Star Trails: From Backyard Astronomy to Cosmic Wonder15 Mar

The Case of Pluto: Discovery, Demotion, and Redemption

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.

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Episoder(127)

The Moon That Sends Us Its Ocean

Saturn has a moon with a hidden ocean, and that ocean is spraying samples of itself into space.Enceladus is only about 310 miles wide, but beneath its brilliant shell of ice lies a global saltwater oc...

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A Black Hole Is Pointing at Us

A black hole in our galaxy appears to be aiming a relativistic jet almost directly toward Earth. That sounds like a reasonably good opening line for October.The object, IRAS 18293−0941, is a binary sy...

4 Okt 29min

There Was a Planet That Swallowed a Moon

What if Venus once had a moon, and then destroyed it?A new study suggests that under plausible conditions, an ancient Venusian moon could have slowly migrated inward, crossed the Roche limit and ultim...

27 Sep 32min

Dyson Spheres: The Heat Has to Go Somewhere

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 ...

13 Sep 23min

Rivers Through the Dark

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 s...

6 Sep 27min

Little Red Dots at Cosmic Dawn

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 wavelen...

30 Aug 27min

Did the Milky Way Flip?

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 differen...

16 Aug 35min

When Black Holes Twist Spacetime

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 ...

2 Aug 38min