names for those full Moons. We had the Harvest Moon last month. And tonight, it’s

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00:02:20

Terrible Taurids?

StarDate ·

2025/11/03

In 1908, a space rock the size of a small office building exploded above Siberia, flattening hundreds of square miles of forest. In 1975, several “fireballs” blazed across the night, and instruments on the Moon recorded several impacts. And 30 years later, scientists saw an impact on the Moon. These events might all be related to the Taurid meteor shower, which is underway now. The shower is created by two objects – a comet and an asteroid. They might be the remnants of a larger

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00:02:20

Taurid Meteors

StarDate ·

2025/11/02

The Taurid meteor shower has a double identity. It’s split into two different streams, which peak a few nights apart in early November. Neither stream is particularly impressive, but things pick up when they overlap. Their story begins thousands of years ago, with the breakup of a big ball of ice and dust – Comet Encke. The biggest remaining chunk kept that name. But the breakup created several other big pieces, plus clouds of dust. The whole messy bunch is known as the Encke

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00:02:20

Settling In

StarDate ·

2025/11/01

AUDIO: We have contact. We have initial contact – initial contact of the Soyuz capsule with the Expedition 1 crew to the International Space Station.A key milestone in the human exploration of space took place 25 years ago tomorrow. The first permanent crew took up residence in the International Space Station. And people have been living on the station ever since. They weren’t the first to actually visit the station. Several groups of astronauts and cosmonauts had spent time assembling

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00:02:14

Abandoned Observatories

StarDate ·

2025/10/31

Like other buildings, observatory domes can outlive their usefulness. They may not be big enough for the latest telescopes. The light from encroaching cities can make it hard for them to see the heavens. Or time may just catch up to them. Many domes and related buildings have been torn down. Others have been converted into offices or libraries. And still others have been abandoned – left to the elements and the ravages of time. Several of these buildings are scattered around the country

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00:02:14

The Gorgons

StarDate ·

2025/10/30

The night sky is filled with monsters. And none are more fearsome than the Gorgons – three sisters who were so hideous that a single glance at them turned the observer to stone. One of them was beheaded by Perseus the hero. His constellation shows him holding the head, which is outlined by four stars – the Gorgons. In mythology, two of the sisters were immortal. But the third, Medusa, was not. Perseus managed to lop off her head with the help of the gods. They gave him an invisibility

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00:02:14

Self Destruction

StarDate ·

2025/10/29

A young “cotton-candy” planet is hastening its own demise. As it dips close to its star, it appears to trigger giant explosions that erode the planet’s atmosphere. The planet orbits HIP 67522, a star roughly 400 light-years from Earth. The star is a little bigger and heavier than the Sun, but less than one percent the Sun’s age. Such young stars generate strong magnetic fields. Lines of magnetic force tangle and snap, producing powerful flares. The planet, HIP 67522 b, orbits

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00:02:14

Distant Visitor

StarDate ·

2025/10/28

A visitor from far beyond the solar system is getting better acquainted with the Sun this week. Tomorrow, it’ll make its closest approach to the Sun – just 126 million miles. After that, it’ll head back toward interstellar space. The visitor is 3I/ATLAS. It was discovered on July 1st by an automated telescope that looks for comets and asteroids. Calculations of its orbit quickly showed that it came from outside the solar system. That makes it the third known visitor from

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00:02:14

Wobbly Times

StarDate ·

2025/10/27

Big “wobbles” in Earth’s magnetic field more than 40,000 years ago could have made the cultures of the time feel wobbly as well. Early modern humans might have adapted to the wobbly field better than Neanderthals. Earth’s magnetic field protects the surface from high levels of solar radiation. But during a period known as the Laschamp Excursion, which began 42,000 years ago, the field weakened to just 10 percent of its current intensity. And instead of acting like a bar

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00:02:14

Pole Stars

StarDate ·

2025/10/26

As seen from most of the United States, the Big Dipper is plunging toward the northern horizon as night falls, as if it’s about to dip into a pail of water.If you line up the stars at the outer edge of the dipper’s bowl, and follow that line to the upper right, the first moderately bright star you come to is Polaris, the Pole Star or North Star. Earth’s north pole aims toward it, so Polaris forms the hub of the northern sky – all the other stars appear to rotate around it

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00:02:14

Interstellar Waltz

StarDate ·

2025/10/25

The Blue Danube has been performed for some pretty lofty audiences – kings and queens, emperors and empresses, presidents and prime ministers. But a performance earlier this year topped them all: it was aimed at the stars. The waltz was composed by Johann Strauss II, who was born 200 years ago today. His birthday was one of the motivations for the performance. The other was the 50th anniversary of ESA – the European Space Agency. So the broadcast was mostly symbolic – not a real

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00:02:14

Mirach

StarDate ·

2025/10/24

A giant companion to a giant star faces an uncertain fate. The star is dying. As it expires, it will blast the companion, drag it inward, zap it with radiation, then loosen its grip on whatever remains. Mirach is the second-brightest star of Andromeda. It’s passed through the prime phase of life, and now is in the red-giant phase. It’s puffed up to about 85 times the diameter of the Sun, making it shine about 1700 times brighter than the Sun. Two years ago, astronomers discovered that

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00:02:14

Fast Eater

StarDate ·

2025/10/23

The black hole at the heart of a distant quasar has the biggest appetite astronomers have ever seen. It gobbles down the equivalent of one Sun per day – more than any other known black hole. It’s fed by the widest disk of gas and dust yet seen. And it outshines everything else in the known universe – 500 trillion times the Sun’s brightness. The quasar is so far away that we see it as it looked when the universe was a little more than one-tenth of its current age. It was

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00:02:14

First Look

StarDate ·

2025/10/22

We got our first picture from the surface of another planet 50 years ago today, when the Soviet Union’s Venera 9 landed on Venus. It transmitted data from the surface for 53 minutes, including a wide panorama. Venus is completely covered by thick clouds, so we can’t see its surface from Earth, or even from orbit around Venus – orbiters use radar to peer through the clouds. Venus also has a hot, dense atmosphere, so landing there is tough. Venera 9 parachuted through the clouds,

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00:02:15

Pulsating Stars

StarDate ·

2025/10/21

A star in the constellation Cetus brightens and fades dramatically every 11 months. At its brightest, it’s fairly easy to see. At its faintest, it’s visible only through a telescope. Because of that change, a 17th-century astronomer called the star Mira – from the Latin word for “wonderful.” The star changes because it pulses in and out like a beating heart. Mira’s in the final stages of its red-giant phase of life. Its core is no longer producing nuclear

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00:02:15

Eclipsing Binaries

StarDate ·

2025/10/20

Algol does something amazing. Every 2.9 days, the star fades to just one-third of its usual brightness. In centuries past, the stars were thought to be unchanging. A star that changed so blatantly was a bit scary. So it was given a name to match: “Algol” comes from an Arabic phrase that means “head of the demon.” But the star’s odd behavior isn’t scary it all – Algol fades as the result of eclipses. The system consists of three stars. Two of them form a

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