Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder

What if the first evidence of an advanced alien civilization isn’t a message, but a star whose energy books don’t quite balance?

This week, we explore the strange history and surprisingly real science of Dyson spheres, from Olaf Stapledon and Freeman Dyson to the unforgettable Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Relics.” We’ll learn why a vast swarm of orbiting collectors makes more sense than a solid shell, and how astronomers search for the missing starlight and excess infrared heat such a civilization might produce.

We also examine Project Hephaistos and its search thr...

Galaxies carry the evidence of their past. When the Milky Way captures a dwarf galaxy or tears apart a globular cluster, it leaves behind long, ghostly ribbons of stars called stellar streams. These streams preserve the history of ancient collisions, and their shapes may trace the invisible dark matter surrounding a galaxy.

This week, we follow the stellar wreckage left behind by galactic cannibalism, from the enormous Sagittarius stream wrapped around the Milky Way to Oyashio, the first suspected globular-cluster stream discovered beyond our galaxy. We’ll explore how astronomers use these delicate structures as cosmic windsocks an...

The James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered hundreds of tiny red points in the early universe. They are extraordinarily compact, unexpectedly bright and strangely quiet in the X-ray and radio wavelengths where an active black hole should reveal itself.

Astronomers call them “little red dots,” but that modest nickname conceals one of the most intriguing mysteries of the Webb era.

In this episode, we follow the clues hidden in their light. Some may contain young black holes buried inside enormous cocoons of hydrogen, objects researchers have nicknamed “black hole stars.” Others may be powered by supermas...

The Milky Way looks permanent from our place inside it, a great band of stars stretching across the night sky. But new research suggests our galaxy may once have been oriented in a completely different direction, perhaps reorienting by more than 90 degrees during its violent youth.

This episode explores the evidence for the Milky Way's possible ancient flip and, even more remarkably, how astronomers could possibly reconstruct something that happened around ten billion years ago. Using stellar motions measured by Gaia, the debris of the ancient Gaia-Enceladus merger, cosmological simulations, and even the inferred shape of the...

What happens when a black hole spins? According to general relativity, it doesn't simply rotate in space, it actually drags spacetime around with it.

This episode explores the strange phenomenon known as frame dragging, from its first predictions more than a century ago to new observations that may let astronomers watch it at work around supermassive black holes. We'll visit a distant black hole where the remains of a shredded star appear to be wobbling through twisted spacetime, then return to the center of our own Milky Way to meet S301, a star racing around Sagittarius A...

Most amateur astronomers spend their nights collecting light. But what if you could study our galaxy without looking through a telescope at all?

In this episode, we sit down with amateur astronomer and radio enthusiast Hap Griffin to explore the fascinating world of backyard radio astronomy. Using a homemade radio telescope consisting of a recycled microwave dish, and less than $100 worth of electronics, Hap is recreating one of the classic experiments that revealed the Milky Way's spiral structure.

Along the way, you'll learn how astronomers use the natural radio emission from hydrogen gas to map...

What if the mysterious "Planet Nine" isn't a planet at all?

In this episode, we journey to the distant frontier of our Solar System to explore one of astronomy's strangest modern hypotheses: the possibility that the unseen object influencing the orbits of distant icy worlds could actually be a primordial black hole, an ancient relic formed in the first moments after the Big Bang.

Along the way, we'll revisit the discovery of Neptune, learn how astronomers detect objects they can't even see, and discover why gravity often reveals secrets long before telescopes do. We'll also...

For generations, we've pictured the Solar System as a stable and orderly place: planets forming where they are today and quietly orbiting the Sun for billions of years. But what if that picture is wrong?

In this episode, we explore the Grand Tack Hypothesis, a fascinating idea suggesting that Jupiter may have migrated deep into the young Solar System before reversing course and heading back outward. Along the way, the giant planet may have reshaped the asteroid belt, influenced the formation of Mars, and helped determine whether Earth as we know it could exist at all.

Summer is almost here, and with it comes one of the richest observing seasons of the year.

In this episode, we take a road trip through the summer sky, exploring the constellations, deep-sky objects, planets, meteor showers, and celestial events that will define the next three months of stargazing. Along the way we'll visit the Summer Triangle, cruise through the star clouds of the Milky Way, stop at famous landmarks like the Great Hercules Cluster and the Lagoon Nebula, and look ahead to the Perseid meteor shower and a deep partial lunar eclipse later this summer.

Back in November of 2024, I attended a star party hosted by the Midlands Astronomy Club and recorded what became one of my favorite episodes of Star Trails. This week, while taking a short break to recharge and prepare future episodes, I thought it would be the perfect time to revisit that night under the stars.

In this remastered archive presentation, we’ll head out to a dark-sky observing site where amateur astronomers gather with telescopes, guitars, stories, and a shared fascination with the cosmos. Along the way, you’ll hear conversations with longtime stargazers, club members, and curi...

This week we conclude our month-long journey through galaxies by exploring one of the biggest questions in astronomy: how galaxies are born, evolve, and eventually die.

We begin in the aftermath of the Big Bang, tracing how tiny fluctuations in matter slowly grew into the first galaxies. Along the way, we explore starburst galaxies, galactic recycling, and the remarkable realization that the elements making up planets, oceans, and even human beings were forged inside ancient generations of stars.

Then we dive into one of the universe’s greatest mysteries: supermassive black holes. Why do most ga...

This week we continue our month-long journey through the world of galaxies, but this time, we venture into one of astronomy’s darkest frontiers. Beyond the glowing spirals and brilliant star clouds lies a universe filled with hidden structures, invisible matter, and mysteries that continue to challenge modern science.

We venture into the Zone of Avoidance, a cosmic blind spot created by the dust and stars of our own Milky Way, and ask whether entire galaxies may still be hiding just beyond our view. From ghostly ultra-diffuse galaxies like Dragonfly 44, to the invisible gravitational scaffolding of dark ma...

This week we continue our month-long journey through the world of galaxies, but this time, we move beyond what galaxies are and explore what galaxies actually do. It turns out these vast islands of stars are anything but static. They collide, merge, exchange gas and dust, fling stars into deep space, and sometimes grow by consuming smaller neighbors in a process astronomers call galactic cannibalism.

We begin close to home with the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, a hidden companion galaxy currently being torn apart by the gravity of our own Milky Way. From there, we travel some 70...

This week, we begin a new month-long journey into one of the most awe-inspiring subjects in astronomy: Galaxies.

We start close to home by exploring our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and asking a deceptively simple question: where does a galaxy actually end? Along the way, we’ll explore spiral arms, dark matter, supermassive black holes, the hidden structure of our galactic halo, and the faint ghostly glow of Integrated Flux Nebula, dust clouds illuminated by the combined light of billions of stars.

We’ll also discover why our solar system doesn’t align with the Mi...

In this episode we step behind the scenes of modern astronomy to explore a side of the universe you can’t see, at least not directly.

We sit down with Professor Enrique López Rodríguez, an extragalactic astronomer at the University of South Carolina and one of the leading researchers in the United States studying magnetic fields in galaxies.

The conversation also dives into the complex behavior of supermassive black holes, some actively feeding and driving powerful outflows, others surprisingly quiet, and how these cosmic engines influence the evolution of entire galaxies.

Alon...

In this episode, we explore the role of computers in astronomy. From the ancient Antikythera Mechanism and the human “computers” of the Harvard College Observatory, to the rise of electronic machines, supercomputers like the Cray-2, and modern programming languages like Fortran and Python, we trace the evolution of how we’ve learned to model and understand the universe.

Along the way, we dive into concepts like data reduction, radio interferometry, distributed computing with SETI@home, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in making new discoveries. We also take a hands-on detour, compiling a simple N-body simulation in For...

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 ac...

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 Spac...

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 in...

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 de...

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...

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...

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 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...

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 —...

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 Canopu...

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 th...

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 co...

What if the problem isn’t the sky, but our expectations?

In this episode we step back from targets, charts, and techniques to talk about something every stargazer eventually encounters: the myth of the perfect night. Clear horizons, steady seeing, and flawless gear. Astronomy culture often presents these moments as normal, when in reality they’re exceptions. Most nights are compromised, interrupted, or quietly frustrating. It’s the nature of the hobby.

We explore how social media and memory itself smooth over disappointment, how unmet expectations can drain motivation, and why so many astronomers quietly drift...

In this episode, we continue our January series for new stargazers by exploring one of the most quietly mind-bending truths in astronomy: everything is moving, including you. Even when you’re standing motionless in your backyard, you’re traveling through space at extraordinary speed, carried along by Earth’s rotation, its orbit around the Sun, the Sun’s journey through the Milky Way, and the motion of the galaxy itself.

From that realization, we peel back the layers of motion that shape the night sky. We explore why stars rise and set, why the Moon never shows us its f...

This week we slow down and spend the night with one of the sky’s most iconic constellations: Orion. We'll use the mighty hunter as a guide, learning how his stars can point the way to other landmarks in the winter sky, from blazing Sirius to Aldebaran and the Pleiades.

Along the way, we explore Orion’s rich mythology, his role in ancient cultures, and the remarkable deep-sky objects hidden within his outline, including stellar nurseries, dark nebulae, and the vast structures shaping this region of the Milky Way.

We also journey back thousands of year...

The first episode of a new year is a good time to slow down, zoom out, and reset. In this episode, we welcome new and returning listeners alike for a thoughtful reintroduction to stargazing, one that sets aside checklists, gear anxiety, and the pressure to “do it right,” and instead focuses on patience, curiosity, and learning the sky where you are.

Along the way, the episode explores the idea of the sky as a clock, the power of naked-eye and binocular observing, and the winter night sky anchored by Orion, Jupiter, and the Great Nebula.

It a...

As the year winds down, we make one last stop beneath the night sky for the week of December 21–27, marking the arrival of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year and a quiet turning point in Earth’s journey around the Sun.

In this short holiday episode, we reflect on what the solstice means from an astronomical perspective, why ancient cultures saw it as a rebirth of light, and how it gifts modern stargazers with long, early nights and some of the most iconic sights in the sky.

We tour the familiar winter cons...

For the season finale of Star Trails, we’re building a “time machine” the only way we know how: with physics, not plot holes. Drew takes a tour through the time-travel stories that shaped his 80s childhood—Back to the Future, Star Trek IV, The Time Machine, Bill & Ted, and even Disney’s wonderfully unhinged The Black Hole—and then sets them beside the actual rules of our universe. We’ll look at the real ways you can travel into the future using speed and gravity.

Along the way we’ll ride with nuclear-pulse starships, bust the myth of the Buss...

This week, we’re doing something chaotic: we’re mapping the entire history of the universe onto the musical eras of Taylor Swift. And yes, the science is absolutely real.

From the Big Bang to the heat death of everything, each of Taylor’s albums becomes a chapter in the cosmic timeline. We’ll travel through the Primordial Universe, the formation of the first stars, galaxy evolution, black hole fireworks, the rise of dark energy, and the long, cold future of the cosmos — all through a Swiftian lens.

Later in the episode, we return to our usual...

This episode begins with auroras and interstellar objects and ends somewhere much closer to the heart. After catching up on the week’s sky – dark moonless nights, Mercury in the dawn, meteor activity, and the quiet unraveling of comet 3I/Atlas – we shift into something different.

We’ll explore the idea of “sad astronomy”: the loneliness of deep space, the slow death of stars, the fragility of spacecraft, the silence of the cosmic void, and why so many stargazers feel a mix of awe and melancholy when they look up.

Along the way we wander through pop...

This week on Star Trails, we let the universe decide.

We fire up a real quantum computer to generate pure randomness — the seed for a million-universe simulation of the famous Drake Equation. Each run explores how many intelligent civilizations might exist in our galaxy, from barren voids to thriving cosmic metropolises. The results are startling, the implications profound, and the method delightfully nerdy.

Along the way, we revisit the roots of the Drake Equation, the strangeness of quantum mechanics, and the poetry of probability. Then we step outside to the real night sky: the waning Mo...

This week on Star Trails, we explore the messages written across the cosmos — from faint comets in our own skies to the coded signals we’ve sent into the void. Drew shares a quick report from his local astronomy club’s fall star party, where hopes of photographing Comet A6 Lemmon met the familiar mix of excitement, haze, and grilled hamburgers under imperfect skies.

Then we turn from backyard observing to deep-space communication with a hands-on look at the Arecibo Message — the radio transmission beamed from Earth in 1974 as humanity’s mathematical greeting to the stars. We’ll break dow...

As Halloween approaches, we drift into one of astronomy’s most haunting questions: if life in the universe is so likely, where is everybody? This week, we explore the famous Fermi Paradox — from Enrico Fermi’s lunchroom question to Frank Drake’s mathematical quest for cosmic company.

Along the way, we revisit humanity’s attempts to speak into the void — the Arecibo Message, the golden records aboard Voyager, and the global volunteer army of SETI@Home. We also consider the possibilities: is the eerie silence a warning, a mystery, or simply a distance too vast for even radio waves...

The veil between life and death is thin in late October, and not just on Earth. This week on Star Trails, we take a haunting journey through The Cosmic Graveyard, a place where dead suns still glow, galaxies devour one another, and the faint aftershocks of ancient explosions echo across time. From the slow cooling of white dwarfs to the bottomless depths of black holes, we explore the universe’s quietest afterlife.

But before venturing into that darkness, the night sky itself offers reason to stay up late. The Orionid meteor shower peaks under a new moon, de...