Dangerous Neighborhood
Our closest neighbor star is a bare cosmic ember. It’s much lighter and smaller than the Sun, and less than one ten-thousandth as bright. Yet the star...
StarDate Podcast
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About
StarDate, the longest-running national radio science feature in the U.S., tells listeners what to look for in the night sky.
Safe Neighborhood
Our planet appears to be in one of the safest neighborhoods in the Milky Way Galaxy. We’re away from the regions where deadly exploding stars are most...
Dark Monsters
Monster black holes were forming when the universe was young — just a few percent of its current age. And that’s a problem. Most ideas of how supermas...
Moon and Jupiter
The Moon shines big and bright tonight. It climbs into good view by about 11 p.m., and is well up in the southwest at first light tomorrow. And it has...
Moon and Planets
Jupiter and Saturn are the largest planets in the solar system. Jupiter is about 11 times the diameter of Earth, while Saturn is almost 10 times Earth...
Moon and Saturn
The Moon and Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, have something in common: The best places to get wet are at the poles. The Moon has lots of water ice....
IC 10 X-1
The galaxy IC 10 is small but busy. It’s only a few thousand light-years across — a small fraction of the size of the Milky Way. But pound for pound, ...
End of the Shuttle
[Double booms] MISSION CONTROL: Piercing the pre-dawn skies, the space shuttle announces its arrival at the launch site with its signature sound of tw...
Long-Term Commitment
Making a mirror for a giant telescope requires a long-term commitment. Back in March, for example, GMT — the Giant Magellan Telescope — began work on ...
Moon and the Scorpion
For most stars, life seems to happen in slow motion — it takes a long time for them to change. One exception appears near the Moon tonight. Over the l...