Cosmic Radio

Mighty Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is also a powerful radio transmitter! The dynamo driving Jupiter’s radio emission is a strong magnetic field.

Throughout history, women have had a tough time breaking into the physical sciences. And when they do, their contributions may go unnoticed for decades. This is the story of Ruby Payne Scott, the first female radio astronomer.

The Atacama desert in Chile is one of the driest places on earth. It’s also the site of a new telescope called the Atacama Large Millimeter Array.

Dip a teaspoon in a pulsar, and pull out the equivalent of a full ocean tanker! Add the amazing fact that a pulsar can rotate up to 700 times a second and you have one of the most exotic objects in the Universe.

Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, actually has water ice in craters near the planet’s poles. Does the Moon also harbor water ice? It would be nice to have a ready-made source of water when astronauts return to set up a permanent lunar colony.

What does a man do who’s bored with his hobby? Build the world’s first radio telescope in his mom’s backyard, of course!

Two days after Christmas 2004, spacecraft detected a giant flash of energy from thousands of light years away – the biggest, brightest explosion astronomers had ever seen. What was it?

Light pollution is a problem for optical astronomers. There is a problem just as severe for radio astronomers – radio frequency interference. Communications towers, satellites, and even home electronics like your iPod produce signals that swamp sensitive radio telescopes!

20/20 vision is a good thing. It means you can read a letter that’s about 1/4th of an inch high from a distance of 20 feet. Put that letter in Los Angeles. Now what if you could read it standing in New York? The Very Long Baseline Array can!

While some astronomers look for transmissions from other civilizations to search for evidence of life in the Milky Way, others search for interstellar chemicals that are necessary for life: organic molecules.

"A strong, unique pulsed signal came booming into the telescope just as soon as we had turned it towards the star Epsilon Eridani." These words of Frank Drake highlight the excitement surrounding the first search for intelligent life in the Milky Way. Drake called it “Project Ozma.”

Beautiful Blue Rigel. Ruby Red Betelgeuse. Our own Yellow Sun. Learn why stars are different colors and why the "color" of the Universe as a whole is in the radio part of the spectrum.

Most scientists agree that the Universe is expanding and that the expansion stems from an event that occurred some 14 billion years ago. That event is called the Big Bang.

Orion the Hunter is the most easily recognized constellation in the night sky, and one of the most intensely studied regions of space. Find out why.

One hundred and eighty light years away, a young star system is in the process of forming planets. This messy construction site is full of pebblesized debris, the forerunners of new planets.

Contrary to what you might think, radio astronomers don’t listen to the Universe; they often make images of it. Because of its size and sensitivity, the Very Large Array is one of the best imaging telescopes around.

Giant spiral galaxies like the Milky Way may form by gobbling up smaller galaxies and clouds of gas. Radio astronomers have discovered the leftovers around our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.

Among the most beautiful objects in the Universe are spiral galaxies, swirling pinwheels containing billions of stars. It turns out that we live in one of these.

In our Galaxy, about once every 100 years, a massive star ends its life in an enormous explosion. This explosion can outshine the full moon. While the light fades away in a matter of weeks, the gas continues to glow in radio waves.

Galileo rocked the world when he turned his simple spyglass toward the sun and discovered sunspots. Since Galileo's time, studies of our star have revealed that Earth is in a very real sense, inside the sun.

The Green Bank Telescope is so big you could put two football fields in its dish. This remarkable telescope, nestled in a rural West Virginia valley, is making fantastic discoveries.

If you could see radio waves, what would the sky look like? Most of the bright dots in the radio sky are not stars, but emanations from black holes in distant galaxies!

All forms of electromagnetic energy, including light and radio waves, obey a cosmic speed limit: 186,000 miles per second! Even at that incredible speed, it takes a long time for light to reach us from the distant reaches of the Universe. What you learn in this segment will blow your mind!

Your favorite radio station reaches you by transmitting radio waves to your radio. In this segment, we learn how cosmic objects communicate with astronomers through a similar mechanism.

What do penicillin, Velcro and radio astronomy have in common? They were all accidental discoveries! Karl Jansky made the first discovery of cosmic radio waves in 1931.

Some of the most fascinating objects, like black holes, and some of the most basic of processes, like how stars are born and how they die, are best studied by radio telescopes. We invite you to learn more with Cosmic Radio. Welcome to the radio universe!