Taking a Telescope to Galileo
Taking a Telescope to Galileo

Skytalk is hosted by WHYY's Dave Heller. Each week he discusses the latest news in astronomy with Dr. Derrick H. Pitts of the Franklin Institute.

All Episodes

a butterfly on a flower

Spring Ahead

It's time to set your clocks ahead!

Air Date: March 7, 2020

Bigstock/alones

Cold Snap Up North

NASA’s InSight Mars lander keeps daily records of weather conditions at the Elysium Planitia landing site on the red planet. Last week ...

Air Date: February 29, 2020

Listen 06:23

Older than Dirt

Stardust discovered in a meteorite that landed in Australia more than 50 years ago is up to three billion years older than our solar syst ...

Air Date: February 22, 2020

Listen 08:34
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Coming Attractions

Astronomers observing white dwarf stars see spectrographic signatures of previously orbiting gas giant planets. Our gas giants (Jupiter a ...

Air Date: February 8, 2020

Listen 07:53
NASA's three Great Observatories -- the Hubble Space Telescope, the SpitzerSpace Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- joined forces to probe theexpanding remains of a supernova, called Kepler's supernova remnant.

Elementary

Supernovae are known as element factories, but astronomers are now discovering that merging neutron stars and fast-spinning supernovae ma ...

Air Date: January 11, 2020

Listen 05:55
the Winter Solstice

Mark the Moment

We’ve arrived at the point in our solar orbit where the number of hours of sunlight are at a minimum for us in the North, and and c ...

Air Date: December 23, 2019

Listen 02:48
child with telescope

Worth A Look

Thinking about buying a telescope as a gift this holiday season? Consider these three easy guidelines: 1) Start simple; a telescop ...

Air Date: December 9, 2019

Listen 08:28
This image, taken on September 7, 1996 by NASA's Galileo orbiter, shows two views of the trailing hemisphere of Jupiter's ice-covered satellite, Europa. Europa is about 3,160 kilometers (1,950 miles) in diameter, or about the size of Earth's moon.

Water, Water Everywhere

There are lots of hints regarding the possibility of the existence of liquid water around the solar, system, the galaxy, and the universe ...

Air Date: December 2, 2019

Listen 05:32
the Milky Way galaxy

You’re Outta Here!

Our Milky Way’s SgrA Black Hole in the center of our galaxy has ejected a star from the galaxy at a brisk 3.7 million miles per hou ...

Air Date: November 23, 2019

Listen 05:14
More from Skytalk