Star Trails: A Weekly Astronomy Podcast

In this episode, we move beyond what the eye can see and into a universe that has been quietly speaking all along.Radio astronomy has transformed our understanding of the cosmos, not by capturing images, but by detecting faint signals that have traveled across space for billions of years. From the accidental discovery of radio waves from the Milky Way by Karl Jansky, to the detection of the afterglow of the Big Bang, this field has revealed a hidden layer of reality that optical astronomy alone could never uncover.We’ll explore how radio telescopes actually work, from signal capture and amplification to digitization and frequency analysis using the Fast Fourier Transform. Along the way, we’ll break down concepts like interferometry, beamforming, and deconvolution—techniques that allow astronomers to reconstruct images from incomplete data and even map the structure of our own galaxy using hydrogen emissions.We’ll also take a look at one of the most remarkable achievements in modern astronomy: the first image of a black hole, created by the Event Horizon Telescope, a global network of observatories that effectively turned Earth itself into a single telescope.And we’ll connect these advanced techniques back to everyday life. The same math and signal processing used to study the universe are also at work in your phone, your Wi-Fi router, and your headphones.Later in the show, we reflect on a striking new image from the Artemis II mission, and step outside for a look at this week’s night sky, featuring dark skies, distant galaxies, and a subtle planetary alignment for early risers.Links mentioned:Artemis II Wake-Up playlist on Spotify"Hello World" image from Artemis IIConnect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

What makes a song feel like space? In this special bonus episode of Star Trails, we take a deep dive into the song "Space Oddity," not just as a piece of music, but as a story of distance, disconnection, and drift.Released in 1969 at the height of the space race, Bowie’s breakout hit arrived alongside humanity’s first steps on the Moon. The BBC even used it during their coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, a strange pairing for a song about an astronaut who never makes it home.But the real story of Space Oddity goes deeper. Through subtle harmonic shifts, borrowed chords, and unconventional production techniques, the song itself begins to drift, mirroring the fate of its protagonist, Major Tom.We’ll explore: How the song quietly abandons its musical “home,” why instruments like the Mellotron and Stylophone create a sense of distance, the role of stereo mixing, reverb, and tape-era studio tricks in shaping its sound, and how Bowie’s use of characters allows the story to resonate on a deeper level.Along the way, we trace the song’s journey beyond Earth itself, including Chris Hadfield’s performance aboard the International Space Station.More than 50 years after its release, Space Oddity remains a haunting reflection on what it means to leave home, and what happens when you don’t come back.Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

This week we step inside one of astronomy’s most iconic spaces: the observatory.Drew visits Melton Memorial Observatory and sits down with director Martin Bowers to explore what a nearly 100-year-old, urban observatory still offers today. From public viewing nights to hands-on learning, we look at how these classic domes continue to connect people with the night sky, even under city lights.Then, we zoom out to the bigger picture.From Mount Wilson Observatory and Palomar Observatory to Mauna Kea Observatories and Paranal Observatory, we trace how observatories evolved from simple telescopes into powerful instruments that reshaped our understanding of the universe.All of it built on a simple idea: gathering light, photon by photon.Plus, a quick look at what’s in the night sky for the week of April 5th.Links mentioned in this episode:Melton Memorial Observatory WebsiteMelton Facebook PageConnect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

This week we leave the familiar planets behind and venture into the farthest reaches of our Solar System, into regions where the Sun’s influence begins to fade and the boundaries of our cosmic neighborhood grow uncertain.We explore the Kuiper Belt, a vast disk of icy remnants left over from the formation of the planets, and travel even farther into the mysterious Oort Cloud, a distant, spherical halo of objects that may extend halfway to the nearest stars. Along the way, we uncover the discoveries that reshaped our understanding of the Solar System, from the first detection of Kuiper Belt objects to the controversial reclassification of Pluto after the discovery of Eris.We also follow the journey of the Voyager spacecraft, now drifting through interstellar space yet still deep within the Sun’s extended domain, and examine the ongoing search for the elusive Planet Nine, a world that may exist only as a gravitational whisper in the darkness.And then there are the visitors: interstellar objects like ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov, fragments from other star systems passing briefly through our own.In this week’s night sky report, we look ahead to the April 1 Full Moon, known as the Pink Moon, and highlight what you can still observe under bright moonlight, including Jupiter, several star clusters, and a beautiful close pairing of the Moon and Regulus.Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

The most intriguing places in our solar system might not be planets at all. This week we turn our attention to some of the most fascinating and unusual worlds in our solar system: its moons.For most of human history, we assumed moons were quiet, lifeless companions like our own. But as spacecraft ventured deeper into the outer solar system, a very different picture emerged.Some moons erupt with volcanoes. Some hide vast oceans beneath miles of ice. Some have weather, rivers, and lakes, made not of water, but methane. And a few of them may have the ingredients necessary for life.We’ll explore these strange worlds, from Io and Europa to Titan and Enceladus, and take a closer look at what makes them so dynamic. Along the way, we’ll revisit Pluto and its surprisingly complex family of moons, and consider why the outer solar system is teeming with these objects while the inner planets remain mostly bare.Finally, we’ll step outside for a guided tour of the night sky for the week of March 22–28, including a waxing crescent Moon, brilliant Venus in the evening sky, Jupiter and its Galilean moons, and the arrival of spring’s galaxy season. We'll also check in on our book discussion with a look at Chapters 8 and 9 in Nightwatch.Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

In 2006, a group of astronomers gathered in Prague and made a decision that shocked the world: Pluto was no longer a planet.But the story of Pluto is far more complicated—and far more fascinating—than that single vote.In this episode of Star Trails, we reopen the case. From Percival Lowell’s search for the mysterious “Planet X” to Clyde Tombaugh’s painstaking discovery using a blink comparator, we trace the strange history of the ninth planet. We’ll examine the discoveries that led to Pluto’s controversial demotion, meet the astronomers who helped redefine what a planet is, and follow NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it revealed Pluto to be a dynamic and surprisingly complex world.Along the way we explore Pluto’s bizarre orbit, its giant moon Charon, its icy surface and hidden mysteries—and the poetic moment when the ashes of its discoverer finally returned to the distant world he found.And later in the show, we step outside for a look at the night sky for the week of March 15–21, including dark skies near the new moon, the arrival of the vernal equinox, brilliant Jupiter in Gemini, and a few deep-sky treasures worth tracking down with your telescope.Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

This week we leave the rocky inner planets behind and journey into the deep cold of the outer solar system. From the storm-wracked atmosphere of Jupiter to the ringed elegance of Saturn and the mysterious ice giants Uranus and Neptune, these distant worlds reveal how strange and varied our planetary neighborhood truly is.Along the way we explore how the solar system formed, why the inner planets are rocky while the outer planets became giants of gas and ice, and why the distant ice giants remain some of the least explored worlds we know.Later in the episode we share a personal observing report after attempting to spot a SpaceX rocket launch from hundreds of miles away, offer up tips on how you might see one yourself, and we'll walk through what’s visible in the night sky for the week of March 8–14.We’ll also continue our NightWatch book club with Chapters 6 and 7, exploring the realities of visual astronomy and how patient observation reveals the subtle beauty of the deep sky.Mentioned in this episode:Spaceflight Now websiteConnect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

In this milestone 100th episode of Star Trails, we bring the cosmos back home.After months of exploring distant stars, nebulae, and black holes, March begins with a tour of our own neighborhood: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, four rocky worlds born from the same protoplanetary disk 4.5 billion years ago, yet shaped into radically different outcomes.We’ll visit Mercury, the tiny planet that helped confirm Einstein’s General Relativity and inspired the hunt for a phantom world called Vulcan. We’ll step into Venus, Earth’s “twin” turned runaway greenhouse furnace, and then we’ll zoom out on Earth itself as if we’re alien astronomers reading its oceans, oxygen, and technosignatures from afar. Finally, we’ll head to Mars, a planet that once hosted flowing water, may have been habitable long ago, and still tempts us with the unresolved question of past life.After the break, I nerd out about my electric car and trace an unexpected history of EVs in space, from the lunar rovers parked on the Moon to a Tesla Roadster orbiting the Sun.In the sky report, the week’s headline event is a total lunar eclipse: the Full Worm Moon turns coppery red in Earth’s shadow, the only total lunar eclipse of 2026 visible across much of North America. Plus: Jupiter shines in the evening sky, and Mercury and Venus linger low in twilight.Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.socialIf you're enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you're planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

In this episode, we wrap up our month-long series on stars by exploring their final acts.Most stars don’t explode. They grow old. We’ll follow the Sun’s future as it swells into a red giant, sheds its outer layers, and becomes a dense white dwarf held up not by heat, but by quantum mechanics itself. Along the way, we’ll examine planetary nebulae like the Ring Nebula and the Dumbbell Nebula, and look at real red giants such as Betelgeuse and Aldebaran that foreshadow stellar endings.Then we turn to the massive stars — the ones that collapse, detonate as supernovae, leave behind neutron stars and magnetars, or cross the final threshold into black holes. We’ll discuss how gravity overwhelms every known force, how black holes are categorized by size, and why even these seemingly eternal objects slowly evaporate over unimaginable timescales.In the night sky report, we cover the waxing Moon, a six-planet evening “parade,” Jupiter shining high after sunset, and a beautiful lunar encounter with the Pleiades.Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

This week we take a nerdy detour into the lives of stars by building a tiny simulated galaxy in Python. We form half a million stars, roll the clock forward 10 billion years, and discover something counterintuitive: nearly all of them are still shining. The stars that dominate our constellations, the bright, showy ones, are statistically the least likely to survive. The night sky, it turns out, is a biased sample.From there, we leave the realm of statistics and tour a handful of “highlight reel” stars: neighbors like Proxima Centauri and Barnard’s Star, navigational royalty like Canopus, famous oddballs like Vega, and cosmic heavyweights like Antares and WR 104, the so-called “Death Star” that’s (probably) not aimed at us after all.This week's night sky lands in the sweet spot of the month: A New Moon on February 17 brings genuinely dark evenings, followed by a delicate crescent return. Watch the young Moon pass Saturn on February 19, with Mercury about five degrees south.Finally, in our book club, we continue with Nightwatch by Terence Dickinson, covering Chapters 4 and 5. We talk old-school printed star charts, seasonal sky “guideposts,” why the Milky Way is a river of unresolved starlight, and Dickinson’s legendary warning about “Christmas trash scopes.”Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

Stars are easy to take for granted. They rise, they set, and they seem unchanged from one night to the next. But in this episode of Star Trails, we shift our focus to what stars are actually doing right now, shaping nebulae, building solar systems, regulating star formation, and quietly organizing the structure of galaxies around them.We explore stellar nurseries like the Orion and Eagle Nebulae, where young stars actively sculpt their birth clouds, and look at star clusters, both open and globular, as living communities that reveal how mass determines a star’s fate. Along the way, we unpack one of the strangest facts in astronomy: that the smallest, coolest stars may live for trillions of years, far longer than the universe has existed so far, and how we know that’s true.Later in the show, we step outside and survey the night sky for February 8–14, demystifying the so-called “planetary parade” by using it as a guide to the ecliptic — the shared path planets follow across the sky.Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

This week, we begin a month-long exploration of the most familiar objects in the night sky, and wonder why they’re still so often misunderstood.In this episode, we take a deep dive into what a star really is, and just as importantly, what it isn’t. We’ll talk about how stars form, why they live such turbulent lives, how light escapes their interiors over immense spans of time, and why the stars we see from Earth are not representative of the galaxy as a whole.Along the way, we’ll challenge common assumptions about color, brightness, and magnitude, explore the strange world of brown dwarves and “failed” stars, and reflect on why nearly everything around us exists because earlier generations of stars lived and died long before the Sun was born.After the break, we turn our attention to the night sky for February 1st through the 7th. The week opens under the light of the full Snow Moon. We’ll talk about a close lunar encounter with Regulus in Leo, and a selection of star clusters and overlooked regions that still shine through imperfect conditions, including the Beehive Cluster, M67, Monoceros, and a charming little cluster in Orion known as “the 37.”We also kick off the Star Trails book club with the first three chapters of NightWatch by Terence Dickinson. We’ll discuss why this classic guide remains so valuable, how different editions compare, and why books are still some of the best companions you can bring to the night sky.Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.If you’re enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee! Also, check out music made for Star Trails on our Bandcamp page!Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you’re planning to start your own podcast, use our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.